“Are we?” asked Cooper, looking up from the papers in his hands.
“Officially? Yes. President Harris is in talks with Beijing at the moment. He’s trying to get recognized as the legitimate President. It shouldn’t be too hard now that NORAD and most of the Air Force is with us. But, until there’s a decisive winner in this Presidential pissing contest, Beijing will probably play coy and try to get us and the Koreans to kill each other a little more. Or let Barron and Harris kill each other…”
Cooper glanced at the papers and dropped them on the desk in disgust. “What do you think about it all, sir?”
The Commandant grinned. “I think the Chinese are using the Koreans as patsies, plain and simple. The NKors do the dying—and soften us up a little—and get wiped out for their trouble. China is then free to reap the benefits over here and won’t have to deal with an unruly step-child anymore. So, until all the dust settles, we’re officially supposed to sit back on our collective asses and let the diplomats hammer out a permanent solution.”
Charlie grunted. “I got a permanent solution—it’s called a .45 semi-auto.”
“Hooyah, baby,” said Jax with a high-five.
The Commandant chuckled. “Unofficially, I’ve been sending my Recon boys behind the lines to stir shit up in the Occupied Zones.” He chuckled. “They’ve been having a great time.” The old man looked surprised and raised his hands, “I’m so sorry, Mr. President, I have no idea why Korean platoons keep show up missing…jeepers, sir, it sounds like they’re meeting stiffer civilian resistance, doesn’t it? Oh yes, sir, I assure you, my boys never left United States territory.”
Cooper grunted and walked over to the far wall to examine a detailed map of the United States. It had been marked-up by someone. His finger traced the angry, red demarcation line between the Occupied Zone along the West Coast and the Free States of the middle of the country. On the East Coast, he saw the besieged cities with little European flags pointing toward each one, denoting who was in control. The sight turned his stomach.
“It’s all happened so fast,” he said.
The Commandant joined him at the map and nodded. “Shit like this usually does, son. The Joint Chiefs are of the opinion this whole thing was orchestrated by Barron. Especially after he fired our asses.” He snorted. “I don’t think the man’s got his shit together enough, though. I think someone else was, or is pulling the strings.”
“The Joint Chiefs got fired?” asked Cooper. “Can he do that?”
“Hell, he disbanded Congress. What’s left to stop him? Barron is, for all intents and purposes, the first American King.” The Commandant sighed. “Yeah, he fired all of us. President Harris was all too happy to have us join his side. So, you could say we’re getting the band back together.”
Cooper chuckled. He pointed at Idaho and a glaring red dot with a Russian flag. “What’s up with Russians this far west?”
The Commandant rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. “I learned from General Harrison—the Army Chief of Staff—that the Source is in Idaho. The Russians sent in a team of Spetsnaz to bag ‘im before the Koreans could. Things went south for Ivan real quick when the good citizens of Salmon Falls butchered a few Russians.” He put his hands on his hips and laughed.
“Last we heard—when I was still in D.C.—the Russians were killing civilians in retaliation. We had some Rangers on the ground and there was an attempt to get samples of his blood out on a Skyhook of all things.” He shrugged. “Then we lost contact with the Rangers who were escorting the Source. I tried to get the President to let me send in some Recon Marines, but Barron didn’t listen.” He shrugged. “Haven’t heard squat since I transferred to Harris’s side.”
“Wait—the Source? Blood samples? What are you talking about, sir?” asked Charlie.
The Commandant checked his watch. “Skip it. There’s a briefing for the command staff starting in a few minutes. I’ll get you in—the docs can explain all this medical shit better than I ever could. Follow me.”
The Commandant led them through a maze of plain, industrial corridors lit by sparse fluorescent lights. There were people everywhere, most of whom wore surgical masks. Every now and then, someone wearing a full bio-hazard suit strolled past them, carrying equipment into a myriad of rooms.
“We’ve taken up residence in a pretty much unused portion of the underground complex,” the Commandant explained as they walked. “Less crowded on this side, but less finished as well,” he said, gesturing towards the areas that were dimly lit.
“And here I thought that Air Force bunker was claustrophobic,” muttered Charlie.
Before long, the Commandant stopped in front of a gaggle of mid-level officers clustered around a door, quietly talking and exchanging papers. They noticed him and snapped to attention. He dismissed them with a casual salute and led Cooper and his men into a well-lit, fully furnished briefing room.
The number of stars and oak leaves on collars in the room was dizzying. The Commandant stationed Cooper, Charlie, and Jax in the back of the room along a wall. “Stay here and listen. I’ve got to be up front. We’ll speak after the briefing.”
“Yes, sir.”
After some coughs and taps on a microphone, someone in Navy dress-whites stood up from the banquet table, under several bright lights at the front of the room. The table was lined with high-ranking officers and a few doctors in scrubs and lab coats. And Dr. Alston—Brenda.
Cooper ignored everything else in the room as his gaze fixed on Brenda. However, the Chief of Staff of the Navy had just begun to speak and the room was being cleared of non-essential personnel.
As the staffers and aides left in an orderly manner, Cooper watched Brenda reviewing papers and leaning over to chat with an Army general. The light reflected off her glossy auburn hair and though her skin looked that peculiar shade of pale cream—thanks to the fluorescent lighting—he still thought she cleaned up rather nicely. The lights gave her hair burnished-copper highlights. She wore clean, green scrubs now, instead of the grungy, blood-splattered baby-blues she had been wearing during their escape from All Saints.
“Somebody’s in love,” crooned Jax.
Cooper felt his cheeks grow hot and tore his eyes from her—Brenda—Dr. Alston. He clenched his fists and turned to his heavy weapons expert.
“Shut your pie-hole, Jax. I’m not in love with—“
“Aaaaw, they say denial is the first stage,” whispered Charlie from Cooper’s other side.
“Sssh!” an army captain hissed from the row of folding chairs in front of them.
Cooper cleared his throat and smacked Jax and Charlie with his arms. The two grinning SEALs fell silent, after a silent high-five over Cooper’s head. Cooper rolled his eyes.
“—introduce Major Brenda Alston,” Admiral Bennet said. “She has seen this thing first-hand in Los Angeles and will be able to give you a better handle on it than I can. Major?”
“Major?” whispered Cooper. Charlie shrugged. The captain in front of them turned around and glared at Cooper.
“Thank you, Admiral Bennet,” Brenda said as she took her position behind the makeshift podium and organized her papers. She picked up a remote control and pointed it at the ceiling. The lights dimmed and a wall-size monitor flickered to life behind her. The screen briefly showed the symbol for the Joint Chiefs of Staff before flashing a warning that the following information was classified and listed dire consequences if the viewer didn’t take that warning seriously.
“I don’t need to tell you all that what we’re facing is incredibly dangerous, not just to us but to the world. Gentlemen, this is our real enemy,” she said and the screen changed to a microscopic image of what Cooper presumed to be the weaponized bug. To him, it looked like a hairy blob, floating in bubbles.
“Many of you will recognize this as the image that graced the cover of Time Magazine at the onset of The Great Pandemic. We are facing that same virus today, only I can confirm now it has been genetically modified to
act as a weapon of mass destruction. Perhaps the greatest such weapon that has ever been devised and unleashed by mankind.”
Cooper and Charlie shared a look. Holy shit. Then Charlie blew him a mimed kiss. Cooper frowned and turned to the front.
“You’ve all seen the early casualty reports and I’m sure no one here needs a reminder of the chaos we all suffered through ten years ago. Well, gentlemen, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. The infected numbers have risen across the country for the past three days at a steady rate and if the pattern holds true to ten years ago, we’ll see a sharp uptick in morbidity in just a few more days. We’re already seeing higher-than average fatalities in hot zones.”
The screen changed to a huge map of the United States. ‘Hot Zones—Epicenters of Contagion’ read the title at the top of the screen. On the map, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. were represented by blinking red dots. Numbers appeared next to each dot—the number of cases was staggering. In Los Angeles alone there were reported over 100,000 people sick with the flu in the past week. Cooper blinked—a warning at the bottom of the screen indicated that the data was not complete for all secondary infection epicenters. The map was only listing the primary targets of the bio-weapon.
“It makes me sick to my stomach to say this, but it appears that there has been an antigen drift,” Brenda said.
There were a few whispered comments from audience.
Antigen drift.
The Pandemic years seemed like another lifetime away, but Cooper well remembered those two little words. During height of the crisis, the Press had breathlessly exclaimed scientists had finally found a way to beat the dreaded virus—only to discover it had mutated slightly, allowing it to parry Modern Medicine’s counter-punch. The virologists had called it an antigen drift.
He had learned antigen drift was nothing really unusual—viruses do it all the time, especially influenza—but before the world could catch its breath, the drift had turned into a shift. The H5N1 Pandemic’s antigen shift had completely fooled the human immune system and threw the floodgates wide open. Infection rates skyrocketed, igniting a wildfire that roared to life around the entire planet. Wherever the Blue Flu went, Death followed in its footsteps.
The antigen drift had been the tipping point—when the H5N1 crisis had surpassed the 1918 Spanish Flu as the single deadliest pandemic in all of recorded human history. After that, it had been forever known as The Pandemic.
And it had all started with those two little words: antigen drift.
“—reach the tipping point,” Brenda was saying, her face grim. Cooper suppressed a shiver. Tipping point. Another pair of words that brought back a lot of bad, bad memories.
“We can’t, of course, predict when that point will be, but I can assure you,” she continued, “it won’t be too long, now. We’re seeing some major drifts in cultures taken from the Occupied Zone that aren’t being matched by what’s happening on the Eastern Seaboard.”
Movement at the head table caught her eye.
“We, ah…” she said, as Admiral Bennet stood and moved toward the podium.
“May I?” he asked.
“Of course, sir,” Brenda replied. She stepped aside.
The Admiral cleared his throat and appeared to be considering what to say. Cooper instinctively leaned forward a little. “I believe I may be able to shed a little more light on this situation. At his first Cabinet Meeting this afternoon, President Harris was briefed by the CIA concerning the North Korean invasion. I can’t tell you everything that was said, but I can tell you the North Koreans have managed to inoculate their marines with some sort of half-assed vaccine. At least that’s what the spooks told the President,” he said to a welcome round of chuckles from his audience.
“Seems the North Koreans have hit on the idea to whip-up some second-hand, cloned version of our old synthetic H5N1 vaccine—the stuff with a reduced shelf-life that we gave countries that weren’t exactly friendly to us. Well, they mixed it with methamphetamine. The combination seems to be giving their troops just enough of an edge to counteract the weaponized flu that’s saturated the West Coast. Our best guess is this mixture, unstable as it is, won’t be effective for very long—then the NKors are going to start getting sick and dropping whether we shoot them or not.”
“I vote we shoot them anyway, just to make sure,” grumbled the Commandant from the head table. A ragged cheer erupted from the assembled commanders that only stopped when Admiral Bennet raised both hands.
“Major,” Admiral Bennet said, stepping out of the way as Brenda once again took the podium.
“Well, either the weaponized strain of flu that was released in the U.S. is changing its own genetic code, or the vaccine strain the Koreans carry may be combining with the weaponized strain they released. Either way, it’s starting to mutate into something slightly different and we can’t be sure which way it’s going to jump.”
The screen behind her changed from the microscopic monster to a graph with different colored lines. Cooper saw one for young children, one for healthy adults in their prime, and one for the elderly. The curves and spikes didn’t mean much to Cooper, but there was an oddly familiar pattern. The line for kids was just a curve. So was that for the elderly. But the line for healthy adults made a distinct “W” pattern.
“This is the mortality graph from the Spanish Flu of 1918.” A laser pointer flared to life and she moved the dot to trace along the “W” line. “It was the first time in history that we noticed this particular pattern. The Spanish Flu had normal death-tolls among the very young and old—the two most vulnerable age groups in the population for any given flu season.”
The laser bobbed and weaved along the “W”. Cooper could tell she was nervous. Hell, he would be too, if he had to get up in front of this much brass and talk about something so frightening.
“This is the scary part. The “W” line you see here indicates the healthy adult population—ages 20-40 roughly—people who were naturally the most likely to either fight off the flu entirely, or to get sick and recover. That spike in the middle represents the large die-off that occurred in 1918 affecting the healthy adult population. It went against all medical knowledge at the time and was completely novel and utterly devastating.” The slide changed to another chart with different dates and similar shapes.
“This is the same chart, with data taken from The Great Pandemic. Notice the similarity? They’re very close, yet the mortality rates are much higher for the H5N1 virus as opposed to the 1918 flu, which was H1N1. The average curves are nearly identical though. The Spanish Flu had a 2-4% mortality rate. Infected patients had a 97% chance—roughly—of surviving. The problem was, if you were in that 2-3%, you died and there was nothing anyone could do. And it happened fast. Death occurred in many cases less than 72 hours after first presenting with symptoms.”
The slide changed to a calendar. “It has been a week now since the first fatality that we can confirm was caused by this weaponized form of the Blue Flu.” The slide changed again showing what looked like a steep, exponential curve. “We are on the cusp of the initial spike. Despite what the current fatality reports are currently indicating, I would add at least 15% to those numbers, and that’s a conservative estimate.”
She waited for the murmuring to die down. “The reason I’m telling you all this is because this form of the H5N1 Pandemic virus has been, as I said, genetically modified by the North Koreans to be even more lethal than the original version. The mutations we’ve found recently indicate that the virus—at least in samples from Los Angeles and Seattle—is somehow slipping past the body’s natural defense mechanisms. The human body doesn’t even recognize this thing as a threat.”
“You’re talking a stealth virus,” someone called out. A ripple of chuckles spread through the crowd.
Cooper felt his own patience wearing thin. Dr. Alston’s cheeks flushed. “Sir, if you’d like to continue making jokes, go ahead. But
this ‘stealth virus’ has what we’re estimating to be a 10% mortality rate. The Spanish Flu killed roughly 100 million people worldwide in the span of a year—it had a 3% average mortality rate.” She took a breath and gripped the sides of the podium with white knuckles. “The Great Pandemic killed almost half a billion people around the planet with a 6% fatality rate. At 10%, we could be looking at death rates that would double what we saw 10 years ago.”
The room became as silent as a crypt.
“Gentlemen, I’m telling you this because you have to take measures now to protect and insulate your soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. We will not be able to fight the North Koreans—or any other threats—if a tenth of our warfighters are dead and the rest are recovering from a major illness.” She rubbed her temples and Cooper could see the frustration in her face.
The screen changed again, this time showing a picture of police officers wearing surgical masks during The Great Pandemic. They had gathered around a pile of bodies in Times Square, stacked straight across the road like cordwood. It was their eyes that spoke most to Cooper. He had seen plenty of dead bodies in his career as a SEAL. But when you saw that look in a man’s eyes, you knew he had seen things that would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life—a period of time he fully expected to not be long.
Brenda took a deep breath and continued: “Gentlemen, I can give you the following information to help you in your preparations. We have discovered that those individuals who were previously exposed to the Blue Flu have a much greater resistance to this weaponized version. That’s most of us in this room. People who were severely ill during The Pandemic ten years ago, now have the highest immunity. The rest of us are more than likely just going to be really, really sick.” She shook her head. “Honestly, until we get more data in, we’re in the dark as to how many fatalities we can expect.”
Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga Page 42