Extinction Evolution (The Extinction Cycle Book 4) (9 page)

Garcia resisted the urge to put a bullet in his head and end his suffering, knowing that what came next would be worse than torture. In his scope, the tiny Variants continued to skitter around the man. They were all young, maybe two years old, but they were fast as hell. He had never seen any Variants this young before.

Two of the creatures collided clumsily. They fell to their backs, then jumped onto two feet, hissing. Long snake like tongues shot out of sucker lips, and the small beasts clawed at one another.

The Alpha Variant shrieked and separated the two creatures before Garcia could get a good look. They scampered away, still hissing like oversized lizards. The female Variants crowded around, and the children arched their backs as the male human prisoner crawled toward first base. He turned every few feet, tears streaking down his face.

“Please don’t do this! Don’t kill me! I’m begging you!”

The Alpha ambled after the children and roared at them. Then it pointed a thin talon at the man dragging his injured body across the grass. When the prisoner saw what was happening, he pushed himself to his feet and staggered toward the pitcher’s mound.

A high-pitched shriek came from the Alpha’s mouth. This time the young Variants took off on all fours, scampering after the man with their backs still arched. One of them crossed in front of Garcia’s scope. As it moved, he saw there was something different about it—something he’d never seen. Its skull curved into a cone, and its ears were pointed like a cats. He carefully lowered his helmet cam toward the scene, documenting every second as one of the small beasts lunged and clamped its sucker lips on the prisoner’s ankle.

“NO!” the man screamed. He dragged the beast attached to his leg into the outfield, where the other five finally caught up and brought him to the ground. They all latched down on him, tearing strands of flayed flesh away with their jagged teeth. One of the beasts, the smallest, was knocked away from the feeding. It hissed and slashed its way back to the man. Again, it was swatted away.

In the bleachers behind home plate, the other hundred Variants watched like it was some sort of sick fucking game. Garcia said a mental prayer, asking God to end the man’s suffering. But it was not to be. The screams continued, the children ripping through muscle and tendons. As the moonlight spilled over them, Garcia finally got a good look at their misshapen bodies through his scope.

Jesus H. Christ.

Scaly plating covered their appendages and wrapped around their chests and backs like vests. The armor continued up their necks and curved skulls, where it crested into a bony Mohawk. The smallest beast shot a glance in his direction, chewing on a hunk of meat it had managed to scavenge. Wide and oval, the child’s eyes were different to the reptilian eyes he was accustomed to seeing. It threw back its cone shaped head and swallowed the chunk of flesh whole.

They look like alien armadillos.

Garcia shifted his muzzle back to the female Variants standing in front of home plate. He wasn’t a doctor or a scientist, but even he could figure out they were the mothers of these Variant children. But how was that possible? The outbreak had started only five weeks ago, yet these children looked at least two years old. Garcia roved his scope back to the smallest of the beasts, the runt of the litter. It scampered back to the feeding, swiping and hissing at its larger siblings.

Stevo tapped Garcia’s arm.

“Sarge,” he whispered. “I think we need to move.”

Garcia swept his crosshairs back to the muscular Variant and saw what the corporal meant. The beast was no longer watching the feeding. It was watching them.

I
t was just before midnight, but Riley couldn’t sleep. His legs and his back ached. He was so fucking sick of sitting in his damn chair. Lying in a bed didn’t help—especially the beds in the barracks—but this was where he wanted to be, with his fellow soldiers.

“Chow, you awake, brother?” Riley asked, craning his neck.

The Asian-American man lay in the bunk to his right, jet-black hair covering the left side of his face. If it weren’t for Chow’s instant response, Riley would have thought he was sleeping.

“Yeah, kid. You hurtin’ tonight?”

Riley gripped the sides of his bed and sat up. “Yeah, my back is killing me.”

“You’ve been sitting in that chair for almost, what, a whole month?”

“Something like that,” Riley said. “You can’t sleep either?”

“Haven’t slept much since Jinx died,” Chow said. He brushed the hair from his face and sat up. “I need a smoke.”

“Since when do you smoke?”

Chow didn’t reply. He swung his legs over his bed and looked at Riley’s wheelchair.

“I’ll come,” Riley said. “Help me up.”

Chow hoisted him into the chair and pushed him through the aisle between bunks. They passed a few snoring Marines on the way out, but the rest of the room was empty. Everyone else was on duty. It reminded Riley how much things had changed.

A few good things had happened since the apocalypse. Riley focused on them as Chow maneuvered him through the room. Even though Riley felt isolated from Team Ghost, he was happy Beckham had finally found someone, and Horn reuniting with his daughters was a miracle worth celebrating. Then there was Meg, the superhero of a woman Beckham had rescued from New York. Riley found a smile on his face every time he thought of the firefighter. 

Chow pushed the doors open to a brilliant moon. The glow covered the entire island. Riley sat there, listening to the chirp of crickets and feeling the breeze on his face. For a moment it reminded him a lot of a summer night in Iowa, but he knew the quiet wouldn’t last. The silence never seemed to last. It was always shattered by the crack of gunfire or the high-pitched shriek of a monster. If science couldn’t stop the Variants, then no one would be left to enjoy moments like these.

Riley reached down for the knife tucked in his belt and stared at his casts. He bit his bottom lip, clenched his jaw, and gripped the handle of the knife tightly. The casts seemed to tighten around his legs. He suddenly felt more trapped than ever before. He needed to walk again. Needed to
run
again. If Kate failed and the Variants won, he wanted to go out on his terms.

Chow glanced over. “What the hell are you doing, kid?” He flicked the cig away and rushed to the chair.

Riley slipped the tip of the blade under the cast on his right leg. “I’m not going to sit here any longer.” He was breathing harder now, his chest heaving.

“Kid, you can’t remove those yet. You still have—”

“Three weeks,” Riley quickly replied. “Plus rehab.”

“That’s not long man. Three weeks is—”

Riley looked up and caught Chow’s gaze. “The world may not last that long.” He dug the tip of the blade inside of the cast and said, “You going to help me, brother, or what?”

T
he stink of wet dog hair hung in the air of Kate’s small bedroom. Beckham sat on the bed holding Lieutenant Colonel Jensen’s .45 in his hands. Apollo was camped out at his feet, sleeping peacefully with his muzzle resting on the cold floor. The sight made Beckham jealous. He was exhausted, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw Lieutenant Colonel Jensen choking on his own blood. Even if he could sleep, he wouldn’t be able to for long. The base looked nearly deserted through the window, and without other soldiers to count on, Beckham couldn’t afford to rest, especially not after the boat they’d seen earlier.

He thought of Wood’s men still locked up in Building 4. He simply didn’t trust them, no matter how many times they claimed they would follow Major Smith’s orders.

Beckham placed the .45 on the bedside table and looked at the clock. It was after midnight and Kate still wasn’t back from the lab. He was half tempted to grab his M4 and take Apollo out for a quick patrol, but he didn’t want to miss her when she did return. They hadn’t talked much since Jensen’s death, and he needed to know she was okay.

Reaching down, Beckham ran a hand across Apollo’s thick coat. After a few minutes of feeling the dog’s fur against his palm, Beckham’s racing heart began to calm. He unlaced his boots and sat on the floor next to Apollo. As much as he wanted to lie down in the bed, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Guilt ate at him—guilt that he was alive when so many others had died. Men and women he couldn’t save.

Apollo glanced up, then rested his muzzle on Beckham’s lap. He patted the dog’s head and looked back at the window. Time seemed to warp as Beckham sat there, staring into the glow of the full moon. He was lost in his thoughts when the door creaked open.

“Reed?” Kate whispered. “Are you sleeping?”

He rubbed at his eyes and shook his head. “No, I was waiting for you to come back from the lab. Wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“That’s sweet, but you shouldn’t have. You need rest.”

“So do you.”

Kate placed a small backpack on the floor and walked over to the window. She pulled her hair tie away and let her brown hair fall over her shoulders. In the moonlight, he could see her shivering.

Pushing himself to his feet, he stood next to her. “Kate...”

She continued looking out the window, her gaze locked on the tree branches shifting in the breeze. Raising her hand to her mouth, she cupped it over her lips and sobbed.

“Kate,” Beckham said again. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her to his chest. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

“No,” she said, pulling away and shaking her head. “It’s
not
okay, Reed. The Variants are adapting around the world. They’re evolving. They’re...faster...and...”

Beckham gently turned her toward him and searched her eyes. He could tell she was hiding something that went beyond the evolution of the monsters. For several days he’d sensed it, but he hadn’t wanted to pry it out of her. He wanted it to come naturally. She was supposed to trust him.

“I’m just a soldier, Kate, but haven’t they been evolving all along?”

“Something’s changed.”

“What?”

Beckham imagined the creature’s talons growing and their meaty bodies morphing into something even worse. After a deep breath and a pause, Kate whispered as if she wanted to keep her words a secret. 

“They’re breeding.”

Beckham wasn’t sure what to say at first. The thought had crossed his mind. It was disgusting, but so what? If her weapon worked, it wouldn’t matter. The idea of killing kids made his heart ache, but he reminded himself these weren’t human kids. The Variants were monsters. He had gunned down children Variants in Niantic and New York. He would do it again if he had to. It struck him, then, that maybe Kate did care. Maybe she couldn’t bear the thought of being the one tasked with killing millions again, even if those millions were monsters.

“This new world we live in, it’s not a place for kids. Variant or human,” Beckham reminded her. “Don’t let this affect your judgment or your work. You have to stay strong. We have to kill the Variants, young and old alike.” 

Kate nodded and sat on the bed. He slid next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. A single tear streaked down her face in the moonlight. After a few minutes of silence, she turned to him with a meaningful look in her eyes, like she wanted to tell him something important, but all she ended up saying was, “You’re right, Reed. No place for kids.”

“L
ieutenant, those things were communicating!” President Mitchell’s lungs burned like he’d swallowed a breath of frozen air. The early morning runs on Capitol Hill seemed like ages ago, and it showed. He could hardly keep up with the well-trained Marines leading him and his staff down the narrow corridor.

Lieutenant Stanton either hadn’t heard Mitchell or was ignoring him. He waved the group, twenty strong, into a tunnel that emptied into a massive chamber deep inside Cheyenne Mountain. There were multiple buildings here, some of them three stories high, all of them built on springs that would allow them to shift if a nuke hit the mountain.

Each structure had its own purpose, from living quarters to a movie theatre. The underground mini-city was buried under two thousand feet of rock and designed to protect approximately three hundred people for several months. Over one hundred thousand bolts had been drilled into the mountain to ensure structural strength and security. Eight diesel engines powered the facility, and air filtration systems protected them from chemical, biological, and radiological agents. The engineering was incredible, but the springs, bolts, and advanced filtering system couldn’t protect them from the Variants if they got inside.