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It was a minute and twenty-one seconds, heavily pixelated, and filmed on a mobile phone.

It started with a teenage girl leaning in close to the camera, which she held. There was a noise in the background that sounded like hysterical laughter. I couldn’t be sure because of the poor quality, but it looked as if she had tears in her eyes.

“I don’t know what’s going on here.”

She stood and walked through a blurred-out space.

The laughter growing louder.

She was moving toward it.

When she finally stopped, I saw that she was standing in the dim living room of a double-wide trailer.

She switched her phone’s camera. It showed a rail-thin man sitting in a recliner. He was trembling violently, and every few seconds, he let out an explosion of laughter that could only be described as pathological.

“Dad, what’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer her. Didn’t even look at her.

“What’s happening to you, Dad?”

He tried to stand, but his balance was ruined.

He toppled over, sprawled across the floor.

The camera view became blurry as the girl was on the move again, rushing down a narrow hall. The next room she entered was a bedroom.

A woman sat in a half-open bathrobe on the end of a bed. She was shaking as well, although not quite as severely.

“Mom, let me take you to the hospital.”

“Thehospitalisfull.”

“I’ll drive you both to Billings.”

“GETOUT!!! GETOUT!!!”

Her mother charged her.

There was a cut, and then the girl was back in her room, crying now.

“It’s like this everywhere. Our town is falling apart. I think I’m getting sick too. The past three nights, my whole body aches. Nine-one-one doesn’t work. I drove to the hospital, but there’s a line out the door. We need help. I don’t know what to—”

That hideous laughter started again, right behind her.

She turned her head toward a silhouette standing in the doorway to her room.

The video ended.

I sat in the silence of the cottage, the rain streaking down the windows.

My pulse was rising: 109. 110. 115.

The video had been shared forty thousand times.

I scrolled through the comments.


Holy shit! Is this how the zombie apocalypse begins?

Anyone else thinking this guy should play the next Joker?

Bitch, they ’bout to eat you. Run!

PUT THEM IN A CAR AND DRIVE THEM TO A HOSPITAL IMMEDIATELY.



There was no real information to be gleaned. I couldn’t even confirm if the video was real.

Glancing back at the television, I saw that the press conference had started.

I moved back into the living room, sat close to the woodstove, and turned up the volume.

Command Sergeant Major Jackson Tolmach was speaking into a cluster of microphones as a Boeing C-17 military transport taxied down a runway in the background. Standing behind him was my old boss, Edwin Rogers.

“…anti-ram vehicle barriers at the intersection of Highway 2 and Highway 24 on the southeast side of town, Highway 2 on the northwest side of town, Highway 246, Aitken Road, and Highway 42. All schools, businesses, and government facilities are closed. The Glasgow airport and train station are closed. All trains on the Northern Transcon will be detoured around the city. There will be no hyperloop regional service to Glasgow. A stay-at-home order remains in effect with no essential activity exemptions. A shipment of MREs just arrived from the Montana Air National Guard, which will be distributed to all impacted residents of Glasgow. If you need immediate medical attention, field hospitals are being set up at the intersection of First Avenue North and Fifth Street North. At this time, I’m going to turn things over to Dr. Manpearl.”

The National Guard commander stepped away, and a suited man with driftwood-colored hair and a five-o’clock shadow approached the microphones.

The army guy was an army guy, exuding can-do coolness.

Even through the pixels I could see that Manpearl was terrified.

“Good evening. I’m David Manpearl, communications director with the CDC. Five days ago, we received the first reports from Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital regarding an illness of unknown origin. There were five cases, and the patients had all come into the hospital within several hours of one another.

“Symptoms included sudden personality changes, memory loss, impaired cognitive abilities, insomnia, incoordination, body tremors, and vocal outbursts. The patients had first noticed symptoms three weeks prior, and had all experienced a steady mental decline. The next day, eleven people came to the hospital with similar symptoms. The third day, that number grew to thirty. The local hospital has only twenty-five beds, so this became a medical crisis in short order.”

He glanced down at his notes, then looked back into the camera.

“At present, we have 218 active cases. The hospital has been transformed into a triage facility and we’re adding more beds and field hospitals in coordination with the National Guard and FEMA. We’re flying in doctors and nurses from all over the country. As of ten minutes ago, 104 people have died.”

A reporter called out:

“What’s the mortality rate?”

“Well, so far it’s one hundred percent.”

Another reporter asked: