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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Excerpt from War Dogs copyright © 2014 by Greg Bear
Excerpt from Tracer copyright © 2015 by Rob Boffard
Author photograph by Maria Diaz
Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio
Cover art by Blake Morrow
Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
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First Edition: November 2017
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ISBNs: 978-0-316-55821-1 (mass market), 978-0-316-55823-5 (ebook)
E3-20170926-JV-PC
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
extras
meet the author
A Preview of The War Dogs Trilogy
A Preview of Outer Earth
By Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Orbit Newsletter
This book is dedicated to all of the Extinction Cycle readers. Thank you for your support over the years and for coming along on the journey with me and Team Ghost. I hope you enjoy Extinction War!
The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
—Douglas MacArthur
Prologue
They were fucked.
It wasn’t a question of whether the monsters would find Captain Reed Beckham and Lieutenant Jim “Ten Lives” Flathman but a matter of how long. After being tossed out of a Black Hawk into a city overrun with monsters, Beckham was back in action and on a path straight through hell.
He squirmed across the rooftop toward Flathman. The glow of the half-moon illuminated Beckham’s ruined body and the twisted metal of his prosthetic leg. He’d lost his prosthetic hand, leaving only the stump where Big Horn had hacked it off with Meg’s hatchet to save his life. Dozens of cuts and scars adorned his exposed flesh like tattoos.
At the edge of the rooftop, Beckham pushed himself up to sneak a glimpse over the side. His eyes were swollen and bruised, but he could still see the destroyed metropolis in the moonlight.
Empty skyscrapers, blown to pieces during Operation Liberty, staggered across the skyline. As a result of the firebombing, raging fires had consumed entire city blocks, leaving a darkened landscape behind. Skirts of debris dressed the shops and businesses like scree around the base of a mountain.
Every road out of the destruction led through Variant territory. Despite multiple efforts to take it back, the monsters still owned Chicago. A small number of Alphas and Variants had gone underground during the deployment of VX9H9. Beckham hadn’t seen many of them, and he wasn’t sure how many were out there, but Flathman had warned him the beasts were lurking in the shadows much like the two men. There was also a small percentage of the powerful Variant juveniles that had survived Kryptonite.
But the old monsters weren’t the only threat. The streets below were filled with the newly infected people from safe-zone territory 15—people like President Jan Ringgold’s cousin, Emilia.
Beckham could see their pallid flesh as they prowled for prey, their infected yellow eyes flitting, blood dripping from multiple orifices. It was like the first days of the outbreak all over again.
Lieutenant Andrew Wood and his army, the Resistance of Tyranny soldiers, had restarted the epidemic by infecting several of the SZTs, including this one. The ROT army, whose goal was to consolidate power under its own flag, used terror as its main weapon and the hemorrhage virus as the vehicle to deliver that weapon. Wood threatened to ruin everything Beckham and the military had fought for since the raid on Building 8 on San Nicolas Island seven months ago.
The newly infected were closing in—and so were the ghosts of the men and women who had died to stop the end of the world. Beckham could visualize several of his friends standing on the rooftop. Meg Pratt, Sheila Horn, Staff Sergeant Alex “The Kid” Riley, Lieutenant Colonel Ray Jensen, and a handful of others stood there glaring down at him as he hid from the beasts.
Under the cover of darkness, he brought the advanced combat optical gunsight of his M4 to his swollen eye and zoomed in, searching for a vehicle that would help them escape. Motion flickered in the limbs of an ancient oak tree next to the building. Hundreds of black birds nested on the spiny branches, their weight causing the tree limbs to creak, a sound that reminded him of the cracking of Variant joints.
They had selected the rooftop for that reason: If an infected got too close, the birds would take to the skies. Most of the time the Variants stuck to bigger prey, which explained the lack of animals and humans in Chicago, but the mindless beasts would likely be forced to turn to birds, rats, and perhaps even insects if they got hungry enough.
Beckham moved the ACOG’s sights to the street, where the infected beasts were hunting. One of the creatures, a sinewy female still dressed in blue jeans and a shredded Chicago Bears sweatshirt, scrambled over to the trunk of the tree. Beckham backed away from the ledge, keeping to the shadows, out of view.
The monster glanced up at the birds with yellow eyes, blood dripping from a sharp nose as it sniffed the chilly air. Beckham’s muscles froze. He didn’t dare move an inch. The beast couldn’t see him, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t smell his body odor or the pus oozing from his wounds.
The sound of joints popping echoed through the city as the abomination bolted back into the road on all fours, uninterested in the birds and oblivious to Beckham.
Beckham slowly moved so he could see the buildings down the block. An armored bank truck sat on the curb at an intersection. He used the ACOG to zoom in on the vehicle but then pulled the scope away when he saw a pack of infected clambering over the exterior of the old warehouse behind the truck. From the height of the roof they looked like an army of albino ants.
There was no telling how many monsters were out tonight.
Beckham flashed a hand signal to Flathman, who looked over the ledge and followed Beckham’s finger toward the armored truck. He nodded and then flashed his own signal.
They retreated from the stone roof ledge and sought refuge in the shadow of the wall. Keeping low to the ground, Beckham followed the lieutenant to a cluster of air-conditioning units.
Beckham crawled across the roof, trying to minimize the noise his prosthetic blade made. When he got to the units, he rested his aching back against one of them and kept his gaze on the south and west sides of the roof while Flathman watched the north and east.
After a few moments of silence, Flathman pulled out a flask of whiskey and took a slug, then offered it to Beckham. It was the tenth time Flathman had reached for his flask that evening, and Beckham finally decided to take the edge off with a drink. The smooth liquor slid down his throat and burned his empty gut. He welcomed that burn, savoring it with closed eyes for a fleeting moment. The burn passed, and Beckham wiped his mouth with the tattered sleeve covering his stump. He reached into his vest pocket, where he used to keep a picture of his mother.
That picture hadn’t survived, but it was carved in his memory like the scars on his body. Instead, he pulled out a handkerchief that he had soaked with antibiotics and then dabbed the cloth against his forehead. The fluid stung the patchwork of cuts and bruises.
Pain raced down what was left of his right arm and prickled where his hand should have been. He gritted his teeth but made himself stop when he heard their grinding. If he could hear the sound, so could the monsters.
The ache in his missing arm was getting worse, something Master Sergeant Joe Fitzpatrick had warned him about. Phantom limb syndrome: It was a condition many soldiers dealt with after losing an arm or a leg.
Beckham gestured for the flask again.
“Easy there, Captain,” Flathman whispered with a smug grin. He handed it over, and Beckham took another gulp, hoping for some relief—not just from the physical pain but also from the mental anguish.
He’d watched helplessly as Doctor Pat Ellis had been executed on Plum Island. The memory flashed across his mind, his fatigued muscles tensing at the remembered crack of the gunshot.
Beckham still didn’t know the fate of the rest of Plum Island’s inhabitants and wouldn’t have been able to help them even if he did. For all he knew, Kate was already dead and he’d never get the chance to meet their son. Images of his best friend, Big Horn, torn to pieces and of President Ringgold, lying dead in a pool of her own blood, swarmed his mind. He couldn’t bear to think of Kate that way …
The grief and uncertainty were tearing him apart inside. He was trapped here in the wildlife preserve that was Chicago, surrounded by infected monsters. Now he could see why Flathman had turned to drinking.
The world was a dark, horrifying place.
He shifted for a better view of the rooftop to the south. The skeletal branches of the trees below scraped the exterior of the building, creaking and groaning in the wind. A crow cawed, the sound reverberating through the night.
The wave of alcohol-induced calm had just begun to settle over Beckham when the sound of clicking joints set his heart slamming against his ribs.
Flathman pushed up the bill of his Chicago Cubs hat for a better view of the roof. He rose to a crouch and directed his gun’s muzzle to the north, using his other hand to signal.
One finger.
Two fingers.
Three fingers, indicating the number of Variants clambering across the gray brick surface of the building adjacent to their location. Beckham couldn’t see the beasts from his vantage, but he trusted Flathman’s report. Even tipsy, the man was sharp.
Beckham slowly raised his M4, a round already chambered. He flicked the selector to the happy switch, a three-round burst, wincing at the click. The faint rustling in the oak tree had stopped.
If the monsters found him and Flathman up here, they would call in reinforcements and overwhelm them. They had come here to seek refuge, but inadvertently they might have also sealed their fate. This time there would be no Black Hawk descending like an armored angel to evacuate Team Ghost off the roof.
There wasn’t even a Team Ghost to speak of in the United States—just Beckham and the alcoholic lieutenant who had survived by running his ass off and fighting like a madman.
I’m not dying on some shitty rooftop. I will get back to my family.
Beckham repeated the words in his mind until it was a mantra. He pointed his stump at the steel door leading back into the building. Flathman shook his head and brought a finger to his lips. It wasn’t the first time they had butted heads on strategy over the past few hours. It had been Flathman’s idea to come up here in the first place. He had survived on his own for a long time, but that didn’t mean he was always right.
Beckham got to his feet and crouch-walked around the air-conditioning units. They had to move, and they had to move now.
Flathman remained on one knee. He shook his head in defiance. No, he mouthed, and then pointed firmly at the ground.
Beckham jerked his chin toward the door.
An eerie silence fell. Even the wind had stopped. Beckham held his position, frozen like a statue and feeling naked in the rays of moonlight.
The fluttering of wings snapped him alert. He slowly twisted to survey the south side of the rooftop. The noise started off as a faint whipping of the air, and then there was the creak of a limb as a single black bird tore off into the night sky. Then, all at once, a flickering wall of birds erupted. Hundreds of the creatures took to the sky in a dense column formation and blocked out the stars like a strip of painter’s tape.
Beckham pushed his stump under the barrel of his suppressed M4 and steadied the carbine while moving his finger toward the trigger. Sweat trickled down his face, salt stinging his cuts. He closed his swollen left eyelid and looked through the scope with his right.
A naked, meaty figure leaped over the side of the building and landed on the roof. The infected beast held a crushed bird and was using its hands to rip the bird in half. It stuffed the head and wings into its maw, crunching loudly.
Beckham had been wrong before; the monsters did eat birds.
He gave it something else to chew on with a round through its wormy sucker lips. Two more of the monsters skittered over the stone ledge as the first beast slumped to the ground.
Two suppressed shots whistled from Flathman’s rifle, punching through muscle, gristle, and organs. One of the infected creatures thudded to the ground quickly, but the second beast stumbled backward, bony arms windmilling. It hit the edge of the building but didn’t fall—yet.
Beckham held his breath and his fire, afraid another shot would send the beast tumbling to the ground. The crack of bones on pavement was far louder than the suppressed crack of his gun and would alert more creatures to their presence.
Apparently Flathman hadn’t thought that far ahead. Another bullet from his M4 slammed into the center of the monster’s forehead, crunching loudly on impact. The force flung the creature’s skull backward, and its entire body flipped over the roof’s edge.
B
eckham shot Flathman an angry glare and then hurried over with his gun at the ready. The shattering of bones boomed like a shotgun blast before he got to the ledge. Flathman joined Beckham and watched in shock as every blood-soaked face in the street flicked in their direction.
What the hell did you think would happen? Beckham thought, cutting a second vicious look at the lieutenant.
As the birds fled into the darkness, Beckham and Flathman hustled across the rooftop toward the door Beckham had pointed at earlier. They had no choice. Without a helicopter to evacuate them, they would have to fight through a building full of horrors if Beckham was to have any hope of escaping this new nightmare.
Captain Rachel Davis could still picture the attack as though it was happening in real time. Lance Corporal Nick Black had steered the Zodiac up to the USS George Washington. Everything had been ready to go. Sergeant Sanders, Private First Class Robbie, Lance Corporal Katherine Diaz, and Davis had remained calm during the ride across the choppy waves.
Dressed in ROT uniforms, and with Diaz and Davis sporting freshly cut hair as part of their disguises, she and her team had thought all seemed to be going to plan. They would sneak on board, rescue any surviving members of her crew, and then blow the ship and every ROT soldier on board to kingdom come.
They had been close—just three hundred feet from the aircraft carrier’s first ladder—when gunshots lanced in their direction. Davis still didn’t know if some fault in their disguises had tipped off the soldiers on the deck or if they’d missed some important signal or sign.
It didn’t matter.
Sanders and Robbie had been killed instantly, but Davis and Diaz were able to lay down return fire. The first of the shots killed two of the men on the deck and sent the other man lunging for cover.
When Davis had looked over at Black, he was clasping his stomach, blood pouring out under his hand. Another gush of blood trickled from a hole in his chest.
“Jump ship,” he had muttered. “I got this.”
Everything that happened after that was mostly a blur in Davis’s memory. Davis and Diaz had narrowly escaped a blast that blew a hole in the side of her ship.
Extinction War Page 1
