First Wave Series Box Set (Books 1-3)

by JT Sawyer

  “How many people are left in these parts?” Travis said, dragging a twig through the sand.

  “You’re lookin’ at it—used to be twelve of us that lived down in this valley and only a few hundred in the whole region. Then a bus with infected French tourists came through here and that’s when the evil came. Now it seems like we must wait this thing out. What can’t be cured, must be endured.”

  “Well, I’m sure sorry for the loss of your kin. It can’t be easy staying out here all alone.”

  “I miss my nephews who used to live not far from here,” the man said, looking down at the ground. “Silence can be a pleasure, though, and I am used to being by myself. When I was a boy, I herded sheep for weeks with only my horse. We’re never truly alone—this is a big, big world with lots of friends,” he said, looking out at a flock of nearby pine jays while leaning over to pat his dogs on their heads.

  “We do get caught up in our own world of worries, don’t we?” Travis said, thinking about how nice it would be to have his own rustic shack in the wilds with no one else to take care of except his son.

  The old man stood slowly, working a hunch out of his back. He grabbed a handmade walking stick leaning against the hogan and motioned to his dogs to follow. “I’m going to the spring to get some water for making tea.” He waved the stick at some nearby shrubs of ephedra. “Plenty of good, wild plants around here—I’ll brew up some extra for you and your people, then we can butcher a sheep and make jerky for your trip.”

  “Why, thank you—that’s much appreciated. I’m going to go up to that distant cottonwood tree to scan the desert terrain ahead. I’ll be back shortly,” said Travis. He stood, shaking the sand off his pants, and then walked over to the shade shelter, twenty yards away, where the rest of the group was starting to stir. He grabbed his binoculars and rifle, then sauntered out to a narrow fin of sandstone that had a large tree jutting out of the drainage beside it. Upon arriving, he sat on a slope in the shade cast by the large cottonwood trunk, with the encampment behind him.

  Travis spied the red rock buttes to the north, trying to look for the best route to Mexican Hat, which was the nearest town. It was nestled on the San Juan River about twenty miles southwest of Bluff, Utah, which was their original destination before the Blackhawk became crippled.

  The morning was calm and the sky its usual cobalt color. It was good to feel the sun again after the last few days of bitter cold that they had endured on their hike to Monument Valley. Winter in these parts could be brutal, with temperatures hovering around thirty degrees during the day and well below zero at night, when tempestuous winds swept across the plateau. Today was different though—a high-pressure system had moved in, bringing with it the promise of a warmer week.

  Travis thought about the last few tumultuous days since they had left Winslow. The unsolved riddle about the damaged helicopter continued to nag at him, along with Rob’s strange demeanor. Travis had had his fill of surprises over the last few months and didn’t like having any loose ends that he couldn’t account for. Like my ulcer isn’t already rotting my insides, trying to get this fucking vaccine to Durango—now I have to wonder if someone in the group ain’t who they claim to be.

  The morning before, he had spoken individually to Rob and Karl, the newest members in the group, but both men had stories he couldn’t see holes in. Karl had been a former mechanic and seemed very physically capable, with a flattened nose that looked like he had been in too many bar-room brawls. Meanwhile, Rob’s experience as a combat medic made his skills a valuable addition to the group despite his odd social habits, which oscillated between one-word answers or full-blown cynical outbursts.

  Travis tried to convince himself that the Blackhawk had simply suffered storm damage as Dane had indicated; then he turned his thoughts back to the trip ahead. Durango was going to be difficult on foot but they had to reach their destination before the winter got any more severe and snow in the higher elevations impaired their movement. Another week of travel would hopefully put them at the intended coordinates and then he could be on his way, at last, back east to Denver.

  While glassing the horizon towards some distant mesas, he heard someone approaching from behind. He turned and saw Katy casually following his footprints up the dune.

  “Hope I didn’t wake you,” he said.

  “Nope. Becka had a large beetle stuck in her hair and roused me,” she said, stretching her fists skyward accompanied by a long yawn.

  “I hate waking up with a large bug with black pincers rummaging through my hair—it just ruins the rest of my day,” Travis said with a dry smile.

  “Wait, are we in some alternate reality because I could swear that I just heard you make a joke.”

  “Hey, I know how to joke around.”

  “Yeah, well you oughta try it sometime. I mean more than once a year,” she said, nudging him with her elbow as she sat down.

  Travis went back to surveying the region. “Looks like more of the same scenery in every direction. I remember driving through here as a kid on a family vacation. My dad was way into Westerns and we stopped at some of the places where they were filmed.”

  “You mean the movies where the couple rides off into the glowing sunset together,” Katy said, sliding her hand up on his leg. He paused and looked at her, gazing into her emerald eyes. Longings stirred in him—feelings that he had kept pushing away since their first kiss in Winslow. He moved closer and placed the binoculars on an overturned piece of sandstone. Then he pulled her into his arms as they both reclined onto the slope. He leaned over and kissed her as he felt her hands slide up around his back. Travis brushed her golden hair aside and made his way along her neckline. As his lips pressed against her smooth skin, he heard a heavy exhalation and smelled foul breath behind him. He twisted suddenly and saw the two cattle dogs whining and moving around them. A patchy brown dog, the larger of the two, came around and licked Travis’s ear.

  “Hey, go away. Can’t you see I’m trying to make my move on this lovely lady?”

  “Geez—don’t they know that slobbering on someone isn’t romantic?”

  As they laughed and sat up to pet the dogs, Travis saw the old Navajo man ambling towards them. The man moved under the shade of the tree and motioned his dogs to come over. He looked down at Travis and Katy. “I used to do a lot of that hair-pullin’ and jumpin’ around in younger days,” he said, letting out a half-smile. “Lovin’ a fine woman was one of my favorite things in life but being a cowboy took up all my time between tending the livestock, minding the horses, and fixing my saddles. Anyway, the tea is ready,” said Benito as he turned and walked away with the dogs trailing in his shadow.

  “Well, looks like I shouldn’t become a cowboy—that’s the takeaway lesson here this morning,” grinned Travis.

  Katy sat up on one elbow and could see the rest of the group in the distance. “Everyone is starting to mill around. I guess we should head back before someone comes looking for us.”

  “Or we could stay here for a while and enjoy this rare shady spot,” he said, sliding his hand along her shoulder.

  Katy frowned and sat up, placing both hands around her knees. “How come whenever we are together in a hotel, you’re so reluctant? Those are the times to start something—when we have some privacy, not out on a ridge top in front of everyone.”

  Travis exhaled deeply and ran his hand over his shaggy head. “How can you be picky with all we’ve been through? You want this, don’t you?”

  “I do, trust me. But not here in the sand with dogs and other people around.”

  “And don’t forget the beetles crawling through your hair,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Yeah, that too. The damn beetles and fire-ants and lizards,” she said, smiling and then slapping him on his shoulder.

  Travis grabbed his binoculars and stood up, extending a hand to Katy. “Come, my lady, I will get you back to our fine castle and then impress the hell out of you with a delicious breakfast of stewed jerky.
”

  “I accept, kind sir,” she said, hopping up and interlocking her arm with his as they walked down the sand dune towards the hogan. “You haven’t cooked in a while so you’ve got your work cut out trying to erase that last meal of charred jackrabbit from my memory.”

  He reached behind her and tugged on her locks. “Ouch, stop it.”

  “Sorry, I thought I saw something crawling through your hair.”

  “At least I have hair, unlike that mop on your head.”

  “Ooh, you can be a hard hitter when you wanna be. And here I thought we were friends.”

  “Friends—why Travis Combs, we’ve been dating for months now. You just didn’t know it.”

  Chapter 3

  After breakfast, the group gathered by a primitive shade structure made of upright wooden posts and ceiling beams covered with juniper boughs. Everyone was present but Karl, who was off behind a nearby boulder relieving himself.

  Benito brought over a sheep tethered with a leather leash around its neck. Then he instructed Becka, Nora, and Rachel to help him, given their experience with butchering cattle. Benito instructed the ladies to lower the sheep on its side, with Rachel holding the hooves while Nora leaned over the body, and Becka gently held the head. He dug out a small depression in the sand and placed a ceramic bowl in it, directly beneath the animal’s neck.

  Becka spoke softly while caressing the creature’s almond-colored head. Benito moved closer and slid his large knife under the throat and deftly pulled it across the jugular and deep into the windpipe. The sheep bucked up momentarily under Nora and let out a few strangled gasps of air as life began draining from its eyes, the blood pooling into the bowl. Silence filled the shade shelter, everyone watching the primal scene unfold as Benito offered a prayer to the creature.

  A few minutes later, after the bowl was full of the hot blood, Benito instructed the three women to lift the sheep and hang it from the rafters by the back legs. Then he went about expertly field-dressing it, removing the entrails first. He separated out the organ meat, placing the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys into a cooking pot beside his dusty boots. The intestines, stomach, and fat were stripped out and placed in a separate bucket. Finally, the hide was removed and then hung over a beam outside.

  “The rest of the meat on the carcass can be cut into strips for making jerky, so it’s your turn to get your hands dirty,” he said, motioning to the rest of the group.

  An hour later, all the meat had been deboned and reduced to narrow strips, which were hung up on a weathered drying rack in the sun. Benito then took the cleaned intestines and wrapped them around a cigar-sized piece of fat and motioned the others to do the same. This is ach'íí—a Navajo delicacy—very chewy with lots of texture,” Benito said, licking his lips. “Later, we will toss these on the coals of the fire and fry them up and use the stomach to boil up a stew of blood sausage.”

  Travis moved up alongside Karl, who was blotting his soiled hands with sand. “You feeling alright?—you were gone for a while earlier.”

  “Yeah, must’ve been something I ate at dinner last night.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing the FDA ain’t around anymore or they’d have a hissy fit seeing our meat-preservation methods.”

  Karl chuckled and continued rubbing the flaky sand, which was glistening with red flecks, off his hands. “Stew sounds good to me tonight. Right now, I’m so hungry I could eat a horse and go back for the rider.”

  “I’m afraid a sumptuous feast will have to wait. We need to push on towards Mexican Hat. Benito told me there’s a tour bus there that we may be able to get operational. That’s where you come in. You said you used to be a mechanic, right?”

  “Yep, I’ll see what I can do. If the fuel filter hasn’t become clogged from sitting too long, we might be able to get her running.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. Then I’ll make you some mutton stew myself when we roll into Durango.”

  Chapter 4

  “There’s the Blackhawk. Eight hundred meters to the northeast,” said the helo pilot to Logan, who was leaning forward, scanning the desert terrain ahead.

  “Got it. Circle around the area one time before setting down. I don’t want to obliterate any tracks,” said Logan.

  It had been five days since Travis and his team had departed from Winslow on the Blackhawk. Logan’s team back in Montrose had had little luck finding any signs of their movement given the intermittent satellite coverage and the fact that they were looking in a desert region that was the size of Kentucky. Logan had six other choppers searching the area for any signs of movement. Meanwhile, one of his techs in the back of the helo was busy trying to decipher the code on Nikki’s encrypted computer that Logan had obtained from Crawford prior to leaving Winslow.

  “I don’t see any tracks or signs of passage below,” said Talia, who was leaning between the pilot and Logan as they all scanned the sandy terrain below. “With the sandstorms in this region, their slate could’ve been wiped clean already.”

  “Set us down by the other helo,” said Logan. “Talia, you take four men up to the cave and check it out while I comb through their Blackhawk.”

  “Roger that,” Talia said, sitting back and grabbing her pack and M4.

  After a few minutes surveying the damaged helo, Logan walked up to the cave. “Anything?” he said to Talia, who was squatting beside a firepit near the back.

  “I’ve got the outlines of nine people’s sleeping bags in the sand but that’s it. They probably holed up here for a night and then pushed on.”

  Logan squatted down next to her while the rest of his men stood by the cave mouth, scanning the region. “So, we know they’re headed to Durango. At least this spot will give us something to triangulate off in creating a smaller search grid,” he said, running his fingers through the fine white sand by his boots. “The strange thing is that the transponder is missing from their helo. That’s why we couldn’t track them here.”

  “That’s a pretty hard-to-extract piece of hardware,” said Talia, leaning against the side of the cave wall. “The pilot’s about the only one with the know-how to even locate and remove such a thing.”

  “The way Crawford described him, he didn’t seem like a shady guy but who the hell knows about anyone’s loyalty in this new world. Someone on that flight is a mole, but which one?”

  “I’ll go get our laptop and compute the new search grids,” said Talia.

  “Don’t bother. I’ll handle that. I’m going to contact Kestrel One and have them rendezvous with us here. They are flying on a parallel search route and can be here within an hour. I want you to head up that team and fly to Durango. It’s time we had boots on the ground there.”

  “You got it. Are we doing a wait-and-see game or you want us actively combing the area?”

  “Travis and his group will most likely approach from the west or the south so set up an observation post on one of the ridgelines. That’ll be your best bet.”

  “As I recall, Durango is supposed to be dark—no intel or signs of life coming out of that place,” she said.

  “Yeah, so watch that pretty top-knot of yours and get your team back in one piece. We can’t afford to lose any more operatives.”

  “You mean you can’t afford to lose me,” Talia said with a slight grin.

  Logan sneered, casually looking down at his wedding ring. He had once nearly found himself drawn in by Talia’s charms on a long mission they had worked together. Upon returning home to his wife, he had vowed it would never happen again, though it was still a challenge not letting his loneliness and her considerable allure erode his moral bastion.

  “Just stay alert out there. The RAMs are moving faster now all over the world, from our reports with other agencies that are still intact. Who knows what’s in store for us with this next wave of the virus once it arrives in force.”

  Talia stood up, slinging the M4 over her shoulder and zipping up her jacket as the wind whipped through the cave. “Colorado in
December—can’t wait. Maybe I can get in some skiing in between popping RAMs and looking for Travis’s sorry ass.”

  “Sir, you should get back to the helo,” a voice said over his microphone. “There’s something you should see on this confiscated laptop.”

  “On my way,” he said, glancing over at Talia. “I just love constant surprises.”

  They walked out of the cave and down the rocky slope towards their Blackhawk, which was situated a hundred yards from the disabled helo. While he walked, Logan radioed Kestrel One and requested that they rendezvous at the cave to pick up Talia. He climbed up into the main cabin and sat down on the bench next to a slender woman who was scanning Nikki’s laptop. Talia stood outside, resting both elbows on the cabin floor by the door.

  “I was working my way through the various layers of encryption when I came across this,” the short-haired woman said, tilting the laptop towards him. Logan looked over the images and text. There were personnel files for various government officials and DOD contractors. He reached over and scrolled down the page, studying the faces attached to each file. He stopped abruptly when he came across the six scientists who had developed the virus. “Hmm…Emory, Tangalos, and Pearson are already dead. These other three, Montoya, Masek, and Downey have been captured by Nikki’s team.” He scrolled to the bottom of the page to a final image. “But who the hell is this guy?” he said, staring at the photo which revealed a silver-haired man of around sixty.

  “I’ve got the highest-level clearance on all the players in this field. Hell, I used to know what brand of cereal these turds ate for breakfast and now, it appears, there’s another mystery person.”

  “Is he one of Pallas’s researchers? Maybe somebody they kept operating in the dark outside the circle of the others,” said Talia.

  “It has to be. I remember hearing rumors a few years ago about a brain-trust—a scientist that some of the other researchers had mentored—under but our investigations never turned up anything. And then there’s that guy that Travis came across during the security test on the Pallas facility. This has to be the same person.”