Extinction Cycle Dark Age (Book 3): Extinction Ashes

by Smith, Nicholas Sansbury

  Ace had a metal garbage lid that must’ve been from the RV park with claw marks across it in one hand, and the butt of his shotgun in the other. Dohi tossed his hatchet at the closest Variant, scoring a hit to the neck, then he jabbed another creature with his knife.

  Rico and Fitz used their blades to parry and strike a beast lunging at them.

  Mendez slammed the butt of his rifle against a Variant’s face. Cartilage and bone cracked at the impact, blood sloshing out of its slitted nostrils.

  Team Ghost had formed a ring around two injured soldiers wrapped in bandages. They must be the surviving Wolfhounds. A third Wolfhound stood beside Ghost, fighting alongside them.

  Beckham raised his rifle, centering it on the first target. “Ghost!”

  Fitz glanced his way, then signaled for the team to close in around the injured as Beckham and Horn fired on the surrounding creatures. Blood gushed from monsters’ new wounds, and wails of pain filled the morning. Three beasts made it out of the gunfire and started up the hill toward Beckham.

  “I got this!” he yelled as he palmed in a new magazine.

  Beckham cut the three creatures down with calculated bursts. Their bodies rolled back down the hill. Before anyone could celebrate the narrow victory, shrieks of more creatures rose in the distance.

  Covered in dirt and blood, Team Ghost and the Wolfhounds looked like they had been through hell and back.

  The group of battle-fatigued soldiers marched up the hill with Rico at the lead. She reached out like she was going to give Horn a hug, but then fingered at his vest.

  “We need magazines,” she said. “For the way back.”

  Horn and Beckham distributed ammo.

  “Damn good to see you, Captain,” Fitz said as he graciously accepted a magazine. “Wasn’t sure we were going to make it out of here.”

  “We’re not out yet, brother,” Beckham said.

  “What the fuck took you guys so long?” said one of the Wolfhound soldiers, a guy with a bloody nametape that read Martin.

  “Give it a fucking rest,” Mendez said.

  “They’re here, aren’t they?” said another Wolfhound. The guy’s nametape said Lawrence. He helped another injured Wolfhound who only had one foot.

  “We need to move,” Beckham said. “Keep close, and tight.”

  He took point through the forest, scanning for any camouflaged Variants lying in wait.

  The pace back to the C-130 was agonizingly slow because of the wounded Wolfhounds that needed help walking. Dohi came up next to Beckham and they exchange a nod.

  Shrieks of hunting Variants followed the group. Beckham checked their six. Horn signaled to him he’d spotted three hostiles. Variant scouts shadowing their retreat.

  The beasts were like wolves, waiting for the rest of their pack before they would move in for the kill.

  Beckham spotted salvation ahead. The big body of the C-130 on the freeway was surrounded by a dozen soldiers that had spread out to provide cover.

  The sight gave the exhausted team the energy they needed to make the final stretch. As the Variants closed in, Beckham led them straight up onto the freeway toward the C-130’s open troop hold.

  Soldiers holding security jogged over to help take the wounded.

  “Hell yeah,” Mendez said. He turned to look at the road behind them. Taking a hand off his rifle, he crossed his chest and kissed his fingers, head angled toward the sky. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord Jesus.” Then he paused, tilting his head. “Aw, shit, not now.”

  Beckham followed his gaze.

  A transmission crackled in his earpiece just as he saw the black aircraft against the blue.

  “We got incoming, Captain, get your people inside, now!” said one of the pilots.

  Beckham swallowed hard when he saw that contact was a Black Hawk.

  “Go, go, go!” Horn shouted, waving for everyone to run.

  They were sitting ducks on the interstate, and they had very few weapons capable of taking down that helicopter barring an extremely lucky shot.

  As the team raced for the open hold, Beckham raised his rifle with its barrel-mounted M203 grenade launcher and Horn aimed his SAW, covering the others.

  The engines on the C-130 thrummed to life, drowning out the panicked voices of the retreating soldiers.

  Ace carried the Wolfhound with only one foot, and Rico helped the one with bandages across his arms into the plane. Mendez and Fitz stayed outside with Beckham as the chopper closed in.

  “Fire!” Beckham shouted.

  Rounds lanced into the bird. A door gunner on the Black Hawk opened fire with a mounted machine gun. Rounds tore into the belly of the C-130 and raked over the asphalt, sweeping toward Team Ghost.

  Beckham launched a grenade, hoping for a lucky shot. But the grenade sailed wide, landing amid the trees and kicking up a fiery cloud of dirt.

  Another soldier from the Black Hawk knelt at the open side door. He leveled an M72 LAW at them. All it took was one good hit, and their plane would be grounded, just like the C-130 that had initially taken Ghost here.

  “Take him down!” Beckham shouted.

  Bullets slammed into the side of the chopper. Horn unleashed his SAW at the man with the rocket launcher, and Beckham launched another grenade.

  This one slammed into the troop hold as the LAW rocket streaked away. It missed the plane and exploded somewhere behind Beckham. The resulting wave of heat threw him off balance.

  The chopper came screaming down toward them.

  Beckham ran out of its path as it slammed down sideways on the right side of the road, skidding across the grass. Fire spewed from its engine as its blades split and flew off its rotor.

  He stopped running, chest heaving as he scanned the road to make sure everyone was okay. Fitz, Dohi, and Horn were aiming their rifles at the downed bird in case anyone had survived.

  Ace was screaming from the troop hold, and Rico came running out. She stopped near a smoking crater, hand covering her mouth.

  When Beckham saw the twisted remains of a rifle, blood-soaked asphalt, and chunks of a torn boot he realized why he hadn’t seen Mendez yet.

  There wasn’t anything left of him to see.

  — 12 —

  Kate sat at the edge of the cot after a night of tossing and turning. Thoughts of Beckham braving newfound dangers on the West Coast had kept her up despite being exhausted.

  Carefully as she could, she maneuvered through the cramped room, careful not to wake Javier yet. He had been excited to see her again, not quite grasping that she hadn’t meant to return to the Long Island bunker so soon.

  The last report she had heard before retiring to her quarters was that Lower Manhattan had been hit hard. It pained her to think of the lives lost, and she couldn’t help thinking this was even more devastating than one night of casualties.

  She and Sammy needed to work in those tunnels again. If they couldn’t, that meant extended delays in their efforts to decode the new signals from the Variant network and locating the hub responsible for the attacks. That also meant it would take even longer for them to observe how the Variants communicated so they could replicate their signals and disrupt their communications, hopefully fighting back with information warfare.

  She splashed some cold water on her face from the stainless-steel sink in the bathroom, then she got changed. When she was ready for work, she went to Javier’s cot where she tousled his hair.

  “Javier,” she whispered. “I’ve got to do some work, okay?”

  He rolled on his back, peering at her through half-opened eyes. “Is Dad back?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Yes, I’m sure he’s fine.”

  Javier sat up. “Will Connor be watching us again today?”

  “Yes.”

  Ringgold had assigned the kids a Secret Service agent named Connor to watch over them since Beckham and Horn were in the field.

  Kate appreciated the gesture. It gave her the a
bility to perform her work knowing someone was keeping Javier, Jenny, Tasha, and the dogs safe.

  That fact also made her feel guilty. Their children were being protected by the president’s own people, snug and safe in a bunker, while so many other parents were literally dying to save their children outside these walls.

  “I’ll be in the lab,” she said to Javier, then stood. “You can always call if you need me.”

  “I know.”

  “I love you.”

  “Love you too, Mom.”

  She left her quarters as quietly as possible while Javier fell back to sleep. Connor sat on a chair outside, dozing. As soon as she closed the door to her room, he woke and stood. Long scars crossed his face, evidence of a Variant attack.

  “Good morning, Dr. Lovato,” he said.

  “Thank you again for watching Javier and the girls. I truly appreciate it.”

  “Doctor, it’s my pleasure.” Connor said. “Children are our future.”

  He locked his gaze with hers. She sensed pain behind those brown eyes. Maybe a lost child in his past.

  She nodded and then started the lonely march toward the lab setup in the bunker. The halls were mostly quiet. A few hushed voices leaked from offices and rooms as leaders worked around the clock.

  She caught only snippets of conversations, listening for any word about Team Ghost or Beckham and Horn.

  President Ringgold came around the intersection, then offered a sorrowful smile when she saw Kate. “Dr. Lovato, just the person I wanted to see.”

  “Madam President, what is it?” Kate asked, her heart thumping.

  Ringgold took Kate’s hand, clutching it. “Your husband and Parker found Team Ghost. They’re on their way out of California now.”

  “Oh, thank God!” Kate felt like a pressure valve had been released on her heart. “So they’re all right?”

  Ringgold bit the inside of her lip. “There were casualties, and I don’t know all the details. But I do know Reed and Parker are okay.”

  She was relieved, but Kate’s chest still tightened again. “Where are they going?”

  “They’re headed to Canada to refuel, and we’re working with our counterparts north of the border,” Ringgold said. “They’ll also look at the damaged SDS equipment that Team Ghost and the Wolfhounds retrieved.”

  Kate only managed to nod as Ringgold continued.

  “In Lower Manhattan, the Variants surged through the vibroseis locations and our forces retreated into the 9/11 memorial outpost,” she said. “Between the Variants, bats, hounds and collaborators, we’ve lost communications with four more outposts, including Cleveland where Beckham and Horn boarded their C-130.”

  The president paused and put a hand on Kate’s arm, gently. “How are you?”

  Kate took a moment to compose herself. “I’ll be fine. Are you okay?”

  “I have to be,” Ringgold replied. “They have us beat in numbers, but even the biggest snake can’t bite if you cut off its head. Once we find it, that’s exactly what I plan on doing.”

  “And I’m going to help you find it.”

  They parted ways, and Kate continued to the laboratory. She dreamed about a cup of coffee right now but realized she didn’t really need the caffeine. Ringgold had given her all she needed to fuel herself through today’s experiments.

  Inside the lab, Sammy was already hunched over a laptop, the blue screen glowing on her face. Kate flicked on the lights, bathing the place in a yellow glow.

  “Jeez, Sammy, have you slept at all?” she asked.

  Sammy clutched her injured side and looked up from the laptop. “Did you sleep at all?”

  “Not really.” Kate pulled up a seat next to Sammy.

  “I made a mistake in those tunnels,” Sammy said. “And it almost got your husband and those soldiers killed. I won’t fail again.”

  “Failure is an unfortunate part of science. We have to face the risk of failure before we stand a chance of succeeding. No one knew what we were dealing with.”

  Sammy nodded.

  “So what are you working on?”

  “I’m running a few scripts to parse the signals we recorded from the webbing. My natural language processing algorithms should translate some of it for us.”

  A few progress bars slowly climbed across the monitor, pixel-by-pixel.

  “That’s going to take a while,” Kate said. “I’ve got a way to keep us busy in the meantime.”

  “What’s that?” Sammy asked.

  “We never had a chance to examine those VX-99 infected bats used at Outpost Portland,” Kate said. “We received a couple of specimens here. Maybe we can find a clue in them that might help.”

  “I’m no biologist, but I’m happy to assist.”

  Kate led the computer engineer to a freezer where they had stored their samples. She took out a small object wrapped in plastic and foil.

  Once she placed it on a stainless-steel table, she pried the wrapping off to reveal a mutated, large brown bat with a body slightly larger than her fist. Protruding vessels crisscrossed its wings. Patches of fur clung to nearly translucent flesh. Even in death, the little monster’s overgrown muscles bulged under its thin skin.

  Sammy placed a tray of dissection tools next to the bat. “What next?”

  “It’s easy enough to verify these bats were modified by VX-99, but that doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.”

  “Okay, so what do we do?”

  “A full autopsy,” Kate said. “I want to know how these things were controlled.”

  She used a biopsy punch to extract small chunks of skin, muscle, and organ tissue, depositing each into separate vials. At Kate’s direction, Sammy froze them down for Leslie and Ron to analyze later.

  Moving the bat onto its stomach, Kate noticed a bulge on its neck. She cut through its leathery flesh with a scalpel.

  A glint of metal shone under yellow tissue and red blood. She pulled out what looked like a computer chip with a pair of forceps. With it came a pair of tiny silver wires.

  After Kate cleaned the small rectangular object off with saline, Sammy deposited it under a dissecting scope.

  “Holy shit,” Sammy said. “I can tell you exactly what this is.”

  “What?”

  Sammy turned away from the scope. “It’s a microelectric array like the devices the collaborators were using to communicate through the webbing network.”

  “All of these technologies, from the bats to the webbing, and the masterminds, share common connections,” Kate said. “They must come from the same source. A source that knows how to engineer electronics and computers.”

  “Yeah.” Sammy swallowed. “Someone who knows this science inside and out. Biology, electrical engineering, all of it.”

  Kate thought of the similarities to the Department of Defense projects they’d discovered and the military tactics that their enemy had employed recently. “And someone with a military background.”

  “Jesus,” Sammy said.

  “We need to figure out the final pieces of this puzzle quickly.”

  “We will, and I won’t mess up again. I swear to you.”

  Kate wanted to feel a sense of satisfaction at these new revelations, but finding the missing links meant more men like her husband and Team Ghost would need to return to hell to destroy the demon behind it all.

  A demon with unmatched resources and intelligence, weapons that were as powerful, if not more, than any army of monsters.

  And Kate had a feeling it wasn’t a Variant Alpha or an abomination like a mastermind—it was a human. Someone like Colonel Gibson who had started the VX-99 program back during the Vietnam War.

  President Ringgold had been right. The science team’s work might be the key to any chance of victory. And judging by what they had just uncovered, the chance of victory was growing smaller by the hour.

  She examined the microelectric array. An idea struck her.

  “Sammy, the tech for these arrays came from that s
cientist investigating neural-digital networks back at the University of Florida. Do you remember his name?”

  “No, but I’m sure we have that somewhere.”

  Kate joined her at the computer. “Please look it up. I want to know exactly what DOD programs the guy was involved in.”

  “You think he’s the real mastermind?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “It’s a longshot.”

  Sammy went to work.

  “Dr. Simon Wong,” she said a few minutes later. “He was recruited by the DOD in 2006 after his work using microelectric arrays to connect rodent brains to various software.”

  “Can you find out where in the DOD?”

  Sammy’s fingers worked across the keyboard. “Says here he joined the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He was a project manager, overseeing the funding and execution of nearly a dozen separate projects.”

  “How long?”

  “Until about 2013. Then…he died.”

  Kate felt the ribbons of her conspiracy theory start to float away. “If that’s true, then he’s not our guy.”

  “Then again, those secret government types have a habit of disappearing and reappearing all over.”

  “Can you find which projects he administered? Maybe there’s a link there.”

  Sammy nodded, scanning through the various projects. “Woah, look at this. It’s Project Rolling Stone. The seismic detection systems that Team Ghost went after.”

  “Dr. Wong specialized in digital and biological networks, so that makes sense,” Kate said. “Did he manage any projects related to bioweapons or medicine? Anything involving cell culture or bioengineering?”

  It took Sammy only seconds to skim through the list. “I found a few potential matches. There’s the Center for Engineering Complex Organs, or CECO. It was funded by a few pharmaceutical companies, too, up in the Seattle area.”

  She looked at the list again. “There’s also HumoSource, which developed medical products from donated tissues derived from cadavers. A third one is Memnet in San Francisco, a company that DARPA was interested in for neural networks.”

  “If we use these three locations to narrow down where those communications from the tunnel originated, would that help?”