Ronnie opened the hatch to the clean room, and all six of them entered the shower facility. On the other side of the next hatch, a team of Medical Corps soldiers and scientists waited.
One of them stepped up to the wall intercom. “Doctors, once you finish rinsing off your suits, please discard them in the infirmary chute.”
Kate gave the thumbs-up sign.
Thirty minutes later, she was shivering in her underwear. She stripped and tossed them into a bag a Medical Corps soldier held. He looked away.
“I’m going to need this back,” Beckham said. He was holding his uniform out toward the Medical Corps soldier with the bag.
“Your clothes have to be destroyed, sir.”
Beckham put his clothes on a bench and began digging through them. Kate didn’t need to see him pull the picture of his Mom from a pocket to know exactly what he was looking for.
“Everything needs to be—”
“It’s my last one,” Beckham said. “No way in hell you’re taking this from me.”
The soldier looked over his shoulder and sighed. Holding out the bag, he said, “Fine. Just put your clothes in.”
Shaking from the cold, Kate reached into the locker and pulled out a white jumpsuit. The warmth of a towel suddenly spread over her back. She grabbed the sides and pulled it around her. When she turned, she was face to face with Beckham. He had a towel wrapped around his waist, but nothing else. His barrel chest was covered in bruises, and scabs had formed around the stitches on his shoulder. Both forearms and calves were covered in scrapes and gashes, some so deep they should have had stitches by now. He was going to have a lot of scars.
“Ready to finally get out of here?” he asked.
Kate smiled as warmly as she could. She slipped into the designated clothes and waited for Beckham to change. When they were finished, they joined Ellis, Ronnie, and the two technicians. The squad of Medical Corps soldiers and scientists waited for them in the passage outside.
“Good to see you, Master Sergeant” one of them said. Beckham reached out to shake his hand. “Thanks for what you did earlier, Anthony. I appreciate it.”
“Happy to help.” The man looked at Kate and grinned. “You know who your boyfriend is, right?”
Kate felt another smile coming on, but she didn’t let it. She was too tired, and now didn’t seem like an appropriate time for small talk. Instead, she nodded and grabbed Beckham’s hand.
Anthony led them above decks where they were met by a Marine escort in CRBN suits.
“This way!” one of the men shouted, pointing toward a Blackhawk.
They took the bird back to the GW and quickly made their way to the makeshift infirmary. The room was packed to the brim with new faces. Many of them were children. The massive space quieted as they entered. Every nurse, doctor, and patient seemed to stop what they were doing to stare in Kate’s direction.
In the center of the room she saw Donna and her son, Bo. Tank was set up in a bed next to Chow. Garcia was standing at its foot. Horn was there too, holding Tasha and Jenny’s hands. The girls looked over and waved at Kate. She couldn’t believe it, but they were both smiling.
Even President Ringgold was there. She finished shaking the hand of an injured soldier, then wheeled toward Kate. An escort of three Marines trailed Ringgold through the maze of beds, moving fast to keep up.
Beckham waved to his men, a gesture that said he was okay. He scanned the room with Kate, both of them realizing at the same time that there were two missing faces.
“Where are Fitz and Meg?” Kate asked.
Beckham shook his head. “I…I don’t know.”
Horn left his girls with a nurse and walked over with Garcia.
“Goddamn, it’s good to see you guys,” Beckham said.
Horn snorted and raised a brow. “That was pretty bold of you, telling me you had to take a dump and then rushing to the Cowpens.”
Beckham blushed when Kate looked at him. “I knew you would try and stop me, Big Horn.”
“You’re okay?” Garcia asked. His black hair was matted to his skull, and bandages covered his forehead. His broken nose was swollen worse than before.
“I should be asking you the same question,” Beckham replied. “You look like hell, Marine.” He searched the room a second time. “Where are Fitz and Meg?”
Garcia shook his head. “Things got bad out there.”
Kate’s heart flipped. She squeezed Beckham’s coarse hand.
“Meg was hurt. Hurt bad. She’s in surgery. Fitz is waiting for her to get out,” Garcia said. “That’s all I know. She’s been under the knife for a while.”
Kate let go of Beckham’s hand as President Ringgold approached in her wheelchair. He walked over to his men and patted Garcia on the back. She heard him asking about Tank, Chow, and the other soldiers just as Ringgold arrived.
“Dr. Lovato,” said the President. “You never cease to amaze me. I’m only going to say this once. I want you and Master Sergeant Beckham to rest. Take a nap. A long one. Then report to the CIC.”
Kate considered protesting, but Ringgold held up her uninjured hand. “That’s an order, Kate.”
“We just need to run a few tests on them before they're cleared to leave,” Anthony said.
Ringgold reached up and put a hand on Kate’s left arm. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
The Marines behind Ringgold didn’t seem to like that. Anthony didn’t either.
“Madame President, please refrain from touching Dr. Lovato right now,” he said. “She’s been cleared, but….”
Ringgold kept her hand on Kate’s arm and smiled. “I’ll see you soon, Kate.”
“Thank you for your concern, Madame President.” Kate smiled back and patted Ringgold’s hand.
“This way, please,” Anthony said.
Beckham finished his conversation and joined Kate in the single file line. Ellis and the technicians were already heading toward the plastic tent marked with biohazard signs across the room.
“You think Meg’s going to pull through?” Kate asked Beckham as they walked. Meg had never stopped fighting the monsters. It didn’t seem fair for her to survive the Bone Collector and everything else, only to perish now.
He clenched his jaw and rubbed at his forehead. “She’s tough.”
Kate focused her thoughts and continued after Ellis toward the makeshift biohazard facility. The temporary infirmary smelled like sweat and blood, but it represented everything they were fighting for. The new faces were civilians. People who Fitz, Meg, and the Variant Hunters had risked their lives to save. As Anthony opened the plastic door to the room, Kate drew in a breath. Kryptonite was almost ready, and there were still people alive out there to save.
People who were still fighting.
Stepping through the door, she allowed a dangerous thought to enter her mind—maybe the human race could be saved after all.
-15-
Numb and drowsy, Meg shifted in and out of consciousness. If it weren’t for the shouts and the beep of an EKG machine, she would have thought she was dead.
“We’re losing her!” someone yelled. The voice was distant and muffled, like whoever was shouting was in the middle of a windstorm.
She felt the world spinning around her, fading away and then rushing back, full of pain. Meg couldn’t remember where she was or how she had gotten there. Her eyelids were weights. She didn’t have the energy to open them.
Fragmented dreams surfaced in her mind as she struggled against the warm darkness that tried to welcome her, like sleep after hours and hours of being awake.
Meg opened the back door to her in-laws' vacation home in Martha’s Vineyard. It was mid-July, and a warm breeze rustled the white blouse she wore over her swimsuit. She stepped out onto the lawn that separated the property from rolling beaches of creamy sand. The ocean sparkled in the distance, beckoning her.
“Meg, the water’s great!” shouted her husband. Tim hopped through the surf and dove into the water.
>
A smile crested her face. She loved watching him swim. His graceful strokes, the way his body glided through the water. He was a natural. It took an Ironman triathlon for Meg to enjoy the sport. And even after completing one, she still didn’t love the water like Tim did. But today, she wasn’t swimming two point four miles with a thousand other triathletes. It was just her and her husband on a beach devoid of everything but seagulls.
She stripped off her blouse as she ran to the water, toes slipping into the warm sand. Nothing beat running barefoot on the beach. Pounding concrete in her running shoes or pedaling her triathlon bike down a straightaway was heaven. But this…this was what she loved more than anything else. It gave her a natural high.
Meg spent the afternoon and evening on the beach with Tim. They ate dinner at dusk, then ran back into the surf with a full moon overhead. She stood knee-deep in water with her back to his chest, his arms wrapped around her stomach. The waves slapped against their legs in the sparkling twilight, and she turned for a kiss that seemed to last forever
That night they made love for hours. It had been months since they had come together so intensely. With demanding careers, they were almost always exhausted at night, and the weekends they spent catching up on everything else. Feeling Tim lust after her reminded her why she had fallen in love with him years ago. She lost herself under his muscular body, his every kiss caressing her skin.
“Give me the paddles!”
A powerful shock jolted Meg awake. Fire raced across her skin, burning her insides at the same time. Her eyelids cracked open to a brilliant white glow. Two faces wearing surgical masks hovered over her. Blinding pain ripped through her extremities, tingling and sharpening until she couldn’t stand it anymore. The agony slowly forced her eyelids shut, the faces overhead blurring until they vanished.
Meg reached out for Fitz’s hand. His eyes flitted from the Variant that had her legs to the bottom of the stairwell. She could hear the beasts climbing, their talons striking the concrete, joints snapping with every movement.
This was no different than being chased by the flames inside a burning building. Her only option was to keep moving forward.
Fitz fired a shot into the face of a Variant that had broken his right blade. Then he reached out to grab her, but she was sliding. Pain lanced up her raw legs, and her chin hit a stair as the monster holding her pulled her away from Fitz.
Shouts echoed through the stairwell. Garcia. Tank. Someone else. She could see figures rushing to help her, but there was no time. The Marines faded into the shadowy stairwell as she was dragged toward dozens of chomping maws.
The Variant Hunters and Fitz couldn’t help her now. She had to help herself.
Still holding her axe, Meg rolled to her back and used the blade to strike at the wrinkled female face of a Variant. Crunching bone echoed, and warm blood sprayed her face. A horrifying, deep shriek followed, and a pair of talons yanked her axe away.
Gripping her axe had given her strength. Without it, there was no holding back the terror. As the claws cut through her flesh, she screamed out for help.
Gunshots rattled above. More blood peppered Meg’s exposed skin. She wasn’t sure if it was her own or the beast’s.
“Meg, hold on!” Fitz screamed.
The swarm consumed her before she could respond. Desperate, she squirmed, punched, bit, and scratched. She tore a chunk of flesh from the monster holding her down, then dug her fingernails into the creature’s neck, pulling away diseased skin.
Blood dripped into her eyes, forcing them shut. The weight of the beast suddenly lifted, only to be replaced by what felt like a dozen Variants all at once. She blinked away the sticky gore to the sight of a single face with almond eyes and bark-like skin.
If it weren’t for the pressure on her chest, she would have screamed. What came out was a strangled whisper. In her peripheral, the rest of the pack raced by her and up the stairs toward the Marines, leaving behind a wake of rotting, sour flesh. Meg writhed under the armored monster, but there was no budging under its weight.
She watched, with one eye open, as the beast’s jaw split. Four mandibles extended to reveal barbed teeth. A blast of rancid breath hit her in the face. Meg searched the ground for something to fight back with. Her fingers brushed the cold steel of her axe.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
Meg gasped for air, her eyelids snapping open to the same bright infirmary. A partially obscured face leaned down. The man waved a thin object in front of her eyes. The pain came back, and stars drifted across the darkness.
“We’re losing her again!”
Meg fired her M9 at the empty bottles. She could see Riley staring at her from his wheelchair. Blushing, she fired off another three shots.
“Damn, you’re a natural.”
“I thought I told you to stop looking at me,” Meg said.
Riley turned slightly, but she could still feel his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just….”
Meg pulled the magazine and handed it to Riley, her eyes locking with his. “Just what?”
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world to me.”
A moment of silence passed between the two of them. Meg wasn’t sure how to reply. It had been a long time since any man told her she was beautiful. After they’d been married for a few years, she and Tim had let their romance all but fizzle out, both of them wrapped up with their careers and their busy lives. They’d talked about taking a trip, just the two of them, to rekindle the spark. They’d never gotten the chance, and Meg had resigned herself to never seeing a man look at her with desire again.
Then she’d met Riley.
“Sorry,” he said, blushing.
Shaking her head, Meg said, “Don’t be.” She gestured for another magazine, and Riley fumbled with one sticking out of his vest pocket. He handed it to her with shaky fingers. It was odd, seeing the elite soldier show such vulnerability, and it was then Meg knew how deeply he cared for her. She realized at that moment how deeply she cared for him too.
“Goddammit, get him out of here!” screamed a voice.
The sharp eyes of a doctor Meg didn’t recognize replaced Riley’s carefree gaze. She was back in the infirmary and could feel herself slipping away, but it was the intense sadness of her memories that hurt the worst. She was afraid to close her eyes again. Terrified that she would see Tim, transformed into a monster, being gunned down, or the life leaving Riley’s blue eyes on Plum Island.
“Meg, it’s going to be okay,” came a second, softer voice. There was urgency and fear in the words, enough to confirm what she suspected—she was dying. Using every ounce of strength, she tried to twist her head in the direction of the voice. A nurse restrained her with a palm Meg couldn’t feel.
“Please stay still, ma’am,” the nurse said sternly.
The slight movement provided Meg a view of the body on the operating table.
She scarcely recognized her muscular legs, the Ironman tattoo on her upper right thigh, or the abs she had worked so hard for. Her body was covered in long, bright lacerations. Two doctors and a team of nurses were working on her. One of the doctors was bent next to her right side. She could feel something inside her.
“I can’t get this artery.…” the doctor began to say. His words trailed off as the pressure increased on her guts.
Are those his fingers?
Meg fought for a better look. The EKG machine chirped louder, her heart rate elevating at the sight of an open gash along the right side of her stomach.
“Don’t move, ma’am!” the nurse entreated.
Meg opened her mouth to yell at the woman, but all that came out was a croak. Shades of red encroached in the sides of her vision.
“Jesus Christ, will someone put her back under!” a doctor yelled.
The same soft voice from earlier called her name. This time she saw the face it belonged to. Fitz was standing to her right. A nurse turned toward him, her hands outstretched. He crutched past he
r and limped toward the table.
“It’s okay, Meg, I’m here,” Fitz said. “And I’m not going anywhere.” His eyes flitted to her injuries for a split second, just like they had in her memory right before she had been pulled from his reach by the Variant that had maimed her.
This time he grabbed her hand and held on. There were no more monsters to drag her away. Only terrifying memories and the sobering reality of her injuries.
She wasn’t going to get up from this table, and they both knew it.
The chirp of the EKG machine sharpened. Meg knew the sound. She’d heard it dozens of times when she lost patients before they made it to the hospital. Oddly, she had felt more fear for those people than she did for herself.
“You’re right,” Meg whispered to Fitz. Despite the numbness, her words came out remarkably clear. “It’s all going to be okay. Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault. You haven’t ever failed anyone.”
Fitz gripped her hand tightly, his sweat mixing with her blood. “Hang in there. You’re going to pull through. You have to pull through.” He looked over at the doctor, but Meg squeezed his hand, forcing him to hold her gaze.
The doctor leaning over her yelled, “Get this man out of here!”
A second nurse approached Fitz, grabbing him by the arm.
“You have to leave, now, sir!”
“No, I’m staying with her!” Fitz shouted back. He yanked his arm away.
Meg was always told life flashed before your eyes when you died. But besides a few memories of Tim, her thoughts were all about the past six weeks. She thought of Tasha and Jenny, how they had been a light in the darkness. She had cherished her time with the girls, even though it was short. Their resilience had given her hope that the human race would survive.
“Tell Tasha and Jenny I love them,” Meg said, her voice dwindling into a whisper again.
Extinction End (Extinction Cycle Book 5) Page 19
