Chapter 22 Chapter 21

Stu Redman was worried. Looking out of a window with iron bars in a new home in Stowington, Vermont.He saw the town in the distance, the gas station sign, the factories, the avenues, the creeks, the turnpikes and roads, the granite mountains of western New England—the green mountains. In contrast, he prefers a prison cell to a ward.He was worried because Denninger was missing.He hadn't seen Denninger since the Three Rings had come from Atlanta.Deitz is also missing.Stu thinks Denninger and Deitz may be sick, or dead. Someone is sick.The disease that Charlie D. Campion had brought to Arnett was far more contagious than anyone could have imagined.In addition, the Atlanta Plague Center has been damaged.Stu believes that everyone who has been there will now have the opportunity to conduct a direct investigation of the virus they call A' or superflu.

They're still testing him, but it seems to have gotten looser.The schedule is in tatters.The inspection results are also scribbled.He figured these people were running errands too, shaking his head and throwing the test results into the shredder. Still, it's not the worst.Worst of all were the guns.The nurses who came in to take blood, saliva or urine were always accompanied by a soldier in a white coat.The soldier always carried a gun in a small plastic bag.This small bag is always hung on the soldier's right wrist.The gun is a military .45 caliber.Stu had no doubt that if he tried to do what he did with Deitz, the .45 would come out of the plastic bag and smoke and shoot him to the bottom of the sieve, and Stu Redman would turned into a statue of gold.

If they were going to make these gestures now, then he was just such a victim.Being detained is bad enough, being a victim is even worse. Now he has to seriously watch the 6 o'clock news every night.Those who tried to stage a coup in India were branded as "foreign spokesmen" and shot.Police are still searching for the man who blew up the Laramie, Wyoming power plant yesterday.The Supreme Court has decided on March 6 that homosexuals cannot be expelled from the civil service. Officials at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Miller County, Arkansas, denied the possibility of a reactor meltdown.The plant in the town of Forkel, about 30 miles from the Texas border, is suffering but not yet alarmed by a circuit problem in the equipment that controls the reactor's cold cycle.Sent to the armed forces, but a preventive measure.Stu wondered what preventive measures the military could take if the Forkel reactor did cause any problems.He thought it was entirely possible that the Army might send troops to southwestern Arkansas for other reasons.Forkel was not far from Arnett.

Another theme of the story was that the flu on the East Coast appeared to be in its infancy—just the Russian germ, not an actual threat.A retired doctor in New York City spoke to reporters in the foyer of Brooklyn's Mersey Hospital.He said the flu was particularly strong because of the Russian-A type, and he urged TV viewers to get a flu shot.Then he suddenly started talking about something else, but his voice was cut out so that people could only see his lips moving.The television picture cut back to the studio, and the announcer said: "There are reports that several people have died in New York due to this recent flu outbreak, but urban pollution and possibly even AIDS in most cases are at play. Deadly cause. Government health officials emphasized that it was Russian A flu, not the more dangerous Swain flu. Doctors' advice: stay in bed, get plenty of rest, drink juice, take aspirin Sweating."

The announcer smiled reassuringly... The camera panned and someone sneezed. The sun is approaching the horizon, dyeing the horizon a golden color.Night is the worst.They carried him to this place where he was not allowed.In this early summer season, all the greenery he saw from the window seemed abnormal, excessive, and to some extent frightening.He had no friends, and as far as he knew, everyone else on the flight from Braintree to Atlanta was dead.He is now surrounded by these cold-blooded men who are drawing his blood at gunpoint.Although he was feeling well, he still feared for his life.

Thinking about it, Stu wondered if it was possible to escape from here.