AESCHYLUS, Agamemnon
To Colonel Olson (RET) and Master Sergeant Hendrickson (RET) for serving our great nation and for providing vital feedback that has immensely improved the Extinction Cycle novels.
— 1 —
“What is that?” Javier Beckham asked. He pressed his face against a window of S.M. Fischer’s private jet.
Captain Reed Beckham looked over his son’s shoulder, watching in disbelief at something he never thought he would see.
A nuclear-tipped missile launched from a submarine roared through the night, leaving a billowing white vapor trail cutting through the sky. Even as the missile vanished, the shock made him grip the hand of his wife, Doctor Kate Lovato, even tighter.
She was just as awestruck, staring in disbelief.
“That’s no tactical warhead,” Beckham said through clenched teeth.
“I thought President Ringgold said…” Kate began to say.
“Something must have changed,” Beckham replied softly.
“Was that a space rocket, Dad?” Javier asked.
“No, it’s a missile,” Tasha said, her face painted in fear. She and Jenny had clustered around Beckham’s son.
Computer engineer Sammy Tibalt craned her neck from her lie-flat seat. Sweat dripped down her forehead, and she could barely open her eyes. The bandages covering the bullet wound in her abdomen had bled through.
“Stay still,” Kate said.
The engineer was lucky the bullet seemed to have missed any vital organs. It had gone clean through, skimming her side and causing mostly superficial damage.
“You don’t want to reopen that wound,” Kate said.
“Ah, shit this hurts,” Sammy said, grimacing.
“We’ll get you more painkillers soon.”
The other ten passengers watched out the starboard windows as a brilliant light bloomed somewhere on the east coast. They included Master Sergeant Parker Horn and his girls, S.M. Fischer, Fischer’s men, and a few lab technicians, plus the two German Shepherds Ginger and Spark. A flash of white burned away the dark night, followed by a growing orange fireball.
How close was that to their plane’s destination?
Truth was, he had no idea where they were going. They had spent the past few hours in the air, and now it was nearly midnight. Their first landing zone had changed last minute after the pilot received classified coordinates for a second location on an encrypted line. He had told them he’d been ordered not to share them with anyone.
Beckham wasn’t bothered by exactly where they were headed. He only cared that his family was headed somewhere safe.
If a safe place even existed now.
“The EMP from the nuke won’t affect us, right?” Kate asked, returning to her seat.
“Most aircraft are equipped to handle an EMP blast,” Beckham said. “I’m assuming this one is, too. And even if it’s not, we should be far enough to be safe.”
He was more worried about the effects of radioactive fallout. The radiation around the impact site could poison everything for years or decades depending on the altitude of the burst.
“Let’s get back to your seats,” Kate said to the kids. Her voice was surprisingly calm, but Beckham knew she was concealing her fear.
Ginger and Spark swarmed around Javier and the girls. Horn stood and herded them behind a curtained partition near the tail of the plane.
As soon as they were gone, Kate nervously tapped her heel against the deck. Dried dark-red blood splatter painted the white shoe. None of them had had a chance to clean up since the disaster at Outpost Manchester. The blood on Kate’s shoe was from Doctor Jeff Carr, who had been shot in the head by a traitorous collaborator in their laboratory.
“Kate,” Beckham whispered.
She stopped tapping her foot. A tremor shuddered down her body.
“Are you…” he started.
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “We completed our mission, and I can still stop this.”
Beckham had known her long enough to sense her uncertainty. She didn’t quite believe the words she said, still trying to come to terms with their harsh reality. He felt the same, but sometimes a little bit of a white lie was good, if not necessary, for sustaining morale.
“We’ll save the Allied States, and we’ll rebuild again,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze.
“Boss,” Horn said, taking a seat next to him. “You got a minute?”
“I’ll give you two a chance to talk.” Kate got up. “I’ll check on the kids.”
She kissed Beckham on the cheek, then disappeared into the back of the plane. Horn waited a few seconds before speaking.
“I’m scared,” he whispered.
There were a lot of words in Horn’s vocabulary, many borderline obscene. But “scared” was one Beckham had never heard from his best friend.
“I’m scared that we can’t protect our families once we land, that this is only going to get worse until it’s so bad there will be nothing left,” Horn said.
“Me too,” Beckham admitted.
“We might think wherever we’re landing is safe, but shit…” Horn took a deep breath, his barreled chest expanding. “The enemy is stronger than we ever imagined. I don’t know if this is a fight we can win.”
“We can. We have to. There’s no other option.”
They were both in shock. After eight years of peace, everything had come crumbling down like a house of cards in a tornado.
By the time the sun rose, Beckham wasn’t sure what would even be left of the Allied States. What he did know was several of the great cities of what had been the United States would be smoldering radioactive craters.
“When are we going to tell the kids about Outpost Portland?” Horn asked, reminding Beckham of their home that had been devastated by their enemies.
“When we get settled, we’ll break it to them.”
“I’m not sure we’ll ever be settled anywhere again,” Horn said, looking through a window. “And what about Timothy?”
“Tasha should know the truth,” Beckham said. “But I’ll leave that to you.”
Horn nodded.
“Nothing in our future will be easy,” Beckham said. “Not for a long time. But we’re the glue that holds everything together, and I need you to be the rock you’ve always been.”
Horn met Beckham’s gaze.
“You can count on me, boss.” He puffed up his chest. “I ain’t no rock… I’m a motherfucking mountain.”
Beckham smirked and patted Horn’s shoulder. The shared moment of jocularity passed when the pilot announced they were beginning their descent.
Fischer went to the cockpit but his guards, Tran and Chase, remained behind.
Ginger and Spark suddenly came bolting down the aisle to Beckham. He couldn’t help but smile when they started licking him.
“Dammit.” Kate marched toward them and grabbed the dogs by the collars.
“I’ll help,” Horn said. He took the dogs to the back, and Beckham joined him.
“Where are we landing?” Javier asked.
“Yeah, is someone going to tell us what’s going on?” Jenny asked.
“That missile…” Tasha said quietly. “That means the war is getting worse, right?”
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Beckham said.
Kate and Horn exchanged a quick look before sitting down again.
Beckham snagged his seat and hoisted Spark onto his lap. Horn took Ginger.
Turbulence rattled the bulkheads, and Spark whined.
“It’s okay, buddy,” Beckham said.
Another pocket of turbulence shook the aircraft, resulting in cries of surprise from the kids. Sammy wailed in pain. Ron and Leslie, two of the technicians that had come with them, helped brace her.
The first sign of the ground came into focus out the window. A single cluster of lights shone below. Beckham squinted, trying to make out anything that might give him an idea of where they were.
The rest of the terra
in was so dark he couldn’t tell if it was flat, hilly, or mountainous. Glowing lights flared below in what appeared to be explosions.
Then came the lancing pulse of tracer rounds.
“You got to be fucking kidding,” Beckham whispered.
The plane turned away from the battle and curved through the sky.
He tried to calm himself, not wanting to scare the kids any more than they already were. He squinted, trying to make out the ground. It took him a moment to realize they weren’t above solid ground after all.
It was water.
A single light sparked in his view, illuminating an arm connected to a statue. Not just any statue—the Statue of Liberty. An eternal flame the Allied States had installed burned on the torch.
Seeing the beacon of freedom filled Beckham with pride and hope.
The plane finally leveled out over what had to be Long Island judging by the proximity of the statue. That made sense to him now. The location would be one of the most fortified and relatively easy to defend.
The tracer rounds and explosions must have been coming from the small outpost in Lower Manhattan.
He prayed they would last the night.
The plane jolted down hard a moment later. With the thrust reversed and spoilers out to slow them down, the plane shuddered noisily. Sammy cried out again but the kids kept quiet.
As soon as the jet stopped, Fischer’s guards palmed in magazines and opened the door.
Fischer joined them and held up a hand to the rest of the passengers. “Everyone, stay put for a moment.”
“Keep your belts on in case we’ve got to fly again,” Beckham said to the kids. “Just precautionary. Nothing to worry about.”
Beckham and Horn grabbed their rifles. The kids were smart enough to know that wasn’t just precautionary.
“Is it not safe here?” Tasha asked.
“Of course it is,” Horn said. “You’re with your old man and Reed.”
The door opened again, and Fischer stepped inside, waving. “All right, let’s go.”
Beckham herded the kids together, while Ron and Leslie helped carry Sammy. Tran and Chase stood guard on the tarmac below the short exit stairs.
A single M-ATV and a military cargo truck waited outside. Two soldiers wearing fatigues and helmets sporting “four-eye” night vision goggles stood beside them.
“Everyone this way,” said one of the men. “We need to get off the tarmac ASAP.”
Beckham helped the civilians and kids into the back of the truck. He scanned their surroundings while they were climbing inside. The tarmac was in the middle of an area with mostly warehouses and factory buildings. He didn’t see any sign of military presence besides the truck and two soldiers.
“Where the hell is everyone?” Horn asked the men.
“You’ll see soon enough,” said one of the soldiers with NVGs.
Once everyone was loaded in the cargo truck, they followed the M-ATV toward the factories.
Jenny nudged her dad’s arm. “I know we’re not going home now, but do you know when we can?”
Horn drew in a deep breath and then shook his head. “I’m sorry, honey, but I’ve got to be honest. I don’t think we’re ever going back.”
***
A dull ringing reverberated in Sergeant Yas Dohi’s ears. Throbbing agony swam across his body like he’d been pummeled by an Alpha Variant and then thrown into a tree trunk. Everything hurt.
Trying to remember what happened, he blinked, hoping his surroundings would jog his memory. But shadows blotted his vision and he only saw vague skeletal shapes.
Most of his senses were dull, except for his sense of smell, which was overwhelmed by the odor of charred wood and burning plastic.
Those scents slowly got the gears in his head turning, and an image of an inferno exploded in his mind. The events since they had landed in the C-130 on the California beach replayed, all the way up to the choppers.
He flinched at the memory.
The birds had fired on him and Specialist Justin Mendez outside the warehouses that were supposed to hold the seismic detection system equipment for Project Rolling Stone.
“Mendez,” Dohi mumbled. He couldn’t remember if the operator had escaped the Humvee before the rockets hit.
“Fitz,” Dohi whispered into his headset.
There was no response, and he remembered the damn thing was broke-dick, jammed by the comms equipment.
A surge of fear masked his pain when he thought of his team.
Master Sergeant Joe “Fitz” Fitzpatrick, Sergeant First Class Jenny Rico, and Corporal Bobby Ace had been with the injured Wolfhounds when the choppers attacked.
His stomach lurched, and Dohi twisted his head to the side, the movement painful. The contents of his belly came spewing up. A sour taste filled his mouth.
Slowly the blackness in his vision dissipated. Orange tongues of flame illuminated the area. Blurred images coalesced enough for him to see why he had trouble moving and his body ached. He was trapped under the tangled, charred branches of a fallen tree, only able to move his head and neck.
He used all his strength to push the branch from his chest. His ribs burned with every breath, bruised no doubt, but he could move now. That was good. With a grunt, he squirmed out from under the heavy branch.
Smoke drifted over the burned terrain, casting everything in a ghoulish gray haze. The flicker of fire danced sporadically in the woods. Not more than a couple dozen yards to his right, he saw the decrepit remains of a warehouse smoldering in gobs of melted plastic and bent metal.
Somewhere along the way he had lost his rifle. He searched the rubble and trees, dropping to a crouch when he heard faint low growls and the popping of joints.
As his hearing returned, the noises grew louder, and he found the source among the broken trees. Three Variants scrabbled through the limbs. Their ribs protruded against their gray flesh, and their joints appeared swollen against their shrunken muscles and skin.
Eyes bulged from their misshapen heads, and their tongues lashed out around their wormy, cracked lips.
Starving Variants.
They had come here at the promise of food, probably attracted by the cacophony of the battle and the smell of burned flesh.
And if they had found food, Dohi worried he knew what they were digging at.
Mendez.
Stalking them at a hunch, Dohi navigated the jumble of trees and smoldering plants, pushing his way through the smoky fog. The snap of breaking branches and popping joints filled the night.
What he didn’t hear gave him hope. No slurps of tearing meat, no human wails of agony.
Dohi grabbed his hatchet with his right hand and slipped out his KA-BAR in his left. Another two steps and he made it directly behind the first of the three Variants. He swung the hatchet into the back of the closest creature. An audible pop of tendons and bone sounded.
The other two turned.
Dohi threw his KA-BAR. It thudded into an eyeball with a sickening pop. The monster staggered forward, then collapsed.
Before he could pull the hatchet from the first Variant or retrieve his knife, the remaining Variant coiled to pounce. Normally he could take a starving creature like that with his fists, but his body had taken a beating.
The Variant launched itself at Dohi. He braced himself, still struggling to pull out the hatchet. He abandoned his attempt to recover the blade and ducked as the Variant’s gnashing jaws snapped next to his face. He stumbled backward and fell into more chunks of busted trees.
Bending, he picked up a broken branch nearly the size of his arm and held it up as the beast slashed at his face. The monster pressed against the branch, snapping.
Saliva sprayed his face.
Dohi’s muscles strained as the monster slammed him against a tree trunk. He wasn’t going to beat this creature through strength alone. Not with his body this battered.
He rolled away, and then made a play for the hatchet sticking out of the dead monster. Gra
bbing it, he used all of his strength to yank it free.
Then he turned and swung wildly. The blade found a home in the center of the final creature’s face, splitting through a wart-covered nose.
Dohi ripped it away with a slurp. Then he retrieved his KA-BAR. He sheathed the knife and gazed blearily at his surroundings, chest heaving. No other diseased monsters careened out of the smoke, and he didn’t hear their clicking joints.
Safe enough for now, he could finish the job the Variants had started: unburying whoever had been trapped by these trees. The Variants had already done most of the work, shredding the branches to splinters.
A surge of adrenaline flowed through Dohi when he saw Mendez’s face reflecting the firelight, dark brown eyes blinking slowly under the stack of branches pinning him to the ground. He let out a few wheezing coughs as Dohi tried to pull the branches off. Unable to move them, he used one to lever them off, but it snapped.
“Son of a bitch,” Dohi said.
He feared for a moment he couldn’t free Mendez. That Mendez would die right in front of Dohi because he wasn’t strong enough to help.
Hell, no. That’s not going to happen.
Dohi got down and started tearing branches off one at a time. Mendez’s wheezing got worse for a few minutes, but lessened as Dohi cleared the tree limbs.
“Hang in there, man, I’m getting you out,” Dohi said.
Mendez moved his lips but Dohi didn’t hear a response.
He dug and dug, sweat dripping off his face, ears still ringing. He never heard the person approach before a hand grabbed his shoulder.
Dohi spun, reaching for his weapons to face a figure covered in ash and soot.
“Easy, brother.” It was Fitz. He waved to two more figures in the smoke.
Rico and Ace ran over, dodging past crackling fires. Ash and dirt smeared their faces and fatigues, too. Suppressed M4A1s hung over their chests, and all kinds of twisted metal junk protruded from their packs.
Dohi didn’t ask any questions and went back to pulling branches and debris off Mendez. The group spread around the main trunk that had pinned him down. Together, they heaved it off, and Ace dragged it away.
Dohi bent beside Mendez, checking him over. “You okay?”
Extinction Cycle: Dark Age Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 66
