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Synopsis
The seventh and never-before-published book in USA Today bestselling author Nicholas Sansbury Smith’s propulsive postapocalyptic series about a soldier’s mission to save the world
An army advances …
In Europe, Master Sergeant Joe Fitzpatrick and Team Ghost return from a mission deep into enemy territory only to find that the Variant army has grown stronger, and they are advancing toward the EUF’s stronghold in Paris.
On the brink of Civil War …
Back in the United States, President Ringgold and Dr. Kate Lovato are on the run. The safe-zone Territories continue to rally behind the ROT flag, leaving Ringgold more enemies than allies. But there are still those who will stand and fight for America. Captain Rachel Davis and Captain Reed Beckham will risk everything to defeat ROT and save the country from collapsing into Civil War.
Release date: November 28, 2017
Publisher: Orbit
Print pages: 464
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Extinction War
Nicholas Sansbury Smith
It wasn’t a question of whether the monsters would find Captain Reed Beckham and Lieutenant Jim “Ten Lives” Flathman but a matter of how long. After being tossed out of a Black Hawk into a city overrun with monsters, Beckham was back in action and on a path straight through hell.
He squirmed across the rooftop toward Flathman. The glow of the half-moon illuminated Beckham’s ruined body and the twisted metal of his prosthetic leg. He’d lost his prosthetic hand, leaving only the stump where Big Horn had hacked it off with Meg’s hatchet to save his life. Dozens of cuts and scars adorned his exposed flesh like tattoos.
At the edge of the rooftop, Beckham pushed himself up to sneak a glimpse over the side. His eyes were swollen and bruised, but he could still see the destroyed metropolis in the moonlight.
Empty skyscrapers, blown to pieces during Operation Liberty, staggered across the skyline. As a result of the firebombing, raging fires had consumed entire city blocks, leaving a darkened landscape behind. Skirts of debris dressed the shops and businesses like scree around the base of a mountain.
Every road out of the destruction led through Variant territory. Despite multiple efforts to take it back, the monsters still owned Chicago. A small number of Alphas and Variants had gone underground during the deployment of VX9H9. Beckham hadn’t seen many of them, and he wasn’t sure how many were out there, but Flathman had warned him the beasts were lurking in the shadows much like the two men. There was also a small percentage of the powerful Variant juveniles that had survived Kryptonite.
But the old monsters weren’t the only threat. The streets below were filled with the newly infected people from safe-zone territory 15—people like President Jan Ringgold’s cousin, Emilia.
Beckham could see their pallid flesh as they prowled for prey, their infected yellow eyes flitting, blood dripping from multiple orifices. It was like the first days of the outbreak all over again.
Lieutenant Andrew Wood and his army, the Resistance of Tyranny soldiers, had restarted the epidemic by infecting several of the SZTs, including this one. The ROT army, whose goal was to consolidate power under its own flag, used terror as its main weapon and the hemorrhage virus as the vehicle to deliver that weapon. Wood threatened to ruin everything Beckham and the military had fought for since the raid on Building 8 on San Nicolas Island seven months ago.
The newly infected were closing in—and so were the ghosts of the men and women who had died to stop the end of the world. Beckham could visualize several of his friends standing on the rooftop. Meg Pratt, Sheila Horn, Staff Sergeant Alex “The Kid” Riley, Lieutenant Colonel Ray Jensen, and a handful of others stood there glaring down at him as he hid from the beasts.
Under the cover of darkness, he brought the advanced combat optical gunsight of his M4 to his swollen eye and zoomed in, searching for a vehicle that would help them escape. Motion flickered in the limbs of an ancient oak tree next to the building. Hundreds of black birds nested on the spiny branches, their weight causing the tree limbs to creak, a sound that reminded him of the cracking of Variant joints.
They had selected the rooftop for that reason: If an infected got too close, the birds would take to the skies. Most of the time the Variants stuck to bigger prey, which explained the lack of animals and humans in Chicago, but the mindless beasts would likely be forced to turn to birds, rats, and perhaps even insects if they got hungry enough.
Beckham moved the ACOG’s sights to the street, where the infected beasts were hunting. One of the creatures, a sinewy female still dressed in blue jeans and a shredded Chicago Bears sweatshirt, scrambled over to the trunk of the tree. Beckham backed away from the ledge, keeping to the shadows, out of view.
The monster glanced up at the birds with yellow eyes, blood dripping from a sharp nose as it sniffed the chilly air. Beckham’s muscles froze. He didn’t dare move an inch. The beast couldn’t see him, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t smell his body odor or the pus oozing from his wounds.
The sound of joints popping echoed through the city as the abomination bolted back into the road on all fours, uninterested in the birds and oblivious to Beckham.
Beckham slowly moved so he could see the buildings down the block. An armored bank truck sat on the curb at an intersection. He used the ACOG to zoom in on the vehicle but then pulled the scope away when he saw a pack of infected clambering over the exterior of the old warehouse behind the truck. From the height of the roof they looked like an army of albino ants.
There was no telling how many monsters were out tonight.
Beckham flashed a hand signal to Flathman, who looked over the ledge and followed Beckham’s finger toward the armored truck. He nodded and then flashed his own signal.
They retreated from the stone roof ledge and sought refuge in the shadow of the wall. Keeping low to the ground, Beckham followed the lieutenant to a cluster of air-conditioning units.
Beckham crawled across the roof, trying to minimize the noise his prosthetic blade made. When he got to the units, he rested his aching back against one of them and kept his gaze on the south and west sides of the roof while Flathman watched the north and east.
After a few moments of silence, Flathman pulled out a flask of whiskey and took a slug, then offered it to Beckham. It was the tenth time Flathman had reached for his flask that evening, and Beckham finally decided to take the edge off with a drink. The smooth liquor slid down his throat and burned his empty gut. He welcomed that burn, savoring it with closed eyes for a fleeting moment. The burn passed, and Beckham wiped his mouth with the tattered sleeve covering his stump. He reached into his vest pocket, where he used to keep a picture of his mother.
That picture hadn’t survived, but it was carved in his memory like the scars on his body. Instead, he pulled out a handkerchief that he had soaked with antibiotics and then dabbed the cloth against his forehead. The fluid stung the patchwork of cuts and bruises.
Pain raced down what was left of his right arm and prickled where his hand should have been. He gritted his teeth but made himself stop when he heard their grinding. If he could hear the sound, so could the monsters.
The ache in his missing arm was getting worse, something Master Sergeant Joe Fitzpatrick had warned him about. Phantom limb syndrome: It was a condition many soldiers dealt with after losing an arm or a leg.
Beckham gestured for the flask again.
“Easy there, Captain,” Flathman whispered with a smug grin. He handed it over, and Beckham took another gulp, hoping for some relief—not just from the physical pain but also from the mental anguish.
He’d watched helplessly as Doctor Pat Ellis had been executed on Plum Island. The memory flashed across his mind, his fatigued muscles tensing at the remembered crack of the gunshot.
Beckham still didn’t know the fate of the rest of Plum Island’s inhabitants and wouldn’t have been able to help them even if he did. For all he knew, Kate was already dead and he’d never get the chance to meet their son. Images of his best friend, Big Horn, torn to pieces and of President Ringgold, lying dead in a pool of her own blood, swarmed his mind. He couldn’t bear to think of Kate that way …
The grief and uncertainty were tearing him apart inside. He was trapped here in the wildlife preserve that was Chicago, surrounded by infected monsters. Now he could see why Flathman had turned to drinking.
The world was a dark, horrifying place.
He shifted for a better view of the rooftop to the south. The skeletal branches of the trees below scraped the exterior of the building, creaking and groaning in the wind. A crow cawed, the sound reverberating through the night.
The wave of alcohol-induced calm had just begun to settle over Beckham when the sound of clicking joints set his heart slamming against his ribs.
Flathman pushed up the bill of his Chicago Cubs hat for a better view of the roof. He rose to a crouch and directed his gun’s muzzle to the north, using his other hand to signal.
One finger.
Two fingers.
Three fingers, indicating the number of Variants clambering across the gray brick surface of the building adjacent to their location. Beckham couldn’t see the beasts from his vantage, but he trusted Flathman’s report. Even tipsy, the man was sharp.
Beckham slowly raised his M4, a round already chambered. He flicked the selector to the happy switch, a three-round burst, wincing at the click. The faint rustling in the oak tree had stopped.
If the monsters found him and Flathman up here, they would call in reinforcements and overwhelm them. They had come here to seek refuge, but inadvertently they might have also sealed their fate. This time there would be no Black Hawk descending like an armored angel to evacuate Team Ghost off the roof.
There wasn’t even a Team Ghost to speak of in the United States—just Beckham and the alcoholic lieutenant who had survived by running his ass off and fighting like a madman.
I’m not dying on some shitty rooftop. I will get back to my family.
Beckham repeated the words in his mind until it was a mantra. He pointed his stump at the steel door leading back into the building. Flathman shook his head and brought a finger to his lips. It wasn’t the first time they had butted heads on strategy over the past few hours. It had been Flathman’s idea to come up here in the first place. He had survived on his own for a long time, but that didn’t mean he was always right.
Beckham got to his feet and crouch-walked around the air-conditioning units. They had to move, and they had to move now.
Flathman remained on one knee. He shook his head in defiance. No, he mouthed, and then pointed firmly at the ground.
Beckham jerked his chin toward the door.
An eerie silence fell. Even the wind had stopped. Beckham held his position, frozen like a statue and feeling naked in the rays of moonlight.
The fluttering of wings snapped him alert. He slowly twisted to survey the south side of the rooftop. The noise started off as a faint whipping of the air, and then there was the creak of a limb as a single black bird tore off into the night sky. Then, all at once, a flickering wall of birds erupted. Hundreds of the creatures took to the sky in a dense column formation and blocked out the stars like a strip of painter’s tape.
Beckham pushed his stump under the barrel of his suppressed M4 and steadied the carbine while moving his finger toward the trigger. Sweat trickled down his face, salt stinging his cuts. He closed his swollen left eyelid and looked through the scope with his right.
A naked, meaty figure leaped over the side of the building and landed on the roof. The infected beast held a crushed bird and was using its hands to rip the bird in half. It stuffed the head and wings into its maw, crunching loudly.
Beckham had been wrong before; the monsters did eat birds.
He gave it something else to chew on with a round through its wormy sucker lips. Two more of the monsters skittered over the stone ledge as the first beast slumped to the ground.
Two suppressed shots whistled from Flathman’s rifle, punching through muscle, gristle, and organs. One of the infected creatures thudded to the ground quickly, but the second beast stumbled backward, bony arms windmilling. It hit the edge of the building but didn’t fall—yet.
Beckham held his breath and his fire, afraid another shot would send the beast tumbling to the ground. The crack of bones on pavement was far louder than the suppressed crack of his gun and would alert more creatures to their presence.
Apparently Flathman hadn’t thought that far ahead. Another bullet from his M4 slammed into the center of the monster’s forehead, crunching loudly on impact. The force flung the creature’s skull backward, and its entire body flipped over the roof’s edge.
Beckham shot Flathman an angry glare and then hurried over with his gun at the ready. The shattering of bones boomed like a shotgun blast before he got to the ledge. Flathman joined Beckham and watched in shock as every blood-soaked face in the street flicked in their direction.
What the hell did you think would happen? Beckham thought, cutting a second vicious look at the lieutenant.
As the birds fled into the darkness, Beckham and Flathman hustled across the rooftop toward the door Beckham had pointed at earlier. They had no choice. Without a helicopter to evacuate them, they would have to fight through a building full of horrors if Beckham was to have any hope of escaping this new nightmare.
Captain Rachel Davis could still picture the attack as though it was happening in real time. Lance Corporal Nick Black had steered the Zodiac up to the USS George Washington. Everything had been ready to go. Sergeant Sanders, Private First Class Robbie, Lance Corporal Katherine Diaz, and Davis had remained calm during the ride across the choppy waves.
Dressed in ROT uniforms, and with Diaz and Davis sporting freshly cut hair as part of their disguises, she and her team had thought all seemed to be going to plan. They would sneak on board, rescue any surviving members of her crew, and then blow the ship and every ROT soldier on board to kingdom come.
They had been close—just three hundred feet from the aircraft carrier’s first ladder—when gunshots lanced in their direction. Davis still didn’t know if some fault in their disguises had tipped off the soldiers on the deck or if they’d missed some important signal or sign.
It didn’t matter.
Sanders and Robbie had been killed instantly, but Davis and Diaz were able to lay down return fire. The first of the shots killed two of the men on the deck and sent the other man lunging for cover.
When Davis had looked over at Black, he was clasping his stomach, blood pouring out under his hand. Another gush of blood trickled from a hole in his chest.
“Jump ship,” he had muttered. “I got this.”
Everything that happened after that was mostly a blur in Davis’s memory. Davis and Diaz had narrowly escaped a blast that blew a hole in the side of her ship.
She wasn’t even sure how long they had been hiding in the forest, waiting for the ROT patrols that still hadn’t come. The eerie quiet sent a chill through Davis. For hours, she had been anticipating the barks of search dogs or the beams of spotlights hunting them. Instead, there was only the whispering of the wind through the palm trees, the hissing of bugs and croaking of frogs.
Davis decided to move again, waving Diaz under a ridgeline along the beach. She stopped a few minutes later at the sight of bodies crucified to the wooden poles beyond the surf.
Marine Sergeant Corey Marks’s scarred face was still slumped against his chest, his flayed body hanging like a scarecrow on the pole the ROT soldiers had constructed on the beach after catching him and two other marines days earlier.
Now she knew where the scent of rot was coming from.
Diaz covered her nose with a sleeve, but Davis pushed on, breathing in the stench of death as a reminder she was still alive, against all odds. There was no time to bury the marines as they deserved, there was only the mission.
She had to get back to the ship and finish the job that so many men and women had already given their lives for. In her mind’s eye she remembered Black gunning the engine of the Zodiac after Davis and Diaz bailed. The ROT soldiers on the deck had riddled Black’s body with bullets, but he’d still managed to slam the Zodiac into the side of the ship and detonate the C4 on board.
Davis shook the memory away, determined to get back to the ship. She continued leading Diaz through the maze of palm trees.
Quick and steady, Rachel. Quick and steady.
The mantra helped her focus. She scanned the area with her rifle’s sight, keeping an eye out for any sign of spotlights and her ears perked for barking dogs.
They stopped a few minutes later at the lip of a ravine to scout the low-lying area beyond. The minutes ticked by as slowly as the bug crawling across Davis’s arm. She didn’t bother brushing it off. Her flesh was already covered in mud, bug bites, and scrapes. At least the creature was a distraction from the pain of her injuries and the queasiness of her stomach.
She lost the battle with her sour stomach and leaned over to dry-heave in the bushes. Diaz looked up, shaking from the cold, her freckle-dusted features ghostly in the night. She hadn’t said more than a few words since they had emerged from the water, and her eyes searched Davis’s for some sort of reassurance.
But Davis had nothing to offer the lance corporal.
They were in bad shape. On top of losing their comrades, along with most of their weapons and ammunition, Davis had lost the radio and satellite phone. There was no way to contact Command unless they got back to the ship.
Diaz broke the silence. “I can’t believe Black …” Her lips quivered and her brown eyes widened. “I … I can’t believe he sacrificed himself like that.”
“He did his duty,” Davis said quietly. “At the very least, I think the blast disabled their launching systems and their ability to move out of the harbor. It’s only a matter of time before Central Command moves in to finish them off, assuming they’re still watching out there.”
“So Wood can’t hit any more SZTs with the hemorrhage virus?”
“Not with the GW. If Wood could fire the missiles, wouldn’t he have already fired them?”
Diaz shrugged helplessly.
“He doesn’t strike me as the type of guy to bluff,” Davis continued. “Black started the job, but we still have to finish his work.”
“What do we—”
Davis grabbed Diaz and pulled her down at the distant whoosh of helicopter blades.
“Quiet,” Davis whispered. She brought up the SCAR-L assault rifle she’d grabbed on the beach and pointed it at the canopy of palm trees. The shifting fronds provided momentary glimpses of the sky. Her first thought was to take off running for cover, but she knew they were better off staying put.
Diaz raised her Beretta M9.
The thump of rotors rose until it sounded as if the bird was right on top of them. Davis leaned from left to right for a better view, finally catching a glimpse of a Black Hawk shooting over the swaying canopy.
But the bird wasn’t out here hunting for them. It was heading for the GW.
Davis flashed a hand signal, motioning Diaz back toward Fort Pickens and the harbor. They advanced through the trip-me vegetation, weaving between palm trees at a quick but cautious pace. There were plenty of hazards out here, including snakes. One of them squirmed across the dirt path. Davis maneuvered around a boulder and focused on the Black Hawk racing across the night sky. There was no doubt about its trajectory—the bird was heading for the GW. She leaped over fallen limbs and powered through a cluster of vines.
“Wait up,” Diaz said.
Davis slowed her pace and caught her breath, muscles burning and injuries flaring. The salty scent of an ocean breeze filled her nostrils. Diaz caught up a moment later, and they crouched behind a tree, both of them panting.
“Slow down,” Diaz said. “What if there’s a patrol searching for us?”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Davis looked back through the fence of palm trees. They were almost back to the place where they had ambushed the ROT soldiers.
“Okay, I’m ready to move out,” Diaz said.
Davis could see the fight returning in the lance corporal’s eyes. Diaz was ready to avenge Black and the crew of the GW.
“Come on,” Davis whispered.
They slipped back through the woods, guided by the glow of the moon. Davis did her best to watch every step. Despite her efforts, she tripped and fell several times, scoring more cuts for her collection.
The clearing that overlooked the weathered walls of Fort Pickens was just ahead, and Davis balled her hand to halt their approach. She took a knee next to a stump and scoped the fence of palm trees at the border of the fort. There was no sign of movement in the green space beyond, nor on the stone walls—no sentries, no snipers, nothing.
“All clear,” she whispered. The words sounded strange, and her gut told her something was off. Where the hell were the patrols? Maybe the ROT soldiers thought Davis and Diaz had died in the blast, but she didn’t want to bet their lives on it.
A wall of smoke drifted away from the GW on the other side of the fort. Davis pushed herself to her feet and raised her SCAR. She would use the opportunity to sneak over to the fort, where she could have a better look at the aircraft carrier and the Black Hawk that had landed there.
“Cover me,” Davis said. She went first, running in a hunch, keeping as low as possible. She hadn’t seen a sniper, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one lurking in the shadows.
Halfway across the field, she stopped at a stone pillar that had been sheared off at the top. The broken piece lay in the dirt to the right. Diaz showed up a moment later and pushed her back against the partition while Davis got down and used the cover of the rubble to scope the rest of the fort.
She played the barrel of the SCAR over the walls and walkways overlooking the ocean. Where there had been ROT soldiers before, she saw only abandoned ledges.
Where the hell are they?
A flicker of white darted across the top of one of the lookouts and vanished into the fort. Davis froze and waited for the contact to reemerge in the moonlight.
“Did you see that?” she whispered.
Diaz shook her head.
Pushing her scope back up, Davis zoomed in on the wall. Seeing nothing, she searched for their next position. She pointed at the wall about a hundred yards away.
“Watch my back,” Davis said.
Diaz looked over, eyebrows arching over her wide eyes at the sound of a distant scream. It rose into a screech of agony and then faded away.
This wasn’t the sound of a monster—it was the scream of a man.
Davis took point and flashed an advance signal.
Quick and steady, Rachel. Quick and steady.
She led Diaz toward a staircase and up the stairs with their rifles angled up. At the top, Davis hunched down and cleared the overlook. She crab-walked to the wall and waited for the screams to come again.
A seagull called out in the distance, and the lap of waves sounded on the beach, but she heard nothing else.
Davis worked her way up to the ledge and peeked over to look at the harbor. The pop of gunfire pushed her back down. Diaz crouched next to her. They exchanged a glance.
Several shouts followed the gunfire, and then came the unmistakable shriek of a Variant. The thump of rotors and a frantic shout joined the din.
“Get us back in the air!”
Davis lifted her rifle over the ledge and centered the barrel on the GW, ignoring the black hole in the metal siding that provided a glimpse into the guts of the carrier.
On board the ship, ROT soldiers ran toward the aircraft housed on the deck, some of them firing over their shoulders at figures bolting out of the open hatches. At first Davis thought that maybe these were members of her crew who had seized the opportunity to take back the ship, but then the figures chasing the ROT soldiers dropped to all fours and skittered after the retreating men.
Not sailors—monsters.
Davis focused her gun on the Black Hawk that had passed overhead for a better look. Its wheels were already lifting off the deck. A crew chief grabbed the chopper’s M240 and directed the barrel at the beasts. That was when Davis saw the missiles containing the hemorrhage virus scattered across the deck.
The blast from the C4 hadn’t just disabled the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System delivery vehicles—it had blown several of the missiles to pieces, releasing the virus and infecting the soldiers and sailors on the deck. Now Davis knew why they hadn’t been pursued by the patrols. The ROT soldiers were no longer human.
For the first time in six months, Davis was happy to see the creatures. The former soldiers tore into the men who had landed in the Black Hawk. Two of the men made it to the chopper. A third soldier leaped into the air and grabbed the side of the troop hold as it lifted into the sky.
Dozens of the galloping beasts fanned out across the deck. A pack skittered over the ship’s F-18 Super Hornets, and another dashed between the Ospreys. Davis felt her heart catch when she realized that some of the infected were former members of her crew.
“No,” she whispered. Tears blurred her vision. This was so much worse than if they’d been executed by the ROT soldiers.
The 7.62-millimeter rounds from the M240 tore through her old friends as the Black Hawk pulled skyward. She locked her jaw and raised her SCAR at the bird. The soldier hanging from the side swayed back and forth with a beast attached to his ankle. Another soldier in the troop hold stomped the man’s fingers until he fell back to the deck with the monster. The callousness of the action took her back as four more creatures pounced on the fallen man. They tore him to pieces in seconds, tossing entrails out like spaghetti to the others.
A guttural howl rose over the thump of the rotors.
It took every bit of restraint for Davis to hold her fire. She wanted to empty her magazine into the chopper, but she couldn’t compromise her position. Their primary mission was complete: The missiles were disabled. Her crew had given their lives, but in the end, countless more lives had been saved.
Now Davis had a new mission: to fight her way back onto the GW and find a way to contact Central Command and the president of the United States of America.
Three days later …
Hatteras Island didn’t have any of the comforts of the White House, but the view of the ocean under the stars was breathtaking—and, even better, it was quiet here.
President Jan Ringgold sat on the fallen trunk of a palm tree with her bare feet dug into the sand, listening to the waves lap the shoreline. This was the second time in her brief tenure as president that her White House had been relocated. The most recent command center, at the Greenbrier in West Virginia, was gone now, the grounds poisoned and her staff likely infected with the hemorrhage virus. She still didn’t know the fate of Vice President George Johnson or anyone else who had been in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, but each passing hour of radio silence told her with more certainty they were dead or infected. Her entourage, or what remained of it, was in the stealth Black Hawk behind her, combing the radio frequencies for information.
I told you there’s always hope. Together, we will persevere. The war will be over soon, Ringgold had said to Doctor Kate Lovato not long ago.
The doctor stood ankle deep in the surf, hand on her swollen stomach, staring up at the stars. Ringgold wasn’t the type of person to regret her words, but the line seemed hopelessly naive now.
How could she have known then that a madman like Lieutenant Andrew Wood was waiting in the shadows for a chance to strike? How could she have predicted that he would deploy the very virus that they had worked so hard to eradicate?
Ringgold shook her head and stood. The only remaining Secret Service officer in her detail, Tom King, followed her down the beach, keeping his distance.
She checked the silhouetted figures of her team above the beach. Most of them were clustered under the canopy of trees set on a grassy bluff overlooking the ocean. The Black Hawk was positioned to the right, a camouflage tarp thrown over everything but the troop hold. They had taken refuge at the southern tip of Cape Point, away from the roads and the Woods Coastal Reserve.
Ringgold joined Kate at the water’s edge. She remained silent, not wanting to disturb the doctor but still trying to show she was here if Kate needed support. It had been three days since Dr. Ellis was killed and Kate’s partner, Captain Reed Beckham, kidnapped.
Three days of hiding and listening to the communications channels as the country slowly collapsed into civil war. Three days of waiting helplessly as SZTs joined forces with ROT, and three days of hearing about the losses of American and European Unified Forces in Europe.
The human race wasn’t just back on course for extinction—it was barreling right toward the black hole that would end them forever.
“He’s out there,” Kate said, turning away from the ocean to look at Ringgold. “Reed is out there looking up at this same sky. I know it.”
Ringgold had figured that was what Kate was thinking about, and as much as she wanted to believe Kate was right, Ringgold was losing faith. There was chaos in every direction. She had thought they’d seen the worst possible threat in the Variants, but Wood was more evil than the monsters. At least the beasts didn’t have access to weapons of mass destruction.
“I better get back to Tasha and Jenny,” Kate said. She walked past Ringgold, feet slurping in the wet sand, but Ringgold reached out to stop her. “Madam President?” Kate asked.
Ringgold struggled to find the right words. After a moment, she let her hand drop. “It’s nothing. Come on, let’s go.”
Side by side, they walked up the beach toward the Black Hawk.
Master Sergeant Parker Horn greeted them at the edge of the forest, his machine gun cradled across his broad chest, his strawberry-blond hair rustled by the wind.
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