Fitz thought for a moment about finding a route below deck to the ship’s aft, but Dohi tapped him on the shoulder. More soldiers were coming from behind them in the passage.
An alarm suddenly blared.
Everything seemed to go in slow motion after that.
There was only one way out of this mess—to fight.
Fitz nodded at Dohi who launched a grenade down the passage. Then he raised his rifle and followed Fitz onto the deck. The hatch clanked closed, commanding the attention of the six soldiers that had gotten out of the chopper.
Fitz open fired, and Dohi did the same. Three of their targets went down right away, and two more dove for cover. Only one brought up a weapon to fire, but Fitz put a bullet between the Chimera’s reptilian eyes before the beast could squeeze off a shot.
An explosion boomed from the grenade.
Dohi tossed another grenade near the chopper as he ran with Fitz between the shipping containers. Bullets sparked over the deck.
The second grenade boomed, drowning the chatter of gunfire.
“Go, go, go!” Fitz yelled.
They sprinted the rest of the way over the deck until they reached the gunwale. He tossed the bags of supplies into the boat, but there was no time to climb down the maintenance ladder.
Instead, Fitz threw himself over the side. He fell, arms wheeling before splashing beneath the frigid water’s surface. He kicked back up, gasping for air. Grasping the life raft, he pulled himself in. Dohi plunged into the water afterward, and Fitz helped yank him in.
Fitz untied the boat as Dohi tried to start the motor, but it wouldn’t turn over.
Raising his weapon, Fitz prepared to fire.
They were sitting ducks now.
“Come on,” Fitz said.
“I’m trying,” Dohi grumbled.
Cursing, Fitz saw the glint of rifles as soldiers lined the gunwale taking aim. He fired a burst to keep them back. Then he pulled out the C4 detonator and squeezed the trigger.
The first series of explosions sounded like the clap of distant thunder. More explosions followed, a chain-reaction from the ordnance stored down there.
Fitz hit the next detonator. Another fiery blast tore up from the belly of the ship. Pieces of flaming debris were thrown into the sky as Dohi finally started the motor.
Shrapnel and flaming hunks of metal fell around them, sizzling when they hit the water. Fitz aimed his rifle again at the gunwale just in case any of the beasts reemerged.
As they motored away, a few of the beasts jumped, their bodies flaming.
Fitz finally started to relax as the boat sank.
When they finally made it back to shore, Rico ran to meet them. Fitz jumped out of the life raft and wrapped her into his arms. For the first time since they had landed in this God-forsaken place, he felt Team Ghost had finally pulled off a real victory.
And they finally had a chance to change the course of this war.
— 9 —
At midnight, President Ringgold sat alone in the EOC’s briefing room in the Long Island bunker, waiting for her next SITREP. She longed to see her friends, Beckham and Kate, but after a rough day, the duo was resting with Javier. She had no desire to interrupt their hard-earned family time.
She sighed. The thought of coffee or some caffeine to keep her focused danced over her mind, but supplies here were meager. While she had avoided looking at mirrors too much, she’d stolen a glance at herself in her quarters before she had come up here.
The new wrinkles, bags under her eyes, and gray in her hair had made her wonder if she was becoming a different person.
Long before the war, she had seen how the stress of a presidency aged a person. With everything she had endured in her tenure as president, it was no surprise her body had suffered.
She quickly realized how selfish it was to worry about herself like that.
So what if she looked older?
You’re alive. That’s more than can be said for thousands and thousands of your people. People that you’re responsible for.
She shook her head. The exhaustion and the fear of what her team was about to report had her on edge.
Someone rapped on her door.
“Come in.”
Chief of Staff James Soprano entered. “Madam President, General Souza and Lieutenant Festa are here with a SITREP.”
“Thank you.”
The duo walked in, and Soprano closed the door, waiting outside.
“Madam President,” they greeted her in turn.
“Gentlemen, please have a seat.”
They took spots across from her at the table.
General Souza shuffled a few papers in his hands. “I’ll begin with the most pressing. Minutes ago, we received word from Team Ghost in California.”
Ringgold’s heart nearly leapt from her chest. She had been all but certain they had been lost, but Beckham was right in not counting them out. Team Ghost always found a way to survive. “That’s excellent news. Did they retrieve the SDS equipment?”
“We’re not quite sure yet,” Souza said.
Ringgold frowned. “Not sure?”
Festa took over. “The laboratory campus was taken over by what they believed were hostile independent colonists,” he said. “Team Ghost also encountered a powerful paramilitary group which we believe are connected to the Variants and collaborators.”
Ringgold rubbed her temples, trying to understand how these paramilitary groups had survived on the West Coast.
“Team Ghost was able to recover some equipment with the help of the Wolfhounds, who took heavy casualties, but it’s unclear if the technology works,” Festa said. “Most of it was damaged in an attack by this unknown paramilitary group.”
He went on to brief her on all the events that had transpired from the moment Team Ghost had infiltrated the National Accelerator Laboratory to the mission to raid the freighter anchored off the coast.
“Team Ghost is with the surviving Wolfhounds now and waiting for evac,” Festa said.
“There’s something else,” Souza said. “The paramilitary group consists of hybrid soldiers—half man, half Variant.”
“Chimeras is what Master Sergeant Fitz called them,” Festa said.
Souza nodded. “Whatever we end up calling them doesn’t really matter. What matters is someone has continued the VX-99 program all this time, and for all we know these new soldiers will join the fight.”
Ringgold wanted to slap the table out of anger. She simply couldn’t understand the evil behind these masterminds who had reignited the nightmarish VX-99 program.
She let out a long sigh.
“I’m sorry, Madam President.” Festa said.
“There’s more?” she asked.
Festa swallowed.
“We have footage from the scouts I deployed after the nuclear attacks,” Souza said. “Bring it up, Frank.”
Festa set up his laptop so Ringgold could see the screen. “This is from a recon unit in Saint Louis.”
With a click on the keypad, the video sprang to life. The feed seemed to be recorded on a camera from the front passenger seat of an armored scout vehicle.
“Holy shit,” a recorded voice said.
The vehicle was driving over a highway, crossing the Mississippi River. Fires blazed across what had once been downtown, evident only by the skeletal scaffolding of towers that hadn’t yet collapsed.
Ringgold noticed the famous Gateway Arch—or at least what was left of it. The middle of the arch had collapsed. All that remained were the hooked bottom halves of the landmark. Each looked like an enormous Variant fang jutting from the earth.
“Wait, wait!” one of the voices behind the camera said. “Zoom in!”
The camera’s view of the arch magnified toward one of the remaining halves of the arch. Shapes scaled the structure, illuminated by the fires flickering over the park below.
“Variants,” Ringgold whispered.
The camera finished zooming in. The monsters crawle
d over the remnants of the arch. Fresh red webbing covered the structures, too.
“How did the webbing survive the bombing and fires?” Ringgold asked.
“It didn’t,” Souza said. “The webbing you see is all new growth.”
Ringgold’s stomach churned. “So our sacrifices here were for nothing.”
“The nukes killed countless Variants, but enough survived to start over,” Souza said, massaging the bridge of his nose. “But there’s more.”
Festa clicked the keypad again. “This is Chicago.”
Images of broken and smoldering skyscrapers flashed over the screen. Variants crawled over the massive Ferris wheel on Navy Pier. It was completely covered in new, throbbing red webbing.
“Kansas City,” Festa said next.
The Heart of America Bridge had snapped and collapsed into the Missouri River. But that didn’t bother the Variants who had reconstructed their own rope bridge consisting of webbing between both sides of the ash-covered city.
“Dallas,” Festa said.
Downtown was nothing but ruins. The videos showed a Texas thunderstorm squashing the scattered fires. Between flashes of lightning, Variants scrambled over the streets, unperturbed by the deadly radiation undoubtedly seeping into their flesh.
“The scenes are the same all over,” Festa said. “Our smaller outposts haven’t fared much better. Outpost Portland was completely leveled in the bombing run. We haven’t found any survivors.”
Ringgold’s heart sank at the terrible news. She listened as he listed off other outposts they had lost, too. All of them wiped out.
“We hit them hard, but the Variants don’t retreat and regroup like a normal enemy,” Souza said. “They keep hitting us before we can recover.”
“Our recon teams are working with whatever tech is still available in the field to track collaborator and Variant movements.” Festa spread a map between them with arrows. “I haven’t updated this map for a few hours. By morning, it’ll likely change.”
Ringgold was afraid to ask, but she had to know. “After the nukes, what kind of numbers are we facing?”
“Our analysts are having a difficult time getting an accurate count,” Souza said coldly. “But if I had to estimate, I would put the collaborators at around a few thousand. The Variants could number twenty thousand. But with their offspring, it could be triple that.”
“We want to be clear these numbers are not accurate,” Festa said. “The only way to know for sure is if the science team can get us access to their communications.”
Ringgold didn’t want to bother Kate and Beckham after everything they had endured, but she needed them. She gave the order to retrieve them and Festa left her with Souza.
For a moment they sat in silence. She liked the general, but she couldn’t help but feel like he and much of the leadership in Central Command had let her down. But then again, they probably blamed her for what was happening, too.
Right now, blaming others was not going to solve anything. Blame would be useless if they were all dead. Learning from their mistakes and moving forward was the only thing keeping them alive.
A couple minutes later, Kate, Beckham, and Horn entered and joined them at the table. Ringgold listened as Festa and Souza brought them up to speed on everything that had occurred over the past few hours.
Beckham was relieved to hear the team was alive, but after the relief, there was shock, and questions.
“I don’t… I don’t believe it. Or maybe I just don’t want to,” Kate said. “Variant hybrids—Chimeras—that can fire a gun and talk?”
“I’m afraid so,” Souza said.
“Christ,” Beckham said.
“You sure Fitz isn’t seeing shit?” Horn asked.
“The whole team backed up his report,” Souza said.
Horn shook his head. “I know, it’s just…”
“If these Chimeras can fire weapons, then they are far more dangerous than any Variants we’ve fought,” Beckham said.
Kate agreed with a nod. “First masterminds, bats, hounds, and the webbing network. Whoever’s behind all this has been busy over the past decade. Creating Chimeras is perhaps the most logical next step—blending the best of humankind with the worst of the monsters.”
“We have to find out who is behind this madness,” Beckham said. “That’s the only way to end this.”
Ringgold looked to Kate. “I know your work was interrupted, but how close are we to locating the actual mastermind responsible for all of this Variant-collaborator organization?”
“I’m afraid we’re much further from that than I initially thought.”
A flush of frustration jolted Ringgold. “I thought everything we did with the mastermind in Manchester was supposed to be enough.”
“It was enough for the mastermind in the lab, but the Variants and collaborators are passing all kinds of communications through the network we didn’t anticipate. We can hardly listen and understand them, much less disrupt their messages.”
“So how do we then?”
“It seems the masterminds transmit on one frequency, while the smaller Variants and collaborators use others. We were trying to translate them when we were extracted.”
“So you need to go back to the tunnels.”
Kate pursed her lips, looking at Beckham. “Yeah, that’s the only way.”
“Assuming the tunnels are even still there,” Festa said. “Lower Manhattan is taking a beating tonight.”
“When it’s clear, we’ll need all the time we can get,” Kate said. “Sammy estimates another day or so at least. It could be more if we run into trouble like today. Whatever it takes, we have to get back there or somewhere with the webbing to do this.”
“I’ll support your mission with as many resources as we can spare,” Ringgold said.
“Thank you,” Kate replied. “I promise we’ll do as much as we can here with the sample signaling data we recorded from the field.”
“In the meantime, we’ve got another important matter.” Ringgold turned to the retired operators who weren’t so retired after all. “Captain Beckham, Master Sergeant Horn, Team Ghost is stranded with valuable intel and our SDS equipment. We need to evac them.”
Kate looked at Beckham again. They exchanged a quick nod.
“When do we leave?” he asked.
***
Beckham sat in the troop hold of a Black Hawk, ready to go back to war.
Across from him, a strike team of six Army Rangers slept. Horn had dozed off too, his head bumping up and down slightly from the unsteady ride. His snores sounded like a chainsaw.
It was two in the morning, and the pilots were flying dark to avoid detection by collaborators. With talk of super-soldier Chimeras and the advanced weaponry they had at their disposal, it was the safest way to cross enemy territory.
Enemy territory, Beckham thought.
He looked out the cockpit, seeing nothing but darkness. They had truly entered the dark ages broaching extinction now, and humanity was to blame—not the monsters.
Men were the monsters. It was men who had developed VX-99 in the first place, and it was men now aiding in the resurgence of the beasts.
He closed his eyes, but he was too angry to sleep.
They were somewhere over Pennsylvania, heading toward Outpost Cleveland. The outpost was on the frontlines. From what Beckham had heard, it was hanging on by a thread. The LZ would be dangerous, especially with the reports of ongoing attacks. They had no choice but to land there to transfer to an available C-130 that would take them the rest of the way to California.
Most other aircraft were being used to evacuate civilians to safer outposts on the Eastern seaboard. This particular plane had taken damage the night before and had subsequently been stranded in Cleveland. Mechanics were supposed to be finishing up repairs now. Beckham hoped it would be ready when they landed.
Any delay in getting to Team Ghost could cost them their lives.
Lights on the horizon caught Beck
ham’s attention. He leaned closer to the window. His vision blurred in his injured eye again, partially due to exhaustion.
But he didn’t need perfect vision to make out the inferno in the distance. The blaze stretched across miles of terrain.
He put on a headset, got up from his seat, and made his way to the cockpit. “What’s burning?”
Both pilots had pushed up their night vision optics as they looked at the glare to their south.
“That was Pittsburgh,” said a pilot. “Hasn’t stopped burning since the nuke hit.”
A lump formed in Beckham’s throat. Hearing that Pittsburgh was hit by a nuclear strike had been disheartening enough. Seeing it in reality after it had become hell on earth was worse.
He stayed in the cockpit, watching as they flew closer.
A crater in the middle of the city showed where buildings had been swept away in the tidal wave of fire. Flames consumed the land around the impact zone, chewing through old neighborhoods in another of America’s most iconic cities.
Having seen enough of the horrific sight, Beckham returned to his seat. Most of the Rangers were still sleeping but Horn was awake now.
“’Sup, boss?” he asked, stretching his big arms.
“We’re passing Pittsburgh.”
Horn looked toward the cockpit.
Big white flakes now plastered the plexiglass.
“That snow?” Horn asked. “Bit early, isn’t it?”
“Too big to be snow,” Beckham said.
He checked the window behind them. The flakes left a black powder.
“That’s ash,” came a voice across the troop hold.
It was Sergeant Gray, a hulking dark-skinned man who reminded Beckham of a long-deceased Ranger that had fought with Team Ghost during the first war—a man named Tank because of his size and strength.
Horn sat up straighter, fully alert. He drew in a deep breath and shook his head. “Jesus.”
“People and monsters,” said another Ranger wearing eyeglasses named Nathan Brooks.
“Huh?” Gray said.
“The ash,” said Brooks. “It’s not just the buildings and trees. It’s the remains of humans and Variants, too.”
Horn ignored the Rangers and nudged Beckham’s arm. “You get any shuteye?”
Extinction Cycle: Dark Age Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 75
