Extinction Cycle Dark Age (Book 2): Extinction Inferno

by Smith, Nicholas Sansbury

  “South square clear,” Rico said.

  “North clear,” Ace said.

  Fitz gave the advance signal.

  Dohi got up and walked at a hunch past the foliage and webbing he’d sheltered behind, moving across the lawn toward the cathedral. A clearing in the clouds let sunlight wash over the choppers. Their shadows surged over the hellish cityscape.

  Screaming Variants chased after them on all fours. It wouldn’t be long before the reinforcements arrived. Team Ghost had to move fast.

  Keeping low, Dohi took point with Fitz and Ace converging on him at the Cathedral. At the south entrance, Rico and Mendez had joined up.

  One of the stained-glass windows suddenly burst into rainbow shards. Dohi brought an arm up to shield himself from the hailstorm of glass as a Variant lunged through.

  A suppressed burst took it down, and Fitz patted Dohi on the back.

  “You good?” he asked.

  Dohi wiped fresh blood off his cheek where a shard had opened his flesh. He managed a nod and followed Fitz and Ace into the nave of the cathedral. The mastermind thrashed around, knocking into the webbing-wrapped bodies dangling from the ceiling as it tried to separate itself from the organic netting in an effort to escape.

  The few remaining Variants in the cathedral launched themselves off the rafters and webbing-covered walls. Calculated shots dropped them all before they could get within striking distance.

  Rico and Mendez joined the team in the nave, and they slowly surrounded the writhing beast.

  “Falcon 1, Ghost 1,” Fitz said into his headset. “We’re inside. Mastermind is alone now, but trying to escape.”

  More webbing snapped from the mastermind. A gaping maw opened as it let out a roar so powerful its breath hit Dohi like gale force wind.

  Fitz flashed hand signals for the team to spread out and cover the entries and exits. The team spread out behind the pews, facing the mastermind as if the creature was a demonic priest and they had come to worship.

  Rotor wash cascaded through the missing chunks of the cathedral’s roof. The Chinook blocked the sunlight as it managed a dangerous hover. Ropes uncoiled, and Marines fast-roped down. The men landed amid the puddles of water between the pews.

  “Move, move, move!” a sergeant shouted as they rushed into positions, scattering among the pews, and securing the entryways throughout the cathedral.

  One skinny Marine slid next to Dohi, carrying a tranquilizer rifle fit for taking down an elephant.

  The sound of the horde increased, the ground rumbling from what sounded like hundreds of clawed feet and hands pounding the concrete outside.

  The Marine with the tranq rifle didn’t waste time. He aimed and fired at the mastermind. Several other Marines did the same. The feathered metal rounds plunged into the folds of the mastermind’s tissue.

  Explosions boomed outside as Hydra 70 rockets from the Apache helicopters slammed into the advancing beasts. The chainsaw growl of the Apaches’ 30 mm M230E1 chain gun burst to life next, spewing rounds into the onrushing horde.

  Another deafening shriek escaped the mastermind. It lashed out at the nearest Marines, tearing away more of the webbing. The Marines backed away, letting loose a second volley of darts.

  The mastermind recoiled; its movements were clumsier, slower.

  A pair of Marines cautiously approached it.

  “How much longer is this going to take?” Dohi asked the Marine next to him.

  “Don’t know,” the man said, sounding a bit desperate. He loaded in another tranquilizer round. “We’ve never done this before. They don’t work instantly either!”

  The resonating blasts of bursting rockets shook the walls. Several of the red vines snapped, releasing shriveled corpses that crashed to the ground.

  “Falcon, requesting a SITREP,” the Chinook pilot said.

  Dohi heard the worry in his quivering voice. Things must not be looking so good from the air. The machinegun fire continued, and another blast from a rocket thumped into the concrete.

  Over the noises, came the angry shrieks of beasts.

  They were getting closer.

  But finally, the mastermind grew still, its eyes rolling in its gargantuan skull. It slumped against the back wall, knocking a lopsided crucifix from the wall.

  “Falcon 1, slings now!” the Marine sergeant shouted.

  Slings and nets unfurled from the Chinook, hanging like tentacles in front of the mastermind.

  The sergeant stood from his hiding spot behind a pew and waved for his men to follow. “Move it, Marines!”

  The men rushed the giant monster as it blinked slowly like it was struggling to stay awake. Teams of the Marines threw the heavy slings and nets around the creature’s limbs, securing its bulbous feet and clawed hands.

  A door suddenly exploded off the hinges and the first Variant staggered into the cathedral with a missing arm and blood cascading from multiple shrapnel wounds across its chest. It sucked in one last breath and then slumped to the ground.

  But more creatures stormed over the corpse.

  Dohi swiveled and squeezed the trigger, releasing a burst that blew off an armored hunk of a juvenile’s head. His bolt locked back after taking out three more of them that had climbed through windows.

  The Apaches circled outside, their chain guns still cutting through the mass of beasts. Survivors bounded through the open door where they were cut down by Team Ghost and the Marines.

  Within minutes a wall of the dead had formed.

  And still they came, trying to save the mastermind. The Marines worked fast and Team Ghost provided covering fire, but the Variants had made it into the nave.

  A sinewy female launched herself into the air and careened down the aisle, headed toward the men struggling to secure the mastermind.

  The beast turned toward Fitz, ducking under his fire. Magazine dry, Dohi pulled out his hatchet and let it fly. The blade landed squarely in the middle of the creature’s face, splitting its nose.

  “Step away from it! Step back!” someone yelled.

  When Dohi looked, the mastermind’s eyes had opened and bloody red lips peeled back into a snarl. The cornered animal, desperate, thrashed against its restraints as men threw the slings around its limbs like lassoes.

  It fell again, pulling on the slack sling roped around its limbs. Panicked screams rang out. The creature fell on three of the Marines trying to secure the slings, silencing their screams with a loud crunch.

  Dohi rushed over with Ace and Mendez while Fitz and Rico continued to lay down covering fire.

  The beast got up again, revealing the mangled, broken limbs of the crushed Marines. One of them was still alive, but his legs were twisted beneath him.

  Dohi helped pull the groaning man to safety.

  Ace and Mendez helped the other Marines. While they worked to secure the monster, a transmission fired over the channel. “Ghost 1, we got a problem,” the Chinook pilot said. “More hostiles headed our way.”

  “You got a count?” Fitz asked.

  “A few dozen Variants and what looks like two fan boats full of collaborators,” replied the pilot.

  “Send an Apache to intercept and eliminate,” Fitz ordered.

  Dohi got the injured Marine to safety. “Hang on man, we’re going to get you out of here.”

  One of his eyes bulged from the socket, but despite his injuries, he still pulled out his pistol.

  A massive hole in the side of the church provided a window to the skyline. Dohi saw the Apache fly to take out the fan boats. He went to turn away when he noticed a stream of white smoke in his peripheral. Before he could turn, an explosion bloomed across the sky.

  The chopper went into a spin and vanished from view.

  “Gun bird down!” cried the Chinook pilot.

  Now it was all too clear what the mastermind had been doing when it tugged on the vines and thrashed around. It was calling for reinforcements, buying time for itself as its Variant and collaborator allies descended on t
he unwary Marines and Team Ghost.

  It had sprung a trap.

  The surviving twelve Marines and Team Ghost all exchanged looks, each of them knowing the implications.

  “Keep working!” Fitz yelled.

  The Marine Sergeant barked at his men, and they went back to securing the beast again. The creature’s eyes fluttered closed again from a new round of darts sticking out of its pink folds.

  Dohi knew what was at stake, and the rest of the team would, too. Even if the team finished securing it, there was no guarantee of their success if the collaborators brought the other Apache down before they could leave New Orleans with their catch.

  “We have to go back outside and take out those collaborators,” Dohi said.

  “Let’s go, bro!” Mendez yelled. “I’ll fuck ’em all up!”

  “You’ll get yourselves killed,” Ace grumbled.

  “Dohi and Mendez are right,” Fitz said. “We have to buy these Marines time to get the target out of here.”

  “Good luck!” yelled the skinny Marine.

  Dohi nodded at the young man and took lead back into Jackson square.

  From there, they rushed eastward past the vine-covered bushes and wall, then around the square, and back to the flooded streets. He navigated through the water-filled craters left from the Apache’s rockets and dodged past the red and crispy corpses of Variants. Smoke still shifted off their smoldering bodies.

  Dohi paused at a street corner as the howl of Variants wailed over the square behind them. Another thunderous storm of Variant shrieks erupted from near the cathedral. The beasts were closing in around Jackson Square.

  Geysers of dirt and water exploded around the monsters as the single remaining Apache struggled to keep them back. Chain gun fire cut through their ranks, but they gushed forward.

  The monsters were mostly coming in from the north, where they had followed the choppers. Their attention was almost entirely on the carnage around the cathedral as they rushed to the mastermind’s rescue.

  If Team Ghost had delayed another minute, they wouldn’t have made it out of Jackson Square.

  Ahead in the flooded street, the glint of the abandoned fan boats caught Dohi’s eyes. The burning wreckage of the Apache sizzled on top of a mountain of debris, sending up a column of oily black smoke, not far from the boats. A few Variants prowled, but these were the diseased, starving beasts, the ones too timid to charge into battle.

  Dohi ignored them and searched for the collaborators. He saw no clear trail here except for their boats.

  Another thump of rockets against the ground drew his eyes back westward where the cathedral was.

  One of the Chinooks hovered with it slings hanging through the open hole in the cathedral’s roof. A crew chief on the other big bird manned an M240 on the open rear gate and two door-gunners unleashed hell from the M60s mounted on the side doors.

  Despite their air superiority, the choppers were sitting ducks to the collaborators’ rockets. The traitorous shits were definitely preparing another shot. They would be looking for the best spot to bring the birds down, and that’s exactly where Dohi had to search, too.

  He searched the roofs that weren’t yet covered in flames from the burning Apache. Most of the apartments, restaurants, and bars had collapsed in on themselves.

  He spotted a three-story nightclub covered in red webbing. At the top floor was a railing around an open-air bar.

  It was the optimal location to launch a couple of rockets at a vulnerable Chinook.

  Dohi pointed toward it.

  Fitz nodded, signaling for them to head into the nightclub.

  Inside, they navigated a floor littered with broken glasses and upturned tables. Footsteps led through the muck and grime coating the floor leading to a stairwell.

  Dohi’s pulse accelerated with each step.

  “Ghost, Falcon 1, the mastermind is almost secure,” said the pilot. “We’re nearly ready to go, but—”

  Something cut off the transmission. Dohi ran up the rest of the stairwell until he made it to the top, outdoor level. After opening the door, he sheltered in an alcove on the rooftop patio overlooking the street and Jackson Square beyond.

  A violent storm of fire and noise bloomed from above the cathedral.

  “Second bird down!” the Chinook pilot said.

  Frantic cries surged over the channels, about Variants invading the cathedral.

  Dohi tuned them out, focusing only on the world directly in front of him.

  Laughing came across the rooftop patio.

  The sounds fueled Dohi’s anger. Thoughts of the people buried in tunnels, of Lincoln dying in the chopper, of all the children now orphaned because of these bastards.

  Rico, Mendez, Fitz, and Ace all fell into line, their chests heaving with the rushed charge they had made to get here. With a hand signal, Fitz gestured forward.

  Dohi went first, keeping low as he moved between chairs and tables. Then he hurdled over a bar covered in black mold.

  Six collaborators were positioned on the other side of the roof, stabilizing their LAW rockets on the railing. Three handled the launchers as the other three prepped the next set of weapons.

  One of the collaborators looked over his shoulder with a mangy beard dangling from his mud-covered face. Dohi halted and aimed his rifle as the man reached for a sidearm.

  A squeeze of the trigger dropped the man with a round punching between his widening eyes. Dohi kept moving, firing as he did.

  The others started to turn, scrambling for weapons. More shots lanced into their flesh. Only the sixth collaborator managed to let loose a final rocket. It was a Hail Mary that punched wide through the air, slamming harmlessly into the cathedral, sending bricks tumbling from a cloud of gray.

  Dohi let his rifle sag and threw his hatchet. It found purchase in the man’s back, sinking deep. He screamed in pain, dropping the launcher, and reaching behind him to try and grab the blade. Then he fell to his knees, still screeching.

  “Falcon 1, Ghost 1, collaborators are down,” Fitz reported on the comm.

  “Copy, Ghost, good work out there,” the Chinook pilot said.

  The big bird with the sling-loader lifted into the air with the red, listless form of the huge mastermind dangling in its nets. The second Chinook flew into position, the rear ramp still open. The crew chiefs had exchanged the fast-ropes for rope ladders to load the Marines back inside.

  Hundreds of Variants swarmed the streets below, shrieking in a desperate din that chilled Dohi to the core.

  The M240 and M60s from the lead Chinook rattled, beating back the crowd that finally scattered in defeat.

  Rotor wash blasted Team Ghost as the second Chinook came to a hover above them. Fitz got Rico up first, and then the rest of the team climbed to the safety of the troop hold. Only then did Dohi collapse against the bulkhead of the aircraft, sweat pouring down his forehead.

  “We did it,” Mendez huffed. “We actually pulled that loco shit off, man.”

  Ace clapped his shoulder, slumping beside him. “Nice work, amigo.”

  “Gracias, hombre.”

  Dohi surveyed the Marines around them.

  Many hadn’t made it back, including the man with crushed legs that Dohi had pulled to safety. He walked over to the skinny Marine who trembled. He balled his fists as Dohi approached, trying to hide his fear, or perhaps, his anger.

  “Good job, kid,” Dohi said. He took a seat next to him, resting his back on the bulkhead. The Marine Sergeant walked through the troop hold, checking his remaining men.

  Fitz went over to the man, wiping blood from his face.

  “I’m sorry about your losses, Sergeant,” Fitz said. “Their sacrifices might have changed the direction of the war in our favor.”

  — 15 —

  The conference room in the packed quarters aboard the USS George Johnson broke into applause as soon as General Souza finished speaking.

  “The mastermind is secure and en route to Outpost Manchester,�
�� he said.

  President Ringgold nodded, but didn’t allow herself to celebrate.

  “That was the easy part,” she said. “Now the real mission begins.”

  “Indeed,” Souza replied.

  He continued debriefing, and when it finished, she marched straight to the lab. There she found the science team busy working behind glass windows on what looked like a lump of bulbous brain matter inside a clear plastic drum the scientists had called a bioreactor.

  She jabbed the intercom, letting it buzz, and the scientists all looked up.

  Kate hurried over, pressing a button to return the call.

  “Is everything okay? Are Reed and Parker back?” she asked, her voice slightly muffled behind her clear face mask.

  “They’re fine and should be here soon,” she replied.

  Kate deflated, the anxiety draining from her.

  “Would you like to join me on the deck for some fresh air while we wait?” Ringgold asked. “I do have some good news.”

  “Fresh air sounds great, and so does good news, just give me a second.”

  After Kate changed, she met the president in the narrow passage outside the lab. Several sailors walked past, so Ringgold stayed quiet, not wanting a single word of the classified information to find itself in prying ears.

  At this point, leaked classified information spread like wildfire across the ship and it was imperative for morale to keep some things as tight as an airlock.

  “Madam President, you have my curiosity piqued, what’s the news?” Kate asked.

  Ringgold looked up and down the passage as they strolled on. “I just want to make sure we’re alone first.”

  They halted outside an exit hatch to the small flight deck. Two Marines standing sentry saluted, and Ringgold returned the gesture.

  “It’s a little cold out there today, Madam President.” One of the Marines motioned toward the general use parkas kept by the exit.

  “Thank you.” Ringgold took one, slipping it on. “Let my agents know I’m about to go above deck. I have feeling they wouldn’t be happy if I met the incoming chopper without them.”