The sun dipped on the horizon, disappearing behind the overgrown trees along the Mississippi River. Fitz looked out the window of the Walter Library at the University of Minnesota campus, eyeing the packs of Variants hunting outside.
Hours ago, the creatures had swarmed the streets, forcing Team Alpha to take cover here. He set up guard shifts, so they could all get some sleep while they waited, but Fitz hadn’t been able to rest. From the looks of it, his men hadn’t fared much better.
Ace leaned against the wall next to the window, clearly struggling to keep his eyes open as he watched for threats. Lincoln lay nearby, his head propped up behind his hands on the floor.
Fitz wasn’t happy about hiding in the mildew-covered building full of rotting books. They needed to get out there and identify the location of the Variants and any prisoners. But roaming packs had forced them into shelter.
Added to that, Fitz was on pins and needles not knowing how Team Bravo was doing. He still didn’t know if Rico and Dohi had linked up with Mendez yet, or if they were even still alive for that matter.
This was the most difficult part about dating Rico. Not knowing how she was, or if she was hurt. Sometimes he could block out the worry by keeping himself busy. But when the only companion in his mind was boredom, he couldn’t help thinking of all the terrible things that might have happened to her.
Every second that passed, he considered breaking radio silence. But he decided to trust Rico would transmit if there was an emergency.
He checked the window again as the last of the packs moved out of the area. Ace nodded from his location at another window.
It was time to move.
Fitz nudged Lincoln with a boot. They gathered their gear and headed toward the entryway to the computer lab. Ace led them into the main corridor of the library, passing toppled shelves bleeding soggy, mold-covered books. Leaking water from the ceiling pinged on the floor.
Somewhere ahead came the scratching and growling of Variants. Their rotten fruit odor rose over the pungency of the rotten books.
A chill ran through Fitz, and he held up a fist.
He suddenly got the sense he made a vital error in judgment, and the Variant packs had flanked them. Shadows stretched over the library’s floor as several beasts sniffed their way into the room.
Lincoln and Ace took cover next to Fitz behind a standing bookshelf. He watched through a gap in the books as three of the thinnest Variants he had ever seen prowled through the shelves, looking for something to eat.
They hadn’t caught the team’s scent yet.
Fitz motioned for Lincoln and Ace to hold their fire.
One of the creatures picked up a book and then tossed it aside, hitting a second beast. It snapped back and growled, an eye seeming to bulge from a sunken socket.
The third beast had stopped to chew on an arm covered in open wounds oozing blood and pus. The creatures were all covered in bite and scratch marks.
They were cannibalizing one another, he thought.
Fitz maneuvered for a better look, his right blade letting out a slight creak.
The munching Variant glanced up. The sucker lips snarled back, rows of needle-sharp teeth glistening in saliva.
Fitz waited a beat, hoping that the Variant would write the noise off and turn away. But he had no such luck.
The growling Variant crept toward the team. Fitz looked for a quick escape but, with the beasts around them, there would be none.
They didn’t have any way out of this mess except—
Fitz signaled to Lincoln.
“Fuck this,” Lincoln growled. He stepped out from their hiding spot and fired a burst. Rounds punched through the creature’s chest, sending it spinning backward. It crashed in a tangled mess of limbs.
The remaining two bounded over to their dead comrade, each letting out a furious shriek. Lincoln ended their short-lived assault with two more bursts.
All three beasts bled out into the pool of rain water and wet pages of novels that would never be read again.
But the damage had been done.
The suppressed shots and screeches had attracted the attention of another pack. Fitz didn’t need to tell his team to run. Fighting inside the close quarters would be suicide. If they were going to make a stand they needed a better vantage.
Or you could hide, Fitz thought.
A pair of Variants exploded out of a doorway ahead of Ace.
Fight it is, then.
The older man blew off their heads with perfectly aimed shotgun blasts. Other shrieks came from the hallway behind them. Lincoln laid out a wall of cover fire.
The crash of metal clanged from the hallway. Fitz followed Lincoln and Ace out to see three more Variants vaulting out of a doorway.
Windows cracked in the back of the library as other creatures flanked their position.
Team Alpha was already surrounded.
Ace took on the Variants in front, and Lincoln focused on those in back with Fitz. A few got close enough they managed haphazard swipes. Bullets chewed into the diseased flesh of the monsters, dropping them easily.
Once they were all down, another flurry of screeches filled the halls.
“Changing,” Fitz said.
Lincoln slapped in a new magazine, and Ace reloaded his rifle.
As Fitz charged his rifle, he noticed broken-open ceiling tiles and the red webbing they had seen in the tunnels. He signaled for Lincoln and Ace to continue down a stairwell.
The group headed toward the bottom floor of the library where manmade tunnels would lead to other buildings on campus. These had preceded the Variants, built for students to transit in warmth during harsh Minnesota winters.
Red webbing covered the walls down here and the scent of carrion intensified. The Variants had made themselves at home.
Fitz ran onto a dirt-covered floor and looked over his shoulder at the stairs. They had to flick on their tac-lights to pierce the suffocating darkness. The roars of the Variants boomed from the upper floors of the library. He whirled to scan the basement.
Growls and grunts came from across the dark space. The noises sounded like there was something more than the garden variety Variants occupying this area. He identified the familiar high-pitched staccato notes and an ear-splitting clicking that the Alphas made.
Now he wondered if it was the noise they had made that drew all of the packs, or if it was this creature commanding them like some crazed conductor.
If that was the case, then they wouldn’t be able to escape the constant barrage of attacks until the Alpha was dead. They had to take it down.
Fitz signaled toward the manmade tunnel that led from the bottom floor of the library to neighboring university buildings. The webbing was dense here, some of it stretching across the passage.
Other Variant-made tunnels branched off the main passage, more of the webbing coating the dirt and rock walls like cobwebs. Clicking joints echoed, preventing Fitz from getting a good read on the location of the other packs. He knew one thing—they were coming for Alpha Team.
The soldiers pressed deeper into another passage where he finally saw movement. A massive shape lumbered down the dark corridor.
“That’s the Alpha,” Fitz whispered to his team members.
Lincoln aimed his rifle but the abomination rounded a corner. A flood of smaller Variants suddenly rushed in to cover their leader’s escape.
Lincoln took a knee, and Ace hugged the wall. Fitz moved between them to get an open firing zone in the narrow passage. The sinewy monsters crashed under the wave of gunfire, clogging the tunnel with bodies.
“Conserve your ammo!” Fitz yelled. He had already gone through several magazines, and only had four left, plus his sidearm, and they still hadn’t collected the intel they needed to relay to command.
They had to get out of here.
He turned, seeing more shadows moving in the space.
Dread filled his gut.
In an effort to try and escape, he had trapped them dow
n here in a network of Variant-infested tunnels.
Shit, shit…stay focused, stay calm. All it takes is all you got, Fitz.
As the Alpha Variant escaped, it seemed to be sending more Variants at Team Ghost. Suddenly one of the creatures pounced from a branching tunnel and rammed into Lincoln. He crashed to the ground pushing up at the beast as the wormy lips peeled back, saliva roping off its teeth onto Lincoln’s face.
Fitz grabbed its head and twisted it with a violent snap. The claws meant for Lincoln’s face slid along the floor, tearing into the pulsing webs of tissue.
“Thanks,” Lincoln said, as he rose with Fitz’s help.
Turning to fire, rounds and shotgun blasts chewed into more Variants advancing on them.
Almost as soon as they finished off that batch, another creature exploded out of the darkness. Lincoln cut it down with a flurry of rounds that sent it sliding across the web-covered floor.
Fitz motioned for them to head into a branching tunnel, trying to find a way out before the Alpha could send another wave.
They needed something to change the paradigm. It took him a few minutes of running for his mind to think back to Outpost Turkey River, and that gave him an idea.
The R2TD system had attracted the Alpha, which had seemed more interested in destroying that piece of equipment than any of the humans around it.
From what Fitz knew, the beast used echolocation to navigate through its environment. Those huge bat-like ears were hypersensitive to sound. And the pings of the R2TD device must be in the right frequency range for the beast to pick up.
More Variants hurled themselves out of neighboring tunnels ahead, and Fitz stopped to take them down. He yelled while firing, “Activate the R2TD system.”
“What?” Ace shouted back.
“Turn it on!” Fitz screamed. “Lincoln and I will lay down covering fire.”
“You fucking crazy?”
“If you want to get out of here, do it!”
Ace took off the device and flipped it on. A low hum emanated from the machine as they waited for the next pack of monsters.
Instead of the squawks from the grunts, a roar blasted from one of the nearby tunnels. The sound of footsteps echoed as the creature was drawn to the machine like a bug to a light.
“Where’s it coming from?” Lincoln said.
Fitz turned just in time to see a giant shape filling the wide corridor.
“Behind us,” he said.
The Alpha ran at a hunch, bat-like ears fanning out the sides of its head. The muscular arms pumped as it moved and the spindles of tissue stuck out of its spine toward the surface of the webbing on all sides of the tunnel.
The three men opened up on it with their weapons. Rounds blew out hunks of meat, slowing the advancing monster. It stumbled under the hail of lead, letting out a series of pained screams.
It made it a few more strides before collapsing to the ground. Using its claws, it dragged its broken body toward them.
Fitz lined up his aiming reticles over the creature’s bulbous head. A final shot blasted away the bone and flesh of the creature’s blind face.
For a moment, Fitz thought he had a chance to gather his breath again, but new sounds boomed down the tunnels.
More Alphas.
A new trickle of adrenaline surged through his vessels. Fitz signaled for Ace to set the R2TD system down. The device would attract all the nearby Alphas. He had only intended to eliminate the one, but if they could clear out more, then he would take that opportunity.
The questions were how many more they would have to take out, and did they have enough ammo?
Another beast lumbered into the tunnel with hands clamped over its ears. It let out a pained howl that was answered by the boom of Ace’s shotgun.
The abomination crashed not far from the first.
Another Alpha joined the fight, then a third and a fourth.
Holy shit, Fitz thought. He hadn’t expected so many of the beasts to be prowling these tunnels under Minneapolis. It only proved to him that this place was important, undoubtedly an epicenter of Variant activity.
By the time Fitz directed Ace to turn the R2TD off, seven corpses clogged the tunnels. The clicking of joints and shrieks seemed to retreat.
“Let’s get out of here,” Lincoln whispered.
Ace picked up the dormant R2TD system, and Fitz used the back of his hand to clean flecks of blood from his face. He took point and led them back to the main tunnel system.
Other tunnels intersected with the sides of the main corridor. Fitz spotted the desiccated remains of animals in several of them. Everything big and small had been strung up, sharing a fate like those deer they’d seen in Duluth.
In some instances, Fitz even saw dead Variants hanging from the red webbing.
Whatever this stuff was, it pulsed more wildly here. Fitz could practically feel the electricity coming off it and into his own skin. The deeper into the main tunnel system they went, the faster his heart beat, as if his own body knew what he was heading into before he did.
After using the R2TD weapon like that, he was certain that they had taken out all the Alphas within a generous area from their location.
If his memory served him correctly, they were nearing the Northrop Performing Arts Center. The air became more humid the deeper they moved.
Advancing through these tunnels seemed like walking through the blood vessels of some giant beast. Fitz realized that wasn’t so far from the truth.
The tunnels were, in a way, part of a living monster, and the Delta Operators were like parasites. These growths of living tissue seemed to be the way the monsters organized themselves, creating a kind of hive mind network.
He didn’t know exactly how it worked, but he had a feeling they were getting close to uncovering that secret based on the ferocity of the Variant defenses they had encountered.
He balled his fist as a deep roar boomed in the distance. The thunderous voice rattled his bones, resonating in his marrow.
Lincoln and Ace both had their hands on their helmets, staggering back and forth until the sound died away.
Fitz brought up his rifle, trying to blink away the stars bursting before his vision.
“What was that?” he stammered.
Ace shook his helmet. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”
Lincoln shrugged and shouldered his rifle. “If something’s going to try to kill us down here, I’d rather get this shit over with.”
***
Kate rolled over in bed, instinctively reaching out for Beckham, and feeling nothing but sheets. She shot up, remembering that he had left shortly after midnight for the USS George Johnson.
“I’m just going to monitor the mission and will only go in after the team has confirmed it’s safe,” he had said.
Horn had gone with him, entrusting her security, and the kids, with Sergeant Ruckley and her Army Rangers, as well as the Marines.
Kate got out of bed and walked over to the window, taking in a deep breath of the crisp morning air drifting into the temporary housing.
Letting out a yawn, she went to her bag of clothes. She had slept, but not well, since Beckham was gone.
With the end of the Great War of Extinction, she had gotten used to seeing him every day and feeling the warmth of his body at night.
For the past few weeks, she hadn’t seen much of him at all, and she feared that wasn’t going to change anytime soon. Especially with the new scientific studies she was embarking on and his decision to take on a role with the government.
It seemed their quiet lifestyle on the island had come to an end.
“Mom,” Javier said, rubbing his eyes in the doorway. “Do you have to work again?”
“Yes, honey, I’m sorry.”
Javier frowned. “When is dad coming back?”
“Soon.”
“I want to go home,” Javier sighed. “I don’t like this place.”
“Don’t you like hanging out with the othe
r kids?”
“I guess, but Timothy seems really mad and so does Bo.”
“I imagine it’s going to be hard for Timothy for a while. Just keep trying to be there for him, okay?”
Javier nodded. “He does like playing with Ginger and Spark.”
“Good, you guys should take them to the park and play today.”
“Okay,” Javier said, his spirit lifting. “As long as Tasha and Jenny are cool with it. Maybe they’ll want to play soldier with me.”
Kate nearly winced.
“Why don’t you play scientists instead?” Kate asked. “You know, some of us are quite happy as scientists.”
Javier sunk his hands into his pockets. “If I don’t become a soldier, then I’ll be a scientist,” he said. “I just want to help people when I get older.”
Kate smiled at that.
“You can start by helping Timothy and being there for him in his time of need.”
“I know, and I will.”
Javier went back to his room to get ready for the day.
When she was good to go, she started a pot of coffee. While she waited for it to brew, she watched Javier eat his breakfast, wondering what his future might hold. Her gut told her his future might very well be decided in the next several days by scientists and soldiers.
One of them waited outside her door now.
“Morning, Doctor,” said Michael. The fit young soldier raised a fist and Javier pounded it.
“Hey, Mikey,” Javier said.
“Sup, champ?”
“Not much, just another boring day ahead.”
“Tell me about it.” Michael glanced at Kate. “No offense, doctor.”
She smiled and walked down to Donna’s room, stopping to knock. Turning back, she kissed Javier and gave him a hug.
“Have a good day, honey.”
Donna stepped out of her room, at that moment, with a smile aimed at Kate. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take good care of him.”
“I know you will, thanks, Donna,” Kate replied.
Michael led her downstairs where a full escort of soldiers waited in the hotel lobby. Security had been tight since the raid on Peaks Island and Portland. Because Ringgold had identified her and Carr as VIPs, they could barely use a bathroom without having to check in with someone.
Extinction Shadow Page 24
