“Jesus,” he muttered. How was that even possible? They were sick, infected with one of the deadliest viruses on the planet, but somehow it had transformed them into something stronger, faster, deadlier—the perfect human predator.
“We have contacts all over the next building,” Beckham whispered into the comm. Wolfe shuffled to his feet, bracing himself against the wall. Riley stepped away from the door, his shotgun angled toward the window.
Beckham brought a finger to his visor. “Radio silence.” He looked to Horn who stood over the victim, his boot still firmly planted against the man’s chest.
The scraping sound grew louder. Beckham glanced out the window again and watched several of them perch on the ledge of the opposite building. They reminded him of gargoyles with the moonlight reflecting off their pale translucent skin. Several of them were naked, and he could see gaping wounds on their arms and legs. He focused on a man missing his chin, lips, and the bottom of his nostrils. The man lifted what was left of his nose toward the sky, sniffing with the cavernous hole in the middle of his face.
Was it trying to pick up a scent? Beckham couldn’t pull his gaze away from the creature. Seconds later, the rooftop was filled with the infected, and all of them were sniffing the air. Searching for prey.
They were hunting.
Beckham saw exactly what the pilot must have seen hours earlier, and now knew why he couldn’t put the Blackhawk down on the roof.
Blinking, he focused on one of the creatures curled up into a fetal position on the roof ledge. The creature scratched the concrete frantically, paying no attention to the others.
Beckham clenched his jaw shut as it suddenly tilted its head in his direction with bloodshot, crazed eyes.
Shit.
Did it see him? He stumbled backward, nearly tripping over his own feet. Crouching, he kept low, his heart racing.
They saw me. Fuck. They saw me. Memories of Tenor’s final moments crept into his thoughts. He couldn’t imagine what the man had felt as the virus quickly took over his body.
Beckham wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to him or any of his remaining men. He focused. Pushing himself up, he crouch-walked over to Riley.
There was another faint scuffling sound. This one came from inside the room.
Beckham almost didn’t hear it at first, but when he finally made it to the door it was unmistakable. He paused, spinning to see the victim struggling under Horn’s boot.
“Shit. We have a problem,” Horn whispered. “Guy’s waking up.”
The prisoner moaned as he twisted his body under the weight of Horn’s foot. Joints snapped and clicked, the creature fighting to get free of its bonds.
“Fucking shoot him,” Riley blurted, reaching for his own gun.
Before Horn could retrieve his tranquilizer gun the prisoner’s eyes widened with awareness. He blinked rapidly, his vertical pupils flickering in size as he focused on the man holding him down. When he locked onto Horn his face twisted in an agonized expression. His lips puckered and smacked.
The creature let out a deafening scream that shook the room. Horn silenced the man with a boot to the face, crushing his skull in one powerful stomp.
Beckham flinched at the sight, but he knew Horn had no other choice.
The poor bastard’s arms twitched before going limp. Beckham held his breath, waiting for the infected across the alley to come crashing through the window.
Silence washed over the space as the men prepared for another attack, their weapons angled toward the windows and door. Beckham could sense the tension in every simple sound. The crunch of Wolfe’s suit, a muffled cough from Riley, and the measured heavy breathing from Horn—the team was petrified of the monsters hunting them.
But the monsters never came.
Beckham moved back to the window. Maybe they had moved on? The scraping had stopped.
Realizing he was still holding his breath, he exhaled and then slowly pulled back the curtains. Staring back at him through the glass was the faceless man that had minutes ago stood on the rooftop across the alley. Beckham didn’t have time to think about how the creature had managed to jump across. In one rapid movement it speared the glass with its skull and then pulled away.
A black hole was all that remained of what had once been a face. The man’s lips and chin were completely gone. A mustache of teeth marks around the gaping wound made Beckham’s stomach roll. Like a gigantic leech, the man pressed the swollen hole against the window.
Beckham jammed his MP5 against the glass and pulled the trigger. The rounds shattered the pane and sent the creature flying back into the night, tumbling toward the alley below.
“Run!’ Beckham screamed. He stumbled away and listened to the creature’s body hit the ground. It sounded like a shotgun going off. Shattering bones always did.
The man released one final shriek of misery that sounded different than the mindless and hungry high-pitched screams of the others. There was a hint of despair.
A hint of humanity.
It was 3 a.m. when Kate and Ellis began the autopsies on the rhesus monkeys. Normally Kate would have left the job to Ellis. He had studied forensic pathology, but she wanted to get as many tissue samples to Toxicology as possible.
The work required great attention to detail, and the exhaustion from lack of sleep was slowing Kate down. She started by removing the internal organs of a female rhesus monkey and examining them delicately. There were no signs of internal hemorrhaging, as she’d suspected.
With her eyes starting to glaze over she took a step back from the table. Blinking several times, she placed the scalpel down and mentally checked off everything that needed to be performed. She couldn’t lose her focus now, and she couldn’t make a mistake.
Get a grip, Kate, you’re almost there.
Ellis craned his helmet in her direction, noticing she had backed away from her table. “How are you doing?”
“Fine. Just needed a breather. How about you?”
“Good. I took several biopsies. Fixed them with Glutaraldehyde then embedded them in paraffin wax. Just waiting for them to dry now.”
“You’re faster than I am,” Kate replied.
“I’ve done this countless times.”
Kate nodded and moved back to her table.
An hour later the samples were ready for the microscopes. Kate brought the data up on the main display. Together they huddled around the screen. They’d used a historical staining and immunohistochemistry procedure on some of the samples. The results weren’t surprising.
As Kate had suspected, the morphology for the endothelial cells was mostly intact. The virus wasn’t attacking the cells like other strains of Ebola.
“Confirms our theory,” Ellis sighed. “The virus isn’t causing massive endothelial cell death, and thus the vessel structures are surprisingly uncompromised.”
“But that doesn’t explain the other changes. Time to dig deeper. Let’s get these to Toxicology.”
Kate and Ellis spent another hour preparing the tissue slices for the technicians in Toxicology. Several of them were on standby, and Kate used the intercom to notify Compartment 1 that the samples were on their way.
“This is Rod,” came a calm and clinical voice that reminded Kate of Michael.
“Good morning Rod, this is Doctor Lovato from Compartment 3. We have tissue samples coming your way.”
“Excellent. Any specific instructions?”
“Perform a complete toxic screen of every one of these samples. I’m looking specifically for traces of VX-99. I want to know how it works and where it shows up.”
“You got it,” Rod replied.
“Oh, and Rod,” Kate said. “I need this back ASAP.”
“Understood, Doctor.”
“Thanks.” Kate took her finger off the intercom and looked at Ellis. She needed some sleep. “I’m going to try and crash for a few hours.”
“All right, I’ll let you know if Toxicology comes back with anything befo
re you wake up.”
Kate thought of the small twin bed back in her quarters. Her body was exhausted, but her mind was on fire with worry. There was simply too much to do and so much at stake. Sighing, she changed her mind. There was no way she was going to sleep with the world burning around her, especially with Beckham and his men risking their lives for her and everyone else on the island.
-18-
Beckham slammed his shoulder into the door. Every muscle in his body ached from the hour they’d spent in the stairwell, trying desperately to keep the horde of infected back.
They’d made it ten feet from their office hiding spot when they were cornered and forced to retreat to a concrete staircase. Neither of the doors on either floor locked. Riley and Horn held off the pack frantically trying to get in through the bottom door, while Beckham and Wolfe held off the infected on the second floor.
The growing group of creatures smashed into the door again, pushing Beckham back. Screaming with rage, he bowed his head like a lineman about to sack a quarterback and slammed into the door with his shoulder. He wasn’t sure how much longer they could hold them back.
He brought his sweaty chin down on the comm. “Horn, Riley. How many do you think are down there?”
Horn’s reply sounded more like a grunt. “Ugh. Five.”
Beckham had no idea how many were on the other side, but from the sounds of their desperate howls, he guessed there were at least half a dozen.
“We need to make a move,” Riley said. He breathed heavily over the channel. Beckham knew he was running on empty. They all were.
“Got any ideas?” Beckham replied.
“Not really,” Riley said. “I guess we could try shooting our way out.”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that,” Beckham said. There was no other option. Morning was quickly approaching. They needed to get to a safe location if they had any hope of being evacuated. There was no way in hell they would survive another day or night out here.
With his shoulder firmly planted against the door, Beckham glanced over at Wolfe. “You good?”
The young soldier managed a nod.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. You can count on me,” Wolfe replied.
Chinning his comm, Beckham said, “Okay, on the count of three we let go of the doors and meet in the middle of the staircase. You fire the moment one of those things breaks through.”
“All right,” Wolfe said, nodding.
“Short controlled bursts. Conserve ammo. Aim for the head or the heart,” Beckham added.
“Got it, boss,” Horn replied.
“Roger that,” Riley chipped in.
Closing his eyes, Beckham calmed his breathing and focused. He kept reminding himself this was no different than firefights in Iraq or Afghanistan; these things could be killed just like any other human.
“One.”
“Two.”
Gripping his MP5 in his left hand, he said, “Three!”
Beckham jumped away from the door and took a careful step down the stairs, standing shoulder to shoulder with Wolfe. The first creature hit the door at a breakneck speed, stumbling and falling face first against the pavement. The moment gave Beckham the perfect view of the hallway beyond. The infected stood six deep, staring back at him almost as if they were surprised.
He utilized the moment of confusion and fired several short bursts into the man on the ground. The bullets tore through the back of his head and he immediately went limp. The next two creatures looked down at the destroyed man’s head and let out deep howls—howls so loud that Beckham could hear them over the gunfire from below.
Wolfe cut them down with his M4 in two shots. Their ruined bodies slumped to the floor. The next batch came running down the hall with amazing speed. Two of them dropped to all fours and used momentum from their back legs to hurtle their bodies forward. The leader, a woman with crazed, rose-colored eyes, lunged through the doorway.
Beckham squeezed off another blast and caught her in the face. A curtain of black hair formed a halo around her head as she flew back into the hallway, crashing into two men behind her.
Taking two more steps backward, Beckham aimed at the creatures just as another pack came bursting around the corner of the hallway. Their hungry shrieks reverberated down the corridor.
“How we doing?” Beckham yelled.
A blast from Riley’s shotgun cracked. The booming gunfire rang in Beckham’s ears, making it impossible to hear a response.
Seconds later the team stood back to back, their guns blazing. Never in his career had Beckham fought in such close quarters. There was nothing quite like a firefight in a space so tight and narrow. Blood and gore caked the walls as the infected grew more desperate. The insanity of the situation recharged Beckham's muscles and he fought harder, his shots precise. Calculated. He wasn’t going to let his men down. Not again.
Blood splattered on Beckham’s visor, throwing him off balance. He swiped it away, regained his composure, and fired the last of his magazine.
“I’m out!” He reached for another but his hand came back empty. He instantly reached for his 10mm and instead found the grip of the tranquilizer gun. With only two of the creatures left, he pulled the pistol from his belt and with one eye closed he fired off one of the rounds at the closest one. His heart skipped a beat when he saw it was just a boy.
Wolfe took out the final woman that emerged at the top of the stairs with four rounds to her mid-section. Her body jerked several times as she slumped against the wall, blood smearing down the concrete.
An odd silence filled the space, ghostly trails of smoke coming from their gun barrels. Beckham scanned the ground. Brass casings littered the concrete and dark red blood flowed freely down the steps, a small river making its way down to his boots. He stood in the middle of a slaughterhouse, some of the bodies still jerking from involuntary muscle spasms.
The sight terrified him for the first time, knowing that only a small layer protected him from the virus that could turn him into a monster.
“We better move,” Horn said. “Those things will be back.”
Beckham slowly emerged out of his trance. Horn was right. They needed to get to higher ground and find a place where a Blackhawk could evacuate them.
“Let’s go,” Riley shouted.
“Wait!” Beckham replied, remembering the boy he’d shot with the tranquilizer gun. He raced up the stairs, stepping over two dead bodies. Reaching for his 10mm, he aimed at the pile on the top floor. The boy’s right arm protruded out of a stack three deep.
Beckham pushed the woman off of him and then poked the kid with his pistol. His yellow, blood-stained eyes popped open, the vertical slits blinking rapidly. The boy groaned and reached up with his one free arm, clawing slowly through the air. He struggled, his lips puckering as the tranquilizer entered his system.
Beckham took a step back and watched the poor boy suffering. In a few seconds it was over. The child’s eyelids closed over his reptilian-like eyes and he let out one final grunt.
Nudging him with a boot, Beckham waited a few more beats and then bent down and grabbed the boy. He hoisted him over his shoulders and then joined the others at the bottom of the stairs. “Got us a new ticket to Fort Bragg.”
Horn acknowledged with a nod and then disappeared into the hallway beyond. Riley and Wolfe went next, and Beckham followed, hoping they could make it to a clear LZ before they were swarmed.
Kate twitched in her chair as the door to the research room swung open. Ellis held two mugs of steaming coffee in his hands.
“Thirsty?”
“You’re a lifesaver,” Kate moaned. “What time is it?”
“Nine a.m.” He yawned. “Did you sleep?” He set the mugs on the table and plopped down in the chair next to her.
“A little,” Kate replied. She nearly jumped from her chair when she remembered the samples they’d sent to Toxicology. “Have you heard anything from…”
“Nope. Not yet.”
>
Kate slowly sat back down and crossed her arms, tightening them against her chest. The room was freezing. “How about Beckham? Is he back yet?”
“Not sure, but I don’t think so.”
With her mind spinning, she moved to her next question. “What’s the latest on what’s happening outside?”
Ellis frowned. “Colonel Gibson has placed a communication cloak over the island. So I have no idea.”
Kate finished a sip from her mug and scowled. “Why would he do that?”
“I know. I don’t understand either, but Major Smith tried to sell the decision as a morale thing,” Ellis said. He ran a hand through his slicked-back hair and took a drink. “Things must be awful outside if he doesn’t want people to know what’s going on. I’m assuming the virus has made it overseas by now.”
Kate resisted the urge to chew her fingernails. There was only a remote chance that other countries could have shut down the airports before it spread, preventing planes with suspected cases from landing. There were protocols put into place that prevented the spread of Level 4 contagions, and if they were followed …
She shook the impossible idea away. Even if the virus hadn’t made it to every continent yet, it would. Knowing what she did now about incubation periods and the nature of the infection, it was ludicrous to think otherwise.
“I did hear the President is dead,” Ellis said nonchalantly.
Kate froze. “What? How?”
Ellis shook his head. “Somehow the infection made it into his bunker. The Vice President is gone, too.”
“My god,” Kate replied.
“The virus is spreading so fast,” Ellis said. His voice grew lower as he spoke. “It’s almost as if it was engineered.” He shook his head and reached for his cup.
“What did you say? Kate said.
“Just that the virus is spreading so fast.”
“No, after that.”
Ellis paused to think. “It seems like it was engineered to spread?”
Kate still couldn’t bring herself to believe that Doctor Medford had designed the Hemorrhage virus with sinister intentions. The man had found a way to severely restrict the destruction of the endothelial cells. He’d done what Kate and Michael had never been able to accomplish. It was a partial cure in its own right, but it still didn’t make sense to her. Why stop at a partial cure? The virus was more contagious now than ever, and the prolonged life of the host had allowed it to spread across the country.
Extinction Horizon (The Extinction Cycle Book 1) Page 22