The Dead Familiar (Winterhaven Series) Read online

  Justin had come to the shop dressed casually, wearing blue jeans, a pair of supple leather boots, and a graphic-T depicting one of his favorite bands;The Killers. His face bore an expression of barely contained fear as he spoke to his recently arrived friend.

  "Jack, listen. You're scaring these people. Hell, you're scaring me a little bit. What's going on?"

  "Justin, didn't you get your Archangel alert?"

  Justin laughed, "you're crazy end of the world plan...? I thought you were just drunk when you told me about that. But no, I didn't. My phone is in my room anyway's."

  Jack looked him dead in the eye. "Justin. We have to GO."

  A young somali man had been sneaking up behind Jack, but his presence was sensed as he closed the distance. Jack turned and shook his head at the man in a clear dismissal. The would be hero responded by yelling at Jack to put the gun down and surrender. Jack’s response was to stare deadpan at the man for a moment before lifting his gun and firing a round into the ceiling.

  Turning back to Justin, Jack muttered a terse, "now."

  Face paling, Justin put his hands up and started towards Jack shakily.

  "Look man, are you nutters or something? Just don't shoot me, remember we are friends..."

  Rolling his eyes at his friend’s stubborn disbelief, Jack felt frustrated.

  Am I going to have to convince every damn one of my pickups that this is for real? Probably for a while...until they can see shit falling apart around them at least.

  Grabbing Justin by the shoulder, he marched him out to the car, pistol pressed into his back. Jack realized that the sight of him marching his buddy at gunpoint into the car wouldn't be too reassuring to Nicole, so he slid the gun away and just shoved Justin forwards in front of him.

  "Get in the passenger seat," he barked.

  Jack had to admit; while it had initially been frustrating, it was a little bit of fun to make his buddy sweat while he played the crazed gun-toting nut.

  It's not like I'm actually going to shoot him, he thought.

  His good-nature fought the smile that his devilish side wanted to release, succeeding in restricting himself to a mere smirk at his friends expense.

  Justin gulped audibly but did as he was told, climbing into the passenger seat. Once he saw the two females in the back seat, he knew he had no choice but go along with Jack's wishes. He wanted to trust his friend, but some of the things he had been saying to him over the last few months were just too unreal.

  Apparently Jack was a believer though. He had even set up the Archangel Protocol, just as promised. Unwilling to leave the women alone with his (probably) mad friend, Justin got in willingly, recognizing that he was along for the ride now.

  Once he saw his semi-captive friend safely ensconced in the car, Jack climbed into the drivers seat. He hesitated to drive off again without some explanation.

  He thought to himself, this isn't going to work unless they trust me. I need to make the time to explain, or they'll just run off next time we stop.

  Sighing, he reached under the heavily modified dash of his Jeep, tripping a hidden switch. With an audible click, a panel rolled back, revealing a file compartment stuffed with papers. Grabbing the files, he thrust them into Justin's hands.

  "Read,” he said commandingly.

  Information delivered, he started to drive back down Franklin, heading for the next stop on his little adventure while simultaneously praying that Cyrus would be ready. Turning to Justin again, he gave further direction.

  "Check the stuff on China especially,” he said, pointing to the Top Secret files that were shuffled into the heavy index.

  Raising an eyebrow at his friend, Justin was both impressed and confused. Jack doesn't have this kind of security clearance anymore. How did he get these?

  In answer to Justin's unspoken question Jack explained. "I have a friend, guy named Gary Scofield. Assuming everything goes right, you'll meet him tomorrow."

  Raising his voice to include the now terrified Nicole and slightly oblivious May, he continued. "Ok, here is what you have to know. At ten pm tonight, China declared war on Japan. They launched a preemptive Reaper Strike on their mainland."

  Nicole interrupted, "Reaper?! As in the virus? They're using that shit...That's pure genocide!"

  Now it was Jack's turn to be surprised.

  “You know about the Reaper Virus," he asked.

  Nicole nodded in the back, "yeah, some of the doctors I helped as a nurse were talking about it. I guess the Mayo was helping to try and find a cure for it."

  His heart suddenly racing, Jack felt a quick candle of hope light in his chest.

  "Do you know, did they perfect one…?”

  She spoke sadly, “they gave up. They thought there was something in the DNA sequencing, but it was a dead end. It was back to square one last I heard. CDC in Atlanta said they were farther along, but there was no vaccine yet there either."

  Moment of hope banished, Jack nodded.My sources were right, the Archangel Protocol remains the only way I can keep these people safe.

  Justin interrupted the two, speaking confusedly, "wait a second, I don't know what this Reaper thing is." He looked askance at Nicole and Jack, waiting for one of them to fill him in. Nicole shook her head, nodding to May, signifying that she didn’t want to talk about it in front of her daughter. The two men nodded in understanding, and Jack grabbed the file specific to the disease for Justin to look over quietly.

  Justin gasped a little as he finished reading, "wait, they are USING this, as a weapon..? Oh my god, fucking biological warfare, that’s what they’re doing isn’t it?... and it's across the globe already? This stuff says its got a 97% lethality rate, and is highly contagious, aren’t they worried about it spreading to their own people?"

  Jack nodded, "in a word, no. This is the Chinese we’re talking about. With democracy growing in their country, and over a billion citizens, they figure wiping out the world population is an effective way to maintain power. Even if they lose 97% of their population, they’ll still have plenty of people to rebuild with,” he explained with a sigh.

  “Our government didn't want to tell anyone. With no cure or possible prevention, we are totally at Chinese mercy. To let the western hemisphere know about it...we would have torn ourselves apart. Hell, with the economy and the continuing war, we were about to anyway. Most of the world is already going dark, and only strict quarantine has kept it off North America, until now."

  Justin looked a little confused. "How do you mean?"

  Jack explained. "With the Reaper Strike on Japan, that leaves just the U.S., Canada, Mexico and China left in the fight. Or maybe left at all. They nuked London, then hit Europe and Africa with the virus. With the world dying, our government agreed to peace. China gets to occupy the rest of the world, we get North America, and Japan stays as a neutral arbiter for the future. But....with Japan attacked we can surmise that the Chinese just used the agreement as a stall in order to prep for invasion. Virus could be on the way, already here, or neither.”

  He looked at the uneasy faces of his friends, wishing that he had something he could say to lessen their worries. The truth was, the world was about to die a brutal death, and there were no words to lessen that fact.

  Jack spoke softly, “either way, easy money says the U.S. tries to glass China. Hell, the only reason we haven't so far is a fear of infiltrators with the virus holding us hostage, well that...and we don't really know the earth can take it. After the Russian extremists glassed South America....lets just say that Mother Earth is pretty fucked up and we are about to kick her while she's down."

  Jack shrugged. "Archangel Protocol was designed by me and Gary. He's kind of a computer genius, not to mention being stupid wealthy. He used to design military tech among other things. I met him while my old recon squad was field-testing it for him,” Jack said with a smile, remembering old times.

  “We ended up hitting it off and quickly became friends. Gary and I ran the numbers. We watched th
e trends and decided that this was the most likely outcome almost a year ago. We couldn't risk spreading the news, panic would have been just as bad; especially if we were wrong. So we did what we could. We prepared, and we set up the Archangel Protocol to preserve a small population."

  Justin looked stunned, he'd been checking the files while Jack talked. Looking at Nicole in the mirror, "He's not joking. It's all in here. The government has been lying to us, faking broadcasts from around the world, using propaganda... I can't believe they got away with it for so long, but it's true. They've been keeping us in the dark about the war efforts, locking down news about the virus, all to keep the public from tearing the nation apart.”

  Nicole started crying as Justin confirmed what Jack had been saying. With the flashing strobes of highway lights flickering by, she thought about her home; the Twin Cities. Would everyone be dead soon? Would she, or May?

  Jack looked in the mirror, straight at Nicole. "The old world dies tonight, and it is going to be hard Nicole, but the new world begins at dawn. We will survive, I swear I will save you and your daughter. If I could save them all I would, but... there just isn’t any way." Jack too was crying, watching lights fly past, full with the knowledge that they would flicker off soon enough.

  Chapter 2: The Mexicans

  10:09pm

  August 15th, 2015

  Northwest Arizona, East of Mesquite

  Rey Lorenzo wiped his sopping forehead. At forty-eight, Rey was well into middle-age, and he could feel it catching up with him. Even so, the short, well-tanned man had maintained himself well. His dark skin was stretched taut and smooth over a thick layer of muscles, and his breath was strong.

  Standing around five feet and five inches, he would never tower, but a naturally energetic personality lent him the inner fire to impress himself on those around him. Quick, dark eyes pierced out from under thick, heavy brows; his innate intelligence shining through in the way he noted and considered everything in his environs. His hair grew black and straight, falling across his forehead and over his ears.

  He looked over to his Uncle Jose, peering through the flame burnt air above the campfire to see him sitting on the other side. His Uncle Jose was nearing seventy, and it had finally begun to show. Although he still possessed the slim, wiry frame he always had, a small paunch had begun at last to announce itself. His hair had gone almost completely grey, though it was still thick and full.

  Rey often caught his uncle grimacing in pain, a clear sign of his advanced arthritis. The man's shadowy brown eyes had lost none of their steel however. They bore the same mark of intelligence, but perhaps with a greater wisdom born of experience. No one who had talked with Jose could discount the man's knowledge. His aged, sun-lined face bore testament to a life spent attaining it.

  Rey and Jose had left the city the prior evening. The bright lights and busy noise of Phoenix had faded behind them as Rey drove into the desert. The camping trip had been an annual ritual, ever since Rey was a kid. He still remembered their first trip vividly. It had all started when his parents died. Back then, he was just a happy eight year old kid.

  Moving to America had seemed like a fresh start, a grand adventure. The Lorenzo’s had truly believed in the promise of the land, seeking to capture it for themselves. America had stripped the shine from their dreams however, showing them the ugly truth of the Mexican immigrants life. Disappointed, his parents stayed anyways, working hard to improve their situation. Working multiple jobs, living on a budget, they had still made time to shower Rey with love and affection.

  He had been happy.

  His happiness was short lived however. One night, late after dinner, the family took a wrong turn on their way home. Their path left them in the middle of disputed gang turf. When a turf war erupted, they were caught in the middle. Violent gunfire stole his parents from him that night. Rey had survived in the backseat of his parents old van, but the front took a brutal amount of lead. No one else made it through the onslaught alive.

  He remembered the feeling of screaming, throat raw and raspy. The horrible sound of metal rending metal. Concussive blasts of air and sound and light as the bullets tore through the sides of the vehicle. He didn't remember climbing to the front. Forgot shaking the bullet ridden corpses there as he tried to wake his parents, to make them breathe. The next memory he had was of sitting on the side of the road, rocking back and forth, holding his head in shock. The flashing strobes of emergency lights dying the scene in hues of red, blue, and yellow.

  When Jose had arrived to the scene, Rey still hadn't spoken a word to anyone. He just sat on the curb, rocking slowly back and forth. He looked up to his uncle, dry eyes glaring forth from a mask of shock.

  Taking one look at the broken child, Jose made a decision. Picking Rey up, Jose had carried him back to his truck. He waved off the officious patrolmen, the earnest paramedics, and the intrusive bystanders. He drove straight out of the city, heading for the desert... for solitude. Away from the lights and sounds of the modern world, they escaped. Rey refused to speak a word the whole time they drove, with Jose choosing to mirror the boy's silence.

  Hours away from civilization, Jose pulled off the road and parked the truck. He had picked up Rey and taken him a few miles from the road, carrying him on his back, Rey’s thin arms hanging idly about his neck. The star filled sky shone above them as they walked through a stark, muted world, silenced but for the dull, crunching footfalls of the older man.

  When they came across a small trickling stream, Jose sat Rey down and went about setting up a camp. He made a fire, threw blankets to the ground, and settled the shock laden child on the ground. The two had lain, backs cushioned from the stony desert landscape by coarse, prickly blankets; knitted by Rey’s mother. They lay with faces turned to sky.

  After a while, Jose reached out and took his young nephew’s hand, tentatively. A silent show of his support. He didn’t want to push the young boy's processing faster than Rey could handle, and had resolved to let the boy speak first. He needn't have worried.

  Once their hands touched, Rey felt himself crack, the world shifting beneath him. The foundation of his being was cast into ruin, and he felt as though time began to slip by once more. It was heartrending, painful, confusing...but it suddenly felt as though he were alive again.

  Feeling his uncle's callused, work-roughened hand squeeze his own gently had brought his mother and father's faces to mind at last. He was struck by the conflicting emotional realities of his utter aloneness and the familial bond he felt for his uncle. With his young eyes staring into the boundless heavens above, he had begun to weep long, wracking sobs. He had let his pain flow out of him, into the sand beneath him in his tears; carried up into the sky by his screams.

  Rey never knew why his taciturn uncle had done it, how he had known to take the closed off boy to the desert, but it had been exactly what was needed. Rey had been able to cry out his loss that weekend, alone, with his uncle in the wilds. It had kept him from bottling it up, from stunting his emotional evolution. Ever since that first night, the two had gone out into the desert at least once a year, sometimes more, but always on the anniversary. There had been hard times; spaces filled with grief and pain, but his uncle had always been there for him. With the memory of that night, Rey had been able to overcome the dark periods.

  Over the years, the ritual had evolved into a way for the two to remember their loss, but also their bond. It became more about tradition, and family; less about grieving and pain. They had learned survival skills together, finding out what was dangerous, what was safe to eat, and how to exist with nature in the harsh American Southwest. They had taught one-another how to track, hunt, and hide. They’d learned how to find the direction and time by the position of the sun. It was all knowledge that they learned not for any purpose, but simply from a shared need to know things.

  In regular life, Rey had moved in with his uncle, continuing his education. He had been taken on as an apprentice Jose’s auto shop, given
an opportunity to study machines and their inner workings at a very young age. His uncle taught him everything he knew about vehicles, which was a sizable amount. Uncle Jose had a knack for machinery; anything with a gear, motor or wheels spoke to him. He could discover it's ailments and remedy them. It was a genius that had often gone unnoticed by the arrogant educated folk who brought their cars into the shop, but it was there despite its obscurity.

  Rey had used his own share of that innate understanding of mechanical working to become an engineer, graduating with honors from Arizona State University. He had worked hard in school, the scholarship they had provided him had been returned a hundredfold when he began to make his fortune.

  He worked at a successful engineering firm, becoming one of the fastest rising stars in the company. He had been promoted repeatedly and as a consequence, been given more and more interesting work. After a few years, he had even begun doing work with the military. This work included training with the army corp of engineers, an opportunity for him to learn about modern construction methods, as well as how to work with military vehicles and equipment. His efforts at bringing these machines to greater levels of efficiency were well remarked upon by his peers, and it was through those interactions that had brought him to Gary Scofield's attention.

  Gary was the son of a successful military contractor. He had inherited his father's skills, and the family fortune. At a young age he had shown a propensity for innovation that was unrivaled by anyone else in his field. He was adept with all forms of computer driven skill-sets, possessed excellent skills in the area of weapons technology, and was a driven businessman.

  He had dabbled in renewable energy sourcing, helping the military try and find ways to reduce their dependence on oil based fuel. A billionaire jack-of-all-trades when it came to technology and military hardware, Gary had found a kindred spirit in Rey, marveling at his peer’s agile mind. The two had bonded over the sharing of ideas and possibilities, and this friendship had deepened over the years to become a bond as sure as blood.