Extinction Cycle (Kindle Worlds Novella): From The Ashes

by Michael Patrick Hicks

  Text copyright ©2017 by the Author.

  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Nicholas Sansbury Smith. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Extinction Cycle remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Nicholas Sansbury Smith, or their affiliates or licensors.

  For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Stay Connected

  About From the Ashes

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Quote

  The Fall

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Note To Readers

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other Works

  authormichaelphicks@gmail.com

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  Edited by Shay VanZwoll, EV Proofreading

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  Cover art by Christian Bentulan

  http://www.coversbychristian.com/

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  About From the Ashes

  In an effort to contain the spread of the Hemorrhage Virus, the United States government launched an attack on its nation's cities. Hundreds of thousands of lives, and a number of major cities, were lost in Operation Reaper but the monsters created by the bioengineered virus remained.

  A small team of Army Rangers have entered the ruins of Detroit in an effort to save whatever refugees they can, and stop whatever creatures they encounter. In an all-or-nothing gambit, the Rangers will soon discover that in the heart of the Motor City, evil rises from the ashes.

  FROM THE ASHES

  Michael Patrick Hicks

  To Nick, for creating this world,

  and then for inviting me into it.

  Thanks, dude!

  "We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes."

  City of Detroit motto, written by Father Gabriel Richard, 1805

  American cities have begun to fall beneath the spread of the Hemorrhage Virus — a bioengineered chemical weapon named VX-99 that was married to a variant strain of Ebola, and which produces epigenetic changes that transforms those infected into savage monsters. The changes are irreversible. There is no cure.

  On April 25, 2015, in an effort to halt the virus from spreading further, the United States Government launched Operation Reaper. The military firebombed and eradicated America's major cities, believing this sacrifice was necessary to save the country. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were killed and, in the aftermath, soldiers were sent into the ruined cities to eliminate any remaining infected and bring whatever survivors they could find to safety.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The survivors wheezed and choked on dust, asbestos, and ash. Arvin Malone hated to think what else they were breathing in. Some of that ash, he knew, had once been people, obliterated in the series of bombing runs conducted by their own government against the city.

  Emerging from Cobo Center, he eyed the remains of Detroit beyond the perimeter established by a National Guard regiment. Soldiers dressed in bright orange CBRN suits stood at the ready, or crouched behind a pile of sandbags that wrapped around the complex on Congress Street and Washington Boulevard, their weapons relaxed but ready. This wasn't the first time Detroit had been under lockdown by armed forces, but Arvin had not expected to see it during his own lifetime, let alone the sheer ruination that had befallen his city. All of it seemed so horribly unreal.

  The elevated track for the People Mover had been broken in the assault, the shattered remains of its concrete spine nothing more than rubble and twisted rails littering the intersection of Congress and Cass Street. The scorched remains of the two-car driverless train lay on its side amidst the rubble in a V-shape, close enough that Arvin could make out the blistered, fire-licked mascot of Fishbone's restaurant along the panel of the second car. The cartoon fish with the top hat and cane was half burnt away, one eye lost in a smoky black coating from where flames had danced and left their mark.

  "Jesus," Melissa said beside him.

  He turned to look at her, her face wearing the same measure of shock and distress that he imagined plastered on his own. She was a small woman, her compact body tightly coiled and, like Arvin, in her twenties. Her hair was a frizzy mess from sleeping on a cot, the bags under her eyes deeply stained with the exhaustion that had become a permanent fixture on all their faces.

  "It's like this everywhere?" she said.

  "President gave the word," Arvin said. His mouth held a bitter, smoky taste, but it was the words that curled his lips into disgust.

  The news had talked about the spread of something like Ebola, how Chicago had been Ground Zero. An infected individual had flown into O'Hare and the disease exploded like wildfire. The president urged the country not to panic, right before the governor declared Michigan to be in a State of Emergency. Hospitals and clinics were overrun with cases of hemorrhagic fever, and the American Red Cross rushed to help, setting up makeshift clinics. Mostly, those were nothing more than tents and Quonset huts where people went to die.

  Then came the order to evacuate the city. Too little, much too late, and damned near impossible for the millions living within the city's borders, not to mention the transient population who came into the city every day to work, sightsee, and attend sporting events or concerts. The burnt-up cars lining the streets were proof enough of that, and the immolated remains of their drivers and passengers, of the families inside. Traffic had stalled to a halt, all the routes out of the city clogged and impassable, leaving the residents with no hope of escape.

  Arvin had spent the night in the basement shelter of Cobo Center, along with a few dozen others. Other survivors were being housed in the upper floors of Cobo — thousands of them, he'd heard. For most of the night, he and Melissa had sat on their cots listening to the roar of F-22 Raptors screaming overhead as their city turned into a war zone. This morning, he'd caught the hushed whispers of rumors, spoken with quiet panic, disbelief, and fear. Standing on the steps looking out at what was left of the city, it was evident that those rumors had been something more than mere speculation. He'd listened as buildings had exploded under the first wave of missile assaults, and, with hardly any pause at all, a second wave of bombings began immediately after. Fire had engulfed the streets, running like a river over all he had once known.

  As furious as he was, and as much as his mind protested the assault on his home, he knew
why the government had taken this route, appalling as it was. He'd seen things, seen...them. The infected. He knew, and still he couldn't believe it.

  Melissa coughed beside him, and he cast a worried glance at her. The color had drained from her face, her hand covering her mouth as her cough turned into gagging. She cleared her throat and lowered her hand, still coughing slightly.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  She turned her hand over to show him. Her palm was slick with clear, shiny liquid. Spit. Not blood.

  Thank God.

  He nodded. "Good. That's good." Unsure of what else to do, he patted her shoulder and gave it a gentle, friendly squeeze. She wasn't infected. Or, if she were, she was not yet symptomatic. Of course, if she were showing, it would have been much too late for her...or any of them, for that matter. They'd all be dead, or near enough.

  Across the street, smoke rose from the remnants of a collapsed 85,000-square-foot brown bricked building that, less than twenty-four hours earlier, had housed on its first floor Ciccarelli's 22 Sports Bar. Glass glittered in the street, the remains of the Hockey Hall of Famer's old joint and more than one hundred years of history lost under the hill of broken bricks and exploded masonry. Through the debris, he spied flickering flames and the occasional blackened limb of some partygoer out for one last hurrah, ignorant of what the night would bring.

  A gray haze stood over everything, the sky clogged with smoke and ash. Overhead, dark clouds blotted out the sun, the world lost in a permanent, wintry dusk.

  "I can't believe it," Melissa said. Her voice tremored, still reeling from shock. She shivered even though she wore a thick coat.

  Arvin realized he had forgotten his, but the chill in the air didn't bother him. The weather in April in Michigan was erratic — cold one day, hot the next, then a blizzard that night before a day of record-breaking heat. He didn't remember leaving his coat, nor when exactly he had last had it on, but he suspected it was in his office. If his office, or the university it was in, still stood, anyway. He couldn't even remember if the day before had been too hot to justify a coat, but what the hell did it matter when the whole city was a burning husk?

  "They actually did it." She spoke softly and slowly, as if her tongue were numb and weighted down. "I can't believe they did it."

  A shrill cry pierced the quiet, loud and abrupt. Arvin's heart jolted as it tried to break through his ribcage, the adrenaline dump into his bloodstream immediate. He nearly jumped out of his skin and dashed down the concrete steps until he realized it was a baby. One of the evacuees who had sheltered with him was a young woman — he'd be surprised if she was even old enough to drive — and her infant daughter. A number of Detroit's elderly had been brought to the underground shelter, as well. Even some couples with pets they were unwilling to leave behind.

  The emergency shelter had been crowded and hot from all the accumulated body heat trapped in such close quarters. The cold air outside Cobo Center actually felt really good after spending all night sweating.

  "Do you think there's anybody else out there?" Melissa said.

  Arvin shrugged. He assumed so, but looking at his immediate surroundings he couldn't imagine there were many. A number of shelters had been set up, but most of those were probably buried beneath the leveled city. The mass exodus out of the city had clearly been a failure. He knew it was silly, especially with a handful of people standing around him and many more still inside, but he felt like the last man on Earth.

  "I'm sure there are," he said.

  They barely knew each other, but had somehow spent most of the night quietly talking. Both had been far too frightened by the explosions to even be able to, let alone want to, sleep. Instead, they had whispered back and forth about books and movies and television shows. Small, mundane things that at least served as a distraction. Neither spoke of the virus, or how awful and frightening it was, nor of the things that replaced the people they had once known.

  In the few minutes they had been standing on the steps of Cobo Center, Melissa had drawn closer to Arvin, and he was slightly surprised to feel her hand in his, their arms entwined. Strangers before that night, being this close still carried a certain comfort, and Arvin found himself grateful for her presence.

  Another cry shattered the eerie silence, startling them both. She looked at him with wide eyes, recognizing the ear-piercing shriek. Gunfire, loud and sustained, followed.

  "We should get back inside," he said.

  Melissa pointed upward, to the two dark shadows moving against the clouds. A moment later, the sound reached his ears and he could finally make out the shapes a bit better. They were helicopters.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Army Ranger Staff Sergeant Matthew Hedley sweated profusely inside the green CBRN suit as he casually studied his squad. The face shields of their protective headgear made it difficult to see their expressions, but he sensed his team's anxiousness. Hell, he felt anxious, too. Afraid even. It was understandable, though, and he knew those emotions would do nothing to hinder either his or their performance on the field once they landed.

  The Black Hawk's two crew chiefs were manning the M240 7.62mm machine guns on either side of the flight deck, ready to eliminate the infected. They were flying weapons quiet, but soon enough the guns would go hot. If this landing zone was anything at all like the shit storm they'd encountered in Dayton, then their brief respite would go south fast.

  He still couldn't believe the command from on high. Sure, things were bad, maybe even critical, but this was next-level crazy shit. The Air Force had been mobilized to attack American cities, to kill American civilians, from one end of the nation to the next, all in an effort to contain an outbreak. Of course, it wasn't anything so simple as an outbreak, he knew. The Hemorrhage Virus and its Ebola-like symptoms had hit the U.S., and hit it hard, but that had only been the start of this nightmare. What followed was something straight out of a fucking horror movie.

  Some of the sick died — those were the lucky ones. But for a lot of them, their illness was only the beginning. They got sick, their skin became blotchy with red marks before growing pale and translucent, and they began bleeding from their eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, sometimes right from the pores of their flesh, and their eyes changed. They became something else, and the virus stripped away every last vestige of their humanity, turning them into...he didn't know what. Animals? Zombies? Some twisted combination of the two?

  Below, Detroit — or what was left of it — came into view. He gasped, and heard the tinny gasp of Corporal Todd Barlow come through over the radio.

  "Think this is all going to be worth it in the end?" Barlow asked.

  "It will be," Hedley said. "It has to be."

  "First we gotta live that long," Lance Corporal Steve Fulton said.

  "Hey, stow that shit," Hedley said.

  Properly chastised, Fulton said, "Sorry, Sarge."

  States and cities had been given little notice that Operation Reaper had been about to commence, and few had the time and resources available to mobilize a rapid response for evacuation. Emergency warnings were issued across every broadcast medium available, interrupting television and radio programs to notify people to leave their homes immediately. Hedley saw the result of those warnings below.

  Stemming from the borders of the western edge of Detroit, he could make out a long train of stilled cars and collapsed infrastructure. Large portions of the freeways and expressways had been devastated by the aerial bombing campaigns. Traffic congestion and automobile accidents had not only slowed, but outright halted, the outflow from the city. Construction had reduced the three-lane interstates down to only one or two lanes, and the narrow shoulders made it impossible to clear accidents off the road well enough for people to pass. Trapped in their cars in the clogged arteries of I-75, I-94, I-96, I-275, and I-696, the highway network had become a massive death chute.

  To the south, there was the Detroit River and Canada, which had closed off their end
of the border crossings. Nobody had been able to escape into Windsor by the tunnel or the Ambassador Bridge, the latter now nothing more than a broken twist of metal and fallen cables. The Canadian border patrol had rigged their end of the tunnel with explosives and flooded the damn thing to prevent either infected or refugees from making it across.

  Cutting through the air beside them was their secondary support chopper, Wayfinder Two Niner Three. The crew chiefs manning the miniguns inside were little more than bulky silhouettes in their CBRN suits. The team of Rangers that had been inside Wayfinder Two Niner Three and inserted into the city had gone dark several hours ago, their last transmission garbled with pained screams, which accounted for Fulton's foul mood.

  Hedley wondered how many of the city's seven hundred thousand souls still remained. Evacing the city had been a suicidal gambit, and the infection had hit hard, as well. Causality estimates were high, and the bosses figured the city had been overrun entirely, or was at least on the verge of it.

  The mission for the Rangers was simple: cleanup and rescue. If there were any uninfected people still alive down there, they would get them to safety. If the bombs had missed any of the monsters, they would kill them.

  Given the rapid spread of the Hemorrhage Virus and ease of transmission, each member of the five-man Ranger team had deployed wearing a CBRN — Chemical Biological Radiation Nuclear — suit. A comic book fan, Hedley thought they all looked a bit like those A.I.M. villains from Marvel Comics, only the CBRN suits he and his men wore were green instead of yellow. Thinking of those comics, he figured it was pretty unlikely he'd have become an Army Ranger if not for the twin influences of all those issues of G.I. Joe comic books from his youth, or the stories his uncle, a Vietnam veteran, had shared. He'd always looked up to his uncle, and considered him to be a real-life Real American Hero, and perhaps that had been why he'd always preferred Duke over the flashier fan-favorite, Snake Eyes. As he grew older, he'd wanted to be more like his uncle, who had also been a Ranger. The day he turned eighteen, Hedley enlisted.