“Obviously,” Walt said into the ensuing silence, “Triple E has been caught by the short hairs same as all of you. If business requires you to leave early, just let us know what your new itinerary is and we’ll rearrange your shoot schedule to accommodate. I know we’ll all work together as we learn more.”
“You won’t be serving us any more contaminated beef, will you?” The tone of the question made it a joke. The group laughed nervously.
Walt chuckled. “No, we’ll take cow and buffalo off the menu and see if our chef can’t find some novel ways to serve up poultry and fish.”
That simple reassurance eased fears far more than it should have. The hunters in the room were all educated professionals, but indoctrination in lavish lifestyles left them a step removed from reality. Epidemics happened to the masses, not to executives earning seven-and eight-figure salaries. The disease and accompanying sanctions were assaults on their businesses and on their personal comfort, but not on their persons. They hadn’t traipsed through the Dakota countryside or wandered through any cow barns to get to the Triple E compound, so they couldn’t be infected. And the compound itself was secured with gates and guards and towering fences. That, coupled with the amount of money they were spending to be there, effectively bought their protection.
Plus, they could treat this retreat just like any conference or convention they attended where they still ran their businesses virtually. In fact, since most of the executives ran their companies remotely most of the time anyway, being bunkered here wouldn’t matter a twaddle when it came to effective management. So long as the government didn’t try to hold them here forcibly beyond 72 hours, they were content to pay lip service to the veneer of being good corporate and U.S. citizens.
In fact, some of them were already considering how they could capitalize on their confinement and what messages of concern and support they could send their workforce from behind the front lines. Hero was a word that sat comfortably with them.
Del Campo, Walt thought, had missed a perfect grandstanding opportunity. Had the president made his speech from somewhere in Montana or the Dakotas, he could have announced that he, too, had been caught by the short hairs and would have to abide by the injunctions same as everyone else. He then could have continued to run the country from within the middle of the crisis area, keeping attention on himself as much as on the epidemic. Public sentiment would have galvanized his constituents and his popularity rating would have soared. But that short-sightedness, in Walt’s opinion, was why he and his cabinet would be lame ducks in a couple of years.
“If they’re killing the source, how long do you suppose this whole thing will last?” one of the executives asked. That question sparked a spirited, if uninformed, discussion among the group as they speculated as to the exact nature, transmission route and incubation length of the new disease.
Walt took the opportunity to signal his employees aside. “I want a board meeting this afternoon. Make sure Dr. Volkov is there.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
IN THE TRUCK ON THE WAY to the Spalding Ranch, Donna was white-knuckling the steering wheel, the familiar contour of it reassuring against her palms. They were nearly to the ranch when they ran up on a convoy of jeeps and SUVs headed in their same direction. Each vehicle carried a handful of somber-faced men and women with an equal number of rifles pointing rudely up beside them.
“I’ve seen the simulations,” Mike warned. “It won’t be easy on the animals. The Guard will go in fast, get out fast and get on to the next herd.”
Donna didn’t say anything. She simply stared at the road, a tic beneath her right eye the only movement on her otherwise rigid face.
“You don’t have to do this now. You want to talk to the ranchers, fine. You can do it before or after the Guard leave. You don’t have to do it while they’re there.”
The truck continued to tail the convoy as it turned down the Spalding drive and wound its way to the barns. When it stopped, Mr. Spalding and three ranch hands Donna didn’t immediately recognize, met it, grim-faced and formally civil. One of the Guardsmen swung out of the lead jeep to greet the men.
Donna felt the eyes of the Guardsmen on her as she rolled the truck past the convoy using the grass beside the drive. She tried to look as nonthreatening as possible and hoped Mike was doing the same. Stopping about 20 feet from the knot of men who had exchanged both words and handshakes, she and Mike stepped out of the cab, moving deliberately and with their hands in sight at all times. Donna certainly had not expected anything more than courtesy and compliance from Mr. Spalding, nor from the majority of her clients. But there were a handful of ranchers she thought might indeed give the Guardsmen trouble. Until now, though, she hadn’t really thought about the consequences if someone tried a standoff with the Guard. The men and women waiting silently in their vehicles seemed pleasant enough now—in the pleasantly intimidating way a group of people in uniform on alert had—but their ready rifles held a threat that couldn’t be ignored. As bad as the situation already was, she hoped it wouldn’t turn violent, that no one grew desperate or crazy enough to do anything truly stupid.
That thought made her realize that Mike’s warnings had been as much about her physical safety as her emotional well-being. For that, she threw a small smile of thanks his way. And as much as she wanted to do right by her clients, she started to make a mental list of those clients of questionable stability that she intended to stay clear of while the Guard were near. There were a few men and women she knew who had moved out to the desolate Dakota prairie to get as far away from government and bureaucracy as possible. Guardsmen intruding on their privacy wasn’t going to sit well with those disgruntled, anti-establishment individuals much less the full-blown isolationists who wired their cabins and set pressure plates around their land.
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 de
feat, 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 maybe 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 Thirty-Five
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.
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