Extinction Age (18 page)

The emotion was tinged with guilt because she was alive to
enjoy it while so many others had died. Her brother, Javier. Her mentor,
Michael. She still didn’t know the fate of her parents, but she had to assume
they too had perished. Any happiness seemed wrong in the light of so much
death.

After Kate had dressed, she brewed coffee in the tiny machine
next to the sink. She poured two cups and took a seat on the bed to wait for
Beckham to finish his sit-ups. The man was disciplined and relentless.

“Almost done,” Beckham said. He grunted, his abs clenching,
and Kate could see every muscle in his back. His torso was sculpted with a lean
layer of muscle.

Apollo rested at his feet, clearly waiting anxiously for a
walk. He glanced up every few seconds.

When Beckham finished his workout, he wiped his forehead with
a towel and then threw it over his shoulder. He pushed himself to his feet and
sat next to Kate on the bed.

“Here,” Kate said.

“Thanks,” Beckham said, taking the cup of coffee from her.

Kate sipped the steaming liquid in silence, enjoying the
minute of solitude with Beckham before they started another day. Birds chirped
from the branches of a tree just outside the window. It felt oddly normal, like
any given morning from before the outbreak.

“Never thought I would enjoy a mug of joe so much,” Beckham
said. He patted Apollo on his head and then walked to the window. Using two
fingers, he parted the shades and looked outside.

“Going to be nice out. Don’t see a single cloud in the sky.”

“Too bad I won’t see any of it,” Kate said. “I’ll be in the
lab.”

Beckham closed the shades. “I bet it’s getting claustrophobic
in there.”

“I’m used to it.” Kate finished the rest of her coffee. She
was still working up the guts to tell him how she felt, but the L-word seemed
to be caught in her throat. She wanted so badly to tell him while they still
had the chance. She had just gathered up the courage to say it when a knock
rattled the door.

“Kate, it’s Ellis. You in there?”

Beckham walked to the door and opened it. Ellis blushed when
he saw the shirtless soldier and spoke over Beckham’s shoulder.

“Kate, Colonel Wood is en route. He wants a status update in
two hours,” Ellis said.

“Great,” Kate huffed. “I’ll meet you in the lab in a few
minutes.”

Beckham closed the door and threw on his shirt. “I have a
briefing. I should get going too.”

Kate hesitated, her lips hovering a fraction of an inch from
his. She didn’t care that Beckham’s breath smelled like coffee and that he
badly needed a shower. She closed the distance between them, pressing her body
against his.

“Reed,” she whispered. “I…I wanted to tell you—”

He grabbed her waist and lifted her into the air, and she
instinctively wrapped her legs around his torso. They kissed again, deeper and
more urgent.

Reluctantly, she wriggled out of his arms and pulled her
shirt back down. They didn’t have time for round four, as much as she wanted
it.

“You let me know if Colonel Wood gives you any problems,
Kate. Or his men,” Beckham said. “Okay?”

His strength made her want him even worse. She nodded, kissed
him quickly one last time, and then hurried off to the lab.

Four weeks. That’s how long Riley had
been in a wheelchair. Looking out over the beach, Riley wished more than
anything that he could get up and run. He desperately missed the ten milers
with the rest of Team Ghost in the heat of the summer. He could almost feel the
sweat dripping down his body, saturating his clothes. He had almost always been
on point back then, setting the pace for the other men grunting behind him as
they struggled with their rucksacks.

Now he was stuck on the sidelines, unable to help with even
the clean-up duty the morning after the massacre on the beach. He glanced over
at what was left of his team. Beckham stood with his arms crossed, Apollo
sitting at his feet. Horn and Chow rested their backs against the Humvee they’d
used to get to the beach. Fitz was there, too, taking in the destruction he’d
help inflict the night before. Meg sat in the open doorway of the truck,
staring out over the blood-stained sand in disbelief. She’d asked Riley if she
could come, but now he wasn’t so sure she was glad to be here.

It seemed almost surreal, even to Riley. He still hadn’t
fully grasped the idea that the world had ended, even though he had accepted
the fact his family was dead.

The cough of a diesel engine broke out as a Medical Corps
soldier fired up a bulldozer and began clearing the Variant bodies from the
beach. A crew of Wood’s men scoured the beach in CBR suits, picking up chunks
of gore and putting them into trash bags. A second crew worked on securing a
new fence. From the look of things, they had been at it all morning.

“Your girls doing okay, Big Horn?” Riley asked.

Horn took a drag on a cigarette and flicked the ash. “Yeah,
man. They’re actually doing pretty good, considering. Glad there are other kids
here. I’m hoping they can help Bo.”

“Bo?” Riley asked.

Horn crushed the spent smoke under his boot and said, “Kid we
rescued from Niantic last night. Sounds like they’ve been through hell, but so
have Tasha and Jenny. Helps kids deal when they have someone they can relate
to.”

Riley nodded like he understood, when in reality he had no
fucking idea what it would be like for a kid growing up in this world. Frankly,
he was having a hard time keeping it together himself, and he was trained for
this shit.

“Those Wood’s men?” Horn asked.

“Yeah,” Chow said. “Saw them take off for the beach first
thing this morning. Must be hot as fuck working in those CBR suits.”

“They’re good at their jobs,” Beckham said. “I’ll give ‘em
that. Looks like they’re going to have that fence back up by sundown.”

Fitz shook his head. Beckham the unwavering optimist—it’s
what made him the best leader Riley had ever served under. Earning praise from
Beckham had always motivated Riley to push himself to his limits. Now he felt
worse than worthless. He couldn’t do anything to help his brothers. Part of him
wished they would just cut his legs off and give him blades like Fitz.

Riley flinched when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He
glanced up to see Meg looking down at him, using his shoulder to balance
herself. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail that whipped in the wind.
The bruises on her face were starting to fade, and he could see her freckles
now.

“Don’t worry. You’ll be back on your feet in no time,” she
said.

“You must be a mind reader.”

“Nah, you just look like you’re warming the bench at a
football game.”

Riley let out a sad laugh. “Yeah that about describes it.”

“How long till you’re out of the chair?”

“Dr. Hill said six to eight weeks, but with the compound
fractures I’m looking at up to a year of rehab after the casts come off,” Riley
said, glancing down. “Doc said I might not ever run again.” The words slipped
out before Riley could stop them. He hadn’t wanted the other operators to know
for fear they would see him as a burden.

“We all know that isn’t true,” Chow said. “You’re too
stubborn.”

“Clearly that idiot doesn’t know who he’s talking to,” Horn
laughed.

“Don’t worry, kid. You’ll be outrunning all of us again in no
time,” Beckham added.

Riley fought to hold back tears of relief. The support of his
brothers meant everything to him, and he cursed himself for doubting their
loyalty.

“What about you?” Riley said, examining Meg’s bandages.

“Just depends on how fast I heal. Dr. Hill told me that it
varies.” She pulled her hand off his shoulder and used it to shield her eyes
from the sun as the mechanical chatter of a chopper cut over the cough of the
bulldozer on the beach.  

Riley turned to watch a long black Chinook approach. Two
Blackhawks trailed the beast. They were still a half-mile out, but Riley could
see the troop holds were packed with soldiers.

“Here comes the cavalry,” Beckham said. There was a dark edge
to his voice. Riley understood what it meant. Beckham didn’t trust Wood, and
that meant Riley didn’t trust him either. Maybe there was something he could do
to help Team Ghost after all. If Wood and his men were a threat, Riley was
going to find out. He massaged the handle of his Beretta M9 as the choppers
descended over the island.

-18-

K
ate hustled to prepare for
Colonel Wood’s arrival. Ellis was already busy isolating blood
samples. By mid-morning, the mice were producing limited antibodies. Her
job was to see if the antibodies they got from those samples would attach to
the Superman protein. That required a simple test with the Variant bone marrow
biopsy they had already extracted. 

Using a transfer pipette, she dropped a sample of antibodies
suspended in a saline solution into a plastic tube. Then she used another
pipette to add a fluorescent molecule to the mix. Since the antibodies were
much too small to see using a light microscope, the fluorescent molecules would
allow her to visualize them using a special filter under the scope.

Now came the real test.

She transferred the antibodies with their fluorescent cargo
to a plastic dish filled with purified bone marrow cells from the Variant
they’d biopsied. Each of those cells contained the Superman protein. If her
antibodies attached to the cell, then she would be able to see the cell light
up with the fluorescent molecules bound to the antibodies.

Kate held in a breath as she moved the plastic dish under the
scope. With the twist of a knob, the fluorescent filter clicked into place.
Sure enough, the Variant cells lit up like they were on fire. The antibodies
were attaching directly to the Superman protein, just as they’d predicted.

“It works, Ellis!” Kate said, pumping her fist in victory.

“Excellent,” Ellis said. “But the next part is where things
get dicey.”

That was an understatement. What came next was the most
important test, and the result would determine whether her theory was right.
She felt confident the antibodies would enable the direct delivery of the drugs
into the Variant cells. That, however, required injecting a live specimen with
the antibody-drug conjugate.

If it successfully shut down the Variant’s immune system,
they could commit to massive production using their antibody replication
facility. In those large drums, they would fuse lymphocytes with a cancer cell
line. Combining these two cell lines created a new line—Hybridoma cells. In
biology, they were the closest thing to immortal cells, replicating forever,
theoretically reproducing into infinity given a viable platform. Each of those
cells would churn out the antibodies they needed for their targeted drug
delivery.

Even if they succeeded, they still didn’t have a solid plan
for deployment of the weapon on a worldwide level. But that was General
Kennor’s headache. Kate’s job was to create the weapon; Kennor’s was to deliver
it.

Kate was so lost in her work she almost didn’t hear the chirp
from the lab’s comm link. When she looked up, she saw a half dozen men staring
at her from the other side of the observation window.

“They’re here,” she said.

Ellis finished his task and set a vial containing blood
cultures back into a housing tray. Major Smith and Lieutenant Colonel Jensen
were at the back of the room beyond the glass, standing behind Colonel Wood and
the twin corporals who had watched over Kate and Ellis’s work the night before.

“Good morning, Doctors. I’m told you have an update for me,”
Wood said.

Kate smiled, though the expression felt false when directed
at Wood. She launched into a brief report on her and Ellis’s findings, assuring
them that they were close to a breakthrough.

Kate watched Wood’s reactions for a read on the man. His
pockmarked face remained stiff, his jaw set, and his blue eyes were unnervingly
still. His mannerisms reminded her lot of Colonel Gibson.

“Superman protein?” Wood finally asked, sounding less than
amused.

Ellis jumped in. “Called so because it speeds the Variants’
healing capabilities. We also think we’ve found their Kryptonite, so to speak.”

“Which would be?”

“Chemotherapeutics. AKA cancer drugs,” Ellis continued after
a pause, “We believe that we can use the antibodies we’re producing for the
targeted delivery of generic chemotherapeutics like Paxlitaxel—”

Wood raised a hand, cutting Ellis off mid-sentence. “You
think you can use cancer drugs to kill the Variants?” The hint of a scowl
formed on his scarred cheeks.

“Yes, Colonel,” Kate said. “The chemotherapeutics normally
destroy rapidly reproducing cells like cancer. An unintended side effect can be
the destruction of immune and bone marrow cells, since these also proliferate
at a high rate. The Variants survive and thrive because of their overactive
stem cells and immune cells. So if we can take those cells out, we believe we will
shut down their immune systems and the Variants will die—slow and painful
deaths.”

“Cut the science jargon and explain this in a way that
everyone in this room can understand,” Wood said.

Kate nodded, but inside she was fuming. “Think of the
Superman protein as the exhaust on one of your fighter jets. The antibody we
have designed is the heat-seeking sensor of your anti-aircraft missile. The
payload of that missile is the chemotherapeutics, and they will blow the damn
plane out of the air. If we’re right, the drugs will destroy the targeted
cells.”

“Sounds like a long shot,” Wood replied.

“The good news is that we can save more lives by using drugs
we already have instead of creating and manufacturing something new. Plus,
there are enough chemotherapeutics stockpiled in this country to deploy the
weapon to the whole world once we determine how to deliver it,” Kate said.
After a moment, she added, “Sir.”

“Don’t worry about deployment,” Wood said. “That’s General
Kennor’s arena. I’m sure he already has a plan.”

“I was hoping he would, sir.”

Wood nodded. “How long until you know if it works on a live
specimen?”

“Twelve hours,” Kate replied. “Maybe more, maybe less. Hard
to say.”

“I have a call with General Kennor at 2100, but I want to be
present for these tests,” Wood said. “I also expect you to be available for
that call, Doctors.”

Kate started to protest that she didn’t have time to waste in
a meeting, but Wood cut her off. “That’s an order, not a request.”

“We’ll be there,” Ellis said.

The colonel turned to leave but hesitated. “How many of these
drugs do you think you’ll you need?”

“A lot, sir,” Kate said. “And we’ll have to coordinate with
all remaining facilities to fuse the antibodies to the drug line before
deploying the final weapon.”

Wood frowned. “Jensen, Smith, prepare the men. I want them
ready to go in a moment’s notice. I’ll inform Central Command and plan an
operation to secure the drugs. Dismissed.”

Kate’s heart sank as everyone but Cooper and Berg cleared the
room. She was thinking about Beckham and the other soldiers under Jensen’s
command being sent on another dangerous mission. She’d known that soldiers
would have to raid facilities across the country to collect the drugs she
needed to complete her weapon, but she had prayed those stationed at Plum
Island might sit this one out.

She returned to her station with a heavy heart. She still had
to encapsulate the chemotherapeutics in a protective polymer coating through
microemulsion. Then she could chemically crosslink the antibodies to the
encapsulated drugs and add the antibody-drug complexes to a saline solution for
a live test. There was still a lot of work to do—hopes and prayers alone
weren’t going to save the human race.

Lieutenant Colonel Jensen and Major
Smith followed a group led by Colonel Wood through Building 4. Jensen still
didn’t have a read on Corporal Cooper or Corporal Berg, but both men seemed to
be extremely loyal to Wood.

Jensen had led his own men down these very halls just weeks
before to study the Variant specimens. No one stopped to examine the prisoners
they kept in the dark cells this time. Jensen suspected Wood was used to
similar conditions. Having been one of Gibson’s cronies since Vietnam, Wood had
likely toured countless top-secret prisons—ones that didn’t follow any laws set
forth by the Geneva Conventions.

The team marched down the corridor, unfaltering even at the
hellish sound of a Variant squawking. Jensen was the only one to slow and watch
the monster skitter up the wall inside the cell. It hung in the corner,
snarling at him from the shadows. Its shrieks, combined with the pounding of
boots, attracted the attention of two figures at the end of the narrow
corridor.

Doctor Lovato and Ellis had already arrived. They waited
outside the observation window that looked into the main isolation room.
Through the glass, Jensen could see a female Variant already strapped to the
metal gurney. A wave of déjà vu tingled through him as he remembered the young
female Variant who had died on the same table weeks before when his team had
injected her with Kate’s first bioweapon, VX9H9.

“We’re ready,” Kate said. “This is Patient 3.”

Wood stepped up to the window for a better look.

“Sergeant Lombardi will inject the specimen with the
drug-loaded antibodies,” Kate continued.

 Wood folded his hands behind his back and leaned closer
to the window. “Well, let’s get on with it.”

Kate nodded and hit the comm button under the window. “We’re
all set, Sergeant. Please proceed when you are ready.”

Lombardi entered the isolation room, sporting the riot gear
that all of the medical staff used. The naked female Variant twisted on the
table and arched her back at the sound of the door closing.

This was the Variant that had lost an eyeball, and the socket
had developed a leathery layer of skin in a matter of days. The bandages that
had covered its left arm and right leg had been removed, revealing thick scar
tissue. Their healing ability was truly remarkable. It also made them damn hard
to kill—something that Jensen found more frightening than impressive.

As soon as Lombardi approached, the Variant jerked its bald
skull in his direction, homing in with the yellow slit of its remaining
eyeball. It squirmed against its restraints, wormy blue veins bulging over its
stretched flesh.

Patient 3 let a high-pitched howl fly that intensified into a
shrill so loud that several of the soldiers in front of Jensen started to
fidget. Jensen reached into his pocket for his chew and wedged a piece between
his gums and lip.

“It should take at least a few hours to see any results, but
the Variants show a strong resilience to infection. That’s why we’re using the
chemotherapeutics. The antibodies enable the targeted delivery of the drugs
straight to the Variant’s bone marrow stem cells, which should drastically
reduce their immune and healing capabilities.”

“In English, Dr. Lovato,” Wood said, sounding bored.

“They’ll die,” Kate said. “Fast, I hope.”

Wood seemed more interested in the creature’s behavior than
the doctor’s explanation. He stepped closer to the glass. “You ever seen one of
these things talk?”

Kate raised a brow. “Talk?”

“Yes, Doctor. Talk.”

Shaking her head, Kate said, “Soldiers in the field have
reported some of the Variants exhibiting traits that imply higher intelligence.
And there was the case of Lieutenant Brett, of course. A soldier injected with
VX-99 back in Vietnam.”

“Of course,” Wood replied smoothly.

Kate froze, her features tensing as she glared at the
colonel. “You’re familiar with Brett?”

“Doctor, I’m here to protect our national security and save
our country and its people. Do you really think there’s
anything
about
the current threat that I don’t know?”

The colonel’s voice was cutting, but his words sounded like
something he had memorized. Jensen had heard it all before. It was the same
rhetoric powerful men throughout history had used. Not much different than the
words Colonel Gibson had spoken himself, in fact.

The Variant screeched as Lombardi inserted a needle into its
arm, but Wood continued talking. “I’m here to see to it that the government
uses your weapon properly, and also to ensure it doesn’t fall into the wrong
hands. Most importantly, I’m here to make sure this wasn’t all for nothing.”

“Wrong hands, sir?” Kate asked.

Wood looked away from the glass, suddenly uninterested in the
test. “Yes, Doctor. And before you ask, I decide whose hands are the right
ones.”

Kate’s face turned red, but she held her tongue.
Smart
girl
, Jensen thought. Like Beckham and the others on Jensen’s side, she
understood the need for keeping a low profile while they all bided their time.

“Let me know the moment you get the results of your test.”
Wood jerked his chin toward the exit. “Let’s go.”

Jensen exchanged a glance with Kate on his way out. He could
only think of one person worse than Wood to control her weapon, and that man
was already buried in an unmarked grave on the beach.