Extinction Age (15 page)

“He didn’t deserve that,” she said.

“No,” Beckham said. “He didn’t.” They walked over to the
graves in silence and found a spot at the back of the crowd. Beckham saw the
fresh dirt of an unmarked grave he’d missed before. It was on the north end of
the others, about ten feet from the white crosses.

“Who’s buried there?” Beckham asked.

“Gibson,” Kate replied. “I guess they figured it was better
that way.”

Beckham scratched Apollo behind his ears and stared at
Gibson’s grave. The chapter on Gibson was closed, but Wood had worked with the
man. Somehow Beckham had a hard time believing that a high-ranking officer like
him hadn’t known about the work going on in Building 8. Then again, he’d
mistrusted Jensen just because of the man’s association with Gibson, and
Beckham had been wrong.

But while Jensen had proved himself as a man Beckham could
trust, he had little—if any—faith left in Central Command or the colonel they
had sent to take over. Not now, after they’d all sacrificed so much. Beckham
silently vowed that if Wood turned out to be another traitor like Gibson, he’d
take the colonel out himself.

General Kennor sat in his office with
the lights off. It was a guilty pleasure he’d developed over the years. No one
ever seemed to knock when the lights were off. Not unless there was a war.

A rap on his door came a few minutes after he’d closed his
eyes. He recognized the brisk, efficient knock.

“Flip the lights, will you Colonel Harris?” Kennor said. “I
was trying to get some sleep.”

The glow from a bank of lights over his desk spilled over the
room.

 “Sorry, sir. Thought you would like to know that
Colonel Wood has touched down at Plum Island. He’s relieved Lieutenant Colonel
Jensen of his command and has taken over the post.”

“Good,” Kennor said. “Jensen’s a damn fool. I should have
known I couldn’t trust him after New York.”

Kennor cursed himself for giving up so much control. He was
already retreating from the cities. He would not allow himself to lose places
like Plum Island. It was a vital piece of winning the war.

Kennor repositioned a picture of his grandkids on his desk.
It was the only personal item he’d managed to take with him before he had been
evacuated from the Pentagon. But there had been no armed entourage to take his
family to an underground bunker. They had been lost in the madness of the
outbreak.

“Sir, is there anything else?” Harris asked. He clasped his
hands behind his back.

“Yes,” Kennor said. He ran a finger over the picture and then
leaned back in his chair.

“Tell Colonel Wood I want him to oversee Dr. Lovato’s work.
Everything goes through him. If she wants a goddamn test tube, she needs to get
it approved.”

“Understood, sir,” he pivoted away from the desk and walked
to the door.

“Oh, and Harris?” Kennor said, stopping him in mid-stride.
“Tell him to monitor Jensen’s men. After that stunt they pulled on the
Truxtun
,
I have questions about their loyalties.”

The next morning Beckham and his team
gathered on the lawn outside Building 1. Fitz, Horn, Chow, and even Riley
trailed him across the grass. Colonel Wood and an entourage of his soldiers
waited for all of the enlisted men and women to report for a briefing. More
troops had arrived under the cover of darkness. Beckham counted a dozen of
them, all wearing the same black fatigues with the Medical Corps insignia.
There were more on the towers and more patrolling the shoreline and wooded area
around the buildings.

With a square meal and a decent night of sleep under his
belt, Beckham felt the most refreshed he’d been since the outbreak. Alert and
on edge, he was ready to hear what Wood had in store for the island.

Jensen and Smith stood behind the colonel. Neither of them
showed any emotion. Beckham suspected Jensen was doing the exact same thing he
had done when they met Lieutenant Gates back in NYC—he was waiting for Wood to
lay the cards on the table and then act accordingly. Beckham would do the same
damn thing in his position.

 “I’ll keep this short as we have a lot of work to do,”
Wood said. He shielded his face from the bright morning sun with a hand. “As
many of you already know, I’m Colonel Wood with USAMRIID. Under orders from
General Kennor, I have officially taken over this post. I will be splitting my
time between this facility and several other top-secret locations as we pursue
a weapon to destroy the Variants. You will all be assigned a new CO during this
time. I don’t care what branch you are from or what you did before. You will
report to your CO at 1000 hours to receive your new orders. Some of you will be
deployed to other locations. Make no mistake: this is war, and as soldiers we
will do what we have to.”

Beckham clenched his jaw as if he were bracing himself for a
blow to the face, but Wood stopped there. He turned to Jensen and Smith,
exchanging a few words Beckham couldn’t hear.

“That is all, dismissed!” Major Smith shouted.

Jensen caught Beckham on his way out. He waited for most of
the men to disperse and then said, “You better steel yourself, Beckham. Things
are gonna get fucked.”

“Figured as much,” Beckham said. “Wood talks a big game,
but—”

He felt a nudge on his shoulder. “Boss, shut up,” Horn
whispered.

Beckham turned to see Wood standing there.

 “Master Sergeant, I’d like to have a word with you,” he
said.

 “Yes, sir,” Beckham replied, trying to conceal his
surprise.

Wood waved off the two soldiers flanking him and continued
across the grass. “I’m told you’re the best soldier we have on the island.”

“I don’t know about that,” Beckham said as he followed Wood.
“But I have seen what the Variants are capable of. In fact, I saw where this
all started.”

Wood stopped, keeping his back to Beckham. “Building 8, I
presume?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The Hemorrhage virus should never have escaped the
facility.”

The top-secret building was no longer a secret, but Beckham
still found it interesting the colonel would bring it up. It confirmed his
suspicions that Wood might have known what Gibson was doing all along.

“I’m flying out to one of our other locations in the next
couple of hours,” Wood said. “But I wanted to talk to you before I leave. I’ve
assembled a strategy that puts Plum Island on the offensive. That requires
recon missions. I’ve done my best to keep you and your men together. Horn and
Chow will be assigned to your team, but I’m keeping Fitz on the towers. Your CO
is Lieutenant Colonel Jensen.”

Beckham considered protesting but stiffened instead.
“Understood, sir.”

Wood nodded and let out a low whistle. His entourage followed
him toward the command building. Beckham watched them go and then glanced at
the blue sky framed on both sides by swollen storm clouds. There was no
question in his mind that this was Wood’s attempt to keep a tight leash on Team
Ghost and Jensen. The colonel didn’t trust them, but that was fine because
Beckham didn’t trust Wood either. He would keep his head down for now, like he
always did, and wait until the truth revealed itself.

With the wind picking up, Beckham turned back to his team to
give them the news. The storm on the horizon wasn’t the only one coming, and he
was going to be damned if he let anyone—human or Variant—destroy everything he
had worked so hard to build here.

-15-

K
ate was doing her best not to think about
anything but work. By mid-afternoon she’d already logged seven hours in the
lab. She’d spent most of the time studying the new glycoprotein expressed by
the Variants.

“We’re really calling it the Superman protein?” Kate said,
glancing skeptically at Ellis. “How’d you come up with that?”

“Take a look,” Ellis said. He swiveled his monitor in her
direction and pointed. “The beta sheets in its tertiary structure look like a
cape.”

“So?”

Rolling his eyes, Ellis said, “The Variant Superman protein
is attached to oligosaccharide chains. Remember? The sugars?”

Kate nodded, leaning closer.

“The protein enables better, quicker interactions with the
biochemical cascade associated with wound healing. It’s why the Variants heal
so quickly. Get it?”

She cracked a half smile. Ellis was a nerd, and a brilliant
one at that. In the past she’d heard of scientists naming proteins Sonic
Hedgehog and Pikachurin. She also vaguely remembered one called Superman. She
asked just to be sure.

“Isn’t there already a protein called Superman?”

“Yeah, but that’s just for plants,” Ellis said. “I’m calling
this one the Variant Superman Protein, but we can still call it Superman for
short.”

“It’s settled then,” Kate said. “Let’s start the sequencing.”

“On it,” Ellis said.

They spent the next few hours sequencing the peptides
corresponding to various sections of the protein. When they were finished,
Ellis synthesized a string of peptides for immunizing the animal subjects Kate
was prepping. With the extermination of the Rhesus population, she was forced
to use mice.

 “I’ll be back in a few,” Kate said. “Gotta get the
rodents.”

“No problem. I’ll have this completed in fifteen minutes.”

Kate left Ellis to his work and crossed the lab, weaving her
way through the compartments. Motion-activated lights flickered on as she
entered the empty labs. The only other scientists at the facility were all
on-call now, waiting in case Kate needed them, but the labs were deserted.

She hesitated outside of the observation window to the animal
testing room, remembering the Rhesus monkeys she’d infected with the Hemorrhage
virus weeks earlier. She could still imagine their crimson eyes and their
clawed hands rattling the cages.

The door beeped as she waved her keycard over the security
panel. She pulled the door open and continued inside. Shelves stacked with the
remaining rodent populations stretched across the room. There were rats, mice,
a few guinea pigs, and even a ferret. Most of them were frail from lack of
proper nutrition. Others were missing large patches of hair from stress and the
constant tests the technicians had performed. Only a few were in decent testing
condition.

Kate picked the plumpest mice she could find and put their
cages on a cart. She pushed them quickly back to her lab, trying not to look at
the animals. Their suffering would be over soon.

“Almost set,” Ellis said when she returned. “Got us our
specimens?”

“A dozen,” Kate said. She positioned the cart near a clear
lab station and waited for Ellis to finish prepping the adjuvant solution. It
contained the peptide sequences that would be used to incite an immune response
from the mice. In turn, this would create antibodies targeting the Superman
protein in the Variants.

When he had finished with the prep, he swabbed the base of
each mouse’s tail with sterilizing solution and then injected the solution into
their veins.

“All done,” Ellis said, taking a step back and standing by
Kate’s side.

“How long should it take before we can perform a bleed?” she
asked.

“Normally ten to fourteen days. There’s no way to speed up
the animals’ immune system to make antibodies faster, but we could always
perform a bleed earlier. That would just mean we get a lower concentration of
antibodies.”

“We’ll have to start in the next day or two,” Kate said.
“General Kennor is going to want this done as quickly as possible.”

Ellis let out a sigh. “I think I can make that work. Question
is, what do we do while we wait?”

“We think long term.”

“Right,” Ellis said. “We still haven’t determined a way to
deliver the weapon.”

“I’ve been trying not to think about this, but we may not
have enough time to manufacture a weapon that we can use on a worldwide level
before…”

Ellis nudged the bottom of the station with his boot. “Before
the Variants wipe every last man, woman, and child off the face of the planet?”

Kate nodded grimly. “I read a study on endangered species in
my undergrad. Scientists found that in order for the human race to survive,
they would need a minimum healthy population of two hundred and fifty adults in
a single location.”

“Like the two hundred and fifty at Central Command?” Ellis
said.

“In theory,” Kate said. “There are other places, too. China,
North Korea, Russia, Austria, and a host of other countries built these underground
cities during World War II and the Cold War. Places that humans could survive
in case there was ever a post-apocalyptic event.”

“Austria was supposedly the most prepared country a few years
ago. They drilled into the mountains and built bunkers that were stocked with
enough supplies to last years,” Ellis said. His eyes suddenly brightened under
the lights. “The cities may be gone, but there still have to be pockets of
resistance, right? Places like these underground cities.”

Kate nodded uneasily. She wanted to believe that, but
everything Beckham had told her said otherwise. Most of the human race had been
forced into shelters underground, and like the caged mice in front of her, they
were trapped.

“We can still stop the Variants, Kate,” Ellis said. “We have
to stop them.”

“I know,” Kate said. She watched the rodents with a hopeful
eye. Inside these tiny creatures, the antibodies she needed to build her new
weapon would soon begin to seed.

Lieutenant Colonel Jensen had done
some things in his career that he regretted, but never in all of those years
had he done anything that kept him up at night. Not until the
Truxtun
.
Nothing he could do would bring his men back or relieve the pain he felt for
taking Timbo’s life. He could only pray that God would forgive his sins and
give him strength to continue fighting. He doubted, however, that God would
forgive Colonel Gibson or Colonel Wood.

Jensen’s gut told him that Wood had known what was going on
at Building 8. Gibson and Wood were like brothers and had worked together since
Vietnam. Though Jensen knew better, you could at least make the argument that
Gibson possessed a moral compass. He had designed VX-99 in hopes that other
parents wouldn’t have to lose their sons on foreign battlefields. The result
was disastrous, but a part of Jensen understood why Gibson had done what he
did.

A very small part.

Wood, on the other hand, had no morals. He didn’t even
understand the concept. Referred to as “The Snake” by his fellow officers, he
was known for his cutthroat tactics. There were rumors that Building 8 wasn’t
the only top-secret biological warfare program Wood had worked on. Some of Jensen’s
colleagues had hinted that Wood had his own hidden facility focused on weapons
of mass destruction.

As much as Jensen wanted to bury Wood next to Gibson, he had
to carry on with his duty. The military still had rules and protocols, even at
the end of the world. Jensen had sworn an oath and he still believed in his
country—although he was starting to lose faith in those that protected her,
especially after the disaster known as Operation Liberty.

Jensen buried any thoughts of mutiny as he jogged toward the
tarmac. He had new orders—a recon mission to Connecticut to observe the Variant
migration patterns. Command had sent word through all channels that the
creatures were leaving their lairs and traveling farther afield for human prey.
His job was to document their behavior and look for anything that could help
win the war, but he doubted a flyover would tell them anything they didn’t
already know.

When he passed Building 1, he glimpsed Kate and Beckham
embracing on the steps. Jensen slowed, hoping to catch the operator’s ear
before they departed for Connecticut.

 “It’s just a recon mission, Kate. I won’t even leave
the chopper,” Beckham was saying. He caught sight of Jensen, kissed Kate on the
cheek, and then loped down the stairs. “Good evening, sir,” he said.

“Is it?” Jensen said. He waved to Kate and added, “Let’s take
a stroll.”

Jensen led Beckham away from the building in silence. He
checked the path for any of Wood’s men. The last thing he wanted was for any of
the soldiers to eavesdrop on their conversation.

Ahead, a patrol marched in the opposite direction. When
Jensen rounded the corner, the crackling of leaves and snapping of branches
commanded his gaze to the trees behind Building 1. A trio of soldiers in black
fatigues had just emerged from the thick canopy.

“How’s Kate doing?” Jensen asked casually in case the
soldiers were listening. He continued forward, using the glow from the
industrial light poles to guide them toward the tarmac.

“She’s hanging in there. Sounds like they’re making some headway
with their experiments. She says they identified a protein only expressed in
Variants, but I don’t really understand all the science mumbo jumbo.”

 “Don’t know what that means either, but it sounds promising.
My first CO told me that if you don’t know what someone’s talking about, you
just nod and grin.”

“Mine said the exact opposite,” Beckham said. “Told me not to
react at all.”

They shared a laugh as they reached the concrete barriers on
the edge of tarmac. The black silhouettes of Echo 1, 2, and 3 rested ahead. The
pilots were starting to warm the birds up.

A dozen soldiers flocked around the Blackhawks, stacking gear
and loading weapons. Half wore the black fatigues of Wood’s men. The other half
sported tan camo and body armor. Among them were a few Marines and Rangers from
Fort Bragg and the last members of Delta.

Just a recon mission
.

After everything they’d been through, Jensen wasn’t going to
underestimate a mission ever again.

“Beckham,” Jensen said quietly. “We got to watch our backs
now more than ever.”

“Always do,” Beckham replied.

“I’m not talking about the Variants.”

Beckham halted and gave him a cockeyed glance. “Wood?”

“He’s connected to Gibson’s work. I’m not sure how deep their
ties go or what Wood knew about VX-99, but we shouldn’t trust him.”

Beckham’s face tensed like he was suffering from a massive
migraine. “You think he could have been involved with Building 8?”

“Can’t confirm or deny that,” Jensen said. “But I would guess
he was, in some capacity.”

“Roger that. I’m already two steps ahead of you, sir.”

Jensen nodded. “Figured as much.”

They continued the rest of the walk in silence. Jensen
dropped his rucksack on the ground beside Echo 2 and waved his new team over.
Chow, Horn, Beckham, and a sergeant from Wood’s staff gathered around.

“Everyone, this is Sergeant Valentine, he’ll be accompanying
us on our flyover of Niantic,” Jensen said.

Valentine stepped forward. He was built like a turtle, with a
bulky midsection and a short neck. “Command wants us to chart enemy movement.
We are not to engage. I repeat: we are not to engage any hostiles.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Jensen said. “We understand our orders
from brass. And this here silver oak leaf means you need to understand
my
orders. But I expect you already know that.” He didn’t care if he sounded
condescending. Valentine clearly suffered from little man syndrome, and given
how uncomfortable he looked in his gear, chances were he’d never seen combat at
all. Jensen made a mental note of that. The last thing he was going to do was
let some green-ass sergeant pull any stunts like Lieutenant Gates had during
Operation Liberty.

“Yes, sir,” Valentine said. “Understood, sir.”

Jensen looked Valentine up and down, shifted the chew in his
mouth, and then pulled a map in a waterproof sleeve from his vest.

“Beckham, you know this area the best. I’d like you to direct
the birds. Give the pilots a heads up about where to look for the enemy.”

“Yes, sir,” Beckham replied. He accepted the map from
Jensen’s hand and took a few minutes to study it. A gentle drop of rain fell on
the paper, beading on the acetate. The sky opened up just as Beckham folded the
map and put it into a pocket.

Anxious to get in the air, Jensen said, “Let’s mount up.”

Horn climbed inside the craft and manned the M260. Chow and
Beckham flung their scoped M4s over their shoulders and piled in. Jensen waited
for Valentine before jumping inside.