Prologue
Slimy Disguise
Love is a Frond
with Bull fiddle head
crushed still curled
by a hiker’s boot
to spring up again
from the very same root
Love is a tadpole
a fat black drop,
a squiggly tailed thing
squirming to apogee
to be bleeping king
of the green algae
Too small and foul
for the grand and the wise,
love’s found all over
in slimy disguise
by fortified mosses
and amused eyes
-Sebastian L. Domenico 1978
Weather’s heavy hand has shaped the course of history. It helped barbarians defeat Rome, sunk the Titanic, and was Hitler’s demise in Russia. Weather has leveled entire cultures, left millions homeless, and dashed all hope in its senseless fury.
With global warming, extreme weather was bent on setting new records. This year, the Northeast was taking the rap. Summer had just started, yet the heat was already intense. It stressed the grid beyond capacity, leaving millions in danger, and desperate for relief. The bitter cold a few months back was now forgotten.
Out on the island, the swelter was unrelenting. But it was a mere sidebar to something far more menacing. Something dark and deadly was about to afflict Burrstone Hospital, a medical institution out on the Island, where some of the most exotic and dangerous diseases were studied. Today, however, they were about to create one of their own. Many a healthcare worker would love to be at Burrstone, but not on this day.
In the incessant heat, a soldier of death descended upon the hospital. It started in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), among the most defenseless patients. Without proper immune systems, these kids were sitting ducks. Something ungodly spread quickly through them and the nursery. No preemie was safe. In the brightly illuminated ward, chaos ensued, as nurses and doctors desperately administered meds. Oxygen tanks, electronic monitors, and helpless attendants–in white coats and blue smocks–surrounded the incubators. These poor infants would never escape the shadow of death.
Through the glass enclosure, a crowd of anxious parents looked on in horror. The highly acclaimed pediatric staff was now beside itself. Even the head nurse foundered while resuscitating a boy no bigger than her outspread hands. The infants would succumb to septic shock, and the adults to emotional shock, as the disease spread unabated.
No one could enter or leave the ward. Indeed, most everyone there was doing everything possible to save these babies. Several antibiotic cocktails were administered, but none were effective. All precautions and treatments proved useless, as the mysterious disease cut rapidly through the living. Regrettably, the epidemic was just getting started.
