Sector C

by Phoenix Sullivan

  Now that the area was in a Red Alert, the observations of a simple statistical analyst wouldn’t mean squat to the teams on the ground. He’d just become excess baggage. But his plane ticket home to Atlanta was for six days out. Besides, he’d already enlisted a partner and a little further investigating on his own would keep him busy in this remote town.

  A commotion at the entrance to the dining room drew his attention to five people — three men and two women — dressed in crisp white shirts, lab coats and perfectly creased slacks. Badges pinned to their lapels identified them as CDC employees. Maybe it was simply the advantage of the group and those grave expressions that made them appear confident and capable. Or maybe it was the authorial feel of those white lab coats. Whatever the prompt, simply watching them move together to their table was mesmerizing. And if they communicated such a strong air of competence even to him, Mike knew the casual observer would be doubly swayed.

  Mike was under no delusion that he inspired that level of confidence. It wasn’t just the jeans and sport shirt he habitually wore. He simply couldn’t carry off the look. Mussed hair that refused to stay parted, a relaxed and open expression despite how serious any given situation might be and a slight hesitation to his movements collectively marked him as second string.

  He debated whether or not to introduce himself to the group, in the end deciding they probably wouldn’t welcome his theories before they’d had a chance to create their own. If he dug up anything they needed to know, Kevin, his boss, could track them down. Besides, they’d be receiving distilled versions of his daily reports to guide their investigation.

  He turned his attention back to his charts. Fifteen more children admitted to ERs, another infant death and another 6 percent rise in stroke diagnoses since yesterday. After this morning’s news reports and the run on area hospitals they’d be triggering, he had no doubt tomorrow’s numbers would be much, much higher.

  The increase in stroke patients, however, still niggled at him. He isolated the stroke cases and scanned the associated data, especially comparing occupations. By themselves, the numbers meant little. Juxtaposed with what he’d seen at the Rocking Sun Ranch yesterday, however, they appeared to offer another clue. Nearly 20 percent were “retired,” a number he thought quite low given the typical age of stroke occurrence. But a 67 percent majority, mainly among patients 28 to 74, seemed to bear out his suspicions that some cases might have been misdiagnosed. Even in a predominantly rural area, that seemed to be a high percentage of people involved in “farming, ranching or other agricultural work.”

  He made note of the observation and emailed his daily report to Kevin. Hopefully, it would give the teams starting their investigations at the hospitals something to consider.

  Meanwhile, he planned to continue concentrating on the farms and ranches so he could have some preliminary data ready for the investigators when they finally caught up with his investigative efforts. And that meant meeting Dr. Bailey at one of the dairy farms in about 30 minutes. Switching off his Pad-L, he dropped a five-dollar tip on the table and headed out.

  CHAPTER 24

  “HEY, DOC.”

  Donna winced at how weak Chad’s voice sounded. The static that buzzed in the background didn’t help as the phone valiantly attempted to keep a connection the farther away from the Watford City cell tower she drove.

  “Did you watch the news this morning?”

  As if she’d had time. “No. Why?”

  “They’re saying there’s some kind of epidemic here. That kids are dying. Do you know anything about it?”

  “Only that the CDC showed up yesterday. I’m meeting one of their guys at the Spalding Ranch this morning.”

  “Doc?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think maybe I’ve got it.”

  “Got what?”

  “That disease. I’m tired, trembling all the time. Can’t remember squat. Sounds like what they were describing on TV. Katy wants me to go in today and find out.”

  “Well, then, you better do what your wife says.” Donna tried to make it a joke, but the memories of all the cows and horses and sheep and goats she’d put down over the last couple of months took the light laugh right out of her voice.

  “Yeah, guess I better. I’ll let you know what they find out.”

  Tendrils of dread tightened in her chest. There wasn’t one animal — not one — with whatever this was that she’d been able to save. “I have the phone with me. Call me as soon as you know something.”

  She glanced across the empty seat bench as she hung up. It wasn’t just Chad. She’d finally had to admit Alfie was showing signs of cognitive and neural distress, too. All that boundless border collie energy had simply vanished over the last couple of weeks taking away Alfie’s enthusiasm for riding in the truck and going on calls. Alfie slept at home most of the day now, from what Donna could tell, getting up only to lap a little water and swallow a few bites of food when Donna insisted.

  For Alfie’s sake it helped that she had become infected now and not earlier. Otherwise, Donna would have put the dog through the same battery of tests she’d already gone through with a hundred other animals and she would have tried every drug that she’d used on those same hundred animals to no avail. Instead, she simply gave Alfie a strong, long-lasting painkiller and a quiet pat when she left the house in the mornings.

  It wasn’t that she’d been in denial about Alfie for the last two weeks. The vet in her at least hadn’t been. Not really. But the part of her that was the nurturing mother of a mischievous, energetic child-substitute certainly had. That part of her kept waiting for Alfie to drop a ball at her feet or jump on the bed and wake her with a sloppy kiss, ready to play. That part of her refused to see a long needle sliding into a furry black-and-white leg and that life-loving energy going still at last. After only eight years that part of her wasn’t at all ready to let go.

  With effort, she turned her attention back to the road, wondering when it had gotten to be such a long way to the Spalding Ranch.

  CHAPTER 25

  FRED SPALDING NO LONGER looked like a businessman. He looked like a defeated rancher. Donna had seen that look a few times growing up in West Texas. The multi-year drought in the latter 2000s especially had ravaged the cattle and ranches. Drinking water could be brought in by the oil truck loads at a sizable cost, but water enough for the withering plains? No one could afford that. And with drought spread across much of the grasslands, what little feed could be produced was selling for twice the price of cattle that were being sold off for almost pennies on the dollar. The very large ranches managed to secure loans or else had enough capital to see them through that lean time. Many smaller ranches and farms dabbling in raising a few cows for a few extra bucks had to sell off their stock for a loss, with many of them not returning to ranching when the rains came over the next years and floods ruined several promising hayfields in the spring. Donna’s ranching family had managed to weather the drought, but only just.

  At seventeen, contemplating a career as a veterinarian and wondering whether there was a future in large animal medicine, Donna had made the rounds with the local vet after school and on weekends, working mainly for experience instead of pay. Rather than crushing an impressionable spirit as it would have a lesser-willed tomboy, that experience of watching the business suffer had toughened her, made her more determined than ever that large animal medicine was where she wanted to be.

  Six years later, in her third year of vet school, another widespread drought produced a repeat performance. Only this time, the general economy was weaker, private loans more difficult to come by and help from the government practically non-existent. Donna’s parents sold out at a substantial loss, draining their retirement account. Her father found work in construction while her mother cleaned houses. If it hadn’t been for her student loan and her parents’ insistence, Donna would have dropped out to help them.

  That had been nine years ago. Her mother had since died of breast can
cer and her father was still paying off the medical bills she’d left as her legacy. Donna sent him a check every month but she knew it wore on him, the long hours he put in building houses and still needing others to help him out. He was only 58, and while his body was strong, in his face he looked 70, with deep wrinkles, sunken cheekbones and eyes that could only be described as hollow. She wondered if things would have been different had he not been driven out of ranching, a profession he loved, and forced into a job that didn’t give him the same joy and satisfaction.

  Today, Mr. Spalding looked very much like her father.

  “I heard the news this morning.” His hollow eyes stared over her shoulder at the land and animals that had given him so much pleasure for so long. “Figured that’s why you asked to come out.”

  Donna turned her head at the sound of a vehicle coming down the drive behind her. “That’s Mike Shafer. He’s with the CDC. They’re looking for any kind of connection between the people they’re seeing in the hospitals. Milk produced here locally might be one of those connections. Might be. We still don’t know what this is, Mr. Spalding. Whatever’s infecting your cows might well be infecting people, too. Or maybe it’s some sort of mold spore that we’re all coming into contact with that’s causing it.”

  “Or maybe my cows are passing it in their milk and there are children dead because of it.” The matter-of-fact way he said it sent chills through Donna.

  “Maybe,” she agreed, knowing right then that one word her voice nearly broke on would be all that she could manage. She practically ran to Mike’s SUV to greet him so she didn’t have to face that weary, dead look in Mr. Spalding’s eyes alone.

  In the moment before Mike stepped out of his vehicle, he saw something unexpected in the self-assured vet: vulnerability. Like generations of men before, he responded to that look viscerally, automatically. He was out the door and reaching for her before he even had the chance to think. The step she took back, away from him, gave him that chance. He stopped abruptly and shoved out his hand. “Dr. Bailey, nice to see you again.”

  Not sure what she thought he was going to do at first, Donna grasped the proffered hand a bit tardily and shook it. “Mr. Shafer. You’ve been busy, I see.”

  He lifted an eyebrow, not sure he understood the remark.

  “The newscast.”

  “Ah. You saw it?”

  “I didn’t, but everyone else seems to have.”

  “That wasn’t my doing. But hospitals can’t really keep a flurry of unexplained illnesses and deaths to themselves for too long before the media gets wind of it. There was another spike in ER visits. My colleagues at the CDC are taking things a little more seriously now. The reconnaissance teams arrived last night. They’ll read my reports, do their own interviews and eventually come up with their own theories and conclusions. It’ll probably be at least a couple of days now before we get the lab teams out, so until then we’re on our own.”

  “You still want to talk to the ranchers, then?”

  “We’re ahead of the curve on this one. Once the teams move from the hospitals, I think they’ll be more willing to hear our reports.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got your mind made up already.” Donna’s tone was bitter.

  “No, I don’t. But I’m not going to turn a blind eye to coincidence either. And neither will my colleagues. Especially now. First we’ll see a local panic, then we’ll see state governors demanding answers, and after that congressmen and senators will speak out and the nation will begin to panic. By then it won’t matter if we can’t pinpoint the actual cause. All anyone needs to see is a newscast where a reporter is talking about infant deaths and there’s footage in the background of a couple of dairy cows stumbling around and there’ll be a public verdict of guilt by inference. We need to prepare for that.”

  “That’s it then.”

  Mike swung around, not having heard Mr. Spalding approach behind him. The rancher faced him, resignation plain in the stoop to his shoulders, the drawn lines at his mouth. Damn. “No, Mr. Spalding, it is not it. Not yet anyway.”

  “That wasn’t a question, sir.” Mr. Spalding pointed out. “You already said it. It won’t matter if it’s not the cows themselves causing kids to die. Even if it winds up being some fungus in the wheat or corn and we burn the fields. Who’s going to trust anything that comes from around here, whether it’s milk or meat or eggs? Maybe in a season or two people will forget. But that season will bury us all. If the CDC doesn’t call for the slaughter of every farm animal out here, the buying public will. Can you really tell me that isn’t the case?”

  The sad thing was, Mike thought, Mr. Spalding was spot on. History bore out his theory — many times over. The boycotts of chicken during the Avian Flu epidemic of 2005, beef imports during the mad cow scare of 2006, pork during the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009 and eggs during the salmonella outbreak in 2016 pointed directly to a public whose buying habits were controlled by fear rather than common sense.

  Every industry had recovered, eventually. But, yes, there had been casualties along the way. Survival of the fittest didn’t apply just to biological entities. Smaller, less adaptable companies had simply not been able to outlast the boycotts. Panicked consumers had given no considerations to the results of their indiscriminate behavior. As a consequence, their thoughtless actions had not resulted in mitigating the spread of disease. No, the only results of the boycotts had been to drive smaller ranchers out of business, giving more power to larger operations; homogenizing price and quality; and ensuring more crowded, disease-prone conditions on ranches to meet consumer demand once something else came along to claim the public’s attention.

  And the general public, Mike knew, would continue on, righteous in their delusional belief that their uninformed, knee-jerk reaction had likely saved their own life or the life of a loved one, happily oblivious to the countless industry lives they’d displaced or destroyed in the process.

  Now, one of the first casualties of the current crisis stood before him. Not a statistic to be graphed, but a wearied man staring at impending tragedy. Mike had seen that look up close and personal only once before: on his uncle’s face when his home of 35 years had burned to the ground and he was left adrift and directionless, his dog dead, his mementos of past lives and loves that had crossed with his gone, no insurance or savings to rebuild, and — at 74 — no time to recapture the comforts he had lost.

  Mike wanted desperately to say something of inspiration to Mr. Spalding. But just as he hadn’t found the words for his uncle, he had no words of hope or encouragement that wouldn’t ring false against the inevitability of what was to come.

  Instead, he looked Mr. Spalding dead in the eye. “You’re right. All hell’s about to break loose around here. You have 24, maybe 48, hours before it does. I don’t know what you need to do to get your business affairs in order, but you better start now. You, your distributor, the other suppliers — you’ll all be media targets. You won’t be able to hide the number of dead or diseased animals you’ve had in the last few weeks, but you better be prepared to show that any milk shipped to market didn’t come from any of them. It won’t help in the long term — probably nothing will — but short term the people who do business with you will appreciate your efforts.”

  Mr. Spalding’s expression didn’t change. Only a slow nodding of his head indicated he’d heard.

  Donna was glad he wasn’t an overly emotional man. Though his calm resignation was eerie in its own right, it was still infinitely better than having him strike out at those around him or weep or curse, if only because a more emotional response would surely draw a like reaction from her. Tomboy background notwithstanding, estrogen still ruled her emotions. “When you make a decision about the cows, have Dan give me a call,” she said.

  Mr. Spalding’s expression did change then. His mouth drew tighter and his eyes widened as he focused on her. “Dan’s been in the hospital since last Saturday. A stroke, they think.” A shadow passed over his face. “
With any luck, he won’t remember any of this. Or even care.”

  In other circumstances, Donna would have been appropriately shocked at the sentiment. But these weren’t other circumstances, and Donna knew Mr. Spalding and Dan both, and could appreciate not only that the remark was made in kindness but that the Dan she’d known would approve of it. She nodded. “Then you call me if I can help, whatever you decide.”

  “One way or another, you’ll hear from me before the end of the day.” He tipped his hat once toward each of them — “Dr. Bailey, Mr. Shafer” — before turning and walking away.

  Mike drew a deep breath, then let it out noisily, his cheeks billowing with the pressure. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t want to do field work for a living.” He slumped against the SUV. “Who’s Dan?”

  The question surprised Donna, who’d expected Mike to focus on the cattle or the business or something more large picture. That he was interested in more personal details impressed her. “He’s Mr. Spalding’s foreman.”