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reminded himself, and picked up the phone. Working at CDC was a job for young doctors.
    “Doctor Poole, good morning, this is Dr. Franzblau. I got your message. I was intrigued. We haven’t had any cases of spinal meningitis west of the Rockies this year.”
    “I’m not sure that’s it,” Poole said. “I spoke to the Virology department at UC Davis and we were discussing it. There was some disagreement. I’m a virologist, but right now I run a family practice. I used to work in Atlanta for you guys, though.” Dr. Poole slipped that in.
    “Really,” Franzblau said. Marvin could tell that Franzblau could care less. “What division?”
    “Childhood diseases. I was just out of medical school.”
    “Yes,” Franzblau said. “Mosley is the head man now.”
    “I’m sure you’re busy, so I’ll try and make this quick,” Marvin said. He watched his secretary push open his office door and put down a note by the phone.
    The waiting room is bursting .
    The word “bursting” was underlined twice in red.
    “Well, as a matter of fact I am,” Franzblau said. “What do you have, doctor?”
    “Sixteen cases that look like bacterial-related spinal meningitis. All acute. Just developed symptoms overnight. Ages range from ten up to fifty-five. So it’s all over the map, age-wise. There is lower-tract discomfort, vomiting, confusion, seizures. But here is the odd, but signature symptom: numbness in the extremities. All the patients complain of numbness. And copious amounts of phlegm. Something I’ve never seen before.”
    “You’re in Northern California?”
    “Yes, a small town in the Sierra Nevada—Timberline,” Poole said. “Backend of nowhere.”
    Marvin could tell the voice on the other line didn’t agree with his call of meningitis. He’d been around doctors long enough to tell when interest turned to skepticism. They usually just shut up then.
    “You say in your email there have been no deaths. My guess is that we have a flu strain that is off our radar—hence the phlegm. But we’ll check the blood work. Send it in,” Franzblau said in a slightly patronizing tone.
    “I’ve got several samples here on my desk, ready to send,” Poole said.
    “We have a lab in . . .  let me see. Bakersfield.” Franzblau gave him the address.
    “One other thing, doctor,” Poole said. “All the patients are suffering from neology, young and old. They are acting, quite suddenly, like schizoids.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Yes,” Poole said. “They all start speaking gibberish. Patients who were perfectly sane. A lot of them talk about hearing God, or the Devil, speaking directly to them. The excessive phlegm seems to come on at the same time as the neology.”
    “All right, let’s do the blood work-up. We’ll go from there. I’ll have someone here contact you as soon as we have something. You were right to call, doctor,” Franzblau said, his tone reversing to one of real concern.
    Poole hung up the phone. His gut told him he’d missed something. He looked at the snack he’d bought from the new vegan restaurant in town: a bran muffin and a cup of coffee that he hadn’t had time to touch. He opened the white bag and took out his coffee.
    He’d ruled out E. coli days before. Several of the patients had switched to pasteurized drinks since the last E. coli scare had hit the Whole Foods Market in Nevada City. Several patients had been in San Francisco and had just arrived in town, with no strong connection to anything in Timberline itself. He’d carefully queried them all about what they’d eaten, and whether they had traveled recently.
    He opened the bag again, looked inside, and stood up. Could be some kind of reaction to the meth lab that had blown up east of town. He went back to his desk and picked up the phone and dialed the sheriff’s office. I was so stupid. I should have checked before. Of course, the meth lab. That was a huge explosion . . . toxic smoke and gases drifted right over town?