Nicholas Smith - Extinction Horizon

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.”

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.