The calves, panicked and bleating, are being herded into a separate pen, their calls for their mothers unanswered. It’s wrong. It goes against every natural instinct, every piece of ranching wisdom I’ve ever known.
“What the hell are they doing?” I demand. The question is mostly to myself, a frustrated grunt directed at the universe.
Seth joins us, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his face etched with a worry that mirrors my own.
“Just got off the phone with Grant,” he says. “The whole town is panicking. The feed store is mobbed. People are buying up all the canned goods and bottled water they can find. It’s a madhouse.”
I take another bite of the bar, the sweet taste doing little to combat the bitter taste in my mouth.
“This is the weirdest shit,” I mutter. “A bunch of city folks in space suits tearing our ranch apart, and the whole town losing their minds over a parasite we can’t even see.”
“Why are they separating the cows from the calves?” Tex asks, his voice tight with a suppressed anger. He’s a bronc rider; he understands the bond between an animal and its young. And this is torturing him to watch. “The calves are too little to be on their own. They’ll stress themselves sick.”
“I asked,” Seth says, his gaze fixed on the scene. “Dr. Thorne said it’s for study. They want to monitor the two groups separately, see if the parasite presents differently in the adults versus the young.”
“Study,” I scoff, the word tasting like acid. “They’re not studying them, they’re terrorizing them.”
I want to argue, to charge over there and tell them to stop, to explain that they’re going to do more harm than good. But I’m too exhausted.
The anger is still there, a hot, burning coal in my gut, but it’s buried under a mountain of bone-deep weariness. All I can do is watch.
“Is Jasper awake?” Tex asks, changing the subject, his need for a distraction palpable.
“He’s awake,” I say. “But he’s sulking somewhere around the barn. I think the whole thing with the sheriff tackling his deputy was a little much for him to handle.”
Seth is quiet for a moment, his brow furrowed in thought. He’s the thinker, the one who tries to make sense of the chaos.
“I have a question,” he says. “And maybe it’s a stupid one, but… how come Sedona is the only one exhibiting symptoms?”
The question hangs in the air, heavy and uncomfortable. Tex and I look at each other, a shared, silent confusion passing between us.
“I don’t know,” I say, and the admission feels like a failure.
I’m the foreman. I’m the oldest. I’m supposed to have answers. But I have nothing. Nothing that is happening makes any sense.
My mind drifts back to the moment she fainted. It’s a memory that plays on a loop in my head, a horrifying, high-definition clip I can’t shut off.
One minute, she was standing there, listening to that CDC doctor, her face pale but defiant. The next, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she just… crumpled. A boneless, graceful fall that froze the blood in my veins.
I’ve seen a lot of things in my life. I’ve seen animals born and animals die. I’ve seen my brothers get thrown from bulls and walk away with nothing but a few bruises. But I’ve never seen anything like that.
I’ve never seenherlike that.
I used to credit myself with thinking I knew her in all ways, every mood, every strength, every vulnerability. But this… this isnew. This is a terrifying, helpless sickness that I can’t fight, can’t rope, can’t fix.
Boone pads over and sits beside me, his head resting on my boot. He lets out a low whine, his intelligent eyes fixed on the distressed cattle in the pasture.
He feels it too. The whole ranch feels wrong. We all do.
We stand there, the three of us, and our dog, watching our world be dismantled by people in plastic suits, and all we can do is watch.
There’s nothing else to be done.
The mooing of the separated cattle is a constant, mournful drone, the soundtrack to our personal apocalypse. I finish the last of the huckleberry bar, the crumbs a sweet, gritty reminder of a world that no longer exists.
We stand there for a long time, the three of us, watching the CDC team dismantle our lives with a detached, scientific precision. It’s Tex whose frustrated voice finally breaks the silence.
“So, what now?” he asks, kicking at a loose rock with the toe of his boot. “We just… stand here and watch them turn our ranch into a science experiment?”
