Chapter 1

Mideast tensions were at an all-time high--which was saying a lot. Every major Western government issued warnings about potential terrorist attacks. It was serious enough that the U.S. government actually sent troops to patrol the borders to keep terrorists out. They also doubled security at the airports and inspected every single ship that arrived in our ports and every cargo container they carried.

What they hadn’t counted on were more than a thousand terrorists willing to die painful, lingering deaths. Even the ones that got caught and were detained still carried out their assigned task to spread the virus they had been infected with. It had been biologically manufactured from a common cold virus--one of the more than a hundred serotypes of rhinovirus. They spent ten years cutting and splicing together genes from some of the most virulent diseases known to man before coming up with this one, building on Cold War Russian work they had purchased on the black market.

Upon infection, there were no symptoms for nearly a week. By then, the carrier had been contagious for three or four days. The air each new carrier breathed was full of the germs, as was anything they touched after getting saliva on their hands or sprayed with minute droplets of saliva when they sneezed and coughed. The accompanying coughing and sneezing guaranteed the rapid spread of the virus.

Claiming an expected biological weapon attack from the U.S., the Arab world began vaccinating its people for several virulent illnesses. The vaccine for their own virus was quietly added into the mix. Only after vaccinating most of their population did they unleash it on the rest of the world.

Within a month, every country in the world was infected. Men succumbed faster than women but literally everyone got it. I was one of the lucky ones. I was in the first wave that had been infected and had the full resources of the fine medical care available in San Diego. The three men we interdicted trying to row ashore seemed perfectly healthy when we captured them. A day later they began sneezing. Within forty-eight hours, all three were dead. It was nearly a week later before the first man in my squad sneezed. The rest followed and within twenty-four hours all had started sneezing. They each succumbed despite the base medical staff doing everything they could. The men all died within forty-eight hours of their first sneeze. It finally hit me after everyone else in my squad was unconscious or worse. The staff had been constantly poking and prodding me to figure out why I hadn’t gotten it, hoping to find some sort of natural immunity. When I sneezed a second time they immediately put me on antibiotics and an IV.

Even so, it was four weeks before I was able to crawl out of bed. The IV had kept me from starving and becoming dehydrated for the weeks when I was unconscious or just too weak to do anything but lay there. I was doubly lucky in the fact that I had a healthy immune system. Everyone else who’d been hospitalized died, even with the IV and antibiotics. By the time I was able to crawl from bed without falling on my face, so few people were left alive that there was little left in the way of medical staff. They had been hit as hard as, if not harder than everyone else.

Initially, the Arab world laughed at us, having developed immunity to the virus. Their laughter died as rapidly as they did when the virus mutated enough that their vaccines didn’t protect them. Anyone who survived the original infection, though, seemed to be immune from re-infection by the mutated virus. Nobody ever got it twice--not that there were many people left to spread it to a second time.

I learned from the one government-run news station still broadcasting that bodies had been piled up and burned when there were no longer enough people left to dig the mass graves to bury them in. There were only five people still at the hospital when I left, one male nurse, one female doctor, and three female nurses, all obviously infected. One of the nurses, a very attractive and very tall one at that, told me resignedly to take a set of keys from one of the bodies I was sure to come across. I protested, insisting that I be allowed to stay and care for the five of them, but they pointed out that I was their only patient that had survived.

The drive back to the base at Coronado would normally take me half an hour--longer during rush hour. I only saw one other car during the fifteen-minute drive, and it was driving very erratically going in the opposite direction on the freeway. The guard that stopped me at the gate couldn’t even stand. Once I showed him my ID he waved me through--not that he could have stopped me. He said that there were only a handful of people left on base that he was aware of. By the end of the day I had dug a big enough grave with a backhoe for everyone I found and had covered the decomposing bodies. By then, there were only three left alive besides me. As senior officer left alive, I was given keys and combinations to most of the base. The parts I couldn’t access, I knew I didn’t want access to.

I finally sat down and cried. Thinking of the billions of lives wasted in the name of religion made me decide never to practice religion again. I cried for my comrades-in-arms, my family, and the friends that I’d lost. When I had finally been coherent enough in the hospital, I’d phoned my family. My dad answered, letting me know between bouts of wracking coughs that he and my youngest brother were the only two still alive and probably wouldn’t be for long. There had been no answer the next day or the day after when I called again.

I thought about the men in the other squads on base, wondering what had happened to them. I hadn’t seen any of their bodies among the ones I buried but I only buried a hundred or so of the many thousands of people originally on base. Then I finally wondered what I should do now. I’d seen dogs, cats, and birds that were obviously unaffected. Hopefully that meant farm animals would survive. There would be plenty of preserved food for a while, but even canned food would eventually go bad.

Finally, I wondered if anyone else would survive. Surely, I wasn’t the only person still alive. Someone else somewhere had to have survived. Would I be able to find them? Would I want to find them? If there were others out there, what did that mean for civilization? I had a pretty good idea what it meant and didn’t like the idea one bit. Eight years in the military--four of as part of a SEAL Team--tends to give one a pessimistic, albeit realistic, view of what humanity is capable of doing to each other.

As the ranking officer--and only person on base still alive--I appropriated an SUV the next morning to set out on my quest to rebuild--if I could find someone to rebuild with. My pessimistic side made sure I was fully geared up for a firefight and the vehicle was fully loaded with fuel, weapons, and ammo. I drove through the main gate dressed for battle just the way I had been the first time we snuck into Tehran years before--except that I was armed better this time.

I spent three days driving slowly through the city honking my horn to let people know someone was there but saw nobody. A few times I could sense someone watching me, but they wouldn’t come out.

The fourth day I tried smoking them out. I set up a barbecue in a schoolyard that was surrounded by houses and apartments and started cooking hot dogs. A cooler of ice with a selection of beverages was left sitting on the table.

Every hour for the next fourteen hours I started another barbecue somewhere else. The next day I went back and checked. Fourteen of them hadn’t been touched. At the fifth one, all the sodas were gone, and one beer had been opened. Missing only one sip, it sat on the table bearing witness to the fact that someone else was alive--or at least had been alive yesterday.

Once again, I started the barbecue, hands trembling with excitement thinking that someone might be alive. Once again I left, following the same route I had the previous day--except that I doubled back after ten minutes. Halfway back I got out of the car and walked, running from tree to tree as if approaching an enemy position. At the crest of a low hill I stopped and watched from under the shrubbery. Five minutes later I saw her. Looking around warily she approached in much the same manner I had. I watched as she loaded the drinks into a backpack, scarfed down two hotdogs and wrapped the rest up before shoving them in the backpack with her sodas.

I watched her run away, still looking nervously back over her shoulder every few seconds before slipping between houses. I caught sight of her one last time as she scaled a chain-link fence behind the houses. I followed, sure that I’d be able to track her from that point. Half an hour later I found where she had stopped to eat some more hot dogs and drink a soda.

Rather than trying to cross a residential street in broad daylight, especially when I didn’t know where my quarry was, I went inside the house and watched--and listened. I trained a parabolic antenna up and down the street but heard nothing. Reasonably certain that the coast was clear, I dashed across the street and into the back yard of the house directly across from where I’d been. Here I could see where she’d run through the tree-bark groundcover headed for the back fence. That house was empty, so I went upstairs and checked out the neighboring houses. Faint wisps of music were coming from the house directly behind me.

There was a recently-dug grave in the back yard and I caught a glimpse of movement when the girl hurried out the back door of a neighboring house, her backpack bulging with loot. Dropping it over the fence she moved a board she’d previously loosened and squeezed through. That was the first time I actually got a good look at her. I upgraded my initial estimate of her age to high school age, probably 17 or 18 based on the breasts she had a hard time squeezing through the opening in the fence. Her pale red hair was more obvious this close although she had it hidden under a baseball cap. I recognized the logo on the hat as one of the local high schools. From what I could discern from the blue jeans she wore, she had an athletic figure. She was tall for a girl and had a cute face--not the kind guys would stop and stare at, but cute nonetheless. She also had a pistol clutched tightly in her hand, a 9mm from the looks of it.

She disappeared into her house quickly, locking the door behind herself and looking out through the drawn blinds of the window next to the door. An hour later she snuck out again, running through her front yard and across the street with her empty backpack. I took the opportunity to sneak into her back yard and then into the house to wait for her. I did a quick recon of the house to make sure she was alone and went back downstairs to wait for her.

Twenty minutes later she crept back into the house. I watched while she stashed the canned goods she’d appropriated from the neighbors. I watched as she looked longingly at a picture she brought back, one she set on the table next to the one I’d seen earlier of what I assumed was a fairly recent picture of her parents and her.

“I’m impressed,” I said calmly.

She screamed and turned on me, pointing the gun at me. “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot. I already killed one asshole,” she spat vehemently.

“If I meant to hurt you I would have waited behind the door and caught you when you ran in,” I replied.

“I mean it,” she warned when I took a step towards her. When I took the next step she raised the gun and pointed it straight at me. “I’ll shoot,” she promised with my third step.

“No you won’t,” I answered calmly as I took another step. She tried to shoot but guns don’t work well when the safety is on. Screaming, she threw the gun at me and tried to duck away.

I caught her hand when she threw the gun and spun her around, grabbing her from behind with her arms pinned under mine.

“Let. Me. Go!” she grunted as she struggled.

“I promise that I won’t hurt you,” I said as soothingly as I could while hanging on to 120 pounds of fighting mad girl.

“No, I know what you want,” she yelled as she continued to struggle.

Only then did it dawn on me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about that,” I apologized as I let her go. She spun and backed away quickly until the kitchen counter stopped her.

“Look, I’m not here to hurt you, I was just trying to find out if anyone else survived. Believe me, If I intended to, I could have done anything I wanted,” I said. That comment certainly didn’t help so I tried again. “I was with a SEAL Team at Coronado,” I explained pulling out my military ID and tossing it onto the counter next to her.

Still watching me she felt around until she found it and held it in front of her face to read it. “Doesn’t say anything about SEALs,” she grunted as she threw it back.

I caught it in midair. “Not something we advertise,” I explained.

“Who was the base commander?” she asked.

Yeah, like she’d know. “Shadler,” I answered.

“What was your team number?” she asked.

Okay, so maybe she did know something. “Team seven,” I replied.

She sighed a breath of relief and collapsed into the chair opposite me. “I’m sorry, it’s just...” she trailed off.

“No need to explain,” I answered.

“So, how did you know the name of the base commander?” I asked.

“My best friend lived two doors down--Carol Shadler,” she sighed as she pointed to the picture she’d just put on the table.

“I’m sorry,” I answered sympathetically. We sat in silence for a couple minutes. I thought again about my family, wondering how it ended for them and decided I probably didn’t want to know.

“What do you plan to do now?” she asked.

I shrugged. “The canned food won’t last forever. I thought I should head away from the big cities to farming country and see what I can set up for the future. Of course, I don’t know the first thing about farming,” I sighed.

“Then it’s a good thing you found me,” she gloated.

It took a second for the implication of her statement to hit me. “Why’s that?” I asked, stunned.

“My grandparents have ... had a place near Visalia--up in the Central Valley. I used to spend summers there and know a little bit about farming.”

“That could work,” I said, thinking out loud. “We should probably hit the grocery stores and stock up on canned goods rather than just raiding all the neighborhood homes,” I suggested.

“No!” she answered adamantly, her vehemence surprising me. “They’re watching the grocery stores,” she answered sadly when she saw the confusion on my face.

“They who?” I asked, still not understanding. She took a breath and steeled herself.

“When I was sick, Mom fed me chicken broth and Gatorade to keep me alive. Five days ago, I was finally able to stand up and was in the bathroom when she got home from the grocery store. Some guy followed her home and came in the back door with a gun. She was too sick to fight him when he tried to rape her. They were making enough noise fighting that he didn’t hear me sneak in the kitchen. I took one of the knives and made sure he never bothered anyone again. That’s where I got the gun,” she explained. I didn’t ask about her mother. The fresh grave out back bore silent witness to her fate.

“What did you do with his body?” I asked.

“Tied it behind the car and dropped his sorry ass off a few blocks from here,” she answered proudly.

“Feel up to a little recon tonight?” I asked. She looked up expectantly. “I want to see if anyone else is watching the grocery stores. I’m going to run back to my car and bring it here for now,” I explained.

“Can I come with you? I’d feel safer,” she asked coyly.

The trip back to the car was much faster than my initial trip to her house. Once we got back with the SUV, we put it in the garage where her dad’s car used to go and securely locked and barricaded the door from the garage into the house.

We also introduced ourselves. She was Stacey Donaldson, 17, and would have been a senior this fall. At 5’11” she was on her high school’s volleyball and basketball team which explained her athletic figure.

I am Lt. Mike Miller, USN. I enlisted at 18 when I graduated and have been a member of the SEALs for the last four years. All of my male relatives, including uncles and cousins, are ... were electricians. They worked on everything--from residential or to commercial to industrial. I spent enough summers working with them that I signed up originally for electronics school when I enlisted.

And there we were. We spent the rest of the day securing the house. While she nailed the windows shut and then taped the blinds down so nobody could see inside, I secured the doors. After “appropriating” mattresses and couches from a couple of neighbors I rigged Claymores to go off if anybody opened the now locked front door.

After punching through the drywall, I also affixed one Claymore to the inside wall on either side of the front door in case they had anyone else with them. The stucco walls wouldn’t stop the blast. The appropriated mattresses helped to cushion the inside of the house from the blast and the sofas held the mattresses in place.

Next, I rigged three sets of brackets each on the door to the garage and the back door. Each set of brackets held a 2 X 6 cross-brace to strengthen the door. Anyone coming through those doors would be slowed down considerably. If it had just been me in the house, those doors would have had Claymores, too.

By nightfall, the last vestiges of power failed across the city. All nuclear plants had been shut down over three weeks ago. All dams had been opened five percent to release the water without causing any serious flooding. With nobody to care for them, the dams would have eventually decayed and failed, causing catastrophic flooding downstream for anyone who might have survived. Coal-fired plants were shutting down as they ran out of coal or people to tend them. No power was bad, but good at the same time. No lights gave me a distinct advantage at night since I had night vision goggles. Anyone dumb enough to use a generator would stick out like a sore thumb.

We spent an hour scouting the exterior of the store and found nobody. Inside was just as deserted. After clearing the interior of the store, I watched the front of the store from the roof while Stacey loaded several shopping carts full of canned goods into the SUV. “Down,” I hissed into my radio mic, satisfied when she dropped to the ground immediately. I watched a lone figure coming closer, carefully concealing herself as she approached the front of the store.

“Freeze,” I ordered. She froze after ducking behind the concrete support for one of the non-functioning parking lot lights.

“I can still see you. Hold up some fingers and I’ll prove it,” I hollered.

“Three,” I yelled.

“That’s not very nice,” I chuckled at her next gesture. She finally came out and lay on her stomach in front of the SUV like I ordered while Stacey cuffed her wrists.

“He’s not going to hurt you. Look, I still have my pistol,” she comforted the woman before finishing loading the car. I rappelled down the wall and flipped the grappling hook loose, taking one last look around before I helped the woman up.

“Please let me go,” she sobbed.

“I’m not going to hurt you. If you want to take your chances on your own, I’ll set you free. Or you can choose to come with us.”

“No, I have to go back or he’ll ... he’ll hurt her,” she sobbed.

Some guy named David had captured her going to the hardware store. He also had a fourteen-year-old girl at the house. As long as she returned with food he’d let the girl live. The woman’s name was Pam and she showed us where they lived. Since it was only two blocks away I zoomed through the parking lot before cutting the engine and coasting a block. The last block we did on foot. Pam filled her bags from what we already had in the SUV, and I followed her home.

“David?” she called hesitantly when she opened the door.

“Took you fucking long enough, bitch,” he spat. It was the last thing he ever said. The young girl beneath him screamed when his lifeless body fell on top of her, but she’d been sobbing already as he raped her. Pam helped pull Vickie out from under the dead asshole and I left them alone so Vickie could get dressed.

On the way back to Stacey’s house, both women were frightened and silent, huddled together in the back seat while Stacey tried to reassure them. After making sure the nearly invisible seals I had put on the back door and garage door were unbroken, we went inside. I warned them about the front door, explaining that both the back door and garage door were safe to use as exits.

“Any chance that either of you knows how to use a pistol?” I asked the newcomers.

“I can use just about any kind of gun,” Pam replied confidently.

“Military?” I asked.

“And stunt woman,” she laughed. I handed her a military issue Beretta. “What’s a big guy like you doing with a woman’s gun?” she asked teasingly, cocking her head coyly. I showed her “my” pistol, the .45 caliber Glock.

“Now that’s a gun,” she cooed. Seconds later she’d ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber, slammed the magazine back, and loaded a round into the chamber.

“I’m impressed, keep it. We’ll get you a holster tomorrow,” I said. They looked at me like I was crazy when I sent them upstairs to bed explaining that I was sleeping on the couch to better watch the doors. Fortunately, the master bedroom was closer to the back of the house and wouldn’t be affected if the front door exploded.

Looking over the choices in the fridge and cabinets for breakfast in the morning I heard raised voices upstairs. I couldn’t tell if it was the ladies arguing or if someone had managed to get in despite our precautions. Rushing into the room, gun leveled, I definitely was not prepared for what I found. Pam and Stacey were standing toe to toe (and tit to tit) having a shouting match.

Between them they wore a total of two pairs of panties--one green and one blue. Pam’s contained less than half the material Stacey’s did. They both turned when the door burst open. Pam just seemed to smirk victoriously while Stacey grabbed for the sheet and covered herself--at least for a few seconds. Seeing Pam still standing there brazenly exposing her charms, Stacey dropped the sheet and gave Pam a “so there” sneer. Vickie was calmly sitting against the head of the bed dressed exactly like the other two and making no effort whatsoever to cover herself while she watched the floor show Pam and Stacey were putting on.

“What the hell is going on in here?” I demanded, barely keeping my own voice below a shout.

“Just a little disagreement,” Pam replied calmly.

“Little?” I exploded. “Anyone within a mile of us knows we’re here now,” I barked. “From now on, settle your differences quietly,” I hissed. At least they both looked appropriately chastened.

“They were arguing over which one of them got to be your girlfriend,” Vickie explained, smirking.

“What?” I gasped.

“They’re arguing about which one gets to be your girlfriend and whichever one you choose, the other will be pissed,” Vickie explained again. “The only way to peacefully settle it is to make all three of us your girlfriends,” she added, grinning like the cat that got the canary.

“I won’t make anyone be my girlfriend. Once things settle down and we get to know each other a little better I may ask one of you to be my girlfriend,” I sputtered.

“You just don’t get it, do you,” Vickie laughed. I was doing a slow burn with this fourteen-year-old trying to school me.

“Civilization is gone and anarchy rules. Right now, he who has the most firepower makes the rules. It’s your basic survival of the fittest scenario. For the foreseeable future, every day is going to be a Survivor Challenge. If you win you get to play in tomorrow’s round. If you lose you get kicked off the island and you’re captured or dead. There are no rules except take what you need and keep everyone else from taking it away from you or killing you.

“Stacey told us about the guy who followed her mother here. David caught Pam and I. Pam saw a woman a couple of days ago in the same situation we were in except the guy beat the crap out of his women. Guys are stronger and are taking women captive all over the city. We were handcuffed to the bed every night so we couldn’t escape or hurt David. The woman Pam saw had red marks around her wrists, too.

“Then you come along and rescue us. Not only do you treat us well, but you gave Pam a gun and let Stacey keep hers. No other guy would dream of doing that. You slept downstairs last night to protect us. What the hell more could a woman ask for today? Stacey says you were a SEAL, so there isn’t another guy within a thousand miles of us better qualified to keep us safe.

“That means we’re with a well-armed guy who knows how to protect us and who doesn’t abuse us. You’re going to have every woman you rescue trying to get into your pants. Add to that the fact that you’re a fuckin’ hunk and you may not get out of bed more than a couple of hours a day,” she giggled.

My face was flaming hot as I blushed harder than I ever remember blushing before.

“She’s right,” Pam offered with a predatory grin.

“You guys do realize that you can stay with me without having sex, don’t you?” I asked feebly.

“And that’s part of the reason you now find yourself in this predicament,” Pam purred.

“I thought you would be traumatized this morning,” I commented to Vickie.

“She wasn’t being raped--well, I guess technically she was, but not like you are thinking,” Pam explained.

“He just wanted to fuck. It’s not like he was the first guy I ever did it with or the first time we fucked. Besides, he was a little better than my previous two boyfriends. I was upset because he threatened to kill me if Pam wasn’t back before he finished fucking me,” Vickie explained calmly.

I shook my head and waved off any further discussion. “I need some food and time to think,” I sighed heavily as I headed back downstairs.

I was still staring absently at the open pantry when the girls arrived and shooed me out of the kitchen. They were still wearing only their panties, flaunting their near nudity--or was it advertising? I flopped on the couch, still trying to think things through. I had no problem having sex with Pam. She was obviously old enough and experienced enough to make those decisions.

Stacey was borderline at 17, but probably not experienced enough to make a truly informed decision. Vickie, despite her self-proclaimed experience, was decidedly too young. And yet, she was the one who hit the nail on the head about the situation we now faced with an insight eerily mature for her age.

I hadn’t even thought about it to that extent. The fact that she had been sexually active BSB (before the shit began) and hadn’t minded having sex with her former captor seriously eroded any moral high ground I might have hoped to find.

Basically, we found ourselves back in the days of the cave men. It was every man or village for themselves. You only had each other to depend on. Anyone else was suspect at best and more than likely an enemy. I realized that eventually (and probably soon), the decision would be taken out of my hands and the women would push the issue.

Mercifully I managed to sidetrack myself by thinking about what I hoped to set up. Like Stacey suggested, the Central Valley was probably one of the best agricultural areas in the country. Every necessary crop could be grown there. There were plenty of rivers to provide the water necessary for agriculture. The winter weather might be cold, but snow was a rarity in the valley. With no major metropolitan areas in the southern half of the valley I felt the threat from raiders would be less--although they would probably realize eventually that they had to find a renewable source of food and do the same thing we were doing.

“Ooooofffff,” I grunted, looking up to find Stacey sitting on my stomach.

“Breakfast is ready,” she announced giddily.

“So, you ladies are serious about the sex?” I asked. She beamed and lay down on top of me. Her nudity was bad enough but having her bare breasts pressed into my chest redlined my horn-o-meter.

“Mike, I would have wanted to be with you even before this happened if I’d met you and gotten to know you,” she answered. She sighed when I slid my arms around her, letting my hands caress the naked flesh of her back. Her moan when I slipped my hands inside her underwear and caressed her firm ass cheeks let me know my attention was definitely appreciated. Her lips descended to mine, touching hesitantly before sealing to my lips and then teasing them apart with her tongue.

She mewled in protest when I gave her butt a light smack. “Breakfast is getting cold,” I reminded her.

Pam was working at the sink, so I slipped behind her, wrapping my hands around her waist. She leaned back into me sighing contentedly, her wet, soapy hands guiding my hands higher until they found her breasts.