The Shift: Book II of the Wildfire Saga (38 page)

“How’s he look?" asked Cooper.

Digen sighed as he walked forward behind the tented stretcher.
 
"To be honest, he looks about like the others that we already took down."

 
Cooper glanced down at the concrete as they walked into a U.S. Airways hangar.
 
He saw a mental image of Brenda, tucked away in a dark corner of the bowels of the government complex deep under his feet.
 
She was down there right now, probably nose deep in some research.
 

“You still with me?”

“Huh?” asked Cooper.
 
“Sorry.”

Digen grinned as he held open a heavy fire door.
 
“Thinking about her, huh?”

Cooper felt the heat rise in his cheeks.
 
“Her?
 
What?”

Digen laughed.
 
“Get used to everyone knowing your business around here.
 
We’re all trapped in this place.
 
Major Alston is kind of a celebrity to us, you know—everyone knows her.
 
She’s the grunt that came back from the Sandbox and now briefs the President.”
 
He laughed again as they all stepped into an industrial freight elevator.
 
“You’re the guy she’s dating.”

“
Nice
,” said Charlie’s robot-sounding voice over Cooper’s shoulder.

“We haven’t even been on
a
date…” groaned Cooper.

“
So much for opsec
,” added Jax.
 
The big SEAL laughed.

The elevator ride down into the bowels of the government complex under Denver International was one of silence.
 
Cooper blocked out everything around him: the slight hum of the motors and cables that ran hundreds of feet deep below the surface; the muted talk of the medics as they discussed Mike's condition and prognosis.
 

Cooper was completely engrossed in trying to sort out his feelings.
 
It was an altogether unfamiliar experience for him.
 
He’d just successfully completed a hair-raising mission behind enemy lines and extracted a high-value target safely.
 

Normally after a successful mission, he would be ready to strip off his gear, stand in a hot shower for about an hour, and let the water release the tension in his muscles.
 
Then the shaking would begin and he would get himself into a bunk—ignoring the ‘old man’ comments from Jax and the others as they started to unwind.
 
He’d sleep for about eight hours and only after he woke would he feel alive enough to
 
join the revelry already in progress complete with shouts, laughter, and empty beer bottles rolling on the floor.

But not this time.
 
Cooper felt strangely calm—almost relaxed.
 
He knew, somewhere deep down below, Brenda waited for him.
 
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
 
The last woman he’d really cared for was Sanjana.
 
That had been just before The Pandemic—they’d been in college.
 
But neither love nor passion had the ability to withstand the Blue Flu.

Cooper stared at the wall of the elevator.
 
Sanjana and her family had not survived the Great Pandemic.
 
When he’d finally recovered from the edge of death, Cooper found there was nothing left for him to do.
 

Most of his friends had died. A few—his hunting buddies—had taken off into the remote forests north of the Great Lakes.
 
Cooper assumed they went native and decided to live off the land in order to avoid all human contact and save themselves.
 
He hadn’t heard from them in years.
 

He had admitted to himself more than once that running off to the Upper Peninsula was a tempting idea.
 
But Cooper couldn’t run—if there was anything he could do to fight the faceless enemy that had taken his friends, family, and Sanjana, he was going to do it.
 
Right now, fighting back meant protecting Dr. Boatner—their best chance for finding a cure.
 

Cooper looked down.
 
His mud and soot-encrusted boots left dirty prints on steel floor of the elevator.
 
No different than the dried blood and spittle that had crusted around Sanjana’s slightly parted lips when he’d found her.
 
She lay on the bed in her dorm as if preparing for sleep.
 
Her sheets were clean and white in contrast to her skin.
 
Where once it had been lustrous and nutmeg tan…the last time he’d seen her, she’d been as dark blue as a shadow of her former self.

 
Sanjana had been dead long before he’d had the strength to crawl his way out of his own dorm and seek her out.
 
The blood he’d found on the floor in her bathroom was so old, it looked like dried mud.
 

For the longest time his heart had been dried and cracked like that mud.
 
He’d been confused, angry, and so terribly weak after his fight for survival.
 
So many students had perished the surviving Trustees had shut down the college.
 
His education, for all intents and purposes, was over.
 
Surviving the Great Pandemic had taught him more about humanity and life itself than any college course could have ever done.

The love of his life had died, extinguished like a candle in a hurricane.
 
His family was dead.
 
His friends were gone—dead or left town, he didn’t know which.
 
The college, the temporary anchor of his young life, was gone.
 
What else was there?
 
No one was hiring—most economies around the world had been devastated.
 
It would be years before people started to recover from the resulting financial chaos.

But there was always someone out there willing to take advantage of others in times of weakness.
 
He saw it at the local level when survivors banded together and began looting the homes of the dead for anything that would make their life a little more tolerable.
 
Some resisted, most joined in.
 
Cooper remained aloof, lost in his own grief.
 
Then one day he saw a soldier take down a thief who had broken into someone’s house.
 
Cooper decided he wanted to be on the side that was just and right—he wanted to be part of the effort to defend what was left of humanity.
 

Recruitment for the Armed Forces had never been so high as during the Aftermath.
 
When power-hungry Third World dictators rose to the top of the flotsam left after The Pandemic, regional wars began to erupt around the globe following long-established fault lines.

Transportation systems around the world had all but shut down, global economies had ground to a halt, and the survivors had begun to feel an acute need for the basic necessities of life: food, water, shelter.
 
Nations blessed with abundant natural resources—like the United States—became targets for those who were not.

Cooper had always been a good swimmer and with few other options had signed up with a Navy recruiter.
 
He’d been anxious to see some fighting aboard the big warships.
 
Cooper had never looked back.
 
His eyes focused and on the mud that splattered his boots and forced the memories and pain of the past back into the box at the back of his mind.
 

Now, 10 years later with more missions under his belt then he cared to count, Cooper stared at the light at the end of the tunnel.
 
His career was rapidly coming to a close.
 
He moved his right leg a little and heard the metallic squeak of the ill-fitting knee brace.
 
He had been blessed so far in that the damn thing hadn’t given him away to enemy forces.
 
Yet.
 
But how long would his luck last?
 
He knew his knee would never be as good as it was before he’d been shot on that last op.

For an operator, Cooper was pragmatic enough to realize he was getting a little past his prime.
 
At 39, he was the oldest member of his team by at least five years with the exception of Mike.
 
Age had no effect on Beaver—he could still run with the best of them.
 
In terms of size versus strength, Mike was one of the strongest men, pound for pound, Cooper had ever met—at least he had been, before he’d caught the damn flu.

And here I was, relaxing in a pool chair just a few weeks ago, thinking about a paycheck from Oakrock… $120,000 a year to provide security and consultation… It was so close.

Another thought flashed across his mind:
If all of this shit had not fallen out of the sky and landed in my lap, I never would've met Brenda.

That, at least, was a comforting thought.
 
Maybe if they were lucky enough to survive the flu—and the war with North Korea—he and Brenda could be together.

The elevator slammed to a stop at the deepest sub-level of the complex and jolted Cooper out of his daydream.
 

"All right, here we are,” said Digen.
 
He motioned for the litter-bearers to move.
 
“We’re all going through the decontamination shower.
 
The Crit-Care staff will take over patient transport from here.”
 
Digen hit the emergency stop button and the wide elevator doors locked open.
 
The four-man team of medics in biohazard suits wheeled Mike's gurney with its incubation tent into a chamber filled with shower nozzles and waited for everyone else to enter.
 
After a few moments of sanitizing spray and a chemical wash the doors opened and a they found squad of medics in self contained breathing apparatuses lining the hallway.
 
They had visored hoods and oxygen canisters, but no suits.
 
At a signal from Digen, they rushed forward to transfer Mike, quickly wheeling him down a side corridor.
 

Capt. Digen led everyone else out, sterile and dry, into a long main hallway.
 
Cooper was amazed such a place even existed.

"
I see why they call this place the Cave
,” muttered Charlie.

As they moved away from the decon shower, Cooper was not surprised when he saw hallways lined with soldiers dressed in NBC suits and SCBAs.
 
If the President was in residence, things were bound to be a bit more complicated.

"We have containment facilities and quarters set up for you and your men over here."
 
Digen used a biometric pad to unlock a thick door that looked more like a bulkhead hatch on a nuclear sub. Cooper stepped in and looked around.
 
A flat screen TV was affixed to the far wall, its wide screen showing a map of the United States with infection zones highlighted in red.
   
Behind the main hatch that led back to the hallway, there was a smaller hatch that opened into a cramped bathroom.
 
He saw six cots, four comfortable-looking chairs and one simple wooden desk that looked like it was from IKEA.
 
Trays of food, still covered by aluminum lids from the mess hall, had been left on the desk, ready for the SEALs.

Cooper heard a shout and turned to see a group of suited medics struggling in the hallway.
 
Whoever it was that had shouted, the medics did not want to let them through, eager to get their charges into lockdown.
 
He saw a flash of auburn hair and recognized the voice when she called out a second time.
 

“Brenda!”

She almost made it through the medics before two of them grabbed her and pulled her back, away from Cooper.
 
She tried to pull her arms free but the men in biohazard suits held fast.
 
“Ma’am!
 
You don’t have a suit on—you can’t get near him!”

“He’s sealed and he’s been through decon—” she said, but Cooper could tell she knew the others were right.

“Are you willing to bet the lives of every single person in this complex on that being enough, ma’am?” asked Digen. He moved to place himself between Brenda and Cooper.
 
“Because I’m not and I’m pretty sure General Daniels won’t either.”

Brenda glared at him but seemed to calm down.
 
Eventually the medics relaxed their grip on her arms and she shrugged free of them.
 
“You’re right,” she said, brushing stray hair out of her face.
 

“Here,” said one of the medics.
 
He handed her a portable SCBA.
 
She put the hooded facemask on and strapped an oxygen bottle to her waist, then put on a pair of shoulder-length gloves and a smock.
   
One of the other others checked
 
that the collar was snug around her shoulders and pronounced her fit to move closer.

Brenda crossed the space between them and
 
crashed into him, her arms wrapped around his chest in a tight embrace.
 
It was perhaps the single most awkward hug of his entire life—he still wore his HAHO suit underneath the bulky, yellow biohazard suit.
 
They bumped facemasks and laughed at each other.
 

“I’m so happy to see you again,” she said, her voice muffled by two layers of polycarbonate plastic.

Cooper laughed at the awkwardness of the situation, as her gloved hands ran up and down his arms and back, as if she could check for wounds through all the suits and protective fabric.

“Glad to see you, too," he said with a grin.
 
"I've never been so happy to see someone post-mission in my entire life."