Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga (7 page)

“Is this a fallout shelter?”

“Well,” John had laughed, “it’s hard for my generation to forget old habits.”
 
He explained a few of the special features he had designed into the shelter and smiled when Denny expressed how impressed he was with the whole idea.
 
“Naturally, if you’ll help me, we’ll have space in there for you as well, if something happens,” John offered easily.

Truth be told, Denny would have done it for the experience, if nothing else.
 
He had grown up in Oklahoma, in an area of the country where basements were just not practical.
 
After the Blue Flu, there had been some part of him that was determined to be better prepared for the next catastrophe, but he just had no idea how to do so.
 
It had taken him months to get to the point where he even
wanted
to survive the next disaster.

Denny had always been firmly rooted in the outdoors.
 
If something happened again, he would head for the mountains, leave civilization and return to his heritage.
 
The Andertons had the opposite idea: they would bury themselves in the ground with food, water, supplies and stay locked away like
skutelawe
, the turtle, hiding in his shell until the danger passed.

Now, as Denny peered in the darkened windows of the Anderton home he saw nothing but blackness.
 
He knocked on the door, tried the doorbell.
 
No response.
 
He glanced at his watch: 6:30pm.
 
He suddenly felt very foolish. They were likely just in town for dinner.
 
He took a deep breath to calm down and then walked back to his house chuckling at himself.

When he stepped onto his own front porch again, he could hear the phone ringing inside.
 
He ran to the kitchen and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“
Good grief, Denny, when are you going to get an answering machine?
”

“Sorry, Phyllis,” he said to the school’s administrative assistant.

“
Oh, it’s okay
,” the older woman sighed.
 
“
You’re the last on my list to call anyway.
”

“What’s up?” he asked as he reached for the remote to mute the TV.

“
Bob is closing school for tomorrow.
”

“Why?” Denny said, finally reaching the remote. The TV went silent displaying a picture of the President and a graphic of his planned campaign stops in California.

“
Where you been, Denny?
 
At least a third of the students are out sick
.”

 
“Well, there were a
few
in my classes that were absent today, but I hardly noticed a
third
of the students gone…” he said absently, trying to puzzle out why the President’s campaign stops were sticking in his mind.

“
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a third
today
, but the sophomore class just got back from their field trip to Sacramento on Monday and half of
them
won’t be in school tomorrow.
 
I’ve talked to the parents calling in—they all claim it’s a stomach bug or the flu.
 
Lot of them are starting to get scared.
 
We haven’t had this many people come down with something since…
” her voice trailed off.

Two little words.
 
The flu
. His conscious mind, if blissfully unaware of the other factors swirling about his head, would have merely nodded and been excited to go fishing the next day.
 
But there were too many factors for his subconscious to ignore.
 

Flu reports on the rise in California.
 
A few students sick today, many more called out for tomorrow—
already
, at…6:40pm on a Wednesday.
 
There were no big games tomorrow, no tests, nothing he could think of that would tempt students to skip school.
 

Hell, there was hardly any homework yet, because the school year was only a few weeks old.
 
The annual sophomore trip had just returned from a three day jaunt in California’s state capital.
 
The Andertons not home…

His subconscious screamed for the stubborn side of his mind to wake up and look at the warning signs.
 
Denny’s pulse quickened and he felt his hands go clammy. He gripped the phone tight, muscles tensing for activity: fight or flight.
 
“Y-you,” he cleared his throat.
 
Then, more confident sounding, said: “You said, the
flu
?”

“Yeah
,” exhaled Phyllis in a tired sigh.
 
“
Bob’s just nervous about it spreading.
 
He’d rather we lose a few snow days than have it passing around the entire student body again like last year…Between you and me
,” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “
I think it’s just ‘cause he doesn’t want the football team getting sick.
 
Gotta beat that record on Friday night, right?
” she half-chuckled, half-cackled in the way of old women.
 

“
But honestly, I can’t say I don’t have a touch of it myself, you know?
”
 
She coughed quietly off to the side.
 
“
Back of my throat been ticklin’ me since yesterday
.”
 
Phyllis loudly cleared her throat.
 

“
Anyway, I got more calls to make, so I just wanted to let you know we’re out tomorrow.
 
Go have fun fishing, will ya?
” she said.
 
He could almost see the smile on her face.
 
Phyllis had always liked him.

“Thanks, Phyll,” he muttered.

“
You betcha!
 
Okay then, bye-bye, now.
”

Denny slowly hung up the receiver and stared at the blank wall for a few moments, processing his fears and trying to rationalize everything.

“
Run…
” echoed through his mind, in Grandfather’s voice.

He looked out the kitchen window at the Andertons’ place. Still no lights on.
 
“Okay, okay,
enough
,” he told himself, hands firmly planted on either side of the sink.
 
“Get it together, Denoyan!” He tried mightily to tamp down the fear that was bubbling up inside him.

He glanced at the mantel over the fireplace in his living room.
 
The picture of his Grandfather decked out in the full council outfit, complete with headdress, seemed to watch him.
 
His wedding photo was there next to the chief, reminding him of all that he had—and lost—because of the Blue Flu.
 
The old man seemed to defy him to do better this time around.

“There is no
this time
, Grandfather.
 
It’s
not
the Blue Flu.”
 
He walked through the room, heading for the basement door.
 
He turned back to the mantel.
 
“It’s
not.
 
Besides, you weren’t even there to see what happened.
 
You never saw—
Christ
,” he said shaking his head.
 
“I’m talking to pictures, now.”

Try as he might, he couldn’t shake the growing feeling that Grandfather was right.
 
Sighing, he resolved to go dig out his hunting gear and get everything in order.
 
Just in case
.
 
He hoped going through the motions of preparing would at least calm his jitters enough to let him get some sleep. He was trying to convince himself that tomorrow he would wake up, watch the news and all this nonsense would make him laugh.
 
Maybe he’d take John out to the river to fish.

He turned on the light in the basement and started digging through the plastic totes that held all his camping and hunting gear during the off-season.
 
He realized he would’ve done this in a few weeks, anyway, for the start of deer season.
 
He looked around behind him, trying to shake the feeling that someone was watching him.
 
Again
.

“I need to get out more…” he muttered as he carried a few of the plastic bins back upstairs.

C
HAPTER
4

Los Angeles, California.

B
RENDA
A
LSTON
SAT
IN
her old clunker of a car, barely edging forward along the parking lot the locals called I-10.
 
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and checked the rear-view mirror for the thousandth time.
 
She
hated
the first day of work.
 
No matter the work, be it the summer job she got in high school as a lifeguard, or the first day of boot camp;
 
the first day of
any
occupation she had ever attempted
always
sucked.
 
It was a curse.
 
She was sure of it.
 

This time would be no different: new hospital, new staff, new doctors to learn, new boss, new
everything
.
 
Not to mention it was her first civilian job since college.
 
She went through her mental checklist once more: find the supply room, get scrubs, name-tag, pens, notepads, phone numbers, beeper numbers…the list seemed endless.

The DJ on the radio made some lame joke about morning commutes on Fridays and launched into a predictable TGIF monologue.
 
She tuned the radio to another station, hoping that it actually played music.
 

“…
my dog toooooooo
,” crooned a singer with a pronounced drawl.
 
Country was not her first choice, but it was music and it took her mind off sitting in traffic.
 
She looked up at the sign that proclaimed she was on the Santa Monica Freeway.

I could
walk
faster than this
, she complained to herself.
 
Brenda checked the dashboard clock again and prayed that she wouldn’t be late on her first day.
 

The next song came on, something about jilted love under a pine tree in the rain, in Georgia.
 
She rolled her eyes and decided she’d had enough.
 
“Okay, I’m going to change this one more time and stick with whatever comes on.”
 
Better to listen to garbage than rear-end someone on the way to her first day at work.

She clicked the radio and went back to drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and trying not to check the rear-view mirror
again.
 
Instead of the pop rock she was expecting, she heard the hourly news blurb:
 

“
…dozen thankfully mild cases of the deadly H5N1 flu virus have been confirmed in the Chicago area.
 
Stringent quarantine procedures, created after The Great Pandemic, have been put in place and the CDC is monitoring the situation carefully.
 
Dr. Paul Kreen, virologist with Loyola University Medical Center, says last week alone, 21 patients tested positive for Influenza A.
 
Thankfully, all but one of those cases were the pre-Pandemic H1N1 swine flu variant…
”

Brenda turned up the volume a little.
 
The reporter continued the story, “
Dr. Kreen cautions, however, that many people may have developed a false sense of security over the last couple of flu seasons, which were comparatively mild
.”
 

The doctor’s voice then replaced the reporter’s melodramatic tone, “
We honestly don’t know why it’s emerging right now, but the fact that it is unusual and has caught the attention of the Centers for Disease Control is—I believe—significant.
”

She only half-listened to the rest of the news snippet, dealing with the usual CDC caveat to get the annual flu shot.
 
When the reporter began to talk about what to do to prevent the spread of illness as the peak flu season approached, she felt her heart rate quicken.
 
Her hands gripped the faux-leather wrapped steering wheel in a white knuckled embrace.
 
Memories of ten years ago flashed across her mind like lightning.