Extinction Cycle Dark Age (Book 2): Extinction Inferno

by Smith, Nicholas Sansbury

  “Yes, Ma’am,” one of the Marines said, before picking up a handset for intraship comms.

  Her security escort team arrived a few minutes later. The group of Secret Service agents and Marines accompanied the two women onto the sternward deck.

  Gusting wind beat against them outside, chilling Ringgold despite her layers of clothing. Bulky clouds rolled across the darkening horizon.

  A scan of the vast sea dotted with white caps confirmed they were alone.

  Marines and Secret Service agents fanned out across the deck nonetheless, prepared to defend her against any unforeseen enemies.

  While the men spread out, she and Kate waited anxiously for the first view of the helicopter carrying the heroes that had helped save them during the last war.

  Both women were worried for different reasons.

  For Ringgold, she waited to hear more about the strange bat attack that had claimed the lives of so many in Outpost Portland, fearing this was yet another weapon that they weren’t prepared to fight.

  For Kate, she likely knew the reunion after days of being apart from her husband would be short-lived.

  She would be right.

  The same chopper would be taking Kate away from the stealth warship on a new mission, very soon.

  Now that Ringgold was alone with Kate and out of earshot from the security team, she broke the news.

  “The good news is that Team Ghost secured the mastermind in New Orleans, and it’s on its way to Outpost Manchester,” Ringgold said.

  “Is everyone okay?”

  Her response was typical Kate, always concerned about the men and women of the mission.

  “Everyone on Team Ghost survived, but there were multiple casualties,” Ringgold said. “Their sacrifices won’t be in vain, and I know you’re going to make sure of that.”

  Kate narrowed her blue eyes. “I take it that means I’m going to Manchester right now, too.”

  “I’m sorry, I know you’re just about to see Reed—”

  Kate drew in a breath and looked back to the ocean, determined. “I have to finish what we started. The future of the Allied States and, for that matter, the entire world might depend on our work.”

  The irony wasn’t lost on Ringgold. Once again, the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of Kate Lovato and a handful of scientists.

  “We’re taking every precaution to keep your work and Outpost Manchester secure, but General Souza warned the Variants might try to recapture their leader,” Ringgold said.

  “We better work quickly then.”

  Ringgold had a feeling Beckham wouldn’t want Kate to go to Manchester alone. She didn’t plan on standing in their way, either.

  “An advance team arrived at the facility earlier today and will be preparing the lab for your research,” Ringgold said.

  “Great. With the team we’ve got, I’m sure we’ll crack the webbing’s code in no time.”

  “Incoming!” shouted a Marine.

  The man pointed at a black aircraft lowering through the cloud cover.

  Another Marine with a handset confirmed the incoming Bell UH-1Y Venom was cleared to land. From what Ringgold had been told it was one of only four the military had left.

  She backed away with Kate from the flight deck until they were safely against the bulkhead. The pilots put down in the center of the helipad, and the side door slid open.

  Horn jumped out first, followed by Beckham, who held a hand to a bandage on his head. Even from a distance Ringgold could tell they were exhausted.

  Rotor wash whipped their blood-soiled fatigues as they trundled over.

  Kate ran to Beckham, and they embraced while Horn stood watching. He glanced at Ringgold almost with a rueful gaze.

  As the rotors slowed to a stop, Kate pulled away and Ringgold joined them.

  Beckham nodded at Ringgold. “Madam President.”

  “Good to see you both,” she said.

  Horn offered a brief, but pained smile.

  Kate looked back at the helicopter.

  “Where are Donna and Bo?” she asked. “I thought you were bringing them…”

  Her words trailed off when she saw the troop hold was empty save for a crew chief. Beckham didn’t respond right away, and when Kate looked to Horn, his eyes glazed with tears.

  Their friends weren’t coming home, Ringgold realized.

  “Timothy?” Kate asked.

  Beckham shook his head. Kate covered her mouth with a palm to hold back a gasp. She took a step back, and he reached out to her.

  “The collaborators killed them,” Beckham said. “They destroyed our home last night, too.”

  Ringgold stepped forward, unsure if she had heard the last part right.

  “The collaborators used some kind of explosives on Peaks Island before the attack on the outpost,” he continued. “Might’ve been the bats there, too, for all we know.”

  “Hit my house too,” Horn said. “From everything we heard, they’ve infiltrated Outpost Portland.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kate said. She shook her head like she couldn’t believe it, and Beckham wrapped her up in another hug.

  Ringgold was equally dismayed. She had underestimated the Variant enemy. Everyone had. But it was the collaborators that the military had really underestimated.

  The underground group was far more organized than she could have fathomed. In some ways, they were worse than the mutated monsters.

  “Let’s go inside,” Ringgold suggested.

  They went back into a passage, and she told the security detail to wait at the exit hatch. Then she took the others deeper into the passage where they could speak alone. She explained what she had told Kate about the mastermind being transferred to Manchester.

  “And Team Ghost?” Beckham asked. “What are their new orders?”

  “They’re going to assist in finding some technology in California that can better protect our outposts,” Ringgold said.

  “What?” Horn blurted.

  “The frontier?” Beckham said, sounding equally as shocked. “That’s no-man’s land.”

  “Worse,” Horn said. “It’s Variant land.”

  “We have no choice,” Ringgold said.

  Beckham and Horn exchanged a look, and Beckham shook his head.

  “We’ve got so much to talk about with everything going on, and I want to see the kids,” he said.

  “We don’t have much time,” Kate said. “My team is heading to Manchester ASAP to begin studying the mastermind.”

  Ringgold wished she could let them take their time, but time, as always, was not on their side. Every minute they waited was another minute that the enemy drove humanity closer to extinction.

  “No need to say goodbye,” Beckham said after a brief hesitation. “We bring Javier and the girls with.”

  “You sure about that, boss?” Horn asked.

  “I sure as hell ain’t letting my wife go out there alone,” Beckham said. “If you’d prefer to stay—”

  “I go where you go, boss.”

  Beckham checked with Ringgold for her approval.

  “Of course, you have my blessing.”

  She knew them all well enough to know there was no debating this. And deep down, she agreed it was best if they were all together. She just wished she could join them. These people were the closest thing to a family she had left in this world.

  ***

  Timothy had spent the past twenty-four hours watching, listening, and learning. Those three words were all things his dad had taught him when he was growing up to survive in a world of monsters.

  The collaborators had confined him to a small holding cell with a sink, toilet, and bed. It was disgusting and claustrophobic, but it beat being plastered to a wall.

  He wasn’t the only one here.

  This wing of the makeshift prison held other people. Women mostly, at least he thought so. They all looked haggard and moved like they were drugged.

  A young woman occupied the cell across
from him. Since he’d noticed her, she hadn’t moved from her position, lying face-down on the concrete floor. He guessed she was in her thirties, but it was hard to tell with the deep bags under her eyes and the way her nearly translucent skin clung to her bones.

  He wanted to ask one of the other prisoners what in the hell was going on, but he didn’t want to piss off the guards stationed nearby.

  So he simply listened and waited.

  As time wore on, he tried to distract himself with hopeful thoughts. Daydreams that would transport him from this misery.

  He recalled afternoons hiking with his dad, and stories about his mother. Days at the beach with Tasha, throwing sticks into the rolling tides for Ginger and Spark to fetch.

  He longed for those moments again, and he hated the collaborators for taking them from him.

  They were talking again and he pushed his thoughts away to listen.

  The guards discussed payback on Outpost Portland for the death of their comrades and the loss of so many ‘thrall’ Variants.

  None of what they said helped much. Timothy still didn’t know where the compound was, nor how many collaborators and Variants it held.

  The guards had said something earlier that sounded important—something about a secret weapon that Pete had been saving. They had decided to use it early after so many of the Variants and the raider demolition parties had been killed.

  Timothy prayed that secret weapon hadn’t hurt any of his friends. Donna and Bo were still at the outpost.

  At some point, Timothy finally succumbed to his exhaustion and fell asleep in his cell. He awoke to the sounds of a key jingling against the iron bars.

  A man stood in the hallway outside, with his back to Timothy. He opened the door to the woman’s cell across from him. Her eyes opened slightly, and she tried to squirm away. She raised a trembling hand and moaned when the man bent down with a syringe in his hand.

  He made a cooing sound, like he was trying to get a child to relax. But the woman resisted, struggling sluggishly as he poked a needle into her arm.

  “No,” she mumbled. “No…”

  “It’s okay,” he said, reassuringly.

  The man remained crouched while her body relaxed. Moments later, her head slumped back to the floor and drool slid down her chin.

  When the man turned, Timothy saw the Red Sox baseball cap and the dirty smirk of Nick, the collaborator his friends called Whiskey. He slipped the dirty needle back in a pocket of his black vest. Then he put his hand on the grip of a holstered pistol and turned.

  “What did you do to her?” Timothy asked.

  “She’s one of the special ones,” Nick said. “Pete likes to keep them quiet until they’re ready for the great awakening. The New Gods will want them to help us propagate our lands.”

  He shut the gate, locked it, and then crossed over to Timothy. For a moment he just stood there stroking his beard.

  Then he reached down to his vest. Timothy feared it was for another needle, but instead, he held out a plastic bag.

  “Better eat somethin’. You’ll need your energy for later.” Nick ripped open the bag and handed it through the bars. Timothy reached out for what smelled like beef smothered in gravy, but then Nick held it back.

  “That was quite the performance last night in front of Pete,” he said. “You got Vin killed, and while I was no fan of that douche, he deserved better than getting a new pair of gills like a stupid perch.”

  “Then he shouldn’t have…” Timothy let his words trail off.

  “Shouldn’t have what?” Nick pulled the bag containing a still warm meal away from the bars. “Finish what you want to say.”

  Timothy considered his words carefully, reminding himself that his goal was to get these men to trust him. His opportunity for vengeance would come only then.

  “Vin would have thrown you under the bus next,” Timothy said. “I heard what he was saying about pinning whatever happened on that Pete guy. You can’t trust a guy like that.”

  Nick furrowed his bushy black eyebrows.

  “I did you a favor, man,” Timothy said.

  “Favor.” Nick chuckled while scratching his beard. “A favor is giving me a bottle of aged whiskey.”

  Timothy eyed the bag, his stomach growling.

  “You know… before all this?” Nick said. “Before the monsters, the war… you know what I did?”

  You were a drug dealer or an ambulance chaser? Timothy thought.

  “I was a dentist with a wife I adored and two kids that would be your age now,” Nick said. “I lost everything. You want to know why?”

  Timothy stayed quiet. It was hard to believe this man could be anything but a traitorous animal.

  “Because of our corrupt government and some fringe scientists that created the monsters,” Nick said. “So I decided, you know what… why fight them?”

  He raised his lip, exposing a rotted tooth.

  You sure you were a dentist? Timothy wanted to say.

  “Why not use those beasts against the government that created them?” Nick continued. “Why not take down the cog that keeps this war turning?”

  “Maybe because the beasts will kill all of us if we don’t stop them,” Timothy said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. He managed his tone. “They aren’t pets to be controlled. They’re apex predators designed for the single purpose of killing.”

  Nick snorted. “Figured you’d say that, kid. You’ve got a lot to learn if you want to survive the reign of the New Gods.”

  Again, he reached into his pocket.

  Nick pulled out a key chain and unlocked the cell. Then he handed Timothy the plastic bag full of mushed food. “Eat and come with me.”

  Timothy took it before Nick could change his mind again. They set off down the passage side by side. He was so hungry that he didn’t bother looking at the people in the other cells while he downed what tasted like leathery roast beef and gravy. The lukewarm food filled his gut, and for the first time he felt a flood of relief.

  By the time they arrived in the lobby of the prison wing, he had finished off the last of the food and was digging inside with his fingers to get the last drops of gravy.

  Two guards sat at a card table with mugs of coffee and eggs over easy. They glared at Timothy while he passed.

  The exit door of the lobby opened to a passage lined with closed doors. Nick kept his hand on the grip of a pistol while they walked.

  Timothy wanted to ask where they were or what this place was, but he didn’t want to sound like a cop. He let his eyes do the investigative work.

  There were no windows. Everything was basically concrete and steel, which told him it might be some sort of old military bunker.

  But that didn’t quite explain the first chamber where he was pasted to a wall or the silo where the bats were stored to feed the beasts.

  He got another look at that silo a moment later. The hallway came to an intersection. The passage on the right ended with the mesh wire that held back the bats.

  This time he didn’t hear any of their fluttering wings.

  Nick went left, toward the sound of footsteps. Several guards with slung rifles walked toward them. Both men nodded at Nick who dipped his baseball cap.

  Two more intersections later, and he stopped outside a door with a rusted radiation sign on it.

  “Go inside,” Nick said, opening the door.

  Hanging lights guided the way up a steep ladder of rungs built into the wall. Another radiation sign marked a hatch at the top.

  By the time Timothy got to the top he was out of breath.

  “Open the hatch,” Nick said.

  Timothy hesitated, then twisted the wheel handle until it popped open. Another long hallway greeted them with a single door at the end.

  When Timothy turned for orders, Nick had his pistol pulled and pointed at him.

  “Walk,” he said in a completely different tone. His features hardened as he pulled the hammer back.

  Timothy’s sto
mach dropped.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Kid, I see right through you. You think you’re smarter than us. Thought you were smarter than Vin, too.” Nick jabbed the pistol forward. “But I ain’t Vin, now move it.”

  Timothy set off down the passage toward the rusted door at the end with a third radiation sign. Each step felt more like his last, and he braced himself for the bullet to the back of the head. He cursed himself for not making a move earlier when he had noticed the gun. It could have been his way out.

  But how could he take down Nick with a gun aimed at his head?

  There was no way he could fight back. He had to try and talk Nick down.

  “I can help you guys,” Timothy said. “You need me.”

  Nick didn’t reply, and Timothy kept walking all the way to the door.

  “Open it,” Nick said.

  “I…”

  “Open the goddamn door.”

  Timothy grabbed the wheel handle and twisted it, expecting to see a room full of starved Variants that would eat his corpse after a bullet blew out his brains.

  But there were no Variants inside.

  He walked onto a platform overlooking a massive room with a high ceiling that reminded him of a hangar. Huge banks of lights illuminated the concrete walls ribbed with iron beams.

  “Look,” Nick said.

  “What?”

  “Look below you.”

  Timothy drew closer to the platform’s edge. Dozens of tents and other temporary shelters were pitched on the ground below. People, many of them women and children, walked about casually, some of them talking.

  At first, he thought the people were prisoners like him, but most seemed happy, and a few even shared smiles as they went about their day. Some ate off plastic plates gathered around crates serving as makeshift tables. Others waited in a line for food outside a shack centered in the large hangar style room.

  Nick grabbed the back of Timothy’s neck, forcing his head down over the edge of the platform. Timothy’s palms sweated as he knelt at the platform’s end, his fingers gripping it tightly.

  “You see those people?” Nick said.

  Timothy nodded.