Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga Read Free Page A

season, but that was it.   Chad paused, his hand still on the can of soup, half in, half out of the cupboard.   They.   He caught himself thinking that word again.   Not ‘they’ any more.   No more family left.   Just him.  

    T HREE DAYS LATER , ON a clear, frigid day, Chad buried Mr. Miller next to Miss Emma.   As he climbed over the horse fence back into his own yard, Chad saw how deserted the neighborhood was.   Every house save a half dozen or so, had either a red 'X' or a black 'X' on the front door.   Chad could remember every single one he had sprayed.
    Stu Masters, three streets up the road, had stopped by the day before and said he had heard from one of the other few haggard people left behind that the National Guard was going through the rural parts of the county looking for survivors, now that the sickness appeared to have peaked.   And now, those left alive in their own neighborhood were planning on hooking up with the Guard and leaving.   They were all running out of food and water and had nowhere else to turn.   Many were out of propane, like Chad.   Would he go too?
    “Don’t know, sir,” Chad had said, scanning the empty streets and empty yards and empty houses beyond his own front door.   The neighborhood had died.    
    “C’mon, son, you can’t stay here,” said Mr. Masters, rubbing his arms in the frigid morning air.   His breath puffed around him in vapor clouds.   “You’ll die, like the rest.   There’s only a handful of us left.”  
    Mr. Masters coughed.  
    A worried look passed the older man’s face for a moment.   He glanced around nervously.   “Look, we’re all leaving together.   The government is coming to take us to Fort Worth, I hear.”   He looked around the deserted neighborhood.  
    “What will you do when you get there?” asked Chad, looking right through Dad’s friend.   Die, most likely.  
    “Does it matter?   Look, my own kids died a few weeks back,” Mr. Masters said, his face a mask of grief.   Chad remembered.   Stu’s children were among the first to fall to the deadly sickness in their community.   He and his wife had taken ill, yet hung on and survived, albeit weakened.   “Nancy and I are going.   So are the Lightways—and we’re taking the Caleb boys, since their parents died.   There’s a few more people we’re trying to reach at the other end of the neighborhood, but that’s pretty much everyone who hasn’t already died or left town.   We’re all leaving; Chad, son, you can’t stay here by yourself.
    “Why not?”
    Stu Masters sighed.   “Chad, I know that look in your eyes.   My dad told me about it when he came back from Iraq.   You’ve seen too much, buddy.”   Quietly, he said, “I know.”   He crossed his arms and looked at Chad with a fatherly gaze of disapproval.   “You think your momma would be happy to see you sit here in the dark, all alone and starve to death?”
    No response.
    “Chad…you can’t give up.   Don’t do that to your folks, son.   They made you immune to this shit somehow.   Don’t waste that gift.   Earn it.   You’ve got to live, if not for you, then for them.”  
    “I’m sorry,” said Chad.  
    “Look…” said Mr. Masters.   “We’ll make sure to stop by on the way out before we leave.   Okay?   One last chance.   Think about it.”   He clapped Chad on the shoulder awkwardly and turned away.
    When the National Guard Humvee rolled to a stop in front of Chad’s house with a charter bus right behind, he was waiting at the end of the driveway with two bags.   One of clothes, the other of all the memories of his family, photos, albums, and scrapbooks.   Mr. Masters helped Chad load his bags into the storage area on the bus, then they climbed aboard.   It was half-empty.
    They had just picked up the survivors from the next town down the road, Mr. Masters explained as Chad found a seat.   The Caleb boys, Edgar and John, were crying about leaving