Sector C

by Phoenix Sullivan

  “Not one of those vegetarians, are you?” the waitress asked. Mike thought she meant it snidely until she continued. “Because we have a vegetable sampler plate on the lunch specials. Order another veggie and a bread for just two dollars more.”

  He didn’t correct her, but he did take her up on the offer and added an ear of corn and a seeded rye roll. He noted Donna had taken the safe route, too: summer salad and beer-battered onion rings.

  They sat across a rough-hewn plank table from one another, two of only six clients in the rustic diner. After the day’s events, the unhurried atmosphere here was just what they each needed. Not to unwind but to catch up on other work that couldn’t be neglected. Mike followed the progress of the CDIC team investigating the ERs and logged his own report of his visits to the Spalding Ranch and to Triple E. Donna texted with Mrs. Rourke, who was keeping an eye on the patients at the clinic since Chad was out and referring any new patients to her colleague in Arnegard for the next few days.

  Must’ve gottn dzn calls — dogs, cats sudnly having seizures, Mrs. Rourke had sent. Ref’d to Abroudi. Ur leaving $$$ on table not being here.

  The message chilled Donna. She thought of Alfie, alone in the house, and wondered if Alfie would start having seizures. And if she did, what would she think if Donna weren’t there with her? Would she be scared or would she be too confused to know something different was happening to her?

  It wasn’t fair, Donna thought. If you had a terminally ill relative — even one you weren’t especially close to — people understood if you grieved. Companies even had to grant you Family Leave if you needed time to care for them. Acquaintances forgave your lapses. Support was offered from every corner. But for a companion animal — even one who’d never missed a day of work with you, who slept beside you at night, ate with you, played with you, listened to you and who was closer to you than blood — most people couldn’t understand the grief, offering at most a sympathetic frown yet still expecting 100 percent from you. How was it anyone had the capacity to tone down the grief and continue to function?

  “Something wrong?” Mike asked.

  There was a genuine look of concern in the man’s kind eyes, Donna thought. But there was nothing he could do. Not with an impending crisis at his door. He, too, would expect 100 percent. That’s what being strong, responsible and adult meant. But more than anything she just wanted to be home with Alfie, to spend whatever was left of their allotted time together with her — and to hell with the rest of the world.

  “That tiger,” she lied, pretending once again that Alfie simply didn’t exist and that her heart wasn’t being eaten through with a regret she knew would only sharpen once her sweet, intrepid collie no longer waited patiently for her to come home. “I keep thinking there’s a dot there we’re not connecting. I thought I almost had it talking to Helen, but whatever the idea was, it’s gone now ...”

  “Gah, I hate that corporate doublespeak shit she was feeding us, don’t you? I felt like she was reading us a brochure or press release. I don’t believe all that competitor confidentiality stuff for a second. They’re hiding something. And what was that line about some organizations out there that wouldn’t approve of what they’re doing? I couldn’t tell if she meant left- or right-wing activists. The don’t-mess-with-God, gene-manipulation-is-a-bad-thing camp or the we-don’t-need-more-wild-animals-kept-behind-bars-let’s-break-them-out-of-prison extremists?

  “Still, what we saw was clean and secure and, I must say, pretty impressive. They spent some bucks putting that facility together. There’s nothing right now I can go to the sheriff on to get a warrant. So if that idea comes to you and it helps, let me know.”

  “Sure, I’ll do that.”

  “You sure you’re OK? You seem distracted. Bad news from the clinic?”

  “Just that whatever it is seems to have jumped to more species. My receptionist started getting tons of calls about dogs and cats. It’s crazy. There’s nothing — nothing — that affects everything the way this thing does.”

  “Maybe it’s some alien virus from outer space. The Polaris Strain. The Betelgeuse Bug. Maybe it’s carried by fleas on prairie dogs or maybe it’s coyotes peeing it wherever they mark. One thing’s certain: we’ll be setting up quarantines for shipping any live animals out of the affected states for a while.” He held up his phone, which blinked incessantly with data feeds. “People are panicking after the newscasts this morning. We expected maybe double the number of people in ERs, but in the last few hours, it’s been more like triple. The CDIC field doctors are reporting up to 75 percent of the admissions are legitimate, too. That, or mass hysteria already has people faking the symptoms pretty well.”

  “Oh, are you talking about that weird disease that’s going around?” The waitress set down her tray and began arranging plates of food on the table. “I heard about that. Babies dying — could anything be worse? But, hey, we’re so far out here in the country, I doubt anything could find us.” With a wink and a smile she headed to the next table to deliver the open-faced burger left on her serving tray.

  Oblivious. Mike watched her walk away, wondering how the news over the next few days would change the waitress’ life. Would it really be a service to disrupt that unwitting innocence? He opened a margarine packet and scooped a dollop onto his corn.

  Donna tipped her dressing cup over the salad. “I keep having to remember this thing isn’t consuming everyone else the way it has been me.” She poised her fork over the greens. “The way it will everyone else soon, I’m sure.”

  If he had to be paired with a local, Mike thought, he was glad it was Donna. She seemed to be on his same wavelength. It was making the whole situation a lot easier. He continued his former train of thought. “So many people with it now will either mean we’ll have an easier time or a much harder time identifying a common source. If everyone is throwing up and they all ate the salmon at Le Chef’s in the past 48 hours, then bingo, easy to identify food poisoning. If they’re all jaundiced and ate there in the past 6 weeks, voila, Hepatitis C from an employee. Maybe they all ate at any one of Le Chef’s 20 franchises. We start checking the suppliers, we can still ID the culprit pretty quickly: a salmon farm in British Columbia.

  “But if it’s coming from multiple sources, the commonality thread will be a hell of a lot more difficult to track.”

  “What if it started with a person?” Donna asked. “What if someone went to the Amazon or the Outback or the African Bush and brought it back? Or what if someone or something is a carrier — they don’t exhibit symptoms but they spread it to others?”

  “That’s the difficulty with new epidemics that defy the standards. Start factoring in the ‘What If’ scenarios and it’s sometimes amazing we can even track back to Patient Zero at all.”

  “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

  “Not anywhere near like this,” Mike said. “And mostly I’m just on the sidelines, observing. Last year’s Pneumococcus outbreak in Florida was the closest thing in recent years to how this crisis is shaping up. About all I did there was feed data to the field reps from my desk, safe in Atlanta.”

  “Well, you couldn’t have had the moonwalk without all the folk back at mission control.”

  Mike smiled at the analogy. “Four or five years ago, before it was mandatory for all health facilities to get on the CDC network, we’d probably still be trying to determine if there was anything going on out here merely on anecdotal evidence — or on tracking web search trends. Simply inputting and compiling the data was time consuming given all the diseases and symptoms required to be reported. Then sifting through it all to determine what the variables were. We’d still have been maybe a week away from marshaling our resources.

  “Maybe you remember the human psittacosis outbreak in south Texas in 2015? It turned out to be just a local epidemic, of course, but it started among a group of wild parrots, who passed it from village to village in northern Mexico until it worked its way across the Rio Grande. That too
k nearly six months and a couple of thousand Mexicans were infected along the way. And we still didn’t realize what was coming. Took us nearly two weeks to identify we had a problem in the U.S., and another two to figure out what it was. And we thought we’d contained it pretty quickly.

  “Truth is, over the last 20 years, the CDC has done a really great job of watching over the big cities, but it’s been a hard climb getting the smaller cities and towns connected. Now that we have the technology in place, we just need the budget to check out suspicious activity faster. We shouldn’t have to wait for a confirmed alert before sending investigators out.”

  “They got here overnight. I thought that was pretty quick.”

  Mike shrugged. “They should have been out yesterday instead of me.”

  Donna shrugged back. “I’m kind of glad it was you, because now I get to play a part too.”

  “I’d like to go to your clinic when we leave here. Can you show me what tests you’ve run? Help me understand them?”

  “Sure. But I can give you the Tweet version now: ran them all and everything came back either negative or inconclusive. A couple of specialized tests that require growing tissue haven’t come back yet, but other than that — deadend.” She pushed her empty plates aside, took a sip of water and reached into her back pocket for her billfold.

  Before she could pull out her credit card, though, he’d pulled out his. “Allow me.” He winked. “Expense account.”

  She didn’t miss a beat, signaling to the waitress. “In that case, let’s find out what’s on the dessert menu.”

  They had finished their apple pie and were sipping the last of their coffee when Mrs. Rourke called. Donna frowned at the vibrating phone. Mrs. Rourke mainly texted; it was rare she wanted to speak, and then it was usually an emergency. “This is Donna.” She heard sobbing on the other end. No-nonsense Mrs. Rourke didn’t sob.

  “Dr. Bailey. You’re not driving are you?”

  “No, I’m still at the diner. We’re just finishing.”

  “I — I have some terrible news. It’s Chad.”

  “Chad?”

  “His wife just called. She took him to the emergency room.”

  “Yes, he told me this morning he was going to the ER.”

  “They think he had whatever that disease is …”

  “Had?”

  “He died at the hospital.” Mrs. Rourke’s voice broke.

  “Chad’s dead?” Donna stared into her empty coffee cup, trying to process the enormity of what she’d just heard.

  Mike, who had taken his own phone out to check messages, glanced up at Donna’s stricken tone.

  She tried to think of something profound to say, but all that came out was, “I didn’t think he was that sick.”

  “No, none of us did. He was only 23, Lord bless him. What’s Katy going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Donna still couldn’t think clearly. “I’m on my way back, OK? I’ll be there in about a half hour.”

  “Well, you drive careful coming back. There’s nothing you can do to help Chad now, so you just be careful.”

  “Yes. I — I will. Thank you for letting me know.” She hung up, the gesture automatic. Dazed, lost, she fumbled with the dishes in front of her before looking up into Mike’s face, searching for a temporary anchor.

  “Who’s Chad?” he asked quietly.

  She clutched at the question, grateful for the grounding. “My technician. My right hand, really. They think he had the disease. He had some of the symptoms, maybe, yes — but they didn’t seem that advanced. Not so that he’d be dead today.” She shook her head, bewildered. “I just don’t understand.”

  Mike pocketed his phone. “The CDIC team doesn’t have any answers yet. Did you say you were still going back to the clinic?” Donna nodded. “Let me give you a lift. We can get someone to come back for the truck later.”

  “No. I’ll have to drive home later. I’m OK, really.” She sniffed and straightened her shoulders. “It was just a shock there for a moment. I’m good. I just want to go now.”

  The road under her tires seemed to go on long after she thought she should be back at the clinic. Why was time so fickle? Whenever she was desperate for it to slow so she could catch a breath, it raced by on extra horsepower. But now, it was leading her with excruciating slowness, making sure she couldn’t outrace her grief, ensuring it dug into every pore, every molecule, layering into her more closely than skin itself.

  She would be strong through it, she resolved, but if she lapsed, she knew her clients, her friends, her family would understand. And lapse she would, because under the umbrella of grieving for Chad, she could grieve in advance for Alfie, too.

  CHAPTER 28

  MRS. ROURKE WAS WAITING AT the clinic when Donna arrived. The two of them hugged and traded words of consolation before Donna sent the receptionist home.

  “I’ll stop by to see Katy on the way,” Mrs. Rourke promised. “That poor girl’s going to need some help with things. I know you’d go if you had time, but this gentleman,” she pointed to Mike, “seems to be taking up all of yours right now.”

  It was a slap in the face, meaning Mrs. Rourke didn’t think anything should interfere with paying respects to the dead and their family. Normally, Donna would agree, so didn’t hold the rebuke against Mrs. Rourke. It was Chad, after all — more than just an employee, he’d been a work companion and friend for over a year. Someone who deserved her time and respect. And her tears.

  And someone who would get all that, she promised herself. Just not now. Now she had to keep her emotions in check. No matter how bad things got, she couldn’t cave. Too many clients were depending on her to look out for their interests.

  So she disappointed the receptionist by refusing to react to the implied indictment of her behavior, sending her off instead with, “Thank you, Mrs. Rourke. That’s very generous of you. I know how much Katy will appreciate it.”

  Donna’s phone beeped just as Mrs. Rourke disappeared through the front door. She glanced at the message from the NDSU laboratory: URGENT. Lab Results. Confirmation of Receipt Requested ASAP. Forgetting Mrs. Rourke and Chad, Donna collected Mike with a curt, “Come on,” and headed for her office. “Something new from the lab,” she said as she pulled up her email on her Pad-L. She looked at Mike as she waited for the attachments to open. “It’s not anything routine. They’ve never asked me to confirm receipt before. And it came to my private number, not through the clinic.”

  The download beeped to get her attention. “What the —” She read the message on her screen. “The file’s encrypted.”

  By the surprise in her voice, Mike figured that wasn’t normal either. She entered her license number to gain access and the report appeared. He looked over her shoulder, but she was scrolling through the unfamiliar form so quickly he couldn’t keep up.

  Until she stopped.

  “My God.” The tone of her voice was low, dead. Like an open grave waiting to be filled.

  He leaned in closer to read the summary she was staring at:

  North Dakota State University Veterinary Laboratories Preliminary Findings

  On reexamination of the Spalding samples, ID # MC7529DB through ID # MC7537DB, it is the conclusion of this lab that cause of death of the 4-year-old cow sampled is a previously unidentified variant form of prion disease. It is not the reportable Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, which typically causes widespread degeneration specific to the nervous system, and which is why the diagnosis was missed in the original sample tests. This form seems to concentrate not only in certain areas of the brain, but in muscle tissue as well. In addition, there are high concentrations of the variant prion in the milk samples provided.

  It is the considered opinion of this lab that this new prion will prove just as infectious to the bovine population as BSE. It is our recommendation that any bovine in close contact with an animal suspected of carrying this disease be marked “U.S. Condemned” and be slaughtered immediately in compliance with t
he USDA’s recommendations for slaughter and disposal of BSE-infected cattle.

  Given the history and number of samples previously submitted for animals displaying similar symptoms in this region, the lab is retesting all samples. We reserve opinion regarding the infectious nature of this new prion in species other than bovines until these samples have been retested.

  All results from animal testing in this region over the past 90 days are being shared with the CDC and USDA. At their request, samples may also be shared for further independent testing.

  “A new disease.” The strain in Donna’s voice made it sound brittle, on the verge of breaking. “That’s why I kept coming up empty. When the lab said it wasn’t BSE, I thought maybe we’d have a chance to control it if we could just identify it. But if it’s prionic like BSE or scrapie, we won’t be able to treat it. Not with any degree of certainty. Not in animals — and not in people.”