Doctor Wilbur Zuckerman, or just 'Doc Zuck' or even just 'Doc' to his friends, was the very picture of a pig farmer - a portly older man, but with an easygoing attitude and an even easier smile that tended to put people at ease. He stared down at his nearly-clean breakfast platter, musing about how most of it had been bacon before going into his stomach.
"It's funny, Ma," he declared to his wife, who was 'Ma Zuckerman' to practically the entire tri-county area. "When I was a younger man, I couldn't decide to study diseases like the ones that took my grandparents when I was a kid, or become a veterinarian to help around the farm. Now, here I am... doing a little of both with my retirement, I suppose.
"Oh Doc," Ma chided him as she began to clean up. She was plump and matronly, resembling her husband the doctor in terms of a certain 'rustic' quality to her. "There you go, talkin' about the good ol' days like you're gonna be some hotshot horse trader like your brothers. Them government boys picked you for good reason, moved us both out here to an abandoned property, and you're fighting the good fight. Nowc try not to think about where that pork came from and get to work - it's almost time for the G-men to do another inspection!" she chided him, before smiling and planting a kiss on his bald head. Smiling back, he put on a straw hat and headed to the barn, knowing that he and his wife were both naturally immune he took little precaution.
The first room was where the cases of 'Swine Flu' - some kinda new strain of an animal morphing disease and an obesity-causing virus - were the earliest, and probably most easy to control. To the untrained eye, it might have looked like the results of a wild college party - folks laying in the hay comfortably, sleeping off food comas instead of hangovers. Some of them even were well enough to give him a hand with the others, or even could help Ma with the household chores.
Next, though, was where the infection really set in. Those who were getting seriously fat, which Doc knew was a bit hypocritical of him to warn them of, his history of both being a larger man and also encouraging obesity in his livestock before. But they were also becoming quite lazy and greedy, and weren't good for much besides eating and giving those whitecoat scientists who came by more information. They always said Doc kept impeccable records, but what they were studying exactly - a cure? A way to control the virus? - He couldn't say. Seemed science was a young man's game, these days - used to be that you could learn all you needed from books.
And the last part of the barn - where he supposed the previous owners had kept the hogs that were ready to become ham and sausage - were the worst cases. They were even getting animal-like qualities to their physical bodies, and every day they seemed less and less human in their behavior.
But today, something caught Doc's attention - some ruckus in one of the rooms! He waddled as fast as his old, stout legs could go, right into...
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