Pandemic

by ASGeek2012


Chapter 9 - A Cause For Alarm

Laura bashed the button to silence her alarm clock and groaned. She yawned and let one arm dangle over the edge of the bed, only to frown when the sleeve of her nightgown got tangled in her fingers. She shook it free and lifted her hand to her head. She pulled a lock of hair into view. Still curly. Still orange.

She hated the prospect of looking in the mirror anymore. What other strangeness would she see? Was her skin going to change color? She held her hand before her eyes. It still appeared the same healthy hue it had the night before.

As she awoke more fully, she realized one bright spot on that Thursday morning: her tail bone no longer ached. Her relief lasted only as long as it took to roll onto her back, when something soft pressed into her buttocks.

Laura squirmed, thinking that her nightgown had bunched up, yet tugging on it did not help. "Fine, I'll just get up," she muttered.

She got out of bed and was about to take a step when she felt the bottom of her nightgown brush the tops of her feet. She dropped her arms to her sides, and the sleeves drifted past her wrists and partially covered her fingers.

"What the hell?" Laura muttered. She took a step, and again something soft brushed her posterior.

Laura's eyes widened. She reached a trembling hand behind her back, under the nightgown, and slid it under her panties. Her heart fell into her toes.

"Oh, God, no." Laura yanked her hand back and swallowed hard. "No, it has to be something else. It can't be what it ... i-it just can't!"

She raced out of her bedroom and barreled down the hallway. The door to the bathroom was closed, but this slowed her down only long enough for her to fling open the door.

"Ack!" Jenny cried from within the running shower. "What the fuck, Laura?! Get the hell out! Don't think you can make me hurry up, either, because ... wait, what are you doing?"

A stricken Laura had turned herself sideways to the mirror. She swallowed hard and lifted her nightgown up the back, then lowered the rear part of her panties. Four inches of curly orange hair lay in the harsh light of the bathroom.

Jenny frantically wiped her hand against the glass of the shower stall to clear the water and steam. "Holy shit, Laura, is that a tail?!"

That pushed Laura past her ability to cope. She yanked her panties back into place, dropped her face into her hands, and burst into tears.


Sarah paced the dining room as she tried for the third time to get through to Doctor Conner's office. She uttered a ragged sigh and clutched her hair, which had become thicker, longer, and more wavy overnight. She yanked the phone from her ear and frowned. "Still getting only voice mail."

"Why don't you just leave a message?" said Harold, his own hair almost completely blue save for some streaks around the ears and over his eyes. "They must be swamped."

"I guess I'm going to have to."

"And, really, we should be talking to Bob like we agreed last night."

Sarah whirled around. "Right now I'm more worried about Laura. I've never seen her so distraught in a long while."

Laura sat at the table nursing a cup of tea, still in her nightgown. "I'm really sorry for my meltdown earlier, Mom. I'm okay now."

Harold looked down. "Are you comfortable sitting down with, um ..."

"My tail?" Laura said in a sour voice. "The hair is soft and not very long." She frowned. "Yet."

"I got through!" Sarah cried. "Yes, hello, Heather, this is Mrs. Sarah Tanner. This is about my daughter, Laura. There's been another development. She ..." Sarah glanced at her daughter and swallowed hard. "Sh-she has a tail. A tail. Yes, as in hair sticking out of her rear." Sarah rolled her eyes. "No, dammit, I wouldn't be this upset if it was just hair sprouting anywhere back there. It. Is. A. Tail."

Laura groaned and lowered her head. Harold placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed just as Jenny started down the stairs. Her hair was pink in the back, and she hesitated at the bottom of the stairs when her mother spoke again.

"Her eye color also changed the day before. Is there any way Doctor Conner can squeeze her in today?" Sarah sighed. "Hang on." She dropped the phone to her side. "Heather said they're completely booked into next week. What the hell? When was the last time that happened?"

"During the flu outbreak, maybe?" Harold suggested.

"Oh, don't get started on that," Sarah declared.

Laura stood. "I'll just go to school. I can ... I can hide this in my jeans."

Sarah lifted the phone. "What about squeezing her in at the end of the day? I really don't like the idea of sending her to school with this ... this condition, but she could stop in after classes."

Harold stared. "Um, Laura? Could you stand up straight for a moment?"

Laura gave him a puzzled look. "Huh? I am standing straight. Why?"

Harold hesitated, then shook his head. "Never mind, I must be imagining things."

"She's gotten shorter," said Jenny.

Sarah turned her head. "She what? Um, what was that, Heather?" She gritted her teeth. "Yes, I'll hold."

Laura turned as her sister approached. Jenny stood up straight and held a hand flat over her head. She slid it forward, where it was level with Laura's eyes. "I think I was coming up to her nose before."

"That's ridiculous," Harold said. "People don't just shrink in height."

Bob came down the stairs. "They don't get tails, either."

Harold sighed. "Point made, sport."

Bob reached the bottom and averted his eyes. "Sorry."

Harold shook his head. "It's okay. Listen, I want to talk to you about something."

"Harry!" Sarah snapped. "You want to do this now?"

"Sarah, at this point, if we wait for a day when we don't have a crisis, we'll be waiting forever."

"But I wanted to be there when--" She snapped her gaze away when she came off hold. "Yes? My God, you don't know how glad I am to hear your voice, Doctor Conner."

"I am shorter, aren't I?" Laura said in a quavering voice. She let her arms fall to her sides. "See? My nightgown doesn't fit anymore."

Sarah swallowed hard. "Doctor Conner, she's ... shrunk. As in lost about an inch of height."

Laura glanced at Jenny. "Go ahead, already."

"Huh?" Jenny said. "Go ahead with what?"

"With whatever nonsense you're going to spout about the Fae Queen or whatever."

"It's fun poking you a bit," said Jenny in a subdued voice. "It's not fun seeing you cry."

Laura stared. "What ... I ... but I thought ...?"

Jenny looked perplexed. "Thought what?"

Laura shook her head. "Never mind, it's not important."

"Thank you," Sarah gushed. "Yes, that will work. We'll be expecting you." She turned to Harold. "His office actually doesn't open for another hour. He wants to see Laura, so he's going to make a house call. He'll be here in about twenty minutes."


"Shouldn't you be more worried about Laura than me?" said Bob as he stepped into Harold's office.

Harold closed the door behind them. "She's got her mother doting over her. You're just as much a member of this family as she is. You deserve as much concern."

Bob averted his gaze.

"Unless you don't believe that," said Harold gently.

"I don't know what to believe anymore."

"I know what it was you heard the other night," said Harold.

Bob glanced at him but said nothing.

"You have every right to be angry with us."

"I do?" Bob asked in a dubious voice. "Weren't you just telling each other the truth?"

"Bob, it's more complicated than that."

"No, it isn't," Bob said. "A statement is either true or false."

"All right then," said Harold. "You want the truth? This family is hurting financially."

"I know," said Bob in a low voice. "I think the girls know, too, but they just don't want to think about it too hard, and they have their own problems now."

"And what Sarah and I said to each other--" Harold paused and rubbed the back of his neck. He frowned as he found his own hair had grown longer as well. "--we didn't mean it in the way it was intended. We sometimes have a bad habit of saying dumb things to each other in the heat of the moment."

Bob uttered an exasperated sigh. "Fine." He marched for the door. "Can I go now?"

"Not yet."

Bob stopped and turned around. "Why not?"

Harold stepped up to him. "Because I don't think you understand."

"I do understand," Bob said. "You implied I was the cause of your financial mess, but that's not what you really meant. I get it."

Harold stared at Bob for a moment. "Something else is going on, isn't there?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Bob, why did you start calling me 'Dad'?"

Bob stared. "Are you serious?"

"Humor me, please."

"Well ... I'm supposed to. I mean ... you like it when I call you that, right?"

Harold smiled. "Yes, I do. I was happy when you started calling me that a few years ago."

Bob nodded. "Well, see?"

"But did you really mean it?"

Bob looked askance at him. "I'm sorry?"

"You didn't have to call me that," Harold said. "I would've been content with you continuing to refer to me as Uncle Harry. What you call me doesn't change how I feel about you."

Bob averted his eyes and drew in his arms.

"Let me ask the question this way," said Harold. "Did you do it because you knew it would please me?"

Bob hesitated. "Yes."

Harold wiped his face with his hand. "You didn't have to do that."

"I felt I did."

"Why?"

"I didn't want you to be disappointed."

Harold tilted his head. "Disappointed?"

Bob finally looked him in the eye. "Look, um ... I really do appreciate everything you and Aunt Sarah have done for me. You don't have anything to prove to me."

Harold hesitated before replying, "Who said that I ever did?"

Bob paused and glanced at the desk where the returned letter sat. "Maybe you don't," he said in a low voice. "Forget I said that. Can we talk about this more some other time? Right now, I just want to get to school before I'm late."

Harold nodded, paused, then pulled Bob into a brief hug before letting him go. "All right."

Bob gave him a weak smile in return before heading out.


"Laura, you're going to feel a tug," said Kevin as he grasped some of the hairs of Laura's tail. "Tell me if this hurts at all."

Laura stood with her back to the doctor, blushing slightly as she held the bottom part of her panties down so that Kevin could better see. She glanced at her mother, who gave her an encouraging look. "All right."

Kevin pulled gently on the hairs.

"No pain," said Laura. "But, well, they're pretty firmly attached, if that's what you were looking for."

"Yes, I can see that." Kevin pressed his fingers against a spot right above where the hairs emerged. "Do you feel any pain here?"

"I did," said Laura. "All day yesterday, it ached right there, but not now."

"And you didn't tell me?" asked Sarah.

Laura sighed. "I didn't think this would happen. I was planning on going to Doctor Conner if it didn't go away."

Kevin drew back and took another look at the tail as a whole. It emerged from the end of the very structure that once hosted such a thing in the distant evolutionary past. He grabbed a ruler from his bag and measured. "It's about five inches long."

"I was sure it was four inches when I first saw it," Laura said.

"But how could it have grown that much in just a half hour?" Sarah said. "Or for that matter, how could that much hair sprout overnight to begin with?"

"Your hair did the same thing, Mom," Laura said. "It wasn't nearly as long last night."

Kevin put his ruler away. "Laura, you can dress now."

Laura yanked her panties up as Kevin stood. She slipped on her nightgown and turned to face him. "Should I try to cut the hair off?"

"Since it appears to be comprised of only hair, it wouldn't hurt you to do so," said Kevin. "But if it is indeed growing that fast, I have a feeling it will just come back." He took out a small flashlight. "Let me take a look at your eyes."

Laura stood still as he flicked the light into her eyes to test her pupil response. He had her look to one side and the other. "I'm not seeing any evidence of infection. Any itching or burning? Discharge? Blurred vision?"

"They itched a bit the night before they changed color," said Laura. "But that stopped, and I don't have any of the other symptoms."

He drew back and slipped off his glasses. "I'm going to be honest here. I don't have any answers for you right now. This doesn't match any known pattern of symptoms. Yes, there are known afflictions that can lead to eye color changes, but you have none of the other symptoms associated with them. There are also conditions that cause overgrowth of body hair, but nothing like this."

"And my height?" Laura asked.

"That's a mystery to me as well."

Sarah stepped up to him, her arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold. "Doctor, normally I appreciate your honesty, but I'm getting a little scared right now."

"You're scared?" Laura said. "It's like I'm turning into something, but I don't know what!"

"Normally, I would consider admitting you to the hospital," said Kevin. "But I talked to them on the way over here. They're as much in the dark about this as well, and they're so swamped right now that it's emergencies only." Kevin turned to Laura. "Do you have any other symptoms?"

"I have a slight buzzing in my ears." She twisted her torso a bit. "And my upper back aches a bit."

Kevin dropped his bag on the edge of the bed and took out his ear scope. "The ache may be from your loss of height. How long have you had the tinnitus?"

She turned her head to give her access to her ear. "It just started this morning."

"Any discharge or dizziness?"

"No, none."

Kevin checked one ear, than the other. "Everything looks normal."

"But they don't feel normal! Something is going to happen to them next, isn't it?"

"I'm sensing that you believe it will," said Kevin. "Is there something you need to tell me?"

Laura swallowed hard, her eyes flicking first to her mother, then back to Kevin. "It's going to sound stupid."

"Laura, whatever it is, I insist you tell him," Sarah declared. "Please, if he really is flying blind, he can use all the help he can get."

Laura nodded quickly. "It's something Jenny told me. My little sister and her friend trespassed on old man ... er, Fred Turner's property. Jenny said she saw him." Laura's voice quavered. "She said he wasn't all that tall, and had peach-colored hair."

Sarah's eyes widened.

"But what's really weirding me out is what she said about his ears. She thought he was wearing some sort of a-animal ears on top of his head."

"What do you mean?" Sarah said.

"Just what I said!" Laura exclaimed. "Jenny was sure it was some sort of costume. That's what I wanted to believe, too, but now I got this stupid tail. What if Turner's ears were real? What if that's going to happen to me next?"

"All right, let's not panic," said Kevin in a firm voice. "Is Jenny still here?"

"No, I sent her off to school," said Sarah.

"Laura, do you know how good a look she had at him?" asked Kevin.

"Not really. They were running at the time," said Laura.

"The worst thing we can do right now is jump to conclusions," said Kevin. "If it helps any, Fred Turner's daughter is on her way and will arrive sometime today. She's intending to bring him in to see me tomorrow. I'll have a first-hand look at him."

"Can you let us know what you find out?" asked Sarah.

Kevin was normally bound by patient privacy laws, but this was a most abnormal situation. "Let me see what I can do. I also intend to contact the Colorado Department of Health as soon as I get back to my office. Mrs. Tanner, you can help me in that endeavor by telling me when each of you in your family came down with the flu and when the first odd symptoms showed up."

Sarah's eyes widened. "Do you really think the flu did this?"

"It's a working theory at the moment," said Kevin. "I had only just finished correlating the data for my other patients late last night."

"All right, let me go get paper and a pen to jot it down for you," said Sarah as she headed for the door.

Laura turned to Kevin. "There's one more thing. I think Fred Turner had the flu before any of us."

Kevin gave her an inquisitive look. "Why do you say that?"

"It was about three weeks ago when he showed up in a grocery store looking really sick," said Laura. "I thought I had stayed far enough away from him, but I came down with the flu days later. I know of at least a few other people who got it right after me."

"Thank you, Laura," said Kevin. "That is likely the most useful bit of information I have received thus far."


Jenny burst out of the school bus, but her initial attempt at running nearly ended in a spill to the ground. The several inches of wet spring snow that had fallen overnight had been packed down to ice by both wheel and foot. She muttered a curse as she picked her way across the lot, then belted out at the top of her lungs, "JAMES, WAIT UP!"

At the foot of the stairs leading up to the entrance of the school, James spun around. Like many other students, he had given up trying to hide his discolored hair. "Jenny, I'm going to be late for class!"

"I really really need to talk to you," said Jenny. "This is urgent."

James sighed. "If this is about your latest story--"

Jenny ran the rest of the way. She yelped as her right foot slid out from under her when she tried to stop. James grabbed her arms and prevented a fall. "No, it has nothing to do with that." She glanced at his hands. "Um, thanks."

"Sure thing," said James with a small smile.

"You can let go of me now."

James cleared his throat and dropped his hands. "Right."

Jenny smiled faintly, but it vanished as she stared at his face. "Your eyes!"

"Yeah, I know," James said in a low voice. What had once been dark brown were now cobalt blue.

Jenny slowly smiled. "If it helps any, it sorta goes with the hair."

James rolled his eyes but smirked. "Thanks. Yeah, it was this way when I woke up."

Jenny clutched the strap of her satchel tighter. "Then I definitely need to talk to you. I want to, well, warn you, I guess."

"Warn me? About what?"

"My sister. She has a tail."

James stared. "No way."

"I saw it myself. It's just as curly and orange as the hair on her head. When I left the house, the doctor was on his way." Jenny paused. "And it happened a day after her eyes changed color."

"What, you mean I'm going to get one next?" James said.

"I-I don't know. All I know is what happened to Laura, but it's happening to you, too, in the same sequence. I mean, look!" She spun around. "Look at my hair. It's halfway to total pinkdom." She whirled around to face him again. "You're not the only one this is happening to."

"Jenny?" James said in a wary voice. "Do you remember what you told me about Turner when you looked at him?"

Jenny bit her lip. "Yeah?"

"What if ... what if those ears you said he had were--"

"No way," Jenny declared. "It had to be a costume."

"But what if it isn't?"

Jenny took a deep breath. "Look, the colored hair and eyes, I can roll with. Even if I get a damned tail, I could have some fun with it. But the ears? That's just too out there even for me. Especially considering what they reminded me of."

"Of what?"

Jenny hesitated. "They kinda looked like horse ears."