Extinction Horizon

-4-

Beckham moved into the hallway where the rest of the team waited with their backs to the wall and their weapons at the ready. Static broke over the net and Caster said, “Noble found what he thinks is the entry to Level One of the laboratory. This way,” he said, leading the group down the dark passage.

They found Noble standing outside a steel door. A sign bolted into the middle read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

Next to the handle was the first non-discreet part of the entire set-up, a glass scanner just large enough for a keycard.

“They could have covered it with something,” Riley said.

Noble pulled a card attached to a cord from a pouch on his belt. He held it in front of the operator’s faceplate and said, “Wouldn’t matter. No one gets into this facility without one of these.”

A metallic click and a chirp rang out as Noble waved the card over the glass. The door cracked open and the doctor took a step back to make room for Spinoza. The operator planted one boot firmly in front of the other and then inched the door open with the barrel of his shotgun.

Beckham could hear the large Latino’s nervous breaths as he eased the door open with one hand while jamming the gun into the opening. Then he was gone, melting into the darkness beyond.

The silence was broken by the rustling of the teams’ new suits. It was a sound that made Beckham cringe.

Unseen and unheard, Beckham thought. They weren’t living up to their motto. He watched Horn move next. The operator’s six foot two frame and modified M27 narrowly squeezed through the door.

Beckham followed his men inside to a narrow staircase. Greeted with darkness, he clicked on his night vision. The small hubs of emergency lights on the low ceiling were dark.

Ducking under the bulbs, Beckham followed the twisting stairs, checking his avenue of fire and shifting his gaze between front and rear, checking on Ellis every few seconds. The team moved with flawless precision, rotating from front to back.

By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, a stream of adrenaline had spiked in Beckham’s system. He felt powerful again. Invincible, even. He grinned. This was what he lived for.

An unmarked steel door separated them from Level One. There was no warning sign or other indication that would imply there was anything significant on the other side.

Noble squeezed past Beckham, Horn, and Spinoza to use his keycard. This time he unsheathed a sleek .45 and carefully opened the door himself.

Beckham saw Horn’s bulky frame straighten in front of him and then they were moving. The scuffle of footfalls filled the stairwell.

Even with his NVGs active, Beckham could see the floor was spotless. So clean the concrete looked as if someone had just mopped the tiles.

He swept the muzzle of his weapon over the space. It was divided into two sections. To the right, a hallway led to the individual examination rooms where the scientists working in the facility would undergo health screenings.

The left passage connected with three decontamination chambers. They were oddly shaped, like pods. Through the glass he could see the entrance to Level Two. Beyond that, there was only darkness.

With a quick flash of his hand, Beckham guided Alpha toward the decontamination chambers. Tenor broke off and led Bravo to clear the medical wing.

It became quite obvious right away that Level One was empty. There were no signs or evidence of recent life. That was a bit of a relief, but it deepened the mystery of what had happened.

“How you doing back there, Dr. Ellis?” Beckham asked.

“Fine,” the doctor answered.

Beckham knew by the monosyllabic reply that the virologist was scared shitless, and he couldn’t blame him.

White noise crackled over the comm and Tenor’s voice broke across the channel. “Area clear. No sign of Dr. Medford or his staff.”

“Copy that,” Beckham answered. He lowered his MP5 and waited for Bravo to make their way back to the lobby. Craning his head, he looked for Caster.

The officer was crouched next to one of the glass cylinders, tapping the surface of his tablet with one of his thick gloves. Caster studied the display and then said, “Looks like access to the control room is just beyond the mess hall.”

“Roger. Let’s see if we can get the power back on,” Beckham said. He motioned the team forward. The sound of boots pounding across the lobby echoed loudly through the sector as the two strike teams proceeded to the decon chambers. Beckham paused as the sudden feeling of being watched overwhelmed him. Horn had always suggested Beckham had a sixth sense. He wasn’t sure if the man was right, but at that moment he felt the strong sensation of being observed. Someone was out there.

Tilting his head, Beckham scanned the lobby.

Nothing.

Sucking in a deep breath of rubber-scented air, he continued through the lobby to the front entrance of the first decontamination pod.

“How do we know that no one’s escaped?” Horn asked while the team waited for Noble to open the first chamber.

“Those scanners,” Caster said, pointing. “They have backup batteries in case of catastrophic power failure, in which case the lab is locked down. The system was designed so no one could get out if that happened. They would have to wait for rescue.”

“In other words, wait for us?” Spinoza asked.

“Anyone working in a lab like this knows if something catastrophic happens, they won’t be rescued. If we didn’t need the sample, we’d already blown this place to hell,” Caster replied.

The first cylinder hissed and the glass doors parted. When they were halfway open, they groaned to a stop.

“Shit,” Noble said. “The hardware must have malfunctioned.”

Beckham eyed the gap. It looked large enough for Spinoza and Horn, but if they had to back out quickly, it could bottleneck the team. “Big Horn, Panda, try to get those open.”

Together the two men pulled the glass doors far enough apart that the team could get through. Beckham waved them forward. Noble moved quickly to the next scanner. This time the doors opened without resistance. The strike teams spilled into the final chamber in a single file line, where they waited to enter Level Two.

Beckham stood next to Noble as he waved his key card over the last scanner. Through the glass he could see an empty hallway leading to the mess hall and personnel quarters, but it wasn’t spotless like Level One. A large, dark smear streaked across the floor beyond the door. He followed the trail to the wall where it stopped.

Flipping up his NVGs, he risked using his headlamp. The beam cut through the darkness and illuminated a bloody handprint on the wall.

Beckham flinched at the sight. What the fuck? he thought, taking a step away from the glass just as it cracked open. Balling his hand into a fist, he very sternly said, “Hold position.” He then pointed at the wall and angled his light at the smear of blood.

The sight didn’t seem to bother Noble. “Don’t worry, that’s why we have suits.”

His response took Beckham by surprise. “That’s not from a spilled test tube, sir. That’s from an injury. A bad one.”

“Turn off your light, Sergeant,” Noble replied coldly, leveling his .45 into the darkness and moving through the door.

“Let’s move,” Caster said, patting Beckham on his shoulder.

Hesitating, Beckham clicked off his headlamp and activated his night vision. Flashing a signal, he followed Noble’s outline into the passage. With his MP5 pointed forward, he scrutinized the trail of blood. He knew better than anyone how much blood a man could lose before death. There was no mistaking it. Whoever had bled out was severely injured. Any soldier would know this, but for some reason the sight hadn’t fazed Noble or Caster at all, like they were expecting it. Beckham was used to working with men he didn’t trust—Afghani and Iraqi forces were the perfect example—but U.S. soldiers?

He reminded himself this wasn’t a normal mission. In the past, he had been forced to keep key details of other missions secret when working with foreign troops. He had never been on the other side of it, however. He now realized how Dr. Ellis must have felt when he first boarded the Osprey hours ago. There wasn’t anything Beckham could do about it, either.

He blinked the thought away and concentrated. The end of the hall broke off into two directions. He remembered that the corridor to the left led to the personnel quarters, while the other corridor led to the mess hall. With another quick hand gesture, he ordered Bravo to the right, while Beckham and his team shuffled toward the individual rooms.

The green outlines of several doors came into view as he rounded the corner. Placards identified the names of the scientists assigned to each room. The first one Beckham approached read Dr. Jane Levoy.

Placing his back against the wall, he waited for his team to move into position. Horn leveled his M27 at the nameplate and inched the door open with the barrel while Riley took up position on the opposite wall.

“Dr. Ellis, Riley, stay here,” Beckham whispered. He put his hand on Horn’s back and followed him into the room. For the first time on the mission, his suit felt tight around his chest. Clenching his jaw, he waited for something to dart out at them, but the room was empty.

The living area was small, not much larger than a dorm room, and it seemed undisturbed with a carefully made twin bed and clean bedside table.

They backed out and switched positions. Beckham entered the next room with his weapon shouldered. Holding his breath, he burst in just as the comm blared to life.

“Beckham, you…” Tenor’s voice faded and then grew louder. “You better see this.”

He knew by the sergeant’s slight pause that he’d found something significant. Over the years they’d seen a lot together. Mass graves, executed prisoners, war crimes of all types. Nothing ever spooked the man.

“Move,” Beckham said, grabbing Ellis under his left arm and spinning him back the way they had come. “Riley, Horn, you clear the rest of these rooms. Major Caster, you’re with me.”

The officer grumbled and fell in line. Thirty seconds later they entered the mess hall. Beckham immediately stopped in the entrance to survey the destruction. In the center of the room, the outlines of flipped metal tables and chairs littered the ground like shrapnel from an explosion. On the floor he saw empty food trays, their contents splattered on the walls. There were more of the smudges on the ceiling. Clicking on his headlamp, he realized the smears weren’t from Jell-O.

Blood.

It was everywhere. Like something done by a graffiti artist high on meth, the walls and ceilings were painted with the substance. Blood was splattered in every direction.

Beckham had never seen anything like it.

“What the hell happened here?” a voice said. He’d forgotten Ellis was still shadowing him. The doctor and Caster were slowly navigating the overturned tables.

The comm crackled and Tenor came back online. “Beckham, where are you?” There was urgency in his voice, enough to kick Beckham into a full sprint. He raced toward the kitchen, where he could see the outlines of Bravo.

And then he stopped, his boots sliding across the smooth floor. He scrambled, nearly tripping over his own feet. Spinoza reached out and steadied him.

Inside were half a dozen bodies. Most of them naked, their frames twisted and mangled beyond recognition. The one on top looked female, but the body was in such terrible condition it was hard to tell.

The woman had suffered extreme trauma to her skull. A gash ran all the way down to the tip of her nose, where her only remaining eyeball hung loosely from the socket.

“My God,” Beckham said. Turning to face Caster, he snorted. “Something you need to tell us, Major?”

Noble stepped into the freezer and crouched next to the female victim. He flipped over one of her arms. It snapped and broke at the wrist, revealing bulging blue veins. “Fuck. She’s infected.”

“How do you know? Let me look,” Ellis said, shoving his way into the room. A few moments later he shook his head. “Hemorrhaging from multiple orifices. The jaundiced skin and bulging veins imply organ failure. Noble’s right, this woman likely had Ebola. But that’s not what killed her is it, Major?”

Noble quickly shook his head. “No, it’s not.” He peered up at Beckham and very dryly said, “I’m sorry. This is much worse than I imagined.” He looked back down at the bodies. “This goes beyond anything I fathomed. Medford must have accidentally created the monster virus I’ve always feared.”

“What does that mean?” Riley blurted. “Monster virus?”

“Judging by the wounds on these bodies…” Noble paused and scanned the pile of corpses.

“It means that victims will display all the symptoms of Ebola but also those associated with VX-99,” Caster said.

“Meaning what exactly?” Horn asked. His chest swelled as he stood staring over Noble’s shoulders.

“Those exposed to VX-99 exhibit a range of violent behaviors in addition to hallucinations,” Noble said. “From the test files I’ve read, the subjects have all proven to be very cunning, with one overall purpose—”

“We saw the reports. We saw Lieutenant Brett,” Beckham said, cutting the doctor off in mid-sentence. “Their purpose is to kill.”

“Precisely, but we don’t know for how long. It’s likely the victims die of the virus before they can do much harm,” Noble finished.

“Not much harm? What the fuck do you call this?” Riley said, his voice rising just shy of a shout. “Someone was alive long enough to do this!”

“Riley. Get a fucking grip,” Beckham ordered.

“That one has bite marks on it,” Spinoza remarked. He extended a massive arm and pointed at the bottom corpse. A swollen suction mark had formed a circle around shredded and exposed muscles.

Ellis pulled on a leg protruding from the pile and quickly backed away. “What the hell…”

The stack toppled over and the sounds of bones snapping reverberated through the room. The cracking sounded like a fork stuck in a garbage disposal.

When the frozen bodies had finally settled on the floor, Beckham could see they all had bite marks. Someone or something had torn long patches of flesh from the victims. In other places the limbs were devoured to the bone. He stared with disbelief. Never in his career had he seen such an atrocity. It was in that moment he realized the freezer wasn’t a gravesite.

He leaned down and focused on the marks. Circular bruises surrounded the torn flesh. It was like an oversized leech had clamped down to feed on the bodies. A flashback to the images of Lieutenant Brett’s mouth made him flinch. They weren’t dealing with some overgrown leech—they were dealing with a human monster, and he was looking at its leftovers.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “This is a storage facility.” He counted six corpses. Gibson had stated there were ten scientists and support staff working in the facility. So where were the others?

Throwing a glance over his shoulder, Beckham scanned the room, searching every corner and shadow. “Keep sharp. There must still be other scientists out there and if my hunch is right, they are going to look a lot like Lieutenant Brett.”

Riley gagged and choked.

“Don’t puke in your mask!” Noble said, his voice just shy of a shout.

After he recovered, Riley looked up. “Whoever did this is some kind of vampire.”

“More like a zombie, man,” Edwards said in his perpetually calm voice. The man rarely spoke, and when he did, his words carried weight. The entire team grew silent for several beats.

“Not exactly,” Noble said. “Whatever these scientists were infected with—”

A guttural, high-pitched shriek cut him off. Beckham spun along with the rest of the team to locate the sound.

“What the fuck was that?” Riley exclaimed, moving the barrel of his shotgun from wall to wall.

Beckham flashed several hand signals, and the team fanned out into the mess hall.

Another screech followed them into the larger room. This one didn’t seem quite human. The sound was primal.

“Where’s it coming from?” Horn said. He angled his M27 at the ceiling.

“Sounds like it’s all around us,” Riley replied.

Beckham knew that was impossible. They’d cleared Level Two, and there was no way the noise would carry from Level Three. The glass was soundproof.

He scanned the ceiling. There, in the right corner just above the nine o’clock position, was a missing tile.

There was a blur of movement.

Beckham froze, not daring to move when he saw it.

A man poked his head from the hole in the ceiling. His eyes were wild, vertical pupils darting back and forth as if they were adjusting to the darkness. A curtain of thin hair hung loosely around his face.

Beckham blinked several times, wondering if this was just an illusion. His focus cleared, and the face was still there staring back at him, studying him.

The man’s mouth puckered and made a popping sound, snapping Beckham into motion.

“Contact at nine o’clock,” he said into his mini-mike.

The beam from Beckham’s headlamp caught the man in the eyes. The result was a long, deep, and painful scream as the sick man swatted at the light.

And then he was gone.

“Where? I don’t see shit,” Riley remarked.

“Got nothin’, boss,” Horn added.

Beckham blinked again, still wondering if what he had seen was real. His suit once again felt tight, pressing against his chest. Every breath seemed strained, almost as if his respirator was failing.

After a short measured breath, Beckham concentrated. “You better find those lights, Doc,” he said, gesturing with the muzzle of his weapon toward the missing tile. “I think your monster has found us.”