Extinction Horizon

-24-

Team Ghost endured the short ride to New York in silence. They didn’t discuss Colonel Gibson or Kate’s bioweapon. They simply sat there listening to the human engineering of the Blackhawk. Each man was still and stoic, lost in his own thoughts.

Beckham unsealed the envelope Kate had given him. A simple note fell out onto his lap. He picked up the piece of paper and read it under his breath.

I hope this brings you some luck.

He turned the envelope upside down and a picture of his mom fell out. It was different than the one he normally carried, but it was her smile, her face.

“That Kate is one hell of a woman,” Riley said.

“How did she know…” Beckham said, his voice trailing off. He remembered telling her about the picture in the mess hall but nothing more.

“She asked me if I could find a pic of your mom,” Riley said. “Apparently the CDC still has access to the Internet.”

“Damn nice of her,” Horn added.

Beckham wiped away what felt like a tear. He kissed the picture and unzipped his CBRN suit, sticking the image inside his vest pocket. “Thanks, kid,” he said.

“Least I could do for keeping me alive all these years,” Riley replied with a wide grin.

The chopper banked hard to the right and swept across the smoke-clogged skyline. Beckham couldn’t believe his eyes. The Air Force had hit New York City hard.

The twisted outlines of ruined skyscrapers protruded out of a lingering cloud of smoke. Through the gaps, Beckham could make out the ruined city below. He had to clear his visor of dust just to ensure the sight was real.

It was, and it extended as far as he could see.

“Never thought I’d see one of our own cities like this,” Riley said. His normally chipper voice was cold and solemn.

“Better get used to it,” Horn replied.

“Stay focused,” Beckham said. “This is just another mission.” He said it, but couldn’t deny he was having doubts now. After telling Kate they would be safe, he wasn’t so sure. The destroyed city would harbor danger every step of the way. Unstable buildings, gas leaks, desperate survivors, and possibly even infected.

Gripping his MP5, Beckham chinned his comm. “What’s our ETA?”

The pilot responded after a brief crackle of static. “Five minutes. LZ is in Astoria.”

“Copy,” Beckham replied. He craned his neck for a better view. They flew over the harbor, moving southwest toward the city. Beckham twisted, his CBRN suit crunching as he looked out the side windows. He could see Manhattan now. Where dozens of skyscrapers stood only weeks before, there were now only piles of rubble. From the sky, the buildings looked like models.

Smoke crawled across the heaps of metal and brick, hiding the street level from view. Beckham clenched his teeth and checked Riley and Horn. They were staring intensely at the same view, their visors hiding their features.

“This is Gibson’s fault,” Horn grunted.

“Motherfucker’s going to pay,” Riley added.

Beckham didn’t reply. There wasn’t anything he could say to lessen the shock of what waited below. It was good that they had someone to blame—it made the difficult orders easier to justify.

The chopper descended as they approached Queens. Dense smoke hung over the harbor. Beckham held his breath and watched the water disappear as the smoke consumed the chopper. He mentally counted the seconds.

One.

Two.

In between blinks the Blackhawk emerged from the gray. Beckham flinched. The outline of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge exploded into view. The landmark had taken a missile to the midsection. Support beams sagged around the missing chunk of bridge.

“Watch out!” he yelled.

The pilot jerked the nose of the chopper toward the water and slipped under the ruined bridge, narrowly missing the jagged metal protruding under the concrete and stone.

“Change of plans,” the pilot said. “Command says Astoria is too hot. Plan B is Times Square.”

Beckham exchanged glances with Riley and Horn.

“Copy,” he finally replied.

They pulled away from Astoria and moved over the Upper East Side. The forest of trees in Central Park jutted out of another layer of smoke haunting the district.

A few seconds later they were hovering over the iconic Times Square. The billboards were dark, the electronic images absent. The scene made his stomach sink. Times Square was the symbol of American culture. The dark screens seemed to warn Beckham about the country’s future.

He forced himself to look toward the streets below. They were clogged with the burned hulls of vehicles. The charred remains of refugees trying to escape the city were all that remained. Beckham had seen similar scenes in the past. Iraq and Afghanistan. These had been desperate people trying to escape with their lives.

Looking closer, he saw there was something else down there, something that Beckham couldn’t quite make sense of at first. The street looked like it was glistening and wet.

“Get us lower,” he shouted.

As the chopper descended the view came into focus. And it took his breath away. The blacktop was peppered with puddles of blood. Mangled bodies lay in every direction, some even on top of one another.

“My God,” Riley choked. “There have to be hundreds of them.”

Twisted lumps filled every city street, blood seeping from the corpses and pooling on the pavement. VariantX9H9 had worked after all. Jensen didn’t need to send Beckham and his team into the field to see that. He could have simply had a pilot do a fly over.

“Get us out of here,” Beckham shouted. “We need a new drop location.”

“Copy that,” the pilot replied.

Beckham kept his gaze glued on the street. There wasn’t a living thing in sight. No loose pets or random survivors. Nothing but blood and death.

A few minutes later they were hovering over a ten-story building that had survived the bombs. The foundation was unscathed and Beckham authorized a landing. Riley secured the rope and they slid down to the roof.

Beckham was moving as soon as his boots hit the gravel. He swept his weapon side to side looking for targets.

“Clear,” he shouted, and waited for confirmation from Horn and Riley that their zones were good to go. It was hard to hear under the whup-whup of the blades. A second later, as the chopper pulled away, Horn and Riley called in a clear AO. Squinting, Beckham watched the bird ascend and race across the skyline, leaving them alone in a city that had hemorrhaged life.

Kate wasn’t sure what time it was. She could hardly think. Patient 12 was driving her nuts. She simply couldn’t make sense of the man’s recovery.

The questions just kept coming.

Had she somehow made a mistake? They hadn’t had the time for multiple tests, but those they had performed had worked perfectly. Her mind spun out of control. She was looking for a complex answer to a complex question, but maybe the answer was simple.

In that moment it hit her.

VariantX9H9 attacked the endothelial cells that made the Ebola virus lethal. The end result was the death of the host. Except in the case of Patient 12. In the chaos of the past few weeks she’d failed to remember that Ebola didn’t have a one hundred percent fatality rate. It didn’t kill all of its victims. The mortality rate was high, but there were always survivors. And Medford had weakened the fourth gene making the virus even less effective. So what if?

Kate gasped. The simple answer was right in front of her. Patient 12 was part of the small pool of survivors.

An anomaly, considering there were less than twenty patients at the facility.

Kate brought a hand to her mouth when she realized what had happened. The epigenetic changes from VX-99 remained. They were unchanged. The man was still a monster. From the observing technician’s reports, Patient 12 was still fast, agile and powerful, but he was no longer infected with Ebola. He’d recovered from the virus.

The implications were startling. Her synthesized virus was designed to attack the endothelial cells in the monster, causing massive hemorrhaging and death. That’s what should have happened, but in this man’s case he had survived the assault. Now he was more dangerous than ever.

Kate sprung from the lab station and hurried across the room. She had to warn Jensen so he could get a message to Beckham and his team. Her heart fluttered as she ran. Beckham had no idea what lurked in the smoke-clogged streets of New York. He was heading into a trap.

Beckham stood at the bottom of the fire escape from the building they landed on. He tapped his helmet, cursing. His radio wasn’t working. For whatever reason, the channel had cut out shortly after their insertion. He could get messages through to his team, but the connection to Plum Island had been severed.

Taking a step back, he made room for Horn and Riley, who jumped onto the concrete. They took up position with their backs to the walls and waited for orders.

Twisting around the corner, Beckham checked the street. The metal cart from a street vendor had been toppled over, the contents spilled over the concrete. Beyond were bodies and more bodies. Some were slumped against vehicles. Others were curled up on the sidewalk.

Nothing moved.

“Horn, you take point. Riley, you got our six,” Beckham said. He flashed an advance signal and Horn jogged onto the street with his rifle shouldered.

Beckham took off after him. As they moved, Beckham flicked his gaze high and low. If any infected had survived Operation Depletion, he knew threats could come from anywhere. He sidestepped around the body of a woman, her hands reaching toward the sky in a twisted curl. Her eyes were wide open and wild. She’d suffered a painful death.

Keep moving, he told himself. There wasn’t anything he could do for these people, but there could still be survivors.

They patrolled the street for the next fifteen minutes. The view slowly sunk in. Death surrounded them. There was no escaping it.

“Regroup,” Beckham said at the next corner. They met at an overturned squad car and crouched into a huddle.

“Looks like we’re going to get wet,” Riley said. He pointed toward a set of storm clouds rolling in from the west. Lightning flashed on the horizon, the distant boom of thunder ringing out a few seconds later.

“Shit,” Beckham muttered.

The rain fell slow at first, but grew heavier quickly. The street rapidly turned into a river of blood flowing into the storm drains. He’d never seen so much in his life. As he stared he mentally calculated just how much he was looking at. Assuming each victim bled out half of the blood in their body, they would each produce about five pints. Combine that with hundreds of dead and you had a shit ton of blood.

“Boss,” Horn said. Beckham caught Horn’s worried eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about my family, man. My little girls and Sheila,” he paused and looked around the corner of the car. “I keep picturing them bleeding out like that.”

“Don’t,” Beckham said. He reached over and put a hand on Horn’s shoulder. “They could have survived. You can’t lose hope, man. I haven’t.”

Horn gave a small nod. “I want you to know something.”

Beckham halted.

“I don’t blame you. You were right. My family was safer at Fort Bragg. If they are gone, I don’t want you to blame yourself.”

Beckham closed his eyes. He had blamed himself, and he still did, but hearing his friend absolve him lifted some of the guilt.

“I promise you, Big Horn, if they are still out there, we will find them when this is all over—” Before Beckham could finish, Horn pulled away and angled the muzzle of his M27 toward the end of the street.

Whatever he saw, Riley saw it too.

“Contact,” the kid said. He scrambled to his feet and leveled his rifle over the hood of the car.

The rain was picking up, the slap of drops hitting the concrete all around them. Beckham wiped his visor clear and focused on the road.

Three drenched figures came into view. A man and a woman holding the hands of a child that walked between them. There was more motion behind them. A man with a shotgun watched their backs. Beckham narrowed in on the lead man. He held a nasty-looking long-barreled pistol.

Beckham contemplated the team’s options. This was a recon mission, but he wasn’t going to leave behind survivors. Especially with a kid. He twisted and whispered his orders. “Horn, Riley, stay put and cover me. I’m going to check this out.”

Standing, Beckham lowered his weapon and approached the group cautiously. They stopped at the end of the block.

“Stay where you are,” Beckham yelled. He watched the man with the pistol raise the barrel, ever so slightly. That wasn’t good, he thought. Beckham froze. He didn’t want to scare the group.

“We’re here to help,” Beckham said in his calmest voice.

“Can you get us out of here?” the woman shouted. “Please! We need to get out of here.”

Beckham hesitated for a beat. “Stay calm. You will have to come with us.”

The woman grew frantic. She dropped the child’s hand and turned to the man. “Let’s go, please let’s go.”

“How do we know we can trust you?” the man shouted.

“He’s military,” the woman said. “He can protect us from them.”

Beckham raised a brow. He would ask what she meant later when they were off the streets.

“Come on,” he yelled. He twisted to run back to the squad car when he heard it.

It started off as a croak that slowly grew into a high-pitched screech. A second voice answered the call, releasing its own ravenous shriek.

No, Beckham thought. It wasn’t possible, was it? The primal noise could only mean one thing—that Kate’s bug hadn’t killed all of the monsters. He jerked as his earpiece flickered.

“One o’clock. On the east side of the FEMA truck,” Riley said in a cool voice.

Beckham shouldered his weapon and spun back to the group of survivors. The truck was easy to spot, it was right behind them. Standing next to the hood was a single figure. A woman. He reached for the small set of binos in his vest pocket and zoomed in.

A curtain of black hair covered her face. Deep gouges covered her skin, bite marks surrounding the open wounds. Between a gap in her drenched hair he could make out a single yellow slit staring back at him.

This was no survivor. This was an infected.

“Run!” Beckham shouted.

The man and woman were already fleeing, pulling the child away. They disappeared into a building across the street, but the man with the shotgun held his ground. He fired off a blast at the creature behind him. In a swift motion she jumped on the front of the FEMA truck, landing on the hood in a crouch.

The man pumped the gun, aimed and screamed, “Die, you bitch.” Before he could fire off a shot a second creature burst from the glass shop window behind him. They rolled onto the ground, a cluster of limbs.

Beckham lowered his binos and raised his weapon. He lined up his iron sights but couldn’t get a target. “Move,” he muttered, shifting to his right, then his left.

Three seconds later, the man was dead, his face caved in from the barbaric blows of the monster straddling his body. Swallowing, Beckham pulled the trigger.

Blood splattered the concrete and the creature’s limp body slumped to the ground.

The woman on the truck screeched, tilted her head and extended a long pale arm, pointing toward the squad car with a twisted hand—toward him. Seconds later a chorus of shrieks joined her cries.

Below, another figure emerged from inside the shattered front door of a small shoe store. Down the street, a man came crashing out of a flower shop. More piled out of other buildings.

“Get out of there, boss,” Riley yelled, his voice deep and tense.

The woman on the hood of the FEMA truck leapt onto the concrete. She broke into a sprint, zigzagging between the cars before hitting the sidewalk across the street where she dropped to all fours and bolted into the building where the survivors had fled.

Beckham hesitated. He had to save the kid. He had to save…

He blinked rapidly, watching dozens of the creatures streaming around the FEMA truck. Others scurried across the horizontal surface of the buildings to the left and right like spiders. Joints clicked and creaked. Their high-pitched squawks were indescribably terrible, a mixture of rage and pain. The street was alive with the monsters.

“Boss!” Horn yelled. “Get out of there.”

Fueled by fear, Beckham backpedaled as he fired off the rest of his magazine. Horn and Riley picked off the creatures on the walls but there were too many. They were everywhere. Team Ghost had to retreat.

Beckham let out his own war cry as he changed magazines. He felt hopeless, knowing he couldn’t save the child or the other survivors. For the third time in two weeks he ran, away from the enemy, away from the death, away from the monsters.

Kate reached Building 4 out of breath. Her thoughts were clouded and confused. VariantX9H9 was not designed as a partial cure. It was designed to kill everyone infected with the virus. She’d never thought of the small rate of survival, or that any of the victims would live.

Damn Gibson, she thought as she ran, he’d boxed her and the entire scientific community into a corner. They hadn’t had the time to design a response. She hadn’t had the time. At least he would pay for his crimes. He was locked away now in complete isolation, waiting for the hammer to drop. When this was all over he would answer to the entire world for his sins. The thought was satisfying. She had no empathy for the man and his motivations. He deserved to burn.

When she got to Building 4, she skidded to a stop. The facility seemed eerily quiet. She stood under the radiant glow of an industrial light pole and scanned the entrance.

There were no guards or sign of scientists coming and going. There was only the darkness and the sporadic zap of a bug as it got too close to the lights.

As she looked back the way she came she saw a distant patrol of soldiers, their flashlight beams cutting through the night. The sight was a small relief, but still she felt a nagging doubt.

Where the hell was everyone at Building 4?

Ignoring her trepidation, she moved briskly across the hundred yards or so of darkness, where the light from the massive rods did not fall.

Climbing the steps to the entrance she again paused. The remains of several cigarette butts littered the ground. Was it possible that the guards had taken a break without having another team replace them? Or perhaps Patient 12 had died and there was no longer a reason for the guards to remain.

She shook the questions away. There was only one way to find out. Removing her keycard from her pocket, she waved it over the security panel. The door chirped, unlocked, and cracked open. She pulled the massive metal door open with a huff, surprised how heavy it really was. Gasping for breath she stepped inside the white atrium. Darkness greeted her.

Kate froze, scanning the room with what little light the open doorway provided. The hallway leading to the isolation chambers was lit only by a faint glow from an emergency light blinking at the far end.

Hesitating, Kate held the door open behind her, propping it open with her left foot. After a few seconds her leg began to shake from the weight.

“Hello?” Kate called out.

The only reply came in a loud bang that echoed down the corridor. Kate tried to place the noise but she was so terrified she could hardly think.

Slowly she took a step backward. Before she could escape her right foot slid across the wet floor. Crying out, she flailed for something to hold onto. Her hands came up empty and she crashed to the floor with a thud. Fuzzy snowflakes exploded before her vision.

Terrified, Kate flipped to her stomach and tried to push herself up. Her hands slid across the slippery floor and she fell forward, onto her chest.

The hair on her neck stood up when she heard the door close behind her, sealing with a metallic click. Another noise followed it. The sound was coming from the hallway. Another door had opened.

“Who’s there?” she cried out again.

The only reply was the sound of skittering feet.

Panicking, she swiveled her body in the direction of the corridor. She couldn’t see anything but the faint glow of the single emergency light.

Closing her eyes, she pushed herself to her knees and spun back to the entrance. With her hands in front of her she pawed the floor.

The sound of scurrying feet got louder. It was closer now, and it sounded like it was coming from above her, from the ceiling.

Frantic, Kate slid on the wet floor again. She collapsed onto something that took away her breath. She knew instantly it was a body.

Gasping, she could only think of infection. Without her space suit she suddenly felt naked. Kate held her breath and slipped into survival mode.

She scrambled across the tiles, searching the body for anything useful. A few feet away from the corpse her fingers found the cold metal of a gun.

The sound of nails dragging across a chalkboard grew louder. It was almost on top of her now.

This isn’t happening, she thought as she grabbed the rifle and pulled it to her chest. She had never fired a gun before. Didn’t even really know how. She quickly found the trigger with her right hand and then ran her other hand down the length of the gun. She remembered the flashlight attachment she’d seen on the weapons.

With a soft click, a beam shot out and illuminated the dark hallway. She angled the gun across the floor, moving from side to side. The light didn’t reveal any sign of life, only death.

The walls were covered in blood. The body of a guard lay sprawled out in the middle of the floor. A few feet to his right lay a technician, his legs bent in opposite directions.

A flash of movement pulled Kate away from the scene. She rapidly raised the weapon and scanned the ceiling, trying to follow the blur of skin. The stream of light caught the pale body of Patient 12 skittering across the ceiling panels.

Her blood froze when she saw the man clinging upside down with claw-shaped hands and feet. He stopped when the light hit him. He sniffed the air, tilted his head, and locked onto her.

Kate froze, petrified with fear.

The creature hung there, smacking its lips together, in and out. In the blink of an eye it released a croak and continued across the ceiling.

Kate instinctively squeezed the trigger. The gun clicked but did not fire. “Shit, shit, shit,” she cried, fumbling with the rifle.

The scratching and scraping of Patient 12’s nails sent another surge of fear through Kate. Her fingers crisscrossed the metallic surface of the gun in a desperate attempt to find the safety.

Think Kate, think. She’d seen guns before. The safety was usually on the side, just above the trigger. Her finger found the small lever and she slid it into position.

Falling to her back, she swung the muzzle of the gun toward the monster, following him as he crawled across the ceiling.

He was so fast.

And then he was sailing through the air, his hands extended in front of him. Screaming with a rage unlike anything she’d ever heard.

Closing her eyes, she pulled back on the trigger and drowned out the terrible noise with the crack of fully automatic gunfire.