Extinction Horizon

-17-

A primal screech jerked Kate awake. The sound was oddly familiar, reminiscent of noises that had kept her up at night on her first trip to the remote jungle in Congo three years ago.

An involuntary spasm shook her body. She was so tired. What time was it? Where was she?

Another shriek followed. Then rattling metal. Kate jerked wide-awake, suddenly remembering.

She shot out of the chair she’d set up outside the observation window to the animal testing area. Rubbing her eyes, she scanned the dark, lab but only saw the silhouettes of frightened rhesus monkeys moving inside their cages.

Kate looked down at her watch. One hour and thirty-five minutes had passed since she’d infected the animals with the Hemorrhage virus.

And now the entire lab sounded alive. Metal cages shook. Shrieks vibrated throughout the space.

Kate hit the lights. A dozen set of crimson eyes instantly gravitated to her. Blood trickled down fur and bulging lips puckered into suckers.

“My God,” Kate said, bringing a hand to her mouth.

As soon as they saw her, the animals went crazy. They stuck tiny hands that were twisted into claws through the gaps in the metal bars, shaking the sides of their cages violently. A female on the bottom row speared her head into the front of the cage.

Kate watched in shock, her eyes darting from monkey to monkey. They weren’t all trying to break loose. Others were tearing at their own flesh, their swollen lips clamped down on a leg or arm as they fed.

Kate had seen enough. They were suffering, and the symptoms told her nothing more than she already knew. Under normal conditions she would apply sedatives, analgesics, or anesthetics to put the animals to sleep, but the risk of infection was simply too high.

Sitting down at the computer, she typed in her credentials and password. Next she brought up the terminate screen and with a few more simple commands, she implemented a procedure that would end the monkeys’ suffering.

Seconds later a hissing noise filled the room. It was one of the worst parts of Kate’s job, but she always forced herself to watch. Sacrificing animals was a necessary measure of viral research. A minute after the gas had filled the room the screeches had stopped. Furry bodies twitched in their cages as the rhesus monkeys struggled to breathe.

Kate picked up the phone and dialed Ellis.

A voice she hardly recognized picked up after a few rings.

“Hello?”

“Ellis, wake up. I need your help. We have some autopsies to perform.”

“What time is it?” he asked, his voice groggy and slurred.

“Time to work. I’ll see you in a few minutes,” Kate replied and then hung up. When she turned back to the window, every single monkey was dead.

The annoying tick of an antique clock replaced the dribble of rain off the rooftop. A single emergency light illuminated the clock next to Beckham with an eerie red glow. It was 0005 hours.

He’d listened to the piece click for the past four hours. Sitting next to it, he was starting to wish he could smash the wood with the butt of his MP5. But then again, the sound did distract him from other thoughts. Especially of those they’d lost.

Standing, he paced over to check the door. Riley stood there with his back to the wall and his shotgun angled at the floor, waiting.

They were holed up in one of the back offices. The room was furnished with several large metal tables, blueprints of some yacht that would never see completion draped across the surface. The infected man they’d captured lay unconscious in the corner of the room. Horn sat on an aged leather couch next to him, his foot still pushing down on the man’s chest. They had bound the man’s feet and hands with heavy cords, but Beckham wasn’t taking any chances. He’d assigned his friend the job of ensuring the creature didn’t get loose.

Behind them a half-dozen windows lined the wall overlooking a small brick building and narrow alleyway. The boat yard was beyond that. White tarps flapped on the concrete from where the infected had tossed them earlier. A fire escape gave them access to a ladder if they needed a quick exit.

The sound of clawed hands and feet scrabbling over the roof had faded hours ago. The silence was awful. He knew the creatures were still out there, waiting. The boat yard had been quiet when they arrived.

Beckham looked back at the clock. It was 0011 hours now. The space was their AO for the night. He was exhausted, but he knew he couldn’t let his guard down. Fuck it, drive on, he thought. They had to get the specimen back to Plum Island. It was their only shot of getting back to Fort Bragg.

Walking across the room, he crouched next to one of the windows and peeled back a dusty curtain. The alley below looked empty, shadows creeping across the concrete from the light of a half moon. None of the creatures were in sight.

Relieved, he stood and moved over to the couch. The captured man’s breathing was more labored now, fluid crackling in his lungs. Beckham took a knee.

“Careful,” Horn said. He grunted and pressed down harder with his boot.

Nodding, Beckham swept his flashlight over the young man’s body. The white beam revealed the same thing they’d seen back in Atlanta; pale, almost translucent skin with blue veins bulging, blood flowing freely from the ears, mouth, nose, and eyes.

Waving the light in front of the man’s eyes, Beckham checked to see if he was conscious. There was no response. His yellow, slit-shaped pupils gazed up toward the ceiling, blank and detached.

“Still out,” Horn whispered.

“Keep an eye on him,” Beckham replied, standing with a groan. He walked over to Wolfe, who sat by himself in the other corner of the room.

“You doing okay?” Beckham asked. He wanted to make sure his team was ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Wolfe looked up, the red glow from the emergency light illuminating his dirty visor. He stared back blankly.

Beckham sighed. He knew the look was from battle shock. It had set in the moment the soldier had seen the corpse of his friend back on the stairs.

“Listen. I need you to stay focused. We can’t stay here forever.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, the sound of crunching glass reverberated from somewhere inside the building. Beckham froze and watched the other team members stiffen.

Another noise followed a few seconds later. This one sounded like it was coming from the alleyway. It was a combination of frantic scraping and then shuffling. Almost like a desperate animal climbing the bark of a tree to get away from a predator.

Moving back to the window, Beckham slowly pulled back the curtain, knowing exactly what was making the noise. The alleyway was dark now, the moon hidden by a dense set of clouds. He scanned the shadows for any sign of the creatures.

A blur of white suddenly flashed across the exterior brick surface of the adjacent building. It disappeared before Beckham could focus on it.

He swallowed. Hard. Cautious not to be seen, he dropped to the floor and crawled under the windows to the other side of the room. Then, standing, he gripped the shades in between his gloved fingers. The scratching grew louder, the scraping closer. The faint moonlight bled into the room.

Slowly he moved the curtain to the side. There was motion on the exterior of the building. He squinted and focused, but his mind couldn’t grasp what his eyes were showing it.

Across the alley, the entire brick wall looked alive. Dozens of infected scaled the surface. They gripped the brick with twisted hands that resembled claws more than fingers. And they moved with inhuman speed.

The sight made Beckham’s skin crawl. He instantly moved his back to the side of the window, peeking out as discreetly as he could.

“What is it, boss?” came Horn’s voice.

Beckham didn’t reply. His gaze was locked onto the building. The first of the group reached the edge of the rooftop. A woman dressed in tattered, blood-stained clothes stood there, sniffing. She tilted her head, finding a scent. Using her legs as springs, she broke into a run across the ledge, her body twisting and jerking. The creaking of her joints echoed in Beckham’s ears.

“Jesus,” he muttered. How was that even possible? They were sick, infected with one of the deadliest viruses on the planet, but somehow it had transformed them into something stronger, faster, deadlier—the perfect human predator.

“We have contacts all over the next building,” Beckham whispered into the comm. Wolfe shuffled to his feet, bracing himself against the wall. Riley stepped away from the door, his shotgun angled toward the window.

Beckham brought a finger to his visor. “Radio silence.” He looked to Horn who stood over the victim, his boot still firmly planted against the man’s chest.

The scraping sound grew louder. Beckham glanced out the window again and watched several of them perch on the ledge of the opposite building. They reminded him of gargoyles with the moonlight reflecting off their pale translucent skin. Several of them were naked, and he could see gaping wounds on their arms and legs. He focused on a man missing his chin, lips, and the bottom of his nostrils. The man lifted what was left of his nose toward the sky, sniffing with the cavernous hole in the middle of his face.

Was it trying to pick up a scent? Beckham couldn’t pull his gaze away from the creature. Seconds later, the rooftop was filled with the infected, and all of them were sniffing the air. Searching for prey.

They were hunting.

Beckham saw exactly what the pilot must have seen hours earlier, and now knew why he couldn’t put the Blackhawk down on the roof.

Blinking, he focused on one of the creatures curled up into a fetal position on the roof ledge. The creature scratched the concrete frantically, paying no attention to the others.

Beckham clenched his jaw shut as it suddenly tilted its head in his direction with bloodshot, crazed eyes.

Shit.

Did it see him? He stumbled backward, nearly tripping over his own feet. Crouching, he kept low, his heart racing.

They saw me. Fuck. They saw me. Memories of Tenor’s final moments crept into his thoughts. He couldn’t imagine what the man had felt as the virus quickly took over his body.

Beckham wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to him or any of his remaining men. He focused. Pushing himself up, he crouch-walked over to Riley.

There was another faint scuffling sound. This one came from inside the room.

Beckham almost didn’t hear it at first, but when he finally made it to the door it was unmistakable. He paused, spinning to see the victim struggling under Horn’s boot.

“Shit. We have a problem,” Horn whispered. “Guy’s waking up.”

The prisoner moaned as he twisted his body under the weight of Horn’s foot. Joints snapped and clicked, the creature fighting to get free of its bonds.

“Fucking shoot him,” Riley blurted, reaching for his own gun.

Before Horn could retrieve his tranquilizer gun the prisoner’s eyes widened with awareness. He blinked rapidly, his vertical pupils flickering in size as he focused on the man holding him down. When he locked onto Horn his face twisted in an agonized expression. His lips puckered and smacked.

The creature let out a deafening scream that shook the room. Horn silenced the man with a boot to the face, crushing his skull in one powerful stomp.

Beckham flinched at the sight, but he knew Horn had no other choice.

The poor bastard’s arms twitched before going limp. Beckham held his breath, waiting for the infected across the alley to come crashing through the window.

Silence washed over the space as the men prepared for another attack, their weapons angled toward the windows and door. Beckham could sense the tension in every simple sound. The crunch of Wolfe’s suit, a muffled cough from Riley, and the measured heavy breathing from Horn—the team was petrified of the monsters hunting them.

But the monsters never came.

Beckham moved back to the window. Maybe they had moved on? The scraping had stopped.

Realizing he was still holding his breath, he exhaled and then slowly pulled back the curtains. Staring back at him through the glass was the faceless man that had minutes ago stood on the rooftop across the alley. Beckham didn’t have time to think about how the creature had managed to jump across. In one rapid movement it speared the glass with its skull and then pulled away.

A black hole was all that remained of what had once been a face. The man’s lips and chin were completely gone. A mustache of teeth marks around the gaping wound made Beckham’s stomach roll. Like a gigantic leech, the man pressed the swollen hole against the window.

Beckham jammed his MP5 against the glass and pulled the trigger. The rounds shattered the pane and sent the creature flying back into the night, tumbling toward the alley below.

“Run!’ Beckham screamed. He stumbled away and listened to the creature’s body hit the ground. It sounded like a shotgun going off. Shattering bones always did.

The man released one final shriek of misery that sounded different than the mindless and hungry high-pitched screams of the others. There was a hint of despair.

A hint of humanity.

It was 3 a.m. when Kate and Ellis began the autopsies on the rhesus monkeys. Normally Kate would have left the job to Ellis. He had studied forensic pathology, but she wanted to get as many tissue samples to Toxicology as possible.

The work required great attention to detail, and the exhaustion from lack of sleep was slowing Kate down. She started by removing the internal organs of a female rhesus monkey and examining them delicately. There were no signs of internal hemorrhaging, as she’d suspected.

With her eyes starting to glaze over she took a step back from the table. Blinking several times, she placed the scalpel down and mentally checked off everything that needed to be performed. She couldn’t lose her focus now, and she couldn’t make a mistake.

Get a grip, Kate, you’re almost there.

Ellis craned his helmet in her direction, noticing she had backed away from her table. “How are you doing?”

“Fine. Just needed a breather. How about you?”

“Good. I took several biopsies. Fixed them with Glutaraldehyde then embedded them in paraffin wax. Just waiting for them to dry now.”

“You’re faster than I am,” Kate replied.

“I’ve done this countless times.”

Kate nodded and moved back to her table.

An hour later the samples were ready for the microscopes. Kate brought the data up on the main display. Together they huddled around the screen. They’d used a historical staining and immunohistochemistry procedure on some of the samples. The results weren’t surprising.

As Kate had suspected, the morphology for the endothelial cells was mostly intact. The virus wasn’t attacking the cells like other strains of Ebola.

“Confirms our theory,” Ellis sighed. “The virus isn’t causing massive endothelial cell death, and thus the vessel structures are surprisingly uncompromised.”

“But that doesn’t explain the other changes. Time to dig deeper. Let’s get these to Toxicology.”

Kate and Ellis spent another hour preparing the tissue slices for the technicians in Toxicology. Several of them were on standby, and Kate used the intercom to notify Compartment 1 that the samples were on their way.

“This is Rod,” came a calm and clinical voice that reminded Kate of Michael.

“Good morning Rod, this is Doctor Lovato from Compartment 3. We have tissue samples coming your way.”

“Excellent. Any specific instructions?”

“Perform a complete toxic screen of every one of these samples. I’m looking specifically for traces of VX-99. I want to know how it works and where it shows up.”

“You got it,” Rod replied.

“Oh, and Rod,” Kate said. “I need this back ASAP.”

“Understood, Doctor.”

“Thanks.” Kate took her finger off the intercom and looked at Ellis. She needed some sleep. “I’m going to try and crash for a few hours.”

“All right, I’ll let you know if Toxicology comes back with anything before you wake up.”

Kate thought of the small twin bed back in her quarters. Her body was exhausted, but her mind was on fire with worry. There was simply too much to do and so much at stake. Sighing, she changed her mind. There was no way she was going to sleep with the world burning around her, especially with Beckham and his men risking their lives for her and everyone else on the island.