Extinction Horizon

-5-

Jim Pinkman awoke to an awful smell, a scent he couldn’t quite place. It was reminiscent of rotting fruit, but more pungent and rancid.

He couldn’t remember where he was. The room he found himself in shook violently. The sound of groaning metal echoed off the walls.

He tried to open his eyes.

Where the fuck was he?

Another small tremor rattled the walls. His ears popped from the sudden change in pressure.

He let out a moan and considered calling out for help, but he had no strength. He struggled to crack open his eyes. Stars crept before his vision. When his focus cleared he saw the distorted reflection of his features inside a metal bowl.

The room shook again, harder this time, and then he remembered. He was on a plane heading to Chicago. Dr. Medford was sending him back to Guinea. The WHO had asked for support at one of their field hospitals.

Blinking, he struggled to move. He was barely able to lift his face. More stars floated before his eyes. When they finally cleared, he realized the metal pillow was actually a toilet bowl.

Shock gave him the energy to pull his face off the cold metal.

The terrible smell entered his nostrils again. His stomach growled. What is that awful scent?

Pushing himself up, his hands slid across a gooey floor. He quivered when he saw the source of the rotting stink.

Covering the floor, the toilet, and even a portion of the wall was black red vomit filled with specks of gore. He felt something drip from his lips and wiped it away, the substance leaving the same color smeared across his wrist.

“What the hell?” he choked. The words didn’t sound like his own. Before he had a chance to think, a sudden and powerful hunger gripped him. The feeling was followed by a burst of energy that jolted him to his feet. He stumbled over to the mirror and blinked away the last of the stars.

What he saw caused him to flinch. This had to be some kind of sick joke. The man looking back at him was not Jim Pinkman. It couldn’t be him. Clumps of thin hair hung loosely where just hours before he’d had thick brown hair that made other men his age jealous. Dark bruises lined his bloodshot eyes. He pulled up his right eyelid, revealing a bright red sclera. There wasn’t a hint of white left, like every blood vessel had simultaneously burst. Streaks of blood oozed from his nose and eyes. He twisted his face to the side and saw the same trickle of red coming from his ears. They all leaked down his face and connected to a beard of dark red around his mouth.

And what the hell was wrong with his lips? They were pale and curved into an oval shape. He brought a finger to his numb and swollen flesh.

“What the hell!” he said, backing away from the mirror. His mouth looked like the sucker of a fucking leech.

He had to get control of himself, maintain control.

Slowly he inched back to the glass and cracked his lips, revealing curved and jagged teeth.

“No,” he muttered. He had to be dreaming.

He forced himself to look away. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be the sick man in the mirror. A sudden spike of pain tore through his head, like an instant migraine had settled right behind his eyeballs. He reached for the wall to brace his hands as the plane began to descend.

Slowly, the memories of Building 8 began to drift across his mind. He remembered the retractable robot arm breaking a vial of the virus that Dr. Medford had been working on for months.

The automatic system had kicked on inside the centrifuge, releasing a mist that destroyed the spilled sample. He’d suited up and entered the area, cleaning up the broken vial and recalibrating the robot manually.

When he’d gone to discard the glass, he’d cut his glove, but after examining his hand he’d seen no signs of a cut. And besides, the mist would have killed the sample. At least that’s what he had thought at the time.

What if the chemical mist had only weakened the virus? What if that’s why he hadn’t shown any symptoms until now?

His eyes darted back to the mirror.

The man in front of him wasn’t just sick; he was a monster.

“No,” Jim groaned, shaking his head as the revelation sank in. He concentrated on the other memories. One of them was particularly vivid.

He had been in a hurry to leave Building 8 after Medford had asked him to take a confidential file to Fort Detrick. Jane Levoy, a doctor he’d been having an affair with for months, had wanted to make love before he left. She’d insisted on it, saying he wouldn’t be back for weeks. The image of their sweat-soaked bodies crossed his confused mind.

“My God,” Jim muttered. Had he infected her?

A voice blared over the PA system and pulled him from his muddled thoughts.

“Prepare for landing. ETA thirty minutes.”

Jim’s stomach growled again, a deep hunger tearing at his gut. It was getting stronger now. And the itching. God, the itching. His skin felt like it was being ravaged by hundreds of fire ants. He slowly raised his right arm and saw the rashes. Dark red blotches lined his bare flesh.

Could it be? Was he infected with Ebola? What about his lips? His teeth? Those weren’t symptoms of Ebola.

A second surge of energy jolted Jim upright. It made no sense. If he was this sick, how was he so…

He doubled over in pain, clutching his stomach as the hunger ripped through him. The burning rippled across his skin. He felt possessed, like some unseen force had suddenly taken hold of his body—a force beyond his control.

His tongue shot out of his mouth and flicked in a circle around his suction-cup-shaped lips. The metallic taste of dried blood seeped down his throat. There was a short reprieve in the hunger. Thoughts of blood, flesh, and meat ripped across his mind. They were just images, but they were powerful. He began to chomp his sharp teeth together. They clacked noisily as he scanned the rashes on his arms.

Another wave of hunger slashed through him. He dropped to both knees in pain. His body jerked and shook as the sensation took hold. Seizing, he collapsed to the floor, his eyes locked onto the naked flesh of his wrist.

No, I can’t, he thought.

A male voice snarled in his mind, “Feed! You must feed!”

Jim recognized the voice for what it was—a hallucination. He was sick and delusional.

But the force that had taken control of him tugged at his insides, at his mind, at his very core. The pain and the craving for flesh was simply too much to deny.

He latched his swollen lips onto his wrist. The numbness slowly faded as he fed. He could feel his mouth now. It was clamped to his arm, his lips forming a barrier over the skin. And he could feel his teeth. They shredded through his flesh like a garden tiller. The blood raced down his throat and he tore at the skin and muscle with a violent twist of his mouth.

A quick succession of raps on the metal bathroom door rang through the small space. He ignored it, swallowing a chunk of meat with a quick gulp.

“Sir, are you okay in there?” a male voice said. The man hammered at the door several more beats.

Jim continued to tear into his wrist. The sound of his own flesh ripping filled him with delight. Oddly, he felt only the pain of hunger, and the more he fed, the more it lessened. After a few moments, his blood-stained eyes shot up to the door. The knocking was annoying him. He wanted it to stop.

The voice outside got louder. The man began yelling, “Are you taking a nap in there or what, man? I need to use the can before we land!”

Jim jerked up, his spine twisting at an abnormal angle. His joints clicked and creaked as he moved. Crouching, he swung the door open to reveal a Navy officer staring back him. The man’s eyes widened and he dropped the magazine he was holding when he saw Jim.

“What the fuck happened to your…” the man began to say, reaching out cautiously before yanking his hand away.

The craving inside him returned with ferocity. He tilted his head, fixating on the bulging vein at the man’s neck. Jim could almost see the blood pumping through it. He lunged. Unable to scream, the man collapsed to the ground. Clawing wildly, Jim fed.

His world became astonishingly vivid. He could taste every bit of the coppery blood and gamey flesh as it ran down his throat. He could hear the gurgling noises in the man’s throat and could even smell the salty sweat on the officer’s collar.

At the end of the plane, the other Navy man turned, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “What the fuck?” he yelled. He unclipped his seat belt and raced down the aisle.

“Get off him man, come on! Get off…” Then the second officer saw the blood. He spun to run, but Jim was much faster. He dove, caught one of the man’s feet, and then climbed on top of the struggling officer, who lashed out with his hands, trying to hold back bulging lips and snarling teeth.

They rolled on the metal floor as the wheels connected with the tarmac, and when the plane finally came to a stop, the last hint of humanity disappeared from Jim Pinkman in one long, high-pitched primal scream.

Beckham and the strike teams gathered around a shredded electrical box in a storage room outside the mess hall. The metal sides were dented and smashed. Cords snaked out in all directions. By then it was obvious that someone on Dr. Medford’s staff—someone infected with the Ebola and VX-99 hybrid virus—had sabotaged the lab. But they hadn’t stopped there. They had murdered and eaten their co-workers.

Hours before, when Beckham was still en route to Edwards Air Force Base, he had hoped that the lab had simply gone offline, that when his team arrived they would be greeted by ten grateful scientists waiting for rescue. As he scanned the blood-stained walls of the mess hall, it all seemed like wishful thinking. Outside in the disturbingly silent landscape, he’d known something catastrophic had happened, but he’d had no idea it would be this bad.

“Isn’t there backup power?” Tenor asked.

“There is,” Caster replied. “That’s what’s running the air ventilation and security systems.”

“We need to get to Level Three,” Noble said, his voice anxious and strained. “None of this changes anything.”

Beckham took a moment to think. The victims in the freezer and the man he’d seen in the ceiling reminded him that they had more to worry about than just infection. They had a much more significant threat on their hands—a Lieutenant Brett was loose in the building.

“Keep sharp. Keep focused,” he said over the channel. “You see anything, you shoot to kill.”

Several helmets twisted in his direction but no one said a word. Together the team moved forward in a cautious formation, their weapons sweeping every shadow.

Beckham forced the mental pictures out of his mind as the doors to Level Three cracked open. He entered first, leading the team into another atrium. From there he did what he had been trained to do in isolated situations. He surveyed the area to ensure it was free of contacts, and then he analyzed potential routes. The ceiling tiles were all intact and the lobby was clear. Like the other level, this one had two hallways. A sign on the right directed them to Labs 1 and 2. He recalled from the briefing that those contained the least severe contagions.

Beckham looked to the left. Through the darkness he could see the green outlines of Labs 3 and 4. It was there they would likely find Dr. Medford’s samples, but he wasn’t taking any chances. They would clear all the labs.

“Bravo, you take Labs 1 and 2. Alpha, we’re on 3 and 4. Remember, your suit is your lifeline,” he said. “Stay sharp, Ghost. I don’t want any other surprises.”

He took point, gripping his MP5 tightly. For the first time in the mission, he could hear his heart pounding inside his helmet. The muffled ruckus of their suits echoed off the narrow hallway as they moved. Behind him he could hear Horn’s labored breathing.

As they approached the first lab, a flash of movement darted across the end of the hallway. Beckham froze and balled his hand into a fist.

“Boss,” Horn whispered over the comm.

“I saw it,” Beckham replied. He held his position, waiting for the contact to reemerge from the shadows. Whatever it was, it was gone now.

After several beats, Beckham flashed an advance signal and followed Horn down the rest of the passage. The door to Lab 3 on their left was wide open, while the door to Lab 4 was sealed.

“The sample will probably be in Lab 4,” Caster said.

“Roger, clearing Lab 3 first, sir,” Beckham replied.

The inside of the room had been trashed. Crushed vials splattered across the floor, their contents still in puddles.

Beckham’s heart kicked as he chinned his comm. “We have multiple contaminants,” he said. “No sign of contacts.” He stepped into the space carefully, avoiding the first broken glass with a small hop. He sidestepped a puddle and kept his gaze on the shapes of several lab stations cordoned off by a plastic curtain at the edge of the room.

When he got to the first station he realized he was holding his breath. Exhaling, he paused to scan the room for any movement or sign of life, sweeping his muzzle over the ceiling for any sign of a breech.

Nothing.

Stepping around another pool of unidentified contaminants, he made his way toward the curtain. He poked the plastic with his rifle barrel and grabbed the lining with his right hand.

With clenched teeth, he pulled the curtain back. He flinched as a limp but heavy object toppled over. Beckham scrambled, regaining his footing and shoving the thing into the glass wall.

Then, raising his MP5, he jammed the barrel into the soft flesh of a dead scientist. The body slumped to the floor and the head fell to the side at an odd angle, the neck broken.

“Damn,” Horn said, standing shoulder to shoulder with him. They looked down at the body together. This one, unlike the others, was fully clothed. Beckham saw a nameplate and crouched down to examine the man.

“Dr. Bob Welling,” Horn muttered.

Beckham reached out with the barrel of his gun and raised the man’s chin with it. He shut off his night vision and clicked on the tactical light at the end of his MP5 for a better look.

The victim’s eyes were severely bloodshot. Dark trails of crusted blood trickled down his pale face, and his lips were bulging.

Beckham took a step backward.

“Infected?” Caster asked.

Beckham nodded and swept his light over the man’s chest, stopping at his stomach. The beam revealed a watermelon-sized hole in his mid-section, the light shooting clear through to the floor under the dead scientist.

“Jesus,” he said, forcing the light away from the revolting sight. He clicked off his lamp and stood when a sudden burst of static broke over the comm. Beckham’s own stomach tightened as he waited for Tenor to report.

His earpiece filled with a flurry of indecipherable shouts and then an agonizing scream so morphed by fear Beckham couldn’t place it. The voices were followed by a loud sizzling sound, like melting plastic.

Gunfire broke out.

More screams followed.

Beckham’s heart leapt with every pained scream of his men.

“Move!” he yelled. “Labs 1 and 2!”

He raced out of the room and into the corridor, wincing at every shriek of terror. Glass cracked under his boots, but the risk of infection was no longer on his mind. He had to get to his men—he had to save them.

There was another crack from high-powered rifles that sounded like thunder over the comm. Beckham rushed out of Lab 3 as quickly as he could, navigating the minefield of broken vials as fast as he could. The entire time he was shouting, “Tenor, do you copy?” repeating the words to the sound of crackling static.

The noise meant something horrible had happened to Bravo. The sizzling, the screams, the gunfire, it could mean only one thing—Tenor had found the other scientists, and one or more of them had transformed into the monsters Noble described back in the mess hall.

What really terrified him was the quiet. When the firing stopped, Beckham waited for voices, shouts, anything.

There were none. Only silence.

By the time Alpha reached the corridor to Lab 1 and 2, the battle was over. It took only a few agonizing moments to see there had actually never been a battle. What Beckham was looking at was a massacre. The lumpy green outlines of four CBRN suits lay in wet puddles on the floor. Beckham felt his heart drop deep in his chest.

A voice from behind him yelled, “Wait!”

That was Major Caster. At least Beckham thought it was. He wasn’t really listening. His eyes were focused on the bodies of his team. Ripping a flashlight from his belt, he flipped off his NVG and angled the light over the outlines in front of him.

From somewhere inside Beckham, there came a sudden flare of anger, a feeling of pure rage. It consumed him, blinding him to the danger lurking in the darkness.

“Stop!” Caster yelled as Beckham rushed over to the first body. He swept the beam over the cheeseburger cheeks of Spinoza behind a broken faceplate. A human bone was lodged deep into the middle of his face, the impact area a bulge of broken skull and flesh.

The fury in Beckham grew.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d never lost a man under his command before. They were all supposed to go home like they always did to celebrate another successful mission where the bad guys ended up in body bags, not the good guys.

Then he saw the next figure, his gaze falling on a helmet, or what was left of it. The visor was scorched, the glass melted onto the man’s face; his eyes and nose were erased into a clump of blackened flesh. If it weren’t for the .45 dangling from a gloved hand, he wouldn’t have even known it was Major Noble.

The sizzling sound suddenly made sense. Someone had sprayed a chemical into the poor doctor’s face. The mission had abruptly changed. This was no longer a recovery mission, it was a survival mission.

Beckham flinched when one of Noble’s eyeballs burst, the clear liquid peppering his faceplate. He scraped it away and continued to the next body, knowing it would be Tenor or Edwards.

Another voice called out from behind him. “Beckham! Regroup. We need to find that sample!” This time he was sure it was Major Caster. The fucking asshole had led them into a trap.

A second voice said, “We have contacts!” That was Horn, screaming from a corner.

“Cover me,” Beckham shouted. He crouched down at the next body. The sample didn’t matter if there wasn’t anyone left to extract it from the building. Tenor’s MP5 rested on the floor, spent bullet casings surrounding the weapon like a halo. But where were the bodies of the infected? Delta Force Operators didn’t miss.

He moved back to Tenor. The operator lay on his back, his scorched helmet on the ground next to him. Looking closer, Beckham saw a patch of darkened flesh where Tenor’s perfectly groomed Mohawk had once been.

There were boots crunching behind him. Several boots, and voices, none that Beckham could make out. He hunched over Tenor and swept the light over his face. “Tenor, can you hear me, man?”

Tenor’s eyes suddenly snapped open. He scrambled backwards, screaming, “Where is it? Where is it?”

“Boss, we have contacts heading your way!” Horn shouted again.

A high-pitched croak tore through the hallway, and Beckham spun to see two men in blood-drenched lab coats sprinting toward the team.

Gunfire erupted from Horn’s M27. The rounds lit up the passage with bright muzzle flashes. Just enough light to illuminate the blood-caked faces of both scientists and their swollen, sucker lips. The head of the leader exploded into mist, but the other man leapt into an open ceiling panel.

Impossible, Beckham thought. He was so fast.

He moved back to Tenor. He had his back against the wall, his eyes darting back and forth like a man possessed. “Where are they?” he kept repeating, his hands twisting in front of him.

“Snap out of it, Tenor!” Beckham yelled.

Tenor grew very silent. He looked toward Beckham, but not actually at him—it was like the man was looking through him. Flashing his light across Tenor’s face, Beckham realized his second in command was slipping into shock.

Beckham had scooped an arm around Tenor to pick him up when the man jolted forward and projectile vomited onto the floor. Scrambling away, Beckham steadied his beam on the ground. What he saw didn’t make any sense. The vomit was red and mixed with black, tarry granules from coagulated blood, but he had already scanned Tenor for injuries and hadn’t seen any sign of wounds besides the burns.

“Tenor, man, what the…” Beckham said.

“Stay away from him!” Caster yelled. “He’s infected.”

Beckham took a step back and held his flashlight on Tenor as the injured operator bent forward and hacked up another stream of the chunky fluid.

No, Beckham thought, shaking his head, it’s not possible. Tenor can’t be showing symptoms that fast. Can he? Even Beckham knew the incubation period for Ebola was days, or in some cases even a week. Certainly not minutes.

“Leave me,” the man choked. He wiped the blood from his mouth, forming a red goatee around his lips. Then he scooted his back to the wall and yelled, “They’re everywhere!”

Another voice exploded in the passage. “Master Sergeant fucking Beckham! We need that goddamn sample before they come back!” Caster shouted.

“We need to get the fuck out of here, sir. While we still can. Tenor is still alive!” Beckham replied.

Ellis crouched down next to Tenor. “My God,” he said, gesturing for a flashlight. “Come on, someone give me a light.” Riley quickly handed his to the doctor.

He swept the light across Tenor’s face. Several red blotches and bruises were starting to appear. His eyes were crimson, and bloody tears trickled down his cheeks. A visible vibration suddenly rippled through the operator’s body.

“What the hell aren’t you telling us?” Ellis asked suddenly, looking over at Caster.

“Shut up, Doctor Ellis, and turn off that light,” the major said. He then very methodically raised his pistol and aimed it at Beckham’s helmet. “I’m going to make this very simple. We are going to retrieve that sample, and then we are going to leave. Without him,” he said, pointing with his free hand at Tenor.

Beckham gritted his teeth, his eyes darting to Riley and Horn, who had already aimed their weapons at Caster.

“Tell your men to stand down and get the sample,” Caster repeated, shaking his pistol. “Now!”

“The mission is fucked, sir!” Beckham replied. “We’re leaving while we still can.” He went to pick up Tenor when he saw movement above Caster. Flipping on his night vision, he scanned the exposed ceiling. Metal pipes from the air filtration system snaked across the opening, and behind them were two crazed faces, their lips bulging in an O shape. Before he had a chance to warn Caster, a mass of limbs reached down and plucked the major into the opening. The officer kicked, screaming for help. Beckham reached for a leg, but in two beats the man was gone. The comm channel filled with the dying man’s agonized cries as he was pulled into the darkness.

Horn responded quickly, shouldering his M27 and unleashing a magazine into the tiles. A white mist burst from the pipes, shrouding the hallway with a cloud of gas.

“We need to get out of here!” Ellis screamed. He disappeared into the haze in a mad dash back the way they had come.

Riley lowered his shotgun and yelled, “Wait, Doctor!”

The hallway quickly filled with the chemical fog, and Beckham snapped into action. He scooped Tenor up under an arm and began dragging him. “Help me, Horn,” he shouted. “Riley, check Edwards.”

Together they pulled Tenor down the passage. Riley quickly caught up. “He’s gone, sir.”

Beckham’s heart skipped a beat again even though he’d already known the operator was dead. There was no time to mourn the fallen men. He had to focus on getting the rest of his men out. Horn had a wife and two young daughters waiting for him at Fort Bragg. Beckham wasn’t going to let those girls grow up without a father.

The team reached the decontamination pods in less than a minute. Dr. Ellis was waiting for them, his gloved hands shaking violently. “We have to get the fuck out of here!”

“Move!” Beckham yelled. With Horn’s assistance they dragged Tenor into the first cylinder. He moaned and muttered, “I see them. All of them.” His hands twisted and flicked the air like he was trying to shoo away a swarm of flies in front of his face.

“What the fuck, man! What’s wrong with you?” Horn asked.

“They’re everywhere,” Tenor choked. Then he screamed, “I see them!”

Before Beckham had a chance to react, Tenor jolted out of their grasp. He lunged for Horn’s suit, his teeth snarling and his gloved hands mangled into claws.

Horn countered the attack quickly. With a strong shove, he sent Tenor flying back through the open doors to Level 3. The operator tumbled across the floor and slid to a stop. In one swift movement, he flipped from his back to his stomach and pushed himself up on all fours. Joints snapped and clicked as he twisted his body. Blood gurgling from his mouth, he lunged forward, bursting into a gallop like a wild animal.

A sudden gunshot behind Beckham made him flinch. This time it was from Riley’s tactical shotgun. The first round hit Tenor in his collar, above his right shoulder. A loud thunk sounded as flesh and bone fragments exploded out of the exit wound. It echoed through the sector, but the blast only slowed him down. He continued on his left arm, utilizing his back legs to propel him forward in one long leap toward Horn.

“I’m sorry,” Riley said over the comm.

Beckham resisted the urge to close his eyes. He had to watch, it was his responsibility. He had gambled with his men’s lives and now he had to pay the price.

A thunderous crack from Riley’s shotgun took off the top of Tenor’s skull. He dropped to his knees and then his stomach, skidding to a stop a few feet away from the team.

“No!” Horn cried out, shielding his faceplate with one hand and holding his empty M27 in the other.

Forcing himself to look, Beckham stared at Tenor’s faceless corpse. Like Spinoza, Edwards, and Noble, the man no longer looked human. Beckham’s skin crawled, his suit closing in around him. He took in a deep gasp of air and tried to focus. He had to focus. He couldn’t do anything for the dead, but he could still save the living.

The outlines of two figures in Level 2 snapped him back into motion.

“Move!” Beckham shouted. He pushed Horn into the next pod and followed him into Level 1. From there they sprinted for the exit. Beckham watched his men climb into the stairway before he stopped. He rotated in place, holding his breath. Standing in the lobby was a man wearing only trousers. Behind him, hiding in the shadows, was a female, still clothed in a blood-drenched lab coat. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought the man fit Dr. Medford’s profile.

For a moment they locked eyes, and he saw the true terror of the virus the scientist had created. Medford’s face was covered in gore that looked like thick, chunky makeup. Cobwebs of bloody saliva webbed across his swollen lips. The man stared back with vertical pupils, and then tilted his chin toward the ceiling, releasing a deep, animalistic scream.

For the first time in his career Beckham ran from the enemy. And he didn’t look back.