Extinction Horizon

-9-

It was 4 a.m., but Kate wasn’t sleeping when she heard the rap on her door. Her eyes were glued to the ceiling of the small room she used for overnight stays.

The door creaked open, followed by a voice just louder than a whisper. “Kate, you awake?”

“Did we get them?” She sat up and reached for the lamp next to her bed. The light spilled over the room and illuminated Michael’s exhausted features.

He nodded. “Let’s go.”

They passed the small break room at a brisk pace. No time for coffee.

By the time they suited up and reached the lab, her heart had started the climb to her throat. She could hardly swallow. She’d seen some horrible things in the past, but this was different. This time it had hit home. The constant flashbacks to patient zero at O’Hare replayed in her mind. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get the gruesome images out of her head. And the call with Colonel Gibson had only added questions, not answers about this new virus. The involvement of VX-99 deepened that mystery. Why had the scientists there been working with a weapon that was, by international law, not even supposed to exist? She knew little about the chemical properties, but had her doubts that it would actually destroy the Ebola virus.

“Ready?” Michael asked.

They stood outside the door to the BSL4 lab. Inside, the samples were already waiting in the biosafety cabinets. The next task would require a clear mind and the utmost patience. Kate sucked in a breath of filtered air, listening to the echo inside her helmet. A lot of people were counting on them, including her little brother. She needed to be strong for Javier. No. She had to be strong for Javier.

“Ready,” she said, flashing a thumbs up.

Michael keyed in his credentials, swiped his badge and waited for the glass doors to slide open. Kate had heard the hiss a thousand times before, but this felt different. She flinched when the doors parted.

“First things first. Let’s isolate the RNA,” Michael said.

Kate nodded, but she knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn’t scared of the risk of infection; she was scared of the events transpiring in Chicago just miles from where her brother lived.

They started working at separate stations in the sterile environment. Kate used a sample marked “saliva” and isolated the virus. Next, she began the painstaking process of disrupting the virus shells and separating out the RNA. The work was labor intensive, and by the time Kate finished, it was already mid-morning.

“How are you doing?” Michael asked.

“Almost there,” Kate replied.

He craned his head in her direction in response to her cryptic comment.

“Sorry,” she replied. “I’m almost finished purifying the RNA from these samples, and then I’ll prep them for the sequencer.”

“Good.”

The purification took longer than she thought, and she finished just before noon. De novo sequencing would map the entire genome of the virus. The machine was state of the art, with the ability to sequence thirty billion individual bases in a day. The Ebola genome had a relatively simple genetic structure, with only nineteen thousand bases and just seven genes, so it wouldn’t take long to get a result.

After setting up the sequencer, she joined Michael at his computer.

“Do we even know which strain Dr. Medford was working with?”

“Colonel Gibson claimed they were working on a cure for the new strain,” Michael replied. His voice was cold and clinical. That was always how he sounded when he was immersed in his work. “We should know by the end of the day.” He finally looked away from the monitor. “Let’s finish up in here, let the sequencer do its job. I want to call Jed for an update. Once the genomes are mapped, we can run them through the bioinformatics software and see if we can’t find a match.”

The program compared the sequence results with all genomes in both the NCBI and CDC database. The results would give her a better idea of what they were dealing with.

“A match,” Kate mumbled.

Her eyes connected with Michael’s ever so briefly. She wanted to see if she could get a read on the man. “Do you really think this is Ebola?”

His features hardened behind his visor. “Some of the symptoms are similar, but the behavior and some of their physiological changes don’t make any sense.” He shook his head and mumbled something Kate could hardly make out. “The lips. What could cause that?”

“I can’t get the images of Jim Pinkman out of my head,” Kate replied. She shuddered inside of her suit.

Michael reached out with a gloved hand, stopping just shy of her shoulder. “We’ll figure this out, Kate.”

She focused on the sequencer. The boxy machine was busy mapping the genomes for the most deadly virus she had ever encountered, and the results had the potential to change the world forever.

The flight to Fort Bragg and a horrible night of sleep had provided Beckham with ample time to think. He was done with the self-pity, the feelings of failure. He was a goddamned Delta Force Operator, not some grunt. He hadn’t risen to the rank of master sergeant by being a weak-minded coward. He’d done so by leading. If he could have traded places with Spinoza, Edwards, or Tenor he would have.

In a heartbeat.

But Delta operators didn’t get the luxury of living in a science fiction world. Their world was war. There were no time machines or do-overs. They didn’t have the luxury of second chances. The wrong decision resulted in missing limbs, death, and ruined lives. All he could do now was honor their memory and make damn sure his men hadn’t died in vain.

Horn and Riley were waiting for him on the stoop outside his quarters. They both looked exhausted and acknowledged him with slow nods.

“How are the girls?” Beckham asked.

“Good,” Horn replied. “Wife’s really upset. She keeps asking what happened. I didn’t know how to respond.”

Beckham nodded. Sheila was a tough woman, the kind that could keep his best friend in line. Horn had hardly been able to convince his wife to let him go to the Keys for a few days, but that was before…

“Ready for this?” Horn asked.

Beckham nodded. The other operators would all be there. They would all know by now that Spinoza, Edwards, and Tenor were gone. Every single one of them had lost other brothers-in-arms. It was part of the job, part of their life.

They walked the remainder of the path in silence. Horn gave Beckham a short pat on the shoulder when they arrived and then opened the door. The sound of a blaring television greeted them. The other teams were huddled around the monitor, watching a news report. Colonel Clinton stood behind the wood podium, his arms crossed, his face set in a stoic grimace.

Horn let the door shut quietly behind them. The metallic click prompted every head to gravitate in their direction. Beckham had entered the room knowing what to expect, but when he saw the grim looks and downturned faces, the loss struck him even harder. He’d lost half of his team. Half of the men he’d lived and bled with for years.

He wanted to drop to his knees, to scream at the top of his lungs. Instead, he held his head high and led his men down the aisle of leather chairs. Every step prompted a new expression of sympathy.

“Sorry about your team, Beckham,” one operator said.

Another shed a tear and whispered a prayer.

There were other noises too, a faint voice from a reporter on the news. “Zombie apocalypse takes Chicago by storm.”

Beckham nearly halted in the middle of the aisle. Had he heard right?

Two other operators offered sympathetic nods as he walked by. He heard one of them say, “No way these things are real zombies.” Beckham instantly picked up on the hint of reservation in the man’s voice. He sounded unsure. Operators were never unsure.

Beckham focused on a headline scrolled across the screen, wondering exactly what the hell was going on.

“How could it spread that fast?” Riley asked.

“They better shut that fucking airport down,” Horn said.

Riley let out a controlled laugh. “They better send us in to shut down the entire fucking city.”

Beckham didn’t laugh. He kept his focus on the television, resisting the urge to clench his fists. He couldn’t stop thinking of the briefing and the lies they had been fed.

The solid rap of Clinton’s palm on the podium pulled everyone back to the center of the room. “Listen up,” he said, scanning the room with focused eyes. The room immediately went silent; a sign of respect that only a veteran commander could conjure in so little time.

“I’m sure you are all aware of the losses Team Ghost incurred yesterday morning. Staff Sergeant Carlos ‘Panda’ Spinoza, Sergeant Will Tenor, and Sergeant Jim Edwards were all killed in action. Funeral arrangements are pending notification of next of kin.”

Beckham looked at the floor. An emptiness he hadn’t felt since his mother’s death filled him, like a vacuum had suddenly sucked out his insides.

“Let’s take a moment to remember our fallen brothers, men who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country,” Clinton said. He bowed his head, the glare from the overhead LEDs glowing off his shiny skull. “Your service will never be forgotten.” Clinton formed the sign of the cross and then swept his gaze across the faces of the assembled men. Beckham caught a glimpse of what he thought was grief. It was gone in the blink of an eye.

“Like so many other times in the past, we don’t have time to mourn our brothers. A situation, as you are all aware, has developed in Chicago. A suspected outbreak of the Ebola virus has hit the city. Brass is saying this is unprecedented. That we should prepare for the worst. I’m going to be honest. I’ve never seen anything like this in my career.” He looked at the television. Another headline crept across the bottom of the screen.

Beckham felt a chill run through his body. How the fuck was that possible? The infection had shown up in Chicago less than twenty-four hours ago. How could it be spreading so fast?

He then remembered Tenor, the confusion on his face—the fear. And then he remembered the symptoms: the vomiting, the red blotches, the bruising and the hemorrhaging. The man had been infected for minutes, maybe less, before he started to change.

“Brass is working on contingency plans in case this thing spreads farther,” Clinton said before adding in a deeper tone, “I suspect it will.” He paused and reached for the remote as a new line of text scrolled across the display.

“Governor Paxton declares a state of emergency and activates the National Guard to help with evacuations,” a female reporter said. “Anyone in the following counties, please make your way out of the city in a calm and—”

Clinton shut the television off and faced the teams. “Steel yourself. This is only the beginning. For those of you that need to get caught up on sleep, I suggest doing so.” He grabbed both sides of the podium, his hands forming fists as he gripped the wood. “Any questions?”

Riley raised his hand, waiting for Clinton to acknowledge him with a nod before saying, “What will our role be in all of this, sir?”

The colonel shook his head. “That’s the first damn question I haven’t been able to answer in my entire career. Would you believe that?”

A few of the operators chuckled nervously.

“Son, I haven’t a damn clue.”

By sunset the post was in chaos. Transportation aircraft roared overhead as they took off into the clouds, their rumble fading as they crossed the darkening horizon.

Beckham watched them disappear and pulled a cigarette reluctantly from Horn’s pack of Camels. The burly man faked a smile, showing off a broken tooth he’d gotten when an Afghani kid had thrown a brick at their team. The boy couldn’t have been more than seven years old, his face a mixture of smeared dirt and blood. He was lucky Horn hadn’t turned his M27 on him. Beckham had seen a trigger-happy Ranger kill an Iraqi teenager after a similar incident. The boy had also tossed a brick, but when he ran the soldier mowed him down.

The image would be with Beckham for the rest of his life.

They took a seat on the curb, watching the sky. Like the crimson sun drifting across the horizon, he found his mind drifting through the violent images of his past. His mind had become a photo album of death, and he was filling it with more images every day.

“You okay, Boss?” Horn asked. He took a long drag from his cigarette and held the smoke inside his lungs with his jaw clenched shut.

Beckham nodded. “Just remembering.”

“I get those moments, too. We all do.” Horn exhaled the cloud of smoke over his shoulder and flicked the cigarette onto the concrete. He reached for another and said, “Tenor, Panda, and Edwards all knew the risks, man. And they trusted you. We all trusted you, and me and Riley, we still do. You got us out of Building 8. If you had listened to Caster, we’d all be dead.”

Beckham nodded again. This time it was more to himself, like he was trying to justify his thoughts.

“We’d all give our lives for one another,” Horn added. He hunched over, placing his hands on his knees and stretching his back.

“Why is the pain always worse when it’s inflicted on one of our brothers?” Beckham ran a hand through his hair. “I mean, I’d rather take a bullet than see you hit.”

Horn nodded and took a short drag from his cigarette. Exhaling the smoke through his nostrils, he said, “Because that’s what it’s like to be a family. I feel the same way about Tasha, Jenny, and Sheila. I’d rather burn in hell for eternity than see them suffer.”

“I’d give anything to see my mom and dad again,” Beckham replied.

They sat there in silence for a beat until Horn chuckled and slapped Beckham’s knee. “We need to get you a girlfriend, man. You know that? You need a woman. A real woman.” Horn laughed as he stood. “You know what my wife has always said.”

Beckham knew he was trying to lighten the mood, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to laugh with his friend. “And you know what I’ve always said.”

“You love Delta Force more than you could ever love any woman,” a deep voice said mockingly behind them.

The metal door to the barracks slammed shut. Riley stood on the top step, holding a bottle of Jameson. He was laughing hysterically. Gripping his chest, Riley chuckled some more. “Do I need to remind you of Kitty’s words? You know, that dancer from The Bing. She said you’re the best looking soldier she’d ever seen.”

“Don’t start,” Beckham said. “I’ve had my fair share of flings and girlfriends. They never worked out because I care more about this,” he pointed to his uniform, “Than some yoga instructor or smoking hot barista.”

“That’s not the only reason,” Horn remarked. He flashed a skeptical glare at his friend and flicked the ash from his cigarette onto the ground. “You’re afraid to get close to people because of your parents. You’ve been this way since I met you.”

A pair of streetlights outside of their barracks clicked on as the last hint of the sun faded away under a carpet of darkness. The darkness matched the feeling rising like a tide inside of him.

“You’re right man, but it’s just easier that way. I have my men to worry about. I don’t need a woman. Complicates things. Can’t have some girl on my mind when I’m trying to shoot bad guys.”

Riley chuckled. “I like complicated women.”

“You mean like that one you thought was a girl? Now that’s complicated!” Horn said, bursting into a deep laugh. He spied the bottle of booze in Riley’s hand and said, “Give that here.”

“Fuck you, man,” Riley replied. “That was an honest mistake.” He downed two gulps and then handed it off.

Horn raised it in the air and said, “Tonight we drink for Tenor, Edwards, and Panda.” He took a long swig from the bottle and ran a sleeve across his mouth before pushing it toward Beckham. “It’s the least we can do.”

Beckham grabbed the bottle. “To our fallen brothers,” he said. He gulped down the whiskey and felt it burn as it slid down his throat and settled in his gut. Tonight he welcomed the burn.

The three drank in silence, watching another plane take off in the distance. As the ground rumbled, Beckham knew everything was about to change. That the world was never going to be the same. What had happened in Building 8 was only the beginning. The next day was going to be a big day for the United States military.