Extinction Evolution (The Extinction Cycle Book 4) (32 page)

T
eam Ghost and the Variant Hunters stood behind five other men and women in the CIC. Four screens hung from the bulkheads. Each display was divided into four boxes showing the feed from one of the soldiers. They were working their way through the sewers now, closing in on the lair of the White King that Garcia had identified during the briefing the night before. Beckham shivered. It wasn’t long ago that he’d been running through the tunnels beneath New York City. Chow and Horn watched attentively, flashbacks likely playing in their mind. Tank and Garcia had their arms crossed, and Thomas was massaging the sides of his mustache.

Beckham felt their pain. Stevo was likely dead, but soldiers always held onto hope. It’s what made the grittiest part of war easier to stomach, believing that maybe a brother was still alive, or that a battle could be won.

He turned back to the screens. As an observer, it was difficult to distinguish between shadows in the dark passages. Every time the light shifted, Beckham thought it was a Variant.

“Echo, Romeo, Kilo, and Sierra are all approaching targets,” Davis said from the front of the room.

Beckham kept an eye on the first monitor. On screen, Echo 1 trudged through ankle deep water. At the end of the passage, on the walls and ceiling, were the mangled bodies of human prisoners. All four members of Echo team stopped in the middle of the tunnel. They flipped on the UV lights attached to the ends of their weapons. The beams cut through the darkness and illuminated the cocoons.

The chatter from the command staff silenced. No one in the room said a word. Everyone stared at the monitors. Most of them hadn’t seen the human prisoners before, but for Team Ghost and the Variant Hunters, this was nothing new.

“Proceed to target, Echo 1,” Davis said into her headset.

Echo 1 went forward, his rifle out in front. His team followed him, marching through the first passage of prisoners, muzzles up.

A distorted face stared back at Echo 1, flayed flesh hanging from cheekbones and eyes frozen in shock. Limbs hung from the ceiling, hands curled from rigor mortis. Most of the cocoons were torn, exposing the skeletal remains of the prisoners. The Variants had already fed on these corpses. Most were chewed to the bone.

The team pushed into the next tunnel, beams dancing from corpse to corpse. Beckham didn’t need a high-res image to see some of these poor souls were still alive.

“Jesus,” Vice President Johnson said. He craned his neck and looked at Garcia. “How much farther to the lair?”

In the second it took to ask the question, there was a flash of movement on all four screens. The light from Echo 1 captured a Variant hanging upside down from the ceiling. It tore a string of flesh from the prisoner it was feeding on, and rotated in their direction, pulling away tendons and muscle. Before it had a chance to escape, Echo 1 fired a torrent of well-aimed shots.

The beast dropped from the ceiling, bringing the human prisoner down with it. The gluey residue stretched into a web as the two bodies fell. The Variant crashed to the ground, but the strings of glue held halfway down, suspending the prisoner in mid-air like an insect caught in a spider web.

All four soldiers approached slowly, their guns sweeping for more contacts. After a few steps, they stopped, but Beckham didn’t see any other hostiles. Echo 1 lowered his cam on the corpse hanging from the ceiling.

The body suddenly twitched, and the prisoner fought to look up. Somehow, he was still alive. His lips trembled, and his eyes widened in the glow of the beams. He said something that looked a lot like
help me.

Beckham flinched as Echo 1 took a step back and shot the man in the forehead with his suppressed M4. It was then Beckham realized the man had said
kill me.

The troops continued through the final passages without stopping until they came to a tunnel overlooking a massive chamber.

Garcia nudged his way through the crowd for a better view.

“That’s where the White King lives,” he said.

F
itz pulled his shemagh scarf just below his eyes as he snuck into the stairwell of Bryant Street Metro Station. The stench here was unbearable, and he almost tossed his breakfast up like Knapp had in the chopper. Fitz paused on the second step with Apollo by his side, then motioned his team forward. They couldn’t halt here, not with the Variants prowling the streets above.

He gagged as he carefully made his way down the steps. They were littered with corpses and the flies. The insects were everywhere. Fitz batted them away as he moved. Thousands of them buzzed around the four Marines. Some were the size of .38 rounds, bloated from feeding.

At first it didn’t make any sense. The bodies should have decomposed weeks ago. The flies would have had their fill then, but now.... As soon as Fitz clicked on his UV light, he saw these weren’t the corpses of humans. These were the withered bodies of Variants.

Fitz had led his team to the site of a battle.

No. A massacre.

The walls, ceiling, and floor were covered in a thick layer of sticky blood. Frail frames of starving Variants dotted the ground at the bottom of the stairs. Some were torn to pieces, jointed appendages scattered in every direction.

What the hell happened here?

Fitz had heard of rival packs attacking one another. But this? This was beyond barbaric. Whatever creatures had done this were the result of more than freak mutations—this was the work of pure evil.

Fitz was transported back to Iraq. His squad had discovered a building of dead Sunnis in the town of Samarra just days after the Al Askari Mosque bombing in 2006. Women, children, the elderly: the Iraqi extremists had spared no one. It had been a slaughterhouse, but even that paled in comparison to what Fitz was seeing now.

He paused halfway down the steps. The platform was riddled with more corpses. He continued staring, still lost in the memory of Iraq.

“Corp’ral Fitz,” Cooper whispered. “Yo, Fitz.”

It wasn’t Cooper’s words that pulled Fitz from his trance; it was the rumble coming from the street above, like there was a sudden stampede of hundreds of bulls running through the city.

He looked up into the sunlight streaming down the stairs just as an army of Variants raced by. The beasts blocked out the sun, covering the team in shadow. Fitz loped down the final stairs, the pads on his blades sticking to the coagulated blood.

The other Marines were already on the move. They ran through the maze of bodies toward the edge of the platform. Apollo was already there, silent and unmoving. If it weren’t for a slight twitch of his tail, Fitz wouldn’t have even seen the dog. Apollo suddenly barred his teeth and turned toward the stairwell just as a voice hissed in Fitz’s earpiece.

“Shepherd 1, Command. Are you in position?”

“Negative, command, we are not in position. Moving to—” The high pitched wail of a Variant cut him off.

Distorted shadows flickered across the top of the stairwell. Fitz motioned for his team to take cover behind several pillars. Cooper pointed to Fitz, held up four fingers, and looked at his gun.

No
, Fitz lipped.

Cooper stared back defiantly. He wanted to light the Variants up; Fitz could see it in his wild eyes. Knapp was shaking his head from his location two pillars down, his gun trembling in his hands.

They sent me out here with a sociopath and a coward.

Apollo nudged up next to Fitz’s leg, growling. 

And the best dog in the world
, Fitz mentally amended.

“Shepherd 1, air assets are incoming for second pass, confirm your pos—”

Fitz shut off the hissing frequency before the Variants could hear it. The Marines had to get the fuck out of here if they didn’t want to end up barbecued. He glanced around the pillar. A pack of Variants four-strong sniffed from the top of the staircase, but none of them were advancing. It was like they were afraid of what lurked in the shadows.

Not afraid enough.

The leader, a bulky creature with a Mohawk of scars, crept down the first three stairs. It stopped and raised a nose that was split down the middle. The second it let out a shriek, Fitz shouldered his rifle and stepped out from behind the pillar. He squeezed the trigger four times in a serious of quick movements.

Three skulls detonated and the fourth Variant took one in the neck, nearly decapitating it. The corpses thumped down the staircase.

Fitz shot an advance signal to the left of the circuits. He swung his blades over the side of the platform and jumped to the ground. Then he turned and hoisted Apollo down. Knapp and Craig came next. Cooper did a final sweep of the stairwell before leaping to the tracks.

Switching on his comm, Fitz said, “Command, Shepherd 1 is heading to objective, over.”

“Move it, Shepherd 1, birds are coming in hot.”

Cooper jogged up next to Fitz. “Nice shooting, but those were my kills.”

Fitz stopped mid-stride. Knapp and Craig froze and watched the area with haunted looks. Cooper paused with that same stupid grin on his face from before. Fitz had a problem, and it was time to fix it.

“Lance Corporal, this is the one and only time I’m saying this. We’re not on a fucking trophy hunt. Check your fucking attitude or go out on your own and rack up your kills. If we see your body on the way out, I’ll bring it back for a burial at sea. But I wouldn’t bet on that if I were you.”

The challenge shut Cooper up, and the team raced into the darkness, the sliver of light at the end of the tunnel dwindling with every step. But now Fitz had another problem. Knapp was falling out. His labored breaths surged over the comm. Fitz wasn’t about to slow down for him, but he couldn’t leave the man behind.

A mechanical roar swept through the tunnel as the jets shot over the city for a second run. The next round of bombs fell over Manhattan. The impacts rattled the entire tunnel, dust and fragments sprinkling from the ceiling.

Fitz glanced over his shoulder to see a fireball explode across the platform they’d just left. The blast scorched the wall and ballooned in their direction.

“Run!” Fitz shouted. He lowered his rifle and sprinted with his helmet down. The wave of heat licked his back, singeing the hairs on his neck. He had glanced back to check on Knapp again when Apollo howled a warning.

“Watch out!” Cooper shouted, seeing the monsters at the same moment as the German Shepherd.

In the blink of an eye, they were on them. Four Variants came barreling out of a side passage onto the tracks to avoid the explosions. The first two clipped Fitz as they darted into the tunnel, apparently just as surprised as the Marines. He spun, tripped, and crashed to the ground.

Fitz scrambled to get up, but one of the creatures leapt onto his back. It dug its talons into his body armor. Swinging his helmet back, he smashed the beast in the nose, knocking it off.

The fireball surged forward, stopping a hundred feet short of their position. Fitz shielded his face from the heat with one hand, and reached for his M9 with his other.

There was suppressed firing, and the ricochets of wild shots. Fitz blinked, his eyes stinging from the smoke, but he didn’t have time to put on his gas mask. The blurred shape of the Variant staggered toward him. He raised his M9 as the creature slashed at him, knocking his pistol away and cutting his arm.

Fitz rolled away and dropped to the ground to find his weapon.

“Apollo!” Fitz shouted. He took in a gasp of air, coughing on the smoke.

More suppressed gunshots rang out, and a Variant wailed in agony. Then Fitz heard what could have been a human scream. A body was catapulted through air, crashing against a wall with a sickening crunch.

Fitz felt the M9 and picked it up. The monster tackled him to the circuits before he could fire off a shot. He landed on his back and grabbed its thin, wrinkled neck with his left hand, and tried to raise his pistol with his right, but the beast’s knee had that arm pinned down.

Snarling, it shook from his grip and lurched for his jugular. Fitz pulled his arm free and pistol-whipped it in the face, shattering jagged teeth. The beast howled in anger and yanked his gun away. Hot, rancid breaths puffed from its mouth, more awful than the decay and the smoke. Saliva dripped onto Fitz’s nose as the monster leaned back in. He grabbed its neck with both hands and squeezed, but the monster was much stronger than it looked.

Fitz jerked his head to the right to avoid the needle teeth as the creature snapped at him again. He fought the urge to cough, tightened his grip, and pushed. Behind the lump of pale flesh on top of him, Fitz saw Knapp firing at the two remaining Variants as they prowled through the smoke. Craig was slumped against the wall, unmoving. The creatures made a run for Cooper, who’d been reloading his weapon when Fitz lost sight of them.

The gaping maw of the Variant on top of Fitz closed in, chomping behind swollen, veiny sucker lips. He pushed harder, but the beast inched closer.

“Help!” Fitz shouted.

Something slammed into the beast, and Fitz used every ounce of strength left to push it off him. He rolled out from under the monster as Apollo tore at the Variant’s neck. The dog ripped a hunk of flesh away, and then went back in for another bite. Warm blood slopped onto Fitz as Apollo chewed through arteries.