Sector C

by Phoenix Sullivan

  The small smile Donna offered Mike as they walked was welcome if confusing to the analyst. Was it encouragement she was trying to offer? Or maybe a damn-the-torpedoes-let’s-walk-into-hell-together signal? Given the vibes he had been getting off her mood all morning, he didn’t think the latter was entirely farfetched. Glad he’d been that she had wanted to start these misdirected, conscience-soothing visits with the Spalding Ranch. At least they wouldn’t be starting the day with a war. His hope was that, after a visit or two, Donna would get the idea that these ranchers considered her presence superfluous. That it didn’t matter what had or had not been done in the past; that the arrival of the Guard pretty much negated any previous relationships. None of this was personal. None of this was because of her. The ranchers would not be grateful that she chose to be there, nor condemning if she wasn’t. Likely, they wouldn’t think about her at all.

  What some of them would be thinking would be how to best protect what was theirs. The simulations he’d been involved with bore this out. Any time property was confiscated, animals killed or evacuation enforced, there were always a few headstrong individuals in the beginning who refused to comply. The longer a crisis wore on, the more people who had initially been passive and had worked within the sanctions would hit their tolerance point and rebel, joining the ranks of the gun-toting, supply-hoarding outliers. Sometimes it took a week, sometimes two. In general, though, most scenarios that challenged people’s property or rights ended in standoffs that were messy, costly and, most especially, bloody.

  McKenzie County, along with every other county in the tri-state area, would soon become a flashpoint, and unless travel restrictions eased up, Mike and Donna were both stuck at Ground Zero. All Mike wanted was to get past this crisis in as orderly a fashion as possible, and to do that, he needed Donna to realize on her own that there was nothing, not one facet of what was about to happen, under her control.

  “Mr. Spalding.”

  The gaunt face that looked back at her as Donna shook hands no longer resembled a defeated rancher’s. If she had been startled by the transformation on her last visit, she was utterly dismayed today. There was nothing in the man’s expression. Not defeat, not hopelessness. Donna had heard the description “dead eyes” before, but had never actually seen a living person who fit that description. Until today.

  The closest she could equate to Fred Spalding was the way her patients looked in the final moment before the life fled their eyes completely. Poets and writers contemplating life’s finality often described their subject in that moment using the romantic phrases of their trade:

  Her eyes filled with the question ‘Why?’

  In the moment between being and not being sparked a recognition, an acknowledgement of all that was and all that could be.

  For a perfect moment he knew deep and utter peace.

  Understanding, complete and beautiful, reflected from the deepest chasm of his eyes.

  But Donna had never seen that kind of mystery. Animals simply died, passing from living to not through an expressionless wasteland. And Fred Spalding’s vacant eyes admitted just how mired already he was in that wasteland. She wondered if he would have the strength — or desire — to return.

  Behind her, the Guard sergeant gave a signal and a handful of Guardsmen, in freshly creased slacks and clean shirts that would later be stained with sweat in the hot afternoon sun, dismounted from their vehicle in orderly fashion and ranged themselves loosely along the fence line, rifles in hand, waiting.

  The reality of the moment clutched at Donna. It was suddenly hard to draw breath or to swallow or to do anything except choke out a pathetic, “I’m sorry.”

  If Fred Spalding heard her, there was no indication.

  One of the unfamiliar ranch hands scowled her way, a vitriolic expression that cast the blame for the disease, for the Guard’s presence, and even for the bullets in their rifles squarely on her shoulders. At least that’s the interpretation Donna put to it, projecting all the self-loathing she was feeling at the moment. It didn’t matter that she’d done all she knew to do when the disease broke out and, realistically, there was nothing she could have done that wouldn’t have ended exactly where they were now. The only thing really in her power she could have affected would have been the timing. And that would have meant standing here a week, maybe two, earlier.

  At their segeant’s signal the Guardsmen on the ground swarmed through the gate heading for the near pasture. Motors gunned and the rest of the Guard took off for more distant fields.

  Sunlight bathed the warm land where a herd of cows grazed contentedly on the close-cropped grasses just as their mothers and their mothers’ mothers had grazed before. Except for their dress, the people walking toward them appeared no different from the ranch hands who put grain in their buckets and hooked them to machines that relieved the pain and strain from the gallons of milk that collected in their udders daily. People were valuable to their herd and so their presence was tolerated. A few of the cows even lumbered their way, curious to see whether the unexpected visit meant a ration of sweet feed coming their way.

  The sharp staccato reports from half a dozen rifles cracked the still Dakota air. Distant reports that might have been echoes but weren’t continued on long after the nearby shots ended. Finally the gunfire grew sporadic, like the last kernels popping in a bag of corn.

  And then it was over.

  Without a word or a change in expression, Mr. Spalding walked back to his house. The ranch hands scrambled toward waiting tractors, their sturdy front loaders poised high, to begin the grim cleanup and burial work. Convoy vehicles returned from the pastures one by one until all were accounted for. The sergeant swung back into his jeep and led his Guards back down the Spalding drive, heading toward the next ranch on the road.

  “Thank God it went easy.”

  Donna rounded on Mike, her angry retort dying on her lips as she realized what Mike meant. No violence. No threat of violence. And no one had gotten hurt. That likely wouldn’t be the case at five or six ranches she could immediately think of.

  The chirping of her phone jarred her thoughts, made the surrealness real again. She thought about not answering, but Mrs. Rourke was with Chad’s wife so there was no one at the clinic today. And while the clinic phone message directed clients to leave a message or call Dr. Abroudi with emergencies, several clients had her cell number and she still had a responsibility to them. Especially in time of crisis.

  She threw an apologetic glance to Mike for the interruption. “This is Dr. Bailey.”

  “Doctor, it’s Lisa Samuels. I know you aren’t in your office today, but I have six puppies I need you to put down.”

  Donna struggled to remember the name. “Puppies? How old?”

  “Two weeks.”

  Kill two-week-old puppies? Donna took a breath. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “Well, I think the mother had that disease the president was talking about. She was shaking, couldn’t get up, and was just burning with fever. Well, we have the two kids in the house, you know, and John wasn’t going to take any chances, so he took her outside and shot her. But I really don’t want him killing the puppies. I’d rather you do it.”

  Donna vaguely remembered the Samuels now. She’d seen the mother dog, a schnauzer if she remembered correctly, a couple of times — once when it had been snakebit. They were typical owners of country dogs who didn’t understand preventive care and only relied on vets for emergencies. From what she was gathering, this should have been such an emergency. The symptoms the woman described were only too familiar. “You said she felt hot?”

  “Oh yes. I didn’t take her temperature, but she was burning up. Her nose and feet were very hot and she was panting pretty hard, though maybe that was because she was in pain?”

  “Lisa, this disease that’s all over the news doesn’t cause fever. Oh God, honey, I wish you had called first before John got out the gun. You’ve been pregnant — did you ever hear of Eclampsia, or m
aybe Milk Fever?”

  “Well, Milk Fever, sure —”

  “It’s not uncommon to see it in smaller dogs a couple of weeks after whelping even small litters — and you say she had six pups ... She was using up all her own calcium to make milk for her puppies. Nerve cells need calcium to work right, so that’s why she was shaking and not able to stand. She just needed a shot of calcium and for you to put the pups on a milk replacer for awhile to give her time to recover. You can still do that for the pups, and they should be just fine.” An unobtrusive beep announced that Donna had another call waiting.

  “Maybe.” Lisa didn’t sound convinced. “But I don’t think John wants ‘em in the house with the kids. Just in case. If you don’t take them, I think he’s gonna put ‘em in a pillow case and drown ‘em in the creek. They’re too little to shoot. But drowning is just so cruel. If you wouldn’t charge much, I’d rather you do it.”

  “I’m in the field now, but Dr. Abroudi should be able to help. Can you get them over to Arnegard?”

  “Sure, I’ll do that. I’ll feel better once they’re out of the house, you know. What with the kids and all.”

  “Of course.” Donna had given up trying to change a parent’s mind about the disposition of a pet when the parent was convinced the health of their child was at risk. “I’ll let Dr. Abroudi know you’re coming. Let me know if you need anything else.” Damn, she hated it when clients, even well-meaning ones, called too late for help.

  She switched over to the next call, but the caller had already left a message. Her stomach twisted as she listened.

  Mike watched her hand clench around the phone as another wave of anger hit. She tossed the phone into the front seat of the truck, though Mike guessed she’d much rather be tossing it down a well instead.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Everyone’s panicking. That was a client I’ve known since I got here. A perfectly reasonable woman with a perfectly reasonable husband — not like that last call — with two perfectly lovely shepherds they want to put down. ‘Just in case,’ she says. Just in case! They’re afraid the dogs might — might — have eaten contaminated meat. They don’t want to take the chance of infecting their kids.”

  “The thing is,” Mike said carefully, “they may be right.”

  He expected a violent reaction from the vet. What he didn’t expect was for her to cave, her shoulders slumping and suddenly choking back tears.

  “Once the priority hosts are eliminated,” he continued, “the ZVED guys will concentrate on the secondary hosts. They just need to find evidence of how far this thing can jump. Dogs? Cats? Mice and rats? Birds?”

  “Alfie.

  “What?”

  “My dog. Alfie. She died last night. Of VTSE.”

  Mike winced, understanding now why she’d seemed so reserved all morning. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Think of the thousands, maybe millions, of animals people will put down ‘just in case.’ Or when the Guard’s done shooting every last cow and pig, are they going to turn their guns on dogs and cats and horses?”

  “To keep people safe, yes they will, if they have to.”

  “But don’t you see, there’s nothing that will keep any of us safe. Not if we have to kill everything around us. Not if we have to kill everything we love.”

  She looked so lost with her bruised heart so uncharacteristically vulnerable on her sleeve. Instinctively, Mike knew that just as her clients weren’t prepared to hear from her that theirs was a wrong choice where their children were involved, no amount of logic would console her in this state.

  Not sure how receptive she would be but knowing at a gut level it was something he had to do — wanted to do even — he wrapped his arms around her.

  Without thought, Donna responded to the base human touch. She put her hands on the backs of his shoulders and drew him close. Then she buried her face in his shirt and cried — for the ranchers, for Chad, for Alfie. But mostly for herself.

  CHAPTER 35

  NEARLY EVERYONE WAS LATE to the board meeting but, under the circumstances, the fact that everyone made it to the room within fifteen minutes of the start time was a feat unto itself.

  Walt Thurman himself was nearly ten minutes late and, to the surprise of many, he arrived smiling. As he worked the room waiting for the last of the stragglers, he sipped a diet soda and even made a few small jokes. Far from defeated, Walt Thurman seemed energized, invigorated.

  When he called the meeting to order, only one board member was noticeably absent: Helen Marsh.

  Walt noticed the worried looks people were giving her empty chair and winked. “Wondering where Helen is? I’ve busted her down to answering phones.” He grinned. “You’ve all heard the president’s address and you’re wondering where we go from here. Helen is working on that now. Before Del Campo announced that we’re in a crisis, we weren’t getting the kind of response our drug research deserved. The major companies didn’t want to partner with us over some hypothetical therapy and the smaller companies didn’t have the resources to fund the research in the manner we thought fit. The good news is that for the past three hours the phones haven’t stopped ringing. Seems everyone wants a piece of the research pie now that there looks to be at least an epidemic and possibly even a pandemic going on. Helen is fielding those calls and qualifying possible drug partners.

  “Meanwhile, in light of the circumstances, I’ve asked Dr. Volkov to give us an update on where we are with the research and potential vaccine. Grigor.” He nodded to his lead geneticist, giving him the floor.

  Dr. Volkov looked decidedly more uncomfortable than a man about to lay out the company’s next successful venture should have. He took a sip of water and cleared his throat before beginning. “In the past four days, we have made some progress on what a vaccine will look like and how to produce it in suitable quantities in a suitable time frame. As Mr. Thurman and I discussed at our last meeting, we are looking at a new peptide that will prod mutant prions into a new configuration, rendering them, essentially, ineffectual. We find these new peptides can be grown in vitro, outside of animal hosts, which means it will be a relatively easy process to extract them for vaccine.”

  There was a general murmur of approval at that announcement. But Dr. Volkov held up a hand. “On the down side, it is slow to replicate — not as slow as its mad cow cousin, but not nearly as fast as VTSE. We are already far behind the curve with this disease — and it will only get worse.”

  “But several labs working together to turn out vaccine would surely improve the odds,” Finance Accountant Peter Carne pointed out.

  “Improve, yes. Overcome? If you mean eradicate, no. If you mean managing to vaccinate every person in the early stages of the disease by this time next year, I would proffer a cautious yes. By then, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, will be dead. And people in the late stages of the disease as well as any animal with the disease will continue to infect others. That, my dear friends, is our best-case scenario.”

  He paused, making sure the board understood just how dire the situation had become. “Furthermore, the vaccine we are developing remains untested. Preliminary findings in animal studies continue to show a near-100 percent success rate in mutating what the CDC calls the Xs variant form into another variant we are tentatively calling Vf, to stand for ‘vaccine form’. However, Vf is a wholly new folding of the proteins and we have only been monitoring animal test subjects for at most a couple of weeks. I must caution, iterate and reiterate that simply being able to convert all Xs prions into Vf ones only means we have successfully been able to halt this disease in select laboratory animals. It does not mean we have a successful vaccine if the Vf prion causes a similar disease in humans or has no effect when introduced into human hosts.”

  “Nevertheless,” Walt interrupted, “our research is months ahead of anyone else’s. While I confess to being disappointed by the timing of the president’s announcement, I can’t think of a better carrot to dangle in front of
the best drug labs in the country. Yes, we’re being pushed prematurely into our next steps and we could have used another couple of weeks to better formulate our direction, but that time has been taken out of our hands. We must decide now what our best recourse is. Do we partner with a major drug lab and work with them to refine and distribute the vaccine, or do we sell our research outright?”

  Grigor Volkov shifted uncomfortably in his seat and tried to catch Walt’s eye. For his part, Walt was studiously avoiding his lead geneticist. Dr. Volkov was and had been the proverbial team player since the inception of Triple E ten years ago. But selling their research outright? Not something Walt had discussed with him and the rest of the genetics team. And by not discussing the disposition of it with the very team that had created it was a decided slap in the face. As a board member he had, perhaps, a little more tolerance for Walt’s actions than his fellow researchers would. If the announcement made him want to strangle the CEO, he had no misgivings as to how those less loyal than him were going to react.