A video of a dark room appeared on screen. Banks of lights flipped on, and the inside of a morgue came into focus. The camera panned from gurney to gurney, each with white sheets draped over corpses.
Ellis punched a key and fast-forwarded through the beginning. He stopped when the cameraman approached one of the bodies. A second soldier, wearing a parka and white breathing mask, came into view and stepped up to the table. He slowly pulled back the white sheet to expose the slitted eyes of a dead Variant. But instead of a bald skull and veiny, pale cheeks, the creature had a head crested with fluffy white hair and a beard surrounding its bulging lips.
The soldier continued pulling the sheet down to the naked creature’s waist. Its chest and torso were covered with a layer of the smooth white fur.
“What the hell?” Kate whispered.
Ellis fast-forwarded further. Each of the bodies was the same. All of them covered in shiny fur.
“Pretty remarkable evolution, isn’t it?” Ellis said.
“That’s not evolution. That’s some kind of twisted metamorphosis. First the gills, now the fur. The Variants are adapting to their environments.”
“I haven’t even shown you the craziest part yet,” Ellis said. “Check this out. This came in from a Special Forces team in Syria.” He moused over to another video and clicked play. The feed of a desert came on screen. Rolling sand dunes stretched across the horizon. The images bobbed for several seconds as the soldiers drove a brown SUV up and down the mounds. The vehicle came to a stop on top of a dune overlooking a valley of rock formations. The driver jumped out onto the sand and angled his helmet mounted cam into the canyon. To his right, a man dressed in tan clothes and a brown scarf raised a sniper rifle and pointed it downward.
“Does this have audio?” Kate asked.
Ellis clicked the volume. Gusting wind and background noise made it difficult to hear much of the conversation between the two men. He fiddled with the controls until a voice finally crackled from the computer speakers.
“There they are,” the man with the rifle said.
“Holy shit,” the cameraman replied. He centered the cam on the clusters of orange rocks below.
“I can’t see any—” Kate began to say when the soldier holding the camera zoomed in on dozens of what looked like orange crabs clambering over the rocks.
The sniper fired into the valley and the monsters scattered in all directions. They moved like other Variants on jointed appendages, but their anatomy was slightly different with fiery orange, scaly skin and humps on their backs. A round from the soldier’s sniper rifle hit one of those humps. It exploded like a balloon, blood and fat bursting into the air.
“Pretty remarkable, isn’t it?” Ellis asked. He shut off the feed and swiveled his chair to face her.
Kate took a few moments to analyze what she had seen. The Variants were adapting all around the world in amazing ways, but unlike Ellis, she didn’t feel anything remotely close to excitement. The new developments terrified her.
She folded her arms across her chest. “The gills, the fur, and the other changes we’re seeing are just the beginning. There’s no telling how the Variants are adapting in other climates. We have to get other labs on board before it’s too late.” She let out a breath of frustration that fogged the inside of her visor.
Ellis leaned back to his station and punched at the keyboard.
“God. There’s more?” Kate asked.
“Yes. The physical changes are metamorphosis, and the behavioral changes are adaptation, but I’m about to show you something that’s clearly evolution.”
Kate steeled herself, drawing in another long breath of filtered air. The clock on the wall ticked toward midnight. Her thoughts drifted as she waited for Ellis to load another video. The day had gone by so quickly that she hadn’t thought about what would happen when she got off work. She knew she had to talk to Beckham, but every time she tried, there was another distraction. Plus, they had just laid Jensen to rest. Now wasn’t an ideal time to spring the news on him. Or at least that’s what she kept telling herself. Maybe she was just too scared to tell him the truth. Maybe she didn’t want to believe it herself. Even if they managed to survive for nine months, what kind of world would she be bringing a child into?
“Here we go,” Ellis said. He clicked the play button, and another video popped on screen, this one of a dimly lit tunnel.
“This is the feed from a Marine Recon team that was inserted in Chicago,” Ellis added. “According to the file, it’s not far from Northwestern Memorial Hospital. As you remember, that was the epicenter of the Hemorrhage Virus.”
Kate’s stomach flipped as she thought of her brother, Javier. He hadn’t been all that far from the hospital when he was infected.
“Give it a second,” Ellis said. “Can’t fast forward this one.”
The video rattled as the Marine’s helmet-mounted camera jolted up and down for several minutes. The graffiti-covered walls of the underground tunnel blurred by. At the end of the passage, the Marine crouched and raised his rifle. He then gestured toward a chamber with arching walls and a vaulted ceiling. In the center of the space, on the concrete floor, a sea of flesh shifted back and forth like dead grass blowing in the wind.
“What is that...” Kate began to say. The NVG camera focused, and Kate saw something that confirmed her worst fear. The Variants slithered over the ground in a solid wall of pallid, glistening flesh. Tucked back in a corner of the room, a female Variant with a swollen belly rested with her back to the damp concrete wall. She looked six months pregnant, but how was that possible?
The fence of flesh suddenly parted, and in the gap of bodies a colossal male Variant lumbered into view. He dragged a female with him, his claw wrapped around her bony arm. The Marine followed them with his cam to a shadowy corner of the chamber. At first, Kate watched with fascination, but as the Variants mated, she forced herself to look away.
“They’re breeding, Kate,” Ellis said. “The next step in the Variant’s evolution is finally here.”
-4-
Marine Sergeant Jose Garcia looked out over Turner Field, trying to picture a stadium full of screaming Braves fans. The signs and scoreboards were all dark, and every seat was empty. Gone were the smells of peanuts and freshly cut grass, replaced by the perpetual reek of rot and trash that had claimed the city.
Four days had passed since Garcia had lost two of his men to the Variants in Key West. It was hardly enough time to heal from the mental and physical injuries, but more than enough time to scrutinize every mistake he’d made.
Morgan, Daniels, and some poor woman whose name he didn’t even know were dead because he had broken the cardinal rule of Force Recon: never, ever get compromised.
If Garcia had searched the water for Variants, they would all still be alive. On this mission, he wasn’t going to make any mistakes. Marine Force Recon always got the job done right. He couldn’t be perfect, but if anyone fell, it wouldn’t be because he fucked up this time.
Garcia squirmed a few inches closer to the edge of the scoreboard. The fresh ink on the underside of his forearm burned. The tattoo gun he kept in his gear aboard the George Washington was old, but it worked. He had tattooed Morgan and Daniels’ names on his arm earlier that morning. The cross was almost full now. There was only room for one more fallen brother.
Overhead, the ethereal glow of a full moon filled the sky. It illuminated the stadium, casting shadows behind the seats and into the dugouts. Garcia hadn’t seen moonlight this intense since the last time he’d been on his acreage in North Carolina. The last time he saw his wife and daughter...
Closing his eyes, he said the Lord’s Prayer. The words filled him with the strength to clear his head and focus on the objective. He opened his eyes, and in his peripheral vision, Stevo moved just a hair. Neither of them made a sound; even their breathing was stifled.
Garcia wiggled another inch and brought the scope of his suppressed M4 to his eye. Thomas and Tank were acro
ss the stadium, somewhere in the top bleachers behind home plate. He couldn’t see them, but he knew Tank was chomping at the bit to move. He could never sit still too long, and being close to three hundred pounds didn’t help. Thomas, on the other hand, could fall asleep in the middle of a gunfight if he had to. The man was an expert at meditation.
Zooming in, Garcia looked for the men. There was still no sign of their position, but that was good. It meant no one else could see them either.
It was 2350 hours, and the Variant Hunters were finally in position. Garcia’s body was already numb from lying on the roof for so long. A Blackhawk had dropped them off a few blocks away at dusk, and they had worked their way into the stadium without being spotted. The city was soundless, like he was in a padded room, but experience told him that was about to change. The Variants were most active around midnight, when they emerged from their lairs and hunted for prey.
Tonight, the monsters weren’t the only ones hunting in Atlanta. Garcia and his boys were too. Their objective was to document enemy movements and any behavioral changes. Rumor had it the freaks were breeding. Garcia didn’t like the idea of being the cameraman for a Variant porno, but orders were orders.
He clicked on the camera mounted to his helmet. For fifteen minutes, he remained in the same prone position. He wiggled his boot to keep the blood flowing when he couldn’t stand it anymore. Stevo didn’t seem to move at all. He remained completely still a few feet to Garcia’s left, his SAW angled at the field. Garcia could see the man’s features in profile. The other Marines teased Stevo for his big ears, lack of facial hair, and perpetual grin. They were all rough men with scars and bad skin from bad habits. Stevo had the type of honest face that made them all jealous. But he did blow at poker; the man couldn’t tell a lie.
Garcia almost smiled. Instead, he ran his tongue over his teeth and swallowed the sour taste of coffee and canned fruit. He moved his shoulder a fraction of an inch and pressed his eye back against the scope to check a flicker of movement coming from the third row of bleachers behind home plate. In the first gate opening to the concourse, a contorted figure emerged. It stood in the moonlight and scanned the stadium before clambering over the first two rows of seats. The beast perched on the final row, tilting its head toward the sky and sniffing the night air.
After a few minutes, the Variant leapt onto the field and dropped to all fours. Garcia could hear its joints popping from his position. It moved with its back hunched to the pitcher’s mound, where it stopped and sat on its hind legs like a dog. Sniffing at the air again, the creature slowly turned and focused on the top row of bleachers behind home plate.
A lump formed in Garcia’s throat when he followed its gaze to the approximate location of Tank and Thomas. He centered the crosshairs on the monster, waiting to see if it had made their position. If it had, he wouldn’t hesitate to blow its diseased face off.
Moving slowly and with care, Garcia twisted the scope and zoomed in. This Variant was unusually large. Instead of the lean forms he was used to seeing, this beast was built like a linebacker with wide shoulders laced with bulging muscle. Scars that looked like whip marks crisscrossed its body. There were fresh lacerations on its legs and arms. Crusted blood and scabs surrounded the gashes.
The monster suddenly stopped sniffing, but continued to stare at Tank and Thomas’s position. The Variants had an amazing sense of smell, but from this far?
Two beats passed—it felt like an eternity. Garcia flicked the selector to single shot and moved his finger back to the trigger. The creature let out a shriek that echoed through the entire stadium. Garcia’s heart hammered against his ribcage. In the blink of an eye, Variants exploded out of the gateways onto every concourse in Turner Field. A cacophony of wails morphed into a horrifying, high-pitched chorus. Flickering movement filled the sky as thousands of black birds soared away from the trees surrounding the ballpark.
Over the otherworldly screeches, Garcia heard another noise—a human scream. Female or male, he wasn’t sure. The Variants streamed from the concourses and emptied into the bleachers behind home plate. In the chaos, he saw human prisoners as the monsters dragged them down the stairs toward the field. There were smaller figures tucked into the mass of pale flesh, but Garcia didn’t dare move his rifle again for a better look.
Stevo fidgeted in Garcia’s peripheral vision. The scene had the man spooked, and Garcia didn’t blame him. The stadium had transformed into a nightmare, but this is what they were here for. To observe and document. The Variant Hunters were not to engage unless they had no choice.
Garcia gritted his teeth in an effort to block out the raucous screeches. He reconsidered reaching up to reposition his NVGs. He wanted to capture every second of this, but any fast movement could send the entire Variant army on them. This time, there was no way his squad would survive a mistake. They were trapped in their positions.
Sitting. Fucking. Ducks.
A cloud rolled overhead, the carpet of light shifting into shadows across the field. Garcia could hardly see anything now. He cursed himself for not keeping his NVGs in position. As he waited for the cloud cover to pass, the hundreds of Variants stopped in the first two rows behind home plate. The clatter of plastic chairs and claws scratching over concrete joined the symphony of tortured screams.
At the pitcher’s mound, the muscular beast had dropped to all fours. Every single creature suddenly went silent, like a switch had been flipped. Garcia and his team were watching the Alpha leader of this group of Variants. These beasts were rare; he had only seen a few of them in the past five weeks.
Overhead, a single bird flapped away from the stadium, squawking as it tried to catch up with the thousands that had fled moments earlier. With the animalistic noises gone, Garcia narrowed in on the sounds of the screaming humans. There were two of them, both on the move. Several Variants dragged the prisoners down the aisles and onto the field. Smaller shadows moved behind them, their bodies seeming to distort awkwardly in the darkness.
When the edge of the cloud passed overhead, the moonlight spilled back over the field. Garcia held in a breath, his eyes feeding his mind something he couldn’t seem to comprehend.
What in holy hell?
Below, in the wild grass between the Alpha and home plate, were six tiny Variants, all circling an unconscious female prisoner in rags and a male prisoner wearing blue jeans and blood-soaked t-shirt that read Go Yankees! There were four female Variants surrounding the group, all with sagging belly fat hanging like a macabre skirt made of flesh.
Holding in a breath, he slowly reached up and clicked his NVGs back into position, then shifted his gun to the prisoners. He had to capture this for Command.
Garcia zoomed in on a male face covered in filth and blood that made it impossible to determine his age. The man crawled across the grass, screaming, “Please, somebody help me!” He sobbed and dug his fingernails into the soil.
Garcia resisted the urge to put a bullet in his head and end his suffering, knowing that what came next would be worse than torture. In his scope, the tiny Variants continued to skitter around the man. They were all young, maybe two years old, but they were fast as hell. He had never seen any Variants this young before.
Two of the creatures collided clumsily. They fell to their backs, then jumped onto two feet, hissing. Long snake like tongues shot out of sucker lips, and the small beasts clawed at one another.
The Alpha Variant shrieked and separated the two creatures before Garcia could get a good look. They scampered away, still hissing like oversized lizards. The female Variants crowded around, and the children arched their backs as the male human prisoner crawled toward first base. He turned every few feet, tears streaking down his face.
“Please don’t do this! Don’t kill me! I’m begging you!”
The Alpha ambled after the children and roared at them. Then it pointed a thin talon at the man dragging his injured body across the grass. When the prisoner saw what was happening, he pushed himself to his f
eet and staggered toward the pitcher’s mound.
A high-pitched shriek came from the Alpha’s mouth. This time the young Variants took off on all fours, scampering after the man with their backs still arched. One of them crossed in front of Garcia’s scope. As it moved, he saw there was something different about it—something he’d never seen. Its skull curved into a cone, and its ears were pointed like a cats. He carefully lowered his helmet cam toward the scene, documenting every second as one of the small beasts lunged and clamped its sucker lips on the prisoner’s ankle.
“NO!” the man screamed. He dragged the beast attached to his leg into the outfield, where the other five finally caught up and brought him to the ground. They all latched down on him, tearing strands of flayed flesh away with their jagged teeth. One of the beasts, the smallest, was knocked away from the feeding. It hissed and slashed its way back to the man. Again, it was swatted away.
In the bleachers behind home plate, the other hundred Variants watched like it was some sort of sick fucking game. Garcia said a mental prayer, asking God to end the man’s suffering. But it was not to be. The screams continued, the children ripping through muscle and tendons. As the moonlight spilled over them, Garcia finally got a good look at their misshapen bodies through his scope.
Jesus H. Christ.
Scaly plating covered their appendages and wrapped around their chests and backs like vests. The armor continued up their necks and curved skulls, where it crested into a bony Mohawk. The smallest beast shot a glance in his direction, chewing on a hunk of meat it had managed to scavenge. Wide and oval, the child’s eyes were different to the reptilian eyes he was accustomed to seeing. It threw back its cone shaped head and swallowed the chunk of flesh whole.
They look like alien armadillos.
Garcia shifted his muzzle back to the female Variants standing in front of home plate. He wasn’t a doctor or a scientist, but even he could figure out they were the mothers of these Variant children. But how was that possible? The outbreak had started only five weeks ago, yet these children looked at least two years old. Garcia roved his scope back to the smallest of the beasts, the runt of the litter. It scampered back to the feeding, swiping and hissing at its larger siblings.
Extinction Evolution (The Extinction Cycle Book 4) Page 6