Extinction Cycle Dark Age (Book 2): Extinction Inferno

by Smith, Nicholas Sansbury

  But Nick didn’t know what Timothy was going to use it for.

  The convoy moved onto a gravel road, and the driver slowed.

  Nick turned around with the black bag in hand.

  “Bend down,” he said.

  Alfred took it and just as he was about to slip it over his head, Timothy spotted a sign for Highway 295. The road led directly to Outpost Portland.

  Then Alfred secured the bag over Timothy’s head and the world went dark again.

  Timothy closed his eyes, using the time to think of his dad. He was going to make his old man proud.

  The next time the convoy stopped and Timothy’s bag was removed, the moon had risen higher into the sky.

  It took a few blinks for Timothy’s eyes to adjust where he could see enough to know they were in a large park. There was a forest to his left and buildings to the right.

  He recognized one with a steeple that stood out under the crescent moon.

  They were here.

  Outpost Portland.

  Armed soldiers popped out of the vehicles and spread out to set up a perimeter while Pete spoke to Alfred. They were on the outskirts of the city.

  Nick opened the door and Timothy got out, standing next to the other prisoner, who still hadn’t said a single word.

  They waited near the truck while the other men unloaded vehicles and prepared their weapons. The growls of the caged dogs filled the night, rising over the low chatter of the soldiers.

  Timothy shivered in the cool air. He was freezing even with the sweatshirt they had given him.

  There was almost no light pollution over Outpost Portland. Only a few stubborn lights burned away the dark.

  By this time tomorrow night, he had a bad feeling there wouldn’t be a single light left. If the collaborators were successful, it would be a scrapyard of the dead, torn apart by the mutated dogs.

  At least Tasha won’t be there, he thought.

  Using the weak glow of the moon, he counted thirty-one soldiers and twelve dogs. There were six trucks and the black muscle car with oversized tires.

  Nick, Alfred, and Pete walked over to Timothy.

  “All right, kid, listen up,” Nick said. “We’ve got a job for you.”

  “I’m ready,” Timothy said confidently.

  “Once we attack, you’re going in with us,” Pete said. “We’ll face a lot of resistance from the Army Rangers here. That’s where you come in.”

  Alfred folded his arms over his chest, watching Timothy.

  “All you got to do is tell them who you are when you get to the gates,” Nick said with a wide grin.

  “What do you mean tell them who I am?” Timothy asked.

  Nick spat on the dirt. “Don’t play me for a fool.”

  “I’m not,” Timothy said. “Why do you think I could get us in?”

  Reaching into his pocket, Nick pulled out a wallet.

  “We found this on you when the Variants brought you to us,” Nick said. He tossed the open wallet at Timothy’s feet, exposing his ID that had his full name and address at Peaks Island.

  “We know all about you, kid,” Nick said. “We know who your dad was and who your friends are.”

  “Including your little sweetheart Tasha,” Pete said, puckering his lips and making a kissing sound.

  Timothy boiled with anger, his face warming. The ID, he understood. But Tasha? How in the hell did they know about her?

  “You know the soldiers at the command post, too,” Pete said. “We heard they even tried looking for you.”

  Timothy wanted to rip their throats out with his bare hands, but he managed to keep still.

  “They’re here,” someone called.

  The welcome distraction got the men to leave Timothy with the other prisoner. As they walked away, the man spoke for the first time.

  “Do what they say or they will kill that Tasha girl,” he mumbled. “They will kill everyone you love.”

  They already killed the most important person in the world to me, Timothy thought.

  “There is only one way to stop them,” the man said. “Destroy Mount Katahdin.”

  “What?”

  Timothy kept his eyes forward, trying to act like he wasn’t talking to the other prisoner.

  “That’s where their base is,” he said. “Mount Katahdin. A top-secret nuclear silo that they took over after the war.”

  Several soldiers walked close by and the man fell silent.

  “Get the dogs ready,” one yelled.

  Timothy tried to process what the prisoner had just told him. If true, he had the location of the collaborators. Something more valuable than their lives.

  The dogs growled louder, snapping, saliva spraying from their snarling mouths until they were shocked into submission.

  A driver got into the black car, and three men holding rocket launchers piled into the back of a nearby pickup. The two vehicles took off down the street and rounded a corner.

  About half of the remaining men marched toward another street and fanned out, jogging toward the city and disappearing into the darkness. The rest of the men waited with the dogs.

  “There.” A soldier pointed to the tree line.

  The other soldiers all watched silently.

  Timothy didn’t see anything at first. Then he heard the crunching joints, like snapping twigs and popping sucker lips. A pack of Variants bounded through the forest.

  Not a pack…

  In the moonlight, Timothy saw a small army of the beasts. Cold terror seeped through Timothy’s bones, but the beasts ignored the humans. They flowed through the collaborators like a river between stones.

  Only one stopped, crouching, and then leaping to the top of a pickup truck. It dented the hood, claws scratching the metal.

  Yellow, reptilian eyes darted back and forth in its sunken skull. Bulging lips opened, exposing jagged teeth.

  The beast rose, sinewy muscles flexing across its pale, veiny flesh.

  A roar sounded from the trees and Timothy saw the source—an Alpha Variant unlike any he had seen. Matted fur covered the monster, chunks of dirt crumbling off it.

  It had huge ears that twitched when it let out a clicking sound. Unmoving, milky white eyes adorned an ugly vaguely ape-like face. Scything black claws curved out over its palms.

  The creature on the hood looked over, screeching. Then it jumped to the dirt and bounded away with the other monsters.

  “Stupid beast,” Alfred muttered.

  Pete pointed a remote at Timothy and then pushed the button. A shock brought Timothy to his knees, his body convulsing.

  Alfred helped Timothy back up a moment later.

  “That’s on low,” Pete said. “I turn this baby up to high and you’ll cook from the inside out.”

  Timothy shivered, electricity still coursing through his body. He lost control of his muscles, and his bladder voided itself.

  Pete put the remote away and then got into the same pickup.

  “Let’s go,” Alfred said.

  He grabbed Timothy and the other prisoner, tossing them back in the truck. Nick hopped in the front and looked back.

  “Put up his hoodie to surround the collar,” he said.

  Alfred covered the shock collar while Timothy tried to calm his thumping heart. The rest of the collaborators moved out.

  When they were gone, Nick looked at his watch. They waited for a few minutes, then drove onward, winding through abandoned streets. Timothy spotted the old fences that had once been the first layer of defenses protecting the outpost. They had collapsed in the road, and the metal crunched under the truck’s tires.

  Timothy saw collaborator soldiers marching on the roads and then a pickup and the muscle car hiding out in an open garage. The other teams appeared poised for the attack.

  Seconds ticked by, each one getting them closer to their target. Timothy gave up trying to control his rapid breathing and racing heart. Adrenaline and fear had taken control.

  Nick turned from the front seat whe
n the pickup stopped outside a warehouse.

  “The first standing gate is about a quarter of a mile away,” he said. “Go there and get them to open the main gate.”

  “You try anything, and I’ll make sure Tasha dies a very slow and brutal death while her sister watches,” Pete said. “Or, you help us, and we’ll spare most of the people here. Then you can be with your little girlfriend again.”

  Timothy nodded. They certainly knew more about him than they had initially let on.

  But there were some things these men didn’t know.

  Tasha wasn’t here anymore, he knew where their base was located, and he didn’t have a damn thing to lose.

  — 24 —

  “Go back to your shelter,” Presley had said to Fischer in the command tent. “Let us handle the defenses.”

  That had settled it for Fischer. He was sick of doing nothing and waiting for Team Ghost and the Orca soldiers to return with the Project Rolling Stone tech.

  For centuries, older men had sent young men off to war. To fight their battles and die on the front lines. He used to be a coward like that, but not anymore. So long as he could wrangle cattle, he could fight for humanity.

  So he had marched to the westernmost buildings on the border of Outpost Manchester, and climbed to the top of a twelve-story structure where he stood now with Tran and Chase. They had even managed to get two scoped M4s from the outpost’s armory.

  If there was one thing they weren’t short of here, it was weapons.

  Two Raven soldiers manned M134 Miniguns on pedestal mounts.

  They didn’t seem to mind Fischer’s presence. He figured none of them would turn down an extra set of eyes or rifles tonight, and with Chase and Tran, he’d brought them three extra sets.

  Sporadic gunshots echoed into the night, making one of the guards flinch. The bursts were followed by an animalistic scream.

  Fischer’s nerves felt like icicles under his flesh as he searched for the source of the screams beyond the razor wire fence stretching across the streets below.

  The noises faded into silence again.

  Command had ordered the sirens off after the regular folk were moved to their shelters. The quiet gave the guards a better opportunity to locate and identify the juveniles that had been spotted earlier, but it also made every scream all the more horrifying.

  The silence now was eerie. It was the calm before the storm that he had experienced so many times before.

  “You boys see anything?” Fischer asked.

  One of the Raven soldiers, a bulky middle-aged man named Amir shook his head. “We’re still getting mixed reports of juvies. Sometimes I hear two or three packs of no more than five.”

  “Other times, it’s fifty juveniles, all flowing through the trees like ghosts,” said Sherman. The blond bearded man grinned. “All I know is I got five thousand rounds a minute to unload on the fuckers.”

  “They took out two of our scout teams so far, and the rest are pulling back now,” Amir said. “Should be heading our way soon.”

  Fischer glassed the swaying grass and shadows beneath the tree-covered hills again. Occasional spotlights from other rooftops swept over the darkness, dispersing the shadows momentarily.

  For several long minutes, they waited in tense silence. Fischer nearly forgot to breathe, trying to remain quiet enough to hear a crunching footstep in the foliage.

  “I’ve got movement,” said Amir. He directed the M134 toward the tree line where a shape burst out.

  Fischer nearly pulled the trigger, but then recognized the distinct shape of a human.

  “That’s one of ours!” Sherman said.

  Two more people followed after the first. All three limped and stumbled forward. Only the lead soldier seemed to have any weapons. He kept a rifle trained on the woods as he backpedaled to cover the other scouts.

  The men stumbled into the street. Spotlights hit their blood-soiled fatigues.

  “Open the gate!” one of the men yelled. “They’re right behind us!”

  Amir grabbed both handholds of the mounted M134 and rotated it into position. “Get ready.”

  “Contact at three o’clock!” Chase shouted. He fired a burst at something Fischer only glimpsed.

  A second later, he too saw movement in the forest. Fischer aimed at a misshapen skull with bulging eyes. Long ropy muscles coursed along the body of the beast stalking the retreating scouts.

  Fischer squeezed the trigger as more of the creatures spilled out of the woods, charging after the injured Raven scouts.

  Amir and Sherman opened up with the miniguns. The engines whined as the rotating barrels painted the wooded area with rounds. Branches and leaves rained down under the spray.

  They eased up and Sherman somewhat calmly spoke into a radio. “Command, Tower 21. We have contacts. Six—no, ten, maybe more.”

  The two men went back to firing into the forest as the beasts emerged. Gunfire lanced from other rooftops into the incoming monsters. The heavy whoomph of a discharging explosive erupted into the night, accompanied by a ball of flames that lit up the landscape.

  In that brief second, Fischer caught the explosion reflecting off the eyes of dozens upon dozens of starving Variants streaming out of the woods. Wrinkled flesh-covered bodies with protruding bones.

  Something within his guts sunk at that sight, dropped by the leaden weight of fear. Those were just the beasts he could see, and judging from the sound of gunfire, the monsters were attacking multiple positions.

  The M134 rounds chiseled through the juveniles below, sprays of hot red mist exploded from their broken armor. That bought enough time for the three fleeing scouts to finally make it to a nearby gate.

  But the soldier that had been manning the gate wasn’t there when Fischer looked.

  “Son of a bitch, Reynolds must have run! That pussy!” Sherman yelled. He turned to Fischer. “Get down there and open the gate while we cover you.”

  “You got it,” Fischer replied.

  The gunfire rattled above them and the sirens blared again as Fischer descended the stairs from the rooftop with Chase and Tran following.

  They hit the ground and split up with Tran going to grab their truck while Chase and Fischer ran to the gate.

  “Let us the fuck in!” yelled one of the soldiers on the other side. The man with the rifle fired into the distance. The third scout held onto the thick bars of the gate to support his body on his shredded leg.

  Fischer unclasped the locks and yanked on a lever that released another locking mechanism. The gate raised up with a clank, pulled by an internal counterweight.

  Chase helped the injured man through, blood weeping from long gashes along his right leg that revealed muscle and tendon. It was only sheer adrenaline and fear that had gotten the man this far. The last soldier was still firing, half his face melted away by Variant acid.

  Fischer looked away and kept his rifle up to cover them. The growl of the truck engine announced Tran’s arrival. As soon as the scouts were through, Fischer slammed the gate down and locked it again.

  Tran hopped out from the cab and helped Chase load the men into the bed. Fischer stayed in the pickup bed to help.

  “Go, Tran! Now!” Fischer shouted.

  The truck peeled away, tires screaming.

  Fischer secured a tourniquet on the man with the shredded leg, and Chase cut off parts of his jacket sleeves to use as bandages for the man with the acid-burned face.

  Every bump and jostle of the truck made the men groan in pain. The remaining scout sat against the back of the pickup’s cab, a thousand-yard stare masking his face.

  “They’re coming… and we can’t stop them,” he mumbled.

  Fischer saw more clearly the wet sheen soaking through the man’s fatigues. The darkness had helped conceal it before, but half the jacket was torn.

  Tran called back through the open window of the cab. “We’re almost there! Just hang on!”

  “I need to look at your side,” Fischer said. He
slowly pulled the torn jacket back, trying not to gawk at exposed ribs. The man’s abdomen had split open, revealing hints of glistening organs.

  He tried to look down but Fischer covered the wound.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he said. “We’re almost back.”

  The soldier exhaled, and stared at the sky.

  A convoy of armored vehicles screamed past them on their way to the border. Tran took a right, and sped toward the main command building.

  “We need medics!” Chase yelled, standing up in the pickup bed. Men and women in scrubs were waiting outside the adjacent hospital with a group of soldiers listening to orders.

  Among those people Fischer spotted a familiar face with a lump on his head.

  Beckham. The ‘retired’ Delta Force Operator just couldn’t stay out of the center of action, and for that, Fischer was more than grateful.

  “Fischer!” Beckham yelled. “What the hell happened?”

  “Juveniles.” Fischer looked back to the soldier with the torn abdomen. The young man’s grip on his hand had loosened, fingers slipping away.

  The medics had climbed into the pickup and others waited at the bed to carry off the first two men, but by the time they got to the man with Fischer, he was gone.

  Chase reached up and helped Fischer out of the back while they carried the lifeless body away on a stretcher. For a moment, Fischer stood there staring, hands covered in blood.

  Distant gunfire filled the night, and the shouts of the medical staff and the cries of wounded joined the din.

  He could almost hear his wife’s voice in his head again. Just like back in the tunnels under his fields.

  Get out! Get out! No one will survive tonight!

  Fischer did his best to repress the storm of emotion coursing through him. He had to keep his wits.

  “Captain,” Fischer said. “What are you doing here?”

  “To see what’s going on… How bad is it out there?”

  Fischer shook his head. “Not good.”

  They entered the command building together and then went up to the second floor to talk to Colonel Presley.

  Inside what had been turned into a CIC, officers relayed reports streaming in from the outpost. Presley stood in front of his war table, eyes darting back and forth. They flitted to Fischer first.