They took off for the archways that led into the lobby of the building, passing another bed of flowers set in a stone box. Davis eyed the infected corpse lying outside the front doors, two bullet holes punched through its skull like an extra set of eyes.
It was another former marine, a female with wispy brown hair. Tattered fatigues revealed bite marks and self-inflicted lacerations. She felt sick at the sight. Davis had seen the infected cannibalize themselves, and it was one of the most horrifying effects of the virus. To be so blinded by hunger that you’d take a bite out of your own arm … it was truly monstrous.
Davis felt the spike of adrenaline soaking her muscle fibers as they entered the building. It was one thing to kill Variants from the earlier days of the infection, but these people should never have been infected. They should have been safe, just like the sailors from the GW. She still couldn’t quite accept how pointless these deaths were.
Gritting her teeth, she looked away from the corpses and directed her anger at Wood. She would have her revenge. He would die at her hands soon. The fury drove her onward.
Blade moved through the door into a tiled lobby, while Melnick and Dixon took the right doors. The interior was decorated with paintings from early in the history of the United States, but Davis didn’t take the time to admire the artwork. They moved through the darkness and down a narrow hallway containing wooden desks and leather chairs. The entrance to the PEOC wasn’t far, if she remembered the map correctly.
Blade and Dixon took up position to the right and left sides of intricately carved oak doors with glass handles. Dixon tried one of them and then shook his head.
Davis and Melnick hung back, their rifles directed at the rear guard. With a nod, Blade gave Dixon the order to execute.
Dixon kicked the right door, splintering the wood but not opening the door. Another swift kick, and it swung off the hinges. Blade entered with his gun’s barrel moving right to left and back again.
A suppressed shot sounded.
“Tango down,” Blade said.
Davis was the last one into the hallway. The patterned wallpaper was blotted with dark blood, and another corpse lay on the floor. This one wasn’t a former marine; she was still dressed in a green polo with the Greenbrier’s logo.
“Looks as if she was trapped in here,” Blade said. He pointed at the scratch marks on the wooden door.
Davis knew what that meant: The hemorrhage missile had infected more than just the marines trapped outside. If it had gotten into the air-circulation system, then it was possible everyone in the PEOC had been infected.
They continued onward until they got to the elevator doors that led to the bunker.
“Going to break radio silence to see where the other teams are,” Blade said.
Davis nodded.
“Bravo One, Alpha One, do you copy? Over,” Blade said over the comms. The lights were still off, which meant Watson, Larson, and Tandy either had run into trouble or hadn’t been able to find a way to get the lights back on.
“Bravo One, Alpha One, do you copy?” Blade repeated.
There was no response, and the senior chief looked at Davis. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his visor, but she knew by the tone of his voice he was on edge.
“Get out the gear,” he said to Dixon.
Papa Smurf placed his rucksack on the ground and pulled out a crowbar and rope.
“Alpha One, Bravo One.” Watson’s voice broke over the comms. “We’ve got multiple contacts in this wing and have been unable to reach the breakers.”
“Roger,” Blade replied. “We’ll get in the old-fashioned way.”
“Got it,” Dixon said. The SEAL stood and made way for Blade and Melnick. Together, the two men pulled apart the elevator doors. Dixon dropped a rope into the shaft, and moments later, the team was rappelling down.
They landed on the top of the elevator box, and Blade crouched down to open the hatch. Davis waited while the other men dropped inside. Dixon was nearly silent while he worked on jacking the doors open below.
Quick and steady, Rachel.
As soon as Blade gave the order, she slipped down into the box and moved out into an empty tunnel. They all flipped up their night-vision optics and turned on their tactical lights. The beams penetrated the inky darkness and hit the final doors leading to the PEOC.
Blade balled his hand, and the team waited, listening and watching for any sign of movement, but the passage was empty. The heavy doors had been designed to protect against a direct hit from a nuke, and they couldn’t hear any sounds coming from the other side. The double steel doors also rendered Dixon’s tools useless, and Blade instructed him to get out the plastic explosive.
The rest of the team waited inside the elevator box while Dixon approached the doors. He carefully placed the C4 in several areas and then retreated.
Blade gave the order with a dip of his helmet.
A fiery explosion followed a beat later. The concussive sound rattled in Davis’s ears as she followed Alpha team into the hallway that had filled with smoke and plaster dust.
Blade and Dixon dropped to one knee, while Davis and Melnick took up position behind the men. It took several moments for the smoke and dust to settle. The ringing faded away, and in its wake came a new sound.
“Hold,” Blade said.
The click-clack could have been from pipes in the walls, wooden supports creaking above their heads, or perhaps even the groan of the walls themselves, but Davis knew it wasn’t any of those things.
The beams from their lights speared through the smoke, capturing a single figure staggering out of the bunker, hands cupped to his ears.
“Stay where you are!” Blade shouted. The man, wearing a military uniform, stumbled a few more feet, hands still on his ears. “Don’t move!” Blade yelled.
“He can’t hear you, Senior Chief,” Melnick said.
Davis moved her finger from outside the M4’s trigger guard to the trigger. In the glow of the beams from their tactical lights, the man finally came into focus. The first thing Davis saw was the American flag on the man’s lapel, and the second was his slitted yellow eyes. His face was covered in bulging blue veins, rendering him almost unrecognizable.
Almost, but not quite.
Vice President Johnson wouldn’t be able to give them the intel they needed after all.
Before Blade could give an order, a half dozen figures exploded out of the smoke and bolted past the former vice president, jumping to the walls and ceiling like insects.
Davis stood her ground and yelled, “Open fire!”
Piero used the barrel of his rifle to pick up the shed skin of a Wormer. The flaky material was thicker than snakeskin, but not much more durable. It tore as he raised the clump that had been coiled on the ground like an oversized fire hose. It wasn’t the only sample on the historic battlefield of the Colosseum. The dirt was speckled with shredded skins.
“Gross,” he whispered.
Ringo’s whiskers twitched, and he reared back in disgust.
The morning sun blazed overhead, cooking the remains of flayed cocoons and the skins that filled the amphitheater with an odor like sewer water.
Piero breathed through his mouth and dropped the fragile skin back to the ground. He navigated the minefield of organic litter and walked over to the open gate leading to the guts of the Colosseum.
The Queen was somewhere down there, but this time he wasn’t heading back into the darkness. He knew exactly where she was hiding—the sewer system beneath the building. His mission was to confirm and/or kill the abomination, and there was only one way to do that without getting himself and Ringo turned into monster jerky.
“We’re going to draw this Varianti whore out,” he whispered to Ringo.
Piero had spent the morning coming up with the plan after remembering something from his childhood. His family had spent many summers in Sicily. Those holidays were some of the best times of his life, but there was one summer he’d ended up in the hospita
l after a run-in with some killer hornets that had come over from Asia. His sister had insisted on knocking the nest down, but Piero, always the protective brother, had swung the bat himself.
Twenty minutes later he was on his way to the hospital, his skin swollen and red from the multiple stings that would have likely killed his younger sister.
Disturbing a nest of hornets was one thing, but disturbing a nest of mutated monsters made Piero pause outside the gate to reconsider his plan. He imagined he felt much as the gladiators did before they stepped out into the blinding sun in a crowded amphitheater, with citizens screaming in bloodlust from all directions.
Those men hadn’t had a choice. Then again, Piero didn’t have one either. This plan was all he had—and he was the only one who could carry it out.
He raised the radio to his lips, his decision made, even though it wasn’t based on the full truth.
Ringo squeaked and paced on his shoulder while Piero sent Lieutenant General Piazza a message. It only took a few moments for a female operator to reply in English.
“Roger that, Sergeant Angaran. This is Crow One, go ahead. Over.”
Crow One? Who the hell is Crow One? Piero thought.
“I’m in position at the Colosseum,” he said, switching from Italian to English. “In about ten minutes, send in the best pilot you’ve got and target the heart of the structure. Drop everything you have … blow this place to kingdom come!”
“Have you located the Queen?” she replied.
“Yes, ma’am. In a few minutes, she’s going to be in the open, let me assure you.”
There was a pause that was long enough to make Piero nervous.
“Sergeant, this is Crow Two,” said a new, male voice. “We need a confirmed sighting before committing any aircraft.”
“Where’s Lieutenant General Piazza?” Piero snapped, frustrated. He didn’t have time to waste on these people. He wanted to talk to the man in charge.
“He’s KIA, Sergeant,” replied Crow Two, his voice cold and stern.
Piero stiffened at the news. He knew right away what it meant: He was about to be grilled about his plan—a plan that had sounded great earlier, but now seemed kind of crazy.
“We need a confirmation before sending air support,” the man said. “Lieutenant General Piazza gave you specific orders, and—”
Piero cut the operator off. “The Queen is here,” Piero said firmly. “I know she’s here because I was in the bowels of the Colosseum and I heard her moving around down there.”
There was a pause filled with more static.
“Roger that, Sergeant. My CO has given the green light to fire up a jet and send it your way in approximately fifteen minutes, with enough bombs to level the Colosseum, but they won’t be dropping a single one unless you have a confirmed sighting, understood?”
“Roger that,” Piero said.
Shaking with anger—and partly with fear—he placed the radio back in his pouch. He crossed over to the gate that led to the tunnels. A chain hung from the metal latch, and he looped it through several passes. After securing the gate with a lock, he retreated to the stairs leading up into the arcades.
This is the only way, he thought. You are doing the right thing. If that woman and her daughter are still alive below, you’re doing them a favor.
Despite the reassurance, Piero still felt conflicted. The fighter jet would kill anyone and everything within a one-block radius of the Colosseum, including any other survivors who might be held prisoner beneath the structure.
The climb up hundreds of steps took him several minutes, and by the time he reached the top, his thighs ached. He didn’t have time to stop and rest. Standing on the highest row in the arcades, Piero set his pack down and pulled out the ancient boombox he’d stolen from the apartment building earlier that morning. He blew off the dust and set it on top of the wall.
An hour earlier he’d changed the batteries and dug through the CD collection the previous resident had left in the apartment. He held a CD of his favorite British band, Led Zeppelin. A smile curled on his face. He wasn’t sure he was going to make it out of here alive, but if he was going to die, he wanted to go out listening to one of the best bands of all time.
Piero put the CD into the player. Ringo skittered over his neck and perched on his other shoulder to look out over the city. The view was remarkable from up here, with views of the Vatican, Palatine Hill, and the rooftops of thousands of ancient buildings. In a few minutes, he hoped an even better sight would show up on the horizon: an EUF fighter jet.
He drew in a breath of fresh air that didn’t reek of rotting trash and closed his eyes for a moment to picture everyone and everything he’d lost: his family, his friends, the rest of the Fourth Alpini Parachutist Regiment. In his mind’s eye, he was transported back to the last trip he’d taken to Rome with his family. His younger sister was standing next to him in the memory, and they were both complaining about being asked to pose for pictures every few feet. His mother had insisted they were making memories, and she had been right.
Now all he had were memories. But at least they were mostly good ones. He opened his eyes as a bad one threatened to overtake his mind—his friend, Lieutenant Antonio LoMaglio, being torn in half by a Reaver right in front of his eyes.
Piero ran a hand through his greasy hair and looked down at Ringo.
“You ready for this, little buddy?” Piero asked.
The mouse squeaked excitedly. It probably thought Piero was going to feed it. Piero heaved a sigh and pushed the Play button on the boombox. The speakers crackled for a few seconds before the opening notes of “Immigrant Song” blasted through the Colosseum. Ringo jumped back to Piero’s shoulder, head tilting from side to side.
As soon as the music started playing, Piero reached for the mouse. “Time to get out of here, little buddy,” he said, dropping his friend into his vest pocket. The song blared behind them as they worked their way down the stairs. They made it only a few steps before the Colosseum shook, the stone and concrete beneath his boots rumbling.
Piero kept moving. The Zeppelin song had been one of his favorites to listen to when running track in school, and it was always on the playlist for the Fourth Alpini Parachutist Regiment in the weight room.
The song started to crescendo. It hit the climax when he reached the bottom of the stairs. He took a right and hurried down the enclosed veranda toward the arched doorway leading out of the amphitheater.
He glanced over the side of the railing at the floor below. The wooden platform was rattling, and the empty bottles and other trash scattered in the dirt were shaking.
His plan was working. The beasts were moving from their nest.
Robert Plant continued to scream from the speakers. For an old stereo, it sure was loud—loud enough that Piero never heard the flapping wings of a Reaver until it was almost too late.
The beast landed on top of the arched doorway, giving Piero just enough time to duck before it reached down to claw at his face. The six-inch talons narrowly missed him. As soon as he hit the shadowed hallway, he slid to a stop and raised his rifle, firing a burst into the beast. It squawked and fell backward, wings flapping and hitting Piero with a draft of rotten air. He quickly turned and ran through the vestibule.
At the end, another Reaver prowled in the shadows, wings at its side and spiky back hunched. Both almond-shaped eyes focused on Piero, nearly stopping his heart in fright.
He pulled the trigger twice. Both shots found their target, puncturing fragile eyeballs that exploded like pus-filled zits. A screech of agony followed, and hot blood coated the ceiling. Piero considered firing another shot but decided to save his ammunition. The blind beast flopped on the ground, thrashing.
Piero pulled out his knife to finish off the monster as he moved into the dim passage. Two steps in, a pair of claws grabbed his pack and yanked him backward. He landed hard on his tailbone. The creature he’d fired a direct blast into earlier climbed on top of him, shrieking in rage
and using its wings to pin his arms down.
He stared up at the ugliest alien face he’d ever seen in his life. Two crooked eyes bulged in pale sockets, and wormy sucker lips opened to blast him with hot, wretched breath that smelled like a thousand dead fish.
“No!” he screamed. “Get off me, you hideous turd!”
Piero fought violently, more worried about Ringo than himself. He could feel the mouse moving in his breast pocket.
The beast slammed his knife hand against the ground, knocking away his blade and cutting his wrist with sharp claws. Somehow he managed to hold on to his rifle.
Sunlight hit his face as the creature dragged him, kicking and squirming, onto the veranda. He caught a glimpse of the dirt floor below, where Wormer tentacles had burst through. Several sets of snakelike beasts wriggled as the tunneling monsters tried to free their bodies from the dirt.
At the gates were several full-grown juveniles. The lock held them back for all of two seconds before the creatures barreled into the open. Another gate across the Colosseum broke off its hinges, disgorging mutated monsters of all shapes and sizes: Beetles, Pinchers, and Reavers.
Piero fought the beast holding him, but every time he moved, the wings tightened around his body. Ringo squeaked inside his pocket, terrified and wiggling.
I should never have brought him with me, Piero realized. The thought of his furry friend ending up as a snack made him fight harder. He managed to fire a shot with his rifle that only pinged off the concrete floor.
The monster’s grip suddenly loosened, and it flapped away, but before Piero could raise his gun, an arm wrapped around his neck, and a claw tightened around his wrist.
He screamed in pain and dropped the rifle.
Then he was rising into the air. Wings flapped to his right and left. He managed to move his head to see sucker lips the size of his head, and remembered Antonio LoMaglio’s last minutes on this earth.
Not like this, Piero thought. “Fuck, not like this!” The words choked out of his mouth. He tried to punch the monster with his other hand, in a desperate attempt to injure the beast or at least startle it into letting go.
Extinction War Page 24
