Extinction Evolution (The Extinction Cycle Book 4) (18 page)

“You can count on me and Meg,” Riley said.

Horn patted Riley on the shoulder. “I know I can, kid. And thanks, Meg. I know you two will take good care of them.”

Meg smiled. “No problem. Try not to worry.”

Fitz’s eyes darted back and forth. “Any other requests?”

“If the Variants come back, I expect you to do what you did last time,” Chow said.

The group chuckled at that, and Beckham pulled a small green pouch from his bag. He opened it and said, “Team Ghost, gather around.” He waited for the men to circle. “Shit I said earlier outside Building 1 wasn’t right. I was wrong about Team Ghost not being what it used to be. In some ways, we’re better. Better because we’ve got Chow, Fitz, and Apollo with us now.”

The MK11 suddenly felt heavier than it ever had before. Fitz slung it over his shoulder as Beckham handed him a patch sporting an image of a skull surrounded by smoke.

“Wear it, and wear it proud,” Beckham said.

“Semper Fi,” Fitz replied. He grabbed the patch and nodded, beaming with pride.

Beckham distributed the other patches to Riley, Horn, and Chow. “You guys can thank Chow for these. Apparently he had them stowed in his pack since Fort Bragg.”

“I pulled patches for all the Delta Teams after shit hit the fan. Just in case anyone made it,” Chow said.

Riley stared at the symbol like he hadn’t seen it for the longest time. He wiped his eyes quickly with his sleeve. Beckham pulled his blade and punched a hole in a fifth patch. Then he bent down and looped it through Apollo’s collar. The dog sniffed at his hand and licked his fingers.

“Welcome to Team Ghost, boy,” Beckham said.

There were more short-lived chuckles, followed by silence. It lingered, broken only by the door to Building 1 opening and shutting. Secretary Ringgold and General Johnson stepped outside. She waved at Beckham and motioned for him to follow.

“Alright, let’s move out,” Beckham said. “You ready, Dr. Lovato?”

Kate nodded at Ellis, and bent down in front of Tasha and Jenny.

“Be good girls,” Kate said. They hugged her, then returned to Horn.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said, kissing them each on the forehead.

Fitz stood next to Riley as the group departed. Tasha and Jenny sobbed while Meg tried to console them. Riley remained still, his eyes locked on his brothers and Apollo. Fitz felt the kid’s pain, but at the same time, Fitz knew in his heart they were where they were supposed to be. Every Marine had a duty. This was Fitz’s island to protect.

G
arcia jerked awake to an awful smell, a mix between puke and the dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant during the height of summer. He opened his eyes to inky darkness.

He tried to move his head. That earned him a shot of pain that ran up his nose and bled through his skull like the worst brain freeze he could remember. Realization hit him with the force of a sucker punch in the gut as he remembered the Alpha Variant that had broken his nose.

“Stevo,” Garcia mumbled. He tried to turn to his left, but he was stuck in some sort of...he didn’t know what the hell it was. His body was pinned, but he was standing up with his back to a wall. Everything was blurry in front of him. At first he thought his vision was clouded, but it wasn’t a problem with his eyes. Something was blocking his sight like a thick piece of murky glass. The suffocating darkness didn’t make things any easier. Somewhere on the other side, there was motion. 

Dazed but aware, Garcia finally accepted where he was. For weeks he had been tracking and killing Variants. He had seen their lairs—and the human prisoners they kept there. Now he was one of those prisoners.

A rush of fear and adrenaline shot through the Marine. He speared his head into a sticky film, his short-cropped hair getting caught in the glue.

“Damn. Fucking. Piece of shit,” Garcia grumbled. As he ripped his hair from the sticky substance, he cursed again. Not from the pain, but because he remembered his missing helmet. Losing it meant he hadn’t just lost the pictures of his family—he had also lost documented evidence of the juvenile Variants.

Stay calm, Marine. All it takes is all you got. All it takes is...

He closed his eyes. He was still alive, and still had the images of the child freaks locked away in his memory. As long as he was breathing, he would do everything he could to get it back to Central Command. But first, he had to find his way out of here. Wherever the hell
here
was.

How long had he been out? Had Tank and Thomas left without him? Where was Stevo?

Garcia focused on his breathing and did an inventory of his body, checking to see what hurt and didn’t. Besides his nose, the only pain came from his back. For a moment he listened to the trickle of water and the sporadic screams that echoed like he was inside a cave with no end.

He tried to move his torso, wiggling from side to side. Then he attempted to move his head again. Each ear brushed up against the same sticky surface in turn, tugging on his skin. He took in a breath filled with the scent of rotting flesh and stomach acid. That made him gag, and this time he dry heaved so hard he lurched forward and tore his right arm free of the cocoon.

Distorted shapes darted by, and Garcia froze. When he was sure they were gone, he slowly moved his right hand, scraping his gloved fingers against the film. He dug the glue away from his stomach for fifteen minutes. If he could get to the switchblade, then maybe he could free himself without being noticed. That was a big
if
, and he had no idea what he would do after. But it was something. A small plan was better than having no plan at all.

The high-pitched shriek of a Variant broke out somewhere in the distance. The noise reverberated, making it nearly impossible to determine how far away the creatures lurked. Could be three feet or three hundred. Thirty seconds later, a tormented human scream followed.

Garcia clenched his jaw and continued peeling away the sticky sludge around his waist. There were more human screams in the minutes that followed, but his focus was on one thing: his switchblade.

Focus, Garcia. You still have air in your lungs, and you still have fight in you.

He had been given a second chance, and wasn’t going to waste it. His instinct and training had helped him survive after his wife and daughter were killed. Each mission, no matter how big or small, kept him moving. He was a Marine, and even if he hadn’t been trained to continue fighting, it was his nature.

The screaming faded away, replaced by the snapping and crunch of bones. At first he thought it was the oddly-jointed Variants, but the popping seemed to be coming from just one place. Garcia had heard it before. It was the noise the creatures made when they fed—the sound of gristle and ligaments being torn away from their prey.

Garcia held in a breath of the putrid scent of his sticky prison cell, wondering if he would be next. He waited there, unmoving, for several minutes. The screams came and went, each time seemingly closer, and each time his heart pounded harder. He didn’t dare move. If the Variants were this close, they would certainly see him digging for his switchblade.

Fuck. Think, Garcia. Think.

He had to do something. He wasn’t just going to sit here and wait to die. With exaggerated care, he used his right index finger to pick at the glue.

Another tortured voice rang out. This one seemed familiar.

“You motherfu—”

Stevo?

Garcia peeled strip after strip of the glue away until he felt a pocket. He plucked it open and fingered for the knife. As he grabbed the handle, two blurred figures stopped in front of him. His fingers were wrapped around the handle of the switchblade, but he didn’t pull the knife. Not yet.

His gut tightened as a hand outside his cocoon reached forward. For a second, he thought he even heard the thing speak. But that couldn’t be right.

Garcia tilted his head back to the cold wall as a talon sliced through the outside of the cocoon. He closed one eye, wincing as he waited for his opportunity to stab the freak in the jugular. The monster cut a square through the film in front of his face and tore it away. Garcia blinked rapidly in the glow of natural light. Between blinks, he glimpsed the creature that had come to eat him.

Only this wasn’t a monster. It wasn’t a Variant at all. It was a man, his face filthy with grime and his forehead covered in scabs and open cuts. His right eye was wider than the left, almost bulging from his head. He wore a tattered Army uniform that was soiled with dark splotches of crimson and brown. 

“That’s him, Frankie,” the man said.

A second figure leaned in front of Garcia. He had his arm around a soldier in fatigues. It took Garcia a moment to recognize the battered, slumped figure as Stevo. Garcia tried to say something, but all that came out was a groan. He loosened his grip around the switchblade, studying his rescuers. Frankie, bearded and dressed in a mud-soaked Army uniform, hoisted Stevo farther up.

“Hurry up and get him loose,” Frankie said.

The soldier with the face covered in scabs flashed a grin with two missing front teeth. Behind them, the shadows shifted, and a blur of emaciated flesh raced by.

Garcia’s heart flipped at the sight of Variants lurking in the shadows. “Quiet,” he whispered. “Those things will hear you.”

Scabs let out a lunatic laugh. “Wait till you see him.”

“See who?”

“The White King.”

Garcia wrapped his fingers around the switchblade again, still dazed but finally comprehending. He glanced over at Stevo, who looked up and caught his gaze. It was then he realized Frankie and Scabs weren’t soldiers who had come to rescue them. They weren’t there to save them at all. They were there to take them to the Variant leader.

B
eckham had lost track of how many days had passed since the outbreak began. But he certainly hadn’t forgotten the Osprey ride that had started it all. He could still picture Dr. Ellis’s nervous yet excited face, and the herd of horses running freely through a field in North Carolina. It seemed like a long time ago. Much longer than the month or so that had passed.

Now he was on another Osprey, on another mission with limited intel. Working with men he didn’t trust was part of being a Delta Force Operator. For years he’d operated in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa with foreign soldiers. Never had he imagined his own military would be responsible for the end of the world.

Kate smiled at him from her seat in the other aisle before turning back to her hushed conversation with Ringgold. Beckham reached down to stroke Apollo’s coat.

“When you said members of Team Ghost, I didn’t realize that would include a bomb-sniffing dog,” General Johnson said from a few seats to Beckham’s left.

“Apollo here has become my shadow, sir. He wouldn’t have let me go without a fight.”

Johnson chuckled. “Is that so? Well, he’ll fit right in on the
GW
. We have a whole squad of bomb-sniffing dogs. Some Variant sniffers, too.”

“Sir?”

“Dogs trained to identify Variants long before they identify us. From what Captain Humphrey told me, it’s partly why the
GW
is still in the water. Before they realized those things could swim, the strike group lost several sailors at the dockyards of Virginia. Now we patrol the decks with dogs. The Variants have excellent olfactory senses, but nothing like a German Shepherd.”

Beckham stroked Apollo’s coat again. “Sounds like Captain Humphrey succeeded where plenty have failed. Surviving out there this long must have been difficult.”

“Resilience, strength, and a bit of luck had something to do with it, I would say,” Johnson said. “I’ll tell you one thing—the view sure as hell beats what we had at Offutt.”

Johnson rested his head on the seat, and Beckham attempted to relax in his own. He wanted to trust it was over. He wanted to believe in the military he had sworn his allegiance and life to, but Johnson’s connection to Gibson, Kennor, and Wood made that nearly impossible. Johnson seemed like a nice Southern gentleman, but Beckham had known some Southern politicians. They were good actors.

As long as the human race still walked the Earth, there would be evil men and women in positions of power. Beckham knew the woman sitting next to Kate wasn’t one of them. The future President had listened quietly for most of the flight, only chatting with Kate from time to time. Ringgold was skeptical, just like Beckham, and that was good. It’s what he liked about her.

The blare of the comm system echoed in the troop hold a few minutes later. “Home plate ETA fifteen minutes,” one the pilots said.

“We should be passing the coast of Georgia,” Johnson said. He twisted to look at Lieutenant Rowe a few seats to his left. “Are the Variant Hunters still in the field?”

“Yes, sir,” Rowe answered. “But they haven’t checked in for four hours.”

Chow and Horn, sitting in the row in front of Beckham, both tilted their heads to listen. Johnson cursed under his breath.

“Not going to lie to you, Master Sergeant,” Johnson said. “Your reputation precedes you. I’d heard of Team Ghost long before Fitz put Colonel Wood down. I was hoping you and the Variant Hunters would meet. Share some of your secrets, even, but I’m afraid they might have used up their nine lives.”