But before that, he had to draw them away. He wasn’t sure if he could get both to move, but he was certain he could draw at least one away.
He snuck to the other darkened side of the T-intersection. There he positioned himself in the shadows so that the corridor with the soldiers ran off to his left and the penlight was in view in front of him, just past where the Chimeras’ corridor intersected.
Shedding his pack, he took out a smaller bone, holding it between his hands.
The two beasts finally stopped talking, and he bent the small bone. The snap echoed down the corridor. He pulled out his knife and hatchet and crouched in the darkness.
For a moment, he heard nothing. Then, a few trenchant whispers. A knock on the steel door, and it creaked open.
Dohi’s heart hammered. He heard the voice of a third Chimera joining the other two.
That hadn’t been part of the plan.
Footsteps splashed through the water toward his trap.
The soldiers were close enough Dohi could hear them more clearly.
“Probably just a rat,” one said in a gravelly voice.
“I’ll split it with you,” said the other.
Dohi listened for the third soldier. He only had one chance, and this last-minute variable added to his plan might screw it up.
The splashing footsteps grew louder as Dohi waited. The first Chimera finally rounded the corner, leading with his rifle. His eyes immediately shot to the penlight and the bones.
The second Chimera appeared, eyes drawn to the light, too.
Keep going, Dohi thought. The first was almost to the snare, just another—
When he hit it, the Chimera didn’t notice. He started to move his foot until the snare tightened around his boot. He fell forward onto the walkway.
Dohi didn’t know where the third Chimera was, but he had no choice but to act now. He lunged from the shadows on the walkway. He wrapped a hand around the standing beast’s mouth and sliced through the mutant’s throat, letting him down slowly.
As the fallen Chimera pushed himself to his feet, Dohi jabbed his knife through its neck. Blood sloshed out of the beast’s mouth.
Footsteps splashed down the corridor as he twisted the blade.
Dohi turned with his hatchet in hand to face the final monster. He swooped around the corner and launched the weapon.
The blade hummed through the air and cracked into the forehead of the monstrous beast. It sprawled backward into the murky water with a splash.
Dohi hurried over, patted the beast down, and found a keycard.
For good measure, he dragged the body around the intersection with the other two, then stripped one of the creatures.
The filthy fatigues fit Dohi better than he expected. He pulled a mask off another dead guard and then set off for the door with the keycard.
The disguise wouldn’t pass muster if anyone actually got close and caught him, but he hoped it would be just enough to cause confusion or doubt, giving him the extra second he might need in any future encounters.
He reached the steel door and slid the card over the slot. A green light appeared, and the lock clicked back. Dohi slowly pushed open the door to the CECO facility.
He was in.
Now he had to find Fitz and Ace.
***
Timothy watched the water from behind the wheel of the sailboat, searching for the gray flesh of Variants cutting beneath the waves. The trip had gotten off to a rocky start. After seeing a pack of the beasts on the shore, they had been forced to slip into a cove where they had waited for two hours in dense cover before the monsters moved on.
Then the rain had picked up, soaking Timothy and Ruckley again as they struggled to relaunch the sailboat. Normally Timothy wouldn’t even consider sailing in a storm, but they hadn’t really had much of a choice—not with the thought of Mount Katahdin weighing heavily on his mind.
Eventually the storm had finally settled, and the waves had calmed. Their journey had gone more smoothly for the past hour.
Now Timothy kept the sailboat close enough to shore to keep an eye on the land, but far enough to be out of the immediate grasp of any threats.
Their luck, like the weather, could change at any moment, and he stayed vigilant, scanning for enemies.
Ruckley was doing the same. The infection from her wound didn’t seem to bother her now that the medicine had kicked in full-force, but the damage to her muscle made it hard for her to hold a rifle.
“Any idea how long until Boston?” she asked.
Timothy looked at a map he had in a clear plastic Ziploc bag, then searched the distant shore for landmarks that might line up with it.
“Maybe another few hours at this speed,” he said. They were hardly moving now that the wind had died and the gray clouds from the storm were finally parting.
Ruckley switched positions to the portside gunwale to look out to sea. He figured she was searching for swimming Variants. She raised a pair of binos to her eyes.
“I think I see something,” she said.
“What is it?”
“A ship. Looks like an old cruise liner…” she paused, not taking a breath. “Oh, shit…”
“What?”
She hurried over and handed him the binos.
When he took them, he saw what had her disturbed.
Smoke billowed off the starboard side of the ship. The storm had concealed it before, but now he could clearly see it.
He could even make out the small shapes of people on the top deck. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. These were some of the ships the government had used to help evacuate people from other outposts.
And they were in major trouble.
Life rafts were being lowered into the water, but there didn’t seem to be enough to hold everyone.
“That’s not the only ship,” she said, pointing.
Timothy scanned the water. Sure enough, there were two more farther away, both burning. He handed the binos back and started to turn the wheel to the port.
“What are you doing?” Ruckley asked.
“We have to help.”
“Help? How are we going to help?”
“We can take a few people on board. Surely they have a radio, too.”
“There’s nothing we can do for them,” Ruckley said. “And our mission hasn’t changed. We go to Boston, and we find a radio there, without risking our boat and our lives.”
Timothy stared at the ships, conflicted. There were thousands of innocent people out there and, if he was estimating generously, maybe enough life rafts for a quarter of them.
“If we go, we risk being overwhelmed,” Ruckley said. “And how will you pick the few people from the thousands to save?”
She looked at him, waiting for an answer.
He gave it by twisting the wheel back toward the shore.
She was right.
While thousands of refugees burned and drowned behind them, he stayed the course for Boston. This was war, and they were losing. Every choice from here on out would be difficult.
Anger replaced the hollow sense of horror at the senseless act that had led to all those deaths. This had to be the work of the collaborators. There was no doubt in his mind.
“Here,” Timothy said, handing Ruckley the map. “Maybe you’ll have better luck than me figuring out exactly where we are.”
She looked out at the shore as the sun dropped toward it.
In the final hour of sunlight, Ruckley figured out their location.
“If that’s what I think it is, we’re about five miles from Boston,” she said, pointing to a peninsula. “Better start taking us closer to shore.”
Timothy nodded. A cool sense of relief filled him as he guided the small boat back toward land. By the time they got within view of the houses along the shore, darkness was setting in, making it impossible to see.
Waves lapped at the hull as they bobbed blindly in the ocean.
There wasn’t a single light in the distance where
Outpost Boston should be.
The moon emerged from behind the clouds, its reflections sparkling on the choppy water.
“Do you see anything?” Timothy said.
“Negative,” Ruckley replied.
His stomach started to twist. “We should see the lights from Outpost Boston by now.”
A cold wind blasted over them, and he shuddered.
He was starting to worry the outpost had been destroyed, but as they sailed closer, a faint glow sparked in the distance.
“There,” he said.
Ruckley stood, using her binoculars again.
“Is it Boston?” he asked.
She stared through the lenses, saying nothing.
“Sergeant,” he entreated, feeling afraid. “Is it Boston?”
Lowering the binos, she walked back to the wheel and grabbed it.
“Have a look yourself,” she said, handing him the binos.
He aimed them at the glow on the horizon. It flickered, orange and red. The light was definitely from Outpost Boston, but the glow wasn’t from electricity—it was from fires.
It was destroyed. They were too late.
Timothy didn’t want to believe it. He kept his eyes pressed to the lenses, hoping to see tracer rounds or hear the crack of gunfire. Anything to let him know the outpost soldiers were fighting back. That someone out there was still alive.
But as they closed in, he only saw flames and sporadic explosions.
Then he saw something swarming in the air, silhouetted by the bright tongues of fire.
“Bats,” he said.
It was then he realized what had happened to the ships. The collaborators had used their VX-99 infected bats to attack them.
Ruckley steered them toward the burning outpost.
“You up for this?” she asked.
“I’m not running.”
“Good, because there isn’t anywhere else to go.”
Timothy took the wheel on the final stretch. Ruckley stood at the bow, helping guide them into the harbor. Other boats in the docks burned. Flames danced over debris and floating patches of oil.
He navigated past the wreckage, careful to avoid embers swimming on updrafts of the air so they didn’t catch the sails. An empty pier ahead seemed like the ideal place to dock, and Timothy pointed to it.
“Take in the sails, then grab some rope,” he said.
Ruckley followed his instructions, grunting as she strained her damaged arm to lower the sails. She went to the bow as he turned them. They gently hit the side of the pier. She jumped out and tied them to the cleats on the dock.
After grabbing the meager amount of gear they had left, Timothy dismounted and followed her down the dock. An explosion boomed into the air a few blocks from the harbor, the fireball rolling upward into the sky.
Embers rained down as Timothy ran with Ruckley through the devastation. He inhaled smoke, then began coughing. Ruckley was coughing too as she looked for another route.
Finally, she pointed toward a yard filled with shipping containers. The smoke wafted overhead from the buildings on the other side.
Timothy ran through the maze of containers using the glow of the fires.
A howl sounded somewhere above the crackle of fire.
The shrill shriek didn’t stop them from pushing onward.
Ruckley led them around the containers until they reached a parking lot with a view of the razor wire-topped fences surrounding the outpost.
On the other side, cars burned on the streets and bodies lay sprawled in torn heaps. A group of three Variants hunched around a burned corpse, tearing pieces off like they were a pack of wolves.
One looked in Timothy’s direction, ropy meat hanging from between its teeth.
Ruckley pulled on his vest, and Timothy shrank back into the shadows.
“Can’t go that way,” came a low voice thick with an Irish accent behind them.
They both turned and Timothy leveled his rifle at a man with a mutton-chop beard. A baseball cap was pulled low over his face, shadowing his eyes.
He held a submachine gun hanging from a strap over his chest.
“You’re pointing those cannons in the wrong direction, friends,” he said.
Timothy kept his gun up, but Ruckley lowered her rifle.
Behind the man was a group of children and a few women peeking out of an open shipping container. The soldier waved them back inside.
A loud cracking sounded in the distance.
Timothy turned back to the outpost. A building nearly ten stories tall began to collapse. As it fell, a furious cloud of dust and embers erupted from its base. The resulting shockwave sent a wave of smoke rolling over the feasting beasts.
The creatures scattered, squawking as their popping joints carried them away.
Timothy and Ruckley dodged around the shipping container. The man with the submachine gun jumped inside with them, closing the door to seal out the rolling cloud of debris pounding against the container.
The metal sides trembled as Timothy scanned the inside of the long container. There were ten people in here, huddled together, shaking with fear.
The Irish guy was the only soldier.
“We need a radio,” Ruckley said. “You got one?”
“Afraid not…” he leaned down to look at her name tape. “Sergeant Ruckley.”
“Why are you still here?” Ruckley asked.
“The last ship pulled away before we could get aboard,” the man replied.
“He came back for us,” said a woman.
Timothy pictured the ships burning out at sea. “It’s probably better you didn’t make the ships.”
“What do you mean?” the soldier asked.
“They didn’t make it very far,” Timothy replied.
The Irish man hung his head. “Goddamn bastard collaborators.”
“So what’s your plan now?” Ruckley asked.
“We hide. You?”
“We need a radio,” Timothy said. “Which means we’ve got to search the outpost.”
“You’ll die,” said the man. “Variants are everywhere. Only way to escape them is by sea. Getting into Boston on foot would be hell, unless you’ve got a set of wheels.”
“Did any survive the attack?” Timothy asked.
The Irishman stroked his whiskers, thinking. “I have a truck.”
“Where?” Timothy asked.
“Where’s your boat?”
“Not far,” Ruckley said. “But it’s just a small sailboat.”
The man seemed to brighten. “Why don’t you give up on that radio and take us all out of here on that boat?”
“No way,” Timothy said. “I’m not leaving until we get a radio.”
“Look, I need to get these people out of here. We can’t hide forever.” The guy reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “So how about this? I’ve got a truck. Might’ve survived, but I can’t guarantee it. I’ll trade it for the sailboat, if you want to take the chance.”
Timothy reached for the keys but the man held them back.
“I’m telling you that you’re going the wrong way,” the man said. “It’s suicide.”
“I’ve been told that before,” Timothy said, taking the keys.
— 20 —
“Holy fucking hell,” Parnell said.
He was jacked up on morphine by the time they saw Denver from the stealth Black Hawk. Liam piloted the craft with the night vision optics from one of the former pilots. They were flying dark toward their target outside the city, hoping to avoid anyone or anything that might still be alive.
As they drew closer to their LZ, Beckham had a hard time believing anything could have survived down there.
Moonlight illuminated enough of the city that the sight was breathtaking. But not in a good way.
Command had fired one of the most advanced nuclear weapons left in their arsenal on Denver.
A crater had swallowed the center of the city, demolishing the buildings and streets th
at had once crisscrossed the terrain. Instead of the normal airburst detonation, this nuke had targeted the Variant hives and tunnel networks beneath the city. That had required subsurface targeting, resulting in the terrifyingly large crater.
“You sure anything is going to be left of this site?” Rico asked. “Maybe it’s not even worth the risk of investigating.”
“Good question,” Beckham said.
He tapped the deck of the helicopter with his new leg, a contraption made of a metal rod, duct tape, and plastic debris that Horn and Rico had secured to his busted prosthetic. The result resembled a peg-leg that a pirate might have sported centuries earlier.
But as long as he could walk, Beckham didn’t give a shit. Walking meant he could fight. Although hostile forces weren’t the only threat here.
The entire city was radioactive from fallout.
To protect his body, he wore one of the CBRN suits like the rest of the team. But Liam had refused to put one on.
“You really don’t want a suit?” Beckham asked the pilot.
“No, I can’t use the night vision with the suit and visor on.”
“Radiation is still going to be at lethal levels.”
“I understand the risk, but if I can’t fly with NVGs and we all crash, then none of us survive.”
“At least nothing’s left to eat us down there, right?” Horn said, his voice slightly muffled behind his mask and respirator. He checked the tape over his gloves and sleeves before opening the side door.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Rico said. She got up for a look outside.
“No, but it’s better than Seattle,” Horn said. “That place must be a nightmare.”
He froze, probably realizing his insensitive remark.
“Fitzie can handle it,” Rico said.
“I know. I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“It’s all good, big guy,” Rico said. She slapped Horn on the shoulder.
Beckham checked over his suit again as they prepared for landing.
“Hold on tight, okay, eh?” Liam said.
“Parnell,” Beckham said. “You good?”
The injured recon Marine looked over from his seat.
“Yeah,” he replied, giving a nod that rustled his suit.
Extinction Cycle: Dark Age Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 88
