Extinction Survival Series (Book 3): Cost of Survival

by Browning, Walt

  “I’ve got this,” the pilot said, holding the heavy metal canister with his good hand.

  “Outstanding,” Carver said. “Stack up behind me.”

  Carver pulled out a compass and got his bearings. They moved as a group, with Shrek leading the way.

  Shrek’s reaction in the stairwell gave Carver pause. He bypassed that door and moved further down the corridor. Carver noticed the motif of the building was painted with brightly-colored hues of aqua blue and marine green. It was the happiest looking hospital he’d ever been in.

  They found a second stairwell and quickly descended. With each successive flight, Shrek became more and more upset. By the time they got to the main level, the Mal’s hair was stiff on his back.

  “Gonzalez. How much time until Osprey One is on station?”

  After a brief call, he replied. “Ten minutes.”

  “We stay put here until then. I don’t want to expose our position until they’re overhead.”

  The group huddled quietly. Occasionally, the faint screams of the infected found their way into the stairwell. The Mal stood uncomfortably next to Carver, its head swiveling side to side the entire time.

  “Shrek’s not too happy, is he?” Keele asked.

  “No. Waiting isn’t his strong point, but it’s not like we have a choice.”

  The group jumped when a nearby shriek sounded. It was close.

  Gonzalez became quiet and put his hand over his earbud, blocking out any external noise. “Red Team, this is Viper One. Osprey One is overhead, ready for extraction. Over,” he heard.

  “They’re overhead,” Gonzalez said.

  “Tell them we’re moving. Give them our pause and let them know we’ll be at the pickup point in under ten minutes,” Carver replied.

  Gonzalez relayed the message and gave Carver a thumbs-up. “They’re ready. Viper One will provide cover.”

  “All right. Let’s hope we don’t need Everly’s skills.” Carver went to the door and let Shrek lead them. “Let’s do this.”

  Shader opened the door and held it back, allowing the others to move out. He’d bring up the rear.

  Carver moved left, following his compass in a generally southern direction. The L-shaped hospital faced north and east. He’d prefer they use a rear door to escape. The less time they spent outside, the better. They’d also bypass a chain-linked fence that separated the front drive from the rear of the building.

  They moved in single-file past the main reception desk, where Carver briefly stopped. The circular workstation had a nautical theme. Tropical colors of orange, green, and purple formed waves on the walls. A large glass-enclosed room was set up nearby, made to look like an aquarium. A display of colored tiles with fish and other aquatic life covered the floor.

  “What kind of hospital is this?” Carver muttered.

  Gonzalez heard him and was about to reply, when a high-pitched roar exploded from a hallway ahead. Ten steps more, and they looked down a corridor with furniture stacked up against a set of locked double doors.

  Shrek recoiled as bodies slammed against the barrier, causing the stacked cabinetry to rattle and the doors to flex.

  A second screech, this time from behind them, caused the group to turn.

  A pack of Variants had just scurried into the main corridor. Seven infected men and women all turned and momentarily stared at the group before they let out a primal scream. The furniture down the side hall began to buckle as the mass of infected all pushed in unison, responding to the cries of the creatures.

  “Fuck them,” Potoski said. He turned and faced the seven Variants, then depressed the trigger on his machinegun.

  The belt was loaded with ball ammunition and tracer rounds. A nearly solid red streak shot forth, the heavy bullets tearing into the monsters as they sprinted toward the group. He sent over forty of the one hundred rounds into the seven creatures. Most found their mark, shredding limbs and chewing through organs and bone.

  They went down, the bullets rendering their bodies useless. Even with all the damage, a couple of the Variants continued to growl, lying in a pool of their own black, chunky blood. Only a brain shot seemed to kill their infected minds.

  After the final round had been fired, a brief silence followed. But it was a temporary reprieve. The screams from the double doors erupted once again, and if possible, they were even more intense.

  “Move!” Carver yelled.

  The war dog team walked quickly away from the carnage and toward another hallway, followed by the rest of the helicopter’s survivors. Placards marked the path to the building’s receiving docks. Carver bet that would lead them to the back of the building and the southern side of the structure.

  “Hey, Carver. You know what hospital this is?” Gonzalez asked as they approached the corridor.

  “Not a clue.”

  A giant crash came from behind them. The barrier had given way and the screams of the infected echoed back at them. Carver turned, just as a wave of tiny Variants poured out of the corridor.

  “It’s a children’s hospital,” Gonzalez said, pointing back at the mass of infected.

  “Jesus. It’s kids,” Carver said.

  Hundreds of infected children spilled into the hallway and spread out. They searched for the human prey they knew was nearby. They quickly found Carver and the group. Several of the little monsters let out a ravenous, horrific cry. The group turned as one and sprinted forward, their eyes crazed with hunger.

  They were thin from lack of food. What was left of their clothing was a mixture of street garments and hospital gowns. Their faces were malformed by the poison that coursed through their veins, and black lines traced across every piece of their exposed flesh. Their limbs were deformed, as if punished by rickets or palsy. They moved like they were on bent or broken stilts, their joints projecting out of their bodies at impossible angles. They ran with a loping gait, their bent legs springing them forward with each stride. Even with their apparent physical flaws, the mass of tiny monsters ran with unimaginable speed.

  The leaders of the pack were teen-sized creatures. Behind them were the younger ones. Some had limbs missing or pieces of flesh ripped from their torsos. Carver’s first thoughts were that the weaker ones were preyed upon by the older, stronger ones, donating parts of their bodies for the nourishment of the pack.

  In the back, came the truly pitiful ones. Toddler-sized creatures and Variants without limbs. In one case, an infected child crawled out of the hallway, dragging its useless legs behind it. The poor thing had very likely been a paralyzed patient in its former life.

  “Aw. This is so screwed up,” Potoski said.

  “Everyone. Run,” Carver hissed, pointing up the side hallway. “RUN!”

  — 15 —

  Viper One

  Over Rady Hospital

  Everly

  Last year we said, ‘Things can’t go on like this’, and they didn’t. They got worse.

  ― Will Rogers

  “Red Team. This is Viper One. Come in. Over.”

  Nothing. Everly began to worry. The last transmission he’d heard was nearly ten minutes prior. Gonzalez had broadcast their pause and that they were moving to the back of the hospital. Several attempts to raise the group proved futile.

  Movement from inside another building caught Everly’s attention. The glass-faced hospital was surrounded by multi-storied structures, and he’d seen a flash through several of their windows.

  He dropped down and hovered a few dozen meters from the top of the hospital. The nearby windows were brightened by the morning sun. He struggled to see inside.

  “There!” he grunted.

  He spun the Viper and faced the glass where shadows passed quickly, just far enough inside to avoid the bright sunlight.

  “This is Viper One. I have movement in the three-story building directly north of your location. Over.”

  “Copy that, Viper One,” Donaldson replied. “Still no sign of Red Team. Over.”

  Everly
’s finger played with the trigger on his visor-slaved cannon. He watched the shadows through his camera. The ebony specters popped into view, then disappeared just as quickly. It was impossible to estimate how many there were.

  “Osprey One. This is Red Team. We’re ready for extraction. Over.”

  Everly could hear the panic in the young Marine’s broadcast. Multiple battle rifles echoed in the background as he radioed their position.

  “Red Team. This is Osprey One. What’s your pause? Over.”

  “This is Red Two actual!” Shader barked back. “We’re coming out of the loading dock! Cover our asses! Over!”

  Everly banked around to the back of the hospital, just as Red Team exfiltrated out one of the receiving dock’s doors. He knew immediately that they were in trouble as they performed a classic hasty retreat. A pair of riflemen would stop and fire back into the building while the rest ran by. A second pair would take up position a few dozen meters back and the first pair would be covered as they retreated.

  Everly dropped down and hovered over the escaping men. He faced his Viper at the giant bay door where, in the prior world, semi-trucks would pull in and drop their loads.

  A wave of tiny, infected creatures rolled into the receiving dock. He looked through his camera and saw they were children. Small infected and deformed kids. He hesitated to fire.

  “Shoot, dammit!” Shader yelled into his radio.

  Everly switched to infrared, turning the oncoming horde of kids into dark, faceless blobs moving across a white background. This helped, and he found himself depressing the trigger on his three-barrel rotary cannon. The advancing creatures exploded as the twenty-millimeter slugs ripped through their plague-ridden bodies.

  He refused to think about the carnage, nor the targets he was destroying. He just fired. The front of the advancing wave was smashed into chunks of hot, infected flesh. They fell like stalks of wheat under a sickle’s blade but were quickly replaced by a second front, which was just as quickly destroyed.

  Everly stopped his assault when the HUD flashed a warning that he was nearing the end of his ammunition. He’d emptied most of his magazine, yet he could see more of the infected spilling into the loading dock.

  “This is Viper One,” he called. “I’m low on twenty-millimeters. What’s Red Team’s pause? Over.”

  “This is Red Team,” Gonzalez replied. “We’re a hundred meters out, moving toward the parking lot. Over.”

  “Copy that, Red Team. Keep your heads down. Over.”

  He switched his controls to the side-mounted weapon.

  “FOX TWO!” he yelled into the radio.

  Everly fired one of his newly-acquired Hellfire missiles, centering his shot on the middle of the bay.

  The explosion of the twenty-pound, thermobaric warhead created a massive fireball that enveloped the garage. Flames exploded out of the loading dock’s door, incinerating everything within.

  “This is Viper One,” Everly announced. “Red Team, you should be clear for evac. Over.”

  Shader replied. “That’s a hard copy and a big thanks, Viper One. Red Team advancing to pick-up point. Out.”

  Everly lifted and planned to circle the area. He wasn’t ten seconds into overwatch, when his girlfriend’s voice barked in his ear.

  “Red Team. This is Osprey One. I have massive movement coming up from the south. Be advised that you have less than a minute before the LZ is overrun. Over.”

  Carver heard the announcement. He was stunned. How could so many have just appeared out of thin air? He looked ahead to the parking lot where the Osprey had landed, its rear door down on the ground. He estimated their speed and distance to the craft. They weren’t going to make it.

  “Give me your radio,” Carver said, pointing at Gonzalez’s back, where the VHF radio was mounted.

  Keele grabbed Gonzalez’s SINCGARS (Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System) and passed it to Carver. He quickly replaced his broken unit.

  “This is Red One actual,” he broadcast. “We can’t make it in time. We need another rally point. Over.”

  “This is Osprey One. I’m going airborne. Over.” She gave Everly a warning to clear the airspace above her.

  Donaldson gave the twin Rolls-Royce engines power, and the V-22 lifted into the air. She tilted the craft forward, moving toward the mass of creatures that was rapidly advancing.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” she said to herself.

  There were thousands of them.

  She flew over the running monsters, following the advancing line funneling out of a ravine south of the complex.

  There were plenty of buildings where the Variants could have come from. Zero-lot line homes and apartment complexes covered the Southern California desert as far as the eye could see. They weren’t coming from any of these places. The line was solid as the fastest movers outpaced the slower, older, or injured of the creatures. They seemed to be emanating from the green space that flanked the main highway. It wasn’t much more than a strip of trees and overgrown grass, but thousands still poured from that particular spot.

  Donaldson spun around the tree line, searching for a break in the foliage. Something massive had to be down there. Something that could hold a small city within its walls.

  Flying the twin-rotor craft and searching the ground proved difficult.

  “Parker,” she said over the internal radio. “See what’s down there.”

  Parker was one of the newer members of the group. He’d worked in construction before the infection, but his time in the service prior to that had made him Donaldson’s backup crew chief. Now, he manned the M240 machine gun since Potoski had taken the door gunner job on the downed Seahawk.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Parker replied.

  Donaldson hovered over the spot out of which Variants continued to stream. She slowly rotated over the area and was rewarded when Parker finally found the source of the infected.

  “Got it,” he said. “It’s a storm drain.”

  Of course! she thought. The desert couldn’t absorb the occasional heavy rains which caused flooding throughout the rapidly growing city. Extensive storm run-off drains crisscrossed San Diego. Most of them paralleled the interstate. They directed the occasional monsoon along the highway system and out to sea. They were everywhere and large enough to hold hundreds of thousands of the infected.

  “This is Osprey One,” Donaldson began. “The Variants are coming out of the storm run-off drainage system. I’d advise avoiding the freeways. Over.”

  Carver grabbed his map of the area. They were surrounded by buildings and pinned in by the expressway system. Sharp Hospital lay north and two major freeways bracketed their position to the east and west. They had nowhere to go.

  He looked at his squad. They were banged up and in no shape for a sustained, rapid march. They had to get out quickly or they’d be overrun.

  “Sir. What about finding a vehicle and driving out of here?” Gonzalez asked.

  “Thought of that already. Did you notice the roads? They’re packed, likely from people bringing their infected to the hospital. We’d never get past the congestion.”

  “Isn’t there somewhere else Donaldson could land?” Keele asked.

  The Marine had been struggling with his wounded foot. The bandage he’d wrapped around his lower leg was beginning to stain with blood. With all the tactical movement they’d just done, Carver was surprised his emergency suture job hadn’t completely unraveled.

  Carver looked up from his map and scanned the surrounding buildings. He settled his view on one in particular.

  “Osprey One. This is Red One actual. Do you copy? Over.”

  “I copy, Red One actual. Over.”

  “There’s a parking garage about a two hundred meters to our west. Can you land there? Over.”

  “That’s a negative. The top deck is covered with cars. I don’t have the space to set down,” Donaldson said, before hesitating. Off in the distance, there was a landing pad attac
hed to a different parking garage. It connected to the main hospital and had been used to helicopter in trauma victims.

  “Red Team. I have a landing pad north and east of you. About seven hundred meters. That’s our closest rally point. Over.”

  Carver didn’t have a detailed map of the hospital campus. He vaguely remembered that the children’s hospital shared its campus with Scripps Hospital. The medical campus must have been a magnet for the injured and infected, which explained the mass of Variants they were dealing with.

  “Osprey One. I need directions. Over.”

  “Copy that, Red One actual. Go north through the parking garage you wanted me to land on. Cross the far street and make a left when it dead ends at the front of a red brick building. You’ll pass the campus’s HVAC building, then go right. You’ll see the parking deck to the north. Take the southeast stairwell. It’s the only one that will get you to the top. That’s where the helicopter pad is located. I’ll be waiting there. Over.”

  “Hard copy, Osprey One. Through the parking deck, across the street to the dead end. Turn west until past the campus plant, then right. Parking deck to north. Take the southeast stairwell to the top. Over.”

  “Outstanding, Red One actual. I’ll be flying overwatch until you reach the deck. Godspeed, Red Team. Osprey One, out.”

  The sound of the advancing horde began to reverberate off the surrounding buildings. Carver nodded to the men.

  “Let’s move with a purpose, gentlemen. Shader, you have the rear. Shrek and I will be up front with Gonzalez. You can hear what’s coming up behind us. Let’s not stick around and find out how many we’ve pissed off this time.”

  Carver grabbed the diminutive Marine by the shoulder and pulled him along. They walked quickly to the west and saw the gaping maw of the parking garage staring back at them. The dark space beyond the rising sunlight sat tomblike before them. They didn’t hesitate with Shrek leading them forward.