The team moved out—all business now that they had passed into Variant territory. With the sun still high in the sky, they kept low and close to cover, their weapons shouldered and roving for targets.
Dohi moved slowly, ears perked and eyes moving as he stepped through the ankle-high water. Fitz kept behind him, scanning the interior of the stores and checking every window for any sign of hostiles. Deep within the next store he saw pangs of sunlight reflect off the costume jewelry around the neck of a mannequin.
“Jesus,” Rico said. “Thought that was a person at first.”
“Nope, but that was,” Lincoln said. He raised his rifle, aiming at the spot that had caught his interest across the road. The bottom half of a human skeleton hung out of a window, mold climbing up from the flooded street as if reaching toward it.
Fitz motioned for the team to check it out. When they got to the second-floor window, he stepped underneath to see that the flesh was completely gone. Tooth marks marred the dried bone. Some were snapped like twigs, the marrow sucked dry.
“Guess we know we’re in the right place,” Rico said dryly.
Fitz looked one last time at the skeletal remains. This was the worst part of tracking down rogue Variants. Team Ghost almost always arrived too late to help.
But they would find the abominations responsible.
According to the reports they’d received, this one was a wily Alpha. Smarter than the average grunt beast judging by how he’d been sneaking in and out of Outpost Patapsco Valley without any of the guards getting a clear shot at it.
Fitz flashed hand signals and the team continued between the brick buildings. A flurry of leaves rustled over the street; flashes of orange and brown, landed in the water, floating away with the slight current at their feet.
The crisp scent of autumn mixed with the odor of must and mold drifted from the buildings. But he didn’t detect the sour odor of a Variant.
“We got another skinny,” Mendez said. With his rifle, he pointed to a second corpse propped up against a bench next to a toppled garbage can. Flags of ripe flesh hung off the bones.
“Looks fresh,” Dohi said.
That sent another stab of dread through Fitz’s gut.
Apparently, the Alpha had been hunting in other areas too.
The sooner they killed it the safer this area would be.
The team continued to survey the street. They were coming to the end of the small, historic downtown. A railway bridge crossed twenty feet above the street. On it was painted ‘ELLICOTT CITY’ in white blocky letters.
A freight train had derailed off the bridge and fallen to the street. The toppled cars served as a dam. Water rushed up against it and trickled between the graffiti-covered cars. Broken crates and steel drums were piled around the train.
Graffiti wasn’t the only thing covering them. Dark stains that could only be blood marked the sides like a macabre painting.
“We’ve got to be close,” Fitz said. “Stay sharp.”
They moved out in combat intervals and squeezed between the train cars. As Fitz came out the other side, water rushed around his blades and streamed toward the river beyond. Before them lay another bridge, this one for cars.
“Do you hear that?” Dohi asked.
Fitz held up a fist to signal the rest of the team to hold tight. He strained his ears, listening for what Dohi had noticed. Between the gusts of wind, he picked up a quiet chorus of something clinking together. The sound reminded him of wind chimes. Only instead of metal, they sounded almost like wood.
“What the hell is that?” Rico whispered.
The team advanced across the bridge and skirted around the abandoned cars there. The wind chime chorus grew louder.
Fitz tilted his head to listen. It seemed to be originating below them. He leaned over the handrail and peered down at a stomach rolling sight.
Bones strung up beneath the bridge rattled in the wind. Tendrils of red hung from the broken edges and droplets trickled off them.
He didn’t need Dohi to tell him these were also fresh kills.
Team Ghost had found two of the human prisoners.
Fitz balled his hand and froze at a scream of sheer agony in the distance. It started off almost animalistic; but by the tail end of the wail he could tell it was human. There was still someone alive out there. At least for now.
Dohi pointed toward a forested area off the road, and Fitz gave the order to pursue the Alpha with a nod. Team Ghost wasn’t going home until it had put down this beast.
— 3 —
President Jan Ringgold took a long drink of cold coffee. She was going to need it tonight. Across from her sat Vice President Dan Lemke. Both of them had been waiting anxiously for her Chief of Staff, James Soprano, to arrive at her presidential office in the Greenbrier.
The knock came a few minutes later, and the door opened.
“Evening,” Soprano said, wandering over to her desk, carrying a stack of briefing folders.
“I hope you’ve got good news for me,” Ringgold said.
“I haven’t looked yet, Madam President,” Soprano gently set the stack of folders on her desk and then backed away.
“Thank you,” she said to her COS. “We’ll catch up shortly.”
Soprano exited the room with a nod toward Ringgold and Lemke.
Ringgold began shuffling through the folders. Most contained information about her meetings tomorrow, but she went right for the one with the recent poll numbers for the upcoming election.
“The moment of truth,” Ringgold said. She took in a breath and opened the folder. “There we are.”
“Well?” asked Lemke.
Ringgold smiled.
The numbers were good. Better than she had thought. Almost seven points in her party’s favor and well outside the margin of error.
“We might just win this thing after all,” she said. “Our recent campaign efforts seem to have pushed things further in our favor.”
Vice President Dan Lemke leaned forward in his chair. She spun the folder around so he could read them.
“That’s because people have a lot to be happy about, Madam President,” he said. “You brought us back from the brink over these eight years. We’ve come a long way from hiding in bunkers and praying during every attack that we would survive for another day.”
She leaned back slightly in her chair, looking out the bulletproof window at the trees. The branches swayed in the wind outside, and moonlight cast a white glow on the bark that made them look like skeletal fingers. A cold wave snaked through her body.
Tonight is not the night to be spooked, Ringgold thought.
Ringgold gave herself a moment to relish in some of her accomplishments in the face of this good news. The migration from the West Coast and mountain states during her first term had been risky, but it had paid off. She had been better able to protect their citizens over the consolidated territory and focus on rebuilding important infrastructure to keep them alive.
The economy was rolling along and, recently, it was accelerating. Dormant industries had reawakened. Factories were producing vehicles for both military and civilian use. An old GM plant had already put out three thousand new cars, a fraction of what it had once done, but it was a start.
Farms and orchards across the Allied States were producing enough food again to feed all the country’s citizens. Wind turbines and solar energy helped power the farms. The government had even rebuilt part of the electrical grid. Telecommunications engineers were getting close to restoring a cellular network that would support personal cell phone use.
In Texas, several oil operations were back up and running to fuel the expanding economy. The country was using all the resources at its disposal to come back online.
But there were some things she wasn’t sure she wanted to return.
Social media, for starters.
She kind of liked the quiet. For one, it made presidential campaigns a lot more straightforward.
The biggest
indicator the country was recovering were the relatively infrequent Variant attacks. The beasts were still out there, sure. Some even speculated they were breeding underground, but at least their numbers were manageable, and the damage they did cause was minor, despite it still being a loss of human life.
Lemke stood and tightened his navy tie. The retired rear admiral had helped save the country from ROT. His transition to politics had been surprisingly easy for him after his long tenure of military service.
He was Kennedy family handsome, with thick wavy hair, dimples, and a perfect smile. His charming East Coast accent put even fierce political enemies at ease. He knew when to flash a grin and when to keep a straight face. Best of all, he was loyal and intelligent.
The perfect person to keep the country moving forward.
“You’re going to make a hell of a president,” Ringgold said. “And I’m going to enjoy watching you from retirement with a mojito in hand.”
“I hope you’ll be willing to answer my calls, even when you’re sipping that drink,” Lemke said. “If I’m going to be a good president, it’s only because I have you to thank.”
Ringgold almost blushed.
“I can’t think of any president besides Abe Lincoln that had to deal with such a traumatic war in our homeland the way you have,” Lemke added. “And somehow, we still came out of all that with hope for a better future.”
“Oh, I see you’re already preparing your next talking points for the campaign trail,” Ringgold said with a chuckle.
The dimples on his face widened slightly until he looked down at his buzzing government-issued cell phone.
Any humor in his expression immediately evaporated.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Trouble, if I had to guess,” he replied. “General Souza at SOCOM doesn’t ever call just to shoot the bull.”
Ringgold got out of her chair and moved around her desk, forgetting the poll numbers and the stacks of files for tomorrow’s meetings.
Lemke took the call in the center of the room, standing behind two couches positioned around a coffee table.
“What?” he asked Souza, furrowing his brow. He flung a glance at Ringgold and then turned slightly, shaking his head.
This couldn’t be good. She walked over to the couches but couldn’t bring herself to sit. She was too nervous to remain still.
“Understood,” Lemke said. “Keep me updated.”
He lowered the phone and slowly slipped it into his pocket, pausing like he was nervous to turn and face her.
“Well?” Ringgold asked. “What is it?”
Lemke shook his head. The normally collected rear-admiral-turned-politician looked like he had seen a ghost.
“Outpost Turkey River,” he said in almost a whisper. “They’ve gone completely dark, Madam President.”
***
“I’m bored as hell, brother,” Horn muttered quietly. He pulled on his jacket cuff. “And I hate wearing this dumb suit.”
“Me and you both,” Beckham replied. They stood inside the guest lobby of the White House, dressed in suits that needed tailoring.
Most of the people waiting in the room were business folk and politicians that had thrived during the reconstruction period.
Several of Ringgold’s security detail stood watching the civilians in the lobby like hawks. Beckham was doing the same thing. It was hard to know who here was a friend and who was an enemy.
A man with a real lip hugger of a mustache stood with his back to a marble column. He wore a cowboy hat, leather boots, and a shiny belt buckle. His gun holster and the holsters on the two bodyguards that accompanied him were empty, their weapons taken by Secret Service.
“Get a load of Chuck Norris over there,” Horn whispered. “Who the hell is he?”
Beckham chuckled. “If I had to guess, that’s S.M. Fischer, the oil guy.”
He had heard the oil tycoon had survived in his doomsday bunker with a group of personal bodyguards during the war.
Unlike Beckham and Horn, Fischer probably wasn’t here to advise President Ringgold. From what Beckham had heard, Fischer would be here to interview the president and vice president.
As one of the wealthiest men left in the country, and with one of the biggest oil fields, Fischer’s support would go a long way for whoever he decided to support in the presidential elections.
Maybe I should encourage him to make the right choice… Beckham thought.
Before he could consider the idea thoroughly, a short Latina woman dressed in a business-length skirt, a blouse, and a suit jacket opened a door across the hall. Beckham recognized her right away. Elizabeth Cortez had started off as a staffer for President Ringgold and now served as Chief of Staff for Vice President Lemke.
“Mr. Fischer, the President and Vice President are ready for you,” Cortez said.
Fischer took off his cowboy hat as he followed her into an office. He looked at Beckham for a lingering second, perhaps sizing him up.
Beckham’s prosthetics and the stories that probably verged more on myth than truth meant he often got looks like that. Most everyone here knew his part in the war. He was also the husband of the woman that had saved the world. Or destroyed it, depending on whom you asked.
“Always last on the list,” Horn grumbled.
“You know the drill. The wealthy and powerful always get seats at the table first.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Horn said. “Somedays I really do miss the battlefield over this boring shit. At least, I had more of an impact and knew why I was there.”
“We’ll find out soon enough and then go straight home,” Beckham promised. He took in a deep breath. He missed the brotherhood that came with serving his country, but he didn’t miss the death.
Part of him was glad to be retired and raising a family.
One by one, the other people in the lobby were led into the President and Vice President’s offices while Beckham and Horn continued to wait. National Security Advisor Ben Nelson and Ringgold’s Chief of Staff James Soprano opened their doors and met with more businessmen and other politicians from the Allied States.
Retired General Cornelius would be doing the same thing at his home base Outpost Galveston, in Texas. The ocean community had become the hub for the Freedom opposition party. He had even organized his own mercenary army there, with over two thousand soldiers. They came from all over, a hodgepodge of armed military contractors, former US service men and women, and militia soldiers from other outposts that had defected to Galveston.
The troops had access to the best weapons, armored vehicles, and even aircraft thanks to Cornelius’ strategic alliances with former manufacturers and military contractors.
Not only did Cornelius plan to grow these forces and take back the West Coast and abandoned cities by augmenting them with a conscripted army if he was elected, he intended to use low-yield nukes. His strategy would turn several cities into radioactive craters despite the fact there was little evidence the cities were anything more than hospices for the dying Variants.
Beckham looked at another set of doors that led to the banquet room where he had married Kate eight years ago. His worries dissolved at the happy memories from that night when they were surrounded by so many friends and family members.
But he also thought of the friends and family members that hadn’t survived to see their union. He pictured the faces of Captain Rachel Davis, all of the lost souls from Team Ghost, firefighter Meg Pratt, Sergeant Jose Garcia, Lieutenant Colonel Ray Jensen, and so many others.
No matter how many times he thought of his brothers and sisters, their faces and voices continued to fade away. His mind, like his ailing vision, was another wound from the war. It didn’t help that he and Horn weren’t the young men they’d been when they were fighting on Team Ghost.
Beckham was forty-two, and Horn was pushing forty.
Another door opened across the hallway, and Beckham glimpsed President Ringgold in the briefing room. She had also aged since B
eckham had last seen her. That was just six months ago.
She was under extreme stress trying to keep the country together and ensure her legacy continued with the election of Vice President Dan Lemke.
The retired admiral was the best hope, in Beckham’s opinion, for a bright future—a future he was here to discuss today.
She shook hands with S.M. Fischer. The oil tycoon left the office, putting his cowboy hat on as he entered the lobby. He walked over to Beckham and Horn with two of his bodyguards flanking him.
“Captain Beckham?” Fischer asked in a southern drawl that matched Horn’s.
Horn stepped up with his arms crossing his swollen chest and his chin up.
“Yeah,” Beckham replied.
Fischer held out a hand. “S.M. Fischer, pleased to meet you.”
“I figured that’s who you were,” Beckham said, shaking his hand.
“Ah, I’m honored to hear that,” Fischer said. He glanced at Horn. “And who is your friend?”
“Master Sergeant Parker Horn,” Horn said, keeping his arms folded over his chest. He finally reached out when Fischer extended his hand.
“You boys here to meet with Ringgold?” Fischer asked.
“We’re here to meet with the president of the Allied States,” Beckham replied.
Beckham waited for Fischer to give him the reason for coming over to say hello. Less talking and more listening was the best strategy he had picked up over the years when he wasn’t sure if he could trust someone.
“She’s an impressive woman,” Fischer said. “I’m grateful for the military support she has lent my growing oil operation. They have been helpful in dealing with the Variants terrorizing my fields in Texas, but I’m hoping for more to eradicate this threat once and for all.”
Beckham nodded.
“I’m told I can expect even more support from Vice President Lemke,” Fischer said.
“He’s a man of his word,” Beckham replied.
“Glad to hear that. I’m curious to hear what General Cornelius has to say about the diseased bastards though,” Fischer said. “What do you boys think of him?”
Extinction Cycle: Dark Age Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 4