Extinction Shadow

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  “Reed,” she hurried over and threw her arms around him. “Did you catch them?”

  “No, and the raider from the island is dead.”

  Kate pulled away with a confused look. “What? How?”

  “He had Variant acid. Must have backfired when he tried to use it to escape.”

  “What was he doing with that?”

  “Good question,” Horn said. He blew the smoke skyward.

  “Do we have a death count yet?” Beckham asked, looking at the tent.

  “No but it just went up by one,” Kate replied without turning. “We just lost McComb.”

  “McComb?” Horn said. “As in Senator McComb?”

  “He was speaking at city hall when it was hit by the bomb,” Kate said.

  Beckham swallowed with realization. He knew it could just be a coincidence that the Senator was here during the attack, but it was hard to believe when looking at the bigger picture.

  This definitely wasn’t a random raider attack. These guys weren’t just here to steal shit and sew a little chaos. They had known about the location of the bunker on the island, which meant they had an inside source, and they had known McComb was going to be here.

  They also had a clear connection to Variants with the acid, which led him to believe they were collaborators.

  “Maybe that prisoner told us more than we thought,” he said.

  “The acid?” Kate asked.

  Beckham nodded. He grabbed her and pulled her tight, looking at the rising sun. Earlier, he could have bought the raiders weren’t working with the monsters and that they were escaping into the Variant zone just to hide.

  But not now.

  In this world, Beckham had learned coincidences were never just coincidences. Whoever these guys were, they were connected to the monsters, and he had a feeling the only way to unravel this mystery was to return to the hell where the demons dwelled.

  — 10 —

  The road sign pocked with bullet holes made S.M. Fischer smile every time he drove past.

  Is this heaven? No, it’s Texas.

  Whoever had hung it years ago had scratched out the word “Iowa” and replaced it with the Lone Star State. Nothing against the Midwest or Iowa, but there wasn’t anything like the Texas Panhandle. Fischer would have happily shaken the hand of the fellow that had mounted the sign.

  He drove his truck solo this morning, but his men weren’t far from sight. Three pickups led the way toward the site of one of his damaged oil derricks.

  It was one of those mornings that he needed time to think and contemplate. He had started it early, getting up before dawn to map out his day.

  He turned his black dual-cab Ford F350 down a rust-colored dirt road and eased off the gas to give the truck ahead some room.

  The golden glow of the morning sun continued to rise in a cloudless ocean of blue. He took in the sights cautiously, recalling why he had stayed here after losing his wife.

  When he was a child, his parents had sent him to a good Christian boarding school back east. They had a second home in upstate New York where he had eventually met his wife.

  During the summers, he had returned to the ranch where he spent dawn to dusk outside riding horses, driving dirt bikes, and hunting for wild hogs with his father’s .357. That same handgun was still nestled in his hip holster.

  Those were some damn good memories.

  Now he felt like most of his time on the ranch was spent hunting for Variants.

  Rolling brown hills rose to the west, but the land to the east was flat and green. Portions of old fences lay on their sides beside the dusty road. He didn’t bother having them fixed. There was no point in keeping cattle out here anymore. The Variants would kill them all, and he didn’t have the men to watch the herds.

  The three-thousand heads he did own were in barns not far from his house. The only way the monsters could get to them were through electric fences and his guards.

  They had tried in the past, and they had failed every time.

  But after the attack on several of his derricks the other night, he was starting to wonder how long they could hold them back. The Alpha had been a smart son of a devil. Who knew how many more were out there like it that would encroach on his land in search of food?

  The convoy of pickup trucks pulled off the dirt road, parking along the shoulder. Fischer maneuvered behind them and then killed the engine. He jumped out, and his most trusted guards, Tran and Chase, got out of the truck ahead. They both wore black fatigues and black baseball caps with the red double F logo.

  Tran carried an SR-25, and Chase had an M4A1. They nodded at Fischer and flanked him on the walk to the fence. The derrick was on the other side of a hill.

  The dozen men started out on the path, their rifles up and ready just in case any Variants had returned to finish what they started.

  At the crest of the hill, Fischer saw that there had been no need to return.

  He had grown up earning his keep by working on the derricks during the summers when he was back from college, long after his days of playing were over. His father had, in turn, paid for his education.

  He knew enough about the technology to know when his engineers were right or when they were just being lazy.

  This time, they were right. The derrick was done for.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said, spitting into the dirt.

  The skeletal oil derrick was completely blackened and bent at the top.

  That brought his count from ninety-five derricks down to ninety-three. It wouldn’t hurt production dramatically, but he couldn’t afford to keep losing more. Employing so many men and investing in tools and weapons to fend off the Variants rang in at a heavy price.

  At least they had capped the wells before too much oil was burned off.

  “Did we recover any bodies?” Fischer asked Tran.

  Tran shook his head.

  “I doubt we will,” Chase said. “My guess is they’re just bones now.”

  He glanced at his watch and then took one last look at the derrick before turning away. He needed to scope out the other one and then get back to the ranch to prepare for his meeting with General Cornelius at noon.

  “Tran, ride with me,” Fischer said. Before his meeting, he wanted to talk to Tran again about his thoughts on the General.

  The four-pickup convoy headed back on the road to the second damaged rig. This one was in plain sight from the road. After putting the truck in park, Fischer used a pair of binoculars to survey the damage.

  “We got this one capped faster,” Tran said from the passenger seat. “You think we can get it back up and running?”

  “Maybe,” Fischer replied. “I’m just not sure if we can recoup the cost, especially since the engineers say they’ve got about a fifty-fifty shot at getting that thing functional. Might be better to just strip it of parts and…”

  His words trailed off when he saw movement.

  “Sir?” Tran said.

  “You see that?” Fischer whispered, a chill running through him. He zoomed in on movement on the right side of the derrick.

  Something was hunched over.

  Tran rolled down the window and brought the scope of his SR-25 up to an eye.

  “Oh shit,” he muttered. “It’s a Variant.”

  Fischer opened the door and exited the vehicle.

  “Sir,” Tran said, meeting him at the front of the truck. “You should stay inside.

  The other men all got out, shouldering their rifles and aiming at the beast in the distance. Fischer calmly reached out to Tran.

  “Relax, and give me your rifle,” he said.

  Tran reluctantly handed it over, and Fischer pulled the bi-pod down. He positioned it on the hood of the truck and lined up the sights on a gruesome scene that made him cringe.

  Two human corpses lay in the dirt. But it wasn’t the dead engineers the Variant had all but consumed that repulsed him—it was the charred right side of the creature.

  Blistering black fl
esh peeled back to reveal bulbous red tissue the color of a ripe watermelon. The burns extended to the head, covering most of the skull and patchy, melted flesh that had once been its ears.

  No wonder it can’t hear us, he thought.

  “It’s not going to miss this, though” Fischer said aloud. He steadied the sights, aiming for the head, moved his finger to the trigger, and pulled. The round found a home in the creature’s skull, blowing out a spray of burned flesh.

  The monster collapsed over the body of the dead engineer.

  Fischer pulled the rifle off the hood and handed it back to Tran.

  “Put the bodies of the men in the back of my truck,” Fischer ordered.

  He got back in his F350 and waited as his men worked, forcing himself to watch them carry the remains back with them.

  Chase was right.

  There wasn’t much left but bones.

  A few minutes later they set off for the ranch. Fischer still wanted to have that talk with Tran about General Cornelius, but a new sight caused him to delay those plans again.

  “Is that a chopper?” Tran asked.

  Fischer looked at the dashboard clock. It was only ten in the morning. He wasn’t late for his meeting.

  Cornelius, or whoever this was, was early.

  Fischer sped around the other trucks and pushed the pedal down, increasing the speed to eighty miles an hour. The vehicle and its oversized wheels easily handled the rough terrain.

  They hit smooth gray concrete over the next hill, and he gunned the engine to one hundred miles an hour. The mile long stretch of road had cost him a pretty penny, but he liked to greet his guests with smooth roads to remind them where they were when they arrived, and what they were leaving when they departed.

  The Fischer ranch was a castle in the middle of what had once been the Wild West. The property, with its many barns and multiple buildings, was more than fitting for his oil empire, and it was equally fitting for a meeting with the man many thought would be the next President of the country.

  Soon, Fischer would make his own determination.

  The chopper landed in the field on the other side of the circular drive. Fischer parked and watched the men getting out of the bird. Keeping low, they hurried under the blades, all but two of them wearing fatigues.

  He spotted Cornelius among them. The tallest, with a mane of white hair, the General was the type of guy that stood out in a room, commanding attention. He wore a crisp uniform that seemed immaculately clean for the current state of the world.

  Dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat, Fischer was hardly ready for a meeting with the potential leader of the country, but he honestly didn’t care all that much. He wasn’t the one asking for money today.

  Fischer got out of his truck and considered telling his men to drive it, with the bodies, away, but it was too late.

  “Mr. Fischer,” Cornelius called out.

  Fischer walked out to meet the man, smiling but not too widely. He was a businessman and didn’t want to look over eager. Entering negotiations with a poker face was one of the first things his dad taught him.

  “You’re early, General,” Fischer said. He reached out and shook the man’s calloused hands.

  “My apologies, but a lot happened last night and I wanted to meet with you before I head out east,” Cornelius replied.

  Fischer motioned for Cornelius to follow him toward the house.

  “Perhaps if you get elected you could move the government down here,” Fischer suggested. “Then you wouldn’t have to leave the best state in the Allied States and you would have prime access to the most productive oil fields to fuel your small army. Don’t tell me you aren’t interested in them.”

  Cornelius let out a laugh. “Perhaps, but I’ve got a lot of other things on my agenda first. Although, you’re right. My plans include cooperation with Fischer Fields.”

  A waft of rotting flesh drifted through the air. Cornelius put a sleeve over his mouth and nose as he passed the truck with the corpses.

  “Sorry about that,” Fischer said. “We were surveying the damage to my derricks and found some of my men that had been out there a while.”

  Cornelius lowered his hand. He didn’t seem disturbed by the gory sight.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Fischer,” said the General. “You weren’t the only one that got hit. Something is happening at the outposts and safe zones. Things that I’m sure President Ringgold wants to keep quiet.”

  Fischer remained standing by the pickup, his curiosity piqued.

  “Ringgold is a smart woman,” Cornelius continued. “I like her and Vice President Lemke. They’re good people, but they’ve proven they don’t have the strength to protect the country.”

  Cornelius looked back at the corpses in the truck. “Letting the Variants take over the abandoned cities is a strategic failure. Those cities are ticking time bombs waiting to explode. It’s negligence like that is leading to the increase in attacks, like the ones on your ranch.”

  There was anger in the general’s voice. Fischer had heard about the general’s temper.

  Anger wasn’t necessarily bad if it was controlled. But if the general was the type that let emotion get in the way of a sound decision, that was a problem. Someone leading the country needed to be cool and levelheaded, especially when facing threats like this.

  “That’s why I’m here to make you an offer in return for your support,” Cornelius said, the edge no longer in his voice.

  Fischer didn’t speak too loudly. He didn’t want his men to hear the offer just in case Fischer didn’t end up accepting it, although he had a feeling whatever it is was, it would beat what little Ringgold had done to protect his oil fields.

  ***

  The morning after the attack, Kate had gone straight to the lab to test the samples rushed in by a helicopter from Outpost Turkey River. Horn and Beckham were outside with several Rangers, and the kids were back at the shelter for survivors in downtown Portland. Knowing Beckham was close and her family was safe helped her focus on the questions.

  There were hundreds of thoughts on her mind about the attacks, but she tried to keep them all about science. Her job wasn’t to figure out who the raiders were or how the attack on Portland and Peaks Island was connected to the other attacks—her job was to find out what was going on in those Variant tunnels.

  A musty odor hung in the lab, contrasting sharply with the sterile hospital smell that usually pervaded the space. Half of her working area was strewn with individually wrapped pipette tips, syringes, and broken beakers.

  Muddy boot prints tracked across what had once been a clean white-tiled floor. Kate brushed aside the cardboard boxes of disposable syringes where they lay scattered on a lab bench.

  Normally, she would’ve been bothered by a single pipette negligently left on a lab bench instead of in its stand or a stray disposable nitrile glove left hanging outside a trash can. But today she had no choice but to work in the filth, hoping that the raiders hadn’t taken everything she would need for her experiment.

  Perusing drawers and cabinets with doors askew, she searched for cell culture supplies. She pulled out a plastic sleeve of cell culture dishes. She could’ve sworn she had had more in stock.

  In the freezer, all her one-liter bottles of red liquid cell media were gone. As were the bottles of bovine serum to supplement that media.

  What in God’s name did raiders need cell culture supplies for?

  Maybe they’d mistaken them for medicine of some kind. Thankfully she still had a few half-used bottles of media with serum already added in her 4-degree Celsius refrigerator.

  Cell culture dishes and handheld electronic pipettes at least had not been stolen. Most of the antibiotics she kept on hand for adding to cell cultures were gone, of course. No surprise there.

  That was okay. As long as she was extremely careful, she could minimize the risk of contaminating her culture dishes.

  Sitting on the bench in front of her was a
cooler-sized Styrofoam container with the samples that had been sent to her from Fitz. She lifted one of the ten milliliter plastic tubes from the container.

  The red matter in there—whatever it was—had apparently been living just fine in dirt tunnels bored through the ground by the Variants outside of Outpost Turkey River.

  If this stuff had been living in those tunnels, what harm was a little bacteria from the lab anyway?

  Looking across the lab space to the smaller room where the biosafety cabinets were, the place looked empty. Not for a lack of debris and lab supplies. But Kate found herself thinking of Doctor Pat Ellis, her old laboratory partner. He’d been with her for several years before he met his tragic end.

  There was still a hole in her heart for the man who’d been both a close and valued coworker and friend. Now she had to do this alone.

  She missed Ellis, but especially today. All the death and destruction had peeled back the scabs of time, reopening old emotional wounds.

  She took the plastic culture dishes and pipettes to one of the biosafety cabinets, inserted them under the protective glass sash. A bottle of pink, pre-warmed liquid cell medium went in next.

  “Let’s see what Team Ghost found,” she whispered to herself.

  Holding the plastic sample tube in one gloved hand, she unscrewed the cap with the other, placing it on the metal surface inside the biosafety cabinet.

  Images of the scenes inside the medical tent flashed through her mind. Still fresh, she could practically feel Senator McComb’s pulse stopping under her fingers again, smell the coppery scent of blood, and hear the cries of the wounded and the frightened.

  She blinked away the memories and exhaustion, willing herself to wake up. The dregs of adrenaline that helped her through the night faded. She needed every bit of brainpower left in her reserves, and it had been so long since she really sat in a lab like this to work on Variant-related research.

  But history had a vicious way of repeating itself.

  She used a pair of stainless-steel forceps to pull a thin strip of the red webbing from the plastic tube. Dangling in the air above the cell culture dish, it could have been a thinly sliced chunk of steak for all she knew.