by Tom Abrahams
Bringing up his wrist, he sucked on the metallic-tasting fluid. The flesh wound was deep, but it would heal in days. The chemicals had made him a supersoldier, but he knew even superheroes could die. It didn’t matter how impressive their power, every hero had a mortal flaw.
Moving like his favorite childhood hero, Spiderman, he continued through the vent. Something about the memory of his childhood comic-book hero made him faster and filled him with strength.
He had no idea where he was going, but instinct told him to keep moving away from the voices. Several shouted in the corridor below and he froze.
“Where the fuck did he go?” someone yelled.
“He couldn’t have gone far. Check every room, every space, dammit!” yelled another man.
“Get Major Gibson and everyone else topside,” replied a third voice.
“Working on it, Sarge,” said a fourth.
Brett’s eyes widened, and his blood warmed. He knew where he was going now. As soon as the voices drifted away, he continued crawling through the passage until he was out of breath and his muscles burned.
Even his body had a breaking point.
He squirmed, moving on his elbows to keep the momentum. At the next intersection, he checked through the vent opening. Instead of a hallway below, he saw a room. Some sort of office.
Listening, he checked for voices, and hearing none, he broke the vent cover and grabbed it before it could fall to the floor. He quietly dropped down, his blood-soaked feet hardly making a noise on impact.
He was in a different area of the facility now. He looked out into a hallway and saw signage. Brett stepped out to read the map, stopping on an arrow pointing to an exit. Somewhere in the distance a door opened.
Ambush them, said the female voice. Take their eyes!
Hushed voices followed the metallic thunk of the closing door, and the click of boots on the tile floor. He counted six of them. Too many to fight in such a confined space given the waves of exhaustion that threatened to end his primal quest.
Instead of confronting them, Brett made a run for the exit and strained to see through the darkness. The door was just at the end of the hallway. This one had no keypad. He had dropped into a non-secure area of the facility. Superheroes also needed luck, and Brett had just hit the lottery.
It opened when he was five feet away, and a woman in a lab coat walked into the hallway, a flashlight in hand. She directed it at him, the beam hitting him in the face.
Brett shielded his eyes from the bright light and darted away, watching her as he melted into the shadows.
She remained standing there, mouth agape, trembling, searching for him with the beam. For a second, he glared at her from a crouched position, a memory of a woman from his past surfacing in his mind. There was something about her youthful features and short brown hair. And her brown eyes that were wide with unmitigated fear.
“Please stop,” she said, lips quivering. “Major Gibson sent me to bring you in peacefully.”
He thought I would go with a woman who looks like Stacey…Brett realized. That explained why she was all by herself. He had a feeling there were more women sent out in other parts of the facility.
The soldiers behind him entered the hallway and, shouting, called out, “Stop him!”
“Get out of the way!”
Gunfire cracked, and Brett ducked down and scrambled over the floor on all fours. Rounds peppered the woman, blood blossoming away from the entry wounds and punching through her fragile flesh.
She crumpled on the ground, gasping for air as her life source drained from her. He again stared at her, trying to understand why he was feeling this…
The word escaped him.
He hadn’t felt like this for as long as he could remember.
It was empathy, he realized as he moved through the open doorway and slammed it behind him. A pointless emotion that he had long since forgotten. So why remember it now?
The woman wasn’t Stacey. Stacey was gone forever.
Brett crushed his emotions like a bug and loped up the stairwell, away from the men hunting him, so he could continue his own hunt for the true villain—Gibson.
He listened as he moved onto the first landing and looked around the corner. The area was lit by overhead lights, and he could see it was clear. So were the next stairs and the next landing. He made it to the sixth sub-ground floor before he heard voices again.
“Go, go, go!” someone shouted.
A male. Definitely a soldier. Probably guiding civilians out of the facility or more sheep to the culling. Below, voices sounded where the soldiers who had gunned down the scientist were running up the stairs.
Again, enemies were closing in from all directions.
Brett grabbed the door handle at the next landing and twisted it slowly with his sharp talons. They should have cut them, he thought. The hardened nails were almost as good as knives.
He entered a room of desks and wall-mounted chalkboards. Bolting across the space, he made his way to the next door. That one opened into another room. Several soldiers in uniforms were crouched on the floor, hunkered down. One of them, a bald man with glasses, screamed.
Brett almost laughed at the coward. He jumped onto a desk and then leapt into the air, bringing the guy down as he went to run for the door. He traced a line across the man’s throat with a talon, opening up a gushing gash.
Hot blood squirted Brett in the face.
He was moving again before the dying officer hit the ground. Two others rushed to his aid, and Brett left them to deal with the distraction.
Stop! came the voice in his mind. Don’t let any of them take another breath!
Brett kept moving; he had to be getting close to the surface now. That was where Gibson was going, and time was running out to cut him off.
At the next hallway he darted for the next door that was marked Floor 1. It swung out and into a hallway that opened to two glass doors. Sheets of rain hit the pavement outside. Beyond that, a wet lawn and barbed-wire fences blocked his escape.
Brett had scaled fences taller than these before, but that was under the cover of darkness. He stopped to think, realizing he couldn’t go out the front entrance. There were several guards posted outside in the rain, facing away from him. He went back into the building and found another room, abandoned and dark. Moving to the windows, he forced one open and stepped out into a flower bed.
Keeping low, he moved against the whipping wind. Rain pattered his body, rinsing away the fresh blood. He scanned his surroundings, trying to get his bearings.
A chop, chop sound caught his ear. Faint, but recognizable. He scanned the skyline to his right, where a black dot was crossing below the storm clouds. That son of a bitch was trying to escape!
Brett took off across the lawn, trying to keep low, but having a difficult time restraining himself. Shouting came over the howl of the wind, and a gunshot cracked.
The round hit the dirt by his feet.
A sniper.
If he could just get around the next…
Brett dove into the dirt as another crack sounded. This time the round whizzed by his body, so close he could see the streak pass on his left. He pushed himself up and bolted around the corner before the sniper could get off another shot.
Around the bend he saw the helo pad, and a group of four soldiers surrounding two officers in uniform. His senses all seemed to snap alert in that moment: his hearing, sight, smell, taste… everything was even more potent and intense.
He could hear the voices of the two officers and smell the adrenaline coursing through their veins, like a wild animal.
They were afraid.
And they had good reason.
Lieutenant Trevor Brett, the super soldier, the White Ghost, was coming for them.
He went down on all fours and skittered over the grass like the beast into which they had molded him. By the time anyone saw him, he had closed the gap by half. Gunshots cracked, and rounds zipped into the grass. He kept low
and zigzagged, as he had done in Vietnam when four soldiers on a hill had him in their sights.
The Black Hawk helicopter lowered over the pad, its blades thumping and the rotor gusts slamming into the soldiers firing at Brett. The two officers ducked down, and one of them made his way to the open door of the chopper, but the other man stopped.
“Don’t kill him!” the man yelled.
Through the rain Brett saw him. It was his creator.
Gibson grabbed one of the soldiers and forced his barrel toward the ground. The other three men kept their guns aimed at Brett as he continued his approach.
“Sir, he isn’t stopping!” yelled one of the soldiers.
Gibson pulled out a handgun and aimed it at Brett, closing one eye.
Brett stood on all fours and ran as fast as he could, muscles straining, veins bulging, heart thumping like an automatic weapon. He was ten feet away when the crack came. Something hit him from behind and exploded out his upper chest, snapping his collarbone. Blood, bone, and grit blew out the exit wound. He flailed with his left arm, but his right went limp as he crashed to the ground in a heap.
“Hold your fire!” Gibson screamed.
Brett lay in the dirt, looking up at the officer as he approached with his handgun angled down. The other four soldiers fanned out, their barrels pointed at his head.
Brett tried to get up, but his right arm wouldn’t work, and his body was numb from the high-caliber round that had blown through his back and out his chest.
Get up! Kill them! Rip their lungs out like wings! screeched the voice in his mind. She sounded mad, panicked almost. He had never heard her like this.
This was the worst injury Brett had ever suffered.
But he wasn’t about to give up.
Brett pushed at the ground with his left hand. It wobbled, and gnashing his teeth, he let out a scream of agony as his strength gave out and he crumpled back to the ground. Blood pooled in the thin grass, and his wispy wet hair hung like a curtain in front of his eyes, but he could still see his creator.
Gibson crouched down, his uniform soaked from the rain. He used a sleeve to wipe his face clean and then stared at Brett for several seconds.
“Nothing…” Brett muttered. “This is nothing compared to what I will do to you.”
Gibson laughed and then shook his head. “You don’t give up, do you? That’s good, son. That’s why you’re so important.”
More soldiers ran across the grass. Brett couldn’t see them, but could hear their boots sloshing in the mud over the chop of the rotor blades.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you all fixed up,” Gibson said. “You’re too valuable an asset to let bleed out in the dirt. I still have grand plans for you.”
He looked up at the soldiers and jerked his chin. The men surrounded Brett, their weapons still angled down, all of them appearing terrified of the beast laying in the pooling blood.
“Get him up!” Gibson shouted.
The other soldiers joined the group, at least ten now.
Get up! the woman screeched in his mind. You have to kill them!
Brett let out a shriek of his own as two men grabbed him under the armpits and yanked him to his feet. The pain was worse than anything he could remember enduring, despite all of the torture over the years. His head slumped against his chest, the jagged end of his collarbone slicing his veiny cheek.
He didn’t bother moving his face, his view of the man he was going to kill was perfect at this angle. Gibson walked away from the chopper and pointed toward the buildings.
Brett blinked as his vision darkened. He wasn’t sure if he would survive this wound, but if he did, he was certain he would have his revenge either in this living nightmare, or in the hell that awaited them.
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Excerpt from
Extinction Horizon
Prologue
March 3, 2015
World Health Organization Field Hospital Guinea
Dr. Chad Roberts popped a stimulant into his mouth and swallowed it without the aid of water. He was exhausted from traveling. In less than twenty-four hours, he’d left his office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s headquarters in Atlanta, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and landed in Conakry, Guinea. From there a chopper had taken him to a WHO field hospital on the outskirts of a remote village twenty miles west of the city of Dabola. The region, though isolated, had a population of approximately 114,000. During his flights, he’d slogged through the reports of the new and deadly Ebola strain. Preliminary notes revealed the micro-outbreak was severe. The virus was killing faster than ever before, and Chad suspected it had mutated. The mere thought had prevented him from sleeping while he traveled. Chad had arrived with deep bags under his eyes and a headache that made it difficult to think.
He slipped on his biohazard space suit. The white walls of the portable biohazard facility closed in around him as he pulled on his helmet. The narrow view through his visor always made everything seem smaller, but he also felt safe. Many scientists described feeling claustrophobic in the suits, but not Chad. The suit gave him the reassurance he needed to face the world’s most lethal biological agents.
After hastily moving through the laundry list of protocols, Chad pulled back a plastic screen and moved into the next room, where Dr. Debra Jones, from the WHO, waited. She tapped her boot against the floor and glanced up with a scowl when she saw him.
“We’re late,” she said. “The rest of the team is already in the village.”
“Sorry,” Chad replied. “I have a hell of an awful headache.”
“I presume it will get much worse when you arrive in the hot zone,” Dr. Jones said coldly.
Chad’s gut sank at the statement. This wasn’t his first time in the field, but he’d never seen the effects of Ebola in person. He swallowed hard as they stepped into the blinding sunlight. The humidity instantly fogged Chad’s visor as they left the cool interior of the biohazard facility. The door sealed behind them with a metallic click.
They moved briskly across a dirt path the color of clay. A Toyota pickup truck waited a hundred yards away, its aged muffler coughing smoke into the sky. Chad set his equipment on the tan bed of the truck and hoisted himself up. He spun and offered a hand to Dr. Jones. She took it reluctantly. They settled onto the metal bed with their backs against the cab as a slender Guinean man closed the tailgate behind them.
Squinting, Chad looked up at the ruthless midday sun. He’d been outside for only two minutes, but he was already suffocating within his suit. Salty drops of perspiration cascaded down his forehead.
It was going to be a brutally long day.
Typically they would have traveled in the morning to beat the midday heat, but a problem with his equipment back at the airport had caused a delay. Now they were heading out at the hottest time of day.
The Guinean man smacked the side of the truck, and the driver hit the gas. The Toyota lurched forward and pulled onto a brown frontage road leading away from the cluster of dome-shaped biohazard facilities. Chad stared in awe, realizing how foreign they looked against the lush green landscape. He could only imagine what the locals had thought when they were going up.
“How long until we get there?” Chad shouted.
Dr. Jones held up three fingers as she gazed out the window. The truck was racing toward a fort of trees in the distance. An oasis of green in an otherwise brown canvas.
The Faranah Region of Guinea was a beautiful place.
Thick forests claimed much of the terrain. The mixture of browns and greens formed a warm collage of colors. But somewhere amidst the dense trees they were driving toward, there was an ancient evil.
Chad focused on the forest and wondered where the Ebola virus was hiding. They still didn’t know what the reservoir was—Mother Nature
had harbored versions of the virus for millions of years, but it wasn’t until the twentieth century that scientists had actually identified the Ebola strain.
Ebola wasn’t the only virus Africa was hiding. The continent was home to some of the nastiest Level 4 contagions that Mother Nature had cooked up. Chad thought of some parts of Africa kind of like a modern-day Jurassic Park, without the dinosaurs. The diseases there were prehistoric.
The truck suddenly swerved to the right; dirt exploded from under the back tires and sent a cloud of dust into the sky. Chad flailed his arms and grabbed the side of the pickup. His head bounced up and down as the driver pulled the Toyota to the side of the road. Branches and twigs snapped under the weight of the truck’s oversized tires. When the dust cleared, Chad saw trees barricading the road behind them.
“The locals did that!” Dr. Jones yelled. “They’ve done it for decades to stop the spread of infection. Smart, but it’ll make it difficult for us to get back.”
Chad nodded and tightened his grip on the side of the truck. He’d heard of villages isolating themselves in the past to prevent the spread of deadly viruses. It was probably one reason Ebola rarely showed up in major population centers. People tended to die at home, with their loved ones.
Several minutes later, the truck pulled back onto the road. Glancing through the glass of the cab window, Chad saw they were approaching their destination—a small village where the outbreak had started.
Dr. Jones had been deployed here a week ago, with the first team from WHO. Chad had read her most recent report. The population of the village was ninety-four. More than half of those residents had already been infected, with half of the infected already dead. Preliminary statistics pointed at a new strain, but Chad wasn’t so sure. Not yet.
The truck eased to a stop about a hundred yards from two WHO doctors wearing biohazard suits.
The local driver jumped down and walked around the truck to let Dr. Jones and Chad out of the back.
“Thanks,” Chad muttered. He followed Dr. Jones toward the other doctors, a short man named Howard Lacey and his taller colleague, Bill Fischer. After brief introductions, the two men led them toward the village at an urgent pace.
