Extinction Survival Series | Book 4 | Warrior's Fate

by Browning, Walt

  “This is Red One actual. I am initiating contact.”

  Carver hit the accelerator and turned left off of East 1st onto Spring Street, pulling up next to a covered escalator that led down into the Grand Park underground transit station. Besides the miles of tunnels created during prohibition, there were many more miles of underground transit lines that crisscrossed the city.

  The drone footage showed that the Variants were using the older tunnel system and not the railway tracks. The entrance to the older prohibition subterranean corridors was just beyond the transit entrance. About fifty yards further into the park was a public restroom facility. Next to these block structures was a large stairwell that went down to the old corridors.

  Carver pulled his HUMVEE past the transit entrance and came up about thirty yards in front of the Variants’ stairwell entrance.

  Rex became animated as Carver popped up into the rooftop opening and manned the machine gun. He racked a .50-caliber round into the chamber and held it over the tunnel’s mouth.

  Rex barked as several pairs of glowing eyes appeared in the gloomy stairwell entrance. Carver didn’t need to wait further. A target presented itself. He tightly gripped the two vertical bars on the back handle of the machine gun. He aimed down the oversized circular targeting sight and felt for the trigger paddle by his left fingers. He massaged the metal plate then pressed it back. Three bullets shot out of the barrel before he could release the trigger. He pressed again, sending four more rounds into the tunnel’s mouth. A tracer round shot out in the middle of the second burst, confirming that he was on target. He strafed the entrance, taking out the infected three and four at a time.

  Rex continued to bark as more Variants tried to escape.

  He heard a primal, enraged scream echo from the dark entrance, then several answering cries before more Variants appeared. He continued his onslaught.

  Carver pressed the trigger bar once more then quickly released it. Each time he fired, his barrel would rise. It forced him to stop and reacquire the target. Tracer rounds had been inserted in the gun’s belt every fifth bullet. It was a huge help in keeping his aim on line.

  He fell into a rhythm. Press the trigger, adjust back down, and press it again.

  Variants ran up the steps, only to be cut down by the gun’s projectiles. Carver almost felt sorry for them. He was beginning to have fun, like a sick game of whack-a-mole.

  Carver had put down dozens of the creatures and was feeling rather cocky about the situation. If things continued like this, he might just kill them all off without having to run those stairs back at U.S. Bank.

  A full minute went by and another twenty-one infected were shredded.

  Then reality struck.

  His belt ran dry. A 100-rounds box had been spent in just a minute.

  Carver dropped back into the vehicle and jumped into the driver’s seat. He maneuvered around a large concrete planter and aimed back onto the street. He drove across the sidewalk, next to the transit tunnel.

  A Variant hurled itself on top of his front hood from the subway station stairs. Carver weaved hard, sending the creature flying from its tenuous hold. He shot forward to the end of the park then turned right toward 1st Street. He stopped at the intersection and looked back. Dozens of Variants were hurtling up the road. Satisfied that he was being followed, he turned back up 1st and drove alongside the city’s giant courthouse.

  “Viper One. This is Red One actual. How am I looking? Over.”

  Carver got no response.

  “Viper One, do you copy?”

  Carver struggled to look up and find Everly, all the while swerving to avoid abandoned cars. When he finally got a break and could check the sky, he spotted the SuperCobra and almost ran his HUMVEE into a stalled truck. The pilot was being chased by a cloud of the flying Variant children.

  “Red One. This is Blue One,” Shader said over the radio. “Viper is busy. What’s your status? Over.”

  “I’m passing the courthouse.”

  Carver came up quickly on his turn. He slammed the steering wheel over, drifting the giant armored vehicle into the left turn on Grand Avenue. The U.S. Bank Tower was a few blocks up this road.

  The Walt Disney Concert Hall was on his right. Its multilevel polished-metal façade gleamed with the last rays of the orange-and-red sunset. He slammed on his brakes and looked back.

  A parking deck sat low to the ground on his left, with most of the spaces underneath surface level. He had a clear view of the courthouse and the distant spire of City Hall.

  Nothing. No pursuit. Where the hell had they gone?

  Carver gave them a few moments to appear. He was about to turn around, when his radio came to life.

  “Red One! The is Blue One. We’re being overrun. Abort mission. I repeat, abort mission. Do you copy? Over.”

  Carver could hear the Stryker’s remote-controlled machine gun firing in the background as Shader screamed his status.

  “Blue One. Blue One. This is…” Carver began. That was as far as he broadcast. His finger fell from the radio’s PTT button.

  He was looking at the courthouse. The long, four-story government building ran the entire length of its block. It was an ugly building. Whitewashed and lacking character, it stood out for its banal, mundane appearance.

  That changed quickly.

  Thousands of Variants swarmed over its roof. It was like a dam had burst, and a flood of the infected had been released. They literally flowed over the top of the structure and came crashing down to the pavement not a hundred yards away.

  It made no sense.

  The flying juveniles, the swarm at Pershing Square, and now a horde of infected larger than he ever feared.

  Carver looked at Rex, and for the first time in a very long while, he didn’t know what to do. He sat frozen in the HUMVEE with no idea how he was going to get out of this mess.

  Under Grand Park

  Escondo – The Redheaded Alpha

  The sound of machine gun fire woke the giant from its slumber. Escondo had feasted on a slab of fresh meat earlier that day. Its servant collaborator Tommy had called it a deer.

  It had its fill of the creature’s guts. It especially liked eating the liver and heart, although it didn’t remember what those organs had been called. It only knew that they were full of fresh blood and had a tasty, chewy meat.

  Escondo jumped up at the sound of the human weapon and ran out into the tunnel as the Variant army quickly awoke from hibernation. The tunnel exit out onto Grand Park was a few hundred yards away. The giant pushed and shoved its slower minions out of the way as it rushed toward the sound of battle. The machine gun fire became louder as it approached the stairs.

  It stopped short of rushing outside as it watched several of its clan shredded by bullets at the top of the landing. There was a momentary lull in the fight, then it heard a sound that sent it into a rage. A dog’s bark.

  Suddenly, the memories of Carver and the man-creature’s animal exploded in its consciousness. Carver, the one that had been killing the horde. Carver, the thing that it had been hunting and had yet to catch. Carver and the cursed animal had come to their lair.

  Escondo grinned as bullets resumed tearing apart several more of its subjects.

  It was time.

  The horde was ready.

  They must all awaken and attack. It was time to kill the Carver.

  Escondo roared. Not the angry scream it used to freeze and kill its enemy, nor the heated sound it used to call a mate. It was the cry of a king, calling all its servants to battle. It was the sound of war.

  Escondo’s voice echoed down the corridors under the city, amplified by the answering calls of its minions. Within moments, all the Variants under its control were rolling through the subterranean corridors. Tens of thousands of the creatures awoke from their hibernation and rushed out to battle.

  They emptied out of the subway at Pershing Square. They flowed up from the basements of City Hall. They flew from their nests in
the Los Angeles sewers.

  By the time Carver had turned to look for signs of pursuit, he was already well inside the horde’s dominion. He was driving on roads that were owned by the infected; he just never knew that they were a dozen feet below him. Carver was in Escondo’s kingdom and the SEAL was the alpha’s only thought as it rushed up the stairs and climbed the walls of the nearby courthouse.

  At its side were scores of its best warriors. All were armed with knives or swords. All were looking to be the one to kill the human and its wicked dog. It was Satan emptying the bowels of hell. There would be no escape.

  Viper One

  Everly

  Everly’s eyes were on the SuperCobra’s infrared camera as he circled over downtown Los Angeles. The proximity of so many structures made spotting a potential Variant difficult, and he needed to give the screen his full concentration.

  “All right, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get to our positions,” Carver said over the radio.

  “About time,” Everly muttered to himself.

  He’d been cruising above the abandoned city for about thirty minutes. Between him and the Freedom’s drone, there were no reports of any Variants.

  He flew slowly over Pershing Square as dozens of vehicles began to scatter to their assigned locations. The three Abrams tanks were especially impressive as they rumbled through the streets, pushing aside or crushing cars and small trucks as they moved into position. Their size and power were amplified by the tight quarters between the massive sky rises. He continued the racetrack pattern above the downtown buildings, waiting for Carver to kick off the party.

  The evening winter sky was clear. Flying over southern California could be tricky this time of year. There was a strong Santa Ana wind blowing from the east, bringing fine desert sand into the air. The tiny glass crystals blew out to sea, creating a magnificent sunset as the last of the day’s light was filtered into a rainbow of colors by the desert’s prismatic dust.

  He circled the area twice more. On the last pass, he saw Carver’s HUMVEE pull up to the intersection next to the park. He checked his watch. It would only be a few more moments.

  He came around and hovered above Carver’s location. With seven hundred rounds in his cannon and a full rack of Hellfire missiles, he could provide support if Carver got into trouble. Otherwise, the plan was to lure the remaining Variants to the bank tower and implode the building on top of them. His armament might be needed for that if the C4 and RDX didn’t do the job.

  From his vantage point directly above City Hall, he saw Carver pop his head up in the HUMVEE’s open cupola then begin strafing the stairwell entrance. At about six hundred feet up, he used the SuperCobra’s camera to keep an eye on the battle. The magnified, infrared view showed white explosions erupting from the end of the mounted M2 and the occasional white streak of a tracer round impacting inside the covered stair landing.

  He was watching intently for any sign of a breakout. If the Variants managed to get past Carver’s fire, he’d be there in an instant, using his cannon to make sure the SEAL got away. With his attention focused on Carver, Everly was shocked when his attack helicopter was rocked by a hard collision.

  He was under attack.

  His bird rolled and dipped with the impact. He struggled to get the craft under control, tweaking the cyclic, the collective and foot pedals. Once stable, he shot forward and looked to the left and right, searching for the attacking monster that might still be clinging to his aircraft. The flight dynamics of his helicopter felt normal.

  “Red One! The is Blue One. We’re being overrun. Abort mission. I repeat, abort mission. Do you copy? Over.” Shader’s voice was panicked, but Everly still had to find the creature that attacked him.

  He banked hard to the left, allowing himself a look back. It also brought him back over Pershing Square. No reason he couldn’t do both. He never had a chance to look down and see what had spooked Shader. His attention snapped to the eastern sky, thick with a cloud of Variant juveniles.

  Hundreds of the beetle-like creatures were swarming toward him. He banked the craft away from the oncoming infected flock and shot off to the west. The damn creatures were fast. Their wings fluttered at an incredible rate. He had to fly well over a hundred knots to put distance between him and the threat. By the time he was able to pivot and face the malformed monsters, he was over the Pacific Ocean, just above Santa Monica.

  The ground was going dark as the sun dipped into the ocean. At this height, the sunset glinted off the creatures’ carapaces, reflecting back a lavender-and-blue light. It looked like a mass of lightning bugs, all afire with azure and purple sparks. Everly took aim and fired his cannon.

  It was hard to miss with the Variants clustered together. He sprayed his rounds into the oncoming mass, shredding dozens. After a five-second burst, he released the rotating cannon’s trigger. He’d punched a hole in the cloud, but the gap quickly filled in.

  He sent another five-second burst at the creatures. He got the same results.

  The Variants and Everly bobbed and weaved a deadly dance. The helicopter would run and pivot as the horde dutifully followed with their instinctive need to feed. The pilot was making a dent in the horde, but his remaining round count was going down quickly. He’d expended over half of his cannon projectiles in an attempt to kill off the creatures.

  There were easily hundreds remaining. He wouldn’t have enough shells to do the job. Add to that, the adult flying Variants had joined the fight. The three hovered at the back of their flock, almost like generals watching their troops battle from the safety of the rear.

  “Freedom. This is Viper One. Do you copy? Over.”

  “We copy you, Viper. Send your traffic. Over.”

  “I’ve got a swarm of Variants on my tail. Too many for me to take out. Over.”

  A few moments of silence followed before Everly got a reply.

  “Send them our way, Viper. We’ll be waiting. Over.”

  “Viper One, on the way. Estimate arrival in one minute. Over.”

  “Confirm. One minute until arrival. We’ll be ready. Freedom, out.”

  Everly banked south and shot toward the Long Beach Harbor. He could see the Freedom floating offshore, its deck speckled with lights, as the sun had already set for those at sea level.

  He kept high in the sky and maintained a speed that allowed the Variants to keep up with him. Sixty seconds later, he turned and let off another burst from his cannon, then dove down for the ocean. The swarm dutifully followed.

  “Let’s see if the eggheads did their job,” Everly said between gritted teeth.

  The helicopter shot over top of the ship’s superstructure with a mass of creatures just a few seconds behind. He banked hard and faced the oncoming swarm as they flew over the foredeck of the ship.

  Everly grinned. Perfect.

  Their new weapon erupted into the sky.

  Six Weeks Prior

  USS Freedom

  Avalon, CA

  “Ah, Pito. All your hard work is paying off,” Dr. Linus Rath said.

  The giant optic that he’d recovered from JPL sat on the front deck of the large ship. It had been slaved to a Vulcan cannon that was mounted next to it.

  After the attack by the flying Variants, there had been a concerted effort to improve their anti-aircraft capabilities. Once the scientists had joined the island, they were tasked with weapons systems improvement.

  Dr. Rath specialized in creating exquisite optics for tracking celestial objects. It was not difficult for him to create an automatic anti-aircraft gun. The two most difficult aspects to making this device were finding the optics and obtaining the appropriate weapon. Pito had successfully scavenged both.

  “Once I figured out the software,” Rath said, “it was relatively simple to put this together.”

  “I can’t wait,” Pito said sincerely.

  With the weapon now a reality, and his involvement in its creation, the young man was genuinely intrigued. It was something he could
see, touch, and understand.

  The Freedom’s klaxon began to blare, announcing the beginning of the test.

  The ship’s Seahawk began its run, a long rope with a linen target trailing behind it. It shot over Avalon’s harbor as Rath watched his computer screen. The optics tracked the objective flawlessly and ripped it to shreds with 20mm rounds from the Vulcan cannon’s six barrels.

  “That’s good for now,” Rath said. “It could hit a target moving much faster, but that’s not necessary for what we need it for.”

  “I guess, Doc. Just how do we know if it’ll track a real live target?”

  “Do you want an explanation on the physics of flight and my software algorithm and why this should work?”

  “Not really,” Pito said with a grin.

  “I like you, Pito. You show interest, even when I can tell you’re bored. So, let me give you the best scientific answer I can.”

  Pito stood and waited for a soliloquy of formulas and assumptions.

  “It’s simple,” Rath finally said. “We’ll just have to try it and see.”

  The disheveled scientist snickered and turned away, leaving Pito to wonder if the old man had lost his mind…or had suddenly developed a sense of humor.

  Six weeks later, as the swarm descended on the ship, they were about to find out.

  Port of Long Beach

  USS Freedom

  Everly flared to a standstill just past the ship and faced back at the oncoming cloud of Variants.

  The ship’s Vulcan cannon came to life, snapping back and forth as its barrels tracked the incoming creatures. When they got within a thousand feet of the front of the ship, the weapon opened fire.

  The optic moved independently from the barrel. The rotating cannon spit out rounds in short bursts while its eye moved on to the next target. The rate of fire was frightening. Although capable of sending six thousand rounds per minute, the software program kept the gun shooting at a lower and more accurate rate. Even so, the snapping of the gun to each target was amazingly quick.