“Changing,” Chow said. She traded places with him and twisted to the side just as a round bit into the metal next to her face. A crack echoed in her ear, but adrenaline pushed her forward.
She fired off several shots at the two men outside of the CIC, hitting one in the leg. He crashed to the floor while his partner fired on Bryant’s position.
The Marine fired back, hitting the second guard between the eyes with a three round burst that blew off the top of his head and helmet.
Davis patted Chow on the shoulder again, motioning for him to move. They hurried into the intersection side by side.
The crack of gunfire echoed through the passages, and a round whizzed past her face as all hell broke loose. She ducked down to avoid the bullets that punched into the overhead.
Raised voices followed the gunshots, and her heart rose in her throat.
Shit. We’re being flanked.
The guard who Davis had shot in the leg managed to push himself up in front of the CIC. Bryant took him down with a shot to the throat. The man crumpled in the open hatch, blocking it from being shut.
Now was their chance.
“Inside!” Davis shouted.
Bryant jumped to his knees to make a run for the hatch when three rounds hit him in the torso. He crashed into the bulkhead, blood gushing from his wounds as he slumped to the floor.
Chow turned to fire on the patrol flanking them. “Go, Davis! I’m right behind you!”
She was already running. Bending down, she grabbed an M4 lying on the deck. It felt heavy, but she didn’t have time to check the magazine. She only had seconds to think as she bolted for the CIC.
Training, habit, and a dash of insanity drove her next actions. She grabbed the armored body of the dead guard blocking the entry under his armpits and hoisted him to his feet.
The chatter of gunfire amplified behind her. More voices called out.
“Stop them! Stop them NOW!”
She positioned the dead soldier against the bulkhead and held him there while Chow, lying on his belly, fired at targets in the south passage. He used the two dead guards as cover, but it wasn’t enough. Blood blossomed across his left shoulder from a bullet wound.
Flashes from two muzzles came from the north firing lane, and a second round hit Chow in the back of his right leg. He fired off a burst toward the flanking soldiers and yelled, “Make it count, Davis!”
She nodded grimly. The Delta Operator was making a heroic last stand to give her a chance at this. She had seconds to make a move. She pushed the dead guard through the open hatch.
Rounds immediately peppered his armor.
Everything that happened next seemed to move in slow motion. Davis bolted into the room with her gun shouldered. She drew in a breath, slid on her knees, and made a mental inventory of the space. Two of the remaining four guards were still firing on the poor bastard Davis had pushed into the room. She killed them both with two short bursts.
Davis shot a third guard in the face as he trained his weapon on her. There was a muzzle flash from his gun, but he missed. Sliding to a stop on her knees, Davis pivoted her gun to the fourth guard hiding behind a radar station. He squeezed off a shot before she could.
She felt the hot rounds before she heard them. They bit into her left shoulder, stinging like the biggest bug on earth had sunk a needle into her flesh. The impact threw off her aim, allowing the soldier to fire again. She rolled to the right to avoid the spray, landing on her stomach and pushing the gun sight to her eyes. She fired a shot that hit the guard just above his heart. He crashed into a monitor, the screen cracking from the impact.
Another round tore into her side as she pushed herself up. It hit her with such force she was slammed into the bottom of a station. The air exploded from her lungs, and she collapsed to the deck, her vision blurring with shades of red.
Get up, Rachel. You aren’t finished.
Davis palmed at the ground, pushing herself to her feet to the sight of a woman staring down at her. At first, she thought it was President Ringgold, but her vision cleared to Kramer’s stern face.
The Lieutenant Colonel aimed a pistol down at her head.
“Brave attempt,” Kramer said. “But you’re too late.”
Davis eyed her M4 a few feet away. It was so close, but she knew the moment she reached for it she would have a bullet in her skull.
There was screaming and gunshots in the passage outside the CIC. Davis strained to hear Chow’s voice, but couldn’t make it out over the ringing in her ears.
He was a Delta Operator, but she knew the chances of him holding back two squads was unlikely, especially since he was already injured.
No, Davis was on her own now.
Alone, cornered, and bleeding from multiple gunshots.
She fought the rising panic, knowing that if she gave in she was dead. But what could she do? Her body was already numb, and she could feel the blood pumping out of her. Her arms wobbled as she struggled to stay on her knees. She strained to look past the barrel angled down at her, searching the room frantically for President Ringgold.
Instead, she saw something that took her breath away.
Through the portholes, she saw a cloud of exhaust ripping across the sky. Davis couldn’t see the USS Florida, but she could hear each of the missiles launching.
One.
Two.
Three.
There were a total of ten, peeling off in different directions to destroy the cities Davis had tried so desperately to save. Her failure hurt worse than the gunshots. She battled her heavy eyelids, trying to keep them open, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t hold back the darkness. It washed over her.
No.
No, she would not let the bitch win.
Davis snapped her eyes open. She pushed at the deck with a groan. Blood soaked her uniform, pooling on the ground, but it didn’t matter. There were raised voices all around her, but she was only focused on Kramer.
“We’re finally taking our country back,” Kramer said as she turned to watch the missiles.
A second voice said, “Not like this, we’re not.”
Kramer’s eyes suddenly widened.
Davis saw Ringgold come from the side with a revolver. She pulled the hammer back with her thumb, pointed it at Kramer’s head, and pulled the trigger without hesitation. Kramer blinked right before the bullet entered her left temple, realizing a millisecond before her life ended that she had failed.
Time ground to a halt in the CIC, as if Davis was watching everything happen from inside a fishbowl. A hot, sticky spray of blood hit her in the face. She blinked it away as Kramer’s body thudded on the deck in front of her. A team of Marines rushed into the room, weapons raking over the space.
“Hostiles down!” one of the men shouted.
Time snapped back into motion as Ringgold dropped the pistol and crouched down in front of Davis. The President wiped blood gently from Davis’s face.
“We have to stop the missiles!” someone shouted.
“I’m on it,” came a voice.
“There isn’t enough time,” said a third.
“Make time!” yelled Captain Humphrey.
The voices blended together as Davis struggled to stay conscious. But there was one voice that was louder than the others. She couldn’t see Ringgold’s face, but she could feel the President’s breath against her face as the woman took off her jacket and pressed it against the wound in her side.
“Hold on,” President Ringgold said. “Hold on.”
-28-
The rap of footsteps filled the tunnel as Fitz and Horn carried Rico and Beckham away from the chamber of sleeping monsters. Apollo trotted ahead, looking behind him every few feet to make sure his handlers were still there.
Fitz was struggling to carry Rico, but Horn was moving at a clip. His best friend was unconscious and limp across his back. It was a sight that made Fitz’s heart ache.
Beckham’s right hand had been severed at the wrist, a
nd he’d lost his left leg just below the knee. Between the blood loss and the toxins, he was in bad shape. Fitz remembered what it had been like to lose his legs in Iraq, the terrible pain and horror he’d felt, but the med-evac had been fifteen minutes away then. Help was over an hour away for Beckham. And that was if Ghost even made it out of the tunnels.
The pain of seeing an injured brother was always worse than his own pain. Part of that pain was knowing what Beckham would have to deal with if he did survive. His trigger finger and knife hand were gone. He would have to learn how to shoot all over again with his left. He’d have to adjust to walking with a prosthetic, too. Nothing about it would be easy.
Fitz knew he was getting way ahead of himself. They weren’t even close to being out of the blast zone, and he wasn’t sure how long Garcia could last before setting the bomb off. If the monsters woke up—
“Hurry the fuck up!” Horn shouted.
Fitz pushed Rico’s body higher up on his shoulders. She screeched in pain.
“Raven 1, this is Ghost 3, do you copy?” Horn said into the comms.
It was the first time anyone from Team Ghost had attempted a transmission since they’d jumped from the Osprey. White noise hissed back. They were still too far underground.
Fitz ran as fast as his blades would carry him. He didn’t know how long the R49 gas would keep the monsters down, but he was guessing it wasn’t long. Garcia wouldn’t be able to hold them back more than a few moments when they did wake. Ghost had to be well out of the blast zone before that happened.
“You see anything back there?” Horn shouted.
Fitz could hardly twist his head, but he checked the shadowed passages with a quick glance.
“Looks clear!”
“Almost to the ladder,” Horn said, his voice tight with the strain of carrying Beckham.
For a fleeting moment, Fitz thought he saw Beckham look up, but it was just his helmet bouncing on Horn’s back. He had no way of knowing if Beckham was even still alive. Judging by his grey skin and bleeding stumps, he was slipping away from this world fast—if he hadn’t already.
“Beckham!” Fitz shouted without thinking. “Stay with us, goddammit!”
Thighs burning, chest heaving, and heart aching, Fitz pushed on. Garcia’s voice popped into his head: All it takes is all you got, Marine.
Beckham had a lot. Much more than most men. More than me.
The skeletal ladder came into focus at the end of the tunnel. Fitz ran harder, his blades creaking with each step. They were halfway to the ladder when the bark of a shotgun echoed from the chamber they’d left behind.
The sound sent a chill through Fitz. They were running out of time.
“Hurry, Fitz!” Horn yelled. “Garcia’s got company.”
Apollo circled at the bottom of the ladder; whining and growling at the noise. Horn slowed as he approached. When he was under the bottom rung, he stopped, and re-positioned Beckham on his back.
“Hang on, boss! We’re getting you out of here,” Horn said. He turned to look over his shoulder. “Boss, can you hear me?”
Fitz glimpsed the cavernous wrinkles on Horn’s forehead and the sweat bleeding out of them. Horn continued to shout his friend's name, but the only response came in the hiss of static over the comms.
“Fitz…Horn…multiple contacts. Can’t hold…hur—”
Garcia’s voice cut off.
Another shotgun blast echoed down the hall from the chamber. Fitz turned to scan the shadows. When he turned back to the ladder, Horn was already climbing.
“I’ll be right back for you,” Fitz said, looking down at Apollo. The dog’s tail made a single pass, and he sat on his haunches.
Garcia fired off three more shots. “Hurry!” he said over the channel, clearer this time. “I can’t hold them back for long.”
The boom from a hand grenade shook dust from the ceiling. Fitz grabbed the bottom rung and started climbing with Rico hanging over his back. Moonlight steamed into the tunnel as Horn pushed the hatch open above. He slid Beckham’s body onto the concrete and pulled himself up, vanishing into the night.
“Almost there, Rico,” he whispered. His arms were shaking, his thighs were on fire, and he struggled to breathe. He focused on the sliver of moon peeking out from behind the clouds, blinking away the sweat dripping into his eyes.
Almost there. Three more rungs. Just three ….
A face emerged over the open hatch. Horn reached inside. “Give her to me!”
Fitz locked the spikes tipping his blades onto the rungs and used the power of his thighs and back to push her limp body up toward Horn.
“I’m going back for Apollo,” Fitz said.
He unlocked his blades and slid down the skeletal ladder to the bottom, sparks streaking down the metal as another explosion rocked the chamber. Four shotgun blasts followed. Garcia was putting up one hell of a fight, but he couldn’t hold on forever.
Apollo jumped into Fitz’s arms. He wrapped his left arm around the dog and grabbed the ladder with his right. The German Shepherd was much lighter than Rico, but Fitz’s muscles had already been pushed to their limits. Every fiber seemed to stretch as he climbed.
Halfway up, he froze at the rattle of suppressed gunfire.
Apollo let out a low whine, looking up with Fitz at rounds spitting across the sky. This gunfire wasn’t coming from the chamber or the comms. Horn was firing on a target.
Shit, Shit. Shit. Keep moving!
Fitz pushed Apollo out of the tunnel and onto the concrete. The dog hurried over to Beckham, stopping to nudge the unconscious soldier with the muzzle of his gas mask.
Climbing out of the hole, Fitz clambered across the ground toward Beckham, Rico, and Apollo. His hands and blades slid through the gory remains of juveniles. Fitz wanted to close his eyes, especially when he saw the remains of what had once been his friend Tank.
There was no time for emotions right now. The world was crashing down around Fitz, and if he didn’t get out of here now, he wouldn’t be getting out at all.
Rico reached up as Fitz approached over. Her lips were as blue as the highlights in her hair. “Hang in there, kiddo,” Fitz said. He moved over to Beckham and put a finger on his neck to check for a pulse. For several seconds Fitz couldn’t feel anything. It was only the slight movement of his chest moving up and down that told him Beckham was still alive.
“Fitz, get your ass over here!” Horn shouted. He was unloading his M249 on targets across 1st Street. In between bursts he yelled, “Raven 1, Ghost 3. We’re outside the Grant Memorial. We got two injured and have multiple contacts closing in. Need extraction, ASAP.”
Fitz almost choked on adrenaline when he saw the lawn around the Capitol. It was full of monsters. Hundreds of dark, jagged shapes rushed across the charcoaled grass. The light of the moon illuminated the rugged armor of the beasts darting across the grass. Shadows from more of the juveniles came loping down the Capitol steps.
In a few seconds, the Capitol Building and the monsters would disappear in a fiery explosion—but Fitz and his friends were still in the blast zone.
Tito’s familiar voice flared over the open channel. “Copy that Ghost 3. Raven 1. Where the fuck you been? We got a major problem!” There was a pause and Fitz looked toward the sky to search for the Osprey. Had he seen his cousin fall?
The next transmission nearly stopped Fitz’s thumping heart.
“There’s a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile on its way to D.C.,” Tito said. “We got maybe five minutes to get the hell out of here!”
Horn glanced back at Fitz. They exchanged a horrified, confused look.
Fitz pushed himself to his feet and unslung his MK11. Tito had to be wrong, there was no way the military would nuke this city, unless….
“They fucking used us as bait, Big Horn!” Fitz shouted. He knew it was paranoid, but shit, nothing else made sense. They’d sent the strike teams into the cities to keep the juveniles occupied while they prepped the nukes.
“
What the fuck!” Horn growled. He fired off another burst that peppered the side of a Humvee, shattering windows and deflating the front tire as a juvenile loped by. Cursing, he squeezed off another shot that finally hit the beast in the spine. It crashed to the ground, flopping and shrieking.
“Get your ass down here!” Horn yelled, stopping to scan the sky for the Osprey.
Another voice surged over the channel. “Fitz, Horn, are you out of the blast—” There was gunfire, then, “I can’t hold—”
“A few more minutes, Sarge,” Horn said. “Hang in there, brother!”
White noise filled the comms between the gunshots. Fitz strained to hear Garcia’s response.
“Can’t…No more…HURRY!”
The words made Fitz’s heart fire like Horn’s SAW. He pushed the scope of his MK11 to his eye, squared his shoulders, tightened his grip on the stock, and lined the crosshairs up on a juvenile that had reached the street that separated Ghost from the Capitol lawn. The creature mounted a vehicle and tilted its curved skull. Fitz shot it in the mouth as it opened its mandibles and let out a howl. It slid down the windshield, leaving a trail of blood.
The shadows of more abominations stretched across the lawn as more of the beasts raced toward the street. There were dozens of them. Fitz fired shot after shot, but the rounds only slowed them down. Nailing headshots was nearly impossible when they were moving so fast. Especially at this range.
Fitz counted the seconds, panic growing inside him like a tumor. Thirty seconds had passed since Tito’s last transmission, but there was no sign of the Osprey. If the chopper didn’t get there soon, they’d be caught in the blast of the dirty bomb.
Or, apparently, a goddamn nuclear explosion.
Hold on, Garcia. Just hold on, brother.
“Where the hell is Tito?” Horn shouted.
Another salvo of gunshots popped behind Fitz. Rico had her back against the south side of the Grant Memorial. She dual wielded M9s from a sitting position at juveniles flanking them across the pool.
“Behind us, Big Horn!” Fitz shouted.
Three more of the beasts had reached 1st Street. They clambered over the vehicles, setting off car alarms. The shrieking sirens nearly put Fitz back on his ass in shock, until he realized what they were.
Extinction End (Extinction Cycle Book 5) Page 37