Joseph S. Miller, Jr. was an American man with distinctive views on freedom, but his understanding of the immune system was certainly not as developed as his numerous arguments against vaccination. This was primarily due to a lifelong habit of listening to radio shows that emphasized freedom over responsibility, and individualism over collective duty. Joe deliberately curated his information diet to include only sources that matched his existing views.

Joe was also a keen hunter, but his hospital maintenance engineer salary didn’t afford him the opportunity to travel to secure fancy, big-game trophies. Trophy hunting in a foreign country was something he’d never before been able to afford, but this year had brought him several lucrative side hustles. He’d made sizable profits selling second-hand electrical equipment, and he sold venison he’d personally butchered after successful white-tailed deer hunts in Wyoming. With the combination of a strong exchange rate, $32 an hour plus overtime, and his savings, Joe purchased his dream hunting trip to Africa.

Hunting in Chad was an experience of a lifetime and, for a blissful week, Joe felt like a character in a Hollywood movie. Everything was cheap, people attended to his every need, and he was plied with food and drink at every turn. On his first day out in the Land Rover with the trackers and professional hunter, he spotted hyenas, giraffes, and elephants, and sized up the Lelwel hartebeest that he planned to bag as a trophy. That evening, he watched dancers perform a tribal legend, ate three different game meats, and drank more than his share of beer and South African brandy.

As a result, Joe spent the next morning recovering by the poolside. In the afternoon, he went out with the team and by sunset, they’d positioned him for a perfect shot with the .375 Magnum rifle. One pull of the trigger later, the group picked up the 385-pound hartebeest, snapped photos for social media, and a team of bearers hauled the carcass into the back of the second Land Rover. The animal’s meat was to be donated to a local tribe, and the head would be dressed and mounted by a local team.

That night Joe dined heartily, and one of the dishes included the liver of the hartebeest he’d shot. There was more beer, more brandy, and more photos for posting, this time of him posing stoically at the solid hardwood bar, puffing on a cigar. In the following days, Joe attended more dances, drum performances, and bushveld sightseeing trips. At the request of his church group back home, he attended several local church services and visited the mission hospital and school. Joe collected several letters to take back home and was given a small statue of Jesus carved out of local Sapelli hardwood as a gift to his church. By the time Joe packed and headed to the airport, he had enough memories to last a lifetime.

He also had an infection.

At the point Joe began to feel a slight fever and slight headache, he’d settled back into the routine of his everyday life. He was no longer the center of attention, being plied with dried game meat snacks, Tusker beer, and Klipdrift brandy. He wasn’t “Boss Joe” or “Mr. Miller, sir,” but just “Joe” and “Hey, you.” Now he lugged a dented toolbox to the hospital and listened to complaints about things that rattled, flickered, or had died. His fellow church congregants, who’d listened to his every account of the school to which they’d donated money, peppered him with questions about the clinic and praised the little wooden Jesus sculpture now barely nodded at him. He was old business, and like the lingering scent of wood fires and African bushveld in his clothes, things had moved on.

Soon Joe’s armpits felt tender, and he had a mild cough and a runny nose. Still, he went to work, climbing a ladder in the Women’s Health clinic to replace flickering and dead fluorescent tubes with new LED units. He tried to engage the nurses in a discussion about the stupidity and “wokeness” of replacing neon lights with LEDs, but none of them were interested. Even the nurses he could usually get a rise out of over his views on vaccines weren’t biting. He did finally have a brief, satisfying chat with one of the clinic’s prenatal patients who agreed that vaccines were a scam and caused more harm than good.

That patient was Elsa, a young woman who’d struggled to get pregnant. After her third in-vitro fertilization series, it came as an overwhelming relief and cautious joy to Elsa when she finally became pregnant. The egg harvesting had been the most painful thing she’d ever experienced, and the repeated buildup of hope followed by scorching disappointment had been exhausting. Finally, that part was over. She attended every prenatal clinic religiously, obeyed every bit of medical advice, performed all the exercises, took extra calcium that made her gag, and swallowed the nauseating vitamin supplements.

Elsa’s hospital clinic was in an underfunded rural region, but what the clinic lacked in equipment or drugs, the staff made up for with love and care. Elsa travelled to the clinic for her checkups from the little farm ten miles out of town that she shared with her wife, Maggie, a deaf dog, and a gaggle of geese. She brought in money with her web design and search engine optimization gigs, but Maggie wasn’t too far behind with her home repair earnings from replacing roofing tiles, refinishing floors, and repairing plumbing. Maggie also made sure their own house had a roof that didn’t leak, doors and windows that sealed, and walls that were smooth and painted, and Elsa made it a home.

The first sign of trouble arrived with a routine blood test. The doctor called them both in and appeared distracted and uncomfortable. She mentioned something about a “serum IgG titer,” and that another blood test had confirmed whatever it was. All Elsa heard was that her dream was suddenly slipping away. What Maggie heard was a bunch of words with “deafness,” “cataracts,” and “heart defects” scattered among them. Elsa was in tears, and Maggie was trying to separate “brain disorders” from “bone alterations.” Maggie suddenly felt like she was in some 70s-era movie about toxic waste dumps and radioactive leaks. How could Maggie and Elsa, in the middle of America, in this year, be talking about their baby having mental handicaps, liver, and spleen damage from an infection easily stopped by a simple vaccine?

“How does a fetus have liver damage like it’s been boozing for thirty years?” Maggie asked tearfully. The doctor looked almost as miserable as Elsa, who’d shut down to the point of catatonia.

“This virus, a virus easily prevented with a vaccine, is typically mild in adults,” the doctor explained. “But it’s an absolute terror for developing babies.”

By the time Elsa and Maggie were mourning the miscarriage of their daughter, a tiny pale wisp streaked with bright blood, everyone in the church congregation including Elsa and Maggie, had heard their fellow churchgoer and clinic maintenance worker Joe recount his hunting trip in Africa for the umpteenth time. Maggie had also heard Joe brag about not taking a single minute off work for some flu he’d picked up on his trip—”German something, ruby something,” he’d said.

Following church service on a misty Sunday morning soon afterward, as Joe walked to his car in the parking lot, he passed a rainbow-stickered, beat-up pickup truck. Maggie, who’d been sizing him up, stepped up behind him with a straight-claw rip hammer in her fist and revenge in her heart. With one shot, she buried the sharp end in the back of his skull. No social media photos were taken.