Beckham coughed, blood-tinged spittle flying out of his mouth.
“You’re not saving humanity,” Beckham continued. “You’re ending it. You’re no better than Colonel Gibson or any of the other war criminals who created VX-99 during Vietnam.”
“After all this time, you still don’t understand.” Nick snorted and walked away.
The captain was a lost cause. He made his way down the row to Horn, then Rico. He stopped when he reached Timothy.
“Sorry, kid, wish this would’ve turned out different,” Nick said. “You had a lot of potential.”
Nick and Pete left the room, leaving the prisoners unguarded. But that wasn’t a concern. The shrieks of the Variants blasted from the chamber as soon as they closed the door.
Raising the remote, Nick clicked the button, releasing the thralls to feed. Then the two men hurried back through the halls until they reached an intersection.
Nick stopped and Pete grabbed his shoulder. “Focus, Nick. We’ve almost reached our goals, everything we’ve planned for. Forget about Diana and Ray. All that matters is the New Gods.”
Nick nodded.
“Don’t bother with her until we leave,” Pete added. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
That was a lie.
He was absolutely dealing with his wife right now, because if she had indeed betrayed him, she wasn’t leaving the mountain. He would leave her in this tomb with Ray’s corpse forever.
Pete ran toward the console where he would enter the launch codes. The powerful missile would launch straight toward the president’s bunker in Long Island that some allied scouts had discovered when they had seen Marine One flying to Lower Manhattan.
Nick wasn’t sure hitting command with the powerful nuke was the best use of it, due to the size of the blast that would occur. But he wasn’t in charge, and he had other things on his mind right now.
He headed for his family through the empty halls to the garage. There, people were loading up into the trucks with the few remaining guards. They had lost more soldiers than Nick dared count in the surprise attack from the various strike groups.
Some of the frightened people sobbed from the news of lost brothers, fathers, and sons, but Nick ignored them. His mind was dead-set on only one thing.
His wife and their daughters were in the back of the line with their bags. Nick grabbed Diana’s arm and pulled her to the shelter of a doorway while his daughters called out.
“I’ll be there in a minute!” Nick yelled back.
He took his wife through the door and shut it.
“Nick, what’s wrong?” she asked.
“Were you with Ray?”
She squinted at him. “What do you mean?”
“Did you sleep with Ray?”
She didn’t answer and he leaned in closer, until their noses nearly touched.
“I’m only going to ask you once more,” he said. “Did you sleep with Ray?”
She turned and went for the door, but he pushed his hand against it.
She slowly turned toward him, tears welling around her eyes. “He listened to me. After you hit Freya…and… He wasn’t gone as much as you…it was wrong, I didn’t want to…”
Her gaze suddenly left his, and she cowered, mouth dropping open like she was afraid he would hit her too.
“Can’t look me in the eye and tell me, huh?” he said. “You can’t—”
Footsteps clattered behind him.
He turned to find a gun pointed at his face. Behind the barrel was Timothy. Another unfamiliar soldier with bandages over her arm stood beside him. She wasn’t one of their prisoners.
“Don’t fucking move, asshole,” Timothy said.
“How…” he started to say.
“You should have made sure everyone was dead. Meet my friend, Sergeant Ruckley.”
“Your pets don’t do well against grenades,” Ruckley said.
Behind her in the hall was Beckham. But Nick didn’t see Rico or Horn.
“Listen, you can still join us,” Nick said. “You can—”
“Don’t say another goddamn word, you piece of shit,” Timothy pressed the barrel against his temple, pushing his head slightly. “Take me to the nuke.”
“Go, Diana,” Nick said, regret tingeing his voice. He might not stand a chance, but revenge wasn’t worth sacrificing his daughters for. “Get the girls out of here.”
“But…”
“Do what your asshole husband says,” Timothy said.
As much he despised his wife now, Nick was thankful Timothy was soft. His girls would need their mother if he died.
“Get the kids out of here,” Nick snapped when she didn’t move.
“You tell anyone you saw us, and he dies,” Timothy said.
Diana opened the door and left before Nick could look at her one last time.
“Take us to the missile, and I promise they’ll leave safely,” Timothy said.
Nick did as instructed, thinking only of his daughters now. They were the reason he had even answered the call on the radio that had led him to Pete and Katahdin. Everything he’d done was for them, for a better future where they lived free from the tyranny of a diabolical government masquerading as a democracy intent on subjugating mankind.
Sucking in a breath, he led them to a stairwell that he knew ended at a locked door. When they reached it, Ruckley moved past him and tried the door. “It’s locked.”
Nick tried to come up with an idea to escape. Maybe he could push them down the stairs, just like he’d done to Ray, and make a run for it.
“Give us the key,” Beckham said.
Nick reached into his pocket, pretending to fish around and buy some time.
The cold metal of a gun barrel pressed against his head dispelled any notion of escape.
“You try anything stupid, and I’ll splatter your brains all over,” Timothy said. “Try me. I’d love to end you right now.”
Without another option, Nick took out the key and handed it to Ruckley. She unlocked the door. Beckham raised his rifle, advancing as soon as the door cracked open.
The operator fired two times, then kept his rifle pointed.
“Don’t move,” he said.
Timothy pushed Nick inside. Two officers lay sprawled, face-first on the floor. Pete stood in front of an office chair, his hands in the air. He glared at Nick, eyes burning with rage.
“The hell did you do, Nick?” he growled. “The HELL did you do?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Ruckley said. She held a pistol with one hand, trying to steady it with the bandaged arm.
Nick wasn’t sure earlier how she had survived against the thralls. But his mistake had cost them all.
Beckham pushed a comm piece up to his lips and spoke quietly.
A few minutes later, Horn and Rico showed up, panting. They explained the other soldiers were holding security and mopping up the final guards.
“You won’t make it out of here,” Pete said.
“Neither will you or your family,” Beckham said. “Unless you give me the location of your other bases. Then we’ll bring you in, and you can live your life in a cell.”
“Bring me in where?” Pete grinned. “You’re delusional. You’ve lost this war, and I’ll never—”
Rico shot him in the neck. He staggered backwards, blood gushing out as he reached up and then fell, knocking over the chair. He tried to speak, crimson bubbles popping from his mouth. He finally slumped to the floor.
Nick swallowed hard as Rico pointed her gun at his chest. He was next and he knew it.
“You just killed the only person that knows the other bases,” Nick said, holding his hands up defensively.
“Fine, I guess you and your family aren’t worth anything to me either then,” Beckham said. He nodded, and Timothy aimed the gun at his head again.
“Wait!” Nick said.
“Tell me where they are,” Beckham said. “Tell us or your family gets to experience what it was like for all
of those people in Outpost Portland. All those kids, mothers, husbands, and neighbors who died because of you!”
“I don’t know where all our bases are,” Nick said, “I do know a place where we turn men into warriors for the New Gods.”
Beckham narrowed his eyes. “Warriors?”
“Half-man, half-Variant,” Nick said. “Or what we call Scions.”
This was intel the Allied States already had according to allies out west who had told Pete and Nick about a military team that had infiltrated Seattle. Nick wouldn’t dare give them something actually useful, if he could help it.
“What else?” Beckham asked.
“I don’t know what else I can tell you. They keep us in the dark, every cell operating independently so we can’t give each other up.”
Beckham looked to Horn who shrugged.
“Okay, I believe you,” Beckham said. He nodded at Timothy.
“For my dad,” Timothy said.
He stowed his pistol and took out a knife. Stepping forward, he jabbed it in Nick’s gut and twisted. He yanked it out and wiped the blood off on Nick’s shirt. Then he put it back in the sheath and walked away as Nick gripped his stomach and stumbled.
Horn motioned to Beckham with one hand pressed to his ear as he stood over a console. “Command just gave me the authorization codes that will permanently disarm this whole base and the nuke. What do you say, boss?”
“End this fucking nightmare,” Beckham said.
Nick watched in horror as the big man entered the commands, watching the power drain from the base. He would never get to see the missile fly.
Beckham, Horn, Rico, and Ruckley left the room without saying another word, leaving Nick to bleed out over the concrete floor, pain wracking his insides. Their boots clanked down the stairs.
Nick crawled toward the door, stopping briefly at Pete’s corpse before continuing. His mind flashed with worry as his life pumped out of him, sloshing over the floor.
The physical pain was nothing compared to the mental anguish of knowing he and Pete had lost. Somehow…despite all odds, despite all their planning, Captain Reed Beckham and a kid had beat them.
Holding his slashed abdomen, Nick stumbled down the steps, leaning on the handrail. He almost fell to the landing where Ray had bled out and died.
But Nick managed to make it back to the garage. His vision had blurred but he could tell it was empty. His family was gone with the rest of the convoy.
But then, through his fading vision, he saw someone had stayed behind. Maybe someone that could help him!
It cleared enough to see it wasn’t someone.
Something…
The thralls had returned.
Ten of the beasts skittered into the room. He reached for his remote, but it was gone. Lost somewhere in the facility. And these filthy creatures didn’t have collars to control them.
He fell his knees and looked out the open garage to see the first rays of sunlight peak over the horizon. As the monsters narrowed in on him, waiting to strike, the light turned into bright blooms.
This wasn’t the sunrise.
This was a bombing run.
The convoy was being destroyed.
— 26 —
Waves rolled into the Galveston shore, sun glinting off the whitecaps in the afternoon glare. Razor wire-topped fences lined the beach, and soldiers patrolled the sand, leaving long trails of footprints.
Compared to the shores of Peaks Island, this beach wasn’t particularly scenic, but to Beckham, it felt like paradise with his son and wife next to him.
The fences and the raw firepower gave him hope that they were safe for now.
But there was no time for strolls on the beach. Everyone had work to do in the war efforts that had brought them here.
Beckham walked along a sidewalk away from the shoreline with his family. The path took them past boarded-up buildings and old hotels transformed into barracks. The base was alive with activity as soldiers marched between posts, and vehicles chugged along the street to deliver crates of supplies.
Kate squeezed his hand as Beckham winced from pain. The Chimeras had beaten him good, leaving deep bruises across his body.
The mission to Mount Katahdin had been a success, but it was one of only a few. He still didn’t know the total number of outposts lost across the Allied States or the total death count. And while the nuke had been stopped, the military was on the run.
Vice President Lemke had set up a new central command in Puerto Rico, with General Souza and LNO Festa joining him there.
It was no surprise that President Ringgold wasn’t with them. He spotted her in the distance standing at an airfield with an entourage of guards and soldiers.
“How long are we going to stay here?” Javier asked.
“I’m not sure,” Kate replied.
“I kind of like it,” Javier said.
Kate shared a look with Beckham. Her time in those humid tunnels had been its own grueling ordeal, and he knew she was thankful to be aboveground, away from that nightmarish world for a while.
But her work was far from over.
Beckham didn’t have the heart to tell his son that right now. Although, Javier was starting to understand his parents had chosen a lifetime of service to a calling greater than either of them. If men and women like them hadn’t stepped up to defend this country, then the monsters would have won the first war.
“Hey, boss!” Horn said. He waved a big arm, jogging down the sidewalk to catch up. Tasha and Jenny led their two German shepherds on leashes, but Ginger and Spark pulled free when they saw Beckham and his family, rushing toward the group with wagging tails and slobbering kisses.
Horn scratched at his overgrown beard that hid some of his bruises and cuts. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and he limped over with a hand on his back.
“How are you feeling today, Big Horn?” Beckham asked.
“Like I fought a gorilla, and he beat the shit out of me, but I got in a few good licks against the son of a—”
Kate shot him a look, gesturing toward their son. Beckham held in a laugh. After everything they had endured, it was refreshing to cling to some sense of normalcy, even if it was just a failed attempt to shield Javier’s ears from a curse word or two.
“Sorry, Javier,” Horn said. “Let’s just say I’m glad to be in one piece.”
“Amen to that, brother,” Beckham said.
The familiar sight of S.M. Fischer’s private plane came into focus. The jet was parked on the runway as the crew prepped it for its next flight.
Silence hung over the group as they approached the side of the jet. A small group had already gathered beside the plane in a semi-circle. Beckham spotted Ruckley right away with her arm wrapped up in clean bandages. Rico was here too, and jogged over to say hello.
She had a big smile on her face now that she knew Fitz and the rest of Team Ghost were safe. Beckham gave Rico a hug and so did Horn.
The three Delta Operators and their families stood back as President Ringgold and her staff prepared to honor a selfless patriot.
General Cornelius stood nearby, the wind tugging at his white beard. Sergeant Sharp, a soldier who had fought with Fischer during the first days of the war was also here to pay his respects.
Beckham saw many familiar faces, but there was one missing—Timothy Temper.
Everyone else had gathered here today to pay their respects to a man who the Allied States owed an enormous debt—a man who had been called out of a rather comfortable position heading a wealthy company both before and after the Great War of Extinction.
Mr. S.M. Fischer.
From what Beckham had learned, Fischer had sustained multiple injuries by the time Commander Amber Massey reached him at Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. She had promised the man he would make it back to Texas.
And she had made good on that promise, delivering Fischer to an evac that got him to Long Island where President Ringgold and the science team had taken him to Galveston. B
ut despite round-the-clock medical care, even the strength Beckham had seen in Fischer wasn’t enough to overcome the damage to his body.
Now the cowboy oil tycoon was in a closed, narrow wooden box.
“Everyone, please gather around,” said President Ringgold.
She waited for the group to form a circle around the casket.
“Thank you all for joining us today,” she continued. “S.M. Fischer impacted each and every one of us. He was a talented businessman who brought out the best in all those who worked for and with him. He had a storied career in ranching and oil.
“But the businesses that Fischer built with his own two hands isn’t all that defined him. What defined Fischer was his devotion to protecting this country when Lady Liberty called for his assistance. He had every reason to run and more than enough means at his disposal to hide somewhere safe, but he decided not to hide, and not to run—he decided to fight.”
She shook her head, a sad smile on her lips.
“By utilizing his knowledge of geoengineering and applying it to our defenses, he saved countless lives. Even in those last moments at Outpost Lower Manhattan, he stayed beside his men, doing his duty until the very end. His sacrifice and the sacrifice of his engineers and guards ensured that we had time to evacuate as many people as we possibly could.”
Ringgold looked over to another familiar face. Commander Massey from Outpost Lower Manhattan stood at the back of the crowd. She stepped forward and Ringgold gave her a nod to speak.
“I didn’t know him long, but he was a kind man. And a strong man,” Massey said. “The type of cowboy who would look a bull right in the eyes and send the bull running from him.”
That got a couple of soft chuckles and a “damn right” from General Cornelius.
“Thank you,” Ringgold said. “Now it is with great honor that I bestow Mr. S.M. Fischer with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And it is my hope that he’ll get to finally be at peace in his beloved Texas.”
Beckham looked at the casket and the plane. He was told that General Cornelius was sending supplies out to Outpost El Paso, another place Fischer helped save. His remains would be laid to rest with his beloved wife, in a cemetery outside El Paso, not too far from his old ranch.
Extinction Cycle Dark Age (Book 3): Extinction Ashes Page 32
