Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga (30 page)

Eyes still closed, Chad tried to fight off the memories from his past.
 
Burying Mom and Dad, his sisters, his neighbors. “What kind of casualty count worldwide?” he asked, ignoring for the moment that a bunch of North Koreans were trying to kill him.

“Uh…” said the Captain. “You know…I don’t really know.
 
Hadn’t thought about it.”
 
The others grunted agreement and ignorance.

Chad opened his eyes and looked around.
 
The Rangers looked genuinely confused.
 

“I haven’t heard anything happening outside North America,” said Deuce.
 
“Why?”

“And even then, it’s mostly in the U.S.,” Captain Alston mused, his frown deepening.
 
“There’s a few cases reported from Canada, but…”

“Jesus,” Chad whispered. “They weaponized it.”

Captain Alston sat up.
 
“What did you just say?”

“Some crazy son of a bitch in a lab coat weaponized The Pandemic strain of H5N1!
 
Don’t you get it?
 
That’s the only explanation.
 
You said it yourself, we’re the
only
country that’s got it in significant numbers.
 
It popped up in major cities, in waves, at the same time—”

“Jesus…someone hit the West Coast, then the next round went east,” said Captain Alston, nodding at Chad’s assessment.

“Why the hell hasn’t CDC gone completely
apeshit
over this?” Chad demanded.

“Damn,” said Garza, shaking his head sadly.
 
“He doesn’t know.”
 

“Know
what?
”
 

“The CDC is
gone
, Mr. Huntley,” said the Captain.
 
“Someone nuked Atlanta Friday afternoon.”

Chad’s mouth dropped open.
 
He was stunned.
 
“Wait…when you mean
nuked
, you mean like a terrorist bomb or something…a—what do you call them?…A dirty bomb, right?”

“No. I mean some tourists in Florida saw a fucking
ICBM
shoot up out of the Atlantic Ocean.
 
It damn near wiped Atlanta off the map.”

Chad looked at the Captain in utter disbelief but the grim look to the man’s face confirmed his words.
 
He looked at Garza who merely nodded.
 
Deuce’s face was dark with anger.

“My parents lived in Atlanta,” the big man growled.

“Who?” Chad squeaked in a whisper.
 
“Who
did
this?”
 
All his friends and co-workers were all at the CDC main campus in the northern suburbs of Atlanta.
 
They were all
gone
.
 
It was like The Great Pandemic all over again.

“Don’t know,” said the Captain.
 
He looked ready to crush the metal coffee mug in his white-knuckled hands.
 
“But when the Brass figures that out, you better believe we’re gonna be dropping the hammer on
somebody’s
ass.”

“Why Atlanta?” asked Chad, eyes closed again.
 
Everyone gone.
 
His home, his neighbors.
Again
. Wiped out.
 
And now with the Blue Flu apparently visiting the country
again
…
 
His eyes flew open.

“Holy shit,” he said.
 
“Holy shit, holy
shit…”
 
Chad got up and started pacing, his mind reeling from the thoughts that were spinning in his head.
 

It can’t be.
 
It’s too outrageous…but there’s too much coincidence.
 
If I’m right, though…holy
shit
.

“What?” asked Captain Alston. “What is it?”
 

“Atlanta
.
 
The nuke—it
confirms
that someone weaponized The Pandemic strain.
 
We…the CDC, my division, I mean…they made a vaccine for it the year after The Pandemic, remember?”

“Yeah, it’s what started calming everything down and stopped the war in Iran from going nuclear,” replied Captain Alston.

Chad pointed at him.
 
“Right!
 
And do you know where the vaccine came from?”

“Well, the CDC I would guess.”

“No way!” said Garza, getting to his feet.
 
He pointed at Chad.
 
“It came from
him
, man!
 
He said he couldn’t get sick, right?”

“Right,” said Chad with a nod toward the grinning Garza.
 
“They took so much of my blood I thought they were going to
kill
me.
 
They needed it to make a vaccine—to kill that fucking super-flu dead in its tracks.
 
Then they started stockpiling it.”

“That’s great!
 
Where is it?” said the Captain.
 
“They should be able to haul it out and stop this flu so we can focus on getting back at whoever nuked Atlanta.”

“In the vaccine vaults at the CDC main campus.
 
In Atlanta,” said Chad with a shake of his head.
 
“Oh, the CDC sent samples to the other countries in the world to let them make their own, but without my blood, it was just synthetic, and it wasn’t as good as ours.
 
The bits that I overheard from the virologists, whatever they did to make the vaccine was pretty classified.
 
They didn’t want anyone else out there to find out how we made the vaccine so they built into it a limited shelf-life or something.
 
After a few months all the vaccines we made to kill H5N1 were
useless
.
 
That kept the entire world dependent on the CDC for the good stuff.”

“How do you know?” asked Captain Alston.
 
“You some sort of doc or something?”

Chad’s anger suddenly bubbled to the surface: “Hey, when
you
see everyone you care about wither and die because of some Goddamn disease, you tend to read up on it.”
 
Chad closed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing.
 
The faces of his co-workers flashed across his mind.
 
All their families, their kids…
 

“I’m sorry,” Chad said after a moment.
 
“Didn’t mean to jump down your throat like that.”

Captain Alston waved off the apology.
 
“Don’t worry about it.
 
You got a lot to take in at the moment.”
 

Chad sighed deeply before continuing: “At any rate, those lab geeks loved to tell me how smart they were—they had to make a new round of vaccines−that’s
what they froze, that’s
what got pulled back to the CDC−“

“
That’s
what got everyone in Atlanta killed,” muttered Deuce.

Chad looked at the floor and after a moment of silence, said: “Last I heard, somebody in Washington determined that the bio-synthetic vaccine was too valuable to National Security or some shit.
 
They wanted it all in the basement at the CDC for safekeeping.”

"Figures," said Deuce. "Some REMF decides to put all the vaccine in one place right before that place gets glassed."
 
He shook his head.
 
"Fuckin' bureaucrats."

Chad leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor in exhaustion.
 
The weight of the world was pressing down on his shoulders.
 
H5N1 was back.
 
He couldn’t even grasp that concept, let alone that some fools had actually released it on purpose, then wiped out the country’s only means of fighting back.
 
He put his head in his hands.
 

“A lot of people are going to die.”

“A lot of people have already died…” said the Captain, sadly.
 
“Atlanta was a big town and they glassed it during rush hour.
 
They’re saying a half million casualties—minimum.”

“
Madre de Dio
,” muttered Garza, crossing himself.

“So why the hell are the
North
Koreans
after you?” asked Zuka, pointing a steaming mug at Chad.

“And how the hell did they get in-country in the first place, that’s what I want to know.
 
Someone dropped the damn ball on that, big time,” said the Captain, disgust rippling across if his face.
 
“Air Force was too busy getting coffee I guess.”

Chad shook his head.
 
“I have no clue.
 
My God, this is a nightmare.”

Captain Alston’s radio broke squelch:”—
net, repeat: Apache Dawn is in effect…communications
—”static erupted again.
 
A moment later the anxious voice returned: “—
in effect. Our satellites have been compromised, a large North Korean force including naval and air assets has invaded southern
—”

“Invaded?” asked Deuce.
 
“Who?
 
Taiwan?”

“Southern
what?
” asked Garza.

“—
marines off the eastern seaboard.
 
Apache Dawn is in effect
—” the static came back and this time the voice didn't.

“Anvil, this is Hammer 2, Actual, come in!” said Captain Alston.
 
“
Anvil!
”
   

He switched frequencies and tried again.
 
“Anvil, this is Hammer 2, Actual, how copy?”

The only reply was static.

He switched frequencies again.
 
“Hammer 2-1, this is Hammer 2, Actual, do you read me?”

The instant reply was two breaks in squelch.
 
Captain Alston leaned his head back against the wall and sighed.
 
“At least we have squad-level comms.
 
Must be only long-distance that’s been killed along with our satellites.” His brow furrowed in thought, then relaxed.
 
“Apache Dawn…”

“What’s that?” asked Chad.

Captain Alston sighed.
 
“It’s a code.
 
It means the United States has been invaded by foreign forces.
 
Enemy combatants on American soil.
 
If
that
has happened, it’s bad juju for everyone.”
 
He shook his head.
 
“I just don’t get it.”

“So we don’t know what ‘southern’ meant,” observed Zuka from his corner of the little shack.

“I got an idea,” said the Captain.
 
He opened a side pouch on his pack and pulled out a smartphone.
 
“I keep this thing off for OpSec, but you never know when you’ll need it…”
 
He turned it on and waited for it to start up.
 

Chad shook his head.
 
“Won’t work.
 
Too many valleys and tall mountains around here – cell signals are pretty much blocked completely.”

The phone chirped as soon as Chad stopped talking.
 
Captain Alston grinned.
 
“Okay…couple text messages…Ah, here’s a voicemail.”
 
He held the phone up to his ear and his face split in a smile as he listened.

Chad thought,
I didn’t realize we were high enough up to get a signal, yet.
 
Forgot how tall Mt. Vaught is…wish
mine
had worked when I needed it…

Chad pulled out his own cell phone and noticed with a frown that its display was shattered.
 
The battery case was fell apart in in his hands.
 
Sighing, he tossed the worthless phone on the floor and rubbed his hands together to heat them up a bit.

At last Captain Alston pulled the phone away from his ear.
 
He was still smiling.
 

“Good news?” asked Garza.

“Horrible
news,” said the Captain, smiling.
 
He hit a button on the phone and the speaker phone came to life.

“—
listen to your messages, press 1.
 
To delete, press 7
—”

The Captain pushed a button.
 
Everyone in the little shack heard the woman’s gentle voice say, “
First new message…”
 

A youthful voice, tight with anxiety, came over the speaker.
 
Chad grinned.
 
She sounded cute.
 
“
Hey bro it’s me.
 
We’re really in the deep-end, here.
 
L.A. is a
warzone!
 
There’s North Korean marines all over the place, jets strafing buildings and missiles dropping out of the sky all around us.
 
I’m not supposed to be calling you, but the hell with it, they already know where we are.
 
We may not have much time.
 
Look—that flu I was telling you about?
 
It’s bad.
Real bad.
People who were exposed to the Blue Flu have a chance of being at least partially immune and that’s it.
 
Everyone else seems to be incapacitated—I’m talking bed-ridden—in 48 hours or less.
 
It’s…worse than before
.”