The sound of coughing echoed off the wooden walls of the barracks. It was a wet, ragged sound.
Jason Underwood stood in the doorway of the infirmary at Camp Devens, Massachusetts.
He pulled his handkerchief tighter over his nose and mouth.
The room was a nightmare. Every cot was full. Men were lying on the floor on thin blankets.
These weren't old men. They were recruits. Twenty-year-old farm boys who were supposed to be shipping out to France next week.
Now, they were dying.
Jason walked down the aisle. He looked at their faces.
They were blue. A deep, bruised purple color around the ears and lips. Cyanosis. Their lungs were filling with fluid so fast they were drowning in their own beds.
A doctor, harried and bloodshot-eyed, bumped into Jason.
"Get out of here, sir," the doctor snapped. "This isn't a place for civilians. It's highly contagious."
"What is it?" Jason asked, though he already knew.
"Pneumonia," the doctor lied. "A bad strain. The dust from the parade grounds..."
"Don't lie to me," Jason said, his voice muffled by the cloth. "It's the flu. The Spanish Flu."
The doctor froze. He looked around nervously.
"Keep your voice down," the doctor hissed. "We aren't allowed to call it that. The War Department says it's bad for morale."
"Morale?" Jason looked at a boy in the corner who was gasping for air, blood bubbling from his nose. "That boy is bleeding from his eyes, Doctor. You think a pep talk is going to fix him?"
Jason stepped back. He felt a cold dread settle in his stomach.
He knew the history. In the original timeline, this wave killed more people than the Great War. It wiped out entire towns.
And it started because the government lied. They hid the numbers. They held parades to sell war bonds while the virus spread through the cheering crowds.
Jason turned and walked out of the infirmary. He walked fast.
He climbed into his car. He scrubbed his hands with a bottle of raw alcohol until they stung.
"To the factory," Jason ordered his driver.
Ten minutes later, he was standing on the floor of the nearby Standard Oil refinery.
He grabbed the foreman.
"Shut it down," Jason barked.
"Sir?" The foreman looked confused. "We're running at full capacity for the Navy contract!"
"I said shut it down!" Jason roared. "Send everyone home. Full pay. Tell them to lock their doors and stay inside for two weeks. If anyone coughs, quarantine the house."
"But the Navy..."
"I don't care about the Navy right now," Jason said. "If this spreads, there won't be anyone left to drive the trucks. Do it!"
He didn't wait for an answer. He ran back to his car.
"Washington," Jason said. "Drive fast."
The Oval Office smelled of lemon polish and old paper.
Woodrow Wilson sat behind the Resolute Desk. He looked scholarly, pinched, and annoyed.
"Mr. Prentice," Wilson said, not offering a seat. "You storm in here demanding an audience? We are fighting a war."
"You're fighting the wrong enemy," Jason said.
He didn't bow. He didn't use honorifics. He walked straight to the desk and slammed his fist on it.
"You have to cancel the Liberty Loan parade in Philadelphia," Jason said. "Tomorrow."
Wilson blinked. "Cancel the parade? It's the centerpiece of the bond drive! We expect two hundred thousand people!"
"If you gather two hundred thousand people in the streets tomorrow," Jason said, "you will kill twelve thousand of them within a week."
Wilson stood up. His face flushed.
"That is defeatist talk, sir! We have reports of a mild influenza. Nothing more. Soldiers get sick. It is the cost of mobilization."
"It's not mild!" Jason shouted. "I was at Devens. The boys are turning blue, Mr. President! They die in twelve hours! It's a plague!"
Jason leaned over the desk.
"If you hold that parade, the virus jumps from the sailors to the civilians. It spreads to the rail lines. It hits New York, Chicago, St. Louis. The country collapses."
Wilson straightened his glasses. He looked at Jason with icy disdain.
"The Surgeon General assures me it is under control. And frankly, Mr. Prentice, your hysteria is becoming a liability. We cannot show weakness to the Kaiser. If we cancel the parade, Berlin will say America is scared of a sneeze."
"Berlin doesn't matter!" Jason yelled. "This isn't politics! It's biology!"
"Enough!" Wilson snapped.
He pointed a shaking finger at Jason.
"If you spread these rumors... if you panic the public... I will have you arrested under the Sedition Act. You are a supplier, Mr. Prentice. Go back to your factories and make bullets. Leave the governing to me."
Jason stared at the President.
He saw a man paralyzed by his own image. A man willing to sacrifice a city to save face.
This was history repeating itself. This was the arrogance that killed fifty million people.
Jason realized then that he couldn't save them by asking permission.
He had to break the rules.
"You're right, Mr. President," Jason said softly. "I'm just a supplier."
He turned and walked to the door.
"But remember this conversation," Jason said, looking back. "When the graves run out of room."
He walked out.
He walked past the secretaries, past the guards, out onto Pennsylvania Avenue.
He looked at the Capitol dome. It looked white and clean against the blue sky.
He checked his watch. 4:00 PM. The Philadelphia parade was scheduled for noon tomorrow.
He had twenty hours to stop a massacre.
He climbed into his car.
"New York," Jason said. "And stop at the first telegraph office we see."
The newsroom of the New York World was chaos.
Reporters were typing furiously, cigar smoke hanging in the air.
Jason walked in. He owned the paper now, through three shell companies.
He marched straight to the Editor-in-Chief's office. He kicked the door open.
"Stop the presses," Jason said.
The Editor, a gruff man named Swanson, looked up. "Mr. Prentice? We're putting the evening edition to bed. The headline is the Battle of the Somme."
"Scrap it," Jason said.
He pulled a sheaf of papers from his coat pocket. They were letters.
Sarah's letters.
He had kept them all. The ones detailing the horror in the French camps. The ones describing the symptoms.
He threw them on the desk.
"This is your headline," Jason said.
Swanson picked up a letter. He read it. His face went pale.
"These are from the front?"
"Redact the names," Jason ordered. "Protect the source. But print the descriptions. The blue faces. The drowning lungs. The death rate."
"This... this will cause a panic, sir," Swanson stammered. "The government will shut us down. The Sedition Act..."
"Let them try," Jason said. "I want panic, Swanson. I want terror. I want every mother in Philadelphia to be too scared to let her children out of the house tomorrow."
Jason grabbed a piece of paper. He uncapped his pen.
He wrote a headline in thick, black letters.
DEATH ARRIVES TOMORROW.
THE KILLER WORSE THAN THE HUN.
STAY HOME OR DIE.
He shoved it at Swanson.
"Run it. Full front page. Biggest font you have."
"Sir, the advertisers..."
"I'll buy every ad slot myself," Jason snapped. "Just print it! And wire the copy to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Tell them Standard Oil is buying their front page too. Tell them I'll pay double whatever the Liberty Loan committee is paying."
Swanson looked at the headline. He looked at Jason's fierce, desperate eyes.
He nodded.
"Get the typesetters!" Swanson yelled to the newsroom. "Tear it down! We're rewriting the front page!"
Jason walked to the window. He looked out at the busy street below.
People were walking, talking, shaking hands. They had no idea that the air they breathed was about to turn into poison.
In the original timeline, the Philadelphia parade went ahead. 200,000 people marched. Within days, the city's morgues were full. They had to stack bodies on porches.
Jason gripped the window sill.
Not this time.
He would use his media empire not to sell oil, but to sell fear.
He would be the villain who ruined the parade. He would be the coward who scared the nation.
But they would live.
The telegraph machines in the outer office began to clatter, sending his warning across the wires.
Clack-clack-clack.
It was the sound of history changing course.
Jason closed his eyes.
"Forgive me, Wilson," he whispered. "But I'm taking the wheel."