“What guys, Officer?” Vic asked.

“Health Department guys,” Joe Bob said.

Vic said, “Oh Jesus, it was cholera. I knowed it was…”

“Then they got on the phone to the Plague Center in Atlanta, and those guys are going to be here this afternoon. But they said in the meantime that the State Health Department was to send some fellas out here and see all the guys that were in the station last night, and the guys that drove the rescue unit to Braintree. I dunno, but it sounds to me like they want you quarantined.”

“Moses in the bullrushes,” Hap said, frightened.

“The Atlanta Plague Center’s federal,” Vic said. “Would they send out a planeload of federal men just for cholera?”

The Stand

Because if the Feds from Atlanta show up in their white suits, you know it is serious. They will do whatever it takes to save the country, even if it means incinerating you and everyone you have been in contact with.

Okay, things don’t turn out so well for the country or most characters in The Stand, but it was not for lack of a rapid and heavy handed government response.