Influenza: Viral Virulence

by Ohliger, Steven

  Influenza

  Viral Virulence

  Steven C Ohliger

  Copyright © 2015 Steven C Ohliger

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1511506288

  ISBN 13: 9781511506281

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015906051

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  I would like to personally and deeply thank my wife for her patience and supportive input. I also would like to thank my parents, Steve & Judy Ohliger, Melba Richards, Lori Richards, and the Createspace Team for their spectacular editing and informative, positive feedback. And a special thanks to Melba for pushing me onward and Lori for her over-the-top editing skills.

  History’s Deadliest Outbreaks

  Antonine Plague, AD 165 (Roman Empire)

  Smallpox—5 million dead

  Plague of Justinian, AD 541 (Eastern Roman Empire)

  Bubonic plague—25 million dead

  Black Death, AD 1338 (Europe, Asia)

  Bubonic plague—100 million dead

  Spanish Flu, AD 1918 (worldwide)

  Influenza—75 million dead

  Yet to be named, present day (worldwide)

  Influenza—530+ billion dead

  “Influenza” (noun)—from the Italian meaning “to flow in,” refers to an illness flowing into the body

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Michael found himself staring blankly at the block-printed sign that was barely hanging on to the glass door. It was a large, colorful sign that had once been expected to attract customers into the dimly lit store. He was sure that the executives of the holding company had spent millions of dollars in research and endless hours in committee meetings contemplating the best presentation of colors and lettering that would appeal to the public. Not that it mattered anymore…

  Most of the glass in the doorframe had been brutally shattered, but enough unbroken glass remained to keep the sign from falling down and being swept away with the other trash. Hanging by only one lonely suction cup in the top left corner, the sign was tilted drastically to one side, and the slight nighttime breeze made it silently sway back and forth. Then, unexpectedly, the fluorescent lights inside the store flickered on and off in conjunction with the street lights behind Michael. Except for the faint hum emanating from the fluorescent street lights, the night air around him seemed unnaturally quiet. Even the usual chorus of crickets held their breath in the still darkness of the night. He returned his gaze to the swinging sign. Because of the large block letters, people could probably read the sign upside down if they really had to. The sign simply read:

  Flu Shots Available

  Ask your friendly Pharmacist for Details

  No Appointment Needed

  Covered by most participating insurances

  As Michael stood there looking at the sign, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so he decided to do neither.

  Chapter 2

  Four weeks ago—the day before the global pandemic began.

  Michael Donovan walked leisurely across campus following the winding strip of concrete sidewalk that curved gently among the green grass. Standing almost six feet tall, with dark, wavy black hair and piercing blue eyes, Michael was a handsome young man. He was a vastly different person than the one who had graduated from high school a mere five and a half years ago. Back then, he had been a skinny runt, weighing no more than 140 pounds soaking wet. Unable to bench the weight of the empty bar on a bench press, he had been ridiculed throughout high school and was not the envy of any of his fellow students. Because Michael wasn’t very good at sports or a beneficiary from a wealthy family, he did not run in the school’s popular circles.

  He wasn’t invited to any of the “cool” parties, and he didn’t attract the attention of many girls either. In fact, he didn’t have his first girlfriend until his junior year in high school. The only advantage that Michael had over his fellow students was his intelligence. The school curriculum came easily to him, and he seemed to breeze through the advanced classes. So Michael had found himself forced into the nerd group. And with that labeling, the school bullies had found yet another unlucky target. After getting the snot beat out of him more than a few times, Michael quickly learned to rely on his wit to try to avoid painful confrontations.

  Looking back, he supposed he must have been a late bloomer, because soon after starting at the university, he finally gained a little muscle mass and, like good wine, he got better with age. He was still thin but now a bit better proportioned…and a little more respected.

  As Michael continued down the sidewalk, he noted that someone must have recently mowed the lush campus lawn. He inhaled deeply, relishing that smell that only freshly cut, damp grass can produce. It carried a slightly sweet odor, like a cool summer breeze at twilight. It reminded him of childhood days not so long ago, when life was carefree and his greatest worry was what games he and his small group of friends were going to play next. Back then, it had seemed like the summer days and nights would last forever. Life was as it should be. He wished, at times, that he could magically rewind the clock and go back to those days. Times when there were no bills to pay, no books to study, and no worries about the future. So, as Michael walked across the university smelling the cut grass, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the brief moment of peace that swept over him. He knew that the warm, fading summer sun would soon yield to the bitter cold of winter.

  It was late September at the university in central Ohio. The fall semester had just started a few weeks prior. The shortening days were still toasty warm, but at night the temperature was starting to get a little chilly. This was Michael’s last year of a six-year degree program. He was both excited and uncertain, as most graduating students were, about the future that lay ahead of him.

  Many students came from the familiar life at home where, as adolescents, they had all of their needs met by a loving mother and father. Then, they were thrown out of their comfortable nest into the university life. The young, naïve students arrived wide-eyed into an unfamiliar, strange new culture and world. To some extent, the students on campus were still sheltered from the rough realities of the world beyond the safety of home, but at least they were being taught little by little how to manage without depending 100 percent on their parents. But soon, their lives were destined to be uprooted and shaken again. These same students, who had recently learned to adjust to a semi-independent lifestyle, would graduate and find themselves out in the real world, completely on their own. They would have to compete for jobs in a tough market and work forty-plus hours a week just to pay the bills. Real life was just around the corner.

  The univ
ersity had been simply another intermediate stage of passage from childhood into adulthood. It was like learning to ride a bicycle for the first time. At first, parents would jog alongside the child with a reassuring hand holding on securely to the back of the bicycle to keep the child from falling. Then, after a time, the parent’s stable support was replaced by training wheels that helped prevent the bicycle from tipping. And finally, when the training wheels were taken off, the child would be riding without help. Sure, there would be a few scrapes and bruises along the way, but children had to go through the stages in order to be independent. As Michael looked forward to the upcoming year, he sensed that another time of transition was quickly approaching. He just never expected how violently and quickly the storm of change would bear down on them all.

  He felt confident that he was well prepared for the journey ahead of him. He had made the change from a simple, carefree child to a semi-independent young adult at the school (where he quickly learned about the dreaded, nonstop arrival of bills). Soon, he would be making decent money in his chosen field of study. A good salary was the best reward for graduating from the six-year pharmacy program. Yes, the money was good, but in return he knew that he had many sacrifices ahead. For example, most professionals had set nine-to-five hours with most holidays and weekends off to enjoy with friends and family. As a pharmacist, he would have to work on holidays and weekends, and even sickness was not a valid excuse to miss work. He thought that having to work Christmas Day or Thanksgiving would stink. If there were days that everybody should have the right to take off, it would be those two. The hectic schedule was just one of the sacrifices that he would have to face in his upcoming career.

  Sometimes, he wished that when he had come to the crossroad where he had to decide on the direction of his life, he had chosen to have some sort of desk job instead. If he were crunching numbers on a computer rather than working in a pharmacy, he would be looking forward to a nice, quiet, low-stress job. The salary wouldn’t be as good, but at least he would be working Mondays through Fridays with weeks of vacation and most holidays off. Oh, well. It was too late. He wasn’t going to throw away six years of vigorous studies, midterms, and finals to suddenly change his course now.

  The weight of his dark-blue backpack containing enormously thick textbooks was starting to bother his left hand, and without thinking much about it, he swung the straps over his shoulders to bear the burden. Sometimes Michael thought the professors purposely picked out the largest books available in order to make people think that their class was more important. He imagined there was some sinister competition between the professors as to who could pick out the biggest, heaviest textbook. The title of one of the books in his backpack was Applied Therapeutics. It was by far his thickest book.

  Friday night was usually a time of fun and relaxing with his friends. Unfortunately, this weekend would be devoted to studying that big, old, nasty book for his first test of the semester. It wasn’t a midterm or a final, but he had figured it would be better to start out well with a decent grade. According to the rumors, the examinations only got tougher as the course progressed.

  The sun was still high in the sky, although it was now starting on its steady decline toward the horizon. Michael continued walking on the path. He didn’t even have to think about where he was going as his feet automatically took him in the right direction. He passed a few people he knew, and they exchanged brief hellos. He was heading toward the front of campus past the administration buildings. Once he passed by, he would cross Main Street, and then it was only a few more blocks to his apartment.

  The college was laid out almost like an elongated football. At the skinny east end of the football, regal old brick administration buildings stood tall, welcoming students and parents alike. The north end of campus was where the majority of classroom buildings were located, and the south end contained the student dormitories. Opposite the front end of campus, located at the far west end of the oval, stood a few large houses, including two sorority and three fraternity houses. In between all these structures was an open field of grass, broken up by a maze of sidewalks. Its crisscrossing paths led the students to and from their various dormitories and classroom buildings.

  In the late vestiges of summer, like this very day, it was a beautiful field of green grass and trees, but in the middle of winter, the snow and wind would rip right through the flat fields. Students had long ago nicknamed this part of campus “the Tundra,” after the frozen northern plains. The wind chill would often reach well below zero. Sometimes the snow was so thick and the wind so harsh that students couldn’t see five feet in front of them. To make it to class, they had to follow the back of the person in front and hope that the person leading them knew where he or she was going.

  The only buildings located in the center of the university were the massive two-story library and a small chapel. Michael often wondered if the university had planned the layout as an analogy. Were they saying that the center of life was knowledge and faith? Or was he just being foolish and reading too deeply into it?

  A group of young freshman girls was heading in his direction. They were excitedly chatting among themselves. Their voices dropped off to a whisper as they approached. He met their shy glances with a bright smile, which immediately brought giggles and blushing faces. They passed each other, and their chatter started up once again but with more fervor. Michael smiled to himself and then turned eastward on an intersecting sidewalk and began walking down the center of campus toward the administration buildings.

  Although he could have driven his pickup truck to class, he usually liked to walk from the apartment he shared with his friends. He had purchased the pickup as his first brand-new vehicle after saving up enough money from his part-time job at the local pharmacy. His parents had offered to help but Michael had adamantly refused. He wanted to be free of his parents and if he had accepted their help, it would mean that they still had influence over him. They needed to stop trying to control his life and let him be independent. Sometimes, parents cannot seem to let go of the back of the bicycle and allow their children to be free. Although Michael loved his parents, he resented their attempts to cunningly direct his life.

  But being only a mile from the edge of campus, the apartment was an easy walk from the university. It would be ridiculous to drive that short distance. Besides, it was good exercise, and he had the chance to breathe in the crisp, fresh air. Walking also presented the opportunity to run into people he knew.

  During the cold winter months, he and his friends would take turns driving to class, but even riding in a car seemed to be in vain, since the engine never heated the air sufficiently before they got to their destination. They would all emerge from the car shivering as much as they would have if they had been walking. The only benefits to using a car were that they were briefly sheltered from the biting wind, and the duration of their suffering was reduced from a thirty-minute walk to a five-minute commute.

  Today, he walked alone. In the past, he and his friends would try to coordinate their classes. But this year, he had taken this additional class, Applied Therapeutics, with the plan to just get it out of the way. Once he completed the class at the end of the fall semester, he would have the opportunity to take it easy and relax during his very last semester.

  “Hi, Michael,” a voice said, breaking him out of his thoughts.

  Michael looked up and recognized Monica walking toward him on the sidewalk. Her smooth, olive skin and dark, alluring eyes made Michael think she was of some Middle-Eastern origin. He got a brief whiff of an exotic perfume that he couldn’t quite place. “Hi, Monica,” he smiled.

  “Going out tonight?” she asked, drawing closer. Monica was a year behind Michael, and he had only seen her out at social events. She was a very-nice, sweet girl, and Michael may have entertained asking her out, but the opportunity had never presented itself.

  “No,” Michael sighed. “I have my first big test of the semester on Monday, and from what I he
ar about the professor, I need every advantage to do well in the class.”

  “Shame,” she merely said as she passed by him. Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, “Give me a call if you change your mind.” She glanced up at his face and then quickly averted her eyes back down to the sidewalk.

  “Okay,” Michael said as she continued walking away from him.

  After a few steps, she glanced back at him over her shoulder.

  He smiled again, waved, and then continued toward home.

  Maybe he would call her, he mused as he crossed Main Street and headed into the residential section of town. He was still considering the possibility of going out with Monica when he arrived at his barely respectable apartment. It definitely needed some cosmetic repairs, but it was affordable and met the requirements of his and his roommates’ college budgets. It was a basic student apartment: three separate bedrooms to sleep in and heat during the winter, and TV for the weekend football games. It was the perfect temporary home for struggling students.

  Their apartment building had a total of three units. There were two student apartments on the bottom floor and one more on the second floor. The unit he shared with his two best friends, Brian and Scott, was on the bottom right. He climbed the sagging, wooden steps to the porch. The dull green paint was starting to flake off, and the boards squeaked beneath his feet. He managed to fish the key out of his right front pocket. As he opened the door, the old hinge groaned in protest. Inside, the apartment was dark and eerily silent. Brian and Scott were out.