Extinction War

by Nicholas Smith

  “I’m with Soprano and the captain on this one,” Ben Nelson chimed in.

  Ringgold thought on it for a moment and then looked at Kate. There was something in the president’s gaze that made Kate wonder if she was holding back information. It could have been fatigue, but Kate wasn’t so sure. The president looked as if she was hiding something.

  “Have you given any more thought to working with the Thalassa’s team?” Ringgold asked.

  Kate nodded. “I have, Madam President, and I won’t be joining them.”

  Ringgold held Kate’s gaze but accepted her answer with a nod and then turned away. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get ready to move command to the USS Abraham Lincoln. I’m anxious to meet with the men and women who will be taking back the United States of America.”

  Everyone stood and began to file out of the room, but Ringgold waited and walked over to Kate.

  “I understand your decision and respect it. Perhaps you’ll join me on the Abraham Lincoln?” Ringgold said. “We can move the children there as well. I’m sure they’re all getting anxious for some fresh air and sunshine.”

  Horn nodded his head, but Kate could see reluctance in his eyes. Despite the promise of sunshine and a better view, she couldn’t help but feel they were safer beneath the ocean.

  Ringgold placed a hand on Horn’s shoulder, smiled at Kate, and then followed her staff and the navy officers out of the room.

  Horn watched them leave with his muscular arms folded across his chest. “’I’m glad you decided not to go aboard that French ship,” he said. “I don’t trust ’em, for one, and two, you’ve done everything you can for science. It’s time to pass the torch, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said, suddenly unsure. The guilt was already eating at her, but feeling Javier Riley move reminded her why she had made the decision. He was her future now, and she had to protect him at all costs.

  “Let’s get back to my girls,” Horn said. “I want to break the news to them that we’re leaving.”

  They returned to the quarters where Tasha, Jenny, Bo, and Timothy were playing a game of cards with Donna. Jake stood outside the privacy curtain, not quite standing guard but watchful nonetheless.

  “What’s the word?” he asked.

  Horn stopped to talk to Jake. They had become friends over the past few days, and Kate had heard them talking about Beckham the night before—something about mounting a rescue mission when the time came. She appreciated the idea, but what could they possibly do against Wood’s growing army?

  She walked into the room and forced a smile despite her rising despair.

  “Pack up your things, kiddos. We’re going on a field trip,” Kate said.

  Tasha stayed focused on the game, but Jenny beamed. “Do we finally get to see the sun again?” she asked.

  “I want to go fishing,” Bo said.

  Horn laughed from the passage and ducked back inside. “I might be able to arrange that, little buddy.”

  “Are there sharks out here?” Tasha asked, looking up.

  “I sure hope so!” Bo said. He smiled so wide that Kate could see his teeth.

  The Klaxon sounded, erasing the smile from Bo’s face.

  “It’s okay,” Kate said. “That just means we’re moving.”

  Footfalls pounded the passageway, and Kate looked out to see Ben Nelson ducking under the pipes. He gestured for her to join him outside the quarters.

  “We received a message from Outpost 46, just outside of Chicago, in response to our broadcast,” he said.

  “What did the message say?” Kate asked.

  “‘Say hi to the kid.’” Nelson lifted a brow. “That mean anything to you?”

  Kate’s eyes flitted to Horn, whose grin rivaled Bo’s earlier smile. “I told you Reed was still alive!” Horn shouted, hooting and clapping his hands together. The children in the room all turned to glare at him as if he was crazy, but Horn bent down to scoop Jenny off the ground. He twirled her around, laughing.

  Kate placed one hand on her pounding heart and the other on her belly. “You hear that, Javier Riley? Daddy says hello.”

  9

  Davis couldn’t believe the radio transmission. The secure message gave her hope in a time when she had thought there was none left.

  “Come again?” she said. “Please repeat your last.”

  “After the rendezvous, you will be rerouted to pick up Ghost One. Stand by,” said Chief Petty Officer Ivan Petrov from the USS Florida.

  Davis wiped the crud from her eyes, a combination of tears and mud. Ghost 1 was the call sign for Beckham, and if he was still alive, then he was even harder to kill than she’d thought. She replied over the handheld radio she’d taken from the GW and then prepared to duck out from her hiding spot in the ruins of Fort Pickens.

  The sun was already setting on the horizon, and more juveniles would be coming out soon. As the twilight approached, the sounds of the animals and insects quieted; even they knew what the darkness brought. It was amazing how dark it was without the power on. Soon it would be nearly pitch black.

  For the past hour, she’d been waiting to make her move. The juvenile that had killed Diaz was definitely out there, prowling, but the monster didn’t know Captain Rachel Davis, a woman hell-bent on revenge, was also on the hunt.

  She wondered if the creature could comprehend something like revenge. Did it think that way? Did it think at all, or did it rely on basic predatory instincts? It was hard to guess what kind of changes had occurred in the latest evolution of the beasts.

  Davis did know that she was running out of time. She had spent an hour burying Diaz and Black—what was left of them, at least. Piles of rocks marked their shallow graves overlooking the beach. SEAL Team Four would be here soon, and she had a mission to complete before they arrived.

  She moved around the stone wall and pushed up her MK21. The fading orange glow of the sun cast little light over the terrain, but she used what there was to guide her, cautious not to stumble and give away her position to the juvenile. She hoped the juvenile hadn’t already smelled her adrenaline.

  She slung the rifle across her back and slowly crept out into the grass, boots squishing in the mud. Suddenly, a wail gave away the monster’s position. It leaped off a stone tower and landed in the dirt about two hundred yards behind her.

  Davis took off running through the maze of ruins toward the woods where she had hidden with Diaz after their failed attempt to destroy the GW. The sound of clicking joints and plates of armor shifting over leathery hide followed her through the fort.

  The beast was tracking her.

  Good, you bastard. You’ve got about two minutes left to live.

  Davis ran harder despite the pain flashing through her body. She leaped over a crumbled pillar and focused on a slanted wall of stone. On the other side was a ravine that separated Fort Pickens from the forest.

  She charged across the terrain at a breakneck pace, pushing as hard as she could, muscles tightening and stretching to their max. The sound of joints and armor grew louder.

  The wall wasn’t far, maybe just fifty feet or so, but the juvenile was gaining on her. She could hear its nose sniffing the air. Its lips popped over a maw of razor-sharp teeth.

  Quick and steady, Rachel!

  She hurdled the fallen pillar and ran as fast as she could toward the three-foot wall of stone. She was going to have to clear the top if she wanted to avoid becoming this creature’s next meal.

  The second before she jumped, she pulled the detonator from her vest. As soon as it was in her hands, she threw herself over the wall, her boots narrowly clearing the chipped stone.

  She landed on her butt, sliding toward the stream below. A second later, she heard the creature slam into the wall, armor shattering rock. Davis pushed the button on the detonator as the juvenile let out a high-pitched screech that was soon drowned out by a boom.

  The explosion and subsequent shock wave hit her in the back, pushing her helmet over f
eet. She lost her rifle in the process and landed on her stomach with such force it knocked the air from her lungs.

  Dirt and rock rained down around her. She gasped and continued sliding down the hill until her gloves hit the water. Her face went in next, and salt water gushed up her nose, burning her sinuses. She pushed at the muck to right herself. Chunks of rocks splashed into the water and landed nearby.

  After wiping the dirt from her face and spitting on the ground, she looked at the debris rolling down the hill. What was left of the wall and the juvenile was still tumbling down the slope. An oval head with narrow eyes and curved ears rolled toward her. It stopped at her boots, slurping into the water.

  The C4 she had planted had blown the juvenile into a dozen pieces. It seemed like fitting revenge, but she felt no relief or satisfaction. Her mind was already focusing on her next mission.

  She calmly retrieved her rifle and climbed back up the bank. There was a smoking black crater where the wall had been, surrounded by a ring of blood and gore.

  Davis moved into the field of swaying grass. Somewhere in the distance came the chop chop of a helicopter. The sight of a Seahawk traversing the purple sky greeted her as she made her way back toward Fort Pickens. The radio tucked inside her vest crackled to life.

  “Victor One,” said a voice. “Victor One, do you copy?”

  “Roger that—this is Victor One. I’m at the rendezvous point,” she replied. “It’s all clear.”

  The helicopter lowered over Fort Pickens, disgorging the team of Navy SEALs that had come to rescue her. Little did they know she had just saved them the trouble of putting down a three-hundred-pound juvenile.

  She jogged over to them with the C4 detonator still in hand. An African American man led the team out across the grass. The other men fanned out to set up a perimeter. The senior SEAL gave her the elevator-eyes treatment. Then he checked the smoking hole in the stone wall behind her.

  “Captain Davis, I presume,” he said.

  “You presume correctly.”

  “I’m Senior Chief Petty Officer Randall Blade with SEAL Team Four. I was under the impression that the GW would be destroyed. You had specific orders to—”

  Davis held up the detonator. She pushed the second button and stepped to the side so Blade could see the aircraft carrier out on the water. A blast exploded on the deck where the hemorrhage-virus missiles were scattered. F-18 Super Hornets and millions of dollars’ worth of other precious aircraft were blown to pieces by carefully placed charges.

  Three more blasts tore through the inside of the ship, blowing holes in the bow, center, and stern all at once.

  Blade ducked as the fireballs burst into the night sky. The other men all whirled and flipped up their night-vision goggles to shield their eyes from the explosions.

  “Happy now?” Davis asked. She dropped the detonator on the ground and took off for the troop hold of the chopper. She’d finished what Black, Diaz, and so many other members of her crew had started. But scuttling her ship—her home—still felt like blasting a hole in her own heart.

  It’s done, she thought grimly. Now what’s next?

  Piero wasn’t sure how long he’d been scouring the moist tunnels under the Colosseum. It felt like an entire day, but it was hard to tell without any sign of the sun.

  Keeping low and hugging the walls, he continued into the darkness guided by his flashlight. Every few minutes, he would cup his palm over his light and stop to listen for the mutated monsters.

  Ringo sat on his shoulder, providing an extra set of eyes. If the mouse sensed anything, he would jump back into his pocket, and Piero would know to haul ass or hide. But so far, the only sign of the beasts was the gooey trails leading deeper into the tunnels. Piero wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but it had to be somewhere under the arcades, in what appeared to be the intestines of an old sewage or water system.

  He stopped when he heard a strange sound. It started as a long, guttural croak like the call of a bullfrog and was followed by a clicking like that of a rattlesnake’s tail.

  The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere. The rattling was followed by the chilling click and clack of skittering, many-legged creatures, and something else that sounded like the wet hide of a snake wiggling across the ground.

  Ringo dove into Piero’s breast pocket, and Piero crouched behind a pillar. He held his rifle, ready to fire. As he had so many times before, he waited for the sounds of the monsters to pass and wondered if this time they would find him.

  It wasn’t all that long ago that he had been losing his mind beneath the Vatican. Seeing the sun again and contacting the EUF had brought him out of the grips of madness, but every step he took down here threatened to transport him back into the mental darkness.

  The beasts eventually retreated until once again there was nothing but the sound of his stilled breathing. He waited for his heart rate to return to normal and repeated the mantra that had kept him moving all day.

  You have a mission. You have to keep going.

  Piero pressed onward, flitting his beam up and down the passage. The cracked walls had been spared from the graffiti that he was used to seeing under other historic buildings throughout the city, but there was something else smeared on them.

  He reached out and fingered a gelatinous white material. At first glance, it looked like the same stuff from the cocoons, but it had the consistency of drying glue. He brought it up to his nose and caught a whiff of sour fruit and acid. The glue webbed out between his thumb and index finger and then popped back together.

  Piero scraped the gunk on the wall, but some of it had already hardened onto his glove like plastic. His heart kicked back into overdrive. Was this some sort of toxin, like the juvenile spray?

  Instead of risking contamination, he took off his glove and tossed it on the ground. That was the last time he would be touching anything down here.

  He followed the white streaks deeper into the tunnels. Several round holes the size of a basketball peppered the ceiling. Water dripped from the openings, plopping into puddles on the ground. This place had to be some sort of sewer and water system, he was sure of it now, and he had a feeling the noises from earlier had emanated from the sewage drains.

  The openings were likely connected to old latrines for the fifty thousand spectators who had once watched the games in the arcades far above his head. It was amazing that the Romans had been so advanced two millennia ago. That amount of time was hard to fathom. Would humans still be here in another twenty years—or even two?

  He continued toward the intersection ahead. If he lost his life to help save the human race, then that was a good death—far better than what had come to those who had died overhead as gladiators in brutal combat for a few minutes of entertainment.

  He stopped a few feet from a junction and crouched before shining his beam into the passage. It crossed over more of the circular openings in the ceiling. Concrete troughs were built underneath to catch the sewage before they continued draining into the lower levels.

  Piero listened, waited, and then ducked under a low arch. He played his light over a faded drawing on the wall to his right and saw the familiar outline of a gladiator helmet etched into the stone.

  He cursed under his breath as he roved the beam toward more of the drawings, all of them depicting warriors from the past with swords, spears, and bows. They were beautiful, but they were also familiar; he’d been here before, which meant he was walking around in circles.

  But if that was the case, then where were the monsters?

  Piero slowly turned to look for a way out of the room. There were three connecting corridors—or two if he didn’t count the one he’d just come from.

  He picked the one to his right, ducked down, and shone his light over the walls, ceiling, and floor, where the streaks of white goo continued. He was almost certain this was a new passage. It had a lower ceiling and narrower walls than the sewage tunnels. Perhaps this was an old aqueduct. The Romans were
some of the first to engineer such a system in ancient times, Piero recalled from school. Surely they had fitted the mighty Colosseum with the technology.

  Ringo popped up out of Piero’s vest pocket, sniffed the air, then pulled up and scrambled onto Piero’s shoulder to watch. They entered another tunnel that seemed to end at a central circular space. This was definitely new. After a few sniffs, Ringo decided it was safer back inside the pocket. He jumped inside, leaving Piero to navigate the room himself.

  He caught a draft of whatever the mouse had smelled a moment later, an acidic and sour smell.

  Varianti.

  Piero raked his beam over the cracked walls and holes overhead that looked like portals in the bulkhead of a spaceship. They all drained into this one central area.

  He flitted the ray back to the floor. In the middle of the room was a large oval opening the width of a small pool. The circular grate was pulled to the side, exposing a gaping hole into the earth.

  Raising his rifle, he approached the opening, keeping his footfalls as quiet as possible. Ringo stirred inside his pocket, a signal that Piero ignored. He kept his light on the hole. A few steps later, his boot scraped against the grate.

  Lowering the flashlight, he carefully stepped off the rusted metal. A faint rattle sounded, and Piero froze like a statue.

  Another long, low croaking sound echoed through the tunnel system, but this time he was certain of the source’s location. It was coming from the massive hole right in front of him.

  He shut off his light and backed away.

  The click-clack of four-legged monsters followed the croaking. It was as if an army of crabs was marching underneath the Colosseum, preparing to do battle.

  Piero moved away in horror, nearly stumbling. He steadied himself and angled the flashlight’s beam toward the nearest overhead hole just to make sure there weren’t any monsters that were going to drop down on him. The tunnel was empty, void of any slitted eyes staring down at him.