A Flock of Ill Omens (5 page)

1.
6. Sidney Knight:

Portland, Oregon

Roommate Trouble

Sid was glad to be home. The familiar environment and the horsing around of her friends calmed her. But the flu and her brother's mysterious warning nagged at her over the next couple days. She couldn't concentrate on the third article she was meant to be writing, so she decided she would look into the dead birds a bit further.

She'd already read everything she could find online about it, even using her University of Oregon alumni access to get articles that required subscriptions. Death rates in the US seemed high to her—higher than what China and Russia had reported, though she knew their media couldn't always be relied on for accuracy. What she really needed was a coastal community where she had some inroads so she could investigate a more personal angle of how this was affecting people's lives. It wasn't the only story, but it was a story she wasn't seeing. And a small town would have people who would talk to a young, unemployed reporter. That was harder to come by in Portland: recruiting a source, when you had no known name to earn their trust.

It was the part of journalism that was hardest for her—reaching out to people she barely knew and calling in favors they didn't owe—but she'd learned to fake it. She'd had a friend in college from Astoria, and if any Oregon port was likely to be affected by this, that was it. The mouth of the Columbia River let in all the inland shipping in the state—a significant portion of what went into Washington, too. And the port authority there would be a perfect source for what official instructions had been given to people about the avian flu.

Sid found Carina Costas on Facebook and gave her a watered down version of what she was looking for and why. Carina's family was mostly still in the Astoria area. Carina was the first college graduate in a line of hard-working immigrants, so had been the first to seek a job outside the thriving blue collar life Astoria offered. At least, it did when the economy was good.

She seemed happy to help. “I have a cousin on the docks and an uncle who manages a warehouse. I'd have to call my mom for my uncle's phone number, but I can hook you up with Gianni here on Facebook.”

Sid let her connect them, and in spite of her discomfort, agreed to have a Skype chat with Gianni. He was a flirt in a backward baseball cap and a wifebeater tank top. Sid had to roll her eyes at the pickup lines, but he did tell her about an incident that would be good for her story, should she get to a story.

“I got called in at 6 AM last week. Thursday, I think. I work the swing, see, but my supe called at five and said we had an issue. He was calling a bunch of us in. I get there and the freaking river is clogged. I mean not completely, but thick enough nobody could miss it. We had to dredge fucking seagulls to clear the mouth so they could get boats up the river without dragging along a ton of those dead birds. I've never seen anything so nasty!”

“And what did you do with them?” Sid tried to wipe the disgust off her own face, but it wouldn't go.

“Gasoline and a blow torch!” He laughed, acting it out with sound effects.

“Great. And did they close the port?”

“Twenty-four hours—and they've had us wearing masks all week. There are some kinds of stuff they won't let in, or actually, they confiscate, because now that it's been exposed, they don't want it sold, but I don't know what. My uncle might know.”

That had been one of her questions—if his father was the uncle Carina had talked about. Apparently not, but it was a shared uncle and he knew the man was in the Astoria phone book. She probably should have thought of that—white pages weren't very helpful with her generation, but for older people, they were still pretty reliable.

Sid decided to contact the uncle on her own the next day. Gianni had given her the experiential side for an article, but a manager would be more helpful for actual facts. What were the authorities being told? And what, in turn, were they telling their employees? Were they passing out the advice to get a flu shot like the law officials in Lincoln City? Was that just so people felt like they had something to do? To avoid panic?

Astoria was just over an hour from Portland, so it wasn't a bad drive, even if Jeff had told her to avoid the places with the birds. She bought some Airborne and took that prophylactically, hoping it would boost her immune system. She asked Sarah for a face mask, which Sarah, as a nurse, always had. Finally she made an appointment with Mr. Costas' secretary. She was sure he wouldn't be thrilled to see her, but she could convince him.

When she got there she found the county offices on the northern side of the little peninsula that was Astoria. The buildings seemed so tiny compared to the buildings that housed Multnomah County's employees. The enormity of a water bird disaster in a city surrounded by water on three sides hadn't really hit her until she parked her car and looked around. Gianni had badly under-reported the problem. Astoria was a ghost town. Mr. Costas was in his office wearing a strained face when she found him.

“Hello, Mr. Costas. Thank you for meeting with me.”

“Who are you?”

“Sidney Knight. I went to college with Carina. I'm a freelance reporter and last week I was down in Lincoln City and noticed the bird issue—dead seagulls everywhere. I was concerned about the health and safety here in a port town. I thought maybe it would be a lot worse here.”

“It's pretty bad. I haven't had time to go anywhere else, but they tell us this is the worst.”

“Are there precautions you're taking?”

“Well, we just closed the port again this morning—the health inspector called and said we had to. People are furious, of course—they need those jobs and those goods to live. But it was too dangerous. We are telling people to stay home. To wear masks if they go out. To go visit relatives. We've tried a lot of things, but what can we do?”

“Did the authorities say anything about flu shots?” Sid asked.

“There's a clinic that does them free for old folks, the poor. But no. Nothing any different than normal. We are of sturdy stock here, or have always thought so. I assume most people just figure if they get sick, they get sick.”

“I think that's right,” she said. She didn't want to cause any panic by passing on her brother's message to a stranger when it had been nothing more than an impulse on his part. “Do you know how many people have died of the flu?”

“Records is just upstairs. They won't release cause, but you could maybe get a monthly total. I've heard of several cases—it swept through one of the rest homes in fact. Dozen people or more dead up there in a matter of days.”

“Do you know which one?” she asked.

He didn't know the name, but he wrote down the cross streets. She wasn't sure she felt brazen enough to go to a place where so many had died recently, but if the records merited it, it was probably a good idea.

Sid asked a few more questions, but it didn't seem like Mr. Costas knew any more than anybody else. The state or federal authorities—whoever should have been advising—clearly hadn't given them much to work with. Though that, in itself, was a story.

At records she learned that the death toll was actually closer to forty. That seemed like a lot for a town the size of Astoria; the records person agreed with her.

“We consider it a bad month when we lose five or six.” Yet in two and a half weeks there had been thirty-eight deaths, most of them attributable to the flu. “Mostly older people—they're so susceptible.” The woman sounded like she was trying to reassure herself.

“I thought the older people had access to free shots,” Sid said.

“Oh, I think some do but I don't know about that home. Or which people died. Old Mrs. Patterson went—she was a neighbor of my mother. And I know she got out and about good. She might have made it to a clinic. But I don't know when they ran that—maybe a week ago.”

It was neighborhood-level gossip, nothing she could really do anything with. But she decided it merited going to the home. When one place had lost so many, and when the records would all be right there—that was solid information.

Sid was already writing the article in her head as she drove up the road to the little home. It was small and brick and looked more like a hospice than a nursing home, though it said Clatsop County Convalescence on the sign—an old-fashioned rest home.

The place was a tomb. Not that she was trying to be morose, but there were only two residents that she could see in the TV room and neither looked capable of motion on their own.
One was asleep on a sofa and the other was zoned out in a wheelchair.

“Can I help you?” A woman at a desk in nurse's scrubs glanced up with a confused expression.

“I don't mean to intrude. I really don't want to bother you, and this might seem insensitive. But I'm a reporter looking into these flu deaths and I wondered if you might answer a couple questions.”

She turned back to an open door. “I'm sorry. We really need to respect the privacy of our residents.”

Sid looked back at the common room. Residents. Both of them. She raised an eyebrow at the woman, but understood she was worried about being overheard. “I understand that, and I'd never ask for any information about individuals. Actually, it really would help if you could answer just one question. Had the residents who died had flu shots?”

The woman's eyes went wide and she wrote something down as she answered.

“I'm sorry, that's confidential, but as you can imagine, in this population, some portion had, and for whatever reason, others had not. That's all I can say.”

Sid looked down at the Post-it the nurse had handed her.

3 o'clock, Rogue Ales Pub.

She'd passed it on her way into town and wondered whether the woman lived that direction or if she just didn't want to be seen with her. She suspected the latter.

“Well, I'm sorry to bother you,” Sid said and left.

It was after two, so Sid went straight to the pub. It was rustic, looking more like a
cowboy bar than a pub, but Oregonians loved their microbrews, so she knew the fare would be good. Only a few other tables were filled, but between lunch and dinner in a small town, this might have been normal, and probably what the nurse was counting on. She ordered a diet soda and beer-battered fish and chips. She'd have an ale with the woman when she arrived, but one was the limit when she had to drive back to Portland. She took in the aroma. There wasn't much better than beer-battered fresh fish. She was glad that a closed port didn't mean a fishing ban, though it did cross her mind to wonder why.

She pulled out her laptop as she waited. Her article was working out nicely.
The Oregonian
might even buy it. She'd worked for them once upon a time and they'd laid her off when newspaper belts got tight. She felt they hadn't needed to cut as deeply as they did, so she sometimes avoided them. Still, she knew the editor and could trust her for a fast turnaround if she didn't want the article, leaving Sid free to try the smaller papers that didn't want the same level of exclusivity. Always best to have a back-up plan.

The nurse, who introduced herself as Mara, had changed clothes before she came. She wore cowboy boots, blue jeans and a sweatshirt under a flannel jacket, very much like the city stereotypes of the coastal lumberjacks. Not that there had been many real lumberjacks on the Oregon coast for a few decades, but the image hadn't faded.

“Can I be confidential?” she said as she sat.

“Of course you can. Though it helps if I can say 'a nurse in a coastal nursing home'.”

Her head bobbed in agreement. “I guess that's okay. Your question struck me... I noticed the same thing. About eighty percent of the residents got the flu shot—batch came in and we gave it. But four residents couldn't because of other things they take, and a few refused. All but one who got the shot died, and three who didn't get the shot lived, almost half. So the shot actually made it worse.”

That sounded worse than ineffective. “Had anyone had the flu before the shots came?”

“Two people—part of the four who
couldn't
have the shot, and both died. That was why they were so rushed to get everyone vaccinated.”

“Do you talk to any other nurses in town?”

“Not really. I'm just an LPN. The people at the urgent care are RNs and sort of act like they're a different class.”

Sidney had heard of that kind of snobbery from Sarah, so she knew it was true. She thanked Mara, bought her a beer and they talked about what Mara had observed outside of the nursing home. She'd seen a family that lived in her apartment complex die of it—a mom and three kids. And she'd heard of others. But mostly what she had observed was people who were either out of work due to the closed port, or because of the economy. They had largely taken the advice of the authorities and gone to stay with friends or family elsewhere.

Sid was relieved to hear that the ghost town wasn't entirely related to deaths. But the worms were only starting to slither out of their can.

Her cell buzzed with a circus tune and Grant's goofiest face as she was driving back into Portland. He'd programmed it himself and she put him on speaker as she pulled off the Fremont Bridge. “Sid, can I ask you for help with something?”