“Please, let me in!” he yelled.
He looked over his shoulder for the collaborators. If they were watching now, maybe they would think this was all part of his ploy to get them into the command post.
But even if the collaborators were convinced, six Variants prowling along the edges of the clearing didn’t seem to be.
One took a step forward, dropping to all fours.
“Please, help! I’m Timothy Temper! Jake Temper’s son!”
He slammed his fist against the door.
The pack of Variants moved in closer. More gunfire rang out from the rooftops. Screams erupted from the parking lot where the monsters feasted.
Timothy levered his hand back, ready to pound again. One Variants twitched its head as it looked between him and the dead monsters at his feet. It looked as if it was figuring out whether he was an ally or traitor.
Then the door flung open.
“Get in, kid!” someone said, grabbing his shoulder.
The door slammed shut behind him, and he was suddenly assaulted with a chaotic din. Down the halls people ran shouting orders. He saw one soldier covered in blood, gashes along both of his cheeks. Somehow the man was standing, but there were many others slumped against the walls. Several looked dead, with bullet wounds or terrible lacerations from Variants covering their bodies.
People in civilian clothes were among the dead and dying. Their wails and pleas for help echoed in the hall.
Timothy staggered forward, trying to look for someone in charge. Lieutenant Niven or Sergeant Ruckley. Someone who he could tell about Mount Katahdin.
He rounded a corner, the tile slick with blood. The trail led up a stairwell to the higher levels where the boom of gunfire echoed against the walls. A door suddenly opened behind him and screaming echoed deeper in the building.
Turning, he saw two soldiers carrying wounded inside. People pushed and shoved their way into the passage. A female and male soldier came inside last, both carrying children.
He recognized the woman. “Sergeant Ruck—”
A zap from his collar made him drop his rifle.
Another shock burned into his neck. He gritted his teeth, gripping the collar. The new group of Rangers and civilians made their way toward him. He reached up toward them, but they all passed him by.
“Ruckley!” Timothy wailed.
She suddenly stopped, handing the child off to another soldier. Then she made her way over to him. A soiled bandage was wrapped around her right arm and blood streaked down her chest.
“Sergeant,” he said. “I have information that…”
A third shock dropped him to the ground.
Timothy’s eyes teared up as he battled the pain. The collaborators wanted him to open the door, let them in. This was their reminder.
“Mount… Mount Katahdin,” he managed.
“Slow down, kid, where are you hurt?” She reached down and saw his collar, rearing back at the sight.
She screamed for back up while pulling out her pistol and aiming it at his head. Several soldiers ran over, rifles pointed down at him.
Outside, the creatures’ howls came in during the respite of gunfire.
Another electric shock coursed through Timothy’s body. Ruckley bent over him with her pistol.
“Mount Katahdin,” Timothy mumbled. “That’s where the collaborators are… that’s where their base is.”
“Hey, isn’t that Jake Temper’s son,” someone said.
Ruckley looked over her shoulder, then back to Timothy. She moved her gun away from his head.
“Jets are inbound, Sergeant!” shouted a deep voice. “Everyone, find cover!”
“Get him in the shelter,” Ruckley said.
Timothy felt people lifting him up. They carried him down the hall, and then down into a basement filled with frightened civilians. He was put up against a wall as another shock coursed through his body.
His vision blurred.
“Timothy, you still with me?” Ruckley asked.
He tried to nod but his muscles were locked rigid, and the pain was too much. Tears streamed over his eyes.
“Incoming!” shouted a voice.
Timothy thought he heard jet engines. He definitely heard the explosions and then felt the floor rumbling from impacts.
Cries. Maybe triumphant. Maybe out of pain.
The electric shocks came again.
Over his own agony, he suddenly focused on one thing—the image of Pete, Nick, Alfred and the other collaborators burning on the ground with their thralls.
Dust rained from the ceiling and the lights winked off, casting darkness over the shelter. The screams that followed were far from triumphant. These were pained wails of agony.
They faded away, but he heard one last thing before he passed out—the shriek of a monster.
— 26 —
Fitz crouched inside the shipping container with Team Ghost and the injured Wolfhounds that had nearly been butchered alive. The gunfire around the National Accelerator Laboratory had grown more sporadic.
But like vultures hovering over carrion, Black Hawks circled the base, their rotors beating the air with a vicious growl. From Fitz’s observations, he noticed the birds rotate out, presumably to stay fueled while maintaining eyes in the sky over the base.
It made no sense to Fitz.
Black Hawks were rare for the military, and how the hell did they have fuel?
The collaborators and Variants must have been more organized than command had realized out here.
He shook those concerns aside to focus. Those questions would have to be answered later. For now, he had to keep his team alive.
If he had kept track of the choppers accurately, there were only two now. The third had departed a few minutes earlier. That meant whoever these people were, they had a place to refuel in range.
Fitz risked peering out the cracked-open door. Using his night vision goggles, he spotted a chopper circling nearby, machine guns trained on the ground. He turned back to Rico and Ace who were crouched next to Martin. The Wolfhound still seethed in anger from the massacre he’d witnessed, his jaw clenched.
Mendez and Dohi were in the back of the container taking care of Hopkins and the other two injured Wolfhounds. The man with the missing legs had woken and groaned in pain. Dohi bent down to keep him quiet.
“We can’t stay here forever,” Rico said. “What’s the plan, Fitz?”
Fitz knew when she used his real name she was worried.
He was too.
The radios were jammed, they didn’t have the Rolling Stone tech, and with the Wolfhounds mostly dead and a new enemy out there, he wasn’t sure what the right move was.
“Your last plan got all my brothers killed,” Martin muttered.
“This ain’t our fault, amigo, and you’re starting to really piss me off,” Mendez said.
“Cool it,” Fitz said to Mendez. Then he looked at Martin. “You want to blame us, fine, but if you want to survive, you got to work with us.”
“So what’s your brilliant plan then?” Martin asked.
“Shoot those choppers down,” Mendez said. “I could plug ’em with a couple good shots.”
“Don’t think so,” Ace said. “Unless you got something more than that M4.”
“Look we still don’t even know who they are,” Rico said. “We don’t know what they’ve got in store for us.”
A chopper boomed overhead, flying in low as its spotlights traced over the ground. The light flashed inside the shipping container door.
“My guess is collaborators,” Dohi said. “Someone compromised our mission.”
“I have a bad feeling you’re right,” Fitz said.
Rico shook her head, like she didn’t believe it. “You ever seen collaborators with Black Hawks? Not me… Hell, the Allied States is low on those birds.”
Fitz started to reply, but then he heard the crash of metal.
The cannibals they had imprisoned in another shipping container ha
d escaped.
He pushed open the door a little wider and saw the cannibals streaming toward a thicket of trees to the southeast.
The two Black Hawks trained their spotlights on the people and flew over to intercept them.
We might not get a better chance, Fitz thought.
He rose on his blades and looked at Hopkins. The man’s eyes were barely staying open.
“Martin, grab Hopkins,” Fitz said.
Martin looked ready to protest, but then grabbed his comrade under an arm.
“Mendez and Dohi, you carry those two,” Fitz said. “Rico, rearguard. Ace, on me. We’re moving. Now.”
Mendez hoisted the Wolfhound missing his legs into a fireman’s carry, and Dohi gave the other soldier his shoulder, helping the man stand.
Fitz slipped out of the container, hesitating outside. The two Black Hawks soared above the trees where the cannibals had run.
Using the distraction, Fitz led the team away from the containers. Dohi and Mendez managed to keep up, but Martin lagged slightly behind as he helped Hopkins. Rico reached out to assist.
All around the campus, fires raged through the buildings from the attack. Oily smoke covered the stars and moon.
Fitz signaled to an office building blazing with flames. If his memory served him correctly, going inside and out the back would take them to the warehouses with the Project Rolling Stone tech. With every other route vulnerable to an attack from the choppers, he hoped the structure and the smoke would provide some cover. They would have to cross a wide-open space to get there first.
Dohi jogged next to him, practically carrying the injured Wolfhound. “I saw some Humvees earlier that had M240s behind those warehouses. If I can get to them, I might be able to take out those choppers…”
“Do it,” Fitz said. “You too, Mendez. Take those two Wolfhounds with you and get them secured.”
Dohi and Mendez took off.
A sudden blast of gunfire made Fitz twist. One of the choppers unleashed a storm of rounds into the trees. Screams sounded, but were quickly silenced.
The other Black Hawk peeled off from the woods and started toward Team Ghost and their injured comrades. Its spotlight raked over the ground, just a few dozen yards from lighting up Martin, Rico, and Hopkins. Those three would be the first to be smeared across the pavement.
The last sputters of the second chopper’s machine guns dissipated.
Fire churned through the top of the building ahead. Bricks and chunks of the walls from the crumbling upper floors littered the ground outside the office. Ace was the first there, and crouched with his rifle up. Fitz arrived a moment later and knelt behind a pile of bricks adjacent to Ace.
Dohi and Mendez had already disappeared through the blazing building with the other two Wolfhounds, but Rico, Martin, and Hopkins were still running to catch up.
They weren’t going to make it.
Rotor wash blew dust and cinder around the hapless trio.
In mere seconds, they would be dead.
Fitz brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired a burst at the cockpit of the Black Hawk. The bullets sparked off the metal and glass. The 5.56 mm M4 rounds couldn’t bring down a chopper. If he was lucky, the best he could do was score a shot that brought down a door gunner.
None of that was the goal, though.
The chopper swerved hard to its right, spotlight sweeping away from Rico and the others. Fitz ran before the light could hit him, using the smoke and scree for cover. Sweat poured down his face as he unleashed another salvo of frantic fire.
Bullets painted the office building in response, trailing after him. He rolled away from the spray, got up, and kept running. Ash and embers lifted into the air above when gunfire raked into the building again.
The second chopper soared far ahead, looking to cut him off. Caught in a pincer movement, he had nowhere else to go but into the building. He lunged sideways, throwing himself through one of the busted windows on the ground floor.
Jagged fragments of glass tore into his flesh like the teeth of hungry Variants. He slammed against a desk, then scrambled over broken glass with his gloved hands and knee pads.
Bullets punched holes into the floor and drywall. Some lanced dangerously past him, close enough he could hear them whooshing past. Dust sprayed from their impact, kicking up a foggy screen.
Fitz scrambled to stand on his blades. Smoke drifted along the ceiling, and he heard the sizzle of burning fire chewing through the building.
Coughing, he stumbled into a hall, ducking under a fallen ceiling beam still smoldering. The choppers were strafing the building, sending in gouts of random gunfire. He might’ve escaped their sight, but he wasn’t safe yet.
Fitz finally made it to the main hallway.
“Fitz!” Rico said.
To his surprise, she now had Hopkins on her back in a fireman’s carry. Martin was beside her, chest heaving. Ace had his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Soot covered their fatigues and flesh.
Fitz joined them and took point.
They jogged down the hall, all coughing through the smoke. Behind them, something crashed through the ceiling. Blackened ceiling beams and ash poured through a hole, along with furniture and dry wall still aflame.
“Go, go, go!” Fitz yelled to be heard over the inferno.
They made it to an exit that butted up against a street. Charred cars lined the road. Papers, still burning, fluttered over the asphalt.
Fitz cautiously stepped outside. He spied one Black Hawk patrolling on the southern edge of the building. The other bird sounded like it was on the opposite side of the office building, but he couldn’t see with the smoke blocking his view.
The third chopper hadn’t yet returned.
He signaled for the others to follow. With Rico now lugging Hopkins on her back, they moved faster, straight toward the building across the street.
The growl of helicopter engines suddenly grew louder. Dark smoke parted with a wave of rotor wash. The first Black Hawk appeared above, spotlights probing the ground.
“Move!” Fitz yelled.
They made it across and into the other building before the helicopter opened fire. Rounds pounded into the doorway, kicking up bits of floor tiles and breaking windows.
Fitz didn’t stop until they got to the opposite exit. Through the windows he saw cars parked in front of the warehouses where the SDS equipment should be. The Humvees Dohi had mentioned were farther down the road, but he didn’t see Dohi or Mendez.
“Master Sergeant!” a voice shouted.
Fitz turned to his right. Through a doorway leading off the hallway, he saw one of the Wolfhounds.
“In here!” Fitz called to the others as he jogged toward the injured man.
The Wolfhound was propped up behind a desk, his eyes glazed over. Next to him was his comrade, passed out from the agony of his severed legs. The rest of the room was covered in heavy desks and tipped over chairs.
“Dohi… and Mendez ran to the Humvees,” the conscious Wolfhound said. “They told me… they told me to tell you they’d be ready when you got here.”
Fitz squeezed the Wolfhound’s shoulder, kneeling in front of him. “Thanks. You hold tight, and we’ll get you guys out of here soon.”
Rico lugged Hopkins into the office. She was breathing heavily when she laid him down behind another desk. Martin settled in beside his brothers, and Fitz crouched next to a fallen cabinet.
Ace aimed his rifle out a window.
The helicopters lowered toward the street, spotlights searching the office windows, lighting up the hallways. They were low enough now Fitz could clearly see the forms of the door gunners and the soldiers working the spotlights.
The choppers hovered down the road, passing in front of the warehouses and vehicles, hunting like beasts. But they were hunting in the wrong place.
Down the road, Fitz saw Dohi and Mendez emerge in the turrets of the Humvees. They grabbed the mounted machine guns and fired on the choppe
rs.
Bullets sprayed through the open side doors and into the door gunners. One tumbled out, falling to the street.
The spotlights sparked and burst with incoming gunfire, going dark. Chunks of the glass in the cockpit gave way, fracturing and exploding. The Black Hawk tilted sideways, the pilot dead. The rotor blades broke against the ground, kicking up a wave of sparks as they fractured.
The bird erupted into flames, grinding across asphalt until it slammed against the side of the building. Smoke wafted from inside the other helicopter as it lifted away.
Dohi and Mendez swiveled their M240s and caught it in their stream of tracer rounds. The bird made it out over the trees past the warehouses before it suddenly dropped, disappearing beneath the canopy. An explosion burst from the woods.
Fitz motioned for the team to move out. Rico, Martin, and Ace helped pick up the Wolfhounds. They hurried past the wreckage of the first chopper. Judging by the mangled debris, Fitz doubted anyone had survived, but he kept his rifle up anyway.
Dohi waved from atop his Humvee. Mendez was propped up at the gun of the other. They were about twenty yards from the entrance to the office. Past where those Humvees were parked were the warehouses where Team Ghost would find the SDS equipment. Finally, they could finish their mission and go home.
Then a familiar sound boomed over the horizon.
The sound of another helicopter.
“Oh, shit,” Martin said, halting.
Fitz tugged Rico down against the ground. The rest of the team took cover next to them.
“Dohi, Mendez, get the hell out of there!” Fitz yelled.
The third Black Hawk raced over the burning woods, launching a volley of Hydra rockets that streaked through the smoke, and slammed into the warehouses.
Heat crashed into Fitz, and the concussive force from the exploding rockets swept over the group in a scorching wave.
Moments filled with thuds and explosions passed by in what felt like slow motion. Fitz couldn’t do anything but crouch down and pray.
Once the bird had expended everything it had, it tore away again.
Extinction Cycle Dark Age (Book 2): Extinction Inferno Page 33