Extinction Cycle: Dark Age Box Set | Books 1-4

by Smith, Nicholas Sansbury

  Teams were spread out between the buildings and even delving into the tunnels. By now he would have expected more than the few scattered gunshots they’d heard.

  A voice called over their channels. “All teams be advised, this is TF Alpha Command. Recon Teams Delta and Lambda have found evidence of webbing network in drainage tunnels located near the main strip.”

  Wong navigated past a charcoaled transport truck, then past tables and benches scattered around a small restaurant advertising lobster rolls.

  Then he froze.

  Timothy swung his rifle around at the sound of rustling.

  A shadow moved beyond a pile of rubble.

  Recon Sigma advanced toward the chunks of concrete and pipes where Wong had spotted the movement. Ruckley signaled for Boyd and Wong to take one side as she and Timothy took another to flank their target.

  As soon as Timothy crept past the broken concrete, a shrill cry erupted.

  A creature with wormy lips shot toward him, claws outstretched. He squeezed his trigger, sending a burst of rounds toward the monster. The shots missed, sparking into the concrete.

  Jaw snapping, the beast slammed into Timothy’s chest, catching his body armor. He fell backward, losing his grip on his rifle. His helmet smacked against the sidewalk, and his NVGs were knocked aside as the creature’s mouth snapped for his face.

  His hand caught the monster under its wrinkled neck, and he pushed up, muscles straining. Saliva sprayed over his face as the creature’s teeth gnashed together. Gunfire cracked around him as the team took on a pack of the beasts.

  He kept one hand on the neck of the Variant and reached toward his holster. Then he swung a fist hard into the face of the monster, connecting with a sickening crack. That did the trick. The creature reared back, and he reached back down and grabbed his father’s pistol—the one Beckham had returned to him from Portland.

  One trigger pull put a bullet through the enraged Variant’s open mouth. A second took off half the jaw. The monster slumped over his chest.

  He shoved it off, recovered his rifle, then put his NVGs back in place. Rushing over to Ruckley, he helped her finish off another starving beast. Then they turned their sights on the monsters after Boyd and Wong.

  She pulled out her knife and stabbed the creature pinning Boyd down. Timothy sprinted to help Wong who was being slammed against the ground by a juvenile.

  He strained to hold off the attacks, parrying with his rifle. Claws clanged against the weapon.

  “Hold still, dammit,” Timothy whispered. He had to aim for a weak spot where its arm met its shoulder. Rounds lanced into the flesh, forcing it to turn. He put a burst into its face. The monster collapsed, letting out a long wheeze, and went still.

  Timothy reached down and helped Wong up.

  “Thanks,” Wong said.

  “They know we’re here now,” Ruckley said in a low voice. “Back into combat intervals.”

  Other gunshots far to their south sounded into the night as they spread out. Maybe TF Bravo squads, but no one in TF Alpha.

  Timothy managed his breathing, his heart rate slowly returning to around normal. He made a goal of having it lower when they reached their first objective, the Stratosphere. More teams would rendezvous here as they prepared to take Vegas’ main strip.

  The team closed in a quick clip, moving fast. Timothy prayed the gunfire had gone unnoticed by the other monsters in the area, but he knew that was wishful thinking.

  He scoped the Stratosphere as they approached.

  Timothy saw something that looked out of place, like a gargoyle. At first, it was hard to tell if it was his mind playing tricks on him through the spotty NVGS.

  He gestured for Ruckley’s attention, then pointed up at the roof.

  He flipped up his NVGs and used his scope to zoom in on a shape, twisted and malformed, like a Chimera or Variant, silhouetted against the stars.

  It suddenly cranked back its head and let out a blood-curdling shriek.

  Ruckley signaled for the team to find cover, but Timothy froze. The rest of the team ducked behind the rubble of a bombed-out restaurant, but he couldn’t take his eyes of the rooftops.

  Another creature appeared, howling. Then a third and a fourth. Soon they stood in lines like an army of screeching statues, their cries forming an unholy chorus.

  They were coming from behind too, and Timothy slowly turned at a view that took his breath. Every rooftop along his sightlines was covered by the twisted silhouettes of monsters.

  — 11 —

  Fitz led Teams Ghost and Spearhead along with Corrin out from the belly of the DHC-5 Buffalo they had taken from Calgary. A lone Black Hawk was parked in the desert. Command had said the bird would be waiting for them. Beyond it, a good ten miles away, he saw tiny pinpricks of light pierce the black of night.

  “They know we’re here,” Ace said. “We have to hurry.”

  Fitz picked up his pace. Getting to Vegas wasn’t the only thing on his mind.

  As he neared the chopper, the side door open. A shorter figure stepped out.

  “Fitzie!” Rico called out.

  Fitz ran over to her and wrapped her in his arms, savoring the feeling of relief that her embrace brought. While they were only apart for less than a week, it felt like a year with everything that had happened.

  “It’s so damn good to see you,” he said, pulling away slightly.

  “You, too,” she said, leaning in for a quick kiss.

  “Come on, guys, you’re going to make me sick,” Ace said.

  Dohi cracked a half grin.

  Fitz wished he had some alone time with her, even just five minutes. The look in Rico’s eyes told him she must be thinking the same thing. That brief embrace was not enough.

  But professionalism and the seriousness of this mission nixed that opportunity.

  “Let’s load up,” Fitz said.

  A crew chief passed headsets to Ghost and Spearhead. The reverberations of the Black Hawk’s engines shook into Fitz’s core as they took off, headed straight for downtown. Rico popped a piece of gum into her mouth.

  As she chewed, she narrowed her eyes on Corrin. “So that’s the Chimera? You sure we can trust him or it, or whatever you’re calling this thing.”

  “Him,” Ace said. “And yes, he saved our asses more than once.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” she said.

  “He’s an asset,” Fitz said.

  Daugherty took a seat next to Ace. “He’s also the reason Banff got attacked.”

  Rico shot Fitz a hard look.

  “The New Gods implanted a GPS tracker in him using some of their weird tech,” Fitz said.

  “I assume it’s gone,” Rico said.

  “Yeah, the Canadians sent some scouts out with it. Sent it far, far north into the mountains. It’ll throw the New Gods off our trail and should save Calgary.”

  The chopper drew closer to the strip, and the team fell into silence, mentally preparing for action. Outside the open door, sparks of gunfire lit up the blanket of black canvassing the ruined city. Each flash was like a miniature lightning strike, illuminating the twisted ruins of what had once been Paris Las Vegas’ Eiffel Tower or the cratered dirt where the Bellagio’s fountains had long-since evaporated.

  The crew chief guided the M240 back and forth, searching for a target, as the chopper soared over the apocalyptic landscape.

  “Reaching LZ in two,” said the primary pilot over the comm channel.

  Fitz checked over his weapons again. Rico stopped chewing and took out a wad of gum. She tucked it under her helmet and gave Fitz a dimpled smile.

  Fitz smiled back and then scanned the team.

  Ace seemed to be mumbling to himself. The older man wasn’t particularly religious as far as Fitz knew, but maybe after everything he had seen, he was warming to the idea. Dohi sat like a statue, calm and collected as usual. Next to Dohi, Corrin wore body armor the Canadians in Calgary had reluctantly given him. If he was nervous, he didn’t
show it.

  Neilson remained stoic, but Toussaint had her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling in deep breaths as if she was trying to collect herself. Daugherty stared out the window, his hands pressed against the plexiglass, bottom lip shaking slightly.

  Rico called over a private channel to Fitz. “You sure they’re up for this?”

  She nodded subtly toward Spearhead.

  “They haven’t been in the field as long as we have, but they’re up for the task,” he said.

  Rico seemed to take his word for it. They both knew they needed the help with the loss of Lincoln and Mendez.

  The chopper slowed and began its descent toward the University Medical Center.

  This Prophet better still be here, Fitz thought.

  After flipping down his NVGs, he saw the cubic shapes of one building with a sign announcing “Trauma” and “Children’s Hospital”. The second building they had been briefed on had once been the UMC’s burn center, but was reduced to piles of broken brick, twisted girders, and gravel.

  “That’s one less place to check out,” Ace grumbled over the comms.

  The pilot swooped in next to the Trauma and Children’s Hospital units.

  Their primary LZ, the hospital’s helipad, was on top of a parking garage next to the building. But half the parking garage had collapsed, spilling concrete and rusted vehicles.

  “Primary LZ is no good,” one of the pilots reported. “Headed for our secondary.”

  The chopper banked toward the parking lot. Humvees, ambulances, military transports, and other vehicles were situated in mostly orderly rows around the asphalt. Between them was a wide space with the broken frames of tents and defunct air filtration units.

  Fitz knew from their briefing this had once been a quarantine site during the beginning days of the first war.

  The rotor wash from the descending chopper kicked up a few ragged chunks of tent fabric still clinging to the metal poles, and the wheels thudded onto the concrete. One of the crew chiefs waved them out while the other covered them with the M240.

  “Radio silence,” Fitz said.

  They fanned out between scattered cots and crates of abandoned medical supplies, taking firing positions. Fitz’s nerves sparked with electricity as the chopper lifted off, disappearing into the black of night. He searched the cars and vehicles parked around them, his eyes roving for a target.

  As the thrum of the rotor blades disappeared with the bird, the echoing chatter of gunfire and low explosions from grenades boomed in the distance.

  Fitz tuned into the public channels to hear frantic voices calling for reinforcements. Others requested medics. The fresh recruits that had joined the mission were having a hard time dealing with the sporadic skirmishes.

  All the more reason for Ghost and Spearhead to find the Prophet quickly.

  Fitz signaled to the others, gesturing to see if anyone had seen any contacts.

  They shook their heads.

  So far, nothing.

  Fitz’s stomach tightened. He had expected some kind of welcoming party, especially with the intrusion of the chopper. Had the science team been wrong about the Prophet’s potential locations? Or had the New Gods’ leadership already escaped?

  He signaled for Dohi to take point, then for Toussaint and Daugherty to take rearguard. The others fell in beside him.

  They filtered between the abandoned vehicles and quarantine supplies left in the parking lot, making their way toward the entrance to the UMC. The tall glass doors and windows leading into the atrium had long since been shattered. Crystalline glass pebbles crunched under Fitz’s blades.

  Dohi made it into the hospital’s atrium first, taking shelter behind a column. He signaled that he still had no eyes on hostiles, but the others needed to join him.

  Ace and Rico hurried behind Fitz, escorting Corrin for the Chimera’s protection. Behind them came Spearhead.

  When Fitz made it to Dohi, his NVGs adjusted to the low light inside. From instinct, he covered his nose with his wrist to mitigate the stench of death and sour fruit.

  He pulled up his shemagh scarf to cover his face. Little good that did, but at least it made him feel like he was doing something.

  Shouldering his rifle, he stepped into the vast two-story atrium. Long vines hung from the ceiling, pulsing and squirming. Webbing stretched along the walls as if it was the vascular system of some giant animal.

  Vines snaked through skulls and ribcages of desiccated corpses that had long since drained of any living matter. Fitz scanned the escalators and stairs wrapped in webbing. This place was huge. It would take several hours to search the place from basement to top floor.

  He turned back to Spearhead and the rest of Ghost. They would have to split up. It was the only way to find the Prophet before the battle being waged in the streets of Vegas cost the Allied States too much in lives and time.

  Pointing to Spearhead, he gestured for them to start on the second floor, taking the stairs. Then for Ghost, he pointed to another stairwell at the back of the atrium. From the old building maps the science team had scrounged up, Fitz knew those stairwells would take them to the basement, where they would find the morgue, storage facilities, and research labs inside the hospital.

  Neilson led Spearhead up the stairs. Their boots slurped on the webbing covering the floor.

  Fitz followed Dohi toward the steps that would take them to the basement. He strained to listen for any growls or clicking joints. But all he heard was the drip of water and creaking in the walls between the distant sounds of the ongoing battle.

  The team descended into the basement.

  In the depths of the building, it was too dark even for their NVGs. No light penetrated the corridor, forcing Fitz to flip up his optics and turn on his barrel-mounted light. The others did the same. White beams of light pierced the cloak of black, revealing patches of webbing and the occasional knot of tendrils formed over a long-dead body.

  Dohi halted, raising a fist, then signaled he had seen movement in a room to their left.

  Fitz felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Corrin, eyes glued straight ahead. Corrin pointed toward the room Dohi had indicated, then at his flared nostrils.

  You can smell them? Fitz thought.

  As if reading his thoughts, Corrin nodded urgently toward that door, his limbs trembling.

  At Fitz’s signal, Dohi went in low. Fitz followed, clearing Dohi’s blind spots.

  A growl exploded from the back of the room. Fitz raised his rifle, the light revealing two beasts with wormy gray lips, yellow eyes, and bony armor.

  Juveniles.

  He blasted their armor, rounds punching into the flesh of the first monster. The second leapt out of Fitz’s aim, but Dohi unleashed a burst that took off a chunk of skull.

  Clicking joints caught Fitz’s attention, and he aimed toward the webbing-covered ceiling. A third beast they had missed before crawled like a spider over the webbing, dropping toward them.

  It landed between Dohi and Fitz. Dohi went for his hatchet, and Fitz slammed the stock of his rifle into the juvenile’s jaw, cracking bone.

  Corrin lunged in from behind, using his claws to slit the sliver of unprotected flesh between the armor plates of the juvenile. Blood pumped out and the creature collapsed, jerking.

  “They have a weak spot there,” he said.

  “Damn,” Ace said. “I’m really starting to like this… guy.”

  Fitz signaled to advance into the room.

  Flashlight beams danced over the stainless-steel doors of body-sized drawers. Two huge metal slabs stained dark by blood were at the center of the space. Taut vines laced into the drawers, and Ace pulled one out to reveal a corpse that had fed those vines.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of this hellhole,” he said.

  Dohi was about to open the door leading out of the morgue when the comm channel crackled to life.

  He signaled for Dohi to pause.

  “Ghost One, Spearhead One,” Neilson
said, his words firing quick as an automatic rifle. “We got contacts! Need backup! Now!”

  ***

  Azrael walked through the lines of two-meter tall banks of supercomputers covered in red vines at his Citadel. The air was sweltering and choking with humidity. This had been the birthplace of his communication network, back when he had relied on manmade computers.

  He no longer needed most of them, although they had kept a few personal computers around for pedestrian tasks. The world of information technology he had created relied not on silicon computer chips, but rather engineered neurons, such as those in the behemoths that towered at the end of the two-story computational lab.

  The bulbous mastermind pulled on red vines and let out long, rattling breaths, filling the air with a fetid odor.

  Scions and human faithful alike moved about the space, using a few of the personal computers that Azrael still needed operating. Loyalists monitoring the communication network relayed updates on the battle in Vegas as well as their operations elsewhere.

  He clasped his claws behind his back, soaking in the musty, bloody smell of the place. Along the walls, a few human prisoners writhed in nests of red. Their pained moans filled Azrael with great pleasure.

  A human kneeled in front of him. “Prophet, I have news of the special operations teams.”

  “Speak.”

  The loyalist bowed his head. “Our guards captured a group of soldiers infiltrating the University Medical Center.”

  A jolt of shock shook through Azrael, but he refused to let it show. “Were they coming after me?”

  “I believe so.” There was fear in the human’s voice.

  “The humans listening in our network truly did track down those signals,” Azrael said. “But that is exactly as we had expected.” He placed a claw under the human loyalist’s chin, forcing the man to look up at him. “Was this the infamous Team Ghost that our guards captured?”

  The human shook his head. “No, Prophet. It was another group with the Canadian flag on their uniforms.”