Extinction Cycle Dark Age (Book 2): Extinction Inferno

by Smith, Nicholas Sansbury

  As a defense mechanism against any potential mastermind escapes, the glass to the lab had been made bulletproof. That ruined any plans of shooting the hostiles from behind. They had to get inside if they wanted to take these assholes down.

  He crouched under those windows as he made his way to the door.

  A roar from the monster confirmed Beckham was going to have more than men with guns to worry about.

  He held his breath and got up to scan the room. A cluster of scientists huddled behind lab benches, but he didn’t see Kate.

  Two men stood near the mastermind, one in a white lab coverall. The man pointed a rifle at another person in the lab. The other gunman was dressed in fatigues and appeared to be unlocking the shackles on the beast.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Beckham ducked down before either collaborator could spot him. The creature roared inside the lab again. Fischer crouched next to Beckham.

  “What do we do, Captain?” he asked.

  “Hold here.” Beckham risked another glance to search for Kate. His heart thumped when he saw her. The floor around her was covered in blood from two fallen scientists. She was crouched beside the bodies, crimson staining her white coveralls.

  Beckham whispered what he saw to Fischer, Tran, and Chase.

  They needed to get in there. Fast. He crawled back to the guards’ bodies to search for a lab key card. He found two. He handed one to Fischer.

  “There is another entrance on the other side of the lab,” Beckham said quietly to Fischer. “You go there with Chase. Tran, you’re with me.”

  Another guttural roar sounded followed by the clanking of chains.

  They were running out of time.

  Beckham held his position to give Fischer and Chase time to get to the other entrance. The wait was agonizing. Every passing second the beast grew louder and more enraged.

  “You take this,” Beckham said. He handed the keycard to Tran. “Open the door on my mark. I’ll go in first.”

  A nod from Tran.

  “Our targets are at the north side, near the beast. You shoot them, but don’t shoot the creature unless I tell you, understood?”

  “You got it, Captain.”

  Beckham waited another beat, then peeked to confirm the gunmen hadn’t moved. They were still in the same spot. He glimpsed a blur of motion behind the other door across the lab. Fischer and Chase must have been in place.

  “Go time,” he said.

  Tran moved into position, and with a nod, Beckham gave him the order. He flashed the keycard over the door, and it slid open.

  Beckham brought up his rifle, aimed, and fired a shot into the scientist’s neck and then two to his chest. Fischer and Chase opened fire across the lab. Their shots lanced into the soldier working on the mastermind’s locks. Bullets peppered his body as he tried to rise to his feet with his rifle.

  The beast screeched and stomped the floor, a miniature quake vibrating through the floor. Fischer and Chase turned their rifles on the monster, but a scream rang out behind them.

  “Don’t shoot it!” Kate yelled, streaks of blood over her face. “We haven’t finished our work!”

  “Get that thing secured!” Beckham shouted.

  Tran, Chase, and Fischer approached the loosened shackles cautiously as the monster swiped at them with a free hand.

  Fischer fired, painting the clawed hand with bullets. The creature shrieked in pain and lashed out at the final chain holding it in place.

  “I said don’t shoot!” Kate shouted.

  Fischer glanced over with a crazed look. “We have to disable those limbs if you want us to secure the damn thing!”

  “Okay, but don’t kill it,” Kate said.

  Beckham hurried over to her, looking between her and the two shot scientists. He recognized the first. It was Carr.

  The woman was still alive. She had one hand pressed down over a red spot on her white bunny suit, and her eyes blinked lethargically, her gaze unfocused.

  “We need to get her to the hospital,” Kate said. “Ron, Leslie, get over here!”

  Two technicians bolted over from their hiding position and bent down next to the injured woman while Beckham embraced Kate.

  “Are you okay?” Beckham asked.

  “The blood’s not mine.”

  He looked her up and down just to be sure. There was no time for hugs or to talk about what happened. “We have to get out of here, Kate. The outpost’s under attack. Variants are on their way.”

  “We’re almost done with our work.” Kate used the back of her gloved hand to wipe some of the blood from her face. “We’re so close. We really can’t leave yet. Too many people have already died for this research. It can’t be in vain.”

  Tran, Chase, and Fischer circled the monster, firing at the limbs with short bursts. Blood wept from the dozens of inflicted wounds, its claws starting to twitch uselessly. The enraged creature screeched with each searing round.

  Two more shots crippled its knee, and the creature finally collapsed to one leg. That gave the men a chance to yank the chains back in place and secure them to the scaffolds.

  Beckham waved Fischer over.

  “Have your men hold sentry in the halls,” Beckham said. “We have to buy Kate and her team time to finish their work.”

  “How long is this going to take?” Fischer asked.

  “Not long,” Kate said. “But I need Sammy.”

  The other technicians were patching the injured computer scientist up, but Beckham could tell she was in bad shape. She had taken a bullet to the gut. One of the most painful—and potentially deadly—places to be shot. If her guts had been pierced, the resulting bleeding and infection would be devastating.

  “I can work,” Sammy croaked. “Just help me up.”

  They got her into a chair after finishing the bandages.

  Her face continued to lose color as she tapped at the computer. “We… we about had my algorithm tuned.” She looked over at the monster. “Just give me… give me five minutes with this bastard.”

  “Are you sure you can do this?” Kate asked.

  “I have to do this.” Sammy grimaced. “The thing is agitated which means we’re going to get better results… There’s no better testing ground for my language processing software.”

  Beckham kept his rifle up while the injured scientist finetuned her code with repeated queries and answers from the monster. He looked out at the lab’s doors with every passing minute, waiting for the eruption of more gunshots.

  Fischer joined him there and they spoke quietly while they waited.

  Finally, maybe fifteen minutes later, Sammy slowly pushed back from her computer. The bandage around her abdomen had already bled through.

  “Done,” she said.

  “Great work,” Kate said. She helped Sammy to her feet.

  “We have to call in an evac now, get this data somewhere safe,” Beckham said.

  She motioned at a phone on the wall. “Ron, see if you can get command on the line.”

  Kate bent down next to Carr and put a hand on his back.

  “We finished the job,” she whispered. Then she bowed her head. “I’m sorry you couldn’t be here to see it.”

  “I can’t get a signal,” Ron said from the phone.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Fischer said, called from the door he was guarding. “I’ve already got a private plane on the tarmac. We can take it anywhere you want to go.”

  “Anywhere is better than this place,” Beckham said. “Get ready, everyone, we move out in five minutes.”

  He looked at the beast as he waited for the science team to gather up their gear and move Sammy.

  Countless soldiers and multiple scientists had already sacrificed their lives for the intel they had gotten from this abomination, but something told him this was far from over.

  ***

  Timothy hunched behind a shed outside the border of Outpost Portland, trying to find the courage to fight his handlers.

  M
e or them… he thought.

  From his vantage, Timothy saw a blockaded road with a machine gun nest and patrolling guards. Snipers had to be on the adjacent rooftop watching the walled campus.

  A second gate blocked off another road with a few guards just beyond it.

  The buzz of his collar hit his ears before he felt the pain. The jolt nearly dropped him to his knees. Scorching pain flamed across his neck. When it passed, he took in a deep breath, tears brimming in his eyes.

  Time to move.

  The collaborators were watching him and if he didn’t get going, they would shock him again.

  Keeping his hoodie cinched above his neck, he walked out from behind the shed and started off down the road, his hands by his side. He made it three strides before a spotlight hit him.

  “Contact!” shouted a soldier.

  Timothy raised his hands in the air.

  “Get on the ground!” yelled another guard. “And don’t fucking move!”

  He dropped to his knees. “It’s me, Timothy Temper! I live here!”

  Footsteps echoed down the street. He blinked to see through the intense light. Two soldiers made their way toward him.

  “I live on Peaks Island,” Timothy said as calmly as he could.

  “All the way on the ground!” shouted one of the soldiers over Timothy’s explanation. “Hands behind your head.”

  Timothy slowly put his hands on his head and went down to his belly.

  “Keep your head—” one of them yelled.

  Before the soldier could finish, his head flew back from a bullet that blew out the back of his skull. Two rounds hit the other in the chest. He slumped next to Timothy, still alive, gasping for air.

  Screeching tires tore down the road. The black muscle car turned a corner. A pickup followed, and a rocket streaked from the bed.

  Timothy rolled off the street and into the ditch as the grenade slammed against a mound of sandbags. Another projectile hit two concrete barriers blocking the gate. The explosions shook the ground, and the gate collapsed, clanging against the pavement.

  He crawled back up as the muscle car sped toward the flames. It thumped over the fallen gate, and the passenger tossed something out the window. Several soldiers at the secondary checkpoint vanished behind a fiery blast.

  The car raced around the wreckage followed by the pickup truck, their tires squealing.

  Timothy rose to a kneel. The dual cab pickup that Pete drove pulled up. Alfred jumped out and aimed his rifle down the street. Then he grabbed Timothy.

  “Get in,” he said, opening the back door.

  The other prisoner was gone. Timothy was afraid to ask what had happened to the man who had told him the location of the collaborators’ base.

  Pete drove toward the sound of gunfire and sparkling muzzle flashes from the rooftops deeper within the outpost.

  The high-pitched shriek of a Variant pierced the chaotic noise.

  Several of the beasts leapt from the shadows and took to the sides of buildings, scaling them like demonic lizards. Near the monsters, a patch of grass and soil gave way. A hulking monstrosity pushed itself from the crumbling soil, and Timothy nearly gasped at the abomination with wide, bat-like ears and a scrunched face. Fangs hung from its mouth.

  It raised its muscled arms, and long tendrils along its back stood straight like the spikes on a porcupine. Red vines clung to parts of the creature’s body as it hoisted itself from the earth.

  A high-pitched clicking noise sounded and the other Variants burst from the ground where the monster had tunneled, each squirming past the red vines.

  Collaborators, Alphas, and all their thralls were descending on Portland.

  Timothy couldn’t save the outpost, but he could still get the enemy’s location to soldiers here.

  Nick drove down a side street littered with twisted and torched bodies. The pickup thumped over one with a sickening crunch.

  As the truck sped closer to the university campus, an army of Variants bounded along the roads to either side of them. Another Alpha exploded from the ground, rallying the smaller monsters and charging toward the heart of the garrisoned outpost.

  “You’re going to let the beasts kill them all?” Timothy asked. “You told me if I got you in, you would spare them.”

  Nick and Pete exchanged a glance, but didn’t reply.

  “Those that respect the New Gods will be spared,” Alfred said quietly. “But first the blood of the heretics must be spilled.”

  Explosions bloomed ahead.

  Timothy tried to think of a plan to stop the madness, but the faster they raced into the outpost, the more muddled his mind became. If the attack continued at this rate, Timothy wouldn’t have anyone to tell about the base.

  “It’s almost over,” Pete said with a crooked grin. “Soon we’ll own this outpost, and our thralls will feast.”

  The truck stopped at the next intersection with a destroyed checkpoint.

  Timothy could see the campus now.

  “This is the spot,” Pete said. “The others should be here soon.”

  Fiery blasts and gunfire cut through the night while they waited. It wasn’t long until the trucks with the dogs arrived. The guards let the dogs out of their cages, and the abominations took off down the main road into campus.

  Alfred opened the truck’s door, gesturing for Timothy to get out. Agonized screams wailed between the staccato sound of gunshots and the chorus of mutant hounds.

  They set off toward the battle with six other armed collaborators.

  Two pickup trucks followed the group as they made their way toward the dormitories.

  More shrieks split the air.

  As they got closer, Timothy wanted to close his eyes when he saw the scattered bodies. The collaborators were proud of the macabre scene. They watched in silence, their features stoic.

  Timothy held back the bile in his throat.

  Variants and mutated dogs fed on people who had been caught during their retreat.

  An Alpha tore one of the bodies in half and sucked at the corpse’s insides. Nearly a dozen people fled in that direction from a side road, oblivious to threats waiting.

  He wanted to scream and warn them, but it wouldn’t matter.

  In the distance, Timothy spotted more people climbing out of windows to escape Variants that had made it into the shelters. A woman jumped from the second floor, only to be torn apart by a pack of prowling beasts outside the building.

  A man with a pistol fired at four Variants surrounding him and two women in the parking lot. They backed toward a parked car. A monstrous dog leaped around the bumper and tackled the man. Its teeth tore into his neck, pulling out sinew as the two women screamed in terror.

  Pete held a walkie-talkie up to his ear.

  Sniper rifles cracked in the distance. The heads of several Variants burst in sprays of bloody mist. One of the Alphas turned in the direction of the gunfire. Bullets plunged through its body, but still it advanced, roaring and gathering a cadre of smaller monsters.

  The Rangers were still in this fight.

  There might yet be hope to turn the slaughter around.

  “They’re retreating to the command post.” Pete pointed the remote at Timothy. “You’re up. The faster you do this, the faster we call off the beasts.”

  Timothy nodded and set off down the road, doing his best to ignore the mangled and shredded bodies littering his path. He turned into a parking lot. If he remembered correctly, this one led to another where more dormitories were. Command was located between those buildings.

  Several Variants and hounds sprinted toward the increasingly sporadic sounds of gunfire. Two diseased dogs ripped apart dead bodies, spilling the organs of carcasses across the asphalt. A few gaunt Variants fought for scraps nearby, shoveling mangled flesh into their mouths.

  Why weren’t they attacking him?

  A bony beast straddling a dead man glanced up at Timothy as he neared the tree line separating the parking lots. Intestines hung
from its maw like noodles. But it didn’t seem interested in him. Nor did the other creatures.

  They simply looked at him and then looked away. He didn’t hear the pop of the creature’s collar zapping him. No way the beast knew that he was one of their allies yet, right?

  It struck him then. The chip that Nick had implanted in his neck. That had to be it. These beasts probably had them too, and they were all connected somehow.

  Timothy started searching for a weapon as he walked. Several soldiers had fallen in the trees. He spotted a rifle and ran over, fully expecting a zap from his collar.

  But none came.

  He was out of sight from the collaborators now. They would catch up to him again soon, but for now, he was free.

  He picked up the rifle and grabbed another magazine off the vest of a dead soldier. Then he took a knife and slipped it in his waistband. With the blade, he could excise the chip.

  That also probably meant the creatures would turn on him if he no longer had it implanted in himself. He stood, armed for the first time since his captivity, conflicted.

  Part of him wanted to go back and mow down Nick, Pete, and Alfred. But he also knew there was something more important at stake than revenge. The intel he had about Mount Katahdin, if true, could save other outposts from Portland’s fate.

  That was his mission now.

  He took off for the command post, keeping low until he spotted the building.

  Several Army Rangers fired rifles from the rooftop at the monsters surrounding it. He spotted more guns in the windows.

  He slunk past the Variants closing in on the building, coming so close to the monsters he could smell their sour flesh and sweat.

  They continued to ignore him, and Timothy made his way to a clearing. He thought about calling up to the Rangers, telling them who he was. They probably wouldn’t be able to hear him and that might only get him shot in all the chaos.

  Two Variants threw themselves at the reinforced door ahead. Another began scaling the wall toward the roof.

  Gritting his teeth, Timothy took aim and fired. Bullets stitched up the side of the climbing beast. The other two at the door turned toward Timothy.

  They too jerked and collapsed as he unloaded the rest of his first magazine into their bony bodies. Then he rushed between their corpses and started pounding on the door.