“I always wanted to come to New Orleans,” she said. “Thought it would be romantic, like Paris or some shit.”
“Someday we’ll go somewhere nice,” he said. “A beach, or the mountains. Wherever you want.”
Ace snorted. “All right kids, let’s focus.”
Fitz nodded and scanned the terrain one last time.
To avoid ambushes from the floodwaters, they had picked routes over higher ground, staying to decaying houses, restaurants, and bars as much as they could. The buildings were set nearly half-a-foot higher than the street, meaning that while the streets were flooded, there was usually no more than a couple inches of water in the buildings.
“Dohi, you’re on point,” Fitz said. “Keep us on dry ground or shallow water as much as possible. Find us a trail to that monster, and from here on out, cut the chatter.”
The team set off through ankle-deep waters to cross the street from the park. Then Dohi led them through a cemetery with raised stone graves. A crumbling angel statue with outstretched wings shadowed them, its head long gone as tendrils of green and brown vines grew over it. Water flowed around the graves, running toward the southern exit of the wrought-iron fence tracing the cemetery’s perimeter.
Fitz took every step slowly, probing beneath the water with his blades to ensure he didn’t trip on some tangle of trash concealed by the murkiness.
Caught against the fence were coffins that had been freed by the floodwaters. They had popped open like ruptured boils. Their skeletal contents were picked bare, all the leathery or decayed flesh had been snacks for desperate monsters.
Dohi held up a fist, and the rest of the team froze. He used two fingers to indicate he had spotted a potential contact toward the west.
Through his Leupold Mark 8 optic, Fitz scoped in on the movement. Near the stone steps leading to a mold-covered house with broken windows, the water rippled as if something swam just beneath the surface.
He held his sights on the movement and waited.
The creature was drawing near, but Fitz gave the order to hold fire, not wanting to draw attention unless absolutely necessary.
An elongated skull surfaced, and two beady black eyes surveyed the cityscape for prey. Those eyes sat atop a long maw full of needle-sharp teeth.
Fitz lowered his rifle.
It was just an alligator, far less dangerous than a Variant with gills. Never in his life had he been so thankful to see the huge predator this close.
He signaled for the team to stay put as the alligator propelled itself lazily down the street-turned-river, its tail slowly undulating. Once it had moved out of sight in the opposite direction, they advanced again.
Their route took them between buildings disintegrating from the unforgiving humidity and water lapping at their baseboards. Piles of debris lay strewn at the foot of the structures.
They passed through the shadow of a hotel with wraparound cast-iron balconies, looking for any sign of the mastermind’s presence. In the distance, the cries of hunting Variants wailed through the city again.
Dohi thrust his fist into the air.
A chorus of clicking joints sounded to their south. Fitz strained to see the source of the noise, but saw nothing.
The chatter and squawk of Variants erupted again from a different direction. This time a scream—all too human—pierced the din.
The agonizing cries continued for a few seconds before going silent. It had definitely come from the center of the French Quarter.
Maybe there were still people alive. People they could save with the airlift. Fitz found new motivation to find their target. If they could secure the area, they might be helping more than just the science team today.
Dohi waved them onward. He guided the team through a series of restaurants and into a bar. At the back exit, Fitz gave him the order, and Dohi opened the door to a flooded alleyway.
This time Fitz stepped down a short set of stairs and waded into water that came up to his naval. Dohi suddenly grabbed him and yanked him back up the stairs and into the door as a splash exploded from behind a mostly submerged dumpster. The scaled body of an alligator shot through the water, headed toward the two men like a living torpedo.
Dohi aimed his rifle right at the animal’s center of mass as Fitz scrambled back inside, dripping wet. Before Dohi could squeeze the trigger, another creature burst from the water behind the gator. The yellow eyes of a Variant glowed as the creature wrapped its sinewy arms around the alligator and chomped into the beast’s armored neck.
The animal rolled in the water, writhing desperately to shake itself loose from the Alpha predator.
Fitz and Dohi moved back into the shadows as a second Variant surfaced, water sluiced down pale, veiny flesh. It waded over, claws extended, waiting to strike.
Shrieks called out from a nearby shop.
Fitz held the team there, waiting with his rifle aimed at the creatures in the flooded alley. The alligator finally stopped thrashing and a circle of water turned an even darker shade of brown.
The two Variants ripped the alligator apart. Seeing no other beasts, Fitz ordered Dohi to take the two monsters down with his hatchet.
Fitz pulled out his knife. They moved into position and then tossed the sharp blades. The hatchet found a home in one of the Variant’s skulls, but Fitz hit his target in the back.
Dohi threw his own knife before the creature could let out a shriek. Both monsters slumped into the water, floating next to the disemboweled remains of the gator.
Fitz waited another moment, then gave the advance. They moved out into the water, retrieved their weapons and pushed on until they reached a street that had been spared from the floods.
Red webbing plastered the sides of buildings framing the road. The organic ropes imprisoned the bodies of enough creatures to make Noah’s Ark seem like a miniscule collection. All evidence of food that the mastermind would need to create its organic central command of the webbing network.
“We’re getting close,” Fitz whispered.
Suddenly Dohi took shelter behind the charcoaled husk of a delivery truck. The others sheltered behind the wall of a nearby building.
Fitz tried to settle his thumping heart.
A horde of Variants surged through a water-filled street ahead. Fitz counted their numbers, watching them hurtle by. Some ran, splashing through the street, on their way to the alley the team had just left behind.
“Go, go, go!” Fitz whispered after the monsters passed.
Team Ghost ran across the street, fighting through deeper water.
Clicks from snapping joints and far off screams of prowling Variants haunted the city.
Fitz’s blade suddenly snagged on something before he made it to the other side of the street, stopping him in the middle of the open water. Rico halted and reached out to help.
Mendez, still on rearguard, paused beside them, scanning the water.
Fitz twisted his blade, bending down to remove it from whatever garbage it had gotten jabbed into. As he did, something burst from the water to his right.
The armored flesh of a juvenile barreled toward Fitz. He couldn’t move out of its way with his blade caught, and there wasn’t time or space for a clear shot.
Rico swung the butt of her rifle into the creature’s face, then delivered a heavy kick into the monster’s side that knocked it off course again.
Blood gushed from the monster’s crushed nose.
Fitz swung his rifle up as the Variant turned on Rico. It raised its claws as bullets lanced through the creature’s chest, chewing through the bone and organs at near point-blank range.
The choof-choof-choof of the suppressed rifle reverberated over the water, but the splash the dead monster made was even louder. It sank in front of Rico.
If the rest of the Variants hadn’t known more than alligators were in their midst, they did now.
Rico bent down, reaching into the water, to help Fitz pry his blade loose. As soon as he was free the shrieks of a dozen
monsters rang out.
They poured from the darkened buildings to the north and south.
“Run!” he ordered.
The team sprinted onto another soaked street as the monsters pursued them. A half-crumbling spire of the St. Louis Cathedral speared the gray sky nearby. Dohi pointed to a museum across from Jackson Square in the center of the French Quarter.
The team stormed past, rifles up as they moved into the lobby of the building. Rotting furniture and broken display cases lay in the water.
The team splashed across the room toward the ticket counter where they took shelter. Red webbing grew across the walls, even denser here than when they’d seen it before outside. He crouched next to a pile of brown bones loosely wrapped in tendrils of red tissue.
They were close. Fitz could feel it in his gut.
Outside, the clamor of the Variants went on for what felt like an eternity.
But slowly the monsters scattered, their wails becoming more sporadic, more distant, and their clicking joints fading as they searched for their lost prey.
Fitz waited, letting the furor of the Variants die down. Their angry voices were replaced by the drone of human voices in agony, sounding all too similar to the pained cries and moans the team had heard in other Variant tunnels and Minneapolis.
He had a feeling that those voices would lead them to the mastermind—or, if not the beast directly, then at least to its lair.
Fitz signaled for the team to move back out toward Jackson Square. There, Dohi pointed out a path that led into the St. Louis Cathedral where the water began to recede.
More red vines of tissue stretched out of the thin layer of water along the streets and grass up to the steeples of the church and into half-broken stained-glass windows.
The team skirted between the overgrown trees and bushes of the square, making their way to the former place of worship. As they closed in on the cathedral, moans traveled out of the broken windows.
Fitz indicated for everyone to stay put except for Dohi.
Together, the two men climbed a short set of stairs and clung to the shadows until they made it into the nave.
The missing roof allowed shafts of light that played across puddles of water between rotting pews covered in red webbing. Tendrils rose to the pillars in the middle of the space and clung to the stained-glass windows.
Cocoons of the red tissue pasted decaying corpses along the walls. Many were nothing but skeletons and flags of leathery brown flesh. The bodies of different native wildlife were there; fish, birds, even a gator.
Other long strands of tissue dangled from the ceiling like bloody icicles. At the bottom of those macabre vines hung more bodies; these were all human, wrapped up like a spider’s prey.
Dozens of Variants climbed up and down those growths, picking at the animals and people suspended in them. Many of the victims moaned in agony.
At the rear of the cathedral, past the sanctuary and altar was a massive creature that stood nearly four times Fitz’s height. Large, pink folds of skin covered the beast, and its stygian eyes peered around at its surroundings.
It stuck to the shadows, apparently wary of the light plunging in through the massive holes in the ceiling.
Fitz slowly backed away with Dohi. They hurried down the stairs and joined the team back on Jackson Square.
“Rico,” Fitz whispered. “Radio command. We found the ugly son of a bitch.”
— 13 —
The cool morning air reeked of death and suffering. Beckham and Horn waited outside the maintenance warehouse on the University of Southern Maine campus. Lawn mowers and equipment sat outside to make room for body bags.
The inside had been turned into a makeshift morgue for the victims of the attack. Like so often before, Beckham wondered why fate had chosen to take Bo and Donna. So many other innocent men, women, and children had perished, gone in an instant or cursed to horrific burn injuries, their moans still haunting the campus.
And somehow he had once again been spared. Left alive to watch all these people suffer.
Beckham looked up to the sky, but he didn’t curse God nor did he question why God might allow atrocities like last night. He had always believed that if there was a God, he had nothing to do with what happened on Earth.
Humans had to live with the consequences of their actions, good or bad. Lately, Beckham had seen too much of the bad.
Especially this morning.
Soldiers and volunteers continued to carry body bags into the warehouse.
In some cases, the bags looked light. Not much remained of the deceased. The real weight was on the minds and hearts of the survivors.
Another pickup truck pulled up. Civilian volunteers lowered the lift gate to reveal more bodies, these ones without the luxury of body bags. People who had likely died in triage.
In the past, with the proper treatment, some of them might have survived. But out here, the medical staff simply didn’t have the supplies or equipment needed to treat them.
Beckham still didn’t know how the collaborators had controlled the bats or what type of explosives they were rigged with, but he had a feeling this was just one of many tricks they would use to win the new war. Between those new weapons and the conspirators within their ranks, he feared the enemy was far stronger than anyone realized.
“Fucking animals,” Beckham growled.
First Jake, then Timothy, and now Donna, and Bo.
All killed by the collaborators. Those people were worse than terrorists. They were demons. He gritted his teeth and punched the side of the metal siding, denting it with his fist. Blood filled the cracked skin over his knuckles.
It wasn’t his hand that hurt the worst though. His head still throbbed from the truck wreck. He closed his eyes and drew in a breath to manage the pain until it passed.
Horn didn’t say anything. The two men had barely slept in twenty-four hours of hellish insanity, and they were at their wits’ end.
A side door to the maintenance building opened and a soldier stepped out, gesturing for them.
“Captain, Master Sergeant, the bodies are ready for you to identify,” said the young man.
Beckham and Horn followed him inside. The door clicked behind them a moment later, sealing them in the long space. Eighty some corpses lay on the concrete floor in zipped up black body bags.
Another soldier with a clipboard walked up and down the aisles, checking off names on his list.
“Captain Beckham and Master Sergeant Horn are here to confirm the identity of the deceased, Donna and Bo Tufo,” their escort said to the soldier with the clipboard.
He glanced at his board, and then looked across the room. “Please, come with me, sir. Master Sergeant.”
Beckham and Horn followed the soldier until he stopped at two body bags.
“These are them,” he said.
Horn bent down and unzipped the bag on the left, the odor of charred flesh exploding out.
“Christ have mercy,” he muttered, covering his face with his wrist.
Bo Tufo’s face was hardly recognizable. Scorched and disfigured, his features had melted into a hideous sight.
Beckham pictured the young boy he had rescued during Operation Liberty. He had survived the monsters and grown up into a young man only to die at the hands of humans.
Bile rose in Beckham’s throat.
“This is Bo Tufo,” Horn managed to mumble.
The soldier with the clipboard nodded, and Horn unzipped the second body bag.
Donna didn’t look as bad as her son. Partly due to the fact Bo had shielded her from the blasts. Despite his sacrifice, he hadn’t saved her.
And maybe that was for the best, Beckham thought. The two were so close that they wouldn’t have survived without each other.
Beckham stood, his blade creaking.
“This is Donna Tufo,” Horn said.
“Thank you,” said the soldier. “From my records, they don’t have any other kin here, is that correct, sir?”
“Would you like us to take care of the burial or…”
“We’ll do it,” Beckham said. Donna and Bo deserved to be buried together on Peaks Island where they had enjoyed a hiatus of peace in the middle of this endless war.
The soldier nodded and stepped away.
Beckham began the short walk to the exit of the maintenance building. Each step felt like a mile. His head spun. The black body bags stretched in all directions.
It was too much, even for him; when he got outside, he vomited into a bush.
Horn patted him on a shoulder, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m good,” Beckham said, wiping his lips. He drew in a breath and started back to the campus with Horn.
Chimneys of smoke rose from the damaged rooftops where suicidal bats had flapped into the sides. Soldiers had reclaimed some of the positions, but what could they do against another attack like that?
Beckham started the march to the command tent on campus.
“Are we going to head back to the George Johnson after we bury our friends, or do you want to keep looking for Timothy?” Horn asked.
Beckham drew in a breath. They both knew the odds of finding the young man alive were slim to zero. “If we go back out there looking for him, we’re not comin’ back, Big Horn.”
Horn rubbed his neck, wincing at the reality. They fell into silence until they got back to the command tent. Beckham pushed past the flap to go inside where Lieutenant Niven was going over maps with Sergeant Ruckley. They both stood at the table.
There were no good mornings or salutes. Only the hard looks of soldiers that had just gotten their asses handed to them and fully expected more.
“Have you heard anything from SOCOM?” Beckham asked.
“We spoke to Lieutenant Festa, but our orders have not changed,” Niven said. “We are to hold this post at all costs.”
Ruckley raised her chin a bit, clearly wanting to say something. If Beckham had to guess she didn’t like those orders.
“People are being evacuated across the Allied States, and we’re expecting to receive over a hundred refugees by tonight,” Niven continued. “We’ve been marked high on the safe list.”
Extinction Cycle: Dark Age Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 47
