“Madame President,” came a stern voice.
“Yes, what is it?”
Vice President Johnson stood behind her, holding his own cup of coffee. “May I join you?”
“Please,” Ringgold said with a smile.
“Is that Beckham?”
Ringgold nodded. “He’s been down there for a while.”
“That man deserves some damn rest,” Johnson said, bringing the coffee to his lips. He took a gulp and then wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand.
“Dr. Lovato hasn’t slept since she got back either. She’s in the lab performing an autopsy on Lucy. Now you know why I said what I did back in the briefing?”
“Absolutely, and I—”
A sharp female voice cut Johnson off. “Mr. Vice President, may I have a word please?”
The reflection of Lieutenant Colonel Marsha Kramer appeared in the window. Ringgold kept her gaze on Beckham. The old soldier reached up to his face and dragged his arm across an eye. Then he stood and looked skyward.
“What is it, Kramer?” Johnson asked.
“A private word, sir?”
Ringgold resisted the urge to turn around and give Kramer a piece of her mind. She wanted to see how Johnson handled his subordinate without her intervention. Things were so new that she hadn’t had a chance to see Johnson in action with his officers. Especially one he seemed to disagree with.
“Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of President Ringgold.”
In the reflection, Kramer twisted her lips to the side. After a brief pause she said, “Very well, sir.”
Ringgold turned and regarded Kramer with a frosty nod. The lieutenant colonel replied with the tightest grin Ringgold had ever seen. She pivoted ever so slightly away from Ringgold, an intentional gesture that showed a much larger lack of respect.
“Mr. Vice President, I would highly advise that you reconsider using our nuclear arsenal on the juveniles,” Kramer said. “Assuming Kryptonite kills the majority of the adult population in two days, the offspring are the biggest threat to our species now. We don’t have the ground troops or resources to kill them all.”
Johnson gulped his coffee, then crushed the cup in his hand. “You better have a damn good reason for bringing this up again.”
“Sir, I’ve been going over the reports Lieutenant Davis compiled. There are several cities that we have no hope of recovering, cities where the juveniles dwell in higher numbers. Places like Chicago, where the outbreak started. Atlanta is another. New York also has a high concentration. There is simply no way we can take those cities back. If we don’t destroy them, we risk the juveniles migrating to areas we can salvage.”
Ringgold drew in a discreet breath through her nostrils, managing her frustration with Kramer the same way she’d always dealt with rogue politicians. The woman certainly had nerve. Especially after what Ringgold had said during their briefing just hours before.
“What about stranded civilians?” Johnson asked. “Have you put together a plan to rescue them before you would rain nuclear fire on our cities?”
“Collateral damage,” Kramer said a bit too quickly. “Casualties of war in an endgame to save our species, sir. I think we need to look at the big picture. A lot more innocent people are going to die before this is all over.”
“Sacrifice the few for the greater good,” Ringgold said, her voice cutting. She cradled her sling with her good arm. “I’m not a big advocate of that philosophy. It got us where we are today. Lieutenant Brett’s platoon in Vietnam was a perfect example of how that philosophy works.”
Kramer shook her head. “With all due respect, Madame President, you have no military experience. We’re fighting a war against an unprecedented enemy.”
“And you’re talking about nuking American cities. Have you thought about the fallout?” Ringgold clenched her jaw and glared at Kramer. They stared at one another defiantly, neither of them flinching or backing down.
Ringgold and Kramer weren’t that different on the surface. They were both crisply dressed and well groomed, even in this chaos, and were about the same age. They’d both spent their careers in public service. But they couldn’t be farther apart when it came to fighting this war or protecting American lives.
“We would set the nukes off underground to minimize fallout,” Kramer replied. She remained calm, her back stiff and features stoic.
That made Ringgold even more furious. They weren’t talking about the potential for civilian casualties in some drone attack—they were talking about killing thousands if not more of their own citizens.
“Your comments have been noted,” Johnson said, shutting the conversation down.
Kramer’s jaw moved, but she said nothing. Offering a nod, she turned and strode across the CIC with her heavily armed guards following her.
“What’s with her entourage?” Ringgold asked when Kramer was out of sight.
Johnson shrugged. “She’s been paranoid ever since the Variants took down Central Command. So paranoid she was ready to evacuate. It saved the lives of most of her staff when Offutt AFB was overrun. Now she’s given most of them guns. They follow her everywhere, like she’s the Pied goddamn Piper.”
Ringgold narrowed her eyes.
“Best to take her with a grain of salt,” Johnson said. “It’s probably hard to believe, but she does have the best interests of our country in mind.”
“General Kennor, Colonel Gibson, and Colonel Wood supposedly did as well,” Ringgold replied. “Forgive me if I don’t extend her the benefit of the doubt.” She took a deep breath and turned back to the window. Beckham was still in the same spot, his hand on Apollo’s head as they waited for their friends to return from a city Kramer wanted to destroy.
“No, let me fucking go!” Fitz shouted. He continued squirming, but there was no escaping Tank’s mitts. He had an iron grip, so Fitz did the only thing he could think of. He shouldered his MK11 and fired at the Variants as Tank dragged him down a hallway. It took every ounce of Fitz’s will power not to give up, but seeing his broken blade and thinking of Meg being torn to shreds threatened to throw him over the edge.
You can still fight. You can still ….
But he couldn’t still fight like he could before, and he couldn’t save her. If it weren’t for Tank, Fitz would be dead, too.
I should be dead.
“In here! In here!” Garcia shouted.
Tank yanked Fitz around a corner, throwing off his next shot. The round hit an overhead bank of lights, shattering them into a hundred pieces.
Goddammit!
Out of three shots, Fitz had only killed one of the juveniles. The 7.62 mm rounds penetrated their armor, but only headshots took them down for good. Lining up kill shots while being lugged down a hallway made that almost impossible.
A stream of rounds fired over Fitz’s head, punching into the ceiling and wall as two juveniles barreled into the dark passage. In the light of the muzzle flashes, he watched them drop into balls and somersault forward. Garcia hit the beast to the left with a volley of shots, sending it spinning into a wall.
Sweat from Tank’s face dropped onto Fitz’s nose as the Marine continued pulling him down the hallway.
“Shoot the other one!” Tank shouted.
Holding in a breath, Fitz waited for the second juvenile to stop rolling, but the beast kept coming. It was moving so fast it was just a blur in the flashes from Garcia’s rifle. Fitz was down to only five more rounds in his magazine.
“Take it down!” Tank yelled.
Fitz fired a shot that hit the creature somewhere in the back. The impact sent it skidding into the beast that was recovering behind it. They both crashed into a door with a thud.
A third juvenile leapt over the two creatures, arms spread like a bat. It clung to the ceiling, tucked its head to its chest, and skittered forward at an astonishing speed.
Fitz aimed his rifle and fired a shot that lanced into the ceiling tiles. He squeezed off another just as the
other monsters leapt back to their feet and charged.
Behind the three creatures, a white wall of veiny flesh exploded into the hallway. Dozens of adult Variants chased the offspring. Fitz’s eyes roved back and forth, taking in the sight, terror striking at his gut.
This was it. There was no escaping.
The juvenile on the ceiling dropped to the floor and crouched. Fitz centered the muzzle on the creature’s face just as its sucker lips popped. Its chin suddenly split down the middle and opened into mandibles with horned teeth on both sides. Another set of needle sharp teeth clattered behind those.
“SHOOT IT!” Tank bellowed.
Squeezing the trigger had never been so simple. A round zipped into the beast’s open mouth. There was an awful cracking sound as it broke teeth and shot out the back of the creature’s skull.
Somewhere behind Fitz, a door opened, and then he was being pulled into a dark room. He let out his breath as the juvenile skidded to a stop a few feet from his broken blade just outside the entrance to the room. Tank dropped Fitz on the floor and shouldered his SAW while Garcia kicked the door shut.
Tank grabbed Fitz under an arm with his other hand and pulled him deeper into an apartment that smelled like a slaughterhouse in summer. Somewhere behind them, light bled through a gap in closed curtains. The rays were just enough to illuminate a family room covered in trash and a filthy rug. It reminded him of the apartment in Iraq where PFC Duffy had killed two Iraqi children and their grandfather.
All three Marines angled their weapons at the door, breathing heavily, sweat pouring down their foreheads.
“Get ready,” Garcia said between gasps. “This isn’t going to hold long.”
Automatic gunfire rang out in the distance. The cracks and pops seemed to grow louder with every beat of Fitz’s pounding heart. He changed the magazine in his MK11 as a thud rattled the gray metal. The first of the Variants pounded on the door, relentless.
Dust rained from around the trim, and a dent in the shape of a skull popped out of the center. A juvenile speared the door with its armored skull again, breaking one of the locks. Fitz readied his rifle in shaking hands.
His earpiece flared to life. “Ghost 2, this is Whiskey Four, strike team is in the building. Where the fuck are you guys?”
“Trapped in Apt 909!” Garcia replied.
“Hold tight, we got….”
The transmission ended in a surge of white noise. A second message quickly replaced it over the open channel.
“Fitz, do you copy? Over.”
Beckham’s voice was drowned out by an explosion. The door flew off the hinges and crashed to the ground next to Fitz’s broken blade.
Heart stuck in his throat, Fitz jerked his rifle up and fired a shot into the ceiling. Light streamed into the dark room and a slender figure ducked into the open door.
“Hold your fucking fire!” someone yelled.
For a moment, Fitz expected to see an Alpha, but this was no Variant. This was a soldier. The figure, covered with Kevlar plates, strode into the room with a hand out. The figure lifted up a face guard and screamed, “What the hell are you waiting for? Let’s move, you motherfuckers!”
Fitz lowered his weapon, staring in shock at the chiseled face and sparkling green eyes of Lieutenant Davis. Behind her, two other soldiers helped hold up a woman covered in so much blood Fitz didn’t recognize her at first. If it weren’t for the axe hanging loosely in her right hand, Fitz wouldn’t have known who it was.
“M-meg?” Fitz stuttered.
Davis snapped Fitz from his shock. She held out a hand toward him, and Fitz took it.
The whine of a drill sharpened inside the lab as Ellis pressed the Stryker saw down on Lucy’s skull. After an hour of working on the juvenile, Kate was starting to get used to the noises, but it still made her shudder every time the bone saw got stuck.
In her gloved hands, she held a section of Lucy’s breastplate the size of a small laptop. According to the calipers she was using to measure it, the armor was a little more than an inch thick, but it was surprisingly light and flexible. She flipped it and put it on a table to study the underside. Thick veins covered a rosy block of flesh like the back of a scab that hadn’t had time to heal.
Using the tip of a stainless steel knife, Kate cut into the flesh, peeled it back, and scraped the blade against a cartilaginous substance. There was something below that too, a second layer between it and the thickest part of the armor.
The technicians waited patiently across from Kate. Ronnie, a forty-year-old man with a thick handlebar mustache, followed her graceful movements with eager brown eyes. She carefully handed the plate to him after she finished examining it.
“Separate each of the layers. Then prepare them for testing. You know the drill,” Kate said.
Ronnie whisked the piece to a lab station. She watched him prepare the sample with a critical eye, still unsure if she could trust Yokoyama’s staff.
When Kate turned back to the cadaver table, Ellis had exchanged the Stryker saw for the bone saw. He was halfway through the crest of her skull when Yokoyama waved them over.
“Take a look at this,” he said.
Ellis left the saw in Lucy’s forehead. It wobbled for a few seconds, the metal groaning before finally coming to a rest.
“What is it?” Ellis asked. He looked over Yokoyama’s shoulder for a better view. The older doctor slowly lifted Lucy’s right arm. He had inserted a clamp in the opening he’d made in the armor covering her radius and ulna. Fishing inside with a gloved finger, Yokoyama pulled out a cluster of what looked like small brown eggs the size of peas.
“What do you make of these, Kate?” he asked, holding them to the light in the palm of his hand. “Extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything like them.”
Yokoyama carefully set them into a tray on the table next to him. Before Kate could respond or protest, he stuck his fingers back into the gap in her arm and dug inside. There was a mushing sound, and he withdrew a glove covered in slimy brown sludge.
“What the hell?” he said, wiping it on his suit. The front of his chest was already covered in black, grainy blood.
Kate considered lecturing the doctor about proper lab protocol, but she was too tired to think, let alone issue basic instructions to a scientist who should have known better. It didn’t help that she needed a fresh bandage on her arm.
“Get a few more of those for sampling,” Kate said, pointing at the balls he’d left on the table. “I want to start testing immediately.”
Yokoyama held up his hands, stretching his fingers apart. The brown goo turned into a tangle of spider webbing. The material snapped as he spread his fingers. Reaching down, Yokoyama put his right hand back into the split in Lucy’s arm.
“Careful you don’t puncture your glove,” Kate said, unable to stop herself from correcting him. She walked across the lab to check the technicians. Ronnie was slowly removing a layer of pink flesh on the backside of the plate Kate had handed him. He hesitated when he saw her watching, but then continued working, slowly and precisely. That was good; he had been paying attention earlier. At least someone in the lab was competent.
He used the sharpened edge of a thin blade to cut away the tissue. He put it in a dish and handed it to another technician, who took it to a separate station.
“Dr. Lovato, there’s more of those things,” Ronnie said. He had peeled back another layer of flesh speckled with brown, egg-shaped balls. “Any idea what these things are?”
Kate shook her head. “We’re going to find out.”
Using a pair of tweezers, Ronnie reached for one of them.
“Careful.”
Ronnie nodded and slowly plucked one of the objects from the flesh. He held it under the bank of overhead lights to scrutinize the small ball. Kate tilted her helmet. It was translucent and filled with….
“Looks like some sort of an egg,” Ronnie said. He slowly set it in another dish and handed it to one of the other technicians.
&n
bsp; Kate squinted to focus on the brown blobs dotting the layer of pink flesh. She leaned closer for a better look when a rough, wet crack sounded from the autopsy table.
An excruciating scream suddenly filled the lab, followed by a crackling that sounded like burning fire logs. She whirled around to see that the clamp that kept Lucy’s right arm open had popped off, locking Yokoyama’s hand inside the arm. The armor seemed to be melting around the doctor’s trapped hand, tendrils of smoke rising from the opening.
“Help me!” Yokoyama shrieked.
Ellis grabbed his wrist and pulled, but that just made Yokoyama scream even louder. The three technicians hurried away from their stations, boots pounding the floor.
Petrified, Kate stared for several seconds before she burst into action. In the time it took to grab a knife from the nearest table, Lucy’s arm had started sizzling. Popping bones and the snap of tendons echoed in Kate’s helmet. Above the hellish sounds, Yokoyama screamed in agony.
“Kate, I need help!” Ellis yelled without taking his eyes of Yokoyama. He yanked on the doctor’s wrist to no avail. It was stuck, and whatever was happening to Lucy’s armor was spreading. Spider webs broke across her outer shell like a fault line rupturing a street. Her mandibles jiggled and the bone saw still jammed in her forehead rattled back and forth, squeaking.
Yokoyama dropped to his knees, holding his trapped arm with his good hand and crying out in Japanese.
“Do something!” Ronnie shouted.
Kate gripped the handle of the knife tightly and focused on the slot in Lucy’s arm. More smoke fizzled out from the small crack.
Shit. Shit. Shit
She couldn’t see an opening that wasn’t too close to Yokoyama’s wrist. Every second she hesitated, Lucy’s armor melted further, drawing screams from her colleague. Kate jammed the tip of the knife into a tiny gap and twisted it to the side to try and force the shell open.
There was a thud as Yokoyama’s skull banged against the side of the table. His screaming rose to a high, piercing wail.
Kate worked the knife back and forth, desperate to free her colleague. Sweat dripped off her forehead as she worked. She was steaming hot now, a dramatic change from the chills she’d had just minutes before.
Extinction End (Extinction Cycle Book 5) Page 15