Still more creatures hoisted themselves onto the roof. The temporary effects of the adrenaline were fading. The pure desperation to survive and see his daughters once more was the only fuel Dom had left. He patted his tac vest. No more magazines. He fired his rifle until it was empty then pulled out his pistol.
Eric used his one good hand, firing haphazardly at the Skulls. He was hardly able to control the recoil from the handgun, yet he still fought against the pain from his injury. Maggie barked as Miguel butted a Skull with the stock of his rifle. He caught Dom’s eyes.
Dom understood at once. Miguel, too, was empty. Empty of ammunition, empty of energy reserves, empty of hope.
The meager group continued to fire until the blasts from their weapons became more sporadic. They circled together, Dom dragging Meredith’s body closer to the center of the roof.
They lashed out with the stocks of their weapons, with blades, with everything they had.
But it wasn’t enough.
Dom had let them all down. His only comfort was that he hadn’t let Kara come with them. The Skulls slashed at them, raking the group with crooked talons. The warm spray of blood splashed on Dom’s face. He couldn’t tell whether it was his or a Hunter’s or a Skull’s. But it didn’t matter. He’d take down as many of these demented bastards as he could before he let them devour him. He’d go down fighting, go down killing one last Skull. One less monster for his daughters to worry about.
Another Skull lashed out. Dom caught its wrist, but the beast bore down on him, throwing the weight of its bony plates at the Hunter. The Skull pushed Dom down until he was on his knees. The creature’s fanged teeth snapped, and saliva flew from its cracked lips. The Skull drew back an emaciated arm riddled with bony growths, its knifelike talons glistening. Dom dodged under the creature’s swipe and plunged his knife into the flesh beneath the creature’s chin. He twisted the blade until he saw the anger and hatred and hunger leave the beast’s bone-rimmed, reddened eyes. The Skull dropped, but another took its place. Another adversary in an endless line of twisted abominations with only one instinct: kill.
Then the distant thump of helicopter blades sounded above the jarring din of Skulls.
Frank, Dom thought. But the pilot was too late and too ill equipped. The damn AW109 was never fitted with a weapons system. What could he possibly do?
As if in answer, dust kicked up around them. The chatter of machine guns filled the air, sounding more like saw blades than gunfire. High-caliber rounds tore into the Skulls, rendering them nothing more than bags of ground meat. Skulls continued to climb over their dead brethren, unafraid of the hail of bullets cracking through their natural body armor. Splinters of the skeletal overgrowths and splashes of dark blood burst all over the roof as the piles of Skulls grew.
Dom looked to the sky. Three black choppers encircled the building, their sliding doors open. They strafed near, and Dom could see the men in their ACUs manning their M240s.
Black Hawks. Fucking Black Hawks.
Door gunners raked their weapons back and forth, kicking up concrete and shattering the waves of Skulls swarming over the building. The fire and smoke stung Dom’s eyes as he hugged Meredith’s unconscious body close.
Bending toward Meredith, he whispered into her ear, wondering if she could even hear him. “We’re going to make it, Meredith. The cavalry is here.”
Another Skull squeezed itself from under the throngs of dead beasts littering the roof. It pulled itself toward Dom with its claws, its belly scraping against the ground. What remained of its legs was little more than pulped sinew and flesh. Yet the fire in its eyes hadn’t been extinguished; it came at Dom with single-minded purpose.
Maggie barked, her ears pressed tight against her head and the fur along the back of her neck and shoulders standing on end. She snarled at the approaching Skull.
“Stay, Maggie.” Dom strode forward, his knife glistening in the blood of the Skulls he’d already brought down. The creature before him stretched out its arm, all muscle and bone. It tried to stand as if it didn’t know its legs were gone. With a flick of his blade, Dom ended the creature’s misery and kicked it backward.
Whirlwinds of air gusted around the Hunters as the Black Hawks closed in. Their blades kicked up the scent of fresh death, blood, and gunpowder. The choppers hovered precariously near the edge of the roof. Soldiers along the open cabin motioned at Dom and the Hunters to move. Hector managed to extricate Joe’s battered body from a pile of Skulls and lift it into a chopper. Dom hoisted Meredith. Beside him, Miguel picked up the dog as they followed the others rushing toward the helicopters.
A soldier offered a hand out to help Dom and Meredith. A dark visor obscured his eyes. He took Meredith into the hovering Black Hawk, and Dom climbed in after her. A medic had already begun tending to Renee’s wounds.
“Give her antibiotics. Everything you’ve got!” Dom said, desperate to be heard over the thrum of the chopper’s engines. He only hoped he could get Renee back to Detrick on time, back to real medical help where they could administer the cure Lauren thought she’d found. He couldn’t stand to lose anybody else.
The chopper lifted away as orange tongues of fire licked out of the windows of the antique store. Skulls still scaled the building, but the door gunners quit firing on the masses of roiling creatures. There were far too many swarming the streets of the once-picturesque downtown.
Dom faintly recalled a dinner with Bethany at Tersiguel’s, a fancy French restaurant overlooking the river running through the city. The restaurant was gone now, overrun by monsters, but he prayed that Bethany could still be saved. He hated the thought of leaving her locked up in her own basement, but he told himself that he had done it for her own good. He’d go back for her when he could, either with the cure or a bullet to end her suffering.
He cradled Meredith’s head in his lap. The chopper’s medic had disinfected and bandaged her wounds. Dom thought most of the cuts came from the broken glass of the bus’s windshield and not from the Skulls’ claws, but he couldn’t be sure. They’d probably all have to be quarantined. He combed his fingers through her red hair. This was a woman who’d risked her life to fulfill a promise to him. She’d been a colleague and friend for longer than he remembered. From their first days in the CIA until these moments spent fleeing in the face of a hellish tableau, she’d supported him, trusted him. Hell, she was more than a friend—to call her just a friend was to discount the bond they shared. He prayed she too wouldn’t be taken away from him by the indiscriminate clutches of death.
Beneath them, the city turned into a distant image of blocks laid among green splotches of trees and parks. It was almost as if the earth below no longer existed, as if they’d escaped the horrors overtaking the world.
Miguel made his way over to Dom. “My God, am I glad these assholes came when they did. Did you tell them where we were?”
One of the door gunners, overhearing their conversation, bent in to be heard over the chopper’s roar. He nudged up his visor to reveal his face. It was Frank. “Deputy Commander Shepherd didn’t want to expend too many of his men, so Adam and I volunteered to come on as gunners.” Frank nodded toward one of the other choppers flying in formation. “He’s over there. Shepherd was a bit pissed when he realized you and Meredith weren’t on the AW109. He didn’t want to send out a rescue squad since that wasn’t part of the deal. But I told him if we were going to get anywhere with this Amanojaku business, we needed to bring your sorry asses back to base.”
“Fucking Frank,” Miguel said. “Goddamned man of the hour.” Then Miguel’s expression turned dour as he peered back at the smoking buildings, growing ever smaller, where they’d made their last stand. “Damn it. How are we gonna break it to Joe’s wife and kids?”
“I’ll tell them,” Dom said, still holding onto Meredith. He calmed himself, willing the storm of emotions to subside. He was the captain of the Huntress and a seasoned covert operative. Yet in that moment, he felt as flimsy and helpless as a c
ardboard box caught in a typhoon. “I promised Joe I’d do it.”
Miguel nodded, satisfied with Dom’s assurance.
The squadron of Black Hawks slowed and descended toward Fort Detrick. As if to remind Dom of the reality of the situation, the cries of the Skulls encircling the military base rose up to greet them. Sporadic gunfire called out to meet those inhuman shrieks. He could see why Shepherd had been reluctant to send out a rescue party. He probably didn’t expect there to be anyone to rescue by the time he risked his men’s lives sending them outside of the meager safety their base provided.
The Black Hawk hit the tarmac hard, and soldiers piled out. Four medics ran toward the chopper. Each pair carried a stretcher, one meant for Meredith, the other for Eric. A grizzled man with a halo of white hair ducked under the rotor wash and headed toward Dom. He held out his hand, and Dom shook it.
“Deputy Commander Shepherd,” he said.
“You need to start my crew member, Renee Boland, on EDTA chelation therapy, followed by tetracyclin, immediately.”
“Don’t worry,” Shepherd said. “We got a complete rundown of the treatment from your ship’s chief medical officer.”
“Then I hope you do exactly as she says,” Dom said as they ran across the tarmac toward a low-lying building. Around them, soldiers carried other bodies on stretchers. “I take it you ran into a little trouble on the base.”
“That’s right,” Shepherd said. “Your boy Frank said you’ve been trying to reach us for a while.”
“That’s right.”
Shepherd paused as he glanced back at the soldiers and medical personnel carting the injured around. “When the outbreak happened, some of our people were infected. It took us a while before we could regain control of the base.”
“And your commander?”
Shepherd let out a breath. “He’s no longer with us. This virus or bacteria or whatever it is got him.”
From that statement, Dom realized Shepherd and the rest of Fort Detrick were as ill-prepared for this disaster as he was. “So I take it you were also in the dark about the Amanojaku Project until recently.”
Shepherd opened the door to the building for Dom when they reached it. “Some of my men dug through our old files. I probably don’t need to tell you this, but before the global decision to cease research and development in bioweapons, Fort Detrick served as a facility for the design and testing of biological and chemical weapons.” The Deputy Commander’s eyes swept the floor as if ashamed for a past he wasn’t actually responsible for. “According the files we found, scientists were working on the Amanojaku Project here during the 1950s. To make matters worse, the objectives of this classified project almost perfectly match the results of the outbreak we’re seeing today.”
Dom stopped in the hall, and Shepherd paused with him. “They wanted to create monsters? What in the hell were they thinking?”
“I don’t know,” Shepherd said. “But I want to reassure you that we’re absolutely committed to doing whatever we can to halt the spread of this biological agent.” He opened another door to a larger room filled with cots and people—a makeshift shelter. “Welcome to Fort Detrick, Captain Holland. You’ll be placed in the civilian quarantine shelter until we can be sure you and your group are clear. And after you have a chance to take care of your family and men, you and I need to have a long chat.”
“You got that absolutely right,” Dom said.
“Dad!” Sadie ran across the room. Dom turned to catch his daughter as she leapt into his arms. Kara sprinted after her and embraced them both.
A long road lay ahead of them. They still didn’t know who’d first sent Meredith the memo that sent them on this wild-goose chase, nor had they found out why IBSL had failed. Who was responsible? Had someone deliberately sabotaged it? Was there a larger conspiracy at work—or was it just the CIA that had blundered?
All those questions swam in his mind as the world seemed to crumble around him, but at least he had found something to hold onto. He had his daughters. He had a crew willing to put their lives against the terror of the unleashed Oni Agent and the brightest scientific minds in the world working on a cure.
And, above all, he had hope.
Thank you for reading.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading The Tide. I hope you enjoyed Dom and the Hunters’ adventure as much as I enjoyed writing it. Dom’s journey has just begun, and the Skulls are still hungry. The Tide continues with the second book in the series here: http://amzn.to/1FxMprN
If you’re interested in future releases in this series and other works of mine, please consider joining my mailing list. I won’t spam you and I won’t share your email: http://bit.ly/ajmlist. As a thank you for signing up, I’ll send you a copy of Fatal Injection for free. Fatal Injection is a novella featuring Officer Ana Dellaporta from my Black Market DNA series.
In any case, as an independent writer, your feedback and support is crucial to my craft. If you’ve enjoyed the story, please consider writing a review (as long or short as you like) on Amazon at http://bit.ly/thetidenovel. Reviews help independent authors like me spread the word so others might experience our stories. I greatly appreciate any and all honest feedback. Every review is important!
I love to hear from readers. Keep in touch through a number of places:
Website: http://AnthonyJMelchiorri.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/anthony.melchiorri
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tony_melchiorri
Email: [email protected]
The Tide Series Continues...
Breakwater (The Tide, Book #2)
The Oni Agent outbreak has devastated countries across the globe. Despite this apocalyptic new world, Captain Dominic Holland and the Hunters are determined to save the survivors and develop a cure. New threats and discoveries challenge them every step of the way. But they soon find potential help from an unlikely source...if they can survive long enough to receive it.
Find it here: http://amzn.to/1FxMprN
Also by Anthony J Melchiorri
Enhancement (Black Market DNA #1)
In the year 2058, Baltimore’s latest crime epidemic is illegal genetic enhancements. Convicted dealer Christopher Morgan finds himself on a hit-list before he’s even released from prison. In a race for survival, he must uncover a shocking conspiracy involving organized crime and genetic engineering.
Find it here: http://amzn.to/1rhSboa
Malignant (Black Market DNA #2)
A genetically engineered and unstoppable cancer is spreading through Baltimore’s citizens. Christopher Morgan eagerly joins Doctor Robin Haynes on a quest to engineer a cure. As the cancer spreads across the country, they discover the disease may be connected to a criminal organization. With the body count rising, they find themselves embroiled in something deeper than they ever imagined—an underground world of scientific intrigue, organized crime, and medical conspiracies.
Find it here: http://amzn.to/1xkBiyh
Variant (Black Market DNA #3)
While treating a patient, Robin discovers a dangerous pathogen long-since thought to be eradicated. Her investigations lead to a startling and terrifying revelation. Now, Chris Morgan may be the only one that can help her uncover the truth.
A powerful adversary from Chris’s past has returned. The lives of thousands, maybe millions, are at stake.
Find it here: http://amzn.to/1NgIti3
Fatal Injection (A Black Market DNA Novella)
Baltimore PD Officer Ana Dellaporta must unravel a sinister plot involving missing persons, murder, and genetic experimentation. And when one of her close friends goes missing, she must uncover the gruesome truth before the trail goes cold and her friend becomes the next victim.
Find it here: http://amzn.to/1BRcAEf
The God Organ
Brilliant biomedical scientist Preston Carter introduces an implantable artificial organ designed to grant its recipients near-immortality. But many of those recipi
ents are suddenly dying. With the organ already implanted in his own body, Carter must uncover the truth before he’s killed by his own invention.
Find it here: http://amzn.to/1yjmMGF
The Human Forged
Former Army Specialist Nick Corrigan is abducted and unwittingly becomes embroiled in a biotechnological nightmare. He embarks on a dangerous adventure to return home. The only person that might be able to help him is a man Nick never knew existed—his clone.
Back in Washington, CIA analyst Sara Monahan makes a startling discovery while tracking the use of biological weapons in an ongoing war in Africa. She races to uncover a global conspiracy that may shake the very essence of what it means to be human.
Find it here: http://bit.ly/thf14
About the Author
Anthony J Melchiorri is a writer and biomedical engineer living in Maryland. He spends most of his time developing cardiovascular devices for tissue engineering to treat children with congenital heart defects when he isn't writing or reading.
Read more at http://anthonyjmelchiorri.com and sign up for his mailing list at http://bit.ly/ajmlist to hear about his latest releases and news.
The Tide (Tide Series Book 1) Page 29