Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga Read online

  It was the worst pandemic to hit mankind since the Black Death of the Middle Ages—it dwarfed even the infamous 1918 Spanish Flu. Chad thought for a second that maybe some long-distant ancestor of his had stood over a mass grave in London or Frankfurt or something, and watched the same way he had watched his little community die. The thought gave him some small comfort.

  The government had labeled the blossoming pandemic a series of numbers and letters that Chad found he now couldn’t remember. Chad had to look it up online to figure out the disease sweeping the planet was an avian influenza. The Press—what was left of them—were simply calling it The Blue Flu. Chad didn’t need to watch the news to know why—his little sister’s face had turned a dark blue as she died. The color was so unnatural—so unsettling—Chad knew straightaway he would never be able to forget the sight. They called it cyanosis. The word had been etched into Chad’s memory overnight.

  The two neighbors sat without a word as video images from deserted cities scrolled across the television screen. London, Madrid, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Frankfurt, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Beijing. More and more bodies were seen in the major cities, just lying in the street where they fell, now bloated and stiff. Most cities had riots of one sort or another as the system broke down under the strain of so many deaths. All that was left was trash and empty cars or overturned buses and dead bodies. The violence and looting died off as soon as the people who started it began to die.

  In Asia, where it had started, the survivors were only then beginning to crawl out from the unimaginable wreckage into the light. New estimates of close to a billion people dead between Europe and the Pacific Ocean were simply beyond comprehension.

  It felt like it was the end of the world.

  “Don’t know when this damn bug’ll ever burn itself out…” said Mr. Miller. He coughed, a wet, deep, pitiful sound. “I don’t think I’ll be around to see the rebuilding, though…”

  Chad said nothing. What could he say? He knew he would be around, and it made his heart ache. If Mom had only been able to stay healthy for another couple weeks, maybe she would have made it.

  He idly wondered if there were any other people out there like him. When the Blue Flu had finally spent its fury and went away…would he be the only person left alive?

  “At least we don’t have to live through that,” the Old Man said, pointing a weak hand at the screen depicting rioting in Phoenix and Mexico City. People broke into retail stores and carried loot in all directions. The sickness was only now beginning to slither its way through the American Southwest from South America.

  “Enjoy your TVs and sneakers, you lousy—“ Mr. Miller sneezed again. “You won’t live long enough to play with that shit you’re stealing!”

  “I’ll try to get us something to eat. You need your strength,” Chad said. He knew the worst for Mr. Miller was just around the corner. He had seen the sickness take its toll on too many people. He looked at the mostly empty pantry. When everything went bad, the truckers had stopped delivering food to the stores. Sometimes the government just took the food. Where they took it, no one knew. Others stole it too, but when the government did it, it hurt more.

  Soup. Again. That was all that was left. Chad hadn’t thought about what he’d do when his last dozen cans of various soups were gone. They had a little bread left, and some emergency foodstuffs left over from tornado season, but that was it. Chad paused, his hand still on the can of soup, half in, half out of the cupboard. They. He caught himself thinking that word again. Not ‘they’ any more. No more family left. Just him.

  THREE DAYS LATER, ON a clear, frigid day, Chad buried Mr. Miller next to Miss Emma. As he climbed over the horse fence back into his own yard, Chad saw how deserted the neighborhood was. Every house save a half dozen or so, had either a red 'X' or a black 'X' on the front door. Chad could remember every single one he had sprayed.

  Stu Masters, three streets up the road, had stopped by the day before and said he had heard from one of the other few haggard people left behind that the National Guard was going through the rural parts of the county looking for survivors, now that the sickness appeared to have peaked. And now, those left alive in their own neighborhood were planning on hooking up with the Guard and leaving. They were all running out of food and water and had nowhere else to turn. Many were out of propane, like Chad. Would he go too?

  “Don’t know, sir,” Chad had said, scanning the empty streets and empty yards and empty houses beyond his own front door. The neighborhood had died.

  “C’mon, son, you can’t stay here,” said Mr. Masters, rubbing his arms in the frigid morning air. His breath puffed around him in vapor clouds. “You’ll die, like the rest. There’s only a handful of us left.”

  Mr. Masters coughed.

  A worried look passed the older man’s face for a moment. He glanced around nervously. “Look, we’re all leaving together. The government is coming to take us to Fort Worth, I hear.” He looked around the deserted neighborhood.

  “What will you do when you get there?” asked Chad, looking right through Dad’s friend. Die, most likely.

  “Does it matter? Look, my own kids died a few weeks back,” Mr. Masters said, his face a mask of grief. Chad remembered. Stu’s children were among the first to fall to the deadly sickness in their community. He and his wife had taken ill, yet hung on and survived, albeit weakened. “Nancy and I are going. So are the Lightways—and we’re taking the Caleb boys, since their parents died. There’s a few more people we’re trying to reach at the other end of the neighborhood, but that’s pretty much everyone who hasn’t already died or left town. We’re all leaving; Chad, son, you can’t stay here by yourself.

  “Why not?”

  Stu Masters sighed. “Chad, I know that look in your eyes. My dad told me about it when he came back from Iraq. You’ve seen too much, buddy.” Quietly, he said, “I know.” He crossed his arms and looked at Chad with a fatherly gaze of disapproval. “You think your momma would be happy to see you sit here in the dark, all alone and starve to death?”

  No response.

  “Chad…you can’t give up. Don’t do that to your folks, son. They made you immune to this shit somehow. Don’t waste that gift. Earn it. You’ve got to live, if not for you, then for them.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Chad.

  “Look…” said Mr. Masters. “We’ll make sure to stop by on the way out before we leave. Okay? One last chance. Think about it.” He clapped Chad on the shoulder awkwardly and turned away.

  When the National Guard Humvee rolled to a stop in front of Chad’s house with a charter bus right behind, he was waiting at the end of the driveway with two bags. One of clothes, the other of all the memories of his family, photos, albums, and scrapbooks. Mr. Masters helped Chad load his bags into the storage area on the bus, then they climbed aboard. It was half-empty.

  They had just picked up the survivors from the next town down the road, Mr. Masters explained as Chad found a seat. The Caleb boys, Edgar and John, were crying about leaving their home and their parents behind. Nancy Masters cried at leaving her own babies in the ground. Almost all of the people on the bus had been sick but survived, barely. Three others apparently hadn’t been exposed and wore masks and clean-suits.

  Chad was the only one, the examining doctor explained, that she had heard of who had not taken ill despite above-average exposure to the sickness. She and her assistant were very excited to talk to Chad, but he ignored them and found a seat near Mr. Masters, next to a window.

  “Hey doc, take it easy. He buried his mother a few days ago. The rest of his family last week,” said Mr. Masters in a warning tone.

  The doctor looked at her clipboard of information through her spacesuit-like outfit and relented. “I suppose there’ll be plenty of time for questions when we get to the survivor processing facility in Fort Worth.”

  Chad watched as his house receded into the distance. He looked at the little mounds in the back yard with the crude tom
bstone. In his hands, Chad held a wrinkled picture of Mom, taken by the pool the previous summer, when all was right with the world, and pandemics were just for paranoid people.

  She had her sunglasses pushed up on her head, her large blue eyes were smiling and her chestnut-colored hair pulled back, tumbling over one shoulder. The smile on her face as she looked at her husband’s camera showed nothing but health and happiness. Chad suddenly felt the warmth of tears rolling down his face as he gently held the picture of Mom.

  When he did cry, it was for her, and her alone.

  CHAPTER 2

  Ten years later…

  Washington, D.C.

  The Naval Observatory.

  Office of the Vice President of the United States.

  AND YOU'RE SURE THIS is the only way?”

  “If you want what we’re offering. Yes,” said the cultured voice on the other end of the secure line.

  The Vice President of the United States sighed. “Of course I want what you’re offering. But the price is…steep.” He tried once again to place the very slight accent of the voice. It almost sounded like New England, but had more of a neutral, Mid-Atlantic pronunciation of vowels.

  “Nothing of value comes cheaply. You of all people should know that, Mr. Vice President. What have you sacrificed−what have you lost in order to attain the office you sit in at this very moment?”

  A chill went down the Vice President’s spine as he listened to the voice on the phone. He barely resisted the urge to look around a hidden camera. He couldn’t shake the feeling of someone standing just over his shoulder. He sighed again. “Let me think about it.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause on the other end. “Think fast. This offer will not last forever and my employers are very impatient people.”

  Arrogance started to rear its head inside the Vice President, shrouded cleverly in the form of political indignation. “Now you listen to me, Reginald. I am the Vice President of the—”

  “You have 24 hours to decide, Mr. Vice President,” the calm, confident, almost smug voice said. “The President is setting himself up to fall this very week. Our plans must be moved forward. It would be positively shameful to let this opportunity pass.”

  “I, uh, I never really agreed to this…” the Vice President said weakly. He looked at his desk calendar: Monday. Why must bad news always come on a Monday? The President was a close friend of his. Their wives played tennis together every weekend.

  “I understand your reluctance, Mr. Vice President. Honestly, I do. But you must remember we have other options…”

  “But—wait just a minute,” the Vice President said, painfully aware that fear had crept into his voice. “We agreed you’d leave my family out of this!”

  “That was before you decided to change the terms of our agreement. Do you, or do you not have the—how do I say it? Ah, yes, the testicular fortitude—to continue? Answer the question and roll the dice, Harry.”

  The line went dead with a soft beep.

  “Dammit!” he growled and slammed the secure-link cell phone down on the wide executive desk. The polished glossy surface of the desk occupied most of his austere office at the Naval Observatory. He leaned back in the plush leather chair and steepled his fingers, lost in thought. It was hard to focus.

  The proposition put forward by the man he knew only as “Reginald”—and the Vice President had serious doubts that was the young man’s real name—was as sweeping and terrifying as it was tempting.

  He drummed his manicured fingers on the desk that had been used for close to 50 years by his predecessors. It was not nearly as nice nor as famous as its bigger, older, more prestigious cousin in the Oval Office. He frowned. That was a fact he regretted every time he sat down to work. But then again, he was the Vice President. Break glass in case of emergency.

  Harold James Barron, Esquire, had spent his entire adult life gaining entrance and ingratiating himself into the tattered American political landscape. He had clawed his way in as an outsider during the heady days of his youth when big government had stretched itself too far and rode the coattails of the progressive movement into office. First at the state level, then the national. At 38, he was the second youngest Vice President to serve the office and was all set to get the nod to be President after faithfully serving as the understudy.

  After all, the President had been pretty popular in the first few years of the first term. He had been swept into office on promises that most people knew he couldn’t keep, but they had liked him anyway. The electorate had given him and his dashing young running mate a chance to reform the out of control government the current generation of voters had inherited.

  Then the reality of Washington politics had set in. The lobbyists arrived, toting bags of money, promises, loans, cars, vacations, plane trips, anything and everything they could get their hands on to bribe the new powers-that-be to lean one way or the other on certain issues. The good old boy network of incumbency began to entwine the new-blood Administration and suddenly all those aspirations and promises seemed like just so many words. But still he had held out−he had been the shining beacon of hope and reform the people so desperately wanted.

  It had taken two whole years for him to fall from his lofty ideals into the mire and filth that was the status-quo of national politics. Part of him would forever be ashamed of that fact. The other part reveled in the perks while trying to remain proud that he had lasted as long as he had. His fall bean one…

  One night on the campaign trail, at a grass-roots fundraiser to show support for the little people that still believed they could help elect him. Candidate Barron had been approached by a young woman straight out of a lingerie catalog. She had been drop-dead gorgeous with amazingly blue eyes and hair of liquid gold. She had that nubile, innocent co-ed look about her that hinted she was fresh out of college.

  This alluring girl had been flashing her eyes at just the right moment and leaning over just when he happened to glance her way so he could see Heaven itself down her shirt. She had flirted so hard that he felt like a college kid again himself. Just when he had started to become nervous a reporter might get an improper photo for the next gaffe, he had blacked out.

  He awoke in his hotel room the next day naked and tangled in the sheets on the floor, He had found her, gloriously naked, snuggled warmly against his side. He slowly reached out and touched her perfectly smooth, unblemished, creamy skin.

  She proved just as beautiful and willing as he had quasi-remembered from the night before. He soon discovered she was even more talented in the bedroom than she had been at snagging his attention at the fundraiser. His heart raced every time he remembered what she had begged him do to her and what she did to him. But, every fiber of his being knew it was wrong.

  Harold Barron loved his wife Alice, dearly. After all, she was the beloved mother of his children, the constant campaign companion, and his rock of stability at the end of a day shaking hands and kissing babies. His graceful, regal Alice had been the debutante queen when they had met and fallen in love so many years before. They had survived The Great Pandemic together and the destruction of her family. They had been woven together by fate and love. And not once had he ever so much as wondered about another woman in all the years they had been married. He was happy and his star was rising. Why ruin a good thing?

  He had been on the road campaigning alone for his running mate, Senator Denton, who would be elected President a few months later. He had missed his eldest son’s birthday for that little campaign stop where he first broke his sacred vows of matrimony. It was an eternal source of shame for his soul that he feared he would never fully erase. And he tried very hard, every day to bury that stain and forget it.

  His wife would never know what that wonderfully flexible girl had promised him in a husky voice, if he would only do a few things for her employers after he was elected to office. He still remembered laughing at the sexy co-ed while he tried to avoid her grasp. Their team was 27 points behind in th
e polls, he had cried. The Democratic Party had not been popular then. There was no way they’d win the election, so blackmail would never work. Yet nevertheless, he had slept with that beautiful, beguiling woman. When the press found out, he knew he’d be finished, along with the ticket’s chances at victory. It would be the final scandal. He began to resign himself to his fate when a thought occurred to him, cast out from his subconscious like a life preserver on an angry ocean. His one chance at salvation.

  He had been drugged. That’s it! Drugged! She merely smiled and mmmm-hmmmmed in response as she crept closer like a tiger stalking its prey, her cobalt blue eyes never leaving his, her blond hair cascading down around her bare, smooth shoulders like a river of golden sunlight. What they were doing, did, going to do—it was all wrong, he had cried out. He had pleaded with her to stop—not really, because what she did had felt so good—but he had at least tried to get her to stop. He could still tell himself he had put up a valiant defense, but she was just…

  His breath came faster as he leaned forward onto his polished desk and remembered that distant morning. He could still picture it like it had happened just hours ago. The way she had smiled at him with those half-closed brilliant blue eyes. He remembered those full, pouting lips as she had slowly, seductively crawled to him across their rumpled bed. The gentle sway of her bare, snow-white breasts as she crawled to him had taken his breath away. The smell of her flowery perfume wafting on the air currents from the bed to his nose mixed with the tangy smell of their lovemaking the night before had nearly drove him wild with renewed lust.

  He shuddered, eyes closed. She had been perfect. Perfect in every way. The perfect, pliable, willing sex slave, and she loved every second of it and begged for more. She was there whenever he needed her: for release, just for fun, or to relieve the boredom of office. Once—he grinned at the memory—he had just wanted to look at her naked body by firelight while he drank himself into oblivion.