He approached the door with his gun shouldered and glanced up at the tower that was going to get their message to Europe. Clouds rolled across the dark sky, but he saw no sign of the Little Birds or other aircraft. The road was still empty.
Beckham took a step back as Ellis unlocked the door. He nodded, and the doctor pushed the steel door open. Beckham burst into the dimly lit control room, raking his gun over the sparsely furnished space. A bank of lights overhead flickered on, spreading a glow over a comms station on the left wall and a table littered with magazines and empty coffee cups on the right. Two chairs faced a computer monitor in the center of the room.
There was no one else here. Huxley hadn’t lied after all.
“Clear,” Beckham said. “Move your ass, Ellis.”
The doctor ran, not to the radio but to the computer station, and pulled something from his backpack. While Ellis typed at the keyboard, Beckham shut the door. The windowless room was humid despite the chill outside.
“What are you doing, Doc?”
Ellis inserted a flash drive into the computer. “Uploading a report and relaying a message to my European counterparts. They’re working with the EUF. I’ll record the video for General Nixon, too.”
“Maybe I should do the talking when it comes to General Nixon.”
“What, you don’t think he’ll take me seriously? I’ve got a science hat.” He turned slightly with a smug grin and pointed at his NASA cap. Then he reached up to reposition the webcam so it centered on him.
“This is an urgent message from Doctor Pat Ellis of Plum Island, asking you to abort Operation Reach. My partner, Doctor Kate Lovato, and I have discovered that the juvenile Variants in Europe respond to radioactive isotopes differently than those in the US. Instead of compromising their flesh, it mutates them…”
Beckham crossed the room and left Ellis to continue his report. He put his ear against the door to listen, but it was difficult to hear over Ellis spewing rapid-fire jargon in the background. He unlocked the door and slowly opened it, raising his weapon.
Nothing stirred in the lawn or the road beyond. Beckham walked outside and checked on Huxley. The man was still lying in the dirt, unconscious.
“Sorry, brother,” Beckham whispered. He lowered his rifle and walked back around the corner. A faint crunching noise made him pause. His eyes flitted from the sky to the road and finally to the cornfield. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear the hum of vehicles on the gravel road on the other side of the crops.
“Shit.” Beckham hurried back into the building. “Ellis, hurry the hell up. We got company.”
“Just about done.”
Ellis had finished recording his video but was now busy typing.
“What are you doing?”
“Uploading the data! Get over here if you’re going to record the video to General Nixon.”
Beckham looked back outside when he heard diesel engines. He scanned the road from left to right.
Ellis turned from the station. “What the hell is that?”
“Trouble!” Beckham yelled back. He ducked down into a crouch and directed his gun toward the field of corn stalks.
“On second thought, you go ahead and record that video to General Nixon,” Beckham said. “And do it fast!”
He slowly backpedaled into the room with his weapon covering the road and the crops. The blurred vision in his right eye made it hard to judge distances. He blinked, trying to focus, and all at once three Humvees exploded out of the field and tore onto the gravel road. A chunk of ice formed in Beckham’s guts. They were cut off from their truck.
Ellis continued talking into the cam, turning to look over his shoulder every few seconds.
“We’re out of time!” Beckham shouted.
“Done. The videos and the report are uploading. They will send as soon as they finish.”
Beckham grabbed the doctor by his arm and pulled him outside. They couldn’t stay here to make sure the videos were sent. They had to run for the woods and find a way to the Animal Disease Center buildings on foot. And with no way to radio Horn, they were on their own.
A bullet hit the door as they bolted out of the building.
“Stay down!” Beckham said. He stopped to fire at the lead Humvee. His gun slipped on his prosthetic hand, but he recovered and squeezed off a burst. The bullets punched through the hood and windshield, making the driver swerve before the gunner in the turret could fire.
Ellis raised his pistol, but Beckham yanked him out of the line of fire. They made it another couple of yards before a pair of Little Birds swooped over the trees to the east. He turned back to the control room, but a stream of gunfire was chewing up the door and concrete walls, forcing Beckham and Ellis to their stomachs. The rounds came from all directions. They were completely surrounded.
Beckham gasped for air. He couldn’t seem to get enough. His vision seemed to be getting worse, and his aching muscles tightened around his chest.
He spat out a curse. This was not the way Reed Beckham—Delta Force Operator, former leader of Team Ghost, and, God willing, future husband and father—would die. He heaved himself to his knees and then stood, rifle raised.
“Get back inside!” Beckham yelled. He squeezed off a shot that hit the gunner in the turret of the lead Humvee. With a pang of guilt, he watched the man slump into the vehicle. The other two turrets opened up with the 240s, rounds kicking up dirt in a wide circle around Beckham and Ellis.
These guys were either terrible shots or else their orders were to capture and not kill. That told Beckham someone wanted them alive. He would use that to his advantage. He shifted his muzzle to the sky to fire on the Little Birds as they came around for another pass. The bullets pinged off the side of the closest chopper, forcing the pilots to pull away.
“You want some too?” Beckham shouted. He fired off another shot that hit the second bird in the windshield. Then he pivoted and sent three more bursts at the closest Humvee. Rounds shattered the driver’s windshield. The internal machine inside him flipped his senses to full alert, and his weapon became another appendage, like his prosthetics.
His aim was true.
He was a Delta Operator again.
A flurry of shots answered his own, one of them hitting him in his blade. He bit his lip as he went down and hit the dirt.
Motherfuckers, Beckham thought. He spat and pushed himself up on his good knee.
“Come on!” he yelled as he fired on the Humvee to the left. Another gunner fell. Ellis joined in, the pop-pop of his pistol cracking next to Beckham.
“I said to get clear!”
“You need my help!”
Beckham gritted his teeth and swallowed a mixture of saliva and blood. He pulled out his empty magazine and palmed another into the gun.
The soldiers opened their doors and hid behind them.
Beckham couldn’t tell if they were Rayburn’s men or Wood’s, but at this point it didn’t matter. He would kill every single last one of them.
Ellis hit one of the men in the boot. He crashed to the ground and Beckham shot him in the torso as he attempted to crawl back to safety.
The helicopters flew back around the building. The wind from their blades slammed into Beckham and Ellis. One of them descended toward the open field while the other laid down covering fire. Beckham raised his M4 at a sniper clipped to the side of the bird.
He squeezed off a shot the same second the sniper fired. The enemy round zipped into his prosthetic hand, blowing it to pieces and sending his M4 cartwheeling away.
A piece of shrapnel grazed his temple. He winced and reached for his .45. Pulling it from the holster, he then struggled to cock the hammer and raise the gun.
“Fuck you!” Beckham yelled. He fired a shot that streaked into the heavens. His next went wide, but Ellis managed a shot that hit the sniper in the chest. The m
an dropped his rifle and went limp in his straps.
Beckham trained his .45 on the windshield of the Little Bird, a much easier target. The pilot pulled away before he could fire, but the second bird hovered.
Rounds tore up the ground around Beckham. One whizzed past his ear.
“I’m out!” Ellis yelled.
“Then fucking run!”
Beckham squeezed off rounds three and four at the chopper. He aimed at the bird, then the Humvees. The soldiers were standing now, and they approached with their rifles shouldered.
“Give up, Captain!”
Beckham roved his gun toward the voice. It sounded familiar. He’d heard it taunting him in his dreams…but no, this wasn’t Colonel Wood.
It was his little brother, the madman who planned to destroy the world.
Lieutenant Andrew Wood stepped out of a Humvee and approached the building within a fort of soldiers. The toxins had all but ruined the vision in his right eye, but Beckham didn’t need both of them to nail a headshot. He held in a breath, lined up the sights, and fired.
Wood jerked to the left when he saw the gun, and Beckham’s bullet hit the ROT soldier behind him instead.
“You stupid fuck!” Wood yelled.
Beckham squeezed the trigger again just as something hard and sharp hit him in the back. He landed on his face in the dirt, his good eye pressed against the ground.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” came a voice, “but I just saved your life.”
Beckham squirmed and lifted his head to see Huxley. Ellis was still on his knees, but his hands were up now and his gun was on the ground.
Beckham tried to push himself up with his good hand and his stump of an arm, but a boot pressed on his back, holding him down.
“Damn it, stay down,” Huxley growled.
“That will do, Marine,” said Wood. “Step away from the traitor. I’ll take it from here.”
The boot relieved its pressure on his back, but before he could sit up, a kick to his side made him wheeze in pain. Another connected with his jaw, lighting up his skull with stars and knocking loose a tooth. A third kick felt like it broke a rib.
“Don’t kill him,” Ellis said, his voice trembling.
“Who the hell are you?” asked Wood.
“My name is Doctor Pat Ellis. We were sending a message to Europe to warn them—”
“Fuck Europe,” Wood snarled. “And I highly doubt that’s all you were doing, Doctor. I hate to disappoint you, but there’s nobody left out there to call for help. I’ve already won.”
Beckham spat out the broken tooth and gasped for air. Two ROT soldiers rolled him to his back and pinned his arms down with their boots. He blinked away the blood and tried to focus.
“So you’re the great Captain Reed Beckham,” Wood said. His eyes flitted up and down Beckham’s body. “You don’t look like much.”
Beckham struggled, but the boots pressed down harder.
Wood leaned down, sniffing the air.
“You smell like a fucking dog. I’m not even sure the Variants are going to want you,” he said. His thin lips curled into a mocking smile.
Beckham tried to speak, but all he could manage was a grunt.
Wood looked to one of his men, who was striding out of the control room. “Did their transmissions go through?”
“No sir, we stopped them before the uploads were complete.”
“What?” Ellis twisted in the grip of the solider holding him. “You don’t know what you’ve done!”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand. Colonel Gibson and my brother dreamed of an America that didn’t waste the lives of our soldiers in foreign shitholes like Saigon or Fallujah. Jan Ringgold just sent thousands of our boys to die in Europe, and for what? Not for America! The entire point of the Hemorrhage Virus was to stop that from happening.”
Blood trickled into Beckham’s eyes. He spat, coughed, and summoned his scratchy voice.
“So that’s why you killed all those innocent people here and in Chicago and New Orleans? That’s why you’re murdering kids?”
A soldier in Beckham’s peripheral went to kick him, but Wood held up a hand. That’s when Beckham saw the blood dripping down the side of his face. The man’s ear was hanging on by threads of cartilage. Fuck. An inch to the left and the shot would have killed the bastard.
“Jan Ringgold killed those people by not stepping down for her war crimes,” Wood said. “You’ve been on the wrong side of this the entire time, Beckham. It’s quite sad. You could have done well with ROT.”
“President Ringgold is the best thing to happen to America. She helped rebuild what your brother destroyed,” Ellis said. He glanced up like he was afraid he was going to be hit. “And she will continue to rebuild our great nation once people learn the truth about you.”
Beckham wanted to tell Ellis to shut up, but Wood quickly cut in.
“Jan is hiding in her underground tomb, and she isn’t coming out.”
“That’s what you think,” Ellis said.
Beckham glared at the doctor, silently trying to tell him to shut his mouth.
“What did you say?” Wood asked. He walked over to Ellis, brows raised over his wild eyes.
Ellis didn’t reply, and Wood nodded at one of his men. The soldier shot Ellis in the leg. He screamed in pain.
Wood laughed and took a step closer to the struggling doctor while Beckham fought his captors.
“Let him go! You have me!” He squirmed to his left and right, but it was no use. The men had him secured with their boots.
Ellis whimpered as Wood loomed over him. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is Ringgold?”
“Go to hell,” the doctor said, his voice a pained gasp.
The lieutenant signaled his man again.
“No!” Beckham shouted. “Take me in—”
Another shot silenced him. Ellis’s screech sounded like a mouse caught in a trap.
“Tell me what you know and this all ends,” Wood said.
Ellis didn’t say anything else, but Beckham could hear his breath coming in short, shallow bursts. Even if the bullets had avoided his arteries, the shock might kill him.
“You bastard!” Beckham yelled. “You shoot him again and I’ll fucking kill you with my bare hands.”
Wood laughed again. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s make a deal. You tell me where Jan is, or I’ll kill you both and put your heads on pikes outside my new office. Sound fair?”
“Fuck ROT and fuck you, you treasonous piece of shit,” Beckham said. Darkness was closing in on the edges of his already blurred vision, and he knew unconsciousness wasn’t far off for him or Ellis.
“I’m running out of patience. This is my final offer: one of you tells me where Ringgold is, and the other one gets to live.”
Beckham looked at Ellis and shook his head.
Don’t do it, Pat. Don’t fucking do it.
There was a long pause, and then Ellis said, “She’s here. Ringgold is on Plum Island. Kill me, but don’t kill Beckham, okay? I told you what you want to know.”
“Deal,” Wood said.
The crack of a third gunshot came before Beckham couldn’t protest. He caught a blurry glimpse of a bloodstained brim of a blue baseball cap flying to the ground, and then a body. One of the soldiers kicked it so it rolled over. Ellis, a neat bullet hole in the center of his forehead, stared lifelessly back at Beckham.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Wood said, brushing down the front of his jacket. He turned to his men. “Find the bitch.”
“No,” Beckham whimpered. He glanced up at Wood, expecting a bullet of his own. His mind raced as he fought to stay conscious. Horn would come. Horn would come and mow these bastards down. He would rip them limb from limb and then beat their corpses with those limbs. His best friend would kill them all. Or
maybe Fitz would show up and blow Wood’s head off like he had his brother.
But deep down Beckham knew the truth.
No one was coming to save them this time.
-22-
Fitz raked his M4 back and forth over an army disgorged from the pits of hell. The shrieks, squawks, and hissing of the angry beasts filled the early morning air in front of the sacred Basilica of St. Thérèse.
This place was anything but sacred now.
Everywhere he looked, his sights fell on a different mutated creature. To one side, what looked like fifty adult Variants prowled the gardens, joints popping and lips smacking. Wormers dug through the earth to the other side. Three Black Beetles lumbered through the woods straight ahead. Fitz could barely bring himself to look over his shoulder. At least a dozen juveniles were perched like gargoyles on the roof on the vestibule, and Reavers circled overhead. Another pack of juveniles guarded the MATV, tilting their heads as though waiting for someone or something to give them orders.
Fitz looked for an Alpha but saw nothing that indicated the monsters had any kind of leader like the ones he’d faced back in New York. Not that it mattered; there were enough hostiles here to overwhelm them even if they weren’t directed by an intelligent general.
The click-clack of armor and joints was joined by another sound Fitz couldn’t quite place. He looked to the gardens, where a monster was emerging from the shadows. The sight of it caused Fitz to tense every muscle in his body.
A man-sized beast crawled out of the foliage on all fours. Its torso was covered in the veiny flesh of an adult Variant, but the lower half was armored like a juvenile. It pushed itself up onto its feet with two massive claws. Both were rimmed with teeth, as was the maw in its disfigured human head.
“Pinchers!” someone yelled.
The screams of children echoed all around Fitz. He forced himself to look away. His mind processed every possible move to get them to the truck, but each thought was shut down.
They had nowhere to run or hide. They had no escape.
I’ve failed Beckham. I’ve failed Team Ghost. I’ve failed the world.
Extinction Aftermath (Extinction Cycle Book 6) Page 30
