Extinction Age

-6-

By mid-morning, a blanket of calm had settled over Plum Island. The only sounds were the sporadic chirp of a bird and the faint rap of footsteps. Beckham heard everything, his senses still on full alert. He hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours but couldn’t seem to shut off his mind. After everything he had been through, it wasn’t going to be easy to let his guard down enough to get some shut-eye.

He sat with Kate on the steps of Building 1, watching the cleanup crews carry bodies draped with white sheets into the medical building. Neither of them spoke. Being next to each other was enough for now.

Beckham wondered how long the quiet would last. He wanted to reach out and put his arm around Kate, to pull her tight, but he feared her soft touch could break him, so he pretended he didn’t need it. He tried to feel something—wanted to feel something—but beyond the lingering pain of losing so many of his brothers, there wasn’t much that seemed safe to feel besides anger.

Anger was a dangerous emotion. Like a house built of cards, the rage threatened to blow everything away. He’d gotten pummeled by a Variant at Bragg and taken shrapnel to the shoulder in New York, but it was always the mental wounds that hurt the worst. They went deeper than the bruises and cuts that tattooed his skin. He was a Delta Operator, yes, but no amount of training or experience could prepare him for the anguish that came with the loss of so many of his brothers, not to mention the civilians they couldn’t save.

“Will you stay now?” Kate asked, breaking the long silence.

“I hope so,” he said. “Need to heal.”

Kate scooted closer, just inches away from him. He almost flinched. She read his body language with a single, critical look.

Seeing her expression, Beckham said, “Sorry.”

“No, don’t do that. You don’t apologize. You’re a hero, Reed.”

Beckham shrugged; he didn’t feel like a hero. Before he could react, Kate brushed up next to him, placing her head on his shoulder. The fresh stitches screamed at him, but instead of pulling away, he leaned closer.

“I’m sorry about Jinx and the others,” Kate said. She stared ahead now, her eyes following another white-draped body on its way to the medical building.

“He died fighting. Can’t ask for anything more than a soldier’s death,” Beckham said. He looked to the north, toward New York City, and thought of Jake and Timothy. The cop and his son they’d rescued from Manhattan during Operation Liberty were safe on a destroyer now, sailing somewhere away from the monsters. He took solace in knowing that Jinx’s death hadn’t been for nothing. In the end, they had saved a few precious lives.

Kate let out a sigh and said, “What comes next?”

“Was about to ask you the same thing.”

“Back to the lab.”

Beckham shifted, trying to relieve the pressure on his wounded shoulder.

“I’m going to design another weapon,” she continued. “Something that will kill every last one of the Variants.”

“That’s what we should have done a week ago,” Beckham said. His anger and frustration bubbled just below the surface. “That son of a bitch, Kennor. In some ways he’s no better than Gibson. If he would have just listened before Operation Liberty. And don’t get me started on Lieutenant Gates, that piece of shit. Called in an airstrike and left us out there to fight an army of Variants numbering in the hundreds of thousands.”

Kate placed her hand over his and gently squeezed his battered knuckles. Then she kissed him on the cheek. “You’re a good man, Reed.”

Hearing those simple words drained the anger from him. It flowed out with a breath and was gone. He pulled Kate toward him and kissed her with a soft ferocity.

Their lips parted and Beckham bowed his forehead against hers. “You get to the lab. I’m going to go check on Riley and then sleep for a day or two, if I can.”

Kate smiled, flashing the dimples that made his heart race. She gave him another kiss that kindled an emotion he had spent most of his life trying to bury. Now, after all hope seemed lost, it had arisen from the grave. He decided then to embrace it. To stop hiding behind his armor and weapons. He could be more than just a soldier.

Beckham gave Kate a meaningful look, and reached down to help her up.

“Where’d you find her?” Kate asked as they walked up the stairs. “The woman you brought back.”

Beckham stopped mid-stride, remembering the nightmarish lair beneath New York.

“Reed?”

He shook his head and turned partially toward her.

“If you’d rather not talk about it, I understand,” Kate said.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We found her in the sewers. There were hundreds of survivors down there. Maybe more. I don’t know.”

Kate squinted, her features tensing. “What do you mean there were survivors?”

Beckham could see she was trying to understand, but nothing he said could describe the true horrors his team had stumbled upon beneath the streets. There was no simple way to explain what he’d seen, and the thought of admitting to her that he’d killed the human prisoners made him feel queasy.

“Reed, you can tell me. I can handle it.” Kate swept a strand of brown hair behind an ear. “I need to know.”

Beckham didn’t want her to feel responsible. The burden she carried was already heavy enough to send a normal person over the edge. She’d blamed herself for the Variants since the deployment of her bioweapon. If she knew what they were doing and what he had tried to stop…

“If I’m going to design another weapon, I need to know everything you do. I’m assuming what you saw is no different than in other cities. I already know they are going underground to avoid sunlight.”

“That’s not the only reason,” Beckham replied, a bit too fast. He closed his eyes, sucked in a breath and exhaled. “They store their food down there, Kate.”

When he opened his eyes, Kate had taken a step back. “Store their food?” Her blue eyes widened as she realized what he meant.

“We discovered a lair of human prisoners. There were hundreds of mutilated survivors that the Variants were feeding on. We saved Meg, but… I was forced to kill the others.”

Kate cupped a hand over her mouth. She whimpered into her palm and then peeled it away. “I’m so sorry.”

Beckham wrapped his arms around her. “It’s not your fault. The blame rests solely on that bastard Gibson.”

“No,” Kate said, pulling away. She sobbed and wiped away a tear. “If VX9H9 had killed all of the Variants, this would never have happened. There wouldn’t be any lairs. You wouldn’t have had to kill anyone.”

Meg jerked awake and reached for her axe that wasn’t there. The movement sent the most awful pain of her life searing through her legs. She gritted her teeth, but a whimper slipped through. Behind blurred eyes, she saw a bank of lights. Her mind went blank a moment later, the agony shutting off her brain.

When she woke again, she felt nothing. If it weren’t for the nurse staring down at her, she would have thought she was dead. A warm, reassuring smile touched the sides of the young woman’s face.

“This might sting,” the nurse said. She reached forward with a needle that looked more like a small knife.

Meg didn’t bother protesting. She couldn’t even if she wanted to. She watched as the nurse inserted the tip into her arm. It hurt as bad as she thought it would. Her muscles knotted, tensing around the needle. She blinked, a tear falling from her eye, and then there was darkness.

The third time she woke, she was alone. Her body felt strange, like it wasn’t hers anymore. She knew it was the drugs. In the past she would have refused them. She was an all-natural kind of a gal, but a lot had changed in the last month. Her husband was dead, and the world was full of monsters. She drew a deep breath in an attempt to calm her nerves. The door squeaked open a moment later and a bearded man with neatly parted brown hair entered her room.

“Hi, Meg, I’m Dr. Hill,” he said. He approached her bedside with his eyes locked on a clipboard.

She tried to sit up by scooting her legs. That hurt worse than the needle. She grimaced as the pain passed.

“Probably want to sit still,” Hill said gingerly. “Your legs are pretty torn up. I stitched them back together, but honestly, I’m not a surgeon.” He flipped a page over the clipboard and continued, “I was a physical therapist working at Fort Bragg. Got lucky and was rescued about a week ago.”

She glared at him incredulously. A physical therapist had stitched her up? She didn’t want to see what was beneath the white covers.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

“Good news is you’re going to be fine. Will take some time for your legs to heal, but once we get you hydrated you’ll start feeling better.”

Meg craned her neck to the left and looked out the window. A patrol of armed soldiers walked down a concrete pathway.

“Where am I?”

“Plum Island,” Hill replied. “You’re safe now.”

Meg let out a weak laugh and closed her eyes again, drifting back into the perpetual nightmare inside her head.

Fitz scoped the beach with his new MK11. It was mid-afternoon and he was still on edge from the attack the night before. He played the crosshairs over the water, half expecting to see the pale flesh of a swimming Variant. After an hour of pacing back and forth, he finally took a seat on a stool and rested his aching body. He was fighting to keep his eyelids open, and his thigh muscles burned like he’d just finished a marathon. He desperately needed sleep, a deep tissue massage, and a shot of whiskey.

Scratch that. He needed a bottle of whiskey.

Just when he was starting to relax, his earpiece crackled.

“Tower 4, Command. We have a report of an unidentified ship drifting south in Gardiners Bay. You got eyes on?”

“Stand by,” Fitz said.

He walked to the edge of the box. This wasn’t the first report of a derelict ship. Vessels dotted the horizon like shells on a beach. Their crews had either abandoned them or were dead.

Hoisting his rifle onto the ledge, he set the bipod and pointed the sleek black muzzle toward the bay. The horizon warned of a mid-afternoon storm. Swollen gray clouds rolled across the sky, a sharp contrast to the calm teal waves. Fitz squared his shoulders, and then roved his aim slowly to the right until he saw the dull gray of metal.

“Got eyes,” Fitz said. “Definitely a ship. Stand by for identification.”

He zoomed in expecting to see a freighter, or perhaps a yacht out of Martha’s Vineyard. Instead of a luxury cruiser, he saw a Navy destroyer. And it wasn’t anchored, either. A powerful wake trailed the boat as she split through the water.

“Command, Tower 4. I have eyes on a Navy destroyer with the markings USS Truxtun, 103. She’s coming in pretty fast.”

There was a hard pause of static, enough to tell Fitz that command was already planning a strategy to blow the boat out of the water if it got too close. Unless Lieutenant Colonel Jensen had some hellfire missiles Fitz didn’t know about, that wasn’t going to happen.

The electronic wail of a siren sounded from the public address system before Fitz could get his thoughts straight. He brought his eye back to the scope. The ship appeared to be on a collision course with the island.

Fitz chambered a round and centered his sight on the bow—as if a shot from his gun would do anything. Still, the cold steel in his hands made him feel better. He scanned the deck of the boat for contacts as it came into focus, but there wasn’t a single person in sight.

A ghost ship.

He imagined a Variant at the helm, crazed and starving, its yellow eyes focused on the island. His heart rate increased as the whine of the emergency sirens blared louder.

“Command, Tower 4. No hostiles. Please advise. Over,” Fitz said.

The whoosh of helicopter blades pulled Fitz’s gaze to the north. Strike teams raced across the tarmac and piled into the trio of grounded Blackhawks. By the time he moved back to the other side of his tower, the birds were airborne. The mechanical chatter of their rotors masked his labored breaths. He watched them race across the sky toward the Truxtun.

“Tower 4, stand by for orders,” the operator finally replied.

Fitz brought the scope back to his eye. The ship plowed through the water at full speed, whitecaps bursting around the bow. Echo 1 intercepted it first. The crew chief didn’t hesitate. They opened up with the M240 and sprayed a line of projectiles across the ship’s path. Echo 2 and 3 flanked the destroyer as it shot by, circling and giving chase.

Fitz followed the ship’s progress with his scope. It looked like it was going to hit the eastern peninsula of the island. “Come on,” he murmured. “Stop, you son of a bitch.”

He watched, astonished, as the new threat continued barreling toward the island. That was the thing about the apocalypse; you never knew what would happen next.

The mechanical whine of gas-powered turbines pulled Fitz from his thoughts. Echo 1 had opened up on the bow of the Truxtun. Whoever was steering the ship didn’t change course. The destroyer charged right through the hail of gunfire. Echo 2 and Echo 3 unleashed a barrage on the port and starboard sides of the ship.

Why would a Navy ship ram the fucking island?

If they wanted resources, all they had to do was point their Tomahawk missiles and Lieutenant Colonel Jensen would wave a white flag.

Nothing made sense… until the ship shot by the shoreline and continued on a straight course toward the Connecticut shoreline. The Blackhawks seemed just as surprised as Fitz. They hovered over the water like oversized bees, their blades buzzing as they waited for orders.

Then Fitz understood. The ship had never been on a collision course at all—there was no one at the helm. The Truxtun was truly just a ghost ship.

Fitz watched the destroyer continue toward mainland as the choppers returned to base. When the ship was only a speck on the horizon, he collapsed on the stool, took in a long breath, and exhaled.

“Command, Tower 4. Anyone got any whiskey?”