The Shift: Book II of the Wildfire Saga (6 page)

Progress.
 
You know how to get your hands free.
 
Step one is complete.
 
Now we need to figure out step two.
 
I can get out of this room.
 
I can.

Chad got to his feet and slowly walked to the door.
 
He leaned his head against the cool painted surface and listened.
 
Nothing but the muffled roar of his own heartbeat.
 
He closed his eyes and concentrated.
 
Then, ever so faintly, he heard voices and laughter.
 
He heard the echo of approaching footsteps from the hallway.
 
The footsteps grew louder.
 
Chad stepped back from the door and waited, but whoever was out there didn't stop at his door and continued down the hallway, until he could no longer hear their footsteps.

He tried the handle on the off chance that somebody had left it unlocked.
 
No luck—the cold metal turned but would not allow him to open the door.
 

Fair enough—that would've been too lucky.

Voices approached in the hallway.
 
First one voice, then two.
 
He recognized Yuri's laugh.

Time for the daily bleeding session.
 
He quickly shuffled back across the room and lay down on the cot.
 
He heard keys jingling outside before the lock clicked.
 
The door opened, letting in a shaft of painfully bright light from the hallway.
 
He kept his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep.
 

Yuri stepped into the room and said something, while Boris remained in the hallway with his rifle pointed at the floor.
 
No, not pointed at the floor, Chad realized through barely open eyelids.
 
The man's hands were resting on top of the rifle.
 
It was slung over one shoulder.
 
He was completely relaxed, there was no way he could get to it quickly enough if Chad had been one of Captain Alston’s Rangers.

I bet Garza would be able to cross this room and kill both of you bastards before you could say “boo”…

Chad could smell the stink of garlic and onions as Yuri leaned over and shook him.
 
He barked something in Russian and Chad fluttered his eyes open as if he had been roused from a deep sleep.
 
Yuri stared intently at Chad's face, then shined a flashlight at him.
 
Chad blinked lazily and tried to roll his head weakly to the side, to give the impression that he was dazed.

Yuri said something over his shoulder to Boris and the shorter man laughed.
 
He lifted Chad off the cot and held him steady on his feet a moment.

"Move,” Yuri said in English.
 
He placed a hand square on Chad's back and pushed.
 
Chad had no recourse but to stumble forward into the hallway, only this time he decided to test his acting.
 
He pretended to trip and fell headlong into Boris.
 
The man jumped back and shoved Chad backwards into the waiting arms of Yuri.
 
Boris yelled at him and gesticulated wildly with one fist as he kept the other resting on the top of his rifle.
 
Abruptly, he turned and marched off down the hall as Yuri propelled Chad forward again.

Chad continued his shuffling gait and hid the smile that threatened to spread across his face.
 
If he had a mind to, Chad could have gripped the trigger on Boris’s rifle and started shooting.
 
He might not have been able to kill him, but he was sure he would have been able to hit Boris in the foot or leg and then possibly spin around and aim for Yuri.
 
It might not be the best plan, since wherever he was fairly crawled with Russians, but it was nice to know that if he ever got to the point where he didn't care if he lived or died, he could at least take those two with him.

The door to the exam room opened and the old Russian doctor was in his usual place by the exam table.
 
The man mumbled something and motioned for Chad to take his place by the exam table.
 
Chad figured it had to be something like ‘assume the position, comrade’—as if he had a choice.
 

Chad shrugged and shuffled toward the table before he sighed and practically collapsed onto its cold, metal surface.
 
The doctor, with a surprisingly gentle hand, slowly lowered Chad down to the table and clucked his teeth over the fact that his hands were still bound.
 
He growled sharply at the guards and Boris stepped forward with a knife. He flashed it between Chad's hands and his wrists were free.

The Russian doctor carefully strapped Chad's abused arms to the table with thick, blood-stained leather straps.
 
He mumbled to himself as he pulled up what Chad hoped was a fresh needle and tapped it, ejecting a droplet of fluid from the tip.
 

He knew what was coming next.
 
He would feel an intense stinging sensation and then heat would slowly spread from his arm up through his chest.
 
In a matter of moments, his eyelids would begin to get droopy and the room around him would fade.

As he had done the last few days, Chad determined to stay awake as long as possible and slowly scanned around the room with eyes that appeared to be drunk.
 
As he shifted his vision, the metal cabinets and chairs shifted too fast.
 
The ceiling was covered in cheap acoustic tiles that could be found anywhere.
 
They seemed to spin as if the tiles were part of some synchronized ballet.
 
The fluorescent lighting overhead gave the doctor a ghoulish look and turned his skin a sickly yellow.

Chad blinked and forced his heavy eyelids to remain open and saw he the doctor leaning over his face.
 
He shined a flashlight in Chad's eyes and then disappeared from view.
 
The world began to fade.
 

Chad could hear the doctor setting up his equipment.
 
Wheels squeaked on the linoleum floor and a metal stand appeared next to him.
 
Chad felt no pain, but he could feel the sensation of something being forced under the skin of his right arm.
 
With supreme effort, he slowly rolled his head to the right and was rewarded with the of the needled embedded in his
 
vein.
 
Within moments, the IV tubing went red as his blood began to seep into the collection bag on the floor.
 

Chad promised himself that one day soon he was going to find a way to end this misery.
 
A small voice told him that one day soon he was going to realize that he didn't care if he lived or died.
 
Just like before.

He'd been a pincushion of the US government during the Great Pandemic.
 
At first, he'd willingly obliged the scientists, delivering up as much blood as they could take.
 
After all there was a Cause.
 
The virus that had made him an orphan and destroyed everything and everyone around him was his target.
 
His blood was the weapon.
 

The scientists had been eager to figure out a way to use his blood to destroy the influenza virus.
 
He remembered snippets of conversations from a decade ago where the chief scientist—what was his name?
 
Boat-something.
 
He’d discussed future applications of the immune properties of Chad’s blood.
 
It might be used in all sorts of fields of medical research.
 
Limitless possibilities.
 
Very exciting. Perhaps he would be able to provide science with a cure for leukemia, or other cancers.
 
Back then he had only been 16.
 
Scared and alone, he’d agreed to everything.

Boatner.
 
Boatner, that was the guy’s name,
Chad told himself.
 
He smiled drunkenly at the memory of Dr. Boatner as he sat and talked with Chad.
 
The others would hook him up to a machine like the one the Russian used, then leave him in his solitude.
 
Boatner always sat on the edge of the bed and talked with him about whatever Chad had wanted to talk about.
 
It helped pass the time while he was drained of blood and for that, if nothing else, Chad had been grateful.

But then as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months and the blood continued to flow
 
through the needles that revolved around him in a never-ending procession of pain, he vowed he would never let them do that to him again.
 
When he'd finally been released at the end of The Pandemic and pressed into the service of the CDC upon completion of high school, things began to get better.
 
He’d at least had his freedom and could hide from other people.
 
The Press for one.
 
They had hounded him as some sort of savior of mankind when word leaked that he was The Source.
 

But now…

Chad struggled to keep his thoughts on track.
 
The Russian doctor appeared before him, but it wasn't a stranger he saw, but rather the face of Dr. Boatner.
 
He had been one of the few doctors who had noticed he was a person and not a walking blood bank.
 
The memories were all fuzzy, though, and Chad struggled to hold onto his thoughts.

Chad blinked slowly again and was surprised when his eyes actually opened.
 
The edges of his vision were starting to go dark.
 
He could see Boris and Yuri standing in the background laughing about something, but he no longer heard them.
 
His consciousness was slipping into the comfortable, drug-induced haze once more.
 
He snuggled into the exam table—the feeling was like someone pulling a warm, fuzzy blanket over his him on a cold winter’s night.

Chad closed his eyes and with his last conscious thought vowed that he would find a way to escape.

C
HAPTER
4

Lumford, South Carolina.

C
APTAIN
D
EREK
A
LSTON
USED
the night vision device attached to his helmet to examine the map in his hands, taken from an airport in Iowa.
 
His Rangers had chased the Russians who’d taken Chad Huntley—the Source—out of Salmon Falls, Idaho with the help of a traitor.
 
He’d chased them halfway across the country.

He looked up from the map and glanced at the Spanish Moss, hanging down from the limbs of the trees nearby.
 
Long way from Idaho.

The map, depicting a string of cities across South Carolina circled in red, was printed in Cyrillic, but Alston didn’t care—he could tell what the city names were and that’s all he needed.
 
A Russian assault force had taken control of each of those unfortunate towns.
 
The line of circles terminated on Charleston.
 
Just west of the red circle around Charleston was a small regional airport: Lumford.
 
It was on the other side of the ridge he and his men occupied.
 

He checked his watch.
 
0230 hours.
 
It was go time.
 
The company of Marines−or what was left of them−tasked with assisting his Rangers had spread along the tree-covered slope just north of the civil airport.

Alston cocked his head and listened.
 
There, just over the background buzz of nocturnal insects, he detected the sound of a helicopter cutting through the night air.
 
It grew louder by the second.
 
It was heading for Lumford.

The warmth of a typical late-autumn day in South Carolina had not yet taken hold.
 
The air was still cool and crisp.
 
Despite that, Alston could feel sweat trickle down his back.
 
He allowed a cough to escape his lips, thankful for the relief.
 
The sound of the helicopter more than drowned it out.

Damn.
 
Coughs are getting harder to hide…How much time do I have?
He had to find the Source and get that man’s precious blood back to the lab geeks who could use it to find a cure for the weaponized flu.
 
That’s all that mattered now.

Lights appeared just over the ridge as the helo started its final approach.
 
The noise was buffered by the pines that crested the ridge, but it was still loud.
 
He let another cough loose and ignored the fear that it brought over his own declining health.
 
He took a sip from his canteen and tried to steady his breathing.
 
He would get treatment when he got back to base.
 
If he got back to base.