Sector C

by Phoenix Sullivan

  “We’ll probably have to pack in, so we’ll have to travel as light as possible.”

  “And if the animals escape?”

  “I wouldn’t expect many would be able to get out alive, but if they did, what worries? We don’t have any livestock left for them to kill.”

  “And with no livestock, something needs to be out there for the coyotes — either for them to kill or to kill them.”

  “You think it’ll burn fast enough?

  “With the panic everyone’s in, I doubt emergency response would be good.”

  “I’m a volunteer firefighter and I guarantee I won’t show up. Everyone else will be out burying carcasses.”

  “Shouldn’t we maybe try to send a helicopter over first. Find out what’s really inside?”

  “Any of you got a chopper handy? No? What’s it going to show us anyway that the SatMaps don’t? Except maybe alert the guys inside that we’re coming. Last thing we need are perimeter patrols. This way we get in and out fast.”

  “They have security guards at their front gate. You don’t think they have guards elsewhere?”

  “Cameras, probably. But I’m betting mainly on the inside. I mean, those fences are as high and thick as they are for a reason. No one’s going in or out by climbing them unless they’re using spikes and spurs and rappelling lines.”

  “All right then,” Jim broke in. “Let’s meet back here in the morning. Haul over diesel, kerosene, gasoline, white gas — whatever you have. And bring plenty of five-gallon cans, if you’ve got ‘em. We’ll check out the area and start soaking. Then we’ll meet back Wednesday with rocket igniters, flares, whatever else you guys use to start your burn piles.”

  “I light my boy’s scout fires with a flaming arrow.”

  “Light ‘em with your branding iron for all I care. As long as it works and you don’t set fire to yourself.”

  “We’ll let them know who’s responsible and why, right?”

  “Oh, yeah, we’ll make sure they know who we are,” Jim said, then he raised his longneck high. “For Chad.”

  The others toasted back. “For Chad!”

  CHAPTER 38

  DONNA STRETCHED AS SHE CAME awake, her hand automatically reaching out to connect with Alfie and draw her close for their habitual early morning cuddle. The unfamiliar feel of naked flesh and a leanly muscled body snapped her eyes open. Mike. Of course.

  The weight of the moment crushed her. That it wasn’t Alfie beside her and would never again be Alfie squeezed her heart and filled her eyes. That it was a man with whom she’d recently shared her body, pain and fears, and who had responded with gentleness and empathy trilled her soul. Out of surety and need, she spooned around him, rocking them gently together.

  It wasn’t long, though, before urgency overcame her gentle ministrations, and Mike woke to the rhythmic thrust of hips and hands encouraging him to rise. He didn’t disappoint. And for a few minutes more they forgot the world in short gasps and an intense ride to an explosive finish.

  It had been, Donna thought as she untangled herself from limbs and sheets, too long since she’d woken in the morning to find a man in her bed with no regrets afterward.

  She turned on the TV while Mike scanned his phone for any new information about Guard movement or CDC updates. News crews crawled the streets, capturing the eerie desolation of downtowns in the tri-state area. Ordinances had been hastily mandated in these cities to keep people from congregating. Not that they were needed. Quarantines, curfews and the triggering of the National Guard had the appropriate effect: people for the most part were too afraid to go out except to the emergency rooms and clinics. Video of medical centers showed lines that stretched for blocks, with voice-overs reciting the numbers of people fainting from the summer heat or from anxiety. Footage of an animal shelter showed crates of dogs and cats stacked at the doors and animals tied wherever there was a bit of shade before being abandoned by their loving owners.

  As Donna surfed the various channels, she was stuck by the number of earth-moving machines shown digging trenches to bury the millions of slaughtered animals as well as the tons of processed meats and dairy goods. Not that it could be an immediate concern, but she wondered how long prions could survive in those mass graves and if they could be unleashed by the simple act of leaching through soil erosion and groundwater movement.

  And she wondered just how long it would be before they would need such mass graves for humans. As one newscaster summarized it, “The fear that gripped America’s Midwest early yesterday morning has radiated out to the rest of the world. It’s as if people and governments everywhere are holding their breath, waiting for the next sign. In fact, some have already likened this to the silence in heaven we’re told will descend when the seventh seal has been broken and the end of the world is about to begin.”

  They shrugged into pants and shirts and made their way down to the restaurant just before eight. The hotel manager met them at the door of the roped-off entrance. “Sorry, but the restaurant is closed,” she said. “There’ve been runs on non-meat groceries and supplies, so everyone’s a bit short now. There are some packets of oatmeal, if you’d like, that you can fix in your room. I’m going to try to have the restaurant open this evening for dinner, but only a couple of the staff showed up today and I don’t know how long they’ll be staying. Same with housekeeping. I can give you clean towels and bed linens, but there won’t be anyone by today to clean the room.”

  There was little doubt the manager was stressed nearly to her breaking point. In fact, Donna was surprised the woman was holding herself together as well as she was, with only her blonde bangs falling in her face and a moderate level of exasperation in her voice to give her away beyond the desperation in her eyes. “I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to entertain guests,” she hinted, “though we’ll do our best until you can travel again.”

  Donna pulled Mike aside. “You’ll just be a drain on the resources here. Why don’t you come stay with me?”

  “You’re sure?” he asked. “Yeah, I’d like that. Just let me settle the bill.”

  It was on the way to the SUV with his packed suitcases that Donna tripped in the hall, and for several minutes after her gait was unsteady as she held to Mike’s arm for balance.

  “Nerves and grief,” she told him with an apologetic smile.

  But deep down they both knew better.

  CHAPTER 39

  JIM THOMPSON WAITED IMPATIENTLY for the other ranchers to arrive. He was glad of something to do and especially glad they’d agreed to Triple E as a target, but now he was eager to just get on with the plans. Get in early, get out early today — and they would still have to wait till tomorrow to actually light the place up.

  He wondered how many people from last night’s meeting would show up in the light after the beer had time to work itself out of the brain. He hoped at least a quorum. It wasn’t that he was a violent man, he just knew that justice was often slow in coming when left in the hands of corporate lawyers. And now with everyone running panicked, he was afraid any company that survived would bug out fast.

  He only wanted justice for Chad. Luckily for him, there were other men of a like mind living far enough away from the seats of government and influence of the cities who were determined to take up arms and act during a time of crisis instead of waiting for a bunch of self-righteous pricks to decide their future for them. Whether he would have called them friends or not in the past didn’t matter. Today they were brothers.

  They arrived, one by one, mainly in pickups, some hauling trailers, all with barrels or tanks settled in the beds. It was nearly seven when the last pickup pulled off the side of the road in front of Carl’s drive, but they had all come. Eleven men and nearly a thousand gallons of accelerant, from diesel fuel to gasoline to kerosene.

  They pulled out maps and GPS’s and gridded out sections for each man to cover. They made sure everyone had gloves and wire cutters and heavy-duty pliers to approach the compound fro
m off road across other ranches, the land likely fenced and cross-fenced with barbed wire. Not that they would have need to mend anything back unless it was horse ranches they were crossing. They each carried binoculars, a phone and a rifle or two hung on racks in their trucks in case they ran into trouble. And finally they passed around buckets and gas cans.

  They left as a convoy, breaking up as they approached the compound and scattering to circle it, keeping to the cover of hills and trees as they could.

  Jim Thompson sloshed gasoline six feet high onto the fence poles admiring how the brittle bark readily sopped in the liquid. At one point, he froze when he heard loud snuffling from the other side of the fence. But whatever made the noise soon lost interest and wandered away. At another point he distinctly heard the trumpet of an elephant and wondered in a not-really-too-interested way whether Triple E supplied animals to zoos.

  The work was satisfying but slow. He had to park several hundred feet from the fence line and traipse back and forth nearly 20 times to refill his can. Then he rigged the ignition system, using a handful of ignitors meant for model rocket engines. It took almost two hours to complete everything, but when he was done, Jim figured it was perhaps the most rewarding two hours he’d spent in a long, long time.

  Driving away to wait another 24 hours was hard, frustrating.

  But — he felt it in his gut — the payoff was going to be worth it.

  CHAPTER 40

  RUNNING MUCH LATER THAN planned after dropping off Mike’s things, picking up Donna’s and grabbing a hurried breakfast, Mike and Donna still managed to show up at the Triple E gatehouse before noon. The guard tried to turn them away.

  “Uh-uh,’ Mike told him. “You let us in or I’ll invite the National Guard on over.” It wasn’t an idle threat, Mike rationalized. If push came to the proverbial shove, he could route a request for help through Kevin, his manager, who could maybe arrange for a Guardsman or two to be here by tomorrow morning.

  The threat itself was enough to intimidate the security guard into calling for his own backup. Mike hoped like hell he wouldn’t have to make good on the threat as the wait time needed would take the punch right out of it.

  Two men arrived on foot about five minutes later. The first man wore a uniform and a scowl that didn’t bode well for Mike and Donna. The second man, in his early 60s, wore a business suit and an air of authority that firmly identified him as the guy in charge.

  “Mr. Thurman, I’m sorry. I didn’t expect you to come yourself.” The flustered gate guard looked from Walt Thurman to his supervisor, clearly hoping he wasn’t in trouble.

  Walt held up a reassuring hand. “No worries. Open the gate. I’ll take it from here.”

  As the gate slid across the drive, Mike and Donna slid out of the SUV. The security chief didn’t break stride, but he visibly tensed beside the older man.

  “I’m Walt Thurman, president and CEO of Triple E. And you were advised not to come back without a warrant,” Walt said.

  “Things have changed.” Mike’s heart was beating fast, but he actually felt surprisingly in control now that he was face-to-face with the man in charge. “In time of an officially declared crisis, the CDC has the legal authority to pursue all health-related leads when the evidence is strongly in favor of cover-up or obstruction. See the codex of 2017 if your legal advisors need precedent.”

  “And your evidence?”

  “The tiger you admitted escaping from your facilities tested positive for VTSE.” Which, Mike knew, was a bit of a fudge since results from the NDSU lab hadn’t yet come back, but the indicators were all there.

  “So it picked up the disease from one of the cows it ate. How does that make it CDC business?

  “Because prion levels and amount of degeneration in the brain indicate the tiger was infected at the time of its escape — not after,” Donna said. “That means it’s highly likely this whole VTSE disease originated here, and we want to know how and why. Patient Zero, whether it’s that tiger or not, may give us clues for how to prevent VTSE, if not cure it. Where did it come from? What species did it first appear in? Was it a genetic anomaly that became contagious? Or was it just a prion that spontaneously twisted wrong and created a new variant purely by happenstance? In other words, is its origin replicable?”

  “If Patient Zero is here,” Mike said, “that makes you and your animals CDC business. Look, you can deal with us now or, as I told your gate guy there, we’ll have the National Guard here within an hour. Your call.”

  Outflanked, Walt realized these two weren’t going away without some semblance of cooperation on his part. Adopting the air of a man unburdening a secret, he said, “Yes, we noticed some unhealthy animals around the time we started hearing complaints from some of the ranchers about sick cows. We’re taking care of it ourselves. I appreciate that you’re here to investigate for the good of the country, but the fact is we’re not the bad guys. We’re simply a business trying to make a profit. Our animals are caught up in this thing same as everyone else’s. The advantage we have is that we make money off of other people killing our animals. We run an elite commercial hunting organization on these grounds, and all of our animals, by the end of next week, will be trophies our clients can show off with pride.

  “We recognize your concern and we recognize the gravity of the situation. We’re smart people here — we realize that once the Guard is through with the cows and pigs in the area, it’ll turn its sights on just about anything else on four legs that’s a potential carrier. We’re being proactive. We just want to dispose of our inventory quietly because, one, we have a reputation of privacy to preserve with our — let me call them ‘privileged’ — clients, and two, we understand there are a great many people in this country that disagree with our business model and we would rather not become a target for their misguided sense of justice. I am sure you can appreciate our position.

  “I’ll be happy to have Sam, my security chief, show you around the compound with these provisos: that you leave any recording devices, including phones, with him; that we see a copy of whatever report you file with the CDC; and that any reports, whether official or not, are filed as eyes-only and are not to be made available to the general public. We’ve worked hard to keep the proceedings of this organization under the radar, and I assure you any mishandling of sensitive information to the detriment of this corporation will be actively pursued. Just so we understand each other.”

  Canned hunts. Donna understood all too well. Legal, yes, in North Dakota, with none of the prohibitions adopted by more enlightened states. Small enclosures, high fences and release of animals right in front of hunters were all acceptable practices. No wonder Triple E had opted to settle here. She bristled at the “misguided sense of justice” remark, but swallowed her anger, unwilling to jeopardize an opportunity to legally punish this corporation if they could find any evidence VTSE started here and Triple E deliberately hid knowledge of it. Prosecution that affected the corporate wallet was the sweetest revenge that could be enacted upon a company. Anything less was simply spitting into its soup.

  As if sensing Donna’s anger, Walt continued, “Make no mistake that what we’re doing is legal here. Endangered animals raised in captivity are property. We can sell them or shoot them at our pleasure so long as whatever we do, we do humanely. You may not like what we’re doing, the same as I don’t like that major soda manufacturers are going into third-world nations and exploiting their water supplies to bottle a product with no nutritional value that only contributes to obesity, which in turn raises corporate taxes to pay for increased medical costs. Ethics and the law clash all the time. We’ve learned we can’t regulate ethics simply because my ethical bounds are not what yours are.”

  The irony wasn’t lost on Walt that what he was launching into was basically the same speech he’d been preparing to combat criticism when they opened the museum to the public in a few months.

  “Consider that we’re doing the same work conservationists are. Preser
ving species that would otherwise be lost to the world. Species that their native habitat no longer supports. Look at the magnificent failures of recent efforts: wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone exterminated by the locals, gorilla populations in Burundi poached into extinction. Conservationists are turning in desperation to zoos to sustain populations that can no longer be sustained in the wild. To what end are these animals being kept, then, except for our benefit? How is that ethical? How does that help the species? It’s not like the native habitats are ever going to be reclaimed. Maybe a few acres here or there, but in the long run, once humans have overrun an area, it’s not ever going to be fit for some species again. Naturalists are fooling themselves to think otherwise.

  “Our genetics program exists to produce the best specimens of endangered species possible. The ultimate goal of nature is reproduction, and our program ensures the most vigorous animals have the chance to reproduce. A lot. No different than how ranchers cultivate their herds. One prime bull may sire hundreds of offspring through artificial insemination. A prime milk cow may have her eggs harvested, fertilized and implanted in dozens of other heifers, and so be mother to ten times the number of offspring she would naturally be able to produce.