Fitz holstered his M9, pulled his M4, and slammed in a fresh magazine. He whirled to the entrance while Davis fired on the final three beasts.
Bodies piled on the floor in front of Rico, blood pooling around them. Apollo reared his head back, ragged flesh hanging from his jaw as he finally ripped his prey’s jugular vein free from its neck.
“Our six!” Fitz yelled. He raised his rifle at the Alpha lumbering through the open doorway. It stood on the broken door, eyes roving from side to side. Patches of glistening blood dotted its muscular body.
The pop of gunshots sounded across the chamber as Rico and Davis finished off the remaining beasts flanking them. Fitz and Garcia aimed for the Alpha and opened fire.
The creature jerked back and forth, rounds punching through its flesh and slamming into the stairs beyond. It roared in anger and clambered away, exposing the smaller monsters trapped in the stairwell. Fitz held down the trigger without restraint and slaughtered those that didn’t retreat.
Garcia strode toward the Alpha, pumping his shotgun and firing off blasts that ricocheted off the walls and floor. The beast was injured, but it was still fast. He finally clipped it in the right leg.
Fitz checked the stairwell one last time. If there were still human collaborators out there, he didn’t see them. By the time he killed the last Variant on the steps, the Alpha had crossed half the room. It was running toward Rico and Davis, maimed, but deadly as ever. Standing at seven feet tall, with talons the length of a buck knife, the abomination was one of the most formidable Variants Fitz had encountered.
“Reloading again!” Garcia shouted.
Fitz reached for a new magazine too, his eye on Davis and Rico. They were down to their sidearms. Both women emptied their weapons into the Alpha, but it wouldn’t go down. Apollo barred his teeth, saliva dripping from his bloody maw. The monster stopped to shield its face with its massive arms.
For the second time that evening, Davis did something that shocked Fitz. She limped toward the beast with her left hand pressed against her injured thigh and her right holding her M9.
“LT, watch out!” Fitz yelled. He moved to the right to get a shot, bumping into Garcia.
Davis stopped two feet from the monster’s face and shouted, “Hey!”
The Alpha pulled its arms away from its face. When it looked up, she raised her gun and shot it first in the right eye, then the left eye. Both rounds punched through skull and brain.
A gurgling sound rose from the Alpha's throat as it slowly fell backward. It hit the ground with the force of a bag of bricks, dust clouds rising into the air. The impact rocked the chamber, echoing over and over.
Davis turned to her team like nothing had happened. In a commanding voice that made Fitz shiver, she said, “Rico, Garcia, find the other crates of Kryptonite and see if there’s anyone else alive. Fitz, you and Apollo follow me. We’re going topside to flag down Lynch and Adair.”
Surrounded by smoking bodies, Fitz drew in the rank aroma of fired weapons, sour fruit, and scorched flesh. More than anything, he was surprised that, once again, he was breathing at all.
President Ringgold stood in the CIC of the GW, cupping her injured arm and staring at the curtain of smoke on the horizon, the only lingering evidence of the tanker that had attempted to ram them before being blown to smithereens. Her mind drifted like a cloud. She would never know who had steered the ship packed full of shipping containers. It was obvious there had been civilians on board—survivors who had managed to evade the infected for weeks. She wanted to imagine they had been bad people. Collaborators, maybe. But what if they had just been people trying to survive?
Blowing them out of the water was another decision she’d made for the future of mankind, and it wasn’t the last time she would be part of such a decision.
A raised voice that seemed way too young to be in the CIC called out behind her. A freckle-faced Petty Officer sitting in front of a cluster of monitors stood and turned to face Captain Humphrey and Vice President Johnson. Ringgold watched the young man’s movements in the reflection of the glass. She could just make out the name tag on his uniform, which read Nagle.
“We have a visual from Spartan 2,” Nagle said. “The feed just came back online.”
Corporal Anderson stood in front of the radio station a few feet away. “Spartan 2 just reported in, sir.”
Johnson hurried to the monitors. He finished his cup of coffee as he examined the screens. “Madame President, you might want to see this.”
Clutching the bottom of her sling, Ringgold worked her way over between the two stations. Johnson offered a reassuring nod that didn’t make her feel much better. Everything was riding on this mission. The tension in the room was palpable. No one was spared, not even Lieutenant Colonel Kramer, who stood at the far end of the room watching like a hawk.
“They’re back online?” Johnson asked.
Nagle punched at his keyboard. “Bringing up the feed now, sir. Spartan 3 is our Chinook. Spartan 2 is our Blackhawk.”
Leaning closer, Johnson furrowed his bushy eyebrows at the screens. “Well done, son.”
Two of the monitors flashed with green-hued video feeds. Ringgold ignored the digital telemetry at the top and bottom of the screens. She didn’t care about the time or how many rounds the two gunships carried. She looked past all of it, focusing on the mountain rising over the crosshairs in the center of the second monitor. An airfield dotted with choppers and a windowless building came into focus.
“Spartan 2, this is Command, do you copy?” Corporal Anderson asked.
A second chopper crossed in front of the feed Ringgold was studying. The Blackhawk raced toward the mountain.
“Roger that, Command, Spartan 2 here. Good to hear your voice.”
Anderson looked back at Humphrey. The Captain reached for the corporal’s headset and slipped it over his head.
“Spartan 2, this is Captain Humphrey of the GW. SITREP. Over.”
There was a brief pause, static crackling from the speakers. Spartan 2 came back a few moments later.
“Captain, the Earthfall facility is compromised. Repeat. The facility is compromised. We came under heavy fire from human collaborators and dozens of Variants twenty minutes ago, suffering several casualties before Davis ordered us away from the mountain.”
“What happened to her?”
“Sir, last we saw her she was entering the building. But we haven’t heard from her for fifteen minutes. Something is interfering with our comms, sir.”
“No sign of contacts,” Nagle whispered. He pointed at the infrared feed to the right. Ringgold followed his finger to an airfield littered with the corpses of dead Variants and several Marines.
“How many hostiles are still in the vicinity?” Humphrey asked.
“We cleared the area of collaborators, sir, but there may still be some Variants lingering,” replied Spartan 2.
Humphrey cupped his hand over the mini-mic and turned to Johnson. “What do you think, sir?”
“I think Davis and her team are probably dead, but do we risk sending in Spartan 2 and 3? It could be another trap. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
Humphrey turned to look across the room. “What’s the status of the new strike teams?”
“They’re in the air, sir,” Kramer said. “Just took off from Creech Air Force Base.”
Ringgold ignored the conversation and took a step closer to the monitors. A tiny flash of red had emerged from the doors of the building. A second darted out behind the first.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Humphrey and Johnson were still busy discussing their next move. Ringgold didn’t blame them. With Lieutenant Davis, the first three strike teams, and Kryptonite missing, the future of humanity hung in the balance. What happened next would be one of the most important turning points in the war.
Nagle scooted closer to his monitor and examined the moving red dots. He held up a hand the same moment Spartan 2 came back online
.
“Command, we have potential hostiles emerging from the target, permission to engage. Over.”
Johnson and Humphrey glanced at the screen, both men squinting.
“Shit,” the captain said. “I don’t like it.”
Johnson gave his next order with a half a nod.
“Prepare to engage,” said Humphrey.
“Roger that, sir,” Spartan 2 replied.
The Blackhawk circled the mountain, then hovered in the Chinook’s video feed. Ringgold’s eyes flitted to the screen with the Blackhawk’s cam. The pilots zoomed in on two figures running across the airfield. Both appeared to be carrying weapons, but Ringgold couldn’t see their faces. There was a smaller heat signature now too. Something small and running on all fours.
A Variant and two collaborators?
“Spartan 2, Command. Do you have eyes?” Humphrey asked.
“Roger that, sir. Three potential hostiles. Got them in our crosshairs. You give us the order and we’ll light ‘em up.”
Ringgold’s heart rate increased, sending a jolt of pain across her injured shoulder and down her arm. There was something odd about the third figure. Something she recognized.
“Unable to identify potential human hostiles,” Spartan 2 said. “But the third appears to be a Variant.”
“Can’t risk our choppers if they got weapons,” Humphrey said. “Spartan 2, permission to engage.”
Ringgold held up a hand when she saw the blades one of the targets was running with. It was Fitz, and Apollo was right next to him. The Blackhawk turned toward them when the video feed suddenly shut off.
“Hold your fire!” she shouted a second too late. By the time Humphrey relayed the message to Spartan 2, the video and the audio were down. Static surged from the speakers. The connection had been severed again.
“Kate, there’s something you need to see,” Ellis said. His features were strained in the glow of his laptop. They were still sitting in the cold conference room aboard the GW. The big hand on the clock ticked toward eleven p.m.
Kate cupped one hand over her mouth to hold back a yawn as she pushed her chair next to Ellis.
“Check this out,” he said, spinning his laptop toward her. “These are French paratroopers tracking juvenile movements in Paris. Last night they parachuted into the city under the cover of darkness wearing camo that was designed to make them nearly invisible to the adults and juveniles.”
Kate couldn’t help raising a skeptical brow.
“Apparently, surviving French scientists have designed a liquid that masks the scent of human flesh. It’s been lab tested with good results, but this is the first field trial,” Ellis added.
“That’s a brilliant idea. I remember reading the Jews used cocaine during WWII to confuse German dogs searching for them. Why didn’t we think of something like this?”
“We were too busy trying to find a weapon to kill them.”
“If this works, then perhaps we can come up with something similar for Reed, Horn and all the other soldiers going back out there.”
Ellis shrugged. “Better see if it works then.” He typed a few commands and pulled up the video.
On screen, the team of paratroopers dove out of the back of a plane and vanished into the clouds. The man taking the video flung a sidelong glance that revealed nothing but darkness. Everything was pitch black until they shot through the cloud cover and descended over Paris. Kate could make out the Seine snaking through the city in the moonlight. This was not the Paris she remembered. The Eiffel tower was nothing but a silhouette, and the city of beautiful cathedrals had crumbled from relentless bombing.
The men landed in the middle of the French national soccer stadium. They quickly discarded their chutes and sprinted across the field. The team made their way into the streets undetected. Ten minutes and two blocks later, they stopped to watch a pack of Variants prowling in a courtyard. The beasts didn’t seem to notice them and moved on.
Flashing a hand signal, the man with the mounted camera ordered his team forward. They took up position in the husk of a building destroyed by artillery fire. It provided a clear view of the cobblestone street below.
“Can you speed this up?” Kate asked.
Ellis pushed another button. They sat and watched for another five minutes. The numbers on the clock at the bottom of the screen ticked away. At six in the morning, the team suddenly moved.
“Slow it down,” Kate said.
By the time Ellis had slowed the feed, the squad was back on the street below. He turned up the volume. Boots pounded the ground, and a voice in French blared from the speakers. The soldier’s helmet cam bobbed as he ran down a cobblestone street surrounded by Gothic facades tucked between modern buildings. He was heading toward a blackened cathedral. The purple and crimson haze of the morning sun rose above the steeple.
Kate could almost smell the charcoaled buildings, the same acrid scent she’d smelled while a prisoner in New York. Those memories once again threatened to break her down. She willed them away by grabbing her coffee mug and taking a swig of the cold, bitter liquid.
She tensed as a soldier covered from head to toe in camouflage sprinted down the street. He had a machine gun leveled at the church. Two more men passed the feed, boots leaving tracks on the ash-covered bricks.
Another voice in French crackled from the speakers. She had only taken two years in high school, but she got the gist of it: Run. They’re coming.
She nearly dropped her coffee mug when she heard the low hissing. After setting it down, she wrapped her arms across her sweatshirt and pulled her knees to her chest.
The soldier on screen heard the hissing too. He craned his neck toward the buildings behind him. Flashes of movement darted across rooftop terraces.
The gut-wrenching feeling of hope being stripped away was not new to Kate, but this time it made her ill. She had wanted desperately for these men to be invisible, for science to give them—and Beckham—a fighting chance against the monsters.
Once, just once, she wanted to find a way to stay a step ahead of the beasts.
These men were supposed to be the hunters. Between their camouflage and the liquid masking their scent, they should have been invisible.
But they were the ones being hunted.
She should have known all along.
Kate continued holding her breath as the men were surrounded by juveniles on every rooftop. The video feed shook as the soldier ordered his team to open fire. They emptied full magazines, but the bullets ricocheted off the armored plates.
Shadows closed in around the team.
The offspring moved like apparitions. Blurs swooped in and whisked the soldiers away one at a time. Agonizing screams of men being slaughtered rose across the dead city.
The man with the cam was the last to be taken. He fought valiantly, firing with his pistol in one hand and machine gun in the other. Both guns were stripped away, and with them, his arms—ripped clean from their sockets.
The last thing Kate saw was a pair of slimy mandibles snapping at the man’s face. She buried her head in her arms, unable to watch.
“Jesus,” Ellis whispered in a flat voice.
They sat in silence for several minutes. Kate slowly pulled her head away from her arms and glanced up at the clock. It was almost eleven now. She was exhausted, and with that exhaustion, an idea formed.
-22-
“Friendly! Friendly!” Davis shouted at the top of her lungs.
The helicopter hovering over the airfield answered with a barrage of 7.62 mm rounds that punched into the dirt around her. She glimpsed Sergeant Lynch behind the M240 right before she dove for the safety of a boulder. The projectiles from Spartan 2 shook the rock. Pieces broke away and exploded all around her.
She had to find a better place to hide, but with her injured leg, moving wasn’t going to be easy. Crouching behind the boulder, she scanned the airfield and focused on a Blackhawk sitting fifteen feet away.
Surely Humphrey wouldn�
��t destroy one of those.
You can do this, Rachel. You have to do this.
With no time to come up with a plan, Davis did the only think she could think of. She ran at an angle toward the bird. Pain immediately lanced up her right thigh. She changed course to distract Lynch. He redirected his fire with the grace of an experienced gunner. She could almost feel those rounds tearing through her flesh, but she hadn’t been hit—yet.
The screaming gun kicked up chunks of earth all around her, peppering her with snow and grit. She dove for the undercarriage of the bird when she was five feet away, but the rounds kept coming.
A stream shattered the cockpit windows and tore into the troop hold above her.
Holy shit!
Davis squirmed under the bird as it was pummeled with projectiles.
“Friendly!” she shouted again. Her muffled voice sounded like it was coming from a stranger. She couldn’t contain her frustration. Spit flew out of her mouth and coated the inside of her face guard.
How could Lynch be so blind?
The answer was in the sky. The moon had slipped behind the clouds, casting a suffocating black curtain over the mountain. She looked down at her armor. Lynch couldn’t see it. All he could see was her heat signature. For all Lynch knew, she was a human collaborator, or a Variant.
Anger swirled with the pain. She had managed to fight her way out of Earthfall, only to be fired upon by her own men. And now it was only a matter of time before Lynch pumped her full of 7.6 mm rounds.
“Fitz!” she screamed. “Fitz, where are you?”
She could hear Apollo barking, but she hadn’t heard anything from Fitz since the rounds started flying. Another salvo zipped across the dirt behind her boots. She pulled herself under the chopper.
“GODDAMMIT! STOP FIRING!” she shouted into her headset.
An explosion rocked the ground. The undercarriage of the bird she hid under rumbled from the impact. She craned her neck and watched as another chopper burst into flames. Lynch had directed his fire at a Blackhawk a hundred feet from hers.
Extinction End (Extinction Cycle Book 5) Page 28