Extinction Age (22 page)

After several moments of silence, she lowered the syringe and
faced Ellis. He was running a hand through his slicked back hair.

“Beckham is out there with the other soldiers, collecting
chemotherapeutics that we hope will end this nightmare. We need to ensure it
doesn’t have any major side effects on the surviving population,” Kate said.

Ellis held out his hand and let out an exasperated sigh. “Let
me, then. You have Beckham, and Horn’s girls have really taken a liking to you.
I don’t have anyone. If something goes wrong—”

“Don’t say that,” Kate said. “You have me.”

He twisted his lips to the side and used two fingers to
gesture for the syringe. “I’m still a better option. Besides, if we’re correct,
nothing’s going to happen. Right?”

Kate nodded without hesitation. She was confident the drugs
would have minimal side effects on humans, but they still had to be sure before
they deployed it on a massive level.

“Let me help at least,” Kate said. She sat Ellis down in a
chair and grabbed his left arm to search for a suitable vein in the crook of
his elbow.

Ellis closed his eyes and said, “Make it fast.”

“What kind of doctor hates needles?”

“I don’t mind ‘em as long as they aren’t going inside of
me
.”

Without warning, Kate inserted the tip of the needle into a
plump vein and pushed in the cocktail. She quickly pulled it out again and put
a cotton swab over the pinprick of blood forming on the surface of his skin.

“All done,” she said with a warm smile.

Ellis placed a finger over the swab. “Thanks. What’s next on
the agenda?”

“I’d like to see how Patients 1 and 2 are doing.”

“But we just injected them a few hours ago.”

Kate disposed of the needle and washed her hands. She pulled
her hair back into a ponytail and said, “I need something to keep my mind off
Operation Extinction.”

“Fine,” Ellis said. He opened the door to the lab and walked
into the hallway where Cooper and Berg were waiting.

“We’re heading to Building 4,” Kate said.

“Follow us, Doctor.”

Kate spoke to Ellis openly as she walked. Her fear of Wood’s
men was still there, but she figured the best course of action was to continue
acting as if nothing was wrong.

“I want to make sure we have the bioreactors online and ready
to go as soon as possible,” Kate said. “We can’t speed up cell growth once we
start the batches, but we can ensure we’re producing as many as possible by
coordinating multiple batches. Colonel Wood has already lined up three other
locations.”

“That’s a good start,” Ellis said. “But we’re going to need
more than four. What about other countries?”

“Wood said to leave that up to his science division,” Kate
said. She recalled the conference call from the night before. The colonel had
answered Kennor a little too quickly and smoothly about coordinating the
production of Kryptonite. She had been so caught up in the moment that she
hadn’t thought twice about it.

Until now.

The mid-morning sun beat down on them when they got outside.
Kate felt a trickle of sweat forming on her forehead. She dragged a sleeve
across her brow and tried to think. If the first stage of Operation Extinction
was successful, they could start the bioreactors immediately. They needed two
weeks to expand the cell line and produce enough for deployment. But in two
weeks, the human population would have dwindled dramatically worldwide. The
thought made Kate stop in her tracks.

“You okay, Kate?” Ellis asked. “You look like you just saw a
ghost.”

“I did,” Kate said. “Billions of them.”

Fitz spat from the side of Tower 3.
He watched the glob plummet and then whip away in the breeze. For the past
three hours he had been on sentry duty, watching Apollo chase seagulls on the
beach.

He brought the scope of his MK11 to his eye and glassed the
post, stopping on Building 4. Kate and Ellis stood at the bottom of the steps
with two Medical Corps soldiers dressed in all black. Fitz centered his
crosshairs on the guards. Both had the same emotionless expressions, and,
weirdly enough, the same mustaches.

Why the fuck would Wood’s men be trailing Kate and Ellis?
There was plenty of security on the island, but it still seemed like a waste to
assign two soldiers to guard Kate and Ellis. Unless that wasn’t their primary
mission.

Fitz made a mental note to keep an eye on them. He was bored
as all hell anyway, and doing some recon wouldn’t hurt anything.

A yelp pulled Fitz’s attention to the grass below his tower.
Apollo glanced up with a ball of fur struggling in his mouth.

“Bad!” Fitz said. “Drop it.”

The dog spat out a live bunny, which darted away the moment
its feet hit the ground, vanishing into a bush. Apollo wagged his tail as Fitz
pulled a piece of a granola bar from his pocket and tossed it down to him.
 

Fitz chuckled and maneuvered his rifle back to Building 4. Kate’s
group had gone inside, but there were several others on the sidewalk. Riley
wheeled his chair down the path with Meg hopping behind him. Fitz couldn’t help
but smile. The two made a cute pair. He wished he had someone to share the
final days of mankind with, but he was happy Riley and Meg had each other.

Grabbing the bipod of his rifle, Fitz then repositioned the
sight and zoomed in on the beach. He didn’t have time for romance anyway—he had
a promise to uphold. His job was to protect the island and his friends on it.

-22-

B
eckham used the glow from strategically placed
ceiling lights as he followed Horn into the complex. A breeze coming from vents
on both sides of the tunnel brushed against Charlie team as they moved. The air
was cold and stank of mildew, but it meant the ventilation system was still
working. Beckham was no longer worried about suffocating or not being able to
see—he was worried about what they would find as they got deeper into the
complex.

Beckham sidestepped around a puddle and saw a sign that read
Ventilation
Control Room
with an arrow pointing to a tunnel on their left. He could
just see the last of Valentine’s men disappear down that passage and hear the
distant tromp of their boots on the concrete.

“Which way?” Horn asked.

Beckham flashed a hand signal to the south. They continued
past the tunnel Valentine had taken, passing doors on both sides of the narrow
corridor. He noted the marks of tire treads and scrapes along the walls, as
though vehicles had squeezed through side by side. His heart hammered as they
moved deeper into the mountain, part of him expecting to see Variants come
clambering across the walls. There was no question they were inside the
complex—but where?

“We’re going to carry those drugs all this way?” Horn
whispered.

“Was hoping we’d find a vehicle inside after we cleared the
complex,” Beckham replied. He hustled to catch up with Horn. Another sign and
arrow indicated they were close to the domestic reservoir. The FEMA warehouse
wouldn’t be far.

A draft of rotting fruit hit Beckham’s nostrils halfway down
the corridor. He halted and balled his hand into a fist. There were two more
doors along the wall up ahead, and one of them was open a few inches.

Pointing first at his eyes, Beckham then pointed to Chow and
then to the open door. Beckham made his way over to the wall in a half crouch.
The stench was coming from inside the room. He waited several seconds,
listening for anything moving inside.

“You take high. I’m low,” Beckham said. “Sweep right to left.
I’ll go left to right.”

Chow nodded and stepped forward, putting his foot against the
rusted bottom of the open door.

“Execute,” Beckham said.

Chow pushed the door open with his left hand and burst
inside. Beckham followed close behind, arching his M4 across what looked like a
mechanical room. Dozens of boxy machines, each six feet tall, were situated
throughout the space, blocking Beckham’s view and dividing the area into a
maze.

Beckham gritted his teeth and sidestepped around the nearest
machine with his rifle trained down the first aisle. Chow started down the
right side and disappeared from Beckham’s peripheral vision.

The left side was clear, but as Beckham continued, the potent
smell increased. He halted when he saw four mangled corpses at the end of the
room. Bones glistening with blood protruded from the sacks of flesh.

“Found something,” Beckham whispered over the comm. He felt a
presence to his right a moment later. Chow stood there with a sleeve over his
nose, his gaze locked on the twisted corpses.

“Better check it out,” Beckham said. He pulled his shemagh
over his face and then led with his rifle. The bodies were so badly disfigured
it took Beckham a moment to realize they weren’t human.

Chow swiped a sweaty strand of black hair from his face,
shook his head and whispered, “If the Variants are eating each other…”

“Then they must have already eaten their way through any
survivors,” Beckham replied.

Their comms flared as they retreated from the room.
Valentine’s voice surged over the channel. “Charlie 1, Bravo 1, eyes on the
objective. It’s in a tunnel just to the left of the reservoir. You better get
over here. Place is fucking huge.”

Beckham pulled the scarf down and looked away from the gore.
“Copy that, Bravo 1,” Beckham said. “We’ll be right there.”

Kennor snatched the picture of his
grandkids off his desk and stuffed it into his pack.

“Hurry, sir!” Harris said, his voice just shy of a shout.

Wood was already gone. He had taken off with several of his
men a few minutes prior, and they were on their way to the tarmac.

I’m too old for this shit
, Kennor thought as he
followed Harris into the command center. The room was packed with his staff.
Most of them shouted into headsets as they stared at the wall-mounted monitors,
where a security feed played in real-time on the screens.

“My God,” Kennor said. He gripped his bag tighter when he saw
what they were watching. The display on the left showed a battle inside one of
the hallways. A trio of Marines fired at a pack of Variants flooding the
tunnel. Fire erupted from their rifles as they emptied their magazines into the
mass.

Several of the monsters flopped to the floor, but the meat of
the pack surged forward, consuming the Marines. A female Variant with wispy
hair dangling over her forehead took to the walls. She dashed over the concrete
on all fours. Her naked flesh came into focus as she skittered closer, like a subject
under a microscope. The bulging veins crisscrossing her skin seemed to pulsate
under the banks of LEDs. She slowed as she approached the camera, tilting her
head and narrowing her yellow eyes at the lens. Her lips opened into a black
void and she released a roar that only the dying Marines in the tunnel would
hear before she trampled the wall-mounted camera. The feed went black, and
Kennor let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in.

“How the fuck did they get in!” he shouted.

“Through the ventilation tunnels,” Harris said.

“Can we hold them?”

“I don’t know,” Harris said. His voice was shaky. “Sir, we
have to go.
Now
.”

Kennor glared at the colonel. Harris’s features were pinched
by fear. After all these years, he had never realized how weak Harris really
was. The colonel wanted to run from the Variants, but Kennor had already
retreated once. He’d left the cities, but there was no way in hell he would
abandon Central Command. He wouldn’t let it fall to the monsters, not without a
fight.

“I’m staying,” Kennor said. He dropped his bag on a chair and
pulled his M1911 from the holster on his hip. The gun had been in his family
since WWII. His father had carried it from France to Germany. It had killed
Nazis, and now it was going to kill Variants.

Kennor worked his way through the stations, getting SITREPS
from men and woman young enough to be his children. They all reported the same
thing: blockade after blockade was falling to the Variants.

Even as the other bases across the country fell, Kennor had
still thought they were safe here. He’d been wrong—again.

 “Get a message through to Cheyenne Mountain,” Kennor
said. “Inform President Mitchell we’re being overrun.” He hadn’t spoken to the
President in several days, and he was the last man Kennor wanted to talk to
now. He’d spend his final moments with soldiers, not talking to weak
politicians.  

Harris hesitated and then hurried away. “Right away, sir.”

“Somebody show me a feed of the evacuation,” Kennor shouted.

“Over here, sir,” Corporal Van said. He was the same man who
had informed Kennor when Raven Rock had fallen to the Variants. Now he was
about to show him the evac of their own bunker.

Kennor hurried over to Van’s station, his eyes roving from
monitor to monitor as he crossed the room.

“Who’s made it out so far?”

Van looked up with rueful eyes. “General Johnson and
Lieutenant Colonel Kramer are in the air, sir.”

“That’s it?”

“From your executive team, yes, sir,” he replied. “Colonel
Wood and his men are on their way through the escape tunnels now.”

“Anyone else?”

“Congressman Hauber, Senator Long, and a few civilians, sir,”
Van said. He cupped his hand over his headset and looked away.

Kennor turned back to the last remaining feed at the front of
the room. The Variants were heading deeper into the base.

“How the fuck are they getting through the blast doors?”
Kennor asked.

“They aren’t,” Harris said. “They’re using the ventilation
and sewer systems.”

“Jesus,” Kennor said. He pulled the magazine out of his .45
and checked the bullets. It was an old habit. He already knew the mag was full.
He jammed it back into the gun and pulled back the slide to chamber a round.

“Listen up, everyone,” Kennor shouted. “Grab a gun and
prepare to fight. If the Variants break through the outer defenses, they will
find us—and when they do, we fight to the end.
Every last one of us
. You
got that?”

A flurry of youthful voices rang out from every direction.
All of them were yelling the same thing: “Yes, sir!”

Outside the doorway of the FEMA
warehouse, Valentine flashed a toothy grin. His team was already loading boxes
marked
Fragile
into the back of a Ford Super Duty truck.

“Looks like Bravo hit the jackpot,” Horn said.

Beckham squeezed past Valentine to stare into a room carved
out of rock with a ceiling twenty feet high. The space stretched as far back as
he could see. There were thousands and thousands of shelves piled high with
boxes that had the FEMA symbol on them. Arrows painted on the floor and signs
hanging from the shelves showed an organized and impressive facility.

It was like a grocery store without the employees.

Horn let out a low whistle and strolled into the cavern. His
wide eyes had fixated on a sign that read
Liquor.
Beckham remembered
Jensen’s request and tapped Horn on the shoulder. “Only if you find a case of
chew for the Lieutenant Colonel, too.”

Horn huffed and let his grin fade. “Now ain’t the time to be
thinkin’ about drinkin’, right, Boss?”

“Right. Let’s start loading the truck,” Beckham said. He
checked his mission clock. They’d been inside for twenty-two minutes, and he hadn’t
heard jack shit from Mikesell.

Beckham flicked his mini-mike to his lips and opened a
channel to all three of the strike teams. “Alpha 1, Charlie 1. Do you copy?
Over.”

Static crackled in his earpiece. He waited a few seconds and
then tried again. “Alpha 1, do you
copy
? Over.”

“Already tried three times,” Valentine said. “Headsets are
useless down here. Too much rock.”

“Shit,” Beckham muttered. He paused to think as the other men
loaded the truck. In some ways, fighting wasn’t all that different than a game
of high stakes poker. Going into a mission without having a plan for insertion
and escape was like playing a bad hand of cards with shit odds of winning. Now
Beckham was deep underground, surrounded by rock and dirt, with no way of
contacting Alpha team.

Beckham jerked his chin toward the Ford. “Is that the only
truck you guys found?”

“The only one we saw,” Valentine replied.

Beckham checked the other end of the tunnel. There had to be
other vehicles somewhere inside. He cursed under his breath and smacked the bed
of the pickup truck. “Let’s get her loaded up and out of here.”

Chow slid a box into the bed of the truck. “Going to need to
make two, maybe three trips. There’s a ton more boxes.”

Beckham looked over his shoulder at the single man Valentine
had posted on sentry duty.

“Jesus,” Beckham said, shaking his head. It was a rookie
mistake that could cost them their lives and the mission.

“Valentine, hurry this shit up. I’ll hold security with Chow
to the south. Get two of your men to set up position to the north where you
came in. I want everybody else loading boxes,” Beckham said.

Valentine acknowledged with a grunt.

Beckham whirled away before he gave the junior NCO a dressing
down in front of the other men. He scanned the hallway leading toward the
middle of the complex for a second time. There wasn’t much cover besides a
forklift and a pile of crates. Not the greatest place to make a stand. Then
again, Beckham wouldn’t want to make a stand anywhere in this maze.