Extinction Aftermath

1

A summer breeze rustled Master Sergeant Joe Fitzpatrick's shaggy red hair as he crossed the deck of the USS Iwo Jima. The Wasp-class amphibious assault ship cut through the rough waters of the English Channel, paving the way for the USS Mesa Verde and the USS Ashland. Together, the three amphibious vessels made up what was left of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, the USS Forrest Sherman, was hours away from joining the MEU.

Fitz touched the handle of the hatchet he kept in a sheath on his duty belt. It wasn't regulation, but he kept it to honor the bravest woman he'd ever known. All the losses over the past seven months had weighed heavily on him during the lonely ocean journey, making for long days and restless nights. Without Captain Reed Beckham and Master Sergeant Parker Horn by his side, he felt more alone than he had in a very long time.

He thought about the friends and brothers he'd never see again: Sergeant Jose Garcia, Staff Sergeant Jay Chow, Staff Sergeant Alex Riley, Lieutenant Colonel Ray Jensen, and so many others. But the one he missed most was Meg Pratt. She had been like the sister he'd never had.

Stroking the handle of her favorite weapon helped ease some of the loss. Part of her still remained with him, even if it was just wood and steel.

He approached the warning line on the edge of the deck and peered up at a red sunset that looked like a gunshot. He smoothed down his uniform, fresh from a supply locker on the Iwo. His hair whipped in a gust of wind. It was far too long. His black carbon blades and black fatigues weren't regulation either, but he no longer had a commanding officer breathing down his neck about little things like polished boots or facial hair.

Now that Fitz was the new non-commissioned officer in charge of Team Ghost, he operated mostly independently of the other soldiers. He reached down to scratch his second-in-command behind the ears. Apollo sniffed at the salty breeze, his ears perked as if ready and waiting for orders.

Those orders would have to wait.

They were still an hour away from making landfall in France. Over seventy years ago, the Allied Forces had stormed the beaches of Normandy during Operation Overlord to take back the country from the Nazis. Now Fitz and his team were about to repeat history to take France back from the Variants.

Fitz was ready to do that legacy proud. More than ready. After a nearly three-month hiatus, the 24th MEU was going to join the fight for Europe. President Jan Ringgold and Vice President George Johnson had answered the call from the new European Unified Forces, only to have their help delayed due to bureaucratic red tape and military commanders who decided not to follow orders. They had insisted that the United States Armed Forces needed to prioritize their own country's safety. Their argument sounded a lot like what Colonel Zach Wood had said before Fitz blew his head off.

America wasn't safe by any means, but rebuilding was underway. The Variants had been almost completely wiped out, and the juveniles were on the run. But the rest of the world wasn't so lucky. Rumors of new types of Variants were popping up all over—creatures with monstrous mutations.

Team Ghost had spent nearly two months with the 24th MEU, helping with recovery efforts along the eastern seaboard of the United States. The next three weeks were spent clearing the Pacific of derelict ships and raiding Navy destroyers whose crews, infected with the Hemorrhage Virus, had managed to escape the deployment of the bioweapons designed to bring them down. Fitz had lost several new friends on those missions. He had no doubt he would lose more in France.

Like they had so many times before, the Marines were prepared to fight evil wherever it emerged. Only this time, the Marines were fighting at a fraction of their original forces. Only five percent of the Marine Corps was left. The 24th MEU consisted of around two thousand men and women. Many of them were volunteers that Vice President Johnson had requested to help rebuild the shattered ranks of the American military. Hundreds of the new faces were already gathered on the deck, helping load M1A1 Abrams Tanks, LAV-25s, Humvees, Assault Breacher Vehicles, MTVR heavy trucks, and Fitz's new ride, an all-terrain version of the heavily armed MRAP vehicle, the MATV, that took a crew of six plus an additional twelve in the back.

The pre-combat sounds sent a phantom chill up the legs Fitz didn't have, and adrenaline emptied into his bloodstream. He spat over the railing.

A full moon rose over the bloody horizon. For a split second he saw the silhouette of what looked like a dragon moving across the moon. He had seen a lot of monsters, but he knew that was impossible. Regardless, he still reached up, rubbed at his eyes, and focused on the moon. The silhouette was gone.

He turned to check on the Mesa Verde and the Ashland, still trailing the Iwo Jima. Final mission briefings were underway on the decks of the other ships. Armament specialists were carefully loading weapons systems while pilots checked their instruments. Everyone had a duty.

A trio of Black Hawks passed overhead. The choppers soared toward the rising moon, buzzing away like bugs toward a floodlight. He pushed his earpiece in and listened to the radio chatter. It was difficult to hear over the clank of machinery and raised voices of combat troops on the deck behind him, but he could vaguely make out the transmissions.

"Command, Rogue 1 … Echo 4 and Echo 5 report Variants on the shore. Adults in the vicinity."

"Come again, Rogue 1. Didn't get your last. Confirm … adults? EUF said the area was clear."

"Copy that, Command. You heard right. EUF must have been wrong. Echo 4 and Echo 5 confirm Variants on the ground. We got ourselves an adult problem."

A hand on Fitz's arm startled him. Sergeant Jeni Rico flicked a pink-tipped lock of hair from her face and smiled, dimples deepening in her cheeks.

"Fitzie, you hear that shit?" she asked. "Sounds like the French didn't do a very good job of bug spraying. Kryptonite must not have been deployed everywhere."

Fitz sighed and bent down again to stroke Apollo's soft fur, catching a glimpse of the brace still on Rico's injured leg. She was lucky she wasn't in a cast.

Apollo whined, amber eyes searching Fitz's face. He knew something was up with all the activity on the deck.

"It's okay, boy," Fitz reassured him. He stroked the dog's head gently. Fitz guessed it wasn't fear making the dog uneasy. He probably missed Beckham and Kate. Fitz had promised them the 24th MEU wouldn't be gone this long, and Beckham had reluctantly allowed Apollo to come to keep Fitz safe.

That had been three months ago.

Fitz sighed and stood. He missed his friends too, and being so far away from Plum Island made him feel anxious. How could he protect them if he wasn't there?

"You're not going to say anything about my new hair color?" Rico asked.

Fitz shook his head like he hadn't noticed. "Is it different?"

She twisted a pink strand. "It's not blue anymore."

He examined her from the corner of his eye. She was cute, smart, and fun, but he'd only ever had time for one relationship—the Marine Corps. Rico might have been flirting, but Fitz wouldn't know how to flirt back if he tried.

Rico changed the subject with a frustrated huff. "How fucking hard is it to replicate Kate's bug killer?" She chewed her gum furiously as she spoke, one hand on her hip. "I mean, all they had to do was launch that shit into the air and sit back in lawn chairs and watch."

Fitz managed a nod. He wasn't sure exactly what to expect in France. No one was. The EUF had finally taken a section of Paris back, but intel was hard to come by. General Vaughn Nixon, the man in charge of the invasion, had planned Operation Beachhead without much to go on. Not long after the final briefing, Colonel Roger Bradley, the commander of the 24th MEU, had pulled Fitz and the other leaders into a meeting and dropped a bombshell. Fitz still hadn't figured out a way to tell Team Ghost.

"Fitzie, you listenin' to me?"

"I told you not to call me that," Fitz snapped.

Rico stopped chewing and glanced down at the deck.

"I'm sorry. I'm just sick of waiting to get off this damn ship. Clearing derelict vessels and performing recovery operations is boring as hell," Fitz said.

A pair of Ospreys took off and climbed into the sky, engines zooming louder than a fleet of riding lawnmowers.

"You'll get to fight soon enough," Rico said. She pulled the strap of her sawed off shotgun tighter around her shoulder.

More Black Hawks joined the Ospreys on the horizon.

"Shit, we really got an adult problem, don't we?" Rico muttered.

"It's not the adults I'm worried about. It's their offspring. They've had longer to evolve over here. And the Variant adults have had time to breed longer, too."

He eyed the vehicle assigned to his squad. The two-inch tan armor of the MATV was designed to protect the occupants from IEDs, but he wasn't sure how it would hold up against the juvenile toxins.

Rico scowled. "I hope Captain Davis is having better luck back in the States."

Fitz raised his brows, thinking of the woman who had helped take back the USS George Washington from the deranged officer who'd attempted a mutiny. Lieutenant Colonel Marsha Kramer had been convinced that a nuclear solution was their only option to defeat the Variants. If it weren't for Davis, Fitz would have been nothing more than a pile of ash on the concrete in D.C. The Captain had caught a couple of bullets in the process, but from what he had heard, Davis was already back in action on the GW.

"I'm sure she's doing just fine," Fitz said. He forced his gaze away from the horizon and jerked his chin toward their ride. "Let's round up the new team, shall we?"

Rico nodded and blew a bubble. They crossed the deck together and put their gear down next to the MATV. Staff Sergeant Blake Tanaka, Specialist Yas Dohi, and Sergeant Hugh Stevenson were already loading the troop hold at the back of the truck.

"Gentlemen," Fitz said as he approached.

All three men spun around and fell into a line. Fitz scrutinized them each in turn, just like Beckham had taught him to do. He started with Tanaka, who was fumbling with an iPod. The soldier hailed from New York and had a hint of a Brooklyn accent. A head shorter than everyone else, Tanaka made up for his lack of height with the build of an Olympic wrestler. He was in his early thirties, about the same age as Fitz.

"Those better not get in the way" Fitz said when he saw the long blade of a Katana, as well as its short-bladed companion Wakizashi, strapped to Tanaka's back.

"These have been in my family for generations. My grandfather killed with these blades during WWII, and my family would be honored if I kill Variants with them during WWIII. I understand they're not regulation, sir, but neither is that." Tanaka's eyes dropped to Fitz's hatchet.

Fitz shrugged. "Hey, if you can kill Variants with them, by all means, bring them. But you use your primary weapon unless we're down to hand-to-hand combat. Got it?"

"Sir, yes, sir."

"Use them toothpicks against an armored juvenile?" Stevenson laughed. "Good luck with that."

"What did you say?" Tanaka pulled his earbuds out of his iPod, the music so loud that Fitz caught a drip of a Lil' Troy song he hadn't heard for years. "You want to try and clean your teeth with one of these?"

Stevenson glared at the smaller man. The music continued to blare from Tanaka's earbuds and he pulled off a glove to shut off the device.

"Why do you listen to that crap?" Stevenson asked. He shook his head and folded his muscular arms across his chest.

"Crap? This shit is gold!" Tanaka straightened his back. "What the hell is your problem, man?"

"Cut the horseshit," Fitz said. He stepped between the two men—his first opportunity to lead, and an important one, considering they were preparing for battle.

"Sorry, sir," Tanaka said.

Stevenson came to parade rest when Fitz shot him a glare. The youngest member of the new team had grown up in Texas and played college football, like Big Horn. Stevenson wasn't quite as big, but his chest muscles bulged under the black armored pads he had added to his gear. He had spent most of the voyage to Europe doing yoga and reading the comic books he had dragged half way across the world.

To Stevenson's right was the oldest member of Team Ghost: forty-five-year-old Specialist Yas Dohi, which he'd told Fitz meant "rock" in Navajo. He was a quiet man, with dark black hair and a silver goatee, but Fitz got the feeling that he'd seen a lot in his time. His sharp brown eyes didn't miss much, and he was the best poker player Fitz had ever met.

He scanned his team a final time, just like Beckham had always done, to see if they were frosty. All three men were transfers from other Special Forces units. Stevenson was a machine gunner from a Marine Recon Unit, while Tanaka and Dohi were both Navy SEALs specializing in tracking, recon, and amphibious insertion. Their service ranks had transferred with them when they were assigned to Team Ghost.

It was slightly unorthodox to mix SEALs and Marines, but with the military still in disarray it wasn't unusual to have a new fire-team consist of soldiers from different branches. It also wasn't unusual for soldiers to carry custom weapons like swords or the hatchet hanging from Fitz's belt. He had even seen a guy carrying a baseball bat on a mission to take back a container ship.

Up ahead, a jagged coastline emerged, silhouetted in the moonlight. Mist drifted across the water, and Fitz remembered the steamy heads of Variants cresting the ocean back at Plum Island when he was in his old guard tower. The sight emptied another rush of adrenaline into his system. He shivered in the cool night air, wondering if this was how his grandfather had felt before he had stormed the beaches with tens of thousands of other men to take it back from the Nazis.

"Listen up," Fitz said. "First off, you all need to stop calling me 'sir.' Fitz, Fitzpatrick, or even 'brother' works."

His team nodded back and he continued. "Operation Beachhead starts in a few hours. We hit the beaches after the tanks clear a path. Then we work our way inland to help build the FOB. We make contact with the EUF and wait for orders. Any questions?"

Rico raised her hand. "Fitzie …?"

Fitz glared at her, watching her dimples fold into a frown. Sometimes she reminded him a lot of Riley. Her humor was usually welcome, but she still had to learn when to joke and when to be serious.

"I mean, Fitz, sorry," Rico said. "Where is the EUF?"

"Yeah," Stevenson added, putting his hand over his eyes like a visor as he looked at the cliffs. "I don't see any white uniforms out there."

This was the moment he'd been dreading. Fitz took a deep breath and said, "They aren't coming."

Every member of Team Ghost focused on him.

"What?" Stevenson asked, his mouth hanging open.

"Colonel Bradley briefed us an hour ago and said the EUF can't risk sending us any forces. They were assaulted last night by an army of juveniles and are hunkered down in Paris. They are barely hanging on to their base. They are surrounded in all directions and it's our job to clear a path to them."

"And save their asses?" Stevenson said.

"That's what we're here for," Fitz said sternly.

Dohi pulled a piece of licorice root from his pocket and wedged it between his teeth, chomping on it slowly. Everything he did was slow and discreet. Fitz could never get a read on him, which is what made him so good at poker.

Rico stopped chewing her gum at the news.

"They aren't fucking coming …," Stevenson mumbled.

"No, they aren't, but that doesn't change our mission," Fitz said. "And I know we haven't worked together very long, but we're all experienced at fighting Variants. We will learn to fight together."

Standing as straight as possible, Fitz let out a breath and nodded at each member of his new team. They needed more than reassurance right now. They needed to know they were part of something bigger than themselves.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the extra Delta Force Team Ghost patches Beckham had given him the day Fitz had boarded a ship with Apollo three months ago.

"This is it," Fitz said. "The moment we have been waiting months for. Welcome to Team Ghost."

One by one, he handed out the patches. Afterward, he stood next to his team and looked out over the cliffs. His grandfather had made it home from WWII, but many of his brothers hadn't. Fitz had experienced similar losses during the War on Terror and now the war with the Variants. He thought of his friends, both alive and dead, and straightened his helmet. He was going to make them proud.

"We're with you, sir," Tanaka said.

"I guess we will do this shit on our own," Stevenson said with a shrug. He pulled an arm across his chest to stretch. "I've got your back, sir."

"Me too," Rico said while flashing a contagious smile.

Dohi nodded reassuringly.

Apollo looked up and wagged his tail.

"For Europe," Fitz said, his voice deep and confident. "For humanity."

The second D-Day was just a few hours away, and each one of the Operators was prepared to give their lives for their country. Team Ghost was back, and they were ready to reclaim Europe from the monsters—or die trying.

Captain Reed Beckham checked the M4 propped up against a wheelbarrow near a row of recently harvested corn. He spat in the dirt and wiped his face on his shoulder. Fitz was about to lead Team Ghost into France against God knew what, and Beckham was digging fresh graves on Plum Island.

He looked toward the makeshift outhouse and trench separating the graveyard from fifty acres of farmland. Corn, beans, and other produce covered any evidence of the foundations that still remained of the Medical Corps laboratory buildings Colonel Rick Gibson had built. But just because Beckham couldn't see them didn't mean he would forget what had occurred there or the hundreds of men and women who had died—many of them buried here, each marked by a white cross.

He would never forget.

Guard towers rose over the beaches, and electric fences lined the coast. Water glistened in the distance, and a destroyer with a massive cage on the bow drifted across the horizon, likely heading for harbor to drop off new civilians.

Beckham looked at his M4 again. He had traded the weapon for a shovel today. He raised his new prosthetic hand and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was unusually hot for October. He glanced down at the carbon fiber blade attached under his left knee. Standing on it was much easier now, but he still couldn't run better than a ten-minute mile. His goal was to keep up with Fitz on a jog around the island when he returned from the European front. For now, Beckham was just trying to keep up with Kate, and she was almost six months pregnant.

It was over seven months since Beckham had led Team Ghost into Building 8 to investigate the breached bioweapons research facility. He could still see Sergeant Tenor transforming into a monster in his arms, and the look on his face when Staff Sergeant Riley put Tenor out of his misery.

Beckham hit his forehead with his prosthetic hand, trying to pound the memories away, but they kept coming in an endless stream, like the bullets from the MP5 he had fired that day. He saw Sergeant Jose Garcia back in the bunker beneath the Capitol Building, sacrificing himself so the rest of them could escape—a duty Beckham should have done himself. He saw Lieutenant Colonel Jensen gasping for air on the tarmac, bleeding out from a bullet Beckham wished he had caught instead. And he saw Riley on the gurney back on the GW, broken and bloody. He couldn't bear the thought of the kid like that …

Beckham hadn't been able to save any of them.

Tears welled up in his eyes, blurring his already damaged sight. The juveniles' corrosive toxins had taken his hand, his leg, and much of the vision in his right eye. He'd given all he could, and it still hadn't been enough to save his brothers.

No. Don't do that, Reed. They don't want your tears. They want you to keep living.

Beckham plucked his shovel out of the dirt, gripping it with his left hand. He speared the ground with the sharp tip of his left blade for balance and stabbed the earth with the shovel. He scooped up a chunk and tossed it to the side, then dug again and again, until a waterfall of sweat was pouring down his chest.

He was right handed, and learning how to do everything with his left was maddening. It had taken him days to figure out how to use a freaking shovel, and he was still learning to shoot with his left hand. That was the hardest part—besides touching Kate. It didn't feel right using something that wasn't a part of him.

Drawing in a deep breath, Beckham filled his lungs. For three days straight he had worked on completing a new irrigation system for the crops. Now that he was done, he was working on graves for civilians. Plum Island had been hit hard with disease. Many of those being rescued from the mainland were suffering from dysentery. Some even had typhoid. There were rumors of Hemorrhage Virus infections in rural areas, but so far Plum Island hadn't seen any infected. In any case, the grave digging wasn't going to stop anytime soon.

A voice interrupted him mid-shovel.

"Boss, we're out of TP."

The door to the outhouse swung open, and Master Sergeant Parker Horn stepped out wearing a pair of fatigues and a white tank top with sweat stains around the pits. Faded tattoos covered his upper body and arms, but there was a glistening new Celtic cross on his chest above his heart with the names of all of their brothers and sisters lost in the war. He had borrowed the idea from Garcia.

"I'd rather just shit in the bushes," Horn grumbled as he slammed the wood door behind him. "Place stinks like a dead Variant."

Beckham chuckled. It felt good to laugh, but he was still having a hard time not feeling guilty when he smiled.

Horn plucked his shovel out of the ground and joined Beckham. A few minutes later, they both looked up at the cough of a diesel engine. An Army truck with an open troop hold plowed down the dirt road. The driver parked the beast of a vehicle on the side of the road. He jumped out, waved at Beckham and Horn, and then disappeared around the side of the truck to let a dozen civilians out the back gate. They were all carrying backpacks and water bottles, like the migrant workers Beckham remembered seeing in the Florida orange groves when Team Ghost was on leave.

The civilians fanned out across a field of carrots to harvest the vegetables. Horn went back to digging, but Beckham couldn't seem to look away from the fields of crops and the fresh graves. Life and death, separated only by a trench.

He went back to digging. Manual labor was one way to keep his mind off things. It wasn't as hard as Delta Force training, but it was tough given his injuries. It was also boring as hell. While he didn't miss the killing, he did miss shooting and training missions. And he really missed Apollo.

Letting him leave with Fitz three months ago was one of the hardest things he had ever done, but with Plum Island officially designated a safe zone territory (SZT), he had felt compelled to let Apollo protect Fitz and his new team. Fitz needed the faithful German Shepherd for protection. Beckham didn't.

He wondered how his two friends were doing now. The last time he had spoken with Fitz was several days ago, and the call had lasted just a few minutes. Not near enough time for an update.

"Boss, maybe you should have accepted the position from Ringgold," Horn said. "You'd be running this place as mayor of Plum Island, hanging out in that fancy air conditioned embassy building. This heat wave is—"

"I'm not a politician," Beckham interrupted. "And I never will be."

"Well, I'm not a ditch-digger."

Beckham stabbed the ground with his shovel and looked at his best friend. "We're retired now, Big Horn. We picked this life for Kate and your daughters. Remember?"

"When President Ringgold personally promoted Fitz, Davis, and us three months ago, I didn't think we'd be the ones digging ditches. We've spent our lives fighting. Now we're doing this shit."

"Would you rather be in Europe, with your girls worrying about you every night, wondering if this time daddy wouldn't come home?"

Horn mumbled something under his breath and bent down to scoop another load of dirt. "No. I just miss it."

Beckham didn't need to ask what he meant. "I do too. Every damn minute. I wish we could be out there with Fitz. I wish a lot of things, brother. Pretty much anything beats this shit. But you wouldn't be happy sitting behind a desk. You wanted to be outside. Besides, we got your girls to think about, and I have Kate and my kid coming. Staying here was the right decision. We can protect them."

"Yeah," Horn said. "Sheila would want me to keep our girls safe. I can't do that from Europe. Didn't mean no disrespect, boss."

"It's fine, Big Horn. I understand."

They continued denting away at the earth in silence for several minutes. Beckham used the time to think. The only reason he hadn't immediately turned down President Ringgold's offer was out of respect for his commander-in-chief. He'd promised to consider it, but in the end, he had still turned her down. There were plenty of other capable people to serve as mayor.

A half hour passed before Horn spoke again. "You hear what Kate said last night about the Hemorrhage Virus still being out there?" He stopped to wring out the hem of his sweaty shirt. "What about VX9H9 and Kryptonite? I thought that shit was supposed to kill all of the Variants."

"Remember the Truxtun?"

Beckham locked eyes with Horn across the grave they were working on. Raw pain flooded Horn's gaze.

"How could I forget?" Horn said.

"The crew was infected with the Hemorrhage Virus because the ship was outside the range of VX9H9. I'm sure there are rural places that have avoided both bioweapons. The rumors are likely true."

"Maybe we'll be fighting again after all."

Beckham bent down and struck the earth with his shovel. Kate was back at their new home, a small three-bedroom prefab house they shared with Horn and his daughters, Tasha and Jenny. They were supposed to find out in a few days if they were having a girl or a boy.

He dug faster, scooping, throwing the dirt, and bending back down for another shovelful until the motion became automatic. His back muscles ached, and his biceps burned with every scoop.

Fifteen more minutes passed, then thirty.

By the time he finally stopped to grab a drink of water, he was standing in a shallow grave, and the ship that had been sailing across the horizon was nearing port.

"Got some newbs," Horn said. "How many more of them can we take on here?"

Beckham shook his head and eyed the boat. Every rifle on the beach was aimed at the newcomers. But it wasn't Variants or juveniles that the security forces were worried about. It was the civilians they were ferrying in.

"You really think someone could be infected with the Hemorrhage Virus?" Horn asked. He spat in the dirt.

"Everyone has to go through decon and an interview about how and where they survived since the Hemorrhage Virus emerged."

Horn flared his nostrils. That was Horn-speak for skepticism.

"Disease isn't the only threat," Beckham said. "President Ringgold told Kate not everyone in the government has accepted her and Vice President Johnson with open arms. There are strongholds popping up and claiming the administration has no right to govern them since it just left them to die."