Fiction

100 years ago. In 1918, this flu killed up to 40 million people across the planet. From the remotest villages in Arctic climates to crowded U.S. cities to the battlefields of Europe, there were plague houses in which whole families lay sick or dead. In the United States it killed more Americans than all the wars fought in the twentieth century put together. The disease did not discriminate. It took whom it pleased. It was a flu unlike any that the world had encountered before or that has come along since. It remains a mystery why the 1918 outbreak was so devastating. As far as the next pandemic is concerned, scientists agree: It's not a question of if, but when.