Extinction Age (17 page)

“Already evacuated!”

“Without me?”

Riley turned again and said, “Shut up and move!’

He pushed open the final set of doors to the lobby and worked
his way across with several powerful rotations of his wheels. She still couldn’t
get over the fact Beckham and his men had done so much for her. Jed’s cowardice
in New York had ruined her faith in the military until she met Team Ghost.

The crack of gunfire sounded over the sirens as soon as they
moved into the atrium. The shots seemed to be coming from all directions. She
resisted the urge to pull the knife from its sheath—mostly because she’d have
to limp along with the blade between her teeth.

Riley stopped at the doors and pulled a pistol from a holster
tucked down by his waist. He pulled back the slide to chamber a round and said,
“Can you see anything out there?”

Meg moved cautiously to the glass doors and peered through.
Two soldiers waited on the steps, their rifles aimed into the darkness.

“Looks clear,” she said.

Riley pushed the doors open and wheeled onto the landing just
as a helicopter roared overhead. Meg hopped out after him and spied several men
inside the troop bay above. The one crouched to the side of an oversized
machine gun looked familiar. Meg felt the hint of a second smile coming on when
she realized it was Beckham. He always seemed to be showing up just in the nick
of time to save the day. He glanced down and waved with two fingers.

Riley laid his pistol in his lap and cupped his hands over
his mouth as the chopper flew over the building. “Get ‘em, Boss!” he shouted.

“Was that Riley?” Horn yelled.

“Looks like he was with Meg and a couple soldiers,” Beckham
said. He prayed Kate and the other inhabitants of the island were safe. This
time, at least, they would have been able to follow evacuation protocols.
Everyone should be on their way to Building 5 to hunker down.

“Get ready on that gun, Horn,” Jensen said.

Beckham checked on Red and his family huddled in the back of
the chopper. They looked like they had been to hell and back. Then again,
according to Red they had been. Beckham hated to drag them back into a warzone,
but he had no choice.

The bird rushed over a canopy of trees. Beckham spotted the
towers and saw the tracers spitting from the boxes and flashes at the fences.
All of the rounds were aimed toward the beach, where a horde of Variants was
advancing.

Not a horde, but an army!

“Holy fucking shit!” Horn yelled. “There’s got to be a couple
hundred of them.” His tattooed forearms tightened as he gripped the M260.

“Those fences should hold them, right?” Valentine said.

Beckham gripped his rifle so tightly his knuckles popped.
Variants struggled in the razor wire, their flesh tearing and ripping with
every move. Others crashed into the fence, earning themselves shocks that sent
them cascading backward. Even from the sky, Beckham could see many of the
creatures were starving.

Starving meant desperate.

They flung their bony bodies against the defenses again and
again. The more intelligent Variants leapt onto the pile of dead for a shot to
clear the top of the razor wire. Beckham wasn’t sure if they were coordinating
the effort to topple the fences or if they were simply crazed with hunger.
Either way, they were succeeding. The first fence leaned at an angle under the
weight of the dead creatures. More were already scrambling up the incline.

He flinched as the first Variant made it over the top and
charged the second fence. Beckham snapped into motion. He raised his rifle and
waited for the order that came a second later.

“Chow, Valentine, concentrate your fire on the fences.
Beckham and I will swap when you reload. Horn, focus your fire on the Variants
coming from the water,” Jensen said.

The chopper shot over Tower 9 and the pilots maneuvered in a
slow circle above the water. This gave Horn an opportunity to unleash
everything he had on the mass of diseased flesh. He raked the gun back and
forth, spraying a line of projectiles at the creatures emerging from the water.
The crack from M4s joined in as Chow and Valentine entered the fight.

 Beckham anxiously waited for his turn to shoot, using
the time to monitor the battle. He spied Fitz shooting madly over the side of
Tower 9. Below the box, he saw movement. It was Apollo, howling and pacing at
the base of the tower.

If the Variants got over those fences, the dog wouldn’t stand
a chance. That wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t going to let them get their
claws into Fitz or Apollo. He thought of Kate, of Horn’s girls, of Riley and
Meg—even nerdy Ellis and cool-eyed Smith. Nobody he cared about would be at the
mercy of those things, not if Beckham could do anything to stop it.

“Changing!” Chow yelled. He moved to the side and Beckham
flattened his body to squeeze through. Finding a target wasn’t a problem. The
entire beach was crawling with them. It didn’t make sense. The monsters had
shown intelligence before, but now most of them just seemed suicidal. He didn’t
see any one creature leading the battle, but then again, he couldn’t see much
of anything.

Beckham fired without restraint, emptying his magazine into a
dozen of the monsters that had leapt over the first fence. Another dozen were
attacking the second barrier. They used the fresh corpses Beckham had just
taken down as springboards to leap into the razor wire. That was the last line
of defense before they had free rein over the island.

“Don’t let them bring down the first fence!” Beckham shouted.
If they did, the second would quickly follow, and then there was no way they
could stop the horde from reaching the buildings.

He stepped back to change his magazine, letting Chow back up
front. Echo 1 and 3 were circling farther up the northwestern shoreline near
Tower 8. The gunners were unloading on the creatures with double the
firepower—and from the looks of it, they were actually winning.

Beckham’s team, on the other hand, was fighting for every
inch of sand. The first fence was leaning at a steep angle now, and whatever
electricity it was producing seemed to do little to deter the tidal wave of
creatures sweeping over it.

“Horn, redirect your fire on the first fence!” Jensen
shouted.

Fitz had killed so many Variants that the corpses were three
deep at the foot of the fence. The mountain of dead was the perfect ladder for
them to reach the second line of defense.

It grew with every crack from Fitz’s MK11.

Horn swept the M260 back and forth, grunting as he doubled
his efforts to stop the relentless charge of starving monsters. Beckham
switched places with Chow and squeezed off automatic bursts into the mass. The
team had thinned the army down to a hundred, but still they came, talons ready
and crazed eyes focused, determined to feed.

The monsters were freely climbing the chains now. The
electricity had been severed to the first fence. Beckham took out three of the
climbers with carefully aimed shots. They slumped onto the leaning metal as the
fence finally came crashing down.

Beckham’s heart skipped as the front of the herd raced
across, jumping over the razor wire and vanishing in a cloud of sand and dirt.
They emerged a second later and crashed into the second fence twenty strong. A
tall and lean Variant with ropy back muscles made it clean over the top in a
leap that would have won a gold medal in the Olympics. Beckham killed it with a
shot to the head before it had a chance to land.

Apollo charged the barrier from the other side, barking
ferociously at the intruders. The dog stood its ground, snarling at the
monsters as they crashed into the last barrier.

“Get back, boy,” Beckham whispered. He centered his rifle on
the ground ten feet away from Apollo and squeezed off a shot. Dirt exploded
into the air, and the dog took off in a mad dash for the Humvees where the
other fire-teams had already retreated.

 “Do NOT let them take down the second fence!” Beckham
roared over the comm. He stepped back to change his magazine, one eye on the
final barrier as it, too, began to lean.

Dread filled him as he watched helplessly—this time he wasn’t
sure if they could stop the Variants. The sheer power of their numbers was too
much to repel. They simply couldn’t kill the monsters fast enough.

 “Keep firing!” he shouted. “Don’t let them take down
that fence!”

Everyone on the island was counting on them now, in this
moment. They either held the Variants here or Beckham lost everyone he loved.
He wedged his way between Chow and Horn, flattening his body and firing with his
Beretta M9. Bullet casings pinged off the floor of the chopper.

Everything was happening in slow motion. Beckham’s senses
amped to a degree he’d only experienced a few times in the most extreme
situations. He could see the rain drizzling from the sky, he could see body
parts rolling across the sand, and he could see the fence as it leaned another
inch. He heard Horn’s labored breathing and Bo’s whimpers as Red tried to calm
the boy. There was something else, too. Another noise growing in the distance.
A faint, mechanical whine.

He looked to the northwest as Echo 1 and Echo 3 swept across
the sky, their M260s already dumping on the beach.

“Yeah!” Chow shouted.

Horn continued unloading his own heavy machine gun. The
combined fire of 7.62 mm rounds sent a fountain of sand and flesh into the air.
The beach was washed with crimson as the trio of Blackhawks circled and rained
fire from the sky.

Beckham finished off his magazine, pulled it out, and then
slammed a fresh one home. There was so much adrenaline swirling through his
veins it seemed like he could feel his blood vessels enlarging.

The beach had transformed into a warzone. Injured Variants
crawled over the dead, dragging stumps where their legs had been. While others
staggered through the smoke, holding gushing wounds.

Fitz continued picking them off from the tower, one at a
time, his fire unwavering. Beckham thought he heard the man screaming. The
Marine wouldn’t stop until every single Variant had taken its last breath.

A few minutes later, the chaos ended. The cry of the M260s
faded as the gunners let up. The beach calmed, the only movement the twitch of
dying monsters. Fitz fired off a final shot, taking out a female Variant still
dragging her ruined body across the sand.

And then there was silence.

Beckham took in a long breath tinged with smoke and the smell
of burned flesh. He felt the adrenaline empty out of him, the energy rinsing
away as the realization set in—they had won the day, but they had lost a line
of defense. The first fence was down, and it was going to be a bitch to clear
the beach and put it back up.

Collapsing on the floor, Beckham turned to Red and his family
and said, “Welcome to Plum Island.”

-17-

The white walls of the spacesuit room
pressed in on Kate. She sat on a stool facing Ellis and Sergeant Lombardi. All
three of them were staring at the secure glass door leading into the hallway.

That’s where the Variants would come from if they breached
the fences. Like her old lab at the CDC building in Atlanta, the doors were
designed to stop anything short of a grenade. But Kate wasn’t worried about the
reinforced glass—she was worried about the ceiling. If the monsters made it
into the building, they would use the ventilation system. The filtered vents
were meant to prevent microscopic monsters from entering, not Variants. If they
breached the system, the only thing to stop them was Lombardi’s rifle.

Kate shivered as she sat there. The spacesuit room was their
designated emergency location, but she hardly felt safe here. Fear prickled
through her body as she waited for the fourth time in a month for the monsters
to come. She resisted the urge to cover her ears against the electronic whine
of sirens echoing in the small room. Instead, she eyed the rifle Lombardi aimed
at the door. It was the same model she had used to kill Patient 12 in Building
4. If she had to, she could fire it again.

The flashback of that night rolled across her mind. She could
still hear the phantom scratching of the creature’s claws as it skittered
across the ceiling and the popping of its joints before she had killed it with
a simple squeeze of the rifle’s trigger.

The crackle of Lombardi’s radio pulled her from the memory.
She shivered again and wrapped her arms across her chest.

“What are they saying?” Ellis shouted over the alarms.

Lombardi brought the radio to his ear and then shook his
head. “Nothing new.”

Kate strained to hear the sound of distant gunshots. Before,
it had been a constant chatter, but now it was intermittent. That meant they
had stopped the Variants at the beach…or else they had been overrun.

Either way, they would know soon.

The red glow of emergency lights danced across the hallway on
the other side of the glass like a strobe light from hell. Kate froze when she
saw a flash of motion at the far end of the corridor.

Lombardi had seen it too. While she backed away, he took a
step closer and said, “Get behind me.”

Kate moved with Ellis to the other end of the small space.
She clenched her fists and crouched on the floor. Two figures were rushing down
the hallway outside the door, their bodies bending and distorting in the bath
of red light. Kate wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t pull her gaze
away from the apparitions moving inside the swirling red glow. Her heart
skipped when she saw a flicker of pale skin.

Lombardi locked his shoulders and took a guarded step away
from the door as the sirens suddenly stopped. The emergency lights clicked off,
and the banks of white LEDs spread a carpet of white over two middle-aged
Medical Corps soldiers.

Lombardi slowly lowered his rifle. “Corporal Cooper, Corporal
Berg,” he said with a sigh. “Jesus, you guys scared the shit out of me.”

The soldiers stepped up to the door directly under the LEDs.
They were Wood’s men—that was obvious by their black fatigues. Both were built
like linebackers, with broad shoulders and slim torsos. They had matching black
mustaches and the same short crew cuts under their helmets. If it weren’t for
Cooper’s darker skin, Kate would have assumed they were twins.

Berg punched the comm link and said, “Sorry for the scare,
Lombardi. My radio is busted or I would have told you I was coming.” He glanced
back at the Kate and Ellis. “Doctors, the base is clear. Command has lifted the
lockdown,” he said. “They stopped the Variant assault on the beach.”

Lombardi gave a thumbs up to the soldiers and then faced Kate
and Ellis. “All clear to get back into the lab.”

Kate wrapped her arms across her chest. “Is Beckham back?

Lombardi plucked the radio from his fatigues. “Command,
Lombardi requesting a status update on Echo 2.”

The response took a few moments. Enough time for Kate to
consider the worst. She moved to the observation window as they waited and
looked out over the BSL-4 lab.

Lombardi turned the radio volume up so they could all hear
Corporal Hook’s reply. “Lombardi, Command. Echo 2 is back safe and sound. They
found three survivors in Niantic.”

“Survivors?” Ellis asked. “After all this time?”

“Sounds like it,” Lombardi replied. “I better get to my post.
Corporal Berg and Corporal Cooper will escort you to your quarters.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Kate said. She checked her watch.
It had been six hours since they injected the mice with the adjuvant solution
of peptide sequences. Their immune systems would be kicking in now. She tried
her best to forget the attack on the island. She was exhausted, but there was
work to do.

Ellis ran a hand through his slicked-back hair and joined
her. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Suit up,” Kate said.

Ellis strolled over to his spacesuit. He spoke as he dressed.
“The Variants are growing more desperate, Kate,” he said. “If they attacked the
beach, that means they’re starving. Like any animal, they’ll get more and more
erratic and vicious.”

“I know, Ellis. I know.”  

She pulled her keycard and waved it over the security panel
to their lab. Cooper and Berg hung back in the hallway, watching from a
distance.

“What’s with the twins?” Kate asked. “Since when do we
warrant armed guards outside the lab?”

Ellis glanced over his shoulder as they entered. “No idea,
but looks like they’re sticking around.”

Kate wasn’t going to complain about extra security as long as
they stayed out of her hair.

“Let’s check the mice,” she said. She hurried over to the
cages. Most of the creatures were sleeping or hiding. She stuck her hands in
both sides of one of the cages and used the internal gloves to grab a mouse. It
struggled in her grip, twisting and squirming to get free. As it wiggled, she
felt something unusual along its chest. She turned the mouse to see its stomach
and spotted a tiny bump in its flesh.

“Shit,” Kate whispered.

“What?” Ellis furrowed his brow.

“This one’s growing a tumor.”

“Damn. That could really mess up its immune system, so I
guess it can’t be one of our antibody donors anymore.”

“Right, if it has cancer, it isn’t much use to us.” Kate
studied the tiny bump. She knew tumors—especially mammary gland tumors like
this one appeared to be—were common enough in rats and mice, afflicting almost
two-thirds of those that weren’t spayed. “We can’t afford to lose any more if
we want to start producing a mass supply of antibodies soon.”

“Speaking of that, we need to figure out what we’re attaching
our antibodies to. I wish we could find something to use on the Variants that
we already have in our stockpiles of drugs,” Ellis said. “That way we wouldn’t
have to waste time manufacturing something new to knock out the Variants’ stem
cells.”

A sudden epiphany struck Kate. “What did you say?”

“It would cut down on the manufacturing—”

“No, about the stockpiles.”

“Oh, I was just thinking out loud,” he said airily.

“I think you might be onto something though.”

Ellis finished keying his credentials into his computer and
glanced up.

“Maybe we do already have something that we could use,” Kate
said, looking back at the sick mouse with its budding tumor. “What about cancer
drugs?”

 “What about ‘em?”

“If we could get our hands on enough chemotherapeutics like
Paciltaxel or Doxtaxel, we could encapsulate the antibodies in the drugs. Since
the antibodies attach to the Superman proteins in the Variants, it would
deliver the drugs straight to the cells responsible for the Variant’s fast
healing. You know how chemotherapeutics knock out rapidly dividing cells naturally,
right?”

“Of course,” Ellis said. “One of the side effects of
chemotherapy is a weakened immune system.” His eyes seemed to widen with
realization. “Hell, high-dose chemotherapy destroys bone marrow stem
cells—hence bone marrow transplants.”

“Exactly. The Variant stem cells would gobble up the drugs
attached via the protein-antibody linkage and die.”

Putting his hands on his hips, Ellis said, “You’re a fucking
genius, Kate.”

She smiled at that, but not because she needed the confidence
booster. If her idea worked, they’d be able to deliver the weapon much faster
than she’d hoped.

“Let’s start isolating the lymphocytes in these mice. We can
fuse the white blood cells with a cancer cell line,” Kate said. “Once we do
that, we can use the hybrid cell line to start producing antibodies to help
deliver the chemotherapeutics.”

“Wait,” Ellis said, holding up a glove. “We’re going to need
a huge amount of these drugs. Who’s going to get them? And from where?”

The smile on Kate’s face vanished. She had gotten so far
ahead of herself that she had neglected the simple question of logistics.

When the answer came to her, she closed her eyes and heaved a
sigh. The only way to collect enough drugs to build a weapon would be salvage
missions—but Beckham and his team would be the obvious choice for the job. Her
plan would send them and thousands of other soldiers into harm’s way again.

Beckham heard Kate come in around two
in the morning. Apollo let out a growl as she quietly opened the door.

“You okay?” Beckham asked groggily.

She didn’t say a word as she stripped off her shirt and
changed out of her pants into a pair of shorts. Beckham felt his loins tingle
as blood pumped through his veins. His sex drive had been almost nonexistent
over the past few days, his mind elsewhere, but seeing Kate’s curves in the
shadows ignited his passion. She slipped into bed next to him.

“Are
you
okay?” she whispered.

“Fine. Everything is just fine,” he said with confidence.
Without thinking, he planted his lips on hers and rolled her onto her back with
just enough force that she squeaked in surprise.

“You read my fucking mind,” Kate said. She sat up, pulled off
her sports bra, and started working on his t-shirt. Beckham felt the stitches
on his shoulder tighten as she finally yanked his shirt over his head. But he
didn’t care; a few moments of pain were worth the pleasure both of them so
badly needed. He gently pushed her back onto the bed and spread her legs with
his. Leaning in, he kissed his way down her neck, over her breasts, and down to
her stomach.

“I want you,” Kate said. She added with a growl, “
Now
.”

Beckham grabbed her shorts and yanked them off. She pulled
his own boxers down around his butt and he squirmed out of them. He had to sit
up to finally pull them off. When they were free of his feet, he threw them onto
the floor and climbed over Kate, using his fists to prop his body up. She ran
her fingernails down his back. 

A low whine came from the floor, where Beckham’s shorts had
fallen on Apollo. The dog shook them off and wagged his tail.

Kate and Beckham both laughed, and he pushed himself off the
bed and led Apollo to the door. He opened it a crack to let the dog out and
pointed at the hallway.

“Sit,” was all he said before closing the door.

Beckham turned and saw the moonlight streaming through the
shades, bathing Kate’s naked body in its glow. He froze, studying every inch of
her skin. Every memory and worry that haunted him vanished. Her beauty awakened
something inside of him that he had never felt before in his life. It wasn’t
just her physical perfection, either—it was her relentless drive, her courage,
and her brilliance in the face of the apocalypse. He promised himself he would
do anything to ensure they could have a life together. He would fight the
Variants with his bare hands if he had to, just to keep her safe.

Kate and Beckham had made love until
they were spent, twice last night and once again this morning. She lay in his arms
after the last time, feeling blissfully exhausted. She felt something else
too—something a lot like love.