Another blast rocked the inside of the cathedral, the carillon ringing again like a dinner bell. Fitz looked through the MK11’s sights and fired on a Reaver soaring in their direction, wings spread out like an angel’s.
Three more of the beasts trailed the first Reaver. Between Rico and Fitz, they cut the creatures out of the sky. Dohi kept the other beasts at bay with the M240. The rapid fire tore through leathery hides and wings. He was almost as good on the gun as Big Horn. Damn—Fitz would give anything to have Horn and Captain Beckham with him now.
“Changing,” Rico said.
“Ghost One, Ghost One, this is Lion Two, do you copy? Over,” hissed a voice in Fitz’s earpiece. This time it was Major Domino. Fitz was afraid to ask what had happened to Bradley.
“Copy that, Lion Two. Ghost One here, and I’m a little busy,” Fitz said between trigger pulls.
“Ghost One, Command is preparing to pull back. We’re losing men and women by the second.”
“I just need a bit more time, Lion Two,” Fitz said. “Just give me …”
A flash of motion in his peripheral vision gave him a warning to duck down. The Reaver slammed into the side of the building, wings and arms gripping the exterior while talons groped for him inside.
Fitz bent down over his desk just in time to avoid razor-sharp claws, so close he could feel the whoosh of air as they passed.
Rico raised her shotgun over Fitz’s helmet and pointed the barrel at the monster’s leathery midsection. Everything seemed to freeze in that second. This was the closest Fitz had ever been to one of the creatures. He could see its hair growing in a patch between barreled chest muscles and two black nipples. Worst of all, Fitz could smell its rancid sweat.
The beast squawked as Rico fired a blast into its rib cage. Hot blood coated Fitz, snapping him out of battle time. The boom of the gun rang in his ear, and he cupped it with his hand.
Rico pulled the smoking shotgun back and pointed outside. Her mouth moved, and he could tell she was screaming, but he couldn’t hear a word.
He wiped blood off his face, grabbed his MK11, and angled it at the sky. Rico smacked his right arm and pointed at the western façade of the building.
A tidal wave of Variants flowed out of the smoking entrance, funneling out onto the stone terrace, where Dohi was still firing at the Reavers in the sky.
Fitz magnified his view of the bony, emaciated monsters. Wrinkled flesh, covered in burns, and shrapnel wounds flickered across his sights. The beasts were almost all hunched over, running just like chimps.
“Christ almighty,” Fitz said.
He realized he could hear again when Bradley’s voice came over the radio: “Ghost One, Lion One. We’re falling back, repeat, we’re falling back.”
Fitz was too distracted to reply. Below, the MATV reversed while Dohi directed the now rapid fire of the M240 at the army of Variants. The attack cut the sinewy beasts down with ease, but the redirected fire also gave the Reavers a chance to attack.
“Rico, keep them off the MATV,” Fitz said. He switched back to the channel with Bradley. “Copy your last, Lion One. Still no sign of the HVT here. We’ve got hundreds of contacts, repeat, hundreds of contacts.”
Rounds fourteen and fifteen of Fitz’s magazine took down another Reaver on a trajectory for Dohi. Three more of the beasts nosedived through the air. Fitz killed one of them before the others slammed into the side of the vehicle, the crunch of metal echoing over the suppressed rounds coming from the apartment.
The creatures crashed into the side of the MATV. The injured beasts flopped and flapped their shattered bones and frayed wings on the pavement. Fitz used the opportunity to kill them both with rounds sixteen and seventeen.
As he brought the gun back up, he saw the attack had just been a test. Seven more of the creatures were nosediving toward the vehicle.
“Watch out, Dohi,” Fitz said over the comms.
Dohi ducked back inside the vehicle and Tanaka swerved, but it was too late. Five of the six Reavers slammed into the vehicle’s side, tipping it to the left.
For a moment, it looked as though the MATV was going to fall back to all four tires.
“Three o’clock!” Rico shouted.
Fitz brought the MK11 up and followed the two Reavers coming in for another pass. He fired round eighteen and lined up round nineteen. The shot ripped through the first Reaver’s upper wing, but it was an inch off, allowing the beast to slam the passenger’s door of the MATV, sending it crashing down on its left side.
“No,” Fitz choked. He quickly pushed the scope down. The army of Variants surged toward the vehicle. The tires squealed as Tanaka pushed down on the gas pedal, but the two-ton truck wasn’t going anywhere.
Apollo barked behind them, and Fitz twisted just as a Variant rushed into the room. The dog took it down by its throat, ripping away a ribbon of flesh.
“Rico, our six!” Fitz shouted.
Two more gaunt figures bolted into the room. Rico brought up her shotgun, blasting the first one back through the open doorway. Apollo took the second one down by the neck.
Fitz focused his attention back on the MATV.
The hatch popped open and Dohi climbed out. Tanaka was already on his feet outside, firing bursts with his M4 from right to left and back again at the horde of a hundred Variants barreling toward them.
“Fall back!” Fitz ordered over the comms.
Dohi fired a grenade from his M203 attachment that blew five of the monsters to pieces. They fanned away from the kill zone, tumbling over one another and leaping in the air to be the first to the kill.
Fitz raised his rifle to the Reavers in the sky—hoping one was the HVT. He could end all of this with a single shot, saving Team Ghost and the men and women on the front lines.
Another boom from Rico’s shotgun echoed through the apartment. Apollo’s growl and the high-pitched shriek of a monster followed. The sounds filled the small apartment, but Fitz kept focused and frosty—knowing everyone was counting on him.
So this is what Beckham said about the burden of leadership and deciding who lives and who dies.
Fitz killed another Reaver before his magazine went dry. He didn’t have a second to waste. Everything was falling to shit around him, and his duty as a sniper was to deliver death with a single bullet. At other times during his service, he had waited hours or even days for the shot, but now he had only seconds, and there were only three beasts left that could be the Queen.
He palmed another mag in the gun, pushed the butt back into position, and killed two more of the Reavers with rounds one and two, leaving a single beast soaring through the sky.
The pop, pop of an M9 echoed behind him. Rico was down to her side arm. Apollo yelped and then growled.
Don’t look. Kill the Reaver.
Tanaka and Dohi retreated across the terrace, firing rapidly in all directions. Another grenade tore a dozen of the beasts apart, fertilizing a bed of weeds and flowers with blood.
Fitz trained his sights on the final Reaver. It already had two holes in its wings, but it still flapped through the sky, monitoring the battle from above. This one looked different from the rest—bigger, with a ridged spine and a black tail the length of an anaconda. Could it really be the Queen?
Deliver death with a single bullet, he thought as he pulled the trigger.
Fitz ended the abomination’s life with a kill shot to the temple. It cartwheeled into the Variant army below. He stood for a better look, watching the beasts trample the monster and continue their charge across the terrace as if nothing had happened.
“Fitz!” Rico shouted.
He unholstered his M9 and brought it around to shoot another Variant that had entered the room. Rico was on the ground a few feet away, straddling and stabbing a beast in the chest while Apollo tore at its legs.
Fitz did a quick scan. Four bodies near the door. Two more in the hallway. When he turned to the window, Tanaka had drawn his swords, and Dohi was down to his M9 and hatchet.
>
The army of Variants flowed around the two men, surrounding them. The hunched beasts slashed and growled, but they kept a few feet distant from the soldiers.
The Reavers were all dead, and the army wasn’t turning on itself as Bradley had said would happen if he killed the Queen. Maybe Command was wrong—it wouldn’t be the first time.
“I don’t understand,” Fitz muttered. He sat back down at the table and picked up his MK11. One of the beasts bolted from the crowd below. Tanaka used both swords and sliced the monster’s head clean from its neck. The body crumpled to the ground.
Another beast made a run for Dohi. Fitz dropped it with a round to the heart. The crowd of diseased flesh began closing in around the two men. It was just a matter of time now.
Rico hurried over with Apollo, both of them panting and covered in blood. She wiped her frosted tips away from her face. The dog nudged up against Fitz’s rusty left blade and looked up, revealing a gash on the side of his head, his fur soaked in blood.
Fitz’s heart ached at the sight.
“Oh my God,” Rico said. “We have to do something.”
A guttural hissing, followed by a rattling sound coming from the cathedral, distracted them both. The army clamping down around Dohi and Tanaka froze on the terrace, every head shifting toward the western façade.
Fitz reached up and put his hand on the top of Rico’s barrel.
“Wait,” he whispered.
The smoke swirling out of the open door gave way to two Black Beetles and several fully grown juveniles. They trotted out onto the terrace, armored plates clanking across their muscular bodies. A dozen of the beasts emerged before Fitz saw it …
“The Queen,” Rico whispered.
Fitz zoomed in on the red, chitinous upper body of their HVT. The abomination had an oddly shaped skull covered in bony spikes, but he couldn’t see her face. Leathery wings were folded against her sides, and she moved on arms covered in ridged armor.
“Take the shot,” Rico whispered.
Fitz swallowed and pushed the mini-mic to his lips.
“I’ve got eyes on the HVT,” Fitz reported over the comms. “Repeat, eyes on HVT.”
There was no reply over the channel, but the sporadic boom of distant explosions told Fitz the EUF was still fighting.
He focused the sights on the Reaver’s skull, waiting for the kill shot.
A section of the pale army parted to allow the Black Beetles and juveniles through. Dohi and Tanaka stood their ground, swords and weapons angled at the creatures.
“Tanaka, Dohi, when I tell you to run, you run,” Fitz whispered into his headset.
“Nowhere to run,” Tanaka said. “There’s only one way out of this.”
Before Fitz could reply, Tanaka bolted for the Reaver Queen, tossing his Wakizashi short blade like a spear. It narrowly missed the monster’s face and sank into the chest of a nearby Variant.
Fitz held in a breath and fired a shot that pinged off the top of the Queen’s armored skull. The juveniles closed in around her like a phalanx, screeching in rage.
“Shit!” Fitz muttered.
Dohi fired his M9 and let out a war cry that distracted the juveniles while Tanaka sliced his way through several of them with his Katana, twirling, slashing, and stabbing like a samurai. He thrust the blade through a juvenile’s skull, yanked it free, and then swung it in an arch that beheaded a Variant and stuck into the neck of a second beast. He pulled it out again, blood gushing out of the now nearly headless creature.
Tanaka killed another juvenile before coming face-to-face with a giant Beetle that towered over him. Tanaka jabbed the demon in the midsection twice. On the third jab, the tip of the ancient blade broke off, and the creature grabbed his wrist and snapped it like a twig.
“No!” Dohi shouted over the comms.
Tanaka screamed in agony as it grabbed him with its other claw and launched him through the air. He landed in a crumpled mess in front of the Queen.
Dohi buried his hatchet in a juvenile’s skull before he was captured by a Beetle. The beast slammed him to the ground, leaned down with open mandibles, and screeched in his face.
“Take the shot,” Rico whispered.
The juveniles were guarding the Queen so closely Fitz couldn’t get a target.
Just one. Please, Lord, just give me one shot.
“Up here!” Rico shouted, waving her arms.
The MK11’s sights flickered over the face of the Queen as she looked in his direction—and Fitz saw the humanoid features as vividly as a picture. Two-Face was one ugly son of a bitch, with fangs protruding out of bulging lips set on a face covered in warts.
All it takes is all you ever had.
Fitz pulled the trigger as the Queen let out a hissing noise. As soon as it started, the noise stopped—the 7.62-millimeter round splitting through her bulbous nose and crunching through her skull to her brain.
The Queen crashed to the ground, blood gushing out of the gaping hole in her face. The monsters all seemed to screech at once.
“HVT is down,” Fitz said into the comms, not even able to hear his own voice. “I repeat, HVT is KIA.”
By the time he finished relaying the message, the Variants, juveniles, and Beetles were all shrieking in their otherworldly languages. Without their Queen to control them, they tore into one another, leaving Dohi and Tanaka curled up on the ground. Only Dohi seemed to be moving at all.
Fitz stood and grabbed his M4.
“Let’s go, Rico,” he said.
She limped away from the windows, and he saw the gash on her left leg. It was bad—she was going to need stitches.
“I’m okay,” she said, when he looked at her.
Apollo trotted over, his fur matted red in several places. The dog wagged his tail, his way of saying he was okay also.
Injured and facing daunting odds, the three hurried out of the room, all of them prepared to lay down their lives for one another.
“Dohi, Tanaka, hang on, we’re coming!” Fitz shouted over the comms.
By the time they cleared the stairwell and reached the streets, the thump of artillery had given way to the thump of a helicopter.
Fitz glanced over his shoulder at an HH-60 Pave Hawk flying low over the buildings to the east. The bark of its M240 sang from the sky. He felt a rush of joy when he heard Bradley’s voice over the comms.
“You son of a bitch, you did it, Ghost One. These freaks are tearing one another apart!” he shouted. “I owe you a barrel of whiskey, Fitz!”
The momentary feeling of victory didn’t last. Dohi and Tanaka were injured, and injured badly. Fitz ran around the corner and spotted their fatigues in the sea of pale flesh and armor.
The Variant armies slashed into one another on the terrace, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Dohi was limping away with Tanaka over his back.
The M240 unloaded on the meat of the army.
The beasts noticed that.
Dozens of the creatures fanned out, squawking in horror. The juveniles and Beetles hissed and roared, but they too ran when the rounds lanced in their direction.
Fitz, Rico, and Apollo ran out to meet Dohi and Tanaka. They set up a perimeter on the stone steps, guarding their injured brothers.
The Pave Hawk hovered for several minutes while the soldiers in the troop hold killed any stragglers. Fitz bent down next to Tanaka and scrutinized his wounds. He sucked air, his chest rattling. A laceration had carved his face, cutting off the tip of his nose and through both lips.
Dohi was already applying bandages to stop the bleeding. He was in bad shape too, with a broken arm and a deep gash on his leg.
Fitz grabbed Tanaka’s hand and gripped it in his own.
“You’re going to be okay,” Fitz said.
Tanaka tried to nod, but the action made him wheeze for air. He coughed up blood.
“Hang in there, brother,” Dohi said.
Apollo licked Tanaka’s arm, and the man looked over at the dog, his eyes wide and terrified.
>
Rotor wash whipped over the team as the chopper set down on the street.
“We need a medic!” Fitz shouted.
An officer Fitz had never seen before ran over, two men following him. Fitz felt Tanaka’s wrist. His pulse was weak, he’d lost a lot of blood, and he was struggling for air.
The officer from the Pave Hawk stopped and looked down. One of the soldiers took a knee and opened a medical bag.
“Watch out,” he said to Dohi.
Dohi moved out of the way but remained on one knee next to Tanaka.
“I’m First Lieutenant Arnold Rollins. I’m here under orders from General Nixon,” the officer said. “Which one of you is Master Sergeant Fitzpatrick?”
“I am,” Fitz said.
Tanaka sucked in a long gasp, his lungs wheezing. He exhaled and met Fitz’s gaze for a single second. His shredded lips clamped shut and his chest deflated.
“No, no, no!” Fitz yelled. He squeezed Tanaka’s hand harder and then felt for a pulse.
Dohi bowed his head, and Rico sobbed, while the medic began CPR on Tanaka.
“Master Sergeant Fitzpatrick,” said Rollins.
Fitz looked up at the lieutenant, expecting condolences or perhaps a commendation for their bravery that had resulted in the death of the Queen, but instead Rollins jerked his chin at Fitz, and the other soldier stepped forward with a pair of handcuffs.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Colonel Zach Wood,” Rollins said.
27
“Stay back,” Beckham growled. He bared his teeth and snapped them together so hard one of them chipped.
President Ringgold took two steps backward with the blade Wood had tossed into the room clutched in hand. Captain Beckham was sprawled on the floor next to Captain Davis, struggling to stand.
Davis twitched, still unconscious but already showing symptoms of the hemorrhage virus. Tears ran freely down Ringgold’s face. Her friends were transforming into monsters before her very eyes. It was just like her recurring dream about her cousin.
Except this was real. She was living a nightmare.
Andrew Wood waited outside, looking through the porthole like a curious child. He waved and grinned when she glared in his direction.
Extinction War Page 34