The Shift: Book II of the Wildfire Saga Read online

  Contents

  Title Page/Copyright

  Books by Marcus Richardson

  Dedication

  Half title

  Shift defined

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  What's next?

  Please Leave a Review!

  Author Contact Info

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Books by Marcus Richardson

  Half title

  MARCUS RICHARDSON

  © 2015 Marcus Richardson.

  All Rights Reserved.

  1st Printing, September 2015.

  This is a work of fiction. The people and events in this book have been written

  for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to living and/or deceased people

  is purely coincidental and not intentional. No part of this book may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

  recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior written consent by the author.

  Want to get an e-mail when my next book is released

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  [Books by Marcus Richardson]

  THE FUTURE HISTORY OF AMERICA

  Book I: Alea Jacta Est

  Book II: Sic Semper Tyrannis

  Book III: Dux Bellorum

  THE WILDFIRE SAGA

  Book I: Apache Dawn

  Book II: The Shift

  Book III: Firestorm

  Other books in the WILDFIRE series:

  False Prey (Novella)

  The Wildfire Bundle (Books I-III)

  For the Operators.

  The silent, shining tip of the spear—those who never sleep,

  never rest, and never relent until every threat is destroyed.

  Antigenic shift: an abrupt, major change in the influenza A virus, resulting in a virus that is so different from the same subtype in humans that most people do not have immunity to the new virus.

  While influenza viruses are changing by antigenic drift all the time, antigenic shift happens only occasionally. When a shift happens, most people have little or no protection against the new virus.

  CHAPTER 1

  Boston, Massachusetts.

  Prior to Apache Dawn.

  DOCTOR MAURICE BOATNER REMOVED his glasses and sighed in relief as he rubbed his temples. The springs in his ancient office chair creaked as he leaned back. He opened his bleary eyes and blinked at the three computer monitors at his workstation. Boatner glanced disapprovingly at the microscope assembly to his right. No matter how hard he tried to identify the antigens he needed, this particular strain of swine flu was proving difficult to nail down. Part of him hoped he would make a big discovery, like any scientist would. Another part wanted his colleagues to be included, if possible, in any simple fix that might assist with next spring's vaccine.

  The only sound in his laboratory was the steady tick-tick-tick of an analog clock mounted on the wall above the only exit. The white-walled room, empty now this late at night, housed more than a dozen microscopes hooked up to computer monitors for teaching purposes.

  Located on the second floor of the Harvard University Advanced Immunology Center, it was a professor’s dream workspace. Unfortunately, Maurice Boatner thought of himself as a virologist first, professor second. He longed for his real lab, deep under the Child Services Building—where he could get real work done.

  He looked around the empty lab and sighed. The upperclassmen virology students he normally taught three days a week were hopefully in bed. He chuckled to himself as he stood and stretched his aching back. Who was he kidding? It was Friday night. The kids would be out partying.

  His eyes found the long window on the east side of the lab and strolled over to have a look. The campus was quiet and deserted. Where normally he’d see dozens of students heading off to bars or to meet up with friends, he saw no one.

  He shook his head. He’d never understand students. Back to work. The virus wasn't going to identify itself. He glanced up at the clock again. 10:23 PM.

  Where did my life go? All alone on a Friday night—in a college town. I still feel as young as a 30-year-old, yet here I am, hunched over a microscope trying to identify a little bug for a friend at the CDC.

  The thought, one he'd been entertaining more frequently as he approached 50, was answered for him by looking at the image of the virus on the screen. He'd lost his entire family during the Great Pandemic ten years earlier. Maurice Boatner had been a rising star in the field of virology—graduated top of his class from Columbia and instead of going into practice, had gone right into research. He'd been fought over by more than a dozen labs and facilities across the United States.

  When the Great Pandemic had erupted across the globe, he threw himself into his work a such singleminded determination to find a cure. He almost didn't notice how many of his friends and family had gotten sick, until it was too late.

  He forced down the dark memories of ten years ago and tried to clear his head. Fresh air. I need fresh air.

  He headed toward the door and snatched his coat on the way. He couldn't help but marvel at the subtle differences in the antigen structure on the curious new strain of the swine flu Taylor had asked him to identify.

  His mind wandered back to the dark days of The Pandemic as his footsteps echoed down the empty corridors of the Advanced Immunology Center Research Building. The long hours, the isolation in government quarantine, soldiers in the streets—soldiers in his lab.

  He paused at the elevator and waited for the doors to open. Why am I thinking about this? Boatner leaned against the back of the elevator and closed his eyes.

  The ding of the doors opening jolted him awake. He blinked and stepped out into the deserted hallway.

  Boatner stopped at the roof access door, relieved the lock still hadn’t been repaired. He smiled when felt the first blast of crips, late autumn air smack him in the face. He braced himself and stepped out onto the widow's walk that graced the top of the building, then took a deep breath of the cleansing, cold air rolling in from Boston Harbor.

  In the distance, he could see the lights of ships out in the Bay, coming in from the open Atlantic or heading out—he couldn't tell which. The sounds and lights of Boston enveloped him like a blanket. The glowing lights of the never-ending stream of traffic coursing its way through the streets of Boston soothed his troubled thoughts. A jet roared through the sky overhead, turbines whining on its way to Logan International.

  Boatner leaned on the weathered, wooden railing and gripped the crackled paint. He closed his eyes and took an invigorating, deep breath of the salt-tinged air. The breeze off the bay was st
iff tonight.

  He was lost in thought, staring at the twinkling lights of the city when he felt his phone vibrate in his breast pocket. He pulled it out, glancing at the number. "Albert Daniels! I haven't heard from you, since—”

  "Sorry to interrupt your Friday night, Professor, but we have a situation."

  When Albert Daniels, perhaps the closest thing to a rival Maurice Boatner ever had in his career as a virologist says 'we have a situation', most people pause. Boatner knew Daniels better than that. He was a general now. Daniels had been rapidly promoted through the ranks for his role in helping to end the Great Pandemic. He was one of the best virologists the military had and he held the ear not only of the Pentagon, but was a close friend with the Director of the Centers for Disease Control.

  "What's going on?" asked Boatner. He couldn't help himself. Whenever he heard of an outbreak of some unknown disease, the old excitement returned. It was both a blessing and the curse of his vocation. When some strange new bug begins to decimate tribal villages or overpopulated cities, it was up to the field virologists to identify, research, and destroy it. Boatner found the process both daunting and invigorating.

  "This line isn't secure. I'm sending you a packet of information via courier. He’ll be arriving by midnight your time."

  Boatner arched an eyebrow as he glanced over the peaceful campus. The square below, usually packed with students rushing to and fro between classes, lay deserted except for two people casually strolling hand-in-hand in between the glow of the streetlights.

  "Military courier? This must be serious…"

  "I'm afraid it is, Maurice."

  He called me Maurice. Albert Daniels was nothing but a perfectionist. Even to his closest friends—hell, he probably called his wife Mrs. Daniels—everyone was called by their title and last name. Daniels had been a perfect fit for the military.

  The last time you called me Maurice was when you told me about my family...

  “—sent you an email with some news reports. Did you read it?"

  "News reports? Since when do you guys use the media to transmit information?"

  A shallow laugh echoed from the other end of the line. "Like I said, I can't tell you over the phone. Just check your email. You'll be able to put it together from what I'm sending you if you haven't already." There was a pause and the sound of papers rustling in the background. "My courier will arrive at your lab by 2345. Are you able to get there to meet him?"

  "Absolutely. I'm already there."

  The tone of the voice changed. “It's Friday night. What's an old man like you still doing at work?"

  "Not so old that I can't help out a friend. You remember Taylor Reeves at CDC?"

  "Reeves… Hey, wasn't that the microbiologist, the redhead that was in to you?"

  Boatner cleared his throat. “That was a long time ago, Albert. Anyway…she has a sample of a possible new strain of swine flu. The interesting thing is we found it in a kindergarten in southeast Missouri—"

  "I'm afraid you'll have to put that on the back burner for now,” the humorless voice said.

  Boatner stopped short. This must be serious. "You have to give me something more than ominous tones—these are kids we’re talking about."

  The silence on the other end of the line was telling. "You have access to a TV?"

  Boatner turned and went back inside. "I will in a few minutes. You caught me up on the roof taking a break. I'm on my way back down."

  "Good. Turn on the news, any of the 24-hour stations. They're all running the story right now."

  "What story?"

  "Jesus, Maurice, you really do need to get out of the lab more often."

  The reception fizzled inside the building and the call dropped. Boatner put the phone away and rode the elevator down to his second floor lab. As the elevator clanked its way between floors, he was occupied by the thought of some disastrous new disease making its presence felt somewhere out there in the world.

  It must be somewhere close to home, he mused, for Daniels to get worked up enough to push aside concern for a class of very sick children.

  Another thought struck him. He may not watch the TV news as much as everyone else, but he had noticed an alarming trend in his own lectures over the past week. Dr. Maurice Boatner's class on advanced immunology—taught by the man who helped defeat the Great Pandemic—was not a class skipped often. He'd had a Senator call his office to explain the absence of his son in the past.

  As he opened the lab door, something made him check up and down the halls. He was still alone. Daniels' phone call was beginning to make him more uneasy than he’d realized.

  He turned on the dusty television in his office and waited for the picture to appear. It was on the Weather Channel. They were talking about some kind of flu forecast—not exactly out of character for mid-November in the northeast—and he quickly changed the channel to CNN. It only took a few moments for him to realize what Daniels had referred to on the phone.

  The President was sick with a mysterious flu-like illness. The country was beginning to feel the effects of a seasonal flu that appeared simultaneously on both coasts and had already struck the nation’s major cities. The President's life was in danger, hundreds of people had already died, and fears of the Great Pandemic resurfacing was the hot topic of the day.

  Boatner turned away from the TV and closed his eyes as the reporter prattled on about the similarities between the current mystery flu and the early stages of the Blue Flu. He took two steps over to his desk and sat down. The TV glowed on the wall while the smartly-dressed woman behind the anchor desk rattled off facts and figures.

  Words scrolled across the bottom of the screen indicating that President Denton, in California for a political fundraiser event, had suddenly taken ill and was in grave condition—after only 36 hours.

  Boatner looked down and realized his hands were trembling. Was The Pandemic back? He turned to his computer and found the email Daniels had sent him.

  After decryption, the information on his screen caused him open a drawer he rarely used on his desk. Inside was a bottle of whiskey. He pulled it out, blew the dust off the cap, and pulled out a glass. He poured himself two fingers. This he took in one gulp, eyes watering as it burned his throat. He wasn’t a heavy drinker, but the information on his screen gave him cause.

  He stared at the magnified image of The Pandemic virus as seen under an electron microscope. It glared back at him from the screen—the organism that he had fought for so long, this thing that had taken his wife and children, most of his friends, and so many millions of people around the world. He was almost hypnotized by the beautifully symmetric structure. The malevolent organism stared back at him, unblinking, uncaring. H5N1. A curse of nature.

  He looked from his slightly trembling hands to the computer monitor again. He clicked through the screens, examining the data sent from his old friend. It looked exactly like the virus they had encountered during the Great Pandemic. His scientific curiosity began to beat down the fear that was rising inside him. If it was the same virus, why didn't they just use the same antivirals developed during The Pandemic? They still had a supply from the Source—he was almost certain. No way in hell would the CDC would let their stockpile expire. So what made this strain different? What had Daniels so spooked? More importantly, why was the military involved?

  Then he scrolled through to the page outlining the viral RNA analysis. Something immediately jumped off the screen at him. There were two diagrams: on the left, the RNA sequencing of the Great Pandemic strain and on the right was the sequencing of the new mystery strain. The two images were almost identical…almost…except for one particular string of nucleobases.

  "Holy shit."

  He scrolled further to read the author’s conclusions. Whoever had done the case work on this had completely missed it. He wasn't surprised, honestly. The average government scientist would probably take a glance at the data—no doubt being rushed by military deadlines—and assume the differe
nces to be insignificant.

  They had already tried the vaccines from the Great Pandemic. He continued reading. Vaccines and antivirals, initially successful, seemed to lose their strength a little too fast. Something was definitely different about the virus. Now he was truly concerned.

  Genetic markers that had been changed in the new virus were ordered in such a standardized pattern they could mean only one thing. Well, there could be other explanations, he told himself as he put on his glasses, but not likely.

  He could see the pattern of changes in the RNA source code were regular, ordered. Nature abhorred static regularity. Nature loved chaos, anarchy, and complete mismatches. This then, could only be the work of a machine—directed by a human mind. Humans loved order.

  He was staring at clear evidence of viral RNA manipulation. Someone had genetically modified the Blue Flu.

  He picked up the receiver to the military-installed secure phone on his desk and dialed a number. The line buzzed once with a completely alien dial tone he had last heard ten years ago.

  "Hello?" asked a voice.

  "This is Dr. Maurice Boatner. I need to talk to General Daniels."

  "Wait one." There was no sound that he had been placed on hold. There was nothing. The line seemed to go dead but for a series of clicks and chirps which announced that someone transferred the line to another secured phone.

  "Daniels."

  "Albert, I just got your data. Is this accurate?"

  Daniels sighed. "I wish it wasn't. Unfortunately, everything we've got points to one conclusion. I just needed to hear it from you."

  "I don't want to say it, but what I'm looking at is a weaponized form of The Pandemic strain."

  "The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs called it an act of war."

  That gave Boatner pause. "What do you mean?” He glared at the screen. “Albert, where were the samples collected?"