“I can’t believe this shit.” Lincoln said. “Why the fuck we got to do it?”
“We’re the guarantee,” Rico said.
“It’s a suicide mission if you ask me,” Ace grumbled.
Dohi didn’t make his opinion known, but Fitz could tell he didn’t like it either. Hell, Fitz didn’t like the orders, but he understood why Team Ghost had to bring the beast down.
They couldn’t risk the strange monstrosity relocating and sprouting new roots. If they waited on a bombing run, the thing might simply disappear into the tunnels. It was like a cancerous tumor that they had to stop before it became malignant and spread further.
“Get your heads on straight,” Fitz said. “This is our chance to bring down the network and stop an all-out invasion that could destroy the country and everything we have worked to rebuild. We can’t let that monster live or escape.”
“You know I’m with you, Fitzie,” Rico said, forcing a pretty smile.
“Me too,” Mendez said.
The others nodded.
“How much ammo do you all have?” Fitz inventoried the few magazines and then distributed them evenly. Everyone would get two for their primary weapon. It wasn’t much, but this mission was supposed to be for recon—not to fight full-fledged battles.
Fitz had learned long ago that improvisation was the best tool for a soldier.
Tonight, improvisation came in the form of grenades. The team had six total among them. Fitz took two, and Mendez and Lincoln took the others.
“Take in some nutrition and water,” Fitz said. “I’ll go over the plan and then we move out.”
Rico brushed a strand of pink hair back under her helmet as she sipped from her bottle. Ace bit off the end of a power bar. Dohi closed his eyes to meditate. Mendez crossed himself, praying, and Lincoln chewed noisily.
“So what’s the plan, boss?” Lincoln said with his mouth open.
“Plan’s simple. Mendez, Lincoln, and I will blow this thing back to hell with grenades while the rest of you keep the Variants off our hides from the catwalk over that stage. Clean, fast, and no mistakes. We’re all going home. Got it?”
“Hold up,” Dohi said. “I’m not sure the grenades are going to do the trick. We might need something else.”
“C4 would be nice,” Ace said.
“What you thinking, Dohi?” Rico asked.
“Those semi-trucks we saw at the loading docks. I could try and siphon out the diesel fuel. Even degraded diesel is combustible. Once a diesel fire gets going, it’s pretty fierce and lasts a long time.”
Lincoln shook his helmet. “So we can all burn in that place? Hell no.”
“And siphon it with what, and into what?” Mendez asked.
Dohi used a knife to cut the straw off his camelback. “I just need something to dump it into.”
Fitz liked the idea. “I think we can find something.”
Lincoln grunted and turned away.
“Let’s do it then,” Mendez said.
Everyone but Lincoln nodded back, but he finally came around. Together, Team Ghost set off for the same entrance they had used to get into the building the first time.
On the way they found several plastic jugs in a pile of trash Fitz had spotted earlier. Dohi picked them up and moved over to the tankers while the rest of the team stood guard.
A single Variant spotted them while he filled the jugs. Lincoln threw a knife that hit the beast in the head before it could sound the alarm with a shriek. It crumpled against a curb and Mendez helped him drag it away.
“I’ll carry those, you take point,” Ace said. He picked up the full jugs of fuel.
Getting inside was easy with Dohi leading them safely back to the dressing room they had first taken refuge in. Fitz took a moment to get his bearings and to listen for hostiles. Then he directed the team toward the auditorium.
The sounds of clicking joints and squawks traveled down the webbing-covered passages along the way. Variants rushed in and out of the shadows, but the team used the jumbles of bodies hanging from the red vines and rotted furniture for cover, advancing slowly.
After fifteen minutes of creeping and even crawling, they reached the stairs. Fitz flashed hand signals. They split up toward the entrances to the auditorium. Rico, Ace, and Dohi continued up the stairs.
Once again Fitz watched Rico venturing away from him.
Keep yourself safe, he thought.
She looked back before she went out of sight, offering him a slight wave. Just enough to let him know she was thinking of him, too.
Once she was gone, Fitz entered the back of the theater to await their signal. He crouched on his blades and gestured for Mendez and Lincoln to spread out.
Then he reached toward his helmet to make sure the cam mounted there was positioned correctly. He wanted to capture every single second of what was about to happen.
Pale beams of moonlight bled through the decayed holes in the roof, bathing the whole chamber in soft illumination. A group of ten Variants lurked on the stage, some of them lying down, others perched like birds.
The giant beast they guarded remained in the same spot, webbed tentacles of tissue sprouting from its gargantuan body and stretching across the auditorium. Several Variants used the strands to climb like freakish children on a nightmarish jungle gym.
Another pack entered from the back stage and clambered up to the bulbous abomination with chunks of rotting corpses. They transported meat in a single file line, each of them dropping scraps into the beast’s gullet before departing to find more food.
Dohi was going to dump a bucket of diesel down the same hole and then Fitz was going to lob a grenade inside. He glanced up at the stage using his night vision goggles, seeing the infrared tags from the other three members of Ghost perched on the catwalk.
He flashed his IR tag on his NVGs at them, and then grabbed one of his grenades.
The show was about to begin.
Another Variant climbed down the red tendrils overhead, and Fitz ducked down. Bones protruded from the monster’s sickly, wart-covered flesh. The Variant dropped to the stage with a chewed-up human arm and jammed it into the abomination’s mouth.
The crunch echoed through the auditorium.
Ace and Dohi both stood on the catwalk and dumped the diesel as the last of the Variants finished the feeding. The fluid rolled down the sides of the pink tissue and pooled around the monster.
Immediately, two Variants holding sentry craned their necks upward, eyes glaring around wildly.
They homed in on a match glowing in Rico’s fingers.
One of the Variants shrieked in alarm.
“Eat this, fuck wad,” she said, tossing the match down.
The abomination also looked up as the match hit the pink folds of its body, igniting upon impact. The flames cast the whole place in a ghoulish orange glow. Nerve tendrils recoiled and broke, crisped by the fire as Dohi and Ace finished dumping their jugs.
An ear-shattering roar exploded from the beast.
Fitz nearly drew back from the overwhelming sound.
“Now,” he said to Mendez and Lincoln.
“Fire in the hole!” Fitz shouted.
They tossed their grenades onto the stage while Dohi, Rico, and Ace moved away on the catwalk.
The three men all ducked as the explosions rocked the stage, shrapnel lancing across the auditorium. Fitz got up with another grenade, but had to switch to his rifle as Variants bounded up the stairs toward his location.
Suppressed gunfire came from above. Rico, Ace, and Dohi firing to keep the beasts back and give the men a chance to lob their grenades.
Fitz fired a burst and glimpsed the burning monster behind the curtain of smoke. It had pulled back one of its flayed arms, snapping more of the spindly growths. For an enormous, bulbous creature, it seemed fairly agile, smacking at the blaze with its huge, deformed hand.
The space filled with the stink of barbecued flesh, and the enormous monster roared again. Variants flood
ed inside the auditorium, scaling the walls and webbing toward the end of the catwalk.
Dohi, Rico, and Ace held their ground, firing calculated single shots.
The fire spread across the stage to the seats, choking the air with smoke. They were running out of time, and the beast still wasn’t dead.
Fitz sighted up the first Variant ready to pounce from the wall to the catwalk. A round punched into its flesh, knocking the monster down. Flames from the burning seats swallowed its corpse.
Dohi and Ace followed up with a volley of cover fire, picking off the advancing beasts. Another grenade sailed away from Mendez. This one smacked against the side of the creature’s head. Its huge claw slapped it away, and the blast blew several Variants to pieces.
Burning flesh sizzled and popped on the stage.
The abomination pushed itself up on its feet. Fitz’s initial impression that this was some lazy queen that relied on its workers to keep it alive disintegrated at the sight of the standing beast.
Another grenade arced through the air from Lincoln.
The beast swatted it away with a burning hand. The grenade sailed right for the seats in front of Mendez and Lincoln.
“Back!” Fitz yelled.
They dove to the ground, and Fitz took cover behind a pillar. The explosion rushed past him, the noise so loud his ears seemed like they were going to burst. He staggered around the pillar, bringing up his rifle in shaking hands to fire at monsters loping up the stairs.
Everything seemed to freeze as Fitz coughed on smoke.
Mendez and Lincoln were both on the ground, hardly moving, their bodies likely torn up from shrapnel. Chunks of steel catwalk fell to the stage and cables snapped from the ceiling.
The rest of the platform tilted. Dohi slipped, sliding down. The monster reached up at his boots with a burning hand.
Fitz grabbed the final grenade, but he couldn’t throw it with Dohi right there. Instead, he brought up his rifle to fire at two beasts making a run for Mendez and Lincoln.
He scored two headshots and then aimed for the abomination on the stage still reaching for Dohi. Adjusting his aim, he lined up the crosshairs and fired at one of the creature’s large eyeballs.
The beast let out a vicious roar and stumbled backward, groping at its face. Dozens of Variants had surrounded their leader, using their bodies to absorb rounds from Rico and Ace.
Even more creatures poured into the burning auditorium, now racing in from behind the stage and dropping from the holes in the ceiling. One of them used the writhing leader as a ladder to climb up toward where Dohi was dangling.
Rico inched out, the catwalk sagging slightly under her weight.
The Variant looked ready to pounce on the two of them. A three-round burst to the center of the Variant’s back dropped the beast, and Fitz moved to another target. He pulled the trigger but the weapon had run dry.
Rico stretched out a hand, grabbing Dohi’s and pulling him to safety. Ace fired to hold back the monsters climbing the walls, but it wouldn’t be long before they were overwhelmed.
Team Ghost simply didn’t have enough rounds, and in a few minutes the fire and the smoke would be too intense to escape. They had to get out now.
“Mendez, Lincoln, get up!” Fitz yelled. He coughed and ran over to them. Mendez had pushed himself up and managed to raise his rifle but Lincoln was limp on the ground.
The mastermind held one paw over its bleeding eye socket. As it struggled, more of the nerves pulled taut, then broke away.
“Mendez shoot it!” Fitz yelled.
The beast roared in pain, opening its maw wildly as gunfire painted the bulbous flesh. Fitz used the opportunity to lob his final grenade like a baseball into the black hole of its mouth.
“Down!” Fitz yelled. He shielded Lincoln’s body with his own as the explosion boomed on the stage. Ears ringing and lungs choked with smoke, Fitz pushed himself up to confirm the beast was dead.
The rest of the auditorium was a hellscape, the conflagration enveloping the rotten curtains on the stage and the neglected auditorium seats. It took Fitz several scorching blinks to find the headless monster burning on the floorboards.
Tendrils of webbing popped around it, melted and charred by the flames. The creature seemed to deflate as the fire consumed the folds of its flesh.
Fitz made sure his helmet cam was broadcasting the entire thing. He wanted command to see this thing was dead. After holding the view for a moment, he helped Mendez pick up Lincoln.
As soon as Fitz picked him up, he felt blood soaking into his gloves.
“Get to the evac point!” Fitz yelled into the channel.
Dohi, Rico, and Ace disappeared from the catwalks, but Fitz could hear the suppressed gunfire as they escaped back down the stairs.
Part of the ceiling dumped into the auditorium, feeding the crackling fire. Sparks flew upward as a column collapsed, one of the balconies crumbling over the body of the mastermind.
Variants shrieked as they were caught in the flames.
Fitz and Mendez carried Lincoln into the lobby where Ace and the others were waiting.
“Birds on the way,” Rico confirmed. “I called it in.”
Fitz nodded just as fire burst out of the theater doors. A burning Variant skidded across the carpet, writhing in pain.
“Go, go, go!” Fitz yelled as more burning Variants burst through the flames.
Dohi and Ace led them out of the front doors to an overgrown lawn bulwarked by brick-faced buildings. Holes littered the area from Variant tunnels.
Team Ghost didn’t have far to go, but they might as well have been trekking halfway around the world. The holes vomited up more of the bastards in front of the team and even more came from the inside of the buildings, surrounding Team Ghost.
The Black Hawk scheduled to pick them up was supposed to meet them in the middle of this grassy field. He strained his injured ears to listen for the telltale thrum of the rotors, but he couldn’t hear shit besides the monsters pursuing them.
Fitz loaded his final magazine and began picking off beasts on the lawn. Rico and Mendez were down to their sidearms, firing at the beasts coming from the performing arts center.
Ace and Dohi fired their final rounds at Variants flooding away from adjacent buildings. Several threw themselves through windows, glass shards flying. Others parted through overgrown grass on all fours like sharks surging through the surf.
Fitz worked his way from one target to the next until his bolt locked back. He let the rifle sag over his chest and drew his Beretta M9.
Flames from the performing arts center spread to another neighboring building. Fitz looked past the columns of smoke choking the sky for the chopper, but it still wasn’t in view.
“Where is it?” Fitz yelled to Rico.
“I don’t know!” she shouted. “They said fifteen minutes!”
The ground tremored violently beneath his boots, and he went back to firing his pistol. Pillars on the front of one building crumbled. Bricks fell next, crushing a handful of Variants.
“What’s happening?” Rico shouted.
Part of the lawn caved in. Other canyons formed, trailing alongside the older holes.
“The tunnels are collapsing!” Fitz yelled back. He changed the magazine of his pistol, his heart leaping as Variants closed in all around them.
Lincoln continued to bleed out on the ground, both of his pant legs saturated with blood.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Fitz said. The team crowded around Lincoln, forming a circle to protect their fallen comrade.
“Our six!” Dohi yelled.
“Three o’clock!” Rico shouted back.
The beasts were coming from all directions.
“I’m out!” Ace said. He switched to his shotgun, blasting a beast that leapt through the air at them. The corpse landed on the ground in front of Fitz, sliding to rest just in front of his blades.
Flashes suddenly lanced from the heavens. Fitz heard the unmistakable bark of an M240.
The sounds of gunfire had never seemed more beautiful.
A Black Hawk lowered out of the darkness, a crew chief sweeping the door-mounted weapon at the Variants leaping over corpses to get to Team Ghost.
“Let’s go!” Fitz commanded.
The team formed a cordon around Lincoln as Ace and Dohi carried the downed operator to the chopper. They piled in with the help of a second crew chief and gently put Lincoln’s limp body on the deck.
Fitz was afraid to check his pulse.
“Get us out of here!” Dohi yelled.
The chopper lifted as another building succumbed to the quaking earth. Fitz bent down next to Lincoln and pushed his finger against his neck.
The beat was weak, but it was there.
Rico was already digging through her medical pack, and Dohi had wrapped a tourniquet over a wound on Lincoln’s thigh that was dark from arterial blood. She handed Dohi a pair of scissors to cut away his pants.
“What are those Variants doing?” yelled a crew chief.
Fitz looked down at the field below. The beasts had all stopped moving below. They appeared to tilt their heads like they were looking or listening for something.
The chopper continued to pull into the sky, but Fitz could still see the ground as the Variants suddenly funneled toward the holes in a mass exodus.
“Where are they all going?” said the crew chief. “It’s like they just got an order to retreat. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Fitz focused back on Lincoln, trying not to worry about what was happening on the ground. Team Ghost had come close to the brink on Operation Shadow and had barely made it out of the city alive.
The bird curved through the sky.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Rico said. “We need to get him to a field hospital, ASAP.”
“We’ll take him to the closest outpost,” said one of the pilots.
Fitz gripped Lincoln’s gloved hand, wet with blood while Dohi finished cutting off the pants and exposing the wounds. He bent down with the rest of them to start working on Lincoln.
“Hang in there, brother,” Fitz said.
Even with the tourniquet in place, Lincoln had already lost so much blood. The fluid pooled across the deck.
Mendez swallowed hard and looked up at Fitz.
Extinction Shadow Page 29
