The tension was broken by raucous laughter, exacerbated by Sam choking on her beer and spitting it all over herself.
"Where's Brian now?" asked Diana once they had regained control over themselves. "Still causing trouble in your hometown?"
Alyssa slugged back another large gulp of her wine. "Not anymore. His grades weren't good enough to get a scholarship, so he joined the Army right after high school. Was almost finished with his first tour in Iraq when his convoy was hit by an IED. He didn't...he never..." She couldn't finish her sentence, again losing control of her tears.
Diana surged off the couch and grabbed Alyssa, smothering her with warmth and comfort. She knew all too well what Alyssa was feeling, having lost several close friends during her military career. The other women piled on, trying to offer their own support as Alyssa struggled to regain her equilibrium.
Eventually, everyone backed off, refilling their drinks and returning to their seats. Sam finally asked the question that nobody was quite confident enough to. "And your sister? How's she doing?
"She's great," giggled Alyssa, pleased to finally not have a depressing answer to a question about her family. "Emily's based out of Atlanta. During nursing school, she joined the Public Health Service to help pay for college. After she did her mandatory service, she got an Epidemic Investigation Service fellowship with the CDC. I can't tell if she's still with the Public Health Service or in the CDC, but she does something with all that kind of thing." Her face brightened as she described her sister's trajectory, shaking off the gloom of her personal history. "She's the reason I got into this whole program in the first place, actually."
"Ah, so she's the one I should blame," snarked Jenny.
"Pretty much. She's the reason you got little old me and not some grouchy old hag or bimbo cheerleader type out to steal your man," Alyssa joked. "I'll be sure to pass on your appreciation." She stuck her tongue out at Jenny, who snorted and giggled at her good humor.
"I suppose that's fair," she conceded. "How did she get you into this program?"
"That calls for a bit more backstory. After college, I didn't want to just go back home and work on one of the ranches. I wanted to explore a little. Do some traveling, meet new people, see what else might be out there for me. A friend from San Antonio told me that there were plenty of jobs in her area, so I decided to head down there after graduation. Took my time, roaming around the country. Visiting friends and seeing the sights. Worked odd jobs to make a bit of cash along the way. Spent a month as a bartender in South Dakota, another picking fruit in California. After six months or so on the road, I was tired of wandering and showering at truck stops so I drove straight through to San Antonio. Pretty quickly got a job at Echo Valley Ranch, this beautiful little dude ranch about an hour outside the city."
She smiled thinking about it. "It was great. Didn't pay that much, but it came with room and board. They had a bunch of little cabins for the hands. I still got to work outdoors and around a ranch, but not so isolated as it would have been back in Montana. The tourists were mostly friendly and excited about the experience. Especially the kids. It's really something to see them light up when they manage to mount a horse or rope a fence post for the first time."
"That sounds perfect," said Sam.
"It was," agreed Alyssa. "At first. Everything was great for the first few months, but then the lockdowns started. Nobody could travel or gather, so tourist traffic fell way off. Not all the way, of course. It was Texas, after all, and you're always gonna have people ignoring what the government tells them."
"That's not just a Texas thing," said Jenny. "People around here didn't want to shut down and isolate either. Didn't matter what we said at the hospital; they weren't interested. Heck, the only reason we've had a halfway decent lockdown was Father Dominic. After two weeks of people ignoring the restrictions, he organized the Granny Brigade to put pressure on their friends, relatives, and neighbors. There's nothing quite like a 90-year-old woman using a megaphone to yell at the idiots down the street having a pool party in the middle of a pandemic."
The group giggled at the visual before Jenny continued, a frown stealing across her face. "It's been better here, but not perfect. We've still lost several people over the past couple of months. Thought it was COVID at the time, but I guess now we know better." She trailed off, her frown deepening.
"That sounds about right," said Alyssa. "Like I said, people kept coming to the ranch for a while, but things were still slowed way down by April. The owners were great about it, though. They didn't fire anybody or anything. They let us all stay in our cabins and just help out around the place as much as we could. There's always something to do around a ranch, after all."
She took another sip of her wine. "You know what happens when a bunch of young folks have time to kill, privacy, and cash? They party. A lot. It started slow, with beers and guitars around the campfire. After a couple months with less and less to do, things escalated. We ended up partying until dawn more often than not by the end."
"Sounds like fun," said Diana.
"Sounds exhausting," disagreed Sam.
"Anyway," continued Alyssa, "I'd been getting calls from Emily every week or so. We'd talk about little things, just touching base mostly. But she'd always make sure to mention the lockdowns, ask about my health, that kind of thing. I never really thought much about it at the time, figured it was just typical big sister stuff. I guess, looking back, she must have known things were worse than everyone thought."
She leaned back in her chair, stretching silently, before continuing. "Everything changed sometime around the start of July. People were more tired, more stressed, more...bad. Emily must have been able to tell things were getting worse on our phone calls. One morning, she called me up at the crack of dawn and asked me if I was ready to get out of there."
"That's all she said?" asked an incredulous Jenny. "She asked, 'do you wanna bail?' and you just jumped on board?"
"Of course not," snapped Alyssa. "She told me that things were gonna get a lot worse before they ever got better, that things on the ranch, hell, things all over Texas, weren't safe. People still weren't taking this seriously and that people were gonna die because of it. A lot of people. Maybe even most people."
"Jesus Christ," muttered Diana. "She didn't sugarcoat that one, now did she?"
Alyssa shook her head. "Once all that settled in a bit, she told me she'd gotten me a lifeline. A chance to go somewhere safe. Somewhere I could be around people who weren't treating this like a joke or a plot. She even told me she'd found a way to make sure that I wouldn't end up in the middle of some big city somewhere."
"Operation Breadbasket," said Niamh. "Makes sense. I assume farming and ranching are pretty much the same, so you'd fit right in around here."
Alyssa and Jenny gawped at her while Sam snorted out a laugh.
"Sure," Alyssa finally managed. "After Emily told me about the program, I got that Oracle link and spent the next hour filling it out. I had to look up...half of the things on that list though. We didn't have people trying to hump clowns back in Montana."
"We definitely had that in California," quipped Diana. "I can't wait to see Aaron in a Bozo costume."
"Y'all just keep that on your side of the house, and we won't have any trouble," joked Alyssa. "The day after that was all done, I got an email with my choices. Once I picked Mike, I got a call from some Air Force lady who said to be at Kelly Field at 8 the next morning. There were probably 30 or 40 women gathered there, everyone wearing masks and spaced out around an empty hangar. It was a pretty slick operation. Plane landed, everyone was hustled on board and spread throughout the cabin, and then we were back in the air. Couldn't have been more than 15, 20 minutes on the ground."
Diana whistled softly before leaning back in her seat with a smirk. "At least the Chair Force finally managed to get something right. All it took was an apocalyptic pandemic to get them operating efficiently."
"Once we landed in Kansas, they ran us all through the same routine as you guys. An info dump, a quick jab, and a Humvee ride from Wichita out here to Hopewell." The other women nodded in confirmation, reflecting momentarily on their own experiences processing through the Air Force's vaccine station.
The group knocked back the last of their drinks before splitting up to hunt down more drinks, refill the snack bowls, and pee.
Stepping out of the bathroom and spotting Diana loading a case of beer into the fridge to chill, Jenny went over and started passing her cans. "Thank you," she finally managed. "This whole thing has actually been, shockingly enough, pretty helpful."
