Extinction Age (3 page)

“I don’t like the idea of moving in the dark. Maybe we should
wait for sunup when the Variants are less active,” Jensen said.

“Not sure we’re going to last that long down here, sir,”
Beckham replied. “We’re low on ammo and low on fuel.”

Jensen looked over his shoulder and nodded. “I definitely
don’t want to get cornered again without ammo.”

“Then it’s settled. We go topside as soon as everyone has a
chance to take in some nutrition and water,” Beckham said. He looked toward
Chow. “Redistribute ammo. Make sure everyone has a mag for their primary
weapon.”

Chow nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

The operator hurried away with Jensen, leaving Beckham alone
with Meg. He reached for his water bottle and gave it a quick shake. It was
almost empty. He was just about to take a swig when Meg moaned.

Beckham handed her the bottle. “Here, drink.” He helped her
bring it to her lips and held it there as she finished it off.

“Bet you’re hungry, too,” Beckham said. He pulled an energy
bar from his pocket and peeled back the wrapper.

“No,” she said, waving it away. “I feel sick.”

“You have to eat. You’ll need your energy.”

She studied the bar in the dim lighting like it was poison.
Beckham pushed it closer.

 “You really think you can get me out of the city?” Meg
asked.

 “I’ll do everything I can to get you out of here. I
promise you that.”

A pained grin broke across her face. “Guess not every man
left in this city is a yellow-bellied coward after all.”

Two Blackhawks hovered overhead. The
blades chopped through the silence of the early morning as the smoke from the
smoldering Chinook swirled across the tarmac.

“Daddy!” Tasha shouted as the choppers descended. Kate
grabbed the girl’s hand and held her back.

“Doctor,” the Medical Corps guard said. “My orders are to
escort you back to Building 5. Major Smith has requested your presence at the
command center.”

She shot him a glare. “Can’t he wait a few minutes? Their
father is on one of those choppers.”

The young man frowned and flicked his headset to his lips.
“Command, this is Sinclair. Holding position on eastern edge of tarmac.”

Kate couldn’t hear the response over the whirring of the
Blackhawks’ rotors, but the man’s eyes told her she could stay.

“Thank you,” Kate lipped.

A beam from a spotlight centered on the wall of smoke
creeping over the concrete. The soldiers roved the light from side to side,
penetrating the thick haze. In the glow Kate saw two-dozen men trudging across
the tarmac.

Kate squeezed the girls’ hands tighter as the men emerged
with their helmets bowed in defeat. Their uniforms were soiled with dried blood
and ash.

One of them stood taller than the others. She knew right away
it was Horn. He jogged ahead when he saw them standing behind the concrete barriers.

“Tasha! Jenny!” he yelled, picking up speed.

“Daddy!” the girls yelled. Kate loosened her grip and let
them run to their father. He scooped them up in his arms and held them tight.
Hot tears blurred her vision as she watched. Tragedy had opened the door for a
miracle, and once again a father was reunited with his daughters.

-3-

M
eg ignored the rancid smell of sewage. She was
more concerned with her shredded legs. When she had finished her first Ironman
Triathlon, she’d endured the pain from the thousands upon thousands of
rotations and footfalls that went into the one hundred forty mile race. That
day, her muscles had been stretched like too-tight guitar strings. She had
thought they were going to snap before she crossed the finish line.

The agony she felt now was worse. She still hadn’t gotten a
good look at the damage the creatures had inflicted. The tunnels were too dark
for that, but she knew from the pain that it had to be bad.

“Give me a weapon,” Meg said.

The two soldiers carrying her down the tunnel hesitated for a
moment. Beckham, the man on her right, shook his head.

“No way in hell you can fight like this,” he said.

“A weapon,” Meg repeated. “Please give me something. A knife
or a gun.”

 “I’ll give you my knife before we go up top,” Beckham
replied.

It wouldn’t replace her axe, but a blade would do. Steel
always made her feel better—even if it wouldn’t do much against the monsters.
Ahead, the other soldiers had stopped. They clustered around a skeletal ladder
that led to a manhole.

“Jinx, check it out. See if you can get eyes on the street,”
Beckham said. “Chow, help me with her.”

Meg groaned as the two soldiers helped position her back
against the wall. Chow kept a hand on her shoulder to keep her from falling
over. Her head felt foggy. The cloud was so thick she could hardly think. She
could only seem to focus on one thing: the blade the man named Beckham had
promised her.

“I’m going to check these dressings,” Chow said. He crouched
down in front of her. “This might hurt.”

Meg gritted her teeth in anticipation. The faint scraping of
metal sounded somewhere in the distance. The manhole, she realized, tilting her
head for a better look. For a second, Meg’s heart caught in her throat as she
remembered Jed and Rex dropping the cover into place, sealing her into this
mazelike grave. Then she felt the presence of the soldiers who had come to help
her, not abandon her. Meg’s breathing slowed and she relaxed while Chow
examined the bandages he’d put on her injuries.

Overhead, the man they had called Jinx climbed the ladder.
His feet disappeared and moonlight flooded the tunnel, casting an eerie glow
over the team that had saved her. Covered in ash, the soldiers looked like
ghosts.

The sight reminded her of one of her first days on the job.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, she and all the other rescue
workers had looked a lot like these soldiers. That awful day had prepared her
mentally for everything she’d seen since then—everything except the monsters.

Meg cursed as Chow pulled away one of the bandages. She
cursed again when she saw her injuries.

Chow pushed his NVGs up and caught her gaze. “Don’t look,” he
said.

It was too late. Meg couldn’t pull her eyes away from the
exposed muscle on her right calf. She wouldn’t be completing any triathlons
again. Not that it really mattered—the only race she was likely to run again
was away from the zombies, or whatever they were.

“Hey lady,” came a voice.

A soldier with an unmistakably Italian nose stood behind
Chow. He stared at Meg with broken eyes. “Hey,” he said again.

Meg managed a weak response. “What?”

“How many made it out of the city?” he asked. “Before things
got really bad?”

She understood then. He was from New York. Probably Queens or
the Bronx, judging by his accent.

“I don’t know,” Meg replied solemnly, her heart hurting for
the man. “Not many. When the virus started spreading, things got bad really
fast. The Air Force took out the bridges first.”

The soldier bowed his head. Before he could reply Beckham
said, “Jinx, you got eyes?”

Meg couldn’t hear the response, but saw Beckham’s features
tense.

“Went too far. That convoy is two blocks away,” Beckham said.
“In the other direction.” He peered into the darkness of the tunnel leading to
the east.

An African-American man with the build of a career soldier
spat and wiped off his mustache with a sleeve.

“What do you think, sir?” Beckham asked the man.

“Two blocks, ain’t far,” he replied. He stepped out of the
moonlight and said, “I’ll leave this one up to you. You’ve gotten us this far.”

“You boys ready for a quick jog?” Beckham asked his men.
 

The other soldiers nodded and approached the ladder. Beckham
crouched back down next to Meg. “When we get up top, Timbo’s gonna carry you.”

His voice sounded so confident that for a moment she actually
believed he would get her out of the city. She held out a shaky hand. “Fine
with me. Long as you give me that,” she said, pointing at his knife.

Beckham reluctantly unbuttoned the sheath and extended the
handle to her. “Hopefully you won’t need it.”

Instead of grabbing the handle, she put her hand over his.
“Just promise me one thing,” Meg said, searching his eyes.

The strength there told her she could trust him. He was not
Jed or Rex. He’d proved that when he’d stayed behind to save her from the lair,
and she could see by the way he interacted with his men that he wouldn’t
abandon them, either.

“If those things come—don’t let them take me again. You put a
bullet in my head before that happens.” Meg coughed into her shoulder and then
squeezed his hand harder.

The man nodded once and she let go, taking the knife. Chow
helped her up, but she kept her eyes on Beckham as he walked away. Like the
rest of this band of soldiers, she had already started looking to him for
leadership—for hope.

“Looks clear up here,” Jinx said.

Beckham stopped under the manhole, tilting his helmet into
the light. “You take point, Jinx. Valdez, you’re on rear guard. Timbo, you
think you can carry Meg up this?” He placed a hand on the ladder.

“Yeah, no problem,” Timbo grumbled. He threw the strap of his
rifle over a shoulder and approached her. “Hang on tight. Okay, ma’am?”

She nodded and tensed her muscles as Chow handed her off to
Timbo. He picked her up and draped her over his back with the grace of someone
who had carried wounded comrades before. Despite his care, her legs hurt so bad
she let out an uncontrolled whimper.

The other soldiers were already moving up the ladder in
single file. They disappeared one after the other into the night. Meg’s arms
dangled over Timbo’s back. She gripped the handle of the blade tighter.

Footfalls pounded the concrete above and a soldier said, “Go,
go, go!”

Timbo’s labored breathing reverberated through the narrow
passage. Meg could feel each breath, his chest moving her up and down. Panic
set in as he climbed. Sweat dropped from her forehead and plummeted into the
stream of sewage flowing below.

“Almost there,” Timbo grunted. “You just hang on tight.”

The fear. The numbness. The radiant moonlight. It all washed
over her, forming a sensation that bordered on an out-of-body experience. Then
the warm trickle of what felt a lot like security replaced the numbness as
Timbo emerged from the manhole.

The soldiers fanned out across the street, setting up
positions behind a cluster of vehicles covered in soot. Everything about their
actions radiated experience. Timbo stopped behind a pickup truck as Jinx wedged
his body through a narrow gap between bumpers. He slowly strode out into the
intersection, scoping Ninth Ave as he moved.

Nothing moved in the derelict streets or the absent windows
of the skyscrapers towering overhead. The quiet city was a concrete and metal
graveyard—a crumbling museum showcasing how things used to be.  

No one else seemed to hear the faint clicking of joints in
the silence. Not in time, at least. Meg should have known not to trust the
deceiving sense of security. It vanished in a heartbeat as a shadowy figure
crashed into Jinx, and a pair of claws dragged him screaming into the darkness.

For ten years, Kate had dedicated her
life to science. In college, when her friends were choosing paths in fields
like pediatrics, she had picked virology. Years later, when they were swabbing
the throats of kids with colds, Kate was holding the hands of children who were
dying of malaria in third world countries. Through all of it she’d been
resilient, praying that her work would help those who needed it the most in
some small way.

Kate never thought for a moment she would be sitting in a
room with the survivors of the worst virus the human race had ever seen. The
fact that it had been engineered as a weapon made her feel so much worse. The
very scientific discipline that was supposed to eradicate disease had wiped out
most of the people on the planet.

She fidgeted at the thought, still unable to completely grasp
the nightmare she was living in. Ellis slid into her as he fell asleep with his
back to the wall.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

Tasha and Jenny were curled up on the floor next to Riley.
The young Delta Force Operator slept with his head propped up on a fist, his
broken body cradled by a wheelchair.

The lobby of Building 5 was crowded. The old and young. Men
and women of all races. There was no discrimination here. The only
conversations were hushed. Hands were held. Prayers were whispered, and tears
were shed.

This was the new world.

In some ways it wasn’t all bad. Now that the Variants had
effectively ended all human wars everywhere in the world, Kate supposed it
didn’t matter what anybody believed anymore. Humans had finally set apart their
differences and come together. Unfortunately, it had taken the imminent threat
of extinction to bring them to this point.

Shouting from inside the command center echoed down the
hallway. Tasha pulled on Kate’s sleeve.

“Are they yelling at my daddy?” she asked.

Kate crouched down. “No, honey. They’re just talking. He’s
going to be back in a few minutes.”

Jenny trembled and sniffled. Sweat glistened under her auburn
bangs.

“Are you feeling okay?” Kate asked. She held the back of her
hand to the girl’s forehead.

Unblinking, the girl nodded and said, “I’m tired.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. You lie back down and try to get some
sleep,” Kate said. It was just shy of four a.m., and the adrenaline from the
attack was finally starting to wear off. Kate felt it like she was carrying a
phantom weight. Beckham was trapped or dead in New York, and a third of Plum
Island’s population had been killed. The truth hurt so bad she could hardly
move.

She snapped alert at the hoarse voice of the Medical Corps
guard.

“Doctors, Major Smith is ready for you,” he said.

“I’ll watch ‘em,” Riley said. He straightened his back with a
wince and rolled his chair closer to the girls.

Kate nodded and followed Ellis into the sweltering command
center. The stink of battle filled the air, reminding her of the medical tents
from missions overseas. She could almost taste the sour stench of blood and
sweat. Horn and the other survivors of Operation Liberty sat around the war
table, oblivious to her presence.

“Have you heard from the others?” Kate called from the
doorway.

Horn, Peters, Rodriguez, Smith, and a handful of other men
she didn’t know turned in her direction, but didn’t reply. Horn dragged a
tattooed arm across his mouth and then put his elbows on the table. She could
see his face fall from where she stood.

 “We lost contact with them shortly after the bombs
dropped,” Horn finally said.

“Well, try again!” Kate snapped without thinking. Her eyes
involuntarily roved from the new female radio operator sitting at the terminal
across the room, to the soldiers, and back to the radio operator. The
middle-aged woman stared back defiantly. Silver hair fell over the shoulders of
her surprisingly neat navy uniform. Kate felt the stab of embarrassment. They
were all looking at her like she was crazy.

Kate turned back to the table, her cheeks hot and flushed.
Several soldiers bowed their heads, but Horn held her gaze. “We have, Kate.
Multiple times.”

“Send a chopper and search for them. You can’t leave him
there…”

Major Smith rose to his feet. “We have a chopper on standby,
Doctor. But we can’t deploy one without extraction coordinates.”

“Kate, calm down,” Ellis whispered.

It was then she realized she was shaking. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

Smith gave her a silent but meaningful look and gestured for
her and Ellis to join them at the table.

“We received a message from Central Command a few minutes
ago,” Smith said. “They have ordered a full retreat from every city. General
Kennor has requested a call with you later this morning, Dr. Lovato.”

“Me?” Kate asked.

“Yes,” Smith replied patiently. “Central is putting forth a
new strategy, and they want your help.”