Bugging Out Read Free Page B

understanding myself. To piece together what he’d shared. But I was still drawing a blank.
    “It’s bad there, Fletch. Brazil has a huge agricultural industry, and the blight is spreading like wildfire.”
    A sick warmth stirred in my gut. Word that the blight had crossed an ocean wasn’t new, though it took the involved governments weeks to admit as much after an equal amount of time issuing stern denials.
    “Plant geneticists from Ag were there to verify the strain,” he said. “Same as Poland. No mutation. The thing is a monster.”
    “All right. That explains one side of your team. Why the hell was the Army tagging along?”
    “Because the blight is behaving like a disease,” Neil explained. “That’s what I picked up from the discussions they were having. I wasn’t supposed to know any of this, but... Fletch, it’s moving through vegetation like the plague rolling over a population.”
    “Wait...are you saying this is like some weapon?”
    He shook his head.
    “No. No one knows, really. Nature is fully capable of screwing us over if conditions are right. And here it looks like conditions were just right for this to begin. First in Poland, and then all it took were a few spores from a contaminated crop to hitch a ride on a plane, or boat, and what was something isolated to Europe and Asia is now a continent hopper.”
    “How widespread is it in Asia?” I pressed him.
    “Russia, into China, Vietnam. Some of those places haven’t become part of the wider conversation yet, but they will be. Soon.”
    I sat back, leaning away from the table. The gravity Neil had brought with him had now infected me. A realization rose as to the timing of this get together we were having.
    “It’s here,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
    Neil took a stuttered breath and nodded.
    “In a cranberry bog, of all places. In Oregon. And if it’s there, it’s going to be everywhere.”
    “Okay,” I said, my head spinning, but still trying to grasp the totality of the situation. “So it kills some crops—”
    “No.” Neil shook his head. “Not some... all . Everything. It kills every single plant it comes in contact with. Not just crops. Trees, bushes, even damn weeds. And when the plants die, the animals aren’t far behind.”
    “And the recovery time?” I asked, fearing what the answer would be.
    “The Ag scientists were scared. One of them made it pretty clear he didn’t see any sort of recovery.”
    We sat there in silence for a moment, staring at each other, me absorbing all that Neil had shared, and him waiting, just waiting, to let me process the same.
    “It all comes tumbling down,” I said, recounting his earlier statement. “I understand what you meant now.”
    “You can tell people there’s a shortage of rubber so they can’t have tires for their car. Or heating oil, so they’re going to have to throw extra logs on the fire instead of run the furnace. But you can’t tell them they’re going to go hungry. You can’t tell them they’re going to watch their children starve. No government has the guts to tell that truth. There’s a dam of denial built around what’s happening and it’s going to burst. When it does...”
    It was part sermon, part indictment. And it was scaring the hell out of me.
    “How is it possible that this isn’t news already?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, it’s not as sexy as a meteor hitting the earth, but the aftermath won’t be too different.”
    “There are rumblings,” he told me. “I’m not the only one asking questions. Agencies are starting to lock down information. Even things that have nothing to do with this. They’re just getting ready for when everything does have to do with this. There’s enormous pressure on news agencies right now to hold damning stories.”
    “But the shoot down...”
    “That’s a gimme,” Neil said. “The power structure would rather have the population fixated on a horror like that than the real shit coming down the drain at