Extinction Aftermath (Extinction Cycle Book 6) Read online

  Ringgold stopped reading to meet Johnson’s eyes.

  “The Hemorrhage Virus? How is that possible?”

  Johnson cleared his throat. “VX9H9 was never one hundred percent effective.”

  “What about Kryptonite? I thought it was supposed to kill anyone left alive who had been infected.”

  He shook his head. “There were areas outside the range of both weapons. Underground, very rural areas, ships.”

  “Have you informed the Medical Corps at Plum Island?”

  Johnson nodded. “Yes, Madame President. We just shipped over a briefing this morning.”

  “Good. Perhaps Kate can shed some light on this.”

  Johnson pulled at his collar before continuing.

  “That’s not the worst of it. There aren’t packs of infected. Only individuals trying to enter the SZTs. It’s odd. So far we have been able to contain all of them…until today.”

  Ringgold resisted the urge to pull at her own collar. “What happened?”

  “It’s SZT 15, Madame President. Turn to page 29.”

  She quickly flipped through the pages, knowing exactly which SZT she was looking for. It was Chicago, and it was special to her for more reasons than one. Her cousin Emilia, who had survived in the countryside and been rescued by a squad of Marines, was living there.

  “That’s a transcript of the last transmission we received.”

  Ringgold looked up. “What do you mean, last transmission?”

  “SZT 15 has gone dark, Madame President. And that’s not all… Plum Island was attacked a few hours ago.”

  It was Commander Rachel Davis’s forty-fifth day as captain of the USS George Washington. At thirty-seven she was young to hold the post, but President Ringgold had overseen the ceremony herself the same night Team Ghost received their promotions. That was the last time she had seen her friends.

  Davis still wasn’t fully recovered from her gunshot wounds, or the actions that had earned her the service rank, but she was slowly getting better. Standing for long periods was painful, but she was fine when she was on the move. The cane her doctor had assigned her was jammed in her locker.

  Stupid toothpick, she thought when she pictured it. If Beckham wasn’t using a cane, she didn’t need one either. She palmed a bulkhead to combat a wave of dizziness and looked out the porthole at Panama City Beach, Florida.

  Rear Admiral Rick Humphrey was right next to her, staring through binoculars at the burning city. Flames licked the sky from relentless bombing. They were clearing the city and preparing to build SZT 79, but there wasn’t going to be much left if they didn’t stop blowing it up.

  “Hit ‘em again,” Humphrey said.

  Davis hesitated for a split second, then gave the order.

  RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missiles streaked away from the aircraft carrier and curved into the sky. Another set followed close behind, the exhaust hissing behind the missiles. They glided three hundred feet over the water and then slammed into two buildings in the center of town, a crimson explosion lighting up the cityscape.

  The raucous blast shook the Combat Information Center, rattling the portholes.

  “That should have toasted most of the bastards,” Humphrey said. He stroked his thick mustache and looked at Davis. She forced herself to watch the flames, praying there weren’t any civilians in the vicinity.

  “That the last of the coordinates?” Humphrey asked.

  “One more, sir,” Davis replied. She read the coordinates the Marine Recon team had identified.

  “Finish it,” Humphrey said. He pivoted away from the CIC’s window before the missiles launched, his hands behind his back. “I want to do a flyover in the morning. If it looks clear, we’ll send in mechanized units to look for survivors. Then we get word to President Ringgold. They can break ground for SZT 79 as soon as the flames recede and it’s secured.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Davis said.

  Four more Sea Sparrows and a flurry of smaller RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles raced away from the GW, lancing into the areas of the city that weren’t yet on fire. If there were survivors out there, Davis hoped they were somewhere deep underground. She knew the juveniles would be. Their chances of finding a survivor stronghold in Panama City was unlikely, but like the other cities they had liberated, there were always a few people left to save. Humans were a lot like cockroaches that way.

  “I’m retiring to my quarters. You have the bridge for now. Wake me up if you hear anything else about SZT 15,” Humphrey said. He looked exhausted, and Davis didn’t begrudge him his rest.

  “Aye, sir,” she replied. She moved over to the station where Jay Belford, a new officer and recently reassigned to the GW, was seated. She still didn’t know half the new staff on her own damn ship.

  “Updates, Belford?”

  “Nothing new, Commander, but there is chatter over the network about an incident at Plum Island earlier today.”

  Davis felt another wave of dizziness.

  “What kind of incident?”

  “An attack, ma’am.”

  Davis reached out to steady herself on the chair, doing her best not to draw attention to her condition. She couldn’t appear weak to her staff, not with morale already at an all-time low.

  “A yet-to-be-identified assailant was carrying a syringe containing the Hemorrhage Virus,” Belford said.

  Davis gasped, her already spinning head going into deep dive. “What? Why in the hell would…?”

  Another explosion rocked the city, a mushroom cloud of fire booming into the air. “Jesus,” Davis said. She pulled her gaze away from the destruction. “Do we know how bad the attack was?”

  Belford nodded. “Ninety-four civilians were killed. All were being relocated to the SZT at Plum Island by the USS Monterey. The virus was contained, we think, but several residents are in quarantine just to be sure.”

  “Ma’am!” shouted a voice.

  Lance Corporal Katherine Diaz stood at her station. The GW was so short on staff some of them held dual positions. Diaz was Davis’s personal bodyguard and helped some of the communication officers.

  “I’m picking up an SOS over the short wave,” Diaz said. “There are survivors out there, Commander.”

  Davis pushed the thoughts of her friends at Plum Island aside. There wasn’t anything she could do to help Beckham or Kate right now, but there were apparently people she could save here.

  Diaz handed over her headset and Davis took a moment to study the short lance corporal as she reached out to grab it. Diaz’s face seemed unusually pale beneath her dusting of freckles, and Davis suspected she was about to find out why.

  Davis wasn’t the only one to lose her loved ones in this war. Diaz had seen her husband killed in an airstrike from the very government she swore to defend. That’s one reason Davis had picked Diaz as her personal bodyguard. They both had nothing to lose.

  A panicked female voice surged over the channel, and Davis cupped the headset over her ears. What the woman said chilled Davis to the core.

  “To the military or anyone that can hear this, stop firing on the city! There are over fifty children and adults at…” The message cut off, then restarted.

  Davis pulled the headset off. She knew the survivors couldn’t hear her. It was a one-way UHF transmission.

  “Diaz, Can you figure out where they are?”

  “Maybe the general area, but not an exact location.”

  “Get it done,” Davis said. She turned to Belford. “I want two Marine fire-teams prepped and ready to go on the hour. Everyone wears CBRN suits.”

  Belford stared for a moment, uncertainty in his watery blue eyes. “What about Admiral—”

  “He left me in charge,” Davis said. “That’s an order.”

  “Yes, Commander,” Belford said. His gaze shifted to someone standing behind Davis. She turned
, half expecting to see Humphrey, but instead saw Marine Sergeant Corey Marks standing in the center of the room.

  He cleared his throat and then rasped, “I’d highly recommend waiting until morning, Commander. You know better than anyone that juveniles hunt at night.”

  Davis understood why some of the Marines called Marks “Two-Face” after the Batman villain. The left side of his face was hidden by shadow, but the right side was illuminated enough to see a scar running from his lip to his ear. He was a rough man with a layer of fat covering old stomach muscles, and a thick upper body from years of weight lifting. He was also smart enough to make sergeant, but something had stopped him from ever advancing past that rank.

  “Ma’am, I lost two of my boys out there the other night. I don’t think sending anyone out there right now is a good idea.”

  “You’re not in charge,” Diaz said. “Commander Davis gives the orders.”

  Davis gave her bodyguard a glance. They would need to work on the chain-of-command thing.

  “I’m sorry about your men, Sergeant, but they died to give us the coordinates to bombard the city.” Davis paused to reflect. “If they were correct, then the juveniles are dead. And any human survivors we were hoping to save will also be dead soon if we don’t go out there to help.”

  Marks coughed and brought his hand up to cover his mouth. His lungs rattled. “Easy for you to say. You got no skin in the game.”

  “Excuse me, Sergeant?” Davis stood tall, her fingers tightening into fists. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”

  Several officers looked up from their stations, but Davis kept her gaze on Marks.

  “I will be going out there with you, Sergeant. Is that enough skin in the game for you? Meet me on the flight deck at 0100 hours, and bring your CBRN suit. We have some civilians to bring home.”

  “Yes. Yes, ma’am,” Marks grumbled. He ran a hand through his thin gray hair and retreated from the CIC.

  Davis looked at Belford. “Tell Humphrey I’m going ashore. In the meantime, you have the bridge.”

  The corporal leaned back a little in his chair. “Ma’am I would highly—” He stopped himself and said, “Good luck. And be careful, Commander.”

  Davis jerked her chin at Diaz. “Let’s go, Lance Corporal.”

  Before they left, Davis eyed the burning city in the distance one more time, thinking of the husband and nephew she had left behind when she’d been called up for duty. Blake and Ollie had died in the outbreak, and she hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye. She had made a promise that she would save everyone she could since that fateful day, and there were people out there who needed her right now. She had no doubt that Beckham and Kate would be doing the same thing at Plum Island. She just hoped they were okay.

  Diaz cradled her M4 across her chest like a pro as they walked out of the CIC.

  “Don’t worry about that turd Marks. He means well,” Diaz said.

  Davis smiled her pearly white grin. “Just watch my six, Lance Corporal. We have some people to bring home.”

  “Kate!” Beckham screamed. He fought the two Medical Corps soldiers dragging him down the white hall of the BSL4 facility.

  “Reed!” Kate yelled back. She was near the end of the passage. Two men were leading her and the other surviving civilians to God knew where.

  The grip under Beckham’s armpits tightened. “Please calm down, sir, or I’ll have to restrain you,” one of the soldiers said.

  “Try it, asshole!” Beckham said.

  Horn was yelling elsewhere in the facility, but Beckham couldn’t see his best friend. “Get your hands off me you piece of shit!” A pause, and then, “I’ll break your dumb chicken neck if you don’t let me go!”

  Hearing Horn’s voice made Beckham even angrier. He struggled again, this time dragging his blade and boot on the floor. The blade caught against a tile and folded under his body. Beckham tried to get his weight on his right foot, but he fell to his knees. He pulled one of the men down with him, tossing him head over feet onto the ground with a thud. Beckham pushed himself up as the other guy backed away. He pulled out a Taser and jabbed Beckham before he could react.

  A jolt of electricity rocked through his body. He screamed in pain and threw a punch that connected with the soldier’s stomach. They both went down and hit the floor together. Beckham tried to stand but stumbled, his arm wobbly.

  Something hot stabbed him in the back.

  “Reed!” Kate screamed.

  “Hold on, I’m com—” Beckham began when another jolt of electricity surged through him. He went down face first this time.

  “Please, sir. Stay down!” one of the soldiers yelled.

  Beckham saw two boots in front of his face, but he couldn’t move. Waves of red and black encroached from the sides of his vision.

  “Kate,” he whispered. “Kate, I’m coming…”

  There was darkness, and blinding pain, and then…nothing.

  Beckham woke up naked in an isolation cell. He was shaking violently in the chilly air.

  A voice came over the speakers. “Stay calm, sir. You’re going to be okay and so will your friends.”

  Beckham raised his hand to shield his eyes from the bright LEDs. He squinted, winced, and felt his back where the bastard had shocked him. It took every ounce of his control not to stand up and pound on the door sealing him in the tiny room.

  A blast of warm water hit him. He pushed himself up and said, “Where’s Kate? Where’s Horn?”

  “They’re being treated, sir.”

  Beckham turned slightly so the water could hit his back. “Treated for what?”

  “They both suffered minor injuries and are now being checked for infection. Please, sir, hold out your arms so we can get you rinsed down. The sooner you cooperate, the sooner you can see them.”

  Beckham looked up at the video camera. The voice was kind and reassuring, but he didn’t trust anyone who worked for the Medical Corps. He had only met two men in that uniform who could be trusted, but Jensen and Smith were both dead.“Sir, you are about to be covered in a disinfectant, so please raise your arms.”

  Grunting, Beckham tried, but he could hardly lift them up. He spun as the shower covered his body with a chemical-infused spray. A few minutes of soaking in the foam made his skin tingle. He did his best to hold his exhausted and sore arms out at his sides. Standing in the shower under the glow of a bank of LEDs gave him the opportunity to see every mark of battle on his body. There was no denying he was not the man he once was. While still lean and muscular, he was covered in scar tissue. Two claw marks crossed his chest like an X, and shrapnel wounds puckered his shoulder. What was left of his right arm was covered in burns.

  The warm water kicked back on, rinsing the chemicals away. He sucked in a breath of steamy air and looked down. Foam flowed down his carbon fiber blade. In the past he would have felt panicked to be trapped in a room like this and terrified at the thought of infection. But like his body, his mind had also changed. Old fears were gone, replaced by those of a man just trying to protect what was left of his friends and family.

  No, he wasn’t worried about infection, but he was sick with worry for Kate and Horn. The tear in Horn’s suit could have exposed him to infected blood. To make things worse, Kate had been lightheaded after the attack. She was under way too much stress, and he feared she could lose their child.

  A wave of anger overtook Beckham, and he pounded the tile wall with his prosthetic hand. A Medical Corps soldier in a CBRN suit looked in through the glass window to the small isolation chamber.

  “Sir, please stay calm,” the man said. His eyes flitted across Beckham’s ruined body. “We’re almost done here.”

  Beckham finished rinsing off and stepped out onto the tiled floor in an area partitioned off by a curtain. A towel hung from a rack near the entrance. He used it to dry off and then wrapped
it around his waist. He pulled the curtain back to reveal a dozen more stalls, all separated by glass windows.

  Jake was toweling off Timothy’s hair in one of the nearby cells. Beckham exchanged a nod with the police officer. Horn was in the next chamber, and the other two surviving civilian men were farther down. Doctor Durand was there, an ice pack on his head where Beckham had punched him. The only guilt Beckham felt was that he hadn’t hit him harder.

  Medical Corps soldiers stood guard outside the entry to each shower. Beckham looked back at the man guarding his.

  “Sir, please put on the clothes provided,” said the sentry. “Your blood test came back negative.”

  Beckham didn’t even remember them taking blood. Must have been when he was out. He picked up a white jumpsuit from the bench. Sitting down, he then took off his blade and rested it against the wall. He changed as quickly as he could, but getting his stump through the pant leg proved to be difficult without help. When he had finished and attached his blade, he stepped up to the door and combed his wet hair back with his left hand.

  A chirp sounded, the door unlocked, and the soldier on the other side pulled it open. One by one, the other isolation doors opened up. Jake and Timothy stepped out with the others, but Horn remained inside.

  “What about Master Sergeant Horn?” Beckham asked.

  “We are holding him for a while,” the sentry said.

  Beckham paused. “What the hell for?”

  The soldier didn’t reply, just waved Beckham forward. They walked down the hallway, but Beckham detoured toward Horn’s door. The soldier guarding it held up his rifle.

  “Sir, please do not step over the red line.”

  Beckham glanced down at the floor. His blade was on the outside of the line, and after seeing what had happened on the dock outside, he didn’t want to push these people. They had their orders.

  “It’s okay,” Horn said. He held up a paw. “I’ll be fine, boss. Just look after Tasha and Jenny till I’m out of this shit hole.”

  Beckham hesitated, and Horn said, “Really, brother. I’m good.”