While the kids ate, Cade closed all of the blinds and double checked the windows and doors, making sure all were locked. The undead didn’t know they were in the house and Cade wanted to keep it that way.
Cade once again turned his attention to the local news. Two anchors were mourning their fellow reporter’s demise that had been broadcast on live television the day before. Thankfully they refrained from showing the bloody spectacle again.
President Odero put on the full court press and declared martial law nationwide. FEMA issued recommendations that doomed millions. They urged the United States population to stay home and tend to their sick and wounded. The most disturbing information that Cade had to process was a graphic simulating the nationwide spread of the infection. It revealed an ever expanding zone indicated in red, which radiated inland from the Eastern Seaboard and spread north from Mexico. Despite the new border crackdown, the entire state of California was awash in red. The South and Southwest looked less impacted and the Northwest and Central Rockies weren’t hit as hard… yet. The next graphic was unfathomable. A fast spreading, time lapsed representation of the contagion’s impact worldwide filled the screen. There were very few locations on Earth not ravaged during the first two days of the global outbreak. As he watched the news, he had no clue that a thousand miles away his in-laws were dying.
Cade had no immediate family in Portland; both of his parents had died years ago. Chuck and Madeline were very close and had been married for fifty-five years when they both suddenly died of natural causes barely a month apart. Chuck passed first. He died peacefully in his sleep. Madeline was devastated and died of natural causes--probably of a broken heart--twenty-eight days later. Cade inherited the house he grew up in.
His parents had been happily married for twenty-seven years before Cade came along. He was not in their plans, but he was the best thing that had ever happened to them. Their proudest moment was when Cade joined the army at the age of twenty: Eleven Bravo. Light infantry was his MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) when he enlisted. He excelled during basic training and loved service life so much that he went through Ranger school, served with the 75th Ranger Regiment and then later went on to Special Forces training at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Mike Desantos recruited Cade for the Delta Force. For the next couple of years he had some top-secret missions where he found himself “down range,” the soldier’s term for being on the receiving end of enemy fire. Cade gave better than he got.
When he met Brook, it was love at first sight. She was a nurse near Fort Lewis when he was stationed there with the 1st Special Forces Group. It was 1999. They were soon married and Raven was born shortly thereafter.
Being an operator was his life, and when those nineteen shit bags dropped the Twin Towers it became a crusade. He believed in the war against terror so wholeheartedly that he had “INFIDEL” tattooed in Old English lettering across his back.
Cade did everything his superiors asked of him, sacrificing anniversaries, birthdays, he even missed Raven’s first words and steps while he was hunting terrorists.
Soon after the new President took office and the crusade had lost its luster for the American people, Cade decided to hang up his spurs. It was a slap in the face to all of the people in uniform fighting for their country when the President and his new administration decreed that terrorist acts be called “man-made catastrophes.” It was the final straw for Cade when the White House staff started omitting the word “terrorist” in official communications.
Choosing to leave his unit and not re-up was the hardest decision Cade had ever made. A lot of career shooters were also taking this route and then going to work for Blackwater or Triple Canopy, providing private security in the Sandbox.
Cade chose instead to immerse himself in family life.