to laugh with her, but all he can manage is a grimace.
When he gets home, he turns on his computer and visits the CDC site again. The infection alert is still there, and seeing it in larger type makes it even more horrifying and unreal. The urge to shower again crawls over his skin like a spreading rash.
Shoulders twitching, he logs into NextExtinction.com, an online forum he joined when he was researching his previous book. Back then he logged in daily, posting comments and asking questions like any survivalist newbie trying to learn the ropes. He found the best places to buy N95-rated face masks and other protective gear. He followed links to sites that sold crates of canned goods and bottled water at deep discounts. Owen even learned how to buy bitcoin and access the dark web to purchase antiviral medications in bulk, though he was too uncomfortable with the idea to actually try. In the end, he came away with a handful of useful details for the book and an uneasy acquaintance with the culture of fear.
He shares the CDC alert in a new thread on the disease monitoring board, adding that he has heard about it first-hand from someone who was at the initial infection site.
Someone he used to chat with messages him almost immediately. Unlike some of the right-wing kooks on the forum, GERTIEBIRD is a kind soul who only recently rejoined society after dropping out in the seventies. She posts tips on the proper way to use water purification tablets, and how to build a natural shelter out of native Californian trees, and other bits of off-grid advice relevant to the interests of a fringe group of paranoid internet users.
I hope you and your friend are doing okay. Still feeling well?
I think we’re infection-free for now, thanks.
Are you feeling lucky? You should buy a lottery ticket.
Quite the opposite, actually.
But think of the odds. You’ve already had a brush with the virus, and you’re fine.
Might be too soon to tell.
Maybe. But I have a good feeling about you. You like dogs, right?
Owen reminds himself that he is talking to an actual nut—a lucid nut as far as nuts go, but a nut all the same. A few of GERTIEBIRD’S posts suggest she spent decades believing herself a survivor of a nuclear blast, afraid to emerge from hiding for fear of capture or radiation.
I used to have a dog, when I was growing up.
See? I thought so. You’re an animal person.
Is that supposed to mean something?
No. Except that maybe you’re sympathetic to the forces at play…
You’re going to have to spell it out for me, Gert.
These viruses usually come from animals, don’t they? Usually when their habitat is under threat from humans. That can’t be a coincidence.
Ah.
Mother Earth is trying to restore some balance. Stop global warming and overpopulation. Maybe it’s a battle we’re going to lose? I don’t know.
So we die, she wins? I thought this site was about us winning instead?
You think so? I ended up here after I first came out of the forest. It was a place for me to connect after being alone for so long. It showed me how people could cope with their fear and how I could help by sharing what I know. I think it’s a nice group of folks, overall.
Owen wants to laugh. Only the most deluded Pollyanna could imagine the survivalists of NextExtinction.com as altruistic. If they are ever generous to one another, it is only from a sense of allegiance to their shared paranoid ideologies. They are nothing more than a self-selected community of outcasts.
Before Owen logs off, he checks his original post. A user named FLUDAD, one of the site’s most active members, has written a response. If FLUDAD’S posts can be believed, he has a bona fide bunker completely stocked with six months’ worth of supplies and equipped with its own ventilation and water treatment systems. He used to be a moderator over at MushroomCloudPreppers.net. Once he was finished preparing for nuclear war, he started to consider the implications of a new strain of bird flu.
Checking with my man Li in China, Jorg in Germany, and a few other people I know in research around the country. We’ll get some answers soon.
FLUDAD’S email signature is Buy more ammo!
Just as Owen is about to turn off the computer, he thinks better of it and instead sends a message to Rachel: I know I’m the last person you want to hear from, but I’m