I'm sorry to say that the town of Greendale is shut off from the outside world. There are state troopers on both the main highways and deputies on all the county roads; we can't leave and no one is allowed to come in without a special health department pass.

Of course, no one wants to come in, but most everyone would sure like to get out.

This kind of unpleasantness is new to us in Greendale; it's not like we see much trouble here. Although this is the county seat, there's hardly any crime.

Occasionally, family members shoot at one another, but other than that, we have all become accustomed to a quiet, respectable life of minding each others' business. This is a very clean, very quiet, very proper little town.

Not that the people here are especially kindly; they aren't. When my father got caught embezzling money, the townsfolk really gave my family a hard time.

After Dad killed himself and Mom died of grief, it was almost a year before our own next-door neighbors would speak civilly to us. I thought that the town should pay for the agony they caused my family, but I couldn't think of anything sufficient, so I bided my time and kept my ideas to myself.

But all of that is in the past. My clan is only occasionally shunned now, and people have almost stopped talking about it--especially since this new situation became known. Certainly, the recent terror has been more than enough to occupy everyone's minds and tongues for the last several months.

They think the trouble started when our next-door neighbors, the Hollers, got back from Idaho. Ed goes elk hunting out there every year. He used to go out with a bunch of the guys, but Myra got wind of the kind of stuff they doing when they weren't hunting, and she put a stop to that. Now they both go in the camper with the cat, and Myra doesn't have to worry about what Ed might be up to.

This year, they were gone a week or so. Myra told my wife that the cabin they rented was full of rats, so they slept in the camper after the first night.

Myra declared she had no intention of cleaning up a place they didn't own for someone else to stay in, and everyone agreed that would have been foolish. Still it must have been cramped in that camper; Ed would only shake his head when I asked if he had a good trip.

It was a few days later that their cat got sick. Not just sick; the poor beast got awful looking--all over sores and bumps. Since I'm a laboratory technician at the hospital, Ed asked me what I thought was wrong with it. I told him I'd never seen anything like it and that he should take the animal to the vet. But Ed didn't believe in wasting money on veterinarians, so he doped the cat with mange medicine and turned it loose. It died after a few days.

Myra told me all about the cat dying when she come over to see me at the health department for her flu shot. She said she was feeling a little under the weather, and I told her that the shot was only good before you got sick--but she wouldn't listen.

Within two days, Myra became seriously ill, and before anyone knew what was going on, she up and died. Ed only lived another week, but by then almost everyone was sick.

You see, Myra was only the beginning. After she died of what looked like the influenza, everyone started to come to the health department for flu shots.

However,it soon became apparent that this wasn't any common type of flu. Some people got very strange and frightening symptoms--great big swellings and bruises, and some went just about crazy from the pain. The government officials didn't want to talk about it, but it soon leaked out that it wasn't flu at all--it was bubonic plague.

Well, this was a pretty hard thing to believe. After all, this is the twentieth century, and that plague business was supposed to have been over a long, long time ago. But the people from the Disease Control Unit came from the state capital, and they said there was no doubt about it.

That was when they closed the town. The hospital was full before long, and they started to medivac the sickest folks out to other cities in the helicopter.

It got even worse when all those people started to die. It sure didn't take long either--a few days and they were gone. Everyone else was afraid to go out--even to burials. The funeral directors had to bring the coffins in by the trailer load, and with only one place in town doing cremations, things started to back up.

The citizens of Greendale were certainly in an uproar. People suddenly took to religion in a big way, but nothing seemed to help.

Meanwhile, all the officials nosed around and interviewed everybody and finally decided it was the Hollers that brought the plague back from Idaho. When it was on the six o'clock news that the FBI was looking for someone who bought active plague culture from a lab in Baltimore, I thought for sure they would look into that too, but they didn't. They were so certain it had beenthe Hollers, you see.

Everyone remembered that Myra was the very first person to get sick and die, and that Ed didn't last much longer. As their neighbor, I was asked if I knew of anything useful. I told them about the cat, and I gave the authorities a clear and detailed account of its symptoms.

They all agreed that the animal had been infected and had spread the disease to the rest of the community. I expect everyone will hold a pretty mean feeling toward the Hollers for a long time, but people eventually stop talking when a new disaster comes along.

Anyway,there is no one left to make miserable; Ed and Myra are both dead. Since their kids moved out years ago, they don't have to live with the shame the way my family did.

Of course, Greendale will be opened back up soon; they are already setting a date for the barricades to be taken down. The disease is dying out now, and I expect that we will soon be back to our solid, orderly, quiet ways. Most of the people who had the plague are either dead or immune, and I happen to know that there will be no new cases.

Copyright (1999) by Linda Kohut