She wasn’t even sure how long they had been hiding in the forest, waiting for the ROT patrols that still hadn’t come. The eerie quiet sent a chill through Davis. For hours, she had been anticipating the barks of search dogs or the beams of spotlights hunting them. Instead, there was only the whispering of the wind through the palm trees, the hissing of bugs and croaking of frogs.
Davis decided to move again, waving Diaz under a ridgeline along the beach. She stopped a few minutes later at the sight of bodies crucified to the wooden poles beyond the surf.
Marine Sergeant Corey Marks’s scarred face was still slumped against his chest, his flayed body hanging like a scarecrow on the pole the ROT soldiers had constructed on the beach after catching him and two other marines days earlier.
Now she knew where the scent of rot was coming from.
Diaz covered her nose with a sleeve, but Davis pushed on, breathing in the stench of death as a reminder she was still alive, against all odds. There was no time to bury the marines as they deserved, there was only the mission.
She had to get back to the ship and finish the job that so many men and women had already given their lives for. In her mind’s eye she remembered Black gunning the engine of the Zodiac after Davis and Diaz bailed. The ROT soldiers on the deck had riddled Black’s body with bullets, but he’d still managed to slam the Zodiac into the side of the ship and detonate the C4 on board.
Davis shook the memory away, determined to get back to the ship. She continued leading Diaz through the maze of palm trees.
Quick and steady, Rachel. Quick and steady.
The mantra helped her focus. She scanned the area with her rifle’s sight, keeping an eye out for any sign of spotlights and her ears perked for barking dogs.
They stopped a few minutes later at the lip of a ravine to scout the low-lying area beyond. The minutes ticked by as slowly as the bug crawling across Davis’s arm. She didn’t bother brushing it off. Her flesh was already covered in mud, bug bites, and scrapes. At least the creature was a distraction from the pain of her injuries and the queasiness of her stomach.
She lost the battle with her sour stomach and leaned over to dry-heave in the bushes. Diaz looked up, shaking from the cold, her freckle-dusted features ghostly in the night. She hadn’t said more than a few words since they had emerged from the water, and her eyes searched Davis’s for some sort of reassurance.
But Davis had nothing to offer the lance corporal.
They were in bad shape. On top of losing their comrades, along with most of their weapons and ammunition, Davis had lost the radio and satellite phone. There was no way to contact Command unless they got back to the ship.
Diaz broke the silence. “I can’t believe Black …” Her lips quivered and her brown eyes widened. “I … I can’t believe he sacrificed himself like that.”
“He did his duty,” Davis said quietly. “At the very least, I think the blast disabled their launching systems and their ability to move out of the harbor. It’s only a matter of time before Central Command moves in to finish them off, assuming they’re still watching out there.”
“So Wood can’t hit any more SZTs with the hemorrhage virus?”
“Not with the GW. If Wood could fire the missiles, wouldn’t he have already fired them?”
Diaz shrugged helplessly.
“He doesn’t strike me as the type of guy to bluff,” Davis continued. “Black started the job, but we still have to finish his work.”
“What do we—”
Davis grabbed Diaz and pulled her down at the distant whoosh of helicopter blades.
“Quiet,” Davis whispered. She brought up the SCAR-L assault rifle she’d grabbed on the beach and pointed it at the canopy of palm trees. The shifting fronds provided momentary glimpses of the sky. Her first thought was to take off running for cover, but she knew they were better off staying put.
Diaz raised her Beretta M9.
The thump of rotors rose until it sounded as if the bird was right on top of them. Davis leaned from left to right for a better view, finally catching a glimpse of a Black Hawk shooting over the swaying canopy.
But the bird wasn’t out here hunting for them. It was heading for the GW.
Davis flashed a hand signal, motioning Diaz back toward Fort Pickens and the harbor. They advanced through the trip-me vegetation, weaving between palm trees at a quick but cautious pace. There were plenty of hazards out here, including snakes. One of them squirmed across the dirt path. Davis maneuvered around a boulder and focused on the Black Hawk racing across the night sky. There was no doubt about its trajectory—the bird was heading for the GW. She leaped over fallen limbs and powered through a cluster of vines.
“Wait up,” Diaz said.
Davis slowed her pace and caught her breath, muscles burning and injuries flaring. The salty scent of an ocean breeze filled her nostrils. Diaz caught up a moment later, and they crouched behind a tree, both of them panting.
“Slow down,” Diaz said. “What if there’s a patrol searching for us?”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Davis looked back through the fence of palm trees. They were almost back to the place where they had ambushed the ROT soldiers.
“Okay, I’m ready to move out,” Diaz said.
Davis could see the fight returning in the lance corporal’s eyes. Diaz was ready to avenge Black and the crew of the GW.
“Come on,” Davis whispered.
They slipped back through the woods, guided by the glow of the moon. Davis did her best to watch every step. Despite her efforts, she tripped and fell several times, scoring more cuts for her collection.
The clearing that overlooked the weathered walls of Fort Pickens was just ahead, and Davis balled her hand to halt their approach. She took a knee next to a stump and scoped the fence of palm trees at the border of the fort. There was no sign of movement in the green space beyond, nor on the stone walls—no sentries, no snipers, nothing.
“All clear,” she whispered. The words sounded strange, and her gut told her something was off. Where the hell were the patrols? Maybe the ROT soldiers thought Davis and Diaz had died in the blast, but she didn’t want to bet their lives on it.
A wall of smoke drifted away from the GW on the other side of the fort. Davis pushed herself to her feet and raised her SCAR. She would use the opportunity to sneak over to the fort, where she could have a better look at the aircraft carrier and the Black Hawk that had landed there.
“Cover me,” Davis said. She went first, running in a hunch, keeping as low as possible. She hadn’t seen a sniper, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one lurking in the shadows.
Halfway across the field, she stopped at a stone pillar that had been sheared off at the top. The broken piece lay in the dirt to the right. Diaz showed up a moment later and pushed her back against the partition while Davis got down and used the cover of the rubble to scope the rest of the fort.
She played the barrel of the SCAR over the walls and walkways overlooking the ocean. Where there had been ROT soldiers before, she saw only abandoned ledges.
Where the hell are they?
A flicker of white darted across the top of one of the lookouts and vanished into the fort. Davis froze and waited for the contact to reemerge in the moonlight.
“Did you see that?” she whispered.
Diaz shook her head.
Pushing her scope back up, Davis zoomed in on the wall. Seeing nothing, she searched for their next position. She pointed at the wall about a hundred yards away.
“Watch my back,” Davis said.
Diaz looked over, eyebrows arching over her wide eyes at the sound of a distant scream. It rose into a screech of agony and then faded away.
This wasn’t the sound of a monster—it was the scream of a man.
Davis took point and flashed an advance signal.
Quick and steady, Rachel. Quick and steady.
She led Diaz toward a staircase and up the stairs with their rifles angled up. At the top, Da
vis hunched down and cleared the overlook. She crab-walked to the wall and waited for the screams to come again.
A seagull called out in the distance, and the lap of waves sounded on the beach, but she heard nothing else.
Davis worked her way up to the ledge and peeked over to look at the harbor. The pop of gunfire pushed her back down. Diaz crouched next to her. They exchanged a glance.
Several shouts followed the gunfire, and then came the unmistakable shriek of a Variant. The thump of rotors and a frantic shout joined the din.
“Get us back in the air!”
Davis lifted her rifle over the ledge and centered the barrel on the GW, ignoring the black hole in the metal siding that provided a glimpse into the guts of the carrier.
On board the ship, ROT soldiers ran toward the aircraft housed on the deck, some of them firing over their shoulders at figures bolting out of the open hatches. At first Davis thought that maybe these were members of her crew who had seized the opportunity to take back the ship, but then the figures chasing the ROT soldiers dropped to all fours and skittered after the retreating men.
Not sailors—monsters.
Davis focused her gun on the Black Hawk that had passed overhead for a better look. Its wheels were already lifting off the deck. A crew chief grabbed the chopper’s M240 and directed the barrel at the beasts. That was when Davis saw the missiles containing the hemorrhage virus scattered across the deck.
The blast from the C4 hadn’t just disabled the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System delivery vehicles—it had blown several of the missiles to pieces, releasing the virus and infecting the soldiers and sailors on the deck. Now Davis knew why they hadn’t been pursued by the patrols. The ROT soldiers were no longer human.
For the first time in six months, Davis was happy to see the creatures. The former soldiers tore into the men who had landed in the Black Hawk. Two of the men made it to the chopper. A third soldier leaped into the air and grabbed the side of the troop hold as it lifted into the sky.
Dozens of the galloping beasts fanned out across the deck. A pack skittered over the ship’s F-18 Super Hornets, and another dashed between the Ospreys. Davis felt her heart catch when she realized that some of the infected were former members of her crew.
“No,” she whispered. Tears blurred her vision. This was so much worse than if they’d been executed by the ROT soldiers.
The 7.62-millimeter rounds from the M240 tore through her old friends as the Black Hawk pulled skyward. She locked her jaw and raised her SCAR at the bird. The soldier hanging from the side swayed back and forth with a beast attached to his ankle. Another soldier in the troop hold stomped the man’s fingers until he fell back to the deck with the monster. The callousness of the action took her back as four more creatures pounced on the fallen man. They tore him to pieces in seconds, tossing entrails out like spaghetti to the others.
A guttural howl rose over the thump of the rotors.
It took every bit of restraint for Davis to hold her fire. She wanted to empty her magazine into the chopper, but she couldn’t compromise her position. Their primary mission was complete: The missiles were disabled. Her crew had given their lives, but in the end, countless more lives had been saved.
Now Davis had a new mission: to fight her way back onto the GW and find a way to contact Central Command and the president of the United States of America.
1
Three days later …
Hatteras Island didn’t have any of the comforts of the White House, but the view of the ocean under the stars was breathtaking—and, even better, it was quiet here.
President Jan Ringgold sat on the fallen trunk of a palm tree with her bare feet dug into the sand, listening to the waves lap the shoreline. This was the second time in her brief tenure as president that her White House had been relocated. The most recent command center, at the Greenbrier in West Virginia, was gone now, the grounds poisoned and her staff likely infected with the hemorrhage virus. She still didn’t know the fate of Vice President George Johnson or anyone else who had been in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, but each passing hour of radio silence told her with more certainty they were dead or infected. Her entourage, or what remained of it, was in the stealth Black Hawk behind her, combing the radio frequencies for information.
I told you there’s always hope. Together, we will persevere. The war will be over soon, Ringgold had said to Doctor Kate Lovato not long ago.
The doctor stood ankle deep in the surf, hand on her swollen stomach, staring up at the stars. Ringgold wasn’t the type of person to regret her words, but the line seemed hopelessly naive now.
How could she have known then that a madman like Lieutenant Andrew Wood was waiting in the shadows for a chance to strike? How could she have predicted that he would deploy the very virus that they had worked so hard to eradicate?
Ringgold shook her head and stood. The only remaining Secret Service officer in her detail, Tom King, followed her down the beach, keeping his distance.
She checked the silhouetted figures of her team above the beach. Most of them were clustered under the canopy of trees set on a grassy bluff overlooking the ocean. The Black Hawk was positioned to the right, a camouflage tarp thrown over everything but the troop hold. They had taken refuge at the southern tip of Cape Point, away from the roads and the Woods Coastal Reserve.
Ringgold joined Kate at the water’s edge. She remained silent, not wanting to disturb the doctor but still trying to show she was here if Kate needed support. It had been three days since Dr. Ellis was killed and Kate’s partner, Captain Reed Beckham, kidnapped.
Three days of hiding and listening to the communications channels as the country slowly collapsed into civil war. Three days of waiting helplessly as SZTs joined forces with ROT, and three days of hearing about the losses of American and European Unified Forces in Europe.
The human race wasn’t just back on course for extinction—it was barreling right toward the black hole that would end them forever.
“He’s out there,” Kate said, turning away from the ocean to look at Ringgold. “Reed is out there looking up at this same sky. I know it.”
Ringgold had figured that was what Kate was thinking about, and as much as she wanted to believe Kate was right, Ringgold was losing faith. There was chaos in every direction. She had thought they’d seen the worst possible threat in the Variants, but Wood was more evil than the monsters. At least the beasts didn’t have access to weapons of mass destruction.
“I better get back to Tasha and Jenny,” Kate said. She walked past Ringgold, feet slurping in the wet sand, but Ringgold reached out to stop her. “Madam President?” Kate asked.
Ringgold struggled to find the right words. After a moment, she let her hand drop. “It’s nothing. Come on, let’s go.”
Side by side, they walked up the beach toward the Black Hawk.
Master Sergeant Parker Horn greeted them at the edge of the forest, his machine gun cradled across his broad chest, his strawberry-blond hair rustled by the wind.
“All clear up here,” he said, voice gruff. He offered a brief nod, then strode out into the grass and took a knee to scan for hostiles.
Ringgold was used to having a dozen men protecting her, but now they were down to just Secret Service agent Tom King, Horn, former NYPD officer Jake Temper, and the two Black Hawk pilots, Captain Ivan Larson and Captain Frank Spade. Both of the pilots were holding security just to the north, watching for any possible juvenile Variants that might have fled Kryptonite by jumping into the ocean.
National Security Advisor Ben Nelson and Chief of Staff James Soprano were both armed, but she didn’t trust them to do much in a fight. They were ideas men—men of strategy, not violence. Both sat on stumps listening to the radio.
Ringgold found her shoes and shoved her feet inside. A crunching sounded, and she looked over as Jake tried to fasten the tarp over the troop hold of the Black Hawk. She could see several sleeping figures inside. Jenny and Tas
ha were nestled up next to Bo and his mother, Donna. Timothy, Jake’s son, was sitting up, wide awake. He waved at Ringgold, and she waved back.
She finished securing her shoes and checked the cluster of backpacks neatly arranged at the foot of the trees. Even in the moonlight she could see their contents had dwindled. They would have to find water and food soon.
“Have you heard anything from the PEOC?” Ringgold asked, joining Kate and the men by the radio.
Nelson and Soprano shook their heads.
“Whatever ROT did, they completely cut off the PEOC,” Nelson said. “I’m guessing they used some sort of electromagnetic pulse.”
“SZT Forty-Nine just declared loyalty to them,” Soprano added. “That pretty much evens the playing field. Once we lose half of them, I’m sure the other mayors will quickly fall into line behind Wood.”
“We need support from our forces in Europe,” Nelson said. He removed his suit coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “I say we try to reach General Nixon and recall our troops.”
“We don’t know what side he’s on,” Soprano replied. “For all we know, he believes we’re behind the missile attacks on the SZTs.” He paused and wagged a chubby finger. “We’re better off trying to find help Stateside.”
“The moment we send out an SOS, we’re toast,” King said. It was the first time Ringgold had heard the Secret Service officer voice his opinion. It was good, though; she needed all of the opinions she could get right now.
Kate remained silent, her arms still folded over her stomach. She was shaking, but it wasn’t from the chilly breeze. Ringgold could tell her friend was near her breaking point, and all of that stress was terrible for the baby.
“Kate, why don’t you go get some rest?” Ringgold said.
“I’m fine.”
Horn walked over and whispered something in Kate’s ear. She huffed and walked away to the chopper. The bulky Delta Force operator hurried after her.
“Kate, wait up. I’m sorry,” he said.
Ringgold watched them move toward the helicopter. The children stirred inside the dark troop hold as Horn and Kate spoke outside. When they had finished talking, Horn bent down to kiss his daughters.
Extinction War Page 2