Nicholas Smith - Extinction Age

“It’s okay,” he said. “We found her in the sewers. There were hundreds of survivors down there. Maybe more. I don’t know.”

Kate squinted, her features tensing. “What do you mean there were survivors?”

Beckham could see she was trying to understand, but nothing he said could describe the true horrors his team had stumbled upon beneath the streets. There was no simple way to explain what he’d seen, and the thought of admitting to her that he’d killed the human prisoners made him feel queasy.

“Reed, you can tell me. I can handle it.” Kate swept a strand of brown hair behind an ear. “I need to know.”

Beckham didn’t want her to feel responsible. The burden she carried was already heavy enough to send a normal person over the edge. She’d blamed herself for the Variants since the deployment of her bioweapon. If she knew what they were doing and what he had tried to stop…

“If I’m going to design another weapon, I need to know everything you do. I’m assuming what you saw is no different than in other cities. I already know they are going underground to avoid sunlight.”

“That’s not the only reason,” Beckham replied, a bit too fast. He closed his eyes, sucked in a breath and exhaled. “They store their food down there, Kate.”

When he opened his eyes, Kate had taken a step back. “Store their food?” Her blue eyes widened as she realized what he meant.

“We discovered a lair of human prisoners. There were hundreds of mutilated survivors that the Variants were feeding on. We saved Meg, but… I was forced to kill the others.”

Kate cupped a hand over her mouth. She whimpered into her palm and then peeled it away. “I’m so sorry.”

Beckham wrapped his arms around her. “It’s not your fault. The blame rests solely on that bastard Gibson.”

“No,” Kate said, pulling away. She sobbed and wiped away a tear. “If VX9H9 had killed all of the Variants, this would never have happened. There wouldn’t be any lairs. You wouldn’t have had to kill anyone .”

Meg jerked awake and reached for her axe that wasn’t there. The movement sent the most awful pain of her life searing through her legs. She gritted her teeth, but a whimper slipped through. Behind blurred eyes, she saw a bank of lights. Her mind went blank a moment later, the agony shutting off her brain.

When she woke again, she felt nothing. If it weren’t for the nurse staring down at her, she would have thought she was dead. A warm, reassuring smile touched the sides of the young woman’s face.

“This might sting,” the nurse said. She reached forward with a needle that looked more like a small knife.

Meg didn’t bother protesting. She couldn’t even if she wanted to. She watched as the nurse inserted the tip into her arm. It hurt as bad as she thought it would. Her muscles knotted, tensing around the needle. She blinked, a tear falling from her eye, and then there was darkness.

The third time she woke, she was alone. Her body felt strange, like it wasn’t hers anymore. She knew it was the drugs. In the past she would have refused them. She was an all-natural kind of a gal, but a lot had changed in the last month. Her husband was dead, and the world was full of monsters. She drew a deep breath in an attempt to calm her nerves. The door squeaked open a moment later and a bearded man with neatly parted brown hair entered her room.

“Hi, Meg, I’m Dr. Hill,” he said. He approached her bedside with his eyes locked on a clipboard.

She tried to sit up by scooting her legs. That hurt worse than the needle. She grimaced as the pain passed.

“Probably want to sit still,” Hill said gingerly. “Your legs are pretty torn up. I stitched them back together, but honestly, I’m not a surgeon.” He flipped a page over the clipboard and continued, “I was a physical therapist working at Fort Bragg. Got lucky and was rescued about a week ago.”

She glared at him incredulously. A physical therapist had stitched her up? She didn’t want to see what was beneath the white covers.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

“Good news is you’re going to be fine. Will take some time for your legs to heal, but once we get you hydrated you’ll start feeling better.”

Meg craned her neck to the left and looked out the window. A patrol of armed soldiers walked down a concrete pathway.

“Where am I?”

“Plum Island,” Hill replied. “You’re safe now.”

Meg let out a weak laugh and closed her eyes again, drifting back into the perpetual nightmare inside her head.

Fitz scoped the beach with his new MK11. It was mid-afternoon and he was still on edge from the attack the night before. He played the crosshairs over the water, half expecting to see the pale flesh of a swimming Variant. After an hour of pacing back and forth, he finally took a seat on a stool and rested his aching body. He was fighting to keep his eyelids open, and his thigh muscles burned like he’d just finished a marathon. He desperately needed sleep, a deep tissue massage, and a shot of whiskey.

Scratch that. He needed a bottle of whiskey.

Just when he was starting to relax, his earpiece crackled.

“Tower 4, Command. We have a report of an unidentified ship drifting south in Gardiners Bay. You got eyes on?”

“Stand by,” Fitz said.

He walked to the edge of the box. This wasn’t the first report of a derelict ship. Vessels dotted the horizon like shells on a beach. Their crews had either abandoned them or were dead.

Hoisting his rifle onto the ledge, he set the bipod and pointed the sleek black muzzle toward the bay. The horizon warned of a mid-afternoon storm. Swollen gray clouds rolled across the sky, a sharp contrast to the calm teal waves. Fitz squared his shoulders, and then roved his aim slowly to the right until he saw the dull gray of metal.

“Got eyes,” Fitz said. “Definitely a ship. Stand by for identification.”

He zoomed in expecting to see a freighter, or perhaps a yacht out of Martha’s Vineyard. Instead of a luxury cruiser, he saw a Navy destroyer. And it wasn’t anchored, either. A powerful wake trailed the boat as she split through the water.

“Command, Tower 4. I have eyes on a Navy destroyer with the markings USS Truxtun , 103. She’s coming in pretty fast.”

There was a hard pause of static, enough to tell Fitz that command was already planning a strategy to blow the boat out of the water if it got too close. Unless Lieutenant Colonel Jensen had some hellfire missiles Fitz didn’t know about, that wasn’t going to happen.

The electronic wail of a siren sounded from the public address system before Fitz could get his thoughts straight. He brought his eye back to the scope. The ship appeared to be on a collision course with the island.

Fitz chambered a round and centered his sight on the bow—as if a shot from his gun would do anything. Still, the cold steel in his hands made him feel better. He scanned the deck of the boat for contacts as it came into focus, but there wasn’t a single person in sight.

A ghost ship.

He imagined a Variant at the helm, crazed and starving, its yellow eyes focused on the island. His heart rate increased as the whine of the emergency sirens blared louder.

“Command, Tower 4. No hostiles. Please advise. Over,” Fitz said.

The whoosh of helicopter blades pulled Fitz’s gaze to the north. Strike teams raced across the tarmac and piled into the trio of grounded Blackhawks. By the time he moved back to the other side of his tower, the birds were airborne. The mechanical chatter of their rotors masked his labored breaths. He watched them race across the sky toward the Truxtun .