Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga

by Marcus Richardson

  “The good news,” she said, with a wan smile. “The good news, gentlemen, is that the age group of 30-60 this time around will have the highest resistance. Why? Because ten years ago, they were the 20-50 age group that got hit hardest. The survivors of that group are now the best equipped to fight off the weaponized flu. Our bodies already have the antigens necessary to deal with the strain we’re facing—it’s not a perfect match, but our confidence is high it’ll be close enough to give us the edge. For now. That’s why outside these new hot zones,” she said, moving her laser to point at Los Angeles and Seattle. “The fatality rates haven’t gone up too sharply yet.”

  Cooper looked at Charlie. There was a nervous smile on his XO’s face. “Whew,” he said, pantomiming wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “We both got nailed by the Blue Flu…and we’re in the right age group…that’s good.”

  “Brigadier General Andrew Ward is in acting command of the Western Regional Medical Command and is the highest ranking officer to survive the invasion—he’s in transit here—and has drawn up directives and information packets for you to relay to your individual commands,” Brenda said, motioning for a few lieutenants to start passing out the material to the gathered command staff.

  “I’ll let you all read the details, but the main goal is isolation, isolation, isolation. If individuals or—God forbid—entire units under your command show signs of infection, you must isolate them immediately. Use whatever protocol works, but separate them from the rest of your command or you risk an outbreak that could threaten your combat effectiveness in as little as 12 to 24 hours as your people become incapacitated. This bug hits hard and hits fast. The recommendation is to make sure your units have plenty of extra pain-meds and anti-inflammatory doses.”

  She waited again for the murmuring to die down. “Gentlemen,” she said, changing the slide. “I cannot emphasize enough the precautions that must be undertaken by your warfighters when they encounter sick civilians or even the bodies of the dead.” A famous picture from The Pandemic appeared on the screen, depicting a pile of gray, bloated corpses outside a hospital in Milwaukee. A dozen people in bulky, blue plastic suits with small oxygen tanks on their waists—woefully outnumbered by the dead—loaded bodies into wheelbarrows.

  “This virus will remain a threat—even in a corpse—for far longer than you would think. Trained personnel in Level-2 bio-hazard suits—at a minimum—should be the only ones handling or disposing of the dead you and your men will likely encounter. The surgical masks you see the Press harping about are next to useless. The virus spreads at the cellular level—much too small a particle for simple fabric to stop.”

  Dr. Alston paused for a moment, then blinked and looked down at her papers. She shuffled through them as the men in front of her began to whisper and discuss strategies. She glanced at Admiral Bennet and shook her head slightly. He moved to the podium again.

  “Thank you, Major.” He patted her gently on the shoulder and motioned for her to take her seat at the head table. The Admiral turned back to the crowd and frowned.

  “Gentlemen, what you’re about to see comes directly from the NSA, at the behest of President Harris. He wants you to see this video, in order to understand what we’re about to face as we mobilize and prepare to take back the Occupied Zone. If there’s any doubt that the public is going to be a major concern for us going forward, this should clear that up for you.”

  The screen flickered and a video began, depicting an angry crowd outside a makeshift medical facility. “These events took place outside of Boston General Hospital, yesterday, gentlemen. The Germans had set up their medical staff here as a command center.”

  The crowd of people was chanting something. Cooper could just barely hear it over the shouts and sirens in the background.

  “Let us in! Let us in! Let us in!”

  Someone was burning a German flag. Hand-mande signs waved back and forth with pictures of relatives and messages of hope. The doors to the hospital opened and a ring of police officers with riot shields marched forward, pushing the crowd back—gently, but firmly. They were wearing black gas masks.

  The intensity of the chanting crowd ratcheted up a few notches. The view shook and wobbled as the cameraman was jostled. His voice, high-pitched with excitement, cursed loudly.

  “Back up, motherfucker! I got a right to be here, too! My wife’s in there!”

  Another officer moved out behind the shield wall and climbed up on something to be able to see out over the crowd. He raised a bull horn and began to speak over the terrible noise.

  “I know you are all scared.”

  The crowd noise dimmed somewhat. Those in the front began to silence the people behind them so they could all hear the officer speak.

  “I know you want to see your loved ones. I regret to inform you, this is not the time to visit the sick! You will only take the virus home with you and infect the rest of your family and friends! This is not general aid station—this hospital has been designated by the German medical consultants as an emergency W.H.O. medical depot. We have taken a shipment of experimental vaccines, not food, not water, as the rumors have said—“

  Something sailed past his head. Another German flag went up in flames. The bull horn squealed in feedback. The crowd cheered. Another thrown object flew towards the officer. He ducked and shouted, “Yeah, you think that’s wicked funny, huh? Well, throwing things at me ain’t gonna change the fact that we got no food or water to give you!” He ducked again as a brick shattered against the hospital’s wall. “Please! Return to your homes! You’re risking infection by coming here—this building houses some very sick people who—“

  A glass bottle exploded against the helmet of one of the cops with a riot shield. His gun went off like a clap of thunder. People screamed. The camera shook and the image blurred—the next thing Cooper could see, the police fired into the crowd. The noise was deafening. Some people fled in a panic, shoving neighbors out of the way. Even more of them pushed forward.

  “Oh, my God!” the cameraman shouted. “Oh, my God, they’re killing them!”

  Cooper couldn’t tell if the shaky cameraman meant the cops were killing the rioters or the rioters were killing the cops, but knew what was coming next. He had seen it before, in Tehran, after the Blue Flu had slaughtered half the city.

  There were only a dozen cops. The camera was lifted up over the sea of heads and panned around. The crowd filled the streets as far as he could see and he quickly guessed it numbered at least a thousand. They were scared, cut off from loved ones, angry, hungry, some were sick—it was a powder keg and it had just been lit.

  The officer was screaming for people to remain calm, between ordering his men to hold their fire and ducking more flying objects. It appeared for a moment that cooler heads might actually prevail. Then the first cop went down under a baseball bat. The crowd roared its approval.

  The line had been broken. In seconds, the riot police vanished under swinging arms and bats as the tide of humanity rolled forward and crashed against the hospital entrance.

  The doors buckled, the officer screamed and the bull horn went flying through the air. The mob smashed through the doors to the hospital and flooded inside, screaming, cheering, waving fists in triumph. Someone ripped down the huge German flag hanging next to the doors.

  It took less than five minute for people to start reappearing out of the hospital, carrying boxes, pillows—someone looked like they were flying a flag, but it was a bloody sheet—anything they could grab. The looting was complete. Cooper spotted IV pumps on spindly stands, computers, tablets—some fool was even trying to roll a gurney out through the man-made hole in the front of the building.

  The video froze on a frame that showed a woman being dragged through the doors into the street by four men. She was wearing a patient’s gown, stained brown with dried blood—and God knew what else. Her face was contorted in fear and pain. Fresh blood was smeared across her mouth. Her eyes, sunken into dark spots on her fa
ce, were blood red.

  Admiral Bennet cleared his throat. The image of the patient remained on the screen behind him, her silent scream quite unsettling. “This woman was identified this morning as a patient who had been admitted to the hospital the day before with the weaponized flu. This crowd pulled her out of the hospital, along with anything that wasn’t nailed down—anything that looked like it was valuable. The hospital was absolutely ransacked: thousands of doses of an expensive experimental German drug were taken and hundreds of patients were killed.” He looked over his shoulder at the image on the screen.

  “She vanished into the crowd along with dozens of others that were forcibly pulled from the hospital, presumably by relatives. These fools,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “By willingly exposing themselves to her, are probably now infected—and may have signed their own death warrants. This, gentlemen, is what we are facing. The total breakdown of society. People in these cities have been cut off from fresh food and water now for a week. They have been watching their friends and relatives get so sick they can hardly move. A few have seen people die—they are one shove away from falling off a very, very high cliff. It is our job to restore order, bring safety, and pull our country back from the brink. We start by putting a stop to the damn Koreans, here and now!”

  The Admiral launched into his final orders and wrapped up the briefing. Cooper found himself staring at the face of the woman, caught mid-scream on the screen as the officers around him filed out. The murmur of the crowd slowly dissipated and still Cooper was transfixed. He saw not her face anymore, but the memories of his own experiences through the nightmare of The Great Pandemic.

  An elbow lodged into his ribs painfully. Jax hissed, “Here she comes, dude.”

  Brenda walked past the Admiral as he and the Commandant discussed something at the podium. She began to walk toward Cooper and his men. Despite the somber briefing, Cooper was smiling. She seemed to miss a step, blushed, and smiled back.

  “Go on, Hoss, say something,” whispered Charlie.

  “Seriously?” asked Cooper. “Are we back in high school or something?”

  “Want me to find out if she likes you?” asked Jax, dead serious. His face split into a wide smile.

  Charlie burst out laughing. The Commandant stopped his conversation with the Admiral and looked over, his face dark as a thundercloud. The Old Man walked over and said in his gruff voice: “Glad you three find the end of the friggin’ world so amusing.”

  Cooper cleared his throat and regained his professional cool-as-ice composure—with a little more effort than he would have liked.

  “Major,” he said with a nod.

  She smiled and her face lit up—in complete opposition to the Commandant’s fierce countenance. She appeared like a patch of sun burning through a ferocious thunderstorm on a humid day.

  “Well, you two can get a room after we beat the Koreans, drive off the U.N. and stop the Goddamn flu. Agreed?” said the Commandant. Cooper snapped to attention at the Marine’s tone—yet there was a twinkle of mischief in the Commandant’s eyes.

  “Things make a lot more sense now, sir. Ivan wants to snag the Source and make a vaccine before the Korean flu can spread everywhere. So far, only the NKors are protected from it, right?” He looked at Brenda. “We don’t have anything like this meth-vaccine, right?”

  She shook her head. “No. Once we get the Source, we should be able to work up some sort of serum, but…” She shrugged.

  The Commandant motioned for Cooper to follow him to a large wall map of the United States. “And if the NKors are safe, you know China is, too. Most likely, China has got a better version of that little meth cocktail the NKors are using. Looks like they dope up their men before sending them over so they can walk right through us as we drop from the flu. And it’s playing hell with the rest of the country. The casualty numbers are getting jacked up because the reporting lines are unstable, but according to the last, best guess we have, we’re looking at something on the order of 35,000 fatalities, so far.”

  “Remember, this is just the beginning,” said Brenda softly. “If this modified virus we’re dealing with is really trying to pull a shift like it did ten years ago…” she shook her head. “We would be looking at a Wildfire Event.”

  “Good God,” muttered Cooper.

  “The hell is a ‘Wildfire Event’?” whispered Jax.

  “It’s what we call pandemics that get out of control, like H5N1 did…” said Brenda.

  “Yeah,” said Charlie, “Kevin told me about it, once…” He shook his head sadly. “I wish I had paid more attention to him at that Christmas party last year. He kept trying to talk to me about some crazy viral research in the Netherlands or something.”

  “Sir, any word about Coronado?” Cooper asked.

  The Commandant frowned. “Don’t know. But Coronado’s gone. Taken out in the first wave of conventional ICBM strikes—just like most of Portland and San Fran.”

  Cooper looked at Charlie. “Allie’s smart, bro, she’ll be okay. Junior, too. They’re fine.”

  “How do you know?” snapped Charlie in a sudden burst of emotion. He took a deep breath, set his jaw, and nodded. “Mission first, aye, Chief.” He turned and stalked off.

  “His family was in Chula Vista,” explained Cooper.

  The Commandant watched Charlie a moment and nodded. “It’s a tough time to be in uniform. Lot of us lost family and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. If we don’t keep our heads in the game, though, we’re going to lose our country.”

  “We’ll bring the pain, sir. It’s what we do.”

  The Commandant clapped Cooper on the shoulder. “Spoken like a true Marine.”

  “You didn’t bring us all the way to Denver to recruit me, though,” said Cooper.

  Admiral Bennet walked over carrying an expensive-looking leather briefcase. He motioned for the two lieutenants at his side to wait in the hallway. The SEALs snapped to attention. The Admiral gave a half-hearted salute and shook hands with the Commandant.

  “Good seeing you, again, Mason. I’m heading out Pearl tonight.”

  Cooper had never met Admiral Bennet before, but his name and picture had appeared on an awful lot of orders over the years. The difference between the two service chiefs was clear. The Marine Commandant was short and solid-looking. The Admiral was tall and lanky and did not look like he could survive outside an office very long.

  “No one’s recruiting you, Master Chief, but me. Don’t let this dirty old bastard get his hands on you,” said the Admiral. The Commandant chuckled politely.

  Cooper shook hands with the Admiral, looked straight into the man’s eyes and was relieved to feel a firm handshake. That was the way a commander should shake hands, despite his appearance as a desk jockey.

  “We’ve had some trouble with the extraction mission concerning the Source,” said the Admiral.

  The Commandant nodded again. “The mission to get him is up in the air. No word on what’s going on—comms are too sketchy. Last we heard, samples of the blood we needed for a vaccine were sent up via Skyhook and were en route to research facilities set up by Barron.”

  The Admiral nodded. “President Harris is going to do the same thing. Only, his plan includes reaching the scientists who made the H5N1 vaccine and get them working on it before Barron can.”

  “Tag and bag. Got it,” grunted Cooper. Now they were talking his language. “Where you sending us, sir?”

  “Your orders,” the Admiral said as he handed over a few sheets of onionskin. He let Chad skim through the message. “We’re putting your team on a flight to Boston.” He pointed at the German flag on the map that was near the embattled city.

  “Why Boston?” asked Cooper, folding the orders.

  “Dr. Maurice Boatner is a professor of immunology and virology at Harvard. He lives in Charlestown. He’s one of two scientists alive today that developed antibody manipulation techniques for the Source’s blood, allowing for the manuf
acture of the stable, safe, vaccine that put an end to The Great Pandemic. That makes him very valuable not only to us, but to anyone who can get their hands on him.”

  The Commandant added, “We’ve known for years that Al Qaeda and ISIS have been hunting for this guy. Barron knows this and will send assets to get him. Hell, rumor has it the Russians and Germans are looking for him, too.”

  Admiral Bennet nodded. “You and your men need to get to him first. Bring him back and let him make a vaccine for us. This will be lean and mean—sneak in, grab this geek, and get the hell out.”

  “My Marines are protecting Denver, but I’ve dispatched an air support wing to bring in the Source and those Rangers, if they’re still alive. So that means you’re all we got. Think you can do it?” asked the Commandant.

  Cooper looked at the Commandant. “Absolutely.” He glanced at the map and chuckled ruefully. “Never thought I’d be doing a HALO into Beantown.”

  The Commandant clapped Cooper on the back and turned to leave=. “The weapons locker is all yours, son. You got a blank check on this—you boys take what you want.” He checked his watch. “Hit the showers, grab some chow, and get your shit wired. Make it snappy though—wheels up in three hours.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Cooper. “Thank you.”

  “Good hunting, gentlemen,” said the Commandant of the Marines. He looked at each of the SEALs in turn. “Hokahey.” The Commandant smiled and left the room.

  “Hooyah,” said Cooper.

  “Master Chief, there’s one more thing,” said the Admiral. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a small box. He opened the lid and turned the silk-lined display toward Cooper. Inside were a pair of gleaming silver bars.

  “Sir?”

  “In light of your actions during the opening days of this crisis, I am pleased to inform you of your battlefield commission to Lieutenant, junior grade. Upon your completion of this mission to Boston, you’ll be assigned to form a new Team and promoted to Lieutenant. We’re going to put you in command of the surviving members of the Coronado Teams.”