The Tide:

Iron Wind

(The Tide Series Volume 5)

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Anthony J Melchiorri

February, 2017

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Books by Anthony J Melchiorri

Prologue

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-Epilogue-

Also by Anthony J Melchiorri

About the Author

Books by Anthony J Melchiorri

The Tide Series

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The Tide (Book 1)

Breakwater (Book 2)

Salvage (Book 3)

Deadrise (Book 4)

Iron Wind (Book 5)

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The Eternal Frontier

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Eternal Frontier (Book 1)

Edge of War (Coming 2017)

Shattered Dawn (Coming 2017)

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Black Market DNA

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Enhancement (Book 1)

Malignant (Book 2)

Variant (Book 3)

Fatal Injection

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Other Books

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The God Organ

The Human Forged

Darkness Evolved

The Tide: Iron Wind

Copyright © 2017 by Anthony J. Melchiorri. All rights reserved.

First Edition: February 2017

http://AnthonyJMelchiorri.com

Cover Design: Eloise Knapp Design

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Prologue

Seven Days After the Huntress’s Escape from the Chesapeake Bay

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Sun glinted off the low, rolling waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Dominic Holland supposed the open sea wasn’t so different from the Sahara. It was unforgiving. Desolate. Nothing to drink for hundreds of miles. But to him, it was a second home. Maybe, if he was being honest, his first home. There was nothing left for him on land. General Kinsey’s people had ensured that when they’d left him and the Hunters for dead, then opened fire on his ship when he had taken the Huntress back from them.

Dom had insisted that his crew avoid killing any of the Coast Guard who had pursued the ship. The decision had taken a toll on the Huntress, contributing to her current sorry state. But neither the ship nor its crew would let a few mechanical challenges stop them now. Below deck, engineers worked to patch the holes in the hull, bolting and welding temporary fixes. Others cleared the wreckage of the ship’s 57mm cannon. The damaged rocket-propelled grenade launcher had been fixed, and the engines had gotten them this far without incident.

Dom’s daughter, Kara, gripped the deck rail next to him. Wind rushed over her, and her auburn hair danced across the scars covering her face. “How long are we going to just sit here, Dad?”

“Aren’t you enjoying the vacation?” Dom asked. The crew had needed this brief respite for repairs and rest before they were ready to get going again. She was no different. His little girl was as much a battle-hardened veteran as any of his Hunters now.

“As much as I like floating around in the middle of nowhere, I’m guessing we didn’t just come all the way out here to give up,” she said.

“Giving up is the absolute last thing we’re going to do.” Dom leaned away from the rail and jerked his chin toward the hatch. “Come on.”

With Kara following, he went down the ladders to the passageway and entered the medical bay.

“Afternoon,” he said, nodding to Tammy and Rich Weaver, then Alex Li. They each offered warm smiles and soft hellos. The Weavers’ son, Connor, gave him an enthusiastic wave. Dom regretted taking the survivors from Boston to sea with them like this, now that the crew of the Huntress were fugitives, but he’d had no choice. They were still too weak to endure any extreme interrogation tactics like the ones used on Fort Detrick’s acting garrison commander Jacob Shepherd. Besides, between the three of them, they had nursing, clinical psychology, and research experience. They might prove useful yet—once they’d fully recovered from their near-death experience in Boston.

Spencer Barrett dozed in another bed. He had finally received the medical attention he had so desperately needed for the dozens of Drooler acid burn wounds that had scorched his flesh. The other patient beds were empty.

That emptiness reminded Dom of the two Hunters they’d lost. Both Ivan and Scott’s remains had been buried at sea. He bowed his head for a moment, silently thanking them for their sacrifice, before he knocked on the hatch to the laboratory. Dr. Lauren Winters waved them in.

“How’s progress?” he asked.

As always, Lauren was wearing a white lab coat and blue nitrile gloves. She held a vial in her gloved hand. “This is the first batch of the drug based on Kara’s FoldIt findings. We’re about to perform cell culture tests right now. If it works in those”—she indicated a few small plastic dishes in the biosafety cabinet—“we’ll have real proof that it can prevent an Oni Agent infection.”

“Excellent,” Dom said. Then a thought crossed his mind. “You know what? Every nasty thing we’ve run into has been given a name. The Amanojaku Project, the Oni Agent, Skulls, Droolers, Goliaths. How about naming something good for once?”

Lauren bobbed her head in agreement. “Something that inspires hope.”

“What about Operation Phoenix,” Kara said. “This is our chance to rise from the ashes, right?”

“I like it,” Lauren said.

“Operation Phoenix it is,” Dom said. “I can’t think of anything better. Our ship is in shambles, half the crew is in bandages, and civilization as we know it is gone. But we haven’t given up. We’ll keep fighting back with every weapon we have. If that isn’t rising from the ashes, I don’t know what is.”

Nearby, the rest of Lauren’s team worked at their cramped lab benches. Sean McConnelly was scrolling through data on a computer monitor while Divya Karnik prepared another cell culture. Sean appeared slightly boyish with the smattering of freckles across his face hinting at his Irish heritage. With her black hair tied back and the khaki shirt collar poking from under her lab coat, Divya looked like she may as well have just returned from one of her stints serving in a makeshift medical office, treating patients in impoverished areas stricken with tropical diseases like Ebola and dengue that threatened to swell into epidemic proportions. Peter Mikos was hunched over a lab notebook, scribbling furiously. His dark hair, speckled with gray, had grown long and wild, and it whipped about as he wrote, making him look a bit like a Greek Einstein. Dom gestured to the new member of the medical team, who was peering over Peter’s shoulder. “I see you’ve found some additional help.”

“Navid’s been great,” Lauren said. “I know he hasn’t even finished his PhD, but he has some ideas about how to design a delivery vehicle to make sure the, uh, Phoenix Compound permeates the blood-brain barrier.”

As if sensing they were talking about him, Navid Ghasemi looked up. Bandages and splints still covered the hand that had been busted in Boston. He waved and then caught Kara’s eye. Blushing, he ducked his head and resumed comparing notes with Peter. Dom raised a brow, and Kara rolled her eyes.

Interesting, he thought. He’d have to keep an eye on the young researcher. Then again, Kara was more than capable of taking care of herself.

Satisfied with the team’s progress, Dom left the medical bay with Kara still acting as his shadow. The click of claws against the metal deck echoed down the corridor. Normally a sound like that set Dom’s nerves on fire and sent adrenaline surging through his vessels. But this time, he knew the noise belonged to a beast that was far friendlier than she was ferocious. He bent to scratch between Maggie’s ears. She jumped excitedly, determined to lick his face.

“Down, Maggie!” Sadie said, grabbing the golden retriever’s collar.

“Where are you two headed?” Dom asked.

“Maggie’s getting cabin fever, so I’m taking her to the cargo hold to play catch.”

“Don’t get into any trouble.” Dom tousled Sadie’s hair.

She wrinkled her nose at him and ducked away, but Dom saw she was smiling. Bouncing a tennis ball against the deck, she led Maggie down the passageway and disappeared through the hatch to the cargo hold.

“I’m going to join them,” Kara said.

“Sounds good.” Dom smiled as he watched her jog to catch up with Sadie and Maggie. But as she disappeared into the cargo hold, her question still lingered on his mind: Where to now?

He glanced at his smartwatch. It was almost time to meet Samantha Hamlin and Chao Li in the electronics workshop. He hoped to find an answer to Kara’s question. Samantha was wearing a pair of headphones, and from them, the tinny echoes of heavy metal music drifted. Chao was at his keyboard, squinting at a map of the world spread across several monitors. Meredith Webb stood at his shoulder. At the third desk, Adam Galloway’s Watchmen figures still stood vigil over his hibernating computer.

The two comm specialists seemed so engrossed in their work they missed Dom’s entrance, but Meredith did not. She strode over to Dom with a grin on her face. Half her head had been shaved for surgery, giving her a punk-rock, warrior-goddess look. White bandages were wrapped around her temple. Lauren had tried to keep her in the medical bay, but as soon as Meredith could stand, she’d insisted on getting back to work.

“You are not going to believe what these two found,” she said.

Dom’s heart skipped a beat. “Did they locate Frank?” Every time Dom saw the Coast Guard helicopter on the helipad that had been left behind when they retook the ship, he was reminded that he’d failed to bring their pilot home.

A glum expression replaced Meredith’s grin. “No, not yet. Commander Shepherd and Midshipman Kaufman are trying their connections at Kent. But so far, nothing.”

“Damn,” Dom said.

“We’ll find him,” she said. “I’m sure of it. After what Samantha and Chao have managed to do over the past few days, I have no doubt about it.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said. “How’s it feel to be breaking out the old CIA skills?”

Meredith huffed. “They’re hardly old. I was sleuthing around until the day of the outbreak.”

Samantha took off her headphones and turned around, apparently noticing him for the first time. “Hey, Captain. What’s up?”

He nodded a greeting at the techies. “Meredith tells me you’ve uncovered something I might be interested in. Let’s hear it.”

“We were able to route into several government networks, thanks to the devices we confiscated from the Coasties before kicking their asses off our ship,” Chao said. “Their cybersecurity is pathetic, and Meredith helped us get through the CIA firewalls.”

“Between the three of us,” Samantha said, “I think we found some deep shit.”

Dom chuckled; Samantha was the one member of his crew who’d never quite grasped the formal address owed to her captain—and he wouldn’t have it any other way. “And exactly how deep does this shit go?”

Chao clicked something on his computer, and a world map projected across the bulkhead. A spiderweb of colored lines spread from most major cities.

“Each line signifies the direction of the outbreak,” Chao said. “We’ve identified several places where we think the Oni Agent was first introduced. We still don’t know why or how it was done, but we pieced this together from Sean’s epidemiological data.”

Dom nodded thoughtfully. “This is good work,” he said.

“We’re not done yet. Here’s where it gets interesting.” Chao zoomed in on Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tehran, Baghdad, and Damascus. Each was now displayed in a separate box. Then, on the opposite side of the screen, he showed Washington, Beijing, London, Paris, Rome, and Tokyo. “Notice anything different?”

Dom squinted. On the side with Washington, he saw straightforward waves of outbreak, like the ripples of a pebble thrown into a lake. It was an obvious trend of reported deaths, emergencies, infections, and news starting from those major cities and spreading through suburbia and beyond. On the Moscow side, the spread wasn’t as clean. Multiple remote cities and towns hundreds of miles from the Russian capital had reported massive deaths at the same time Moscow itself had declared a state of emergency. There were no clear-cut stages of the spreading pandemic. Instead, it looked more like someone had taken a giant shotgun and sprayed scattershot across the map.

This isn’t right, Dom thought. “Where did Sean pull his epidemiological data?”

“Mostly from government agencies or news reports,” Chao replied.

“Either the Oni Agent outbreak spread differently in Russia, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, or something very odd is going on,” Dom said. “I find it hard to believe those small villages miles outside Moscow and Baghdad were targeted at the same time as other major cities across the globe.”

“That’s what we thought, too,” Meredith said.

“The alternative is that some of these government reports and news stories were fabricated,” Dom said.

“Completely made up,” Chao agreed.

Dom followed this thought to its logical conclusion. “Which means someone was trying to throw people off their scent.”

“Looks that way to me,” Meredith said. “At first I wasn’t ready to put on my tinfoil hat. I still wanted to know how David Lawson was involved in all this. My old boss was acting suspicious since before the outbreak.”

Dom scratched the stubble along his chin. Lawson had tried to get Meredith off the case when it had first come across her desk. “You still think he might be a double agent?”

“We started snooping down that route,” Samantha said. She took a swig of her energy drink and crushed the empty can. Dom wondered briefly how many cans she had left in her stockpile, and what would happen when she ran out. He didn’t want to be around when she did. “It seemed like David Lawson was suspect numero uno. He’s been around the CIA long enough that he could’ve been the one to move the Amanojaku Project undercover when the US stopped its bioweapons research programs.”

“But by the looks on your faces, you don’t think Lawson was the mastermind behind this,” Dom said.

“Yeah, not so much,” Samantha replied. “Remember the memo that started this whole mess?”

Dom nodded. He’d never forget that first ominous message regarding the International Biologics at Sea Laboratory. That was what had caused Meredith to send them to the IBSL in the first place. They’d never determined who had sent Meredith that message.

Samantha’s eyes narrowed. “Lawson got one of those messages too.”

“I need to see this.” Dom strode to her computer, and she twisted the monitor so he could view it.

“This was sent to Lawson shortly before Meredith received her memo. It seemed to originate from the CIA director’s encrypted email address, which we now know to have been a fake trail.”

CLASSIFIED: DAVID LAWSON: EYES ONLY

CIA Officer Meredith Webb may be involved in abandoned biological weapons program and may be complicit with contracting organization informally identified as “Hunters.” Contractors operate out of stealth sea vessel, location unknown. Scientists aboard vessel. Technical personnel may or may not be operating under their own volition—potential hostage situation. Webb suspected of treason and/or seditious conspiracy.

“Holy shit,” Dom said. His heart felt like it had dropped out of his chest and plummeted straight through the deck. “How in the hell did they get intel on us?”

Meredith ran her hand through what was left of her red hair. “I don’t have a clue. We’ve been played. Lawson, me, all of us. We’ve been played big time.”

“And we’re not the only ones,” Chao said. “A few days before the outbreak, five members of CIRO, the closest thing Japan has to a CIA, committed suicide, and three more were reported missing. Six people we suspected of being MI6 agents were murdered. The executive of France’s Directorate-General for External Security was arrested, and their minister of defense received a vote of no confidence. China’s minister of state security and twelve other officers in the ministry were executed. The list goes on.”

“The only reason we didn’t hear about it sooner was because, well, the outbreak kind of put a stop to the media,” Samantha said.

“This is insane,” Dom said. A sudden rage filled him, and he slammed his clenched fists on Samantha’s desk. “Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Russia. We’ve taken missions in all those countries. Everything was supposed to be completely covert, and we never got caught. So how were we found out? Do we have any idea who knew about our connection with Meredith?”

“Maybe?” Samantha shrugged and then tapped on her keyboard. Another image popped up onscreen. It was a zigzag of lines connecting what looked to be half the cities in the world. “I know you don’t like my techno jargon, so I’ll simplify it.” She clicked another button, and most of the lines disappeared. “I’ve been tracing communications related to suspected sites behind the Oni Agent. Watch this shit.”

A thick line connected Langley to Baghdad. Another line traced from Baghdad to a location deep in the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“That’s militia-controlled territory,” Dom said, pointing to the map of Africa. “Trying to cross those borders even before the outbreak was a death wish. Do you have a visual?”

“I wish,” Samantha said. “Satellite imagery isn’t very helpful. All we get are treetops. In Baghdad, however, we can see this.”

She pulled up an image of sand-colored buildings and streets filled with people. There were canvas awnings and vehicles crawling between pedestrians.

“What am I looking at?” Dom said.

“I can’t say for certain, but not too long ago, Iraq, Syria, Russia, and Iran created a joint information center, or JIC. It was supposed to serve as a base to cooperatively manage missions against ISIS militants.”

“This is where you think the messages to Meredith and Lawson originated?”

“Yep,” Samantha said, leaning back in her chair.

Dom pointed to the location in the Congo. “So what’s this all about?”

“To be honest, I’m not certain,” Samantha said. “It was difficult enough for me to track the JIC down, and I’m still trying to see if I can decrypt any of the individual messages that were sent from the information center to other locations. So far, no luck.” She used her mouse to circle a small town near the Congo River. “But for whatever reason, the JIC kept in constant communication with these guys. Spooky, right?”

“Never heard of much ISIS activity in the jungle,” Dom said. “We always suspected the IBSL on the oil rig wasn’t the only location where the Oni Agent was being researched. Think this is their headquarters?”

Chao shrugged, spreading his hands. “The only thing we really know is that the JIC was probably interfering with international intelligence agencies and laying the false flags that got so many people killed or indicted. At best, we’ve found a tenuous connection to the Oni Agent.”

“Tenuous is better than nothing,” Dom said. “We could use this information to get on Lawson and Kinsey’s good side again.” He studied the map, his eyes tracing back and forth between Baghdad and the Congo. The war-torn capital of Iraq would likely be full of Skulls by now. The African nation could hold all manner of surprises, too, between surviving militias and soldiers-turned-Skulls. Entering a hostile landscape full of unknown threats was hardly ideal. But one of those places might hold the key to solving the Oni Agent outbreak.

Both choices came with enormous risk to him and the Hunters. But while they floated in the Atlantic, licking their wounds, the last survivors in the US and elsewhere were being hunted by Skulls. With the Phoenix Compound under development and intelligence accumulating on the masterminds behind the Oni Agent, humanity might finally have a chance, but not if the crew of the Huntress remained sidelined. They needed to be back in action.

Dom had a decision to make.

“Chao, Samantha, notify the crew that we set sail in an hour,” Dom said. “Send the charts you showed me to the pilothouse.”

“You got it,” Samantha said.

Dom rushed up the ladders to the pilothouse with Meredith close behind him. Maps of Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were already glowing on the electronic display. “So, Captain,” Meredith said, her eyes gleaming. “Where to first?”

-1-

Somewhere in Virginia

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The high-pitched warbling of chickadees and sparrows contrasted sharply with the low, gurgling moans of the Skulls. The monsters lumbered along the highway between the charred husks of vans and SUVs, bumping into each other and the cars lethargically then moving on like the slowest and most dangerous game of pinball the world had ever seen. Each Skull showed signs of prolonged Oni Agent exposure, including the crooked talons that clicked against asphalt and bony spikes jutting from their vertebrae. Bone plates rustled, echoing on the air like the sounds of an undead army going to war. The creatures’ slow, shuffling movements were due to starvation—a sure sign all the easy prey had already succumbed to their tearing claws and gleaming fangs.

But that didn’t make them any less dangerous.

Amid the monsters lurked a single Goliath crunching over smaller Skulls that dared to get in its way. Its shadow rolled across the highway like a mountain blotting out the sun, and every step it took rattled the shards of broken glass and singed metal scattered about the road. A Skull wearing the remains of a tattered navy business suit—the standard uniform of Washington politicos and nine-to-five office slaves alike–bumped into the Goliath’s leg, and the giant swatted it as a man might smack a mosquito. The monster’s enormous tree-trunk-sized arm came down hard on the suited Skull, and the twisted creature blew apart in a spray of broken bone and blood. The other Skulls gave no indication they saw, much less cared about, the aggressive display.

They marched on, directionless, hungry. Deadly.

And through the whole show, Frank Battaglia, lost pilot of the Huntress, watched from his position atop a hill, hidden behind a thicket of spruce and birch. He dared not even move to take a sip from his canteen. The slightest noise would draw the starving monsters to him like a dinner bell. In the dreams of his youth, he’d longed to play drums in a hair metal band. Back then, he had fantasized about running from hordes of adoring groupies. He’d never thought that one day he might be running from hordes of mutants with a far less lascivious hunger on their minds.

His hand wrapped around the cool metal of the M1911 pistol tucked into his waistband. Instinct told him to pull it out and go through the methodical ritual of checking the chamber and magazine. But he already knew what he would find. Seven rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber.

Eight bullets against an army of Skulls.

Sorry to disappoint, space cadets, Frank thought. But today’s concert is cancelled on account of some asshole fans that tried to maul the drummer. Keep your hands—and teeth—off the merchandise.

He needed to get over that highway. Under it. Past it. Whatever. But the entire length of road he’d paralleled so far had been crawling with Skulls. He shifted his weight, as slowly as humanly possible, and shrank back into the shadows of the trees.

Maybe he could just stay here. If he closed his eyes, the invitingly sweet scent of the sap and the birds’ persistent songs reminded him of hiking through the woods as a kid. He could almost pretend that the low gurgling and growls of the Skulls was the churning of a distant brook, splashing across polished stones.

Ah, hell, who was he kidding?

This was the goddamned apocalypse. There was no pretending. No daydreaming. Life was a constant fucking nightmare. It was like being trapped in a never-ending horror film.

And this was the worst fucking movie he’d ever seen.

Strangely, it could also be pretty damn boring.

Ever since he’d escaped that hellish underground prison outside Pentagon City, he had hiked westward alone. In his head, he still heard the voices calling desperately from the other cells asking to be set free as the Skulls tore apart the guards. The military brass had thought they were safe there, planning their war against the monsters from their concrete fortress. They’d been killed along with everyone else.

But Frank knew better than to be fooled by the illusion of safety. He’d been in the field long enough to know nowhere was safe. Not on land. Not even at sea. Those damn monsters were more stubborn than a teething two-year-old being told he couldn’t watch The Teletubbies.

Frank cocked his head as he trudged beneath the trees. Did kids still watch The Teletubbies? Was that still a thing? He gave a noncommittal shrug to the ghosts in the forest. It didn’t matter now anyway. The Skulls had made sure of that.

The brilliant yellow glow of midday sunlight gave way to the red light of sunset filtering between the branches. He’d been banking on finding someplace to shelter for the night. At this point, he would have slept in a panel truck. But the bone-plated monsters had already been milling about every backwoods fast-food joint and convenience store along the highway.

Water sloshed in his canteen, a bitter reminder he was low on provisions, too. No food, eight bullets, and a cup of water if he was lucky. He thought about turning around, but there was something demoralizing about trudging back through the weeds and scraggly trees he’d already passed. The only thing he could do was push on to Manassas, Virginia, where he hoped he would find what he was looking for.

A sudden low growl sounded behind him. Adrenaline surged through his vessels as he spun on his heels. Dusk light cast a brackish glow over a Skull in a soiled and torn set of denim overalls.

Holy hillbilly zombies, Frank thought. But jokes wouldn’t do shit now, not with the creature charging him, its claws outstretched and spittle flying from its mouth.

He reached for his pistol with one hand as he bent and grabbed an arm-sized branch with the other. A single bite or even a trivial scratch would infect him with the Oni Agent and drive him along the sickening biological pathway toward becoming one of these monsters.

The creature leapt. Frank hoisted the branch and swung it with all the force he could muster. It connected with the Skull’s chomping teeth. It tore the makeshift weapon from Frank’s hand and scrambled to its feet, ready to pounce again. Frank’s nerves fired with familiar electricity, churned by fear and a desperate yearning to survive. He whipped out the pistol but didn’t dare take a shot. Firing the weapon here would be a death sentence; the loud noise would send the birds flying and call all the Skulls wandering the highway below. He’d been lucky enough the hillbilly Skull hadn’t shrieked the bloodcurdling cry he’d so often heard from these monsters.

Frank didn’t count on luck alone. He charged the Skull and came in low, avoiding its slicing claws, and pistol-whipped the creature. The clash of metal against bone made a hollow sound, and chunks of the horns and spikes rimming the creature’s head cracked off. Another quick hit with the pistol sent a small fissure across the monster’s skull. It wheeled on him, jaw open, tongue quivering, and Frank bashed it straight in the mouth. While it pawed helplessly at its shattered teeth, Frank picked up the dropped branch. He used it like a battering ram, slamming the dazed Skull against a nearby tree trunk.

He spied a rock and slammed it against the Skull’s face over and over until the creature’s limbs went limp. Blood trickled from the mangled bony plates covering its devastated face, and a low hiss whistled from between what remained of the Skull’s teeth as its body slumped forward.

Frank heaved the rock once more into the monster’s head for good measure. He wiped his perspiring forehead with the back of his hand.

“Told you,” Frank said, panting, “concert was cancelled.” He eyed the bloodied overalls. “And besides, you wouldn’t like my style anyway. I don’t play country.”

Still recovering his breath, he was preparing to continue on when a snapping twig caught his attention. He wheeled around, ready to take down another Skull. Instead, he saw dozens of monsters among the trees. They were coming from the north side of the hill. To the south was the Skull-infested highway. He was being sandwiched by two separate hordes.

He readied his pistol and clicked off the safety. Maybe he could take out a few of the hillside Skulls and sprint past them, weaving between the trees.

Yeah, and then get run down like a deer being chased by wolves.

He knew his limits, but he had to try something.

Something else stirred in the pine needles. He swiveled, aiming the pistol. A squirrel scaling a tree blinked at him.

The squirrel had the right idea. Frank stowed his pistol and leapt. His fingers grazed the branch above his head but didn’t quite connect. He fell down hard. The breaking branches and twigs under the Skulls’ feet sounded closer, and Frank coiled his legs, willing more power into his muscles. He was starved for energy, but he wouldn’t let a little hunger get in his way now.

He jumped again. This time his hands clenched around the tree limb, and he pulled himself up. Branch by branch, he climbed until he was shrouded by pine needles. A quick glance up confirmed no other branches looked stable enough to support his weight, so he froze, hugging the tree trunk. In another tree, the squirrel he’d seen earlier bounded along a limb with practiced ease and then leapt to a shorter tree.

“Thanks, little buddy,” Frank whispered as the first few Skulls wandered below.

The squirrel continued on its way, its fluffy tail arched. More Skulls prowled below, apparently unaware of Frank. Their growls and long groans made it sound as if they were dying—figuratively and probably literally—for a fresh meal. They looked like the Las Vegas gamblers Frank had sometimes seen at three o’clock in the morning after losing their money and waddling to the all-you-can-eat buffets to drown their sorrows in prime rib and lobster.

Frank breathed easier as he waited. Patience. That was all he needed now.

Nearby, the squirrel had found a pinecone and was gnawing on it. Its teeth chattered like miniature hammers, chipping away at the pinecone as it rotated the thing in its paws.

“Wanna get us both killed?” he asked in a low voice.

The squirreled ignored him. Then, without warning, it dropped the pinecone and hopped away to go on some other thoughtless errand. The pinecone landed next to a Skull with long, fin-like protrusions growing from its back like sails.

For a moment, all was still, and Frank thought the event had gone unnoticed, that maybe he would be fine. But the Skull’s head slowly looked upward. Its gaze followed up the tree trunk, then to the branches, then to Frank. Its eyes went wide.

The beast dug its claws into the tree trunk, scaling it like a demented gecko. Frank ripped off a nearby tree branch and leapt from the limb. He stabbed the branch through the Skull’s open mouth, driving it down the creature’s throat and into its belly. His feet hit the ground hard, and he rolled as the Skull crashed down next to him. He didn’t bother glancing at the other creatures and instead sprinted northward. Pounding footsteps and a frustrated cry followed him.

His actions hadn’t gone unnoticed—and neither would they go unpunished.

Onward he ran. His lungs burned as his legs pumped. He dodged past tree trunks and hurdled over fallen logs. Tree branches whipped his face, scratching him, but he didn’t slow. Not with death so close at hand.

His muscles ached, and he tasted copper. He wasn’t meant for physical exertion. Frank was a pilot, damn it. He was supposed to be soaring above the fray, not running for his life from a clamoring horde of man-eating monsters.

More hunting cries sounded out behind him, calling other Skulls to the pursuit. Frank risked a quick glance and saw ghostly shapes flitting through the foliage. The telltale rattle of bone against bone chased him out of the forest and into a clearing. He dashed through a meadow of brown grass. On the other side lay a rusted chain-link fence and several squat, rectangular trailers—offices for a construction site. His heart leapt at the sight, hope springing up amid what he thought was certain doom. There might be shelter, water, and food, maybe even a weapon.

Then he spotted a slew of yellow tractors and backhoes. Several pickups were parked next to a muddy patch where scaffolding stuck up from the ground like broken bones.

Sorry, fans, Elvis has left the building, Frank thought. For a brief, giddy moment, he imagined himself driving through Virginia in a backhoe, using the scoop to smash any Skulls foolish enough to get in his way.

The Skulls barreled after him across the meadow and into the construction site. He dodged a cement mixer then wound between concrete pillars, still heading toward the pickup trucks.

Then something grabbed his foot, and he fell forward, sliding in the mud. His pistol slapped into the wet earth, and he turned to see what had snagged his boot. A tangle of wires encircled his ankle, and he fought to pull it free. But each tug only made it tighter.

The first Skull cornered around one of the office trailers, followed by a second and third. They charged onward with hungry cries, their clawed feet kicking up globs of mud. He could see drool dripping from their mouths as they prepared to feast on fresh meat.

Frank’s biggest regret, as the monsters closed in, was that no one would be here to record his awesome and hilarious last words for posterity.

-2-

Dom stood in the bridge of the Huntress with his first mate, Thomas Hampton. Cliff Slaton, serving as the ship’s helmsman, sat at the wheel, silently staring out over the bow as the ship cut through the cresting blue Atlantic waves. Gray clouds hung heavily in the air, threatening a downpour, as gusts of wind buffeted the ship.

“Damn gloomy weather,” Thomas muttered. Gray whiskers lined his jaw, accentuating the wrinkles and dark bags under his eyes. He still sported a mottled, yellowing bruise along his cheek, and the bandaged bullet wounds beneath his shirt gave his shoulders a lopsided appearance. The sling cradling his arm didn’t help his looks, either. Thomas rolled a cigar between his forefinger and thumb, practically grinding it into powder.

“You plan on smoking that?” Dom asked, already knowing the answer.

“Just as soon as the color returns to my hair, and the world is rid of Skulls.”

“The Skulls, I’ll take care of. The hair is between you and a box of Just for Men.”

“Ah, I’m not that cheap,” Thomas said, his furrowed brow forming a gorge of wrinkles. “I think I’ll go to your stylist. Whatever salon you go to did a fine job with your new do.”

“How kind of you to say,” Dom said, rubbing his hand over his buzzed sandy-blond hair.

“That’d be me,” a woman’s voice called. Meredith strode to the chart table and leaned across it. Truth be told, Meredith didn’t look much better than Thomas, bandaged and bruised as she was, but Dom still thought she was beautiful. He smiled at her, and she grinned back.

“I’m a wizard with the clippers,” Meredith said with an exaggerated wink at Thomas. “Looks like you could use a trim, Santa. Your beard’s getting a little rough.”

“I’m an old man,” Thomas replied. Dom could already tell he was headed into one of his half-complaining, half-joking diatribes. “I don’t give a crap about what I look like. I’d wear my boxers and a dirty white T-shirt if Dom would let me, but he insists there’s got to be some modicum of respectability aboard the ship. Whatever that means.”

“Got to have some rules to keep you in line,” Dom said.

“Not like someone out there is going to see me.” Thomas gestured past the glass windows lining the bridge to the choppy waves. “You keep me on the ship like a caged puppy. I’m itching to get out, and I promise I won’t pee on the deck like Maggie does.”

“And last time you tried to get off the ship, what happened?” Meredith nodded at his bullet wound.

Thomas sighed and slumped into a chair over the chart table. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Like I said, I’m an old man. Should be reaching Angola within the hour. Just in time for you all to run off and leave me again.”

“Very good,” Dom said, all business again. He walked to the foremost section of the bridge and stared through the glass. If he squinted, he thought he could see land. A quick glance with a pair of binoculars confirmed his suspicions, though the port city of Soyo was merely a thin shadow tracing the horizon at this distance. “Thomas, have the Hunters prepare our landing party.”

“As you wish, my liege,” Thomas said with mock reverence. Sarcasm or not, he was already on his way down the ladders to the lower decks.

With the Oni Agent threatening to devour the remnants of humanity, they had all learned the importance of quick, decisive action. Thoughtful, slow deliberation led to long meetings between military leaders and whatever remained of world governments. Every second spent debating the finer points of tactics and politicking meant more people infected by the Oni Agent. Skulls were massacring the few surviving humans clinging to a miserable existence in hopes someone somewhere would save them from this mess.

Meredith reached out, finding his hand. Their fingers intertwined, and Dom felt a warmth spread across his skin. A soothing calmness came over him, allaying the anxiety of their fast-approaching mission. She leaned into him and placed the unbandaged side of her head against his shoulder. “This past week was almost like a cruise, you know? You, me, the girls. The ocean breeze in what’s left of my hair.” She looked up at him and smiled her toothy grin. Her freckles gave her a youthful charm despite the five decades she had spent on Earth.

“I know,” Dom said. “Except for the lack of soft-serve ice cream, pools, bars, a casino, ridiculously overpriced souvenirs, comfortable beds, and buffets big enough to feed a small country, this was just like a cruise.”

She gave him a playful elbow to his side. The jab caught a bruised rib, but he didn’t wince. “You big oaf.”

Dom wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close. Shafts of shimmering light broke through the clouds as they approached Soyo.

“I hate to leave the girls again,” Dom said after several minutes of companionable silence shared with Meredith.

“Me too.”

“I think they really like you.”

“Of course they do. I keep saving your ass.”

A soft chuckle escaped Dom’s lips, but her words held as much truth as they did humor. The Hunters had all saved each other’s lives at least once. That trust was a big part of what made them work so well together as a group. But they didn’t always succeed, and each mounting loss pressed on Dom’s conscience. They’d already lost Ivan, Scott, Hector, Brett, Owen, and Adam.

Good God.

He closed his eyes to reinforce his memory of the men they’d lost in this fight. If he forgot them, even for a minute, the details might start to slip away. He had to ensure they hadn’t perished in vain. Soon they might finally meet someone or some group responsible for the Oni Agent outbreak. His muscles tensed as he thought about what he would do in that moment, and he turned away from Meredith, away from the ocean and the dancing sunlight on the waves, to look at the chart table where a town in the middle of the disputed and dangerous Democratic Republic of the Congo was circled in red marker.

Bikoro. That was where he had decided to go first. There, Dom hoped to find the clues that would bring down the people behind the Oni Agent outbreak. He would make them pay for what their terrible crimes had cost his team, had cost his country, had cost the world.

***

Kara stood at the gunwale of the Huntress and peered over the prow. Water sprayed her face, but the large waves breaking against the hull didn’t frighten her. She’d seen things far worse, violence perpetrated by both Skull and man. A shudder snaked down her spine, and she tried to push the haunting thoughts from her mind.

“You okay?” a familiar voice asked.

She turned from the water and toward her companion. Kara was very aware of the scars on the side of her face as his eyes, as dark as the cloudy sky, studied her. She saw the pain behind those eyes. She knew he had been through just as much as she had, if not more. Navid had been forced to kill his girlfriend-turned-Skull with his bare hands. Then he’d risked his life trying to save Kara and her sister, Sadie.

He wasn’t a soldier like her father’s Hunters. He’d been a student, like her. And like her, he’d been broken by his experiences and pieced back together into something different than he’d been before the outbreak. Yes, there was pain in his eyes, but there was also compassion—and steel.

“Kara, you okay?” Navid asked again.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” she said.

“Thinking about your dad’s new mission?” he guessed.

“I wasn’t. But I am now.”

“Sorry.”

“No need to be.”

Navid sighed. “Thinking about the past, then?”

“Always.”

They had both been spending long hours in the lab helping Lauren with her research. Navid had toiled with cell cultures and a complex setup of glassware that was supposed to help synthesize new drugs. Kara had run simulation after simulation to test new Phoenix Compound developments on the lab’s computers. And between the experiments, they’d talked—about their histories, their regrets, and their roles in the new Skull-filled world.

“Can’t believe all the Hunters are leaving us again,” she said. “And, yeah, I’m worried about my dad. I wish he didn’t have to go back out there.”

“You aren’t going to stow away with them, are you?” Navid asked. She’d thought he was joking at first, but the look in his eyes let her know he was serious.

“No,” Kara said, tracing a finger along the slick metal rail. “I think I’ve had enough adventures for a lifetime.”

“Good,” Navid said, looking away from her and back out over the gray waves. “We definitely need you in the lab. Plus, your dad is going to be fine. I’m convinced he’s a goddamned superhero. Our very own Super Dom.”

Kara let out a short laugh. “I’m glad you think so.”

“The Hunters are like the Justice League or Avengers or something. I mean, Renee is basically Wonder Woman, right? You should have seen her save me from that sinking ambulance. And Andris is like a Latvian version of the Punisher, with all those guns.”

Now Kara laughed. “All right, you’ve got a point.” But she couldn’t help the sinking feeling in her gut. Even Superman had his kryptonite, and they all knew the sacrifices the Hunters had made so far in their self-appointed mission to save the world.

Navid placed his hand on her shoulder lightly—a friendly, reassuring gesture. Or was it more than friendly? Either way, his touch comforted her, dispelling the dark thoughts.

“I know you worry. And you have every right to,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you not to, either, because you’d probably just tell me I’m stupid for saying that.”

Her eyes felt watery, but she grinned. “You’re absolutely right I would.”

Navid smiled too. “But if anyone in this world can tear through the jungle and find a nest of bad guys, it’s your dad.”

She sniffed and then nodded. “Thanks.”

The ship rose, its prow pitching to the sky as they crested a large wave, and they both tightened their grip on the rail. Water splashed around them in freezing droplets as gravity pulled the ship back down. As the clouds parted, yellow light spilled over the ocean toward the horizon. Sunlight glinted off metal, and for the first time, Kara could clearly see Soyo, the devastated city where her father and his crew planned to start their mission.

“My God,” she said, her stomach twisting at the sight.

Kara no longer felt better about her father’s mission.

-3-

Meredith followed Dom down the ladders to the electronics workshop. Their footsteps echoed in the empty corridors. The rest of the crew was at work, preparing for the upcoming mission. Meredith and Dom were greeted by the sounds of buzzing computers. At her desk, Samantha stared intently at a bank of monitors, energy drink in hand. Nearby, at a clean desk where every spare pen and electronic component was neatly stowed, were Chao and Miguel Ruiz. Miguel’s prosthetic arm was laid across the table, and Chao was working on it like a surgeon, pointing to some new accessory he’d added to the arm.

“What’s going on, boys?” Meredith said as she and Dom joined them.

Chao pressed on a metal cylinder amid the wires and servos of the prosthetic, and a small panel slid back over Miguel’s arm, concealing the mechanical artistry within.

“Chao hooked me up with a new toy,” Miguel said, a wide grin breaking across his ruddy face.

“Do we get a demonstration?” Dom asked.

“Wouldn’t want one in here,” Miguel replied.

“Kill it with the suspense. What’d you do?” Meredith asked.

Chao tapped on his mouse, and a schematic of the prosthetic appeared on one of the screens mounted to the bulkhead. “A while back, Miguel joked about using a Drooler’s spray as a weapon.”

Meredith nodded, recalling all too well the fatal acidic spray that came from the strange Skulls. “But you didn’t actually do it, did you?”

“I did,” Chao said. “Acid seems to be an effective weapon against the Skulls’ organic armor, and you guys need all the help you can get.”

Samantha seemed to realize her captain had arrived. She stood, stretched, and ambled over to them. “Plus, an acid cannon is just plain badass. Who doesn’t want to be badass?”

Meredith’s smile froze as she caught sight of Adam’s empty workstation. They’d kept his things exactly where he’d left them, his toys and action figures arranged like a shrine to the young man’s memory. “Chao’s right. We need any weapon we can get.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Against the Skulls and against whoever else wants to kill us in the jungle.”

“You got that right,” Dom said. “Let’s get to it. What’s the situation on shore?”

Chao hit two keys on his keyboard, and the monitors displayed an array of images taken by the ship’s outboard cameras. Meredith had seen the destruction across Boston and Washington, DC. But what she saw at Soyo made both places look almost untouched in comparison.

The Congo River met the Atlantic Ocean at the Angolan port city. Once, the water traffic must have been heavy. But now, no traffic would get in or out. Several huge freighters jutted from the water. Terrible gashes had opened up along their hulls, as if they were gutted animals. Smaller craft, ranging from cutters to rust-pocked fishing vessels, rocked against the sides of the freighters in a jumble. Flotsam was strewn over the ocean, tangled in fishing nets and the cables hanging from fallen cranes around the port.

As the cameras panned over the wrecked vessels, Meredith gasped. Picked-over skeletons littered their decks. It took no leap of imagination to guess why or how the bones had been broken and the meat devoured. Skulls ambled among the dead, still dragging their carcasses under the hot sun in search of food.

The shore told a similar story. Huge crates of abandoned goods studded the landscape, and rubble filled the streets. Charred vehicles and empty steel drums sat like ghostly reminders of a once densely populated city. Glass shards glimmered across the asphalt near one storefront advertising fresh produce. Even if the fruit and vegetables hadn’t been rotten, the monsters prowling the streets were strict carnivores. Meredith spotted a Goliath lumbering near a row of large white oil tanks.

“Good lord,” she muttered. “We’ve got to get past all of that?”

“Even a Zodiac won’t fit through all that wreckage in the water,” Chao said.

“Looks like we’re going for a walk,” Dom said.

***

Lauren Winters held up a silver pistol-like paint sprayer and doused another set of black Hunter fatigues with clear liquid. Once she’d saturated the garment, Sean used a UV light to cure the liquid plastic onto the fatigues.

“Perfect,” she said, handing the fatigues to Divya. “I think we’re done here.”

“The Hunters better appreciate this,” Sean said. “Took me forever to scrounge up enough polyethylene microparticles for all these fatigues.”

“I’m sure they will,” Divya said. “Having clothes that are impermeable to Drooler acid spray? You bet they’ll be thanking you.”

“And don’t worry, Sean—even if they don’t say thanks, you know I will,” Lauren said. “Just as soon as you two take care of our patients.”

“You got it, Doc,” Sean said. He and Divya left the lab to join Peter Mikos in tending to their patients.

Lauren ducked out of the lab and med bay and then peered into the passageway. A tennis ball zipped by her head, and a golden retriever bounded after it, tail wagging. Lauren turned the opposite direction and called to the girl at the other end of the hall. “Hey, Sadie, want to help me with something?”

“Sure!” Sadie said enthusiastically, running toward her. “Maggie, stay!”

The dog obediently sat outside the med bay with the slobbery tennis ball in her mouth, and Sadie followed Lauren into the lab.

“I need your help getting these to the Hunters,” Lauren said, gesturing to the pile of uniforms. “Think you can do it?”

“Of course!” Sadie said, grabbing an armful of the fatigues.

Lauren hoisted the rest, and they trooped along the passageway to the cargo bay. The Hunters were already there, packing supplies into one of the Zodiacs. Lauren dumped the uniforms on top of a crate and waved at Dom. He called the Hunters to attention, and all eyes were abruptly on her.

“These have been treated with polyethylene. They should be acid resistant. Not perfect, but it’ll help against the Droolers. That being said, it’s still best to avoid the acid, got it?”

“Trust me,” Terrence Connor said, rubbing the scarred flesh along his neck. “I don’t want to get near one of those things again.”

“You can say that again, brother,” Glenn Walsh said, his deep voice sending a little thrill up Lauren’s back. “Drooler breath is worse than Terrence’s.” Then he winked at Lauren. “Though if it means you’ve got to take care of me again, I can handle it.”

“Get a room,” Jenna Reed said, blue eyes flashing with a hint of good humor as she shook her head.

Lauren walked over and grabbed Glenn’s hand. She could feel the calluses from a life of hard work beneath her fingers as she gazed into those intelligent brown eyes. “You better not get sprayed or bitten or anything, got it? I want you whole and functional.”

Glenn wrapped his arms around her. “I’ll be fine.”

“Promise?”

He bent to her level, looked her straight in the eyes, and gave her a quick kiss. “Promise.” They embraced again, and she let herself be absorbed by his warmth. She wished for one more day at sea, one more day where they could find an hour or two to be alone, to talk about medicine and science and what it was like to travel the world before the Oni Agent. Lauren had denied herself a relationship with Glenn once before, and she wasn’t about to lose him a second time. From the look in Glenn’s eyes, she could tell he longed for the same thing. They parted at the sound of Dom’s voice.

“All right, you know the drill. The name of the game is quick and quiet,” Dom said as the Hunters gathered around him.

Lauren retreated to the hatch, where Sadie was waiting.

“I don’t want them to go,” Sadie said.

“Me neither,” Lauren said.

A low growl resonated in the bay, and the bright yellow lights went off, replaced by the ominous glow of the crimson battle lights. The bay doors opened to reveal a star-studded sky. The waning moon reflected across the gentle waves rolling toward Soyo. The crew had waited until nightfall to begin their descent, hoping that the cover of darkness would provide them some advantage, no matter how slight. Lauren worried that it wouldn’t be enough.

A lone Skull howl drifted across the water. It sounded like the call of a demented siren, and shivers crept through Lauren’s flesh. She gazed at the Hunters’ faces, praying she’d see them all again.

-4-

Dom watched the cargo bay doors close from his vantage point on the Zodiac. His fingers curled around the rope secured along the gunwale of the small craft as it bobbed over the waves, leaving his girls behind once again. Saying good-bye had been as difficult as always. Mission after mission, it never got easier.

But now was the time to turn off emotions and prepare for battle. Their goal was far beyond the broken ships and derelict city of Soyo. Somewhere along the Congo River, they would find the town of Bikoro—and, he hoped, some clue to who was responsible for the Oni Agent.

“As soon as we hit the shore,” Dom yelled over the crash of the ocean waters, “we port this sucker”—he patted the gunwale of the Zodiac—“and hightail it to the river. Remember, stealth is the key here.”

As the Hunters nodded, Dom surveyed the team. Jenna and Terrence looked at him expectantly. Miguel crouched at the tiller, his face wrought in determination. Renee sat at the prow with Meredith and Glenn behind her, and Andris was parked near the supplies in the center of the craft. Dom gave a quick hand signal, and the boat took off, gliding over the dark water.

“Can’t help but notice how damn small our team seems, Captain,” Jenna said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Terrence said. “Damn shame Spencer’s Drooler burns aren’t healed.”

“Burns like that don’t heal overnight,” Dom said. “We’ll have to work that much harder to make up for Spence. He’s going to hate missing out on this.”

“I’ll kill an extra Skull or two for him.” Miguel flexed the fingers on his prosthetic. “I’m itching to try out my new toy and give those bastards a taste of their own medicine.”

“Like a kid at Christmas,” Dom muttered.

As they skimmed the water, they approached the jumble of wrecked freighters, fishing trawlers, and barges. Dom held up a fist for silence. Several Skulls were meandering atop one of the freighters, their spikes and demonic crowns of horns contrasting sharply against the full moon.

The low gurgle of the motor accompanied the groans of shifting, rusted metal as they passed by the wreckage. The Zodiac sailed south along the coast, and Dom studied the abandoned piers and toppled cranes, searching for the best route to the river.

Skulls ambled everywhere he looked. Between the great white oil tanks, among the warehouses, and near the dry-docked ships, the monsters shuffled with their half-hearted gait. He used his night-vision binos to identify the skeletal bright-green shapes hiking through the woods between the tree trunks and dense foliage. There would be no avoiding the creatures even if they took a long route through the jungle to the south.

This would not be easy.

He spotted a shadowy pier next to a trawler lurching unhealthily to its port. Only one Skull limped near it, dragging its left foot.

One lamed Skull, they could handle.

Dom signaled Miguel to steer the Zodiac toward the dock. The others crouched low at the gunwale. Their packs rustled as they situated themselves, ready to leap from the craft and bring it to shore. Dom motioned to Miguel to take point, and the Hunter eased his way to the prow.

“Think you can take this guy out quietly?” Dom whispered.

Miguel nodded, his eyes already locked on the monster. As the craft neared the dock, Miguel slipped off his pack, jumped over the side, and then sprinted across the wooden planks. His feet padded softly, and he reached the Skull without it noticing him. With a twist of his prosthetic arm, the concealed blade jutted from the hidden compartment in his wrist. It gleamed in the moonlight as the blade found its home in the soft flesh under the Skull’s chin. Blood flowed from the wound, streaking over Miguel’s arm and puddling onto the dock and dripping into the sloshing ocean water. Gently, Miguel lowered the Skull and then let its body slip into the black waves, where it disappeared.

“Clear,” Dom said to the others. “Glenn, you’re on rearguard with Renee. Miguel and I will take point. Everyone else, get the Zodiac ashore.”

Silent nods from the Hunters met his commands, and they piled out of the craft. Dom and Miguel rushed to the end of the dock. They scanned their surroundings with their rifle barrels. Dom’s finger hovered near his trigger guard. He listened to the muted grunts of the others as they lifted the Zodiac from the water. They had brought as much ammunition and supplies as they could fit in the packs they carried, as well as in extra packs tied down inside the Zodiac. Carrying the rubber craft with its added weight through the shipyard was not a task any of them had been looking forward to.

“Ready to go,” Renee said in a low voice over the comm link.

Dom held up a hand and pointed to a row of dry-docked ships in various stages of disrepair and neglect. A breeze twisted between them as they ran to the nearest vessel and hid behind the rusted hull. The pungent odor of fermenting bacteria and rotten meat, characteristic of the Oni Agent chewing through the flesh of its victims, stung Dom’s nostrils.

When Renee and Glenn reached the protection of the broken ship, she gave Dom a hand signal to let him know none of the beasts had spotted them. Dom peeked around the bow toward their next objective. A huge warehouse stood near the edge of the jungle. Its doors stood open like the mouth of a hungry leviathan waiting to devour them. On the other side of the warehouse, a few barges and ferries floated on the Congo. They had once connected the villages and towns along the waterway, allowing civilians to take the long and sometimes dangerous trek to sell their goods or try their luck in a different part of the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now the vessels were abandoned and the people they had once carried either dead or turned into monsters.

Soyo, never a popular tourist destination even in its heyday, was a city of ghosts.

Between the dry-docked ship where they hid and the warehouse stood a row of oil tanks, each one several stories tall. A huge crater lay next to the ruins of one tank, and a fallen crane lay across their path like a giant serpentine corpse. Small groups of Skulls wandered the asphalt, crunching some sort of debris underfoot.

As Dom used his night-vision binos to examine what they were walking on, his chest tightened. The Skulls were walking over the bones of corpses whose flesh had long since been shredded and eaten. Amid the scattered bones and remnants of clothing, spent casings and weapons littered the ground. Dom spied several other craters, all of them documenting the battle that had taken place here, and there was no mystery as to who—or what—had been the victor.

Shouldering his own weapon, Dom walked in a crouch to a nearby fishing boat with Miguel. He stopped near a skeleton slumped against the hull with a rifle lying by its side.

“Careful, everyone,” Dom said over the comm link. “We don’t want to end up like these guys.”

The others followed, carrying the Zodiac. Sweat glimmered on their faces as the relentless heat and humidity washed over them. Each step they took away from the ocean and toward the warehouse seemed to increase the mugginess of the air they breathed.

Dom paused. Between this last boat and the shelter of the oil tanks lay the crumpled crane and a host of Skulls. He surveyed the landscape. There was no getting around it. At either end of the crane were groups of Skulls numbering at least three to four dozen.

“We need to make this quick,” Dom said. “No guns, if possible. Slice ’em, then run. Get the Zodiac over the fallen crane and then sprint for that first oil tank. I don’t see any contacts there yet, so we might get lucky. Ready?”

The Hunters nodded in unison.

“Radio silence until we make it to the other side.”

Dom strapped his SCAR-H over his back and drew his blade from his thigh sheath. Miguel’s blade clicked out from his prosthetic arm, and he held another knife in his right hand. With a subtle nod from Dom, they bolted from their cover and straight at the first pair of Skulls in their path. One turned slowly, long horns hooking from its brow and its mouth agape in what looked like a lazy yawn. Its eyes went wide when it spotted Dom, and its cracked lips curled back into a snarl, ready to shriek.

Dom’s blade cut through the roof of its mouth. Hot blood poured over his wrist as a second Skull leapt, attracted by the commotion. Its bone plates rattled as it dashed for Dom. He struggled with the dying Skull in his arms, unable to get his knife free.

Before the second monster could reach him, Miguel intercepted it. He buried one knife up to the hilt in the creature’s eye. His second blade found a weak spot between the plates in the creature’s neck. It sliced into the vocal cords before the monster could cry out. The beast managed only a feeble death rattle as its body fell to the ground. Its bony plates connected with the asphalt, letting out a dull thud.

The monster thrashing in Dom’s arms slowed as more blood trickled from its fatal wound, and he lowered it next to the other dead monster. The Hunters dashed over the tarmac with the Zodiac in tow. Glenn and Renee ran behind them, their suppressed rifles playing across the darkness.

They were almost halfway to the latticework of the fallen crane when another three Skulls turned their direction. Legs pumping and muscles burning, Dom rushed to intercept them with Miguel at his side. He flashed Glenn a hand signal to leave his position and help. Together, they met the trio of Skulls like bulls crashing against each other.

The Skull Dom had engaged knocked away his blade before he could cut into the creature’s jugular. The knife skittered away, just out of reach. The Skull’s bloodshot eyes glared, and it opened its mouth to howl. Dom slammed the creature’s jaws shut before it could call the others, and the noise came out only as a gargling growl. The Skull writhed as he wrapped his arm around the creature’s neck, struggling to wrestle it to the ground. Desperation and anger fueled him. He tried to force the creature down using his body weight, but the Skull drove its shoulder hard into Dom’s body armor. The plates in his tac vest deflected what would have been a terrible wound from the spikes jutting from the Skull’s shoulders and upper arms, but he still felt the force of the impact.

Dom kicked the back of the Skull’s knee. The blow sent the Skull off-balance. Its arms swung out, scything claws raking the air and forcing Dom to jump back. His fingers slipped from around the creature’s jaw. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Dom felt a twisting sickness squirm in his gut. Yellowed teeth, glistening with saliva, protruded from the Skull’s mouth as it opened. Spittle flew in disgusting strings. The monster let out a howl that split the night air, bouncing off the aluminum siding on the warehouses and the hulls of the dry-docked vessels.

In a swift motion, Dom dove to grab his knife and threw it into the creature’s open mouth. The blade dug in, and the Skull fell backward, silenced.

But as the howls of Skulls across Soyo wailed in response, Dom realized the damage had already been done.

-5-

Frank had no other choice. His leg was still stuck in the loop of barbed wire, and the hungry Skulls were almost upon him. He took the pistol from his waistband and leveled the gun at the first Skull’s face. It had a snubbed pig nose, protruding cheekbones, wisps of gray hair, and bugged-out eyes that gave it a distinctly Tales from the Crypt look. Frank might have laughed at the ridiculous-looking Skull if it didn’t look about ready to tear a chunk of flesh from his leg.

He squeezed the trigger. The blast echoed over the construction site.

Just seven bullets left.

A clink rang out as the spent casing pinged against a rock, and the Skull slumped forward. Crimson liquid poured from its broken nasal cavity. It stopped chomping, and its claws gave a final twitch before going still. Three more Skulls prepared to pounce, their muscles coiled beneath bony plates and spikes.

Frank struggled again to get free. The barbs tore into his flesh, but that pain would be nothing compared to the teeth of a Skull. He bit the inside of his cheeks to refrain from screaming and at last heaved his leg from the coiled wire. Fabric and skin tore, but the pain faded away as adrenaline flooded his system, urging him to run, to flee the ugly shits chasing after him.

There were at least two dozen Skulls in the construction site behind him. Math had never been his best subject, but seven bullets plus twenty-four Skulls did not equal a happy, healthy Frank. He searched the site for weapons as he ran. Veering around a set of tools and a cement mixer, he spotted the wooden handle of a sledgehammer sticking up next to a large tool chest. He grabbed it with one hand and tucked his pistol into his waistband with the other.

His boots slapped in the mud, spraying the filth around him. He did not know where he was going, only that there was no turning back.

An inhuman shriek wailed to his right, and a Skull barreled at him from an open trailer. Its arms spread wide, like it wanted to give him a hug. A tool belt still hung around its hips. Frank cocked back the sledgehammer.

“Sorry Home Improvement ended, but damn, Tim, you really need to take care of yourself,” Frank said. Even at the grisly sight of the monster, he couldn’t help the gallows humor as he unleashed all the power stored in his muscles. The sledgehammer connected with the Skull’s face. Bone chips flew, and half of the creature’s skull caved in. Its eye devolved into a mangled mess of red gore, and its shattered teeth fell from its crooked mouth.

And still it ran. A slicing claw caught Frank’s shirt, and he recoiled. Again, he swung the sledgehammer, not as powerfully as before but with all the desperation of a man knowing his life depended on this one action. One miss, one false move would end with Skulls descending on him like a bunch of ravenous all-you-can-eat-buffet patrons when the fresh crab legs have just been brought out.

The sledgehammer crushed the Skull’s head. Blood sprayed into Frank’s face. He squeezed his eyes closed and clamped his mouth shut. A brief wave of relief washed through him when the creature dropped to the ground. But the relief was short-lived.

Another two Skulls burst from woods across the parking lot. They ran between the trucks standing idle on the asphalt, leaping over skeletons and neglected construction equipment with all the muscled grace of lions hunting gazelle. Frank held up the sledgehammer again as the two Skulls narrowed the distance between themselves and him. There was no avoiding them. It was either take them out or slow down and let the horde devour him. Frank’s muscles burned. He was weak from dehydration, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a decent meal.

“But if I don’t get to eat, neither do you bastards!” Frank said.

With a yell full of pent-up anger and frustration, he swung the sledgehammer like an all-star batter. This time the Skull’s head caved inward on the first blow, and the monster went down. “How’s my hammer taste, bitch?”

The one-liner wasn’t his best. He knew that. But goddammit, he got points for trying in the face of almost certain death. Let the record show that he was still cracking jokes right up until the end. Frank juked to his left to avoid the second Skull. The monster twisted, carried by its own momentum, and crashed to the ground. It still wore a construction helmet secured over its head by fraying straps. The Skull scrambled to right itself, its claws clicking, but Frank was quicker.

An overhead slice of the sledgehammer debilitated the Skull, and its jaw was smashed between the sledgehammer and the ground. As Frank panted for breath, he knew he wouldn’t outrun the rest of the creatures. The burn of lactic acid wore on his overworked muscles.

It was time to find some wheels.

“You’re no helicopter, but you’ll do,” Frank said, heading for the nearest pickup truck. He yanked open the door. A brief glimmer of hope flashed through him as he noticed the keys still dangling in the ignition. Frank jumped into the driver’s seat and set the sledgehammer on the floor. His heart thumping, he twisted the key. But instead of being rewarded with a revving engine, only a soft clicking came from the starter.

“Damn it!” He punched the dashboard. The battery was dead. He tried the keys once more but was met with the same result. Through the windshield, he eyed the next pickup. Maybe this one would be in better shape.

But before he could slide out the driver’s door, something slammed into the truck. The whole vehicle shook as the Skulls attacked. Then the driver’s-side window exploded in a spray of glass shards as one of the Skulls punched its fist through, reaching for Frank. He cowered, retreating into the passenger’s seat. The Skull squeezed itself into the window as the others clamored around it, desperate to reach their prey.

Frank picked up the sledgehammer and shoved it in the Skull’s face. But with little room to maneuver, the impact wasn’t enough to convince the Skull to cease its attack. The monster’s claws dug into Frank’s boot, and he kicked, warding the beast off. With one hand gripping the sledgehammer, he fumbled for the door handle. The truck rocked as the pack of Skulls slammed against the vehicle’s driver-side door like a crashing wave.

A shallow click sounded behind him as the door released, and he tumbled backward with the sledgehammer in tow. The Skull in the truck pulled itself forward, claws slashing into the fabric bench seat of the truck, and it let out a frustrated shriek as Frank sprinted away.

The mob of Skulls hadn’t yet realized that their dinner had escaped. Frank ran to the next truck in the line. It was locked. As he yanked uselessly on the door handle, the Skulls succeeded in tipping the first truck onto its side. The noise was deafening, and Frank used the cover to bash the window in with his sledgehammer.

The safety glass fell into the driver’s seat. A loud wailing joined the din of the angry Skulls. The truck’s security alarm announced his presence to all the monsters running around the construction site.

“Can’t catch a break,” Frank muttered. His pulse thundered in his ears as he leaned into the cab to unlock the door. He scrambled in, and the glint of light on metal caught his attention. He picked up a key ring from the dash. He fumbled with the keys, trying to insert each into the ignition as the Skulls sprinted from the other wrecked pickup to this one. None fit.

Then he read the plastic tag attached to the key ring: BD #09.

BD. What the hell is BD? He glanced frantically around the parking lot as the cacophony of screaming Skulls surrounded him. More pickup trucks, a couple of cars. He spotted a backhoe and a cement truck.

BD?

The first Skull crashed into the side of the truck. It pounded on the windshield. A fracture line appeared, cracking across the glass. Then he saw it. BD is for Bulldozer.

He piled out the passenger side again and sprang across the parking lot. Most of the horde was preoccupied with the truck and its screaming alarm. A few Skulls broke away and headed toward Frank. A stitch pulled in his side as he sprinted. He pulled the bulldozer’s cab door and sat in the bucket seat. Finding the ignition slot, he shoved the key in, and to his relief, the diesel engine rumbled to life.

The first Skull reached the vehicle. Huge round plates covered its body, and dozens of spikes sprouted along its vertebrae like blades of grass. Its fists ended in stubby, hammer-like claws. The monster pummeled the window as Frank studied the controls. Two curved joysticks stuck up on either side of him. An additional lever rose on the right side.

Okay, okay, he said, willing his racing mind to calm. If I can fly, I can damn well drive a bulldozer. How hard can it be?

He moved the joystick on his right forward, and the front blade lowered. Twisting the joystick side to side pivoted the blade. But that would not get rid of the monster now banging its head against the side door. He manipulated the left joystick. Nothing happened until he twisted it, and the bulldozer rotated.

Okay, that’s a start...

The Skull attacking the bulldozer’s door was joined by a second, then a third. More scraped at the cabin. Then Frank grabbed the third stick and pulled it back. A deep rumble growled from the engine, and the bulldozer lurched forward.

More Skulls descended on him. They climbed over the top of the cabin, peering in with their bloodshot eyes and trying to bite the windows, dragging saliva across the glass. Fractures spiderwebbed on the driver’s-side door. The bulldozer gradually accelerated, but there was no shaking off the monsters already battering the construction vehicle.

Frank drove toward the gravel road leading from the construction site. He avoided the muddy banks, all too aware that getting stuck would end in his untimely demise. The sound of shattering glass pierced the cabin. Frank ducked as the Skull with stubby claws reached through the broken window and tried to grab him. Holding up the sledgehammer, he blocked the groping fist. The Skull grabbed the handle and whipped the tool away. The monster lost its balance, flopping into the mud as the bulldozer continued forward. Another Skull took its place. This one, far skinnier, had no problem fitting through the broken window. Frank tore out his pistol and fired into the monster’s face. Its eye exploded in a mess of gore, and he kicked it in the chest, knocking the creature backward.

Only six bullets left—and just as many creatures clinging to the bulldozer.

Another punched through the window on his right. Frank dodged its arcing claws and hit the steering joystick. One of the treads splashed into the muddy bank beside the gravel road, burying itself almost immediately in the muck, and the bulldozer began to slow down. Frank pistol-whipped the attacking Skull over and over until its horn-rimmed brow shattered and blood seeped between the cracks. He planted a boot in its face to give himself room to aim and fired. The deafening blast slammed into his eardrums.

His ears rang as he shoved the fresh corpse out. Another two Skulls joined the group fighting to get in. Frank used the pistol to bash the monsters who dared to thrust their heads into the broken windows. Four more gunshots brought down two others.

One bullet left.

As the last two Skulls fought each other, shoving and biting to get at him, he wondered if he should save that bullet for himself. Maybe it was better to face the quick bite of lead rather than letting himself be devoured by the Skulls.

But he’d made a promise long ago that he intended to keep. Dom and the Hunters were relying on him. He couldn’t fail. He clocked one of the Skulls with his gun as he struggled to keep the bulldozer straight on the gravel road. More monsters poured into the path of the bulldozer, and Frank drove straight at them. He used the vehicle’s blade to push them off the road and crushed others underneath. Their bodies broke under the heavy treads, popping like smashed insects.

A gurgling sound rose above the growls and shrieks of the Skulls being squashed by the bulldozer. It was a noise Frank knew well from his time in the backcountry. Between the Skulls running at the vehicle, Frank saw a skinny one walking with an injured gait straight at the vehicle. Gobs of dark liquid sizzled from its drooping jaw, dripping across its chest and dissolving the armor plates bulwarking its ribs.

Drooler.

The creature bent its head backward and let fly a stream of acid.

-6-

Nausea boiled through Meredith as she watched the Skulls swarming Dom and Miguel. She, Andris, Terrence, and Jenna still carried the Zodiac between them, sprinting to catch up. Glenn stood his ground, picking off more Skulls as Renee charged ahead.

Through the comm link, Meredith heard the rushed breathing of the others. She could almost feel their tension. Without a word, they each knew exactly what they were supposed to do now: help Dom and Miguel.

Dom and Miguel were backed up to the fallen crane, finding shelter amid the latticework. Through her night-vision goggles, Meredith spotted bright-green shapes rushing from the warehouses and decrepit buildings. Most of the Skulls appeared to be coming from upwards of a half mile away, giving them precious minutes to do something, anything to escape the ravenous bastards.

Her mind raced as she ran. They might have enough time to make it to the warehouse where they’d initially been headed. But that required sprinting across a vast open space until they reached the oil tanks. The Skulls would take notice and corner them before they reached cover.

As the group approached Dom and Miguel, she could see the concerned looks on the others’ faces.

A group of almost two dozen Skulls careened over the fallen crane, headed for Dom and Miguel. Meredith let go of the Zodiac and shouldered her rifle in one fluid motion. She sighted up the first Skull and squeezed the trigger, letting a three-round burst fly. The armor-piercing rounds tore through the creature’s bulwarked ribs, and it sprawled forward, tumbling on the asphalt. The other Skulls trampled their wounded comrade.

Terrence, Jenna, and Andris took up positions, kneeling around the craft and firing at the Skulls. The muffled pop of the suppressed fire and the smell of cordite hung heavy in the air, mixing with the odor of spilled blood as Skull corpses piled up.

“We got to keep moving!” Dom shouted, breaking the group’s radio silence. “Get the Zodiac over the crane! Cover’s blown! Open fire!”

Meredith flipped the selector on her rifle to full auto and riddled the oncoming horde with gunfire. Several Skulls fell, but others leapt over their bodies. In less than a minute, the largest packs of Skulls would be on them. The Hunters continued firing desperately as Glenn and Andris struggled with the Zodiac, leveraging it over the fallen crane.

“We can’t hold ’em off much longer!” Jenna said over the bark of gunfire.

“We don’t have a choice!” Dom yelled.

Meredith saw the pained look on his face. She wished they still had Frank on call. The Huntress had a new Huey sitting on board thanks to the Coast Guard, and flying away in a helicopter would be nice right about now. If only they had a pilot, they could soar right over all the rotten skeletal abominations lurking around Soyo.

But wishes wouldn’t stop the Skulls now.

More fell under the wall of lead spewing from the Hunters’ rifles, but even more replaced the dead, swelling the ranks of the monsters.

“Captain, how hard can we go?” Meredith yelled. “Grenades?”

Dom glanced at the Skulls, then at her. She could tell what he was thinking. Bringing explosives into this battle would ensure every damn Skull in Africa knew where to find them.

Then again, if they didn’t live through the next five minutes, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

“Do it!” Dom said.

Meredith loaded a grenade case into her FN40 barrel-mounted grenade launcher. She sighted the closest group of Skulls. The monsters ran clustered together, unaware of their imminent deaths. The grenade flew out of the launcher with a whoomph. It sailed over the fallen crane and slammed into the pavement right in the middle of the Skull pack. A plume of blinding fire flared in Meredith’s NVGs. Skull limbs and chunks of unrecognizable flesh exploded in a display of bloody fireworks. Other grenades whistled through the air, tearing wide swathes from the approaching horde.

“Good enough!” Dom said. “Move, move, move!”

Glenn and Andris were already dragging the Zodiac on the other side of the crane. The others climbed the giant steel structure and followed. Meredith and Renee went over last, covering the group.

Meredith’s rifle rocked against her shoulder as she peppered another group of Skulls. Five, maybe six perished in the blaze of gunfire, but many more avoided the onslaught of lead. 

“Meredith, Renee!” Dom yelled, beckoning them as they ran between the corpses of freshly killed Skulls toward the oil tanks.

“We’re coming!” Meredith said. She and Renee sprinted toward the others, but two Skulls were hot on their tail.

Meredith swiveled and fired. Renee joined in, but the Skulls were too fast and lean. Bullets glanced off their horns and knocked chunks of bones from their arms, but neither Renee nor Meredith landed a fatal blow. The Skulls ran like Olympic sprinters, and Meredith knew there would be no escaping them without a kill shot.

The first Skull leapt, its arms outstretched. Meredith fired a final volley, and shots plunged into the Skull’s right arm, side, and leg. The thing’s momentum carried it forward. Meredith ducked and slammed the stock of her rifle into the creature’s chin as it soared over her. Metal cracked against bone, and the monster let out a pained grunt as it rolled to the ground.

In her periphery, Meredith vaguely saw Renee battling with the second Skull. Locked in hand-to-hand combat as they were, the rest of the group wouldn’t dare fire for fear of hurting Meredith or Renee. She heard the heavy footsteps of a Hunter or two rushing back to join the fray, but the Skull attacking her was already on its feet. It raked the air with its claws. She parried its blows with her rifle. The creature roared. The spikes along its wide, fin-like shoulder blades seemed to fan out like some reptilian show of aggression. Meredith panted, trying to catch her breath as the thing forced her back.

Come on, she thought, hold it together. This isn’t your first rodeo.

Then she saw it—an opening, and likely the only one she would get. The Skull drew back both its claws, ready to hammer down on her. But she was quicker.

She jammed the rifle’s barrel into the Skull’s mouth, firing at the same time. Bullets plunged through the monster’s brain. They burst out the back of its head, and its limbs twitched once before going limp. Meredith kicked it away and then ran at the Skull towering over Renee.

Over the comm link, she heard some order issued by Dom, but adrenaline and instinct had reduced her world to a single pinpoint, her focus only on saving Renee. The assaulting Skull had one claw embedded in Renee’s body armor near her collar. The other claw came back as it readied for a debilitating blow. Renee flailed, trying to lash out at the monster, but her hands were empty. Her rifle lay useless nearby, its strap slashed.

The Skull’s claw swung down.

Meredith jumped.

Her shoulder crashed against the Skull’s side, and the monster fell backward, its left claw still stuck in Renee’s fatigues. But the right claw missed, slicing through empty air instead. The monster swiveled. Its cracked lips drew back in a fearsome snarl.

But not for long. Meredith bashed her rifle into its fangs, hitting it again and again until the teeth fell from its mouth in bloodied shards. The repeated blows dazed the creature, preventing it from so much as growling. Another heavy bash knocked it out for good, and its skull cracked against the asphalt. Meredith fired straight into the monster’s face, not leaving anything to chance, then twisted to Renee. She slung her rifle over her back as Andris and Glenn joined her side.

“You okay?” Meredith yelled, grabbing Renee’s tac vest and removing the dead Skull’s claw from it.

“Never better!” Rivulets of blood streamed across Renee’s face. “Thanks.”

“You can keep your thanks for when you save my ass later,” Meredith said. “For now, let’s move!”

***

The monsters were closing in from all sides, but Dom still had one ace up his sleeve.

He hailed Thomas aboard the Huntress as he raced toward the Zodiac and the rest of the group. He hopped over a small crater in the asphalt then bounded past the skeletal remains of a man wearing shredded green jungle fatigues.

“You want to send some smoke our way?” Dom asked.

“The grenade launcher clip has been changed,” Thomas’s gruff voice reported back.

Dom shouldered his rifle and delivered a burst of fire into an approaching squad of Skulls. The leader of the group went down hard in an explosion of broken bone and blood. Its corpse tripped the other three, and Dom took advantage of their mishap by riddling their flanks with bullets.

“Fire when ready, Thomas!”

For a moment, nothing changed. Suppressed gunfire pumped from the Hunters’ weapons, Skulls howled, bony plates rattled, claws clicked on asphalt, and the rotten-meat odor of the creatures wafted on the hot air.

Then a low whistle sounded overhead. Something crashed into the crane. Another whistle, and another crash, this time in the crater. More heavy thuds echoed across the tarmac. The projectiles began to hiss, and tendrils of dark smoke floated up. Gray fog soon blanketed the scene. Dom mouthed a silent thank-you to the engineers back on the Huntress who’d ensured the ship’s remaining grenade launcher had been restored to full functionality.

“Don’t stop!” Dom ordered. “Go, go, go!”

Miguel and Dom covered the others as they hoisted the Zodiac, and the group dashed toward the oil tanks. The dense smokescreen would obscure even their vision, and Dom ordered them to turn on infrared filters. He flicked a switch on his own goggles, and the world lit up in hues of orange, red, blue, and green.

A red shape hurtled at him, unseen with his normal night vision. The blow knocked him on his back as a Skull with a linebacker’s build pounced at him. He scrambled backward then rolled as the Skull’s bladelike claws struck the ground where he’d been moments before.

More movement caught his attention from the corner of his eye. Miguel was running to assist him, but Dom spotted something else sporting long talons and shoulder blades that spread from its back like the wings of a deadly bird of prey.

“Miguel! Watch out!” Dom yelled.

The Hunter turned in time to engage the monster, but Dom didn’t have time to watch the outcome of the battle. The linebacker Skull was still hunting him. Its head twitched as it stuck its nose in the air. Dom froze. The thing couldn’t see him through the smoke, so it relied on sound and scent. He slowly brought his rifle up and aimed at the creature. His pulse thumped in his eardrums. He hoped the Skull couldn’t hear his heavy heartbeat as he squeezed the trigger. Rounds lanced into the monster, and it clutched its belly for a moment before lurching forward, lashing out blindly. Dom pulled the trigger again, and more bullets punched into the Skull. It fell, and Dom rushed to assist Miguel.

But the others hauling the Zodiac had already ended Miguel’s struggle with the other Skull. The monster lay dead atop its broken wings. The group limped onward, navigating through the smokescreen with the Zodiac between them. Huge cylindrical shapes rose around them—the oil tanks. A few Skulls emerged from the haze but were quickly cut down by waves of gunfire.

“Give us more cover,” Dom said over the comm link.

“You got it, Captain,” Thomas replied.

Soon more hissing canisters thumped around them. The cacophony of howling Skulls sounded farther and farther away with each hard-won step. They made it past the oil tanks and sprinted toward the wide-open door of one of the warehouses. Inside were several dry-docked sailing craft, tools strewn across the concrete floor, and various barrels and oil drums standing in precipitous stacks. The acrid scent of spilled oil and gas drifted in the humid air, and congealing diesel clung to the bottom of Dom’s boots. He twisted and fired at a mechanism holding the warehouse door open. The door rolled on its tracks and slammed to the concrete, closing them off from the hordes outside.

But the hair on the back of his neck still prickled. He sensed something staring at him, stalking him. Between the piles of miscellaneous repair equipment and steel crates, Dom spied a single red shape standing before them.

A huge shape.

“Goliath!” he yelled.

-7-

The Drooler’s spray splashed over the front of the bulldozer, and Frank ducked instinctively. Acid oozed down the glass, sticking to the uneven surface of cracks. Frank peered through the mess and grabbed the controls on either side of him. Pulling the throttle back, he accelerated and steered straight at the skinny Drooler. The thing lurched forward, a horror of melted skin and singed bone plates, dragging one foot with a limping gait.

“Buddy, you ain’t winning this battle,” Frank said.

He smiled despite the Skulls still clinging to the bulldozer’s side. As the bulldozer approached the Drooler, he lowered the blade and crushed the creature into the mud. The heavy treads rolled over its corpse. The monster popped like a water balloon, and acid splashed the nearby Skulls. The creatures reeled and swatted at the corrosive liquid dissolving their bony armor and eating through their flesh.

One stubborn Skull clung to the right side of the dozer, scraping its claws along the glass, desperate to get in.

“Damn, you Latter Day Saints people are way too pushy,” Frank said as he swung the door open, knocking the Skull off-balance. The creature slopped into the muddy bank by the road. It lifted its claws, trying to drag itself out, but it would never catch him now.

A host of Skulls trailed the bulldozer. Some hobbled pathetically on limbs broken after being run over, but there were plenty more that had escaped the dozer’s tracks. Frank judged he had only a few minutes before they’d reach him.

Frank patted the pistol stuck in his waistband. He still had one bullet. One final bullet against a hundred Skulls, maybe more.

Images of one of his favorite movies, Apocalypse Now, filtered through his head. The initial scene of Martin Sheen being flown in a helicopter over the Vietnamese coast was one of his favorites. He wished he were flying in one of those birds over the ocean, the jungle. Whatever. Anything was better than driving a goddamn bulldozer over a Skull-infested highway.

He began to whistle Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”

Frustrated growls cut through the music and the sound of the diesel engine. Frank glanced behind to see the silhouettes of Skulls still stubbornly following his trail in the pale moonlight. He noticed one, smaller than the others. It had something strange growing out of its scalp, like a misplaced duckbill. He soon realized it wasn’t a growth but a baseball cap. The Skull’s devil horns had grown right through the hat. As the creature sped up, gaining on the bulldozer, Frank recognizing the stylized white “N” representing the Washington Nationals, DC’s professional baseball team.

A painful knot formed in Frank’s stomach, and all his forced good humor faded. He felt foolish and guilty all at once. His son, Philip, had been wearing the same hat when he’d last seen him. And for a second, he thought the small Skull might even be Philip.

But that, at least, was impossible. Philip had been long gone before the Oni Agent outbreak. When he joined the crew of the Huntress, he had told them that his wife had taken his kid in a nasty divorce. He’d talked up what a shitty father he was, cataloging all the birthdays he’d missed and the ballgames he’d forgotten, because that was easier than admitting the truth.

Frank wasn’t a deadbeat dad. He wasn’t sure he could call himself a dad at all anymore.

Years ago, he’d been teaching a flight class at the Manassas Regional Airport, and his wife, Marie, and Philip had surprised him by dropping by for lunch. He’d been in the middle of a safety lecture—oh, the irony!—so his buddy Gerald had offered to take them up on a quick sightseeing flight while Frank wrapped up his class. That had been the day an aneurysm had chosen to burst in Gerald’s head like a goddamn land mine. The chopper had crashed less than a quarter of a mile from the airport.

There had been no survivors.

Only one man knew the truth about Frank’s past, about the guilt and grief that was eating him alive even as he cracked jokes and slammed down one too many beers with the crew. Dom knew everybody’s secrets aboard the Huntress.

He needed to get back to Dom now. And to do that, he needed to get to the Manassas Regional Airport. As the bulldozer crested a small rise leading to the highway, he recognized the familiar landscape smothered in evergreens. A strip mall stood near the airport exit, where his favorite hole-in-the-wall Chinese place was. He hadn’t been to Happy Wok or the airport since the day he’d lost his family. It felt only fitting, when all the world had gone to shit, that he returned now. The bulldozer followed the ramp onto the highway, and Frank weaved between cars, shoving through them when he had to, losing precious momentum as he did. He glanced around the cab, flipping various switches. One turned on a fan in the cabin. Another switched on the CB radio, which hissed static. Finally, one switch lit up the road ahead with wide swathes of brilliant white light.

Frank also discovered an ancient paint-splattered boom box tucked under the seat. He hit the eject button, and a tape popped out.

Black Sabbath. Excellent!

He replaced the tape and cranked it up. “War Pigs” filled the cabin, joining the cacophony of monsters chasing him.

Skulls ran over the abandoned vehicles, hunger glinting in their eyes as they rushed the bulldozer. He locked the throttle into place and lowered the blade. The dozer pushed cars out of the way. An SUV’s fender got caught on the bucket, and the smell of burning rubber wafted from its tires as the bulldozer strained to move it.

It seemed the valiant dozer had finally met its match.

Frank was only a few yards from the far side of the highway. He judged the odds for half a second and then opened the door to the bulldozer’s cabin and leapt out, leaving the machine running and the boom box blaring. He scrambled over the cement Jersey wall and dove into a dense thicket of bushes. Branches snagged on his clothes. As quickly and quietly as he could, he army-crawled under the foliage.

Risking a look, he saw Skulls pouring through the woods toward the bulldozer. Soon they were crawling over it like ants devouring a watermelon. He crept through the coverage of tree trunks and bushes, ducking whenever he heard a Skull sprinting to investigate the commotion he’d caused.

His distraction had worked beautifully. The creatures had been so focused on the bulldozer they hadn’t noticed him sneak into the woods. Their sensitive ears didn’t seem to detect the occasional snapping branch or rustling bush over the roar of the engine and the relentless onslaught of Black Sabbath.

Maybe the Skulls were all metal heads.

Rock on, Frank thought. Just as long as you stay the hell away from me.

It took almost thirty minutes of sneaking and skulking through the forest until the trees opened up and the crisscrossed runways of the airport welcomed him back to a place he’d tried to forget. But where once it had held only painful memories, it now held salvation. Frank rushed through the shadows, his heart pounding. He stopped at the perimeter of the airport, which was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence that had been broken and bent in several places. Several helicopters sat on the tarmac, all waiting for him. He could already picture the office pegboard where the keys to those choppers would be—and which bird he’d try flying first.

Just a little farther to go, and then he’d be back where he belonged. He could almost taste the freedom of the skies once more.

Frank Battaglia, you’re cleared for takeoff.

-8-

The Goliath gazed at them as if surprised by their arrival.

“Everyone on the Zodiac,” he said. “Run to the east wall of the warehouse. Let me and Miguel take care of this asshole.”

They ran off, leaving Dom and Miguel to face of the twisted creature. It looked more boulder-come-to-life than human-turned-monster. Rounded plates covered its flesh, and instead of long horns and spikes, it had bumped nodules. Each plate seemed to be a good inch or two thick, meaning this thing was built like a wrecking ball, and Dom didn’t doubt it took its job seriously.

“What you looking at, you big ogre?” Miguel said.

The Goliath thumped its chest then charged. Dom and Miguel fired at the creature. Bullets cracked against its armor, but still it ran, seeming to gain speed with every direct hit.

“Move, move, move!” Dom roared. He and Miguel turned and dashed through an aisle of crates and equipment, passing another dry-docked sailboat. They hurdled over Skull corpses, and the occasional spent round case went pinging against the floor when they kicked it. This wasn’t the first time Skulls had faced humans in this hellhole. Heavy thudding footsteps followed their every move. The bellow of the Goliath sounded out, reverberating in the aluminum roof of the shoddy warehouse.

They passed a pile of destroyed crates, and Dom swiveled to unleash a flurry of rounds into the Goliath. It swatted at the gunfire like it was trying to ward off a swarm of gnats. Still, it churned forward, shielding its face, and stomped over the crates and Skull corpses beneath its heavy feet. Even with armor-piercing rounds, the thick flesh and huge muscles throbbing around the creature’s limbs and torso protected it. The bastard was still somehow on its feet.

“Come on!” Dom yelled.

“I got this!” Miguel said, racing past Dom. He let his rifle drop to his side and aimed his prosthetic arm at the creature. The small nozzle Chao had installed sprayed a concentrated stream of acid in the Goliath’s face, sizzling against bone and melting its eye. The monster bellowed in a mixture of rage and anguish.

Miguel shot another acid burst at the Goliath, and the burning liquid cut through the monster’s plates, exposing singed flesh and sinew. Dom fired at the weak spots and was rewarded with another howl from the giant.

But despite the monster’s evident agony, it barreled toward them, its huge arms swinging like a gorilla’s. Each loping step it took shook the floor and sent fractures fissuring through the concrete. Gunfire would not stop the giant anytime soon.

“Run!” he yelled.

He and Miguel sprinted to the others.

“We’ve got company headed your way!” Dom said over the comm link.

“On it, Captain,” Glenn said.

The Goliath let out a roar that shook Dom’s eardrums. Warm globs of spittle slapped the back of his neck and drenched his fatigues. The creature was fast on their tail. He and Miguel weren’t going to outrun it, and bullets only made the creature angrier.

Instead, Dom pointed to a dry-docked tugboat, its hull so badly rusted that holes had formed in it. Miguel gave him a subtle nod, and once they reached the tugboat, they slid under it. The slick floor carried them halfway along the length of the boat. They ran in a half-crouched position the rest of the way.

Then, abruptly, the hull above their heads disappeared. The Goliath had picked the whole thing up and was holding the boat above its head. Wrenches and a welder fell from the upturned deck.

“Duck!” Miguel yelled.

The tugboat sailed over their heads and slammed into a stack of oil drums, knocking them over like a professional bowler scoring a strike. The drums bounced; some crumpled and others cracked, spilling viscous liquid in dark pools. Dom and Miguel avoided the spreading oil and ran along another alley of shipping containers. The Goliath’s broad shoulders scraped against the steel, slowing it slightly—but not enough for Dom’s comfort.

Miguel sent a burst of rounds into the creature’s chest. Blood drizzled out of the acid burns and bullet holes, but the monster appeared not to notice. Dom thought he could see the outline of one of the Goliath’s lungs pressing against its exposed flesh. The spot was less than six inches in diameter, and it would be impossible to hit while both he and the beast were running.

Dom stopped and shouldered his rifle.

“Chief! Come on!” Miguel said.

But Dom ignored him and timed the creature’s gait, predicting where the weak point would be in the next millisecond. He fired. The bullets pinged against the plates surrounding the wounded area, and for a moment, Dom thought he’d failed. Then a loud hissing sounded, and the Goliath stumbled forward. Air spurted from a freshly bored hole in its exposed chest. Bubbles of blood frothed around the wound as it struggled to breathe.

He’d scored a direct hit and punctured the monster’s lung. Miguel followed up Dom’s attack with his own devastating volley. The Goliath fell to one knee and caught itself with its gargantuan right hand, still struggling to stand.

Dom and Miguel fired until both had emptied their magazines. And somehow, through the hail of gunfire, the Goliath staggered to its feet. It ran again, unsteadily at first, crashing into the shipping containers, and then more steadily, straighter, heading toward Miguel and Dom.

The creature picked up a metal crate.

“Miguel, look out!” Dom yelled. The crate careened toward the Hunter. Dom tackled Miguel. The crate crashed onto the concrete near them, breaking apart. Bags of grain tumbled out of the busted crate. Several tore and spilled across the concrete.

Miguel was already pushing himself to his feet. He helped Dom up, and they continued their flight away from the rampaging Goliath.

Another crate flew at them, but this time they were ready, and both dodged it with ease. The crate smashed into a wall of shipping containers. Its sides split, and straw and glass bottles spilled out. The bottles exploded against the concrete floor. The biting odor of alcohol wafted over Dom and Miguel as glass shards stabbed through the air like shrapnel.

“Jenna, Glenn, Terrence!” Dom called between gasping breaths. “Get ready!”

He and Miguel zoomed around another corner. The other Hunters perched in positions along a catwalk.

“No explosives!” The warehouse was an inferno waiting to happen. Between the oil and the alcohol, they’d have one hell of a blaze.

The Hunters on the creaking catwalk let loose a fusillade of gunfire that cut across the Goliath’s chest and face. Bullets plunged into the gaping wounds already torn by Miguel’s acid spray, and the Goliath slowed again. It struggled against the incoming bullets like a person fighting gale-force winds. Its eyes still gleamed in hatred as its mouth chomped and an angry bellow shook the walls—and Dom’s ears. One of the Goliath’s eyes exploded in a gory mess. Its head twitched, and for a second, Dom thought that was it.

But the Goliath wasn’t ready to give up. It summoned animalistic fury from somewhere within its ruined body, and it charged. Dom dove out of the monster’s path, barely making it in time, and the Goliath ran into a huge shelving unit full of metal drums. It fell hard to its right and landed on the Zodiac amid a cascade of oil drums. The impact crushed several of the packs, and the skeletal blades jutting from the Goliath’s arms cut into the Zodiac. Hissing air gasped from the wounded sea craft, even as a ragged death rattle escaped the bloodied, cracked lips of the Goliath.

For a moment, no one said a word. They surveyed the damaged Zodiac and the giant corpse.

“Oh shit,” someone whispered over the comm link.

Dom glanced at the Zodiac. It was damaged beyond repair, no more seaworthy than a plastic tarp lined with cement blocks. Dom could hear the shrieks and scratches of Skulls outside the warehouse. It seemed that they were surrounded.

But for now, they were still outside—and Dom hoped to be long gone before they found a way in. He rushed to the Goliath and listened. Nothing. The gored mess that had been its chest lay still.

The other Hunters gathered around cautiously, each of them scanning the darkness, anticipating the signs of an ambush from the shadows.

All was quiet.

Glenn broke the silence. “So we gonna find another ride, Captain? Didn’t come all the way to the Congo to check out a boathouse.”

“Yeah,” Terrence said. “I’m dying for some action after Doc kept me cooped up in the med bay.”

Jenna grinned. “I haven’t killed near enough Skulls today.”

Dom couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride. Despite all the odds stacked against them, despite the Zodiac’s demise, his team still wanted to move forward. The Hunters finished what they started. To them, every problem, every challenge, no matter how seemingly impossible, had a solution—often one that involved high-caliber ammunition.

The Hunters would risk it all to accomplish their mission, so it was Dom’s job to be the voice of reason. He looked at each of them, watching the sweat roll down their foreheads and their constantly roving eyes. They talked tough, but they were on edge.

He tried not to let the Hunters’ unwavering faith and support sway his decision. Rationally, their next step regardless of whether they pressed on or scrapped the mission would be the same. Whether they were going to travel along the Congo or return to the Huntress, they needed a mode of transportation, something that could handle the river or the choppy waves back to the Huntress.

“So what now, Chief?” Miguel asked.

What now?

“We find ourselves a new boat,” Dom said.

-9-

Lauren leaned over a microscope and peered into the eyepiece. She twisted the coarse adjustment knob to focus her view. The fuzzy specks and blurred lines in the tiny plastic dish coalesced into something recognizable. This was it. The first experiment to assess whether the synthetic compound Kara had found via her FoldIt simulations had worked. This experiment would determine the future of Operation Phoenix, the pie-in-the-sky, moonshot project with the potential to stop the Oni Agent.

If the test worked, it would not only kill the nanobacteria, but it would destroy the infectious protein component of the Oni Agent—the prions. By doing so, it would allow an infected patient’s brain to have a chance to recover from any neurological damage and fight the Agent. And if a patient was injected with the Phoenix Compound as a vaccine before they ever got the Oni Agent, then the Phoenix Compound should drastically reduce, if not eliminate, their risk of Skull mutation.

This might be it. Humanity’s salvation.

Kara stood beside Lauren. Ordinarily, she did not invite spectators into the lab, but the girl deserved to be here since she was the one who’d discovered the theoretical Phoenix Compound. The rest of the medical research team—Peter, Sean, Divya, and their newest member, Navid—were also circled around the scope. Lauren could almost feel their tension.

“All right, guys,” Lauren said, “remember to breathe. Can’t have you all passing out.”

“Then kill it with the suspense. What do you see?” Divya asked.

Lauren flicked a switch that activated the scope’s camera, and an image displayed on a computer screen next to the device. Long cells stretched across the monitor, forming tentacle-like connections with other neighboring cells.

For Kara’s benefit, Lauren pointed at them. “These are neurons.”

“And they look healthy! They actually look okay!” Navid said, his eyes brightening as he stared at the screen. “Did it work? Did we do it?”

Lauren laughed—a rare sound these days. “I think we did.”

“You’re kidding me,” Sean said. “I can’t believe it. I mean, it’s almost too good to be true.”

Kara didn’t seem to share in the others’ excitement. Instead, she leaned forward and examined the cells. “Okay, so the neurons you’re growing in this plastic dish are healthy. But what does that mean? The cells look alive...for now.”

Lauren didn’t know Kara well enough to judge whether her skepticism was an innate trait or something born from her recent experiences during the outbreak. Regardless, Lauren approved. Skepticism was well suited for an individual interested in exploring truth through scientific experimentation.

“You’re right,” Lauren said. “It is probably too soon to get our hopes up. At the very least, it looks like the Phoenix Compound can sustain the viability of the neurons in the presence of the Oni Agent.”

“But prions are too small to see in a microscope like this,” Navid said, gesturing to the light microscope they were using.

“Right,” Lauren said. “So we’ll run a couple of tests this afternoon to find out if the compound actually eliminated the Oni Agent prions or not.”

Navid shook his head, pulling his hand through his thick black hair. “So we actually have no idea if the compound works. This might not be a breakthrough at all.”

“Now hold up,” Lauren said. Healthy skepticism was a good thing, but pessimism would kill their momentum on Operation Phoenix. “Yes, there are more experiments to run, and we’re miles from the finish line. But this is a good first step.”

“Lauren is right,” Peter said. “If I’ve learned one thing during my career, it’s that you should celebrate the little wins because they come far and few between.”

Navid gave a noncommittal shrug, and Kara simply nodded, her expression unreadable.

Back at the CDC, Lauren’s next steps would have been a lot easier. She used to have a fully equipped lab with over two thousand square feet of dedicated resources at her disposal. But here, in a footprint barely the size of a Manhattan studio apartment, her experiments were necessarily more constrained and limited.

At least she had good people on her team. Lauren couldn’t resist testing them now. “So, if you were me, what would you guys do next?”

“I’d test the Phoenix Compound in an animal model,” Navid said. “It’s the only way to know for sure whether it actually works. You need, say, a mouse with a working immune system, fully intact organs, and healthy tissues. Then you can see if the body’s normal physiology interferes with the Phoenix Compound’s treatment of the Oni Agent in any way.”

“Very good,” Lauren said. “But unless you’ve got a cage full of mice hidden in your quarters, we’re out of luck, aren’t we?”

“Dunno about that,” Divya piped up. “I’ve seen a few rodents scurrying around in Sean’s room.”

Sean shot her a mock hurt expression. “Who I spend my time with is none of your business. And I’ll have you know the mice in the Huntress’s galley are a thousand times friendlier than you lousy bunch.”

“All right, let’s get serious,” Lauren said. “This isn’t just about solving some theoretical scientific problem. We’re talking about a compound that can change the course of the Oni Agent pandemic. Something to keep the Hunters safe out in the field.”

“So mice are out of the question,” Kara said. “And we can’t exactly work with Fort Detrick right now.”

“Not while General Kinsey is trying to sink us,” Lauren said.

“Damn,” Kara said. She shuffled her feet and looked at the floor as if the answer were hidden somewhere on the tiles.

“I got it,” Navid said. “Organ-on-a-chip!”

“Bingo,” Lauren said.

Kara looked confused as the other scientists scoured the lab for the small chips Lauren would use for the upcoming experiment. Peter was the first to find one labeled HUMAN NEUROLOGICAL SYSTEM. Lauren held up the acrylic chip, letting the light illuminate the tiny channels within the thumb-sized device.

“That’s the brain?” Kara hazarded.

“Basically.” Lauren placed the chip in a biosafety cabinet. “Within this chip, there are a selection of molecules and cells that will help us to simulate the brain microenvironment. I’ll inject it with samples of both the Oni Agent and the Phoenix Compound.”

Kara furrowed her brow, leaning closer to the biosafety cabinet. Sean, Peter, and Divya were already prepping various solutions in vials for the experiment. “Why is this better than those neuron cells?”

“Well, scientific discoveries in a cell culture aren’t always representative of what will actually happen in the real biological environment,” Lauren replied. “For example, when scientists are looking for a cure for a certain type of cancer, it’s very easy for them to test all kinds of chemicals made by man or found in nature to show whether or not they kill the cells. But those same chemicals might interfere with important physiological functions. And sometimes, the human body might actually render the chemicals useless.”

“Okay. So we can’t just say something works by testing it in the cell culture. Like, bleach will definitely kill your cancer cells in a plastic dish, but you can’t say bleach cures cancer?”

“Exactly,” Lauren said, pleased to see the dawn of understanding in Kara’s eyes. She’d make a scientist of the girl yet.

“Ready,” Divya piped up beside Lauren. She held a vial in one gloved hand and a pipette in another.

“Go ahead and introduce the compound.” Lauren stood back from the biosafety cabinet and watched as her team finished their work. She listened to the soft clatter of plastic against plastic and the whoosh of filtered air blowing through the cabinet. Her heart rate increased in anticipation as Divya inserted a tiny droplet of liquid into one of the chip’s channels. It contained a fatal dose of Oni Agent, capable of transforming a healthy person into a Skull within mere hours.

They’d worked with several deadly pathogens and biological agents over the years, but nothing had ever matched the brutality of the Oni Agent or the havoc it wreaked.

“Done,” Divya reported.

“How soon will we know?” Kara asked, her eyes turned to Lauren hopefully. “What do we do next?”

“We wait,” Lauren said, imagining the microscopic battle being waged between the Phoenix compound and the Oni Agent within the tiny plastic device. “With any luck, it’ll take a few hours at most for the Phoenix Compound to eradicate the Oni Agent.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Kara asked. “What’s our next move?”

Lauren looked around at her crew. Dark bags hung under their eyes, evidencing the long hours they’d spent in the lab and the med bay. The answer to Kara’s question almost physically hurt to admit.

“If the Phoenix Compound doesn’t work, we’ll keep redoing the simulations and finding new compounds until we identify one that does.”

Kara looked stricken. “You mean we’ll have to start over?”

Lauren shrugged. “Welcome to the world of science.”

-10-

The bang and clatter of Skulls ramming the warehouse doors echoed through the building. Meredith shuddered at the relentless noise. Her nerves were halfway shot, and this wasn’t helping.

Despite Thomas’s best efforts to distract the creatures, they’d been drawn to the warehouse by Dom’s bout with the Goliath. Escaping this place would be a challenge, even with the Huntress’s distant support. There was only so much the ship could do to convince a horde of hungry Skulls to search elsewhere for food.

Something slammed into one of the warehouse doors. The hinges squealed, and the door bent inward with a metallic groan. The Skull—or maybe multiple monsters—battered at the dented door, sensing that their dinner was close at hand.

“We need a way out of here,” Dom said. “The faster, the better. Meredith, Andris, check for a route. The rest of you, see if we can find anything useful in here.”

“Message received,” Meredith said. She surveyed the doors along the warehouse’s perimeter. The majority of the Skulls’ roars and scratches seemed to be coming from the front of the building, so they might sneak out the back. She wanted to have a better idea of what they were up against, though, before they made a move. Since she didn’t have Superman’s X-ray vision, there was only one option.

“To the roof,” she said, grinning at Andris.

The Hunter stretched his arms, his joints cracking. “A little climb would do my body good.”

Meredith scanned their surroundings, taking in the catwalk and the series of grimy skylights in the ceiling. Even with Andris giving her a boost, she wouldn’t be able to access the roof that way.

Another Skull threw itself against a warehouse door, the sound reverberating through the metal walls like a drum.

An idea sparked in her brain, but she quickly discarded it. Stacking oil drums would take far too much time, and they needed to be quick. She stalked through the winding stacks of storage crates, searching for something they could use.

“Got a plan for getting to the roof?” he asked.

“It’s coming together,” she said, rushing toward a wall of tool chests near some compressed gas tanks and a rusted forklift. She peeked into a crate filled with sheet-metal scraps and pieces of discarded pipe. She sifted through the junk.

“Here,” she said, handing Andris a pipe. Then she withdrew an anchor fitted for a small craft no bigger than a rowboat. It still had a barnacle-covered rope attached to it. The tool chest held an array of cables and ropes, from which she took a bungee cord.

Andris shot her a wry grin. “Ah, I see where you’re going with this.” He moved to the rows of compressed air tanks, checking the valves of each. A twist of a knob yielded the satisfying hiss of air. He coiled some silicone tubing around his shoulder. “Ready.”

Meredith started climbing the metal stairs to the nearest catwalk. Andris followed with the heavy tank.

Once they reached the top, Meredith took the tank from him, attached the tube, and secured it to the end of the pipe. Then she fitted the anchor into the end of the pipe, adding several wraps of duct tape to ensure a snug fit. She secured the bungee cord over the anchor to hold it in place.

As she leveled it to the nearest skylight, she gave Andris a short command. “Shoot that one out.”

Andris complied, shouldering his rifle and letting out a salvo of suppressed shots. The holes punched through the glass, and shards rained down. Meredith cringed at the sound, but it was unavoidable.

Now for the real show. She used the nozzle on the air tank to fill the tube with gas, pressurizing it. The anchor trembled, but the bungee cord held as the pressure built. Without a gauge, she had no idea how many pounds per square inch of gas were pushing on her makeshift grappling hook. Once the bungee cord looked like it was about to give way, she unclipped one end.

The cord whipped as the tension within it released, and the anchor flew from the pipe, thrown by the expanding gas. The barnacle-covered rope trailed behind it as the anchor cleared the opening in the destroyed skylight. A heavy clunk signaled the anchor had landed on the roof, and Meredith tugged the rope, dragging the anchor until it snagged the lip of the skylight. She heaved on the line to ensure it stayed in place.

Andris glanced up at her handiwork. “Want me to go first?”

“Thanks for the chivalry, but I’ve got this.” Meredith gave the rope one more tug for good measure. She started to climb, hand over hand, refusing to think about the hard concrete waiting for her thirty feet below if she fell. The skylight framed a night sky full of glittering stars, and she reached up toward it with a gloved hand.

For a moment, up above it all with the night air tickling her skin, the Skulls’ growls sounded as distant as the calls of birds in the trees and the crash of water against the shore. Meredith pulled herself up to the skylight and then onto the roof. It took more effort than she liked to admit. Was it because she hadn’t kept up with her fitness routine of calisthenics, running, and weight exercises since the start of the outbreak? Or worse, was it just a sign of reaching a half century in age?

She let out a long exhalation as she took her first few cautious steps on the corrugated metal roof. Neither age nor the apocalypse could stop her. With her rifle pressed against her shoulder, she scanned the rest of the roof, looking for any sign of movement through the lingering haze of the smokescreen.

“All clear up here,” she called through the comm link.

The muffled huffing and clang of boots on metal told her when Andris had made it up. The clamor of the Skulls rose all around them, especially deafening near the front of the warehouse. The Hunters definitely wouldn’t be escaping the way they’d come in.

The front of the warehouse faced the harbor—and the thronging mass of Skulls. Meredith and Andris crept over to the other side of the building. It looked onto a dense line of trees, their leaves dancing in the wind. Meredith used a pair of binoculars to scope the river just past the canopy of leaves.

Misshapen creatures were lurking on the river’s edge. Skulls, and plenty of them. But at least they seemed spread out enough that the Hunters might avoid being overwhelmed.

“Any sign of a boat?” Andris asked. He stood at her back, covering them while she searched.

Meredith shook her head and followed the bend of the river as it snaked toward the harbor, back to the clot of shipwrecked barges, freighters, and fishing craft smashed together like a manmade mountain. None would be of any use.

As she studied the river, she spotted something that made her heart leap. A ferry had been beached on the shore closest to them. It had three decks. Cars, motorcycles, vans, and other vehicles in a sorry state of repair lined the bottom deck. A middle deck appeared mostly closed off, protected by a bulkhead punctuated with portholes, many of which were cracked. The top deck held what looked like the pilothouse along with several rows of benches. There was a smattering of tarps strung up between the gunwales and benches as some sort of temporary shelter.

If they sprinted, they could make it to the ferry within a few minutes. The prow was far enough up the bank that they might be able to lower the ramp onto solid ground. Meredith guessed at least a couple of the vehicles inside might work if they needed land transport. The ferry itself might still be functional. The Zodiac had been smaller and quieter, but it offered almost no protection against the elements or Skulls. Even if they couldn’t get the ferry going, she spied a pair of lifeboats.

“Think it’ll work?” Andris asked when she handed him the binos and pointed out the vessel.

“Only one way to find out.”

Meredith’s blood quickened in her veins. The hunt was back on.

-11-

Frank was only a football field or two away from the choppers that would take him out of Manassas. But between them stretched an airfield with dozens of lumbering Skulls. Their claws scraped against the tarmac, and every once in a while, one of the monsters’ hungry groans would echo over the landscape. They meandered between the idle single-prop planes and larger passenger aircraft, bumping into the luggage-handling vehicles and a lone fuel truck. Frank’s fingers traced across the cold metal of the pistol tucked in his waistband, loaded with his only remaining round. He had no other weapon besides his fists and his ability to talk himself out of any situation.

He didn’t regard either of those too highly at the moment.

Instead, he gave himself a half-hearted pep talk. “Well, Frank, ol’ boy, didn’t you always want to be a ninja? Now’s your chance.”

He crept through the underbrush toward the tarmac then sprinted for a luggage truck to hide behind a wall of spilled suitcases, each of them carefully packed for vacations or work trips. Marie had packed them all a picnic lunch on the day she and Philip died, and he had never found out what was in it.

No need to get all sentimental again.

He couldn’t stop thinking about his family. Their ghosts haunted this place, and he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to stay here with them. At least they’d be together again. Frank slumped against a massive wheeled suitcase. A Skull limped on the opposite side of the luggage cart. He tried to hold his breath and balled himself up as small as possible.

The Skull’s shuffling footsteps ceased as it drew to a halt. Frank didn’t dare move to see what it was doing, but he heard it sniffing and imagined the monster’s nostrils flaring beneath the scarred bone masking its face. Frank’s heart threw itself against his ribcage with wild abandon, and he pressed himself tighter against the pile of luggage. Another Skull’s footsteps scraped closer until he heard the two monsters collide with the hollow thud of bone smacking against bone. The first Skull let out a menacing growl, and the second responded in kind. Frank heard a brief scuffle, followed by a whimper of pain. Then a spray of blood painted the concrete red as one of the monsters fell. It crashed against the ground in a heap of skeletal limbs and gray flesh.

What the hell? Frank had seen plenty of humans torn to shreds by the beasts—God rest their souls—but the Skulls didn’t usually turn on each other. These must be desperate, ravenous.

The surviving Skull finally dragged itself away, and Frank held back a sigh of relief. He peered between two suitcases leaning against each other to watch the silhouette of the victorious Skull amble away, awash in pale moonlight. Strange, amorphous dark shadows covered its organic armor. Frank guessed they were splashes of blood.

Turning, he started toward one of the squat buildings outside the regional airport’s terminal, where he hoped to find the keys to the Helicopter Flight Training School’s choppers. He snuck between helicopters and abandoned vehicles across the tarmac. Each time a Skull growled or shuffled closer, he froze. It was like playing a game of Statues where the other team ate you if you lost.

He made his way to a row of bushes lining the training school office. After sneaking to the front door, he tried pushing the handle. It didn’t budge. If he had to, he’d come back and break it, but for now he wanted to keep his options open. Any tinkling glass shards would call out to all the Skulls he had just painstakingly avoided.

Instead, he followed the brick walls to the back of the building. There, he tiptoed to a familiar white-framed window. His old office. He used to complain about the window looking over an untended field of grass and wildflowers. Drafty in the winter and a channel for the sticky humid air of summer, the window never quite closed right. He’d hated it then, but he loved it now.

He probed around the swollen wooden frame until he felt the gap. Then he wedged his fingers in it and pried. A muffled pop sounded, and the window jolted open. Frank surveyed the field to ensure he hadn’t been spotted. Nothing jumped out of the darkness, and no Skulls cried out with their demonic wails.

So far, so good. Score one for Team Battaglia.

His old office was almost unrecognizable. Where once a picture of Marie and Philip had sat on a wide wooden desk, now metal scale-models of various Air Force helicopters were lined up in a neat row across a modern glass desk. The chair was a minimalist piece instead of the lush leather beast Frank used to sit in. Framed certificates and diplomas for a Leonard G. Craft decorated the otherwise-barren walls.

Something besides the decor caught his eye. Long streaks of dried blood traced a path out of the office and into the lobby, as if someone had been dragged by their blood-covered fingers into the next room.

“Well, that’s another new addition,” Frank muttered to himself, scanning the office for a weapon.

But before he found one, a low growl sounded from the doorway. A Skull appeared, one arm hanging from its socket by strings of sinew, the other intact and laced with bony growths jutting out like daggers. A leather jacket hung off one shoulder, fur lining the collar, both sleeves torn off, but a metal name badge still gleamed in the moonlight filtering in through the window: Leonard G. Craft.

“I hate what you’ve done with the place,” Frank said, his muscles tensing and fingers curling into fists.

He didn’t have time for another quip before the monster snarled, its cracked lips tearing back to reveal a mouthful of needle-pointed teeth.

One bullet left, Frank thought morbidly as he rushed the beast.

-12-

Dom had always made his decisions guided by a simple principle: the right choice was the one that saved the most lives. In a world devastated by the Oni Agent, that left one option. “We’re moving out. Glenn, Jenna, Terrence, Renee, unless you found something good, meet us back by the west exit. Meredith found us a boat.”

“Roger that, Captain,” Glenn’s deep voice called back over the comm link.

“Meredith, Andris, get your asses down here, too.”

“Happy to,” Meredith responded.

When they had all gathered, Dom split the salvageable supplies from the destroyed Zodiac among them. “Glenn, Terrence, you’re on rearguard. Miguel, you’re on point.” Together, they moved as one around the stacks of crates and planks of wood and heaps of junk metal. Miguel reached one of the rear doors to the warehouse. His hand wrapped around the handle as Dom sidled up to him, rifle shouldered and ready to take out any lingering threats. With a subtle nod from Dom, Miguel whipped the door open, taking care not to slam it against the wall.

A single hunched Skull twisted to face them.

Dom reacted out of pure instinct. His optical sights centered on the monster, and his finger squeezed the trigger to release a short burst of suppressed fire. The bullets found their home in the creature’s chest, shattering armor and rupturing organs. To Dom’s relief, no other Skulls howled or charged, and he signaled the group forward. But the sensation he was being watched scratched at the back of his neck. It unnerved him as they crept across a muddy incline toward the edge of the jungle.

Ringing metal still sounded out as Skulls threw themselves at the front of the building. While most of the beasts had gathered on the east side, others still skulked between the trees leading west. Dom spotted a group of three stumbling over a twisting root pushing up from the soil like a sea serpent. His muzzle remained trained on them as they approached the trio. The other Hunters breathed in quick bursts, their weapons at the ready. He could sense their anticipation before he gave the signal to cut the Skulls down. A volley of bullets shredded the monsters, and their skinny bodies dropped into the foliage.

These Skulls seemed especially emaciated. Maybe they’d been weak from hunger. Could that be why they hadn’t joined the others in the desperate battle near the crane and warehouse?

Dom didn’t have long to entertain his curiosity when something exploded from the brush to his right. Swiveling, he targeted the Skull with his rifle. But a twisting feeling in his gut made him pause before he pulled the trigger.

“Drooler,” he whispered.

From the corner of his eyes, he saw Miguel, Meredith, and Jenna lower their rifles. The Drooler stumbled forward, favoring its right leg. Ropes of acidic saliva dangled from the edges of its half-melted jaw. Its belly appeared sunken in except for the pockets of gurgling liquid churning behind its loose skin. Remnants of old jungle camouflage fatigues hung from its limbs. Its lips opened as a gargling sound belched from its mouth.

The thing was primed to explode, ready to spray acid at any moment. Firing at the creature now would risk rupturing the creature’s belly, resulting in everyone receiving a hot bath of scalding acid. Dom didn’t want to test the new microparticle coatings Lauren’s team had given their fatigues if he could avoid it. He gestured for the others to cover him as he rushed to meet the charging beast. The scent of bile and rot reached Dom long before the creature did. He ignored the pungent odor and leapt at the Drooler, cocking his rifle back.

He planted one knee into the Drooler’s chest and slammed the stock of the rifle into the Drooler’s skull. The monster’s head flicked violently to the right. Bone crunched and then caved in around its scalp. It fell, and for a moment, Dom thought the fight was over. But the Drooler cranked its neck around and let loose the acid.

The geyser of corrosive liquid was aimed at Dom. His quick reflexes were no match for the sheer volume of acid spewed by the Drooler. His chest armor got the worst of it, but a drop hit his cheek. It burned, but he pushed past the pain, knowing he had to protect the rest of his team. He planted three rounds into the Drooler’s head, devastating what remained of its face. More acid spilled from its open jaws, sizzling as it scorched tree roots and ferns.

The spot on Dom’s cheek continued to burn until Meredith rushed to his side and splashed his face with water.

“Dom, didn’t your mom ever teach you not to play with exploding monsters filled with acid?” Meredith asked.

“Missed that lesson.” His cheek still stung, but there was no pain from the acid that had splashed across his chest. “Remind me to buy Lauren and the team a drink later.”

Meredith washed away the remaining acid on his chest. “Her team did damn good. Probably deserve more than a drink. Maybe a raise?”

“Don’t give them any ideas,” Dom said.

“I could use a drink,” Miguel said. “Or at least some goddamned AC. It’s too hot out here.”

Dom checked his fatigues one last time to make sure the acid had been thoroughly washed off. Meredith was right; the science team deserved a hell of a lot more than a drink. A hit like that should’ve been deadly. But there was little time to celebrate his science team’s achievement. Surviving the Drooler’s acid would be of little use if he couldn’t get his team safely to the ferry and figure out their next move.

“Forward,” he said to the team.

Maintaining his point position, Miguel guided the group along a winding path. He and Dom were forced to slice through twisting knots of vines with the machetes they’d at least had the foresight of bringing in their packs. They pushed through the hanging vines roping around tree branches and thick tree trunks, stepping over layers of leaves in various stages of decay. It was almost impossible to traipse through the jungle without making noise.

Distant howls from the Skulls in Soyo permeated the jungle. A tingle of anxiety still sparked within Dom as he waited for those voices to erupt unexpectedly somewhere closer to their position. The Hunters’ belabored breaths sounded around him as he kept his ears open for the occasional groans and crunching footsteps of nearby Skulls. They ran across several monsters, but most went down easily with a stealthy swipe of a blade or a smattering of suppressed gunshots.

The smell of death hung heavy in the air, piercing the intense, complicated aroma floating off the myriad of flowers and trees. Then something caught Dom’s eye before he stepped over another rotting log. The stark whiteness of the object stuck out against the mottled greens of the jungle. He held up a fist to slow the group and bent to get a closer look. As he studied the jungle bed, he noticed more fragments of white. It didn’t take long to realize what they were: human bones. Not so much as a morsel of meat or sinew hung off the bones. Many were cracked open, their marrow sucked dry. Dom gingerly moved aside a fern to get a better view at a half set of ribs. Between the ribs he spotted a glinting piece of metal. A knife blade.

Miguel tapped Dom’s shoulder. He pointed to his eyes, then to his right. Vines and plants had been cut down to reveal a path that intersected with theirs. It seemed as if they hadn’t been the only ones to travel this way. A sinking feeling sucked at Dom’s stomach. All along that intersecting path he spied the crooked and broken skeletal remains of what looked like a small army, spread among the plants as if this were some dark garden of human remains. Between the bones and the plants growing to reclaim the pathway, rifles, pistols, and blades littered the ground. Judging by the sheer number of weapons and bones, the force that had perished here had numbered ten, maybe even twenty times as many as the Hunters.

Whatever killed them had apparently attacked with unparalleled ferocity and effectiveness. He saw nothing but human remains. What kind of Skulls had done this to these people, yet escaped with nary a casualty among their ranks?

Again, he felt the eyes of something watching him. Maybe hidden Skulls, maybe wary survivors, maybe the ghosts of the deceased.

He shuddered.

What the hell was he leading his people into? He looked at the Hunters. Miguel cocked his head and gave him a quizzical look. He could tell exactly what the Hunter was asking: “What now, Chief?”

Before Dom could answer, something caused the ground to vibrate. A tree fell near their position, crashing through the jungle canopy. The overwhelming smell of rot washed over them, and Dom signaled everyone to retreat into the dense trees. They ducked behind the logs and ferns, blending into their surroundings.

Dom gripped his rifle, ready to fire. He prayed it wouldn’t come to that. At first he thought the rumblings were from a passing Goliath. But as the trees continued to shake, birds taking flight and monkeys howling, he feared there must be more than one Goliath trampling the woods in their direction. The forest floor trembled as if the Earth itself shivered from fear.

Dom caught a glimpse of armored plates through the dense foliage. He couldn’t see the whole creature, only fragments, but it was bigger than any Goliath they’d ever faced.

More footsteps rumbled through the trees like thunder. The creature, whatever it was, wasn’t alone.

-13-

Frank took the pistol from his waistband and leveled it at the Skull’s head. His finger started to squeeze the trigger as his heart climbed into his throat, but the Skull suddenly ducked. He let the trigger go, unwilling to waste his remaining bullet, and juked left to dodge the Skull. The monster crashed into a bookshelf, spilling the paperbacks and flight manuals. A framed picture of the former Leonard G. Craft’s family fell to the floor. The glass broke, and shards pinged across the faux tile.

Growling, the Skull charged, and Frank dove over the desk. The creature slammed into the office wall. Cracks fissured, spreading from the site of impact, and several of the framed certificates and degrees crashed to the ground. Leonard didn’t seem to care about his credentials now as he prepared to charge Frank again.

The monster leapt at Frank and collided with the sleek, modern glass desk instead. The glass exploded, but the Skull kept going until it slammed into Frank. The impact knocked the breath out of him. The Skull lifted its good hand, ready to slice Frank’s exposed neck.

The claws came down in an arc, and Frank parried the blow with the pistol. The move deflected the scything claws but also sacrificed Frank’s grip on the weapon. The handgun skittered across the floor and came to a stop at the opposite wall near the door.

The Skull struck again, and Frank twisted in time for the claws to embed themselves in the wall. His heart hammered against his ribs, and adrenaline tore through his vessels like a riptide. The Skull leaned in with its serrated teeth. Rancid breath washed over him. The Skull’s bloodshot eyes widened, and its over-calcified ears seemed to press flat against the side of its head like a rabid dog. Flecks of the Skull’s saliva sprayed Frank’s face as it chomped.

“You need a fucking breath mint,” Frank said as he kneed the creature’s groin.

The impact would’ve left a normal man flat on his back and whimpering in agony. But the Skull hadn’t noticed. Frank delivered a powerful uppercut. Pain exploded in his fist, but this time the monster had the worst of it. The Skull’s teeth cracked together, and it chomped off part of its tongue. Blood dribbled from the corner of its mouth. The Skull wailed in a mixture of anger and frustration.

Frank pressed his advantage, shoving the Skull away. It fell hard onto the spikes lining its spine. Several cracked under its own weight. Frank dodged past the creature. He rushed toward the office’s door, scooping up his dropped pistol on the way.

The office led to a small room used as a makeshift lobby for the training school. Peeling posters hung on the walls over worn leather couches and a water cooler. A large bookshelf had been shoved against the front door of the office. The suitcases piled in one corner spoke of someone’s desperate attempt to use the office as a redoubt against the Skulls. If this was the site of a last stand, then surely Leonard and his family had brought weapons here somewhere.

Sure enough, Frank spotted a bat leaning against a chair nearby. It wasn’t the best weapon against bone-covered people-eaters, but it would have to do. He sprinted for it as the Skull appeared in the doorway again, its crimson eyes scanning the room for its escaped prey. It let out a shaking cry that reverberated in Frank’s bones. Frank scooped up the bat as the Skull leapt over a couch. He cocked the bat back and swung with wild abandon. The bat slammed against the Skull’s face with a sickening crack. Its body spun with the impact, and it crumpled to the floor.

Frank didn’t let down his guard. From his dealings with the Skulls, he’d learned the creatures fought against death with all the stubbornness of a wild stallion being ridden for the first time. The monster pushed itself to its feet. Blood seeped from the fissures in its skull and out of its mouth. One of its eyes had been ruined by the crushed bones on the side of its face, but its good eye locked on Frank. Its lips curled back to reveal crimson-stained teeth.

Frank swung the bat again, aiming for the same spot. One solid blow would scramble the creature’s brain.

But that blow never landed. The monster held up its clawed hand and grabbed the bat. With its superhuman strength, it ripped the weapon from Frank’s hand and squeezed until the wood snapped. It dropped the pieces at its feet.

Frank dodged the swipes and blows of the Skull like a boxer. He tried to grab the handle of the busted bat. As he did, the Skull landed a hit on Frank’s side. Hot pain coursed through his ribs. He couldn’t tell whether the Skull had broken skin or just the bones underneath.

He didn’t care. This bastard had to go down. The monster coiled for another attack. Frank raised the bat handle and thrust forward, using the splintered wood like a short sword. He thrust the bat through the creature’s soft eye socket, piercing the weak bone behind its orbital cavity.

The monster’s limbs went still, and Frank planted a foot into its chest, knocking it backward. The Skull fell. Frank panted, his fists curled, ready to pounce on the creature in case it wanted to go for another round. But it didn’t move. Blood pooled from its crushed head and out of its burst eye, soaking into the carpet.

Frank leaned on one of the couches to catch his breath. Constantly running and fighting these damn things was sucking the life out of him, literally and metaphorically. He wasn’t the spry twenty-five-year-old pilot he’d once been, weightlifting on the weekdays and playing soccer in three leagues on the weekend. He’d gotten old and, if he was honest, out of shape.

Once he felt his heart settle, he looked around the room for anything he could salvage. His stomach gave a lurch of hunger, growling almost as loudly as the Skull had.

He gazed longingly at the water cooler, but nothing sloshed inside it. Frank walked toward the office’s kitchenette, but what he saw made him stop and forget his hunger.

A flash of hot-pink fabric, glittery and almost obscenely cheerful in the ruin of the lobby.

“God, no,” Frank said.

No one-liner, no humor could make this better. Instead of continuing to the kitchenette, he took several tentative steps toward the suitcases. He opened the nearest bag, a duffel containing bottles of water, and he muttered his thanks to Leonard. But before he drank, he picked up a smaller suitcase that he hadn’t noticed earlier.

The smiling face of a cartoon pony decorated the pink-and-purple piece of luggage. There was another small suitcase beneath the first, this one covered in pictures of cupcakes. No, no, no, Frank thought, his mind reeling. He unzipped it, hoping to prove his darkest suspicions wrong. Several shirts and pairs of pants fell out, suitable for a young girl no older than eight or nine. The clothes in the second pink suitcase were no different. Frank set it down then rummaged through a generic black weekend suitcase. He found several blouses, along with a few pairs of women’s jeans.

Frank took a wild guess these weren’t Leonard’s. That left only one question: Where were the owners of these suitcases?

Slowly, he stood again, chewing his bottom lip in worry. His fingers tensed, curling and releasing as he walked toward the short hall that led to the kitchenette and two other offices.

“Anyone else here?” he said in a whisper. He tried again, slightly louder. “Hello?”

It felt like his shoes were growing heavier with each step. The kitchenette appeared on his right, and he peeked in. A two-burner stovetop, refrigerator, sink, and the distinct odor of rotting fruit greeted him. But nothing else. Nothing living.

He moved on to the next room, which in his day had been an office. With the back of his hand, he nudged the door open. Its hinges creaked. The sound made him cringe as he squinted into the moonlit space. Another desk, this one an ornate wooden piece, sat in the middle of the room with two felt-covered chairs in front. A formidable leather chair waited behind it for an occupant that would never return. Bookshelves had been positioned over the windows, and a pile of blankets rested in another corner.

Nothing charged from the darkness. No one called for help. No whimpers echoed from the shadows.

Sucking in a long breath, Frank swiveled back to the hallway and crept to the last door. His heart thundered as he drew closer. A nearby window was partially blocked by another bookshelf full of flight training books and tomes filled with photographs of different helicopters. It left just enough space for moonlight to filter through. The pale light washed over gouges in the wood. A door handle rested on the ground, leaving a gaping hole where it had once been.

Frank pushed the door open slowly. Something moved in the darkness, scuffling across a carpet. The creature ran at him. But it was no Skull. It was a rat. A goddamned rat, and nothing more.

He kicked at it, hurrying the rat on its way.

“Damn varmint,” Frank said with an exaggerated Southern twang. He felt a twinge of guilt for trying to kick it, but he’d been caught off guard by the rodent. In his experience, the creatures ran from people, not at them. He pushed the thoughts of the rat out of his mind as he inched the door open. A faint ferrous scent tickled his nostrils. Every window in this room was barricaded, shrouding the space in darkness. As the door opened wider, moonlight slipped in, illuminating the floor, inch by sullen inch. The ends of sleeping bags appeared, followed by a lantern on its side, the light long since gone out. Bullet casings glinted over a dark stain in the carpet. The stain led to a pistol with its slide locked back. It had been fired until empty.

Frank had an inkling he knew what the weapon had been aimed at, but he still didn’t see who had fired it. Not until he opened the door wide enough for the light to wash over a sight that made his stomach lurch.

Bones. More bones.

He covered his hand with his mouth. He’d seen death. He’d seen people mauled and torn apart. But those two skeletons, picked clean, made him sick and sad and angry all at once. The smaller skeleton lay next to a larger one, teeth marks etching ringed patterns across both sets of bones. A family, torn apart by the Oni Agent. Leonard had brought his family here, maybe received a scratch defending them. Thought they were safe. Thought he’d done well. Instead, he’d condemned them to a violent death.

Just like Frank had when he sent Philip and Marie up in the chopper with Gerald. The parallels were too much, crushing him like an avalanche. Frank pressed his palms into his eyes and leaned against the wall. He slid down it until he slumped on the floor, his head in his hands. All the horrors he’d seen seemed to overwhelm him at once. He sat like that, face hot in his palms, for some time.

A few Skulls still groaned and howled from the airfield, and the scent of rot drifted into the room, mixing with the pungent smell of death clinging to the walls of this one. This was not a place for the living.

Wallowing in his grief would not keep him alive. It wouldn’t change anything. And besides, he still had to reunite with Dom and the rest of the Hunters. He might not have any idea where in the world they were, but judging by the events at the NIH, they could very well need his help. He opened his eyes again and gazed up the wall. A wooden board with pegs hung on it, and on those pegs glimmered the door keys to the training school’s choppers.

Frank had no way of knowing which choppers were fully fueled or still in working condition, so he pocketed them all. He quickly checked around to see if there was any more ammunition for the emptied pistol he’d found. But he found no other spare magazines or rounds, so he walked back to the hall, shutting the door respectfully behind him.

Rummaging through the suitcases and backpacks, doing his best to ignore the thoughts of whom they’d once belonged to, he found a box of protein bars. His stomach growled, twisting on itself, as he unwrapped a bar and devoured it. Thirst took him next, and he pulled a bottle of water from the duffel. When his stomach no longer rumbled, he put the rest of the protein bars and all the canned goods into the duffel with the water bottles.

He moved one of the bookshelves covering the glass front door to let in more light. It looked out on the neat row of helicopters. Several Skulls lumbered between the choppers, circling them like aimless vultures without a morsel of meat in sight.

“Hope you all aren’t too hungry,” Frank said, eyeing the Skulls as he slowly opened the door to slip out. He pulled his pistol, holding it low against his leg. “I’ve only got one serving of lead to share.”

-14-

Kara sat on a stool in the mess hall and sipped a cup of coffee. Maggie lay nearby, her tail brushing the floor, back and forth, as she watched Kara. The dog nodded off every few minutes, but each time, she’d shake herself awake.

“You’re a good girl,” Kara said. “But you don’t have to wait up with me.”

Maggie licked Kara’s hand as if to say she disagreed, that she did have to stay awake to protect and comfort her.

“Seriously, Maggie. Go back to Sadie. What’ll she do when she wakes up all alone? She’s going to be mad at you for leaving her.”

The dog slumped, spreading her front legs across the floor, and groaned, tail still fanning behind her. She closed one eye but kept the other lazily open, watching. Maybe it was Maggie’s way of trying to get her to return to her and Sadie’s quarters. But she’d already tried that. She couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to close her eyes.

Each time she did, images of what her father and the Hunters might be facing flashed across her mind, each more despairing than the last. The frantic voices drifting from the closed door of the electronics workshop made her nervous, and Thomas wouldn’t even let her and Sadie down in the cargo hold to play catch with Maggie. He’d said they needed to keep the whole place clear so he could get a boat out with a small team should the Hunters need their help.

She’d known things were taking a turn for the worse when Lauren ushered her and Navid out of the med bay. The scientists had transitioned into their roles as the ship’s medical team as quickly as Clark Kent changing in a phone booth. If they were gearing up that fast, Kara figured there must’ve been a casualty. But everyone she wanted to ask about it was locked up in the electronics workshop studying maps, listening to the comms, and watching the views from the Hunters’ helmet-mounted cameras. All she’d gotten out of Lauren was that her father was okay.

“Get some sleep. Things will be better in the morning,” Lauren had said. “And we’ll get the first results from our organ-on-a-chip.”

Tomorrow seemed too far away.

Kara nervously rubbed the rigid scars stretching along her cheek and jaw. She took another sip of the coffee. The instant brew tasted burned, reminiscent of the Capana Coffee Company shop she used to frequent at the University of Maryland. The flavor evoked memories of days before the outbreak, days when her mom wasn’t a Skull, when Sadie was innocent, and—

“Hey,” a voice said, and Kara jumped, spilling a splash of coffee on herself.

“Damn it,” she said.

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” It was Navid. He was looking at her from the hatch, one hand pressed against the bulkhead, the other brushing through his longish hair. “Mind if I join you?”

Kara shook her head, dabbing the coffee off her hand. “Be my guest.”

Navid disappeared into the galley for a moment then returned with his own cup of steaming coffee. The cup clinked on the table as he sat across from her and blinked his groggy eyes.

“You can’t sleep either?” she asked.

“Not a wink.”

“Too excited about the Phoenix Compound?”

Navid shook his head, fidgeting with the splint on one of his fingers. “Not exactly.” He chugged a gulp of coffee that Kara figured must’ve burned his tongue, yet he didn’t seem to care. “I mean, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens, hoping it’ll be successful. But...”

“But that’s not what you’re losing sleep over.” Kara guessed she knew what haunted him. Abby. They’d only briefly talked about his girlfriend a couple of times, and he’d said precious little about her. Yet her ghost seemed to dog him like a shadow, a piece of darkness following him everywhere.

They sat in silence for some time. Maggie finally drifted off, her tail growing still and her breaths long and dreamy.

Navid was the first to speak. “I’m guessing the experiment isn’t what’s keeping you up, either, is it?”

“You know me too well already.”

“Doesn’t take a PhD to guess why you’d be up late.”

“That easy to read, huh?”

“Call it an educated guess. A scientific hypothesis, maybe.”

A slight smile threatened to crack Kara’s lips. “It’s all about science with you.”

Navid suddenly appeared sullen. All the brightness left his eyes as he looked down at his hands wrapped around the cup.

“I’m sorry,” Kara started tentatively. “Did I say something wrong?”

Navid snorted. “No, it’s just...” He sighed. “She used to say that all the time.”

“Abby,” Kara said. It wasn’t really a question. Just a statement. As easy as it was for him to guess what she’d been thinking about. She knew what stewing in your emotions did to a person’s psyche because she’d practically been a crockpot full of boiling emotions herself. “Tell me about her.”

Navid gave her a dubious look, cocking his head.

“Seriously, I mean it.”

When Navid started to speak again, Kara was afraid he would just give her the same details he’d given her before. Blond. Blue eyes. Runner. Getting her PhD in neuroscience. Nothing too deep, nothing too personal. But to her astonishment, Navid finally opened up, relating to her his last moments with Abby, the look in her eyes when she first knew she’d been scratched by a Skull and found out fate had damned her, the promises Navid had made about whisking her away to anywhere outside Boston, anywhere that might be safe. Anywhere they could be together. About the ring he had considered buying her. As he talked, Kara forgot her own worries and why they were both still awake in the early hours before the sun rose. Then the hatch to the mess hall swung open, clanging on the bulkhead, and a disheveled face poked in.

It was Sean from the medical team. “Whoa, you guys are still up?”

Sensing the urgency behind his wild eyes, Kara stood. “Need something?”

“Coffee,” he said, eyeing their cups hungrily. “But since you asked, yes, matter of fact, I could use your help.”

***

Dom pressed himself deeper into the brush, willing himself to blend in with the jungle. With a slow, deliberate hand gesture, he commanded the rest of the Hunters to remain still among the thick ropes of vines and roots twisting from the ground. He heard their hushed breathing over the comm link as the mammoth creatures passed, mostly unseen, a good thirty or forty yards away. The creatures were far enough for the dense forest to conceal their movements. Dom caught more flashes of bone-plated limbs pushing through trees that would’ve stopped a tank. But these things kept lumbering along like the massive trees were nothing but dandelions.

His fingers twitched slightly from the effects of adrenaline as his body prepared for its instinctual fight-or-flight response. Fighting or fleeing right now would be absolutely the wrong move. The last thing he wanted to do was attract the monsters to the Hunters’ positions.

The ground trembled with each thumping footstep. Leaves trickled down from the jungle canopy, along with occasional branches thudding into the weeds. Dom counted the seconds, slowly bringing his rifle up with one hand. With his other, he reached quietly for one of the FN40GL grenade cases stowed in his utility belt. He had no delusions these giant monsters would be brought down by mere armor-piercing bullets.

But before his fingers found his grenade cases, the quaking began to calm. The creatures continued on their trajectory and pushed onward into the forest past the Hunters. Dom waited a good five minutes after the ground stopped shaking and he could no longer hear the monsters’ thundering footsteps before he gave the Hunters the signal to move again.

Apprehension tingled in the air between them as their unvoiced questions lingered. What the hell had just happened? And more importantly, would they see those things again? But they didn’t have the luxury of discussion. They only had one option: to move forward. As they continued through the overgrown riverbank, the hairs on the back of Dom’s neck prickled. He listened intently for Skulls stumbling through the underbrush or the herd of gargantuan creatures returning.

But he heard nothing. Just the rustle of the wind tickling the treetops.

That made his heart hammer like an off-kilter piston. It was too silent. No buzzing insects. No birds calling for a mate. No monkeys, hidden among the leaves, yowling and hooting.

With his rifle, he scanned the path in front of him and signaled for the Hunters to survey the area. No one reported contacts.

Something isn’t right, Dom thought.

Before he could give the matter more thought, something plummeted from the trees and slammed into his shoulders. The impact knocked him off his feet, and the creature tore his rifle from its strap. The thing that had dropped on him stood atop his chest. It lifted its small fists into the air. Needle-sharp claws jutted from the ends of its fingers. Horns curled from its brow, and its ribs had burst from its flesh, encompassing its chest like armor. Twisted and bumpy plates of bone covered its thin, lanky legs. It was a Skull, no larger than a child.

Dom heard the whistles of other Skulls dropping from tree limbs and landing amid the Hunters’ ranks.

“Huntress to Alpha, what’s going on?” Chao’s voice called through the comm link. Worry laced his words; he was undoubtedly watching the scene through the Hunters’ helmet-mounted cams.

But Dom had no time to answer. He grabbed one of the small Skull’s hands as it flailed at him, searching for flesh. His gloved fingers tightened around the skinny wrist, and he squeezed until he heard a crack. The breaking bones did nothing to allay the Skull’s fury. Its free hand came slicing down at Dom’s face before he could stand again.

The claws tore into his cheek. Warm blood gushed from the wounds, but surging adrenaline numbed the pain. He ignored the injury and burst to his feet, knocking the barely three-foot-high Skull from his chest. The beast slammed into a tree trunk, its injured wrist dangling uselessly, and its head clunked into the tough bark with a hollow thud.

Dom withdrew his knife from its sheath and charged the creature. The sounds of slashing blades and low growls sounded all around him. In his periphery, he saw only the silhouettes of Hunters fighting monsters, disappearing and reappearing in the camouflage of the entangling vines and plants.

As Dom closed in on his attacker, the small Skull stood upright. It puffed its bulwarked ribs out, and its lips peeled back as it bared a set of fangs that would make a vampire jealous. It lunged, and Dom thrust the knife out to meet the enraged creature. The blade glanced off the organic armor on its shoulder, and the monster clung to Dom’s body armor. While holding onto Dom with one bony hand, the Skull slashed at him with its other. Its attacks tore into Dom’s fatigues, but its claws met only the armor plates over Dom’s vitals. Dom tried to pry the creature off, but it clung stubbornly to him.

A cry sounded out to his left. It wasn’t one of the Skulls—Dom was sure of that. It had been a human cry, one of pain.

His anger boiled over, and he tried to bash the creature with an elbow. But the Skull hugged itself close to him, raking with its claws. Most continued to glance off his armor plates, but the occasional blow snagged through his fatigues and scraped his arms. His mind whirled in frustration and desperation. A single voice echoed in his head, his conscience reminding him he’d been the one to urge his team forward. He’d gotten them mired in this mess in the first place. He’d led them into this dark chaos.

Another groan of agony sounded to his left, somewhere in the shadows of the tree trunks. He couldn’t tell whom it belonged to as Hunters and Skulls roiled in hand-to-hand combat. Another Skull pounced, and he tried to kick it away but succeeded only in allowing the thing to chomp into his shin. Flames of pain radiated up his leg as he limped forward, fighting against gravity and agony. The creatures were all so damn small, so quick. Nothing like the Skulls they’d seen before. The things looked like they had tails, too. Maybe he was going crazy, but they looked like imps sent to terrorize him and the Hunters on a devilish mission.

Another creature leapt at Dom, landing on his shoulder and tearing at his helmet. This one was smaller than the other two. But the weight of all three was too much, and he couldn’t parry their blows in time. Nor could he reach for his pistol with the one on his chest blocking his hand.

He lurched forward, still trying to push the one off his chest. Through his NVGs, now knocked off-balance, he saw Miguel impaling one of the impish Skulls into a tree with his prosthetic’s concealed blade. Another creature clung to Miguel’s back, and a third lunged for the Hunter from the shadows. Renee fired on the diminutive monster just as another swung off a branch for her.

Glenn used his huge fists to punch the creatures away as they ran at him. Andris and Jenna fell into the foliage, battling several creatures, and Terrence fired at another that skipped through the tree branches.

Another violent slash at Dom’s face caused him to spin. He tried to restrain the creature clinging to his front, crushing its arm with his grip. But even as the bones crunched between his fingers, the other two attacking him renewed their assaults with unbridled vigor.

Dom’s eyes found Meredith. A regular-sized Skull had wrapped its arms around her in a death grip, pinning her against a tree. A low growl escaped its lips as it bared its glistening teeth and thrust its face into the crook of her neck, preparing to bite.

Good God, Dom thought again. What the hell have I done?

-15-

Dom’s muscles surged with newfound power and energy, and he ignored the small Skulls trying to tear into him. He slammed into Meredith’s attacker and carried it off her, pounding through the roots grasping at his feet.

Dom crushed the Skull’s head between him and the tree trunk. The impact shattered the armor of the smaller monster clinging to his chest, and Dom’s teeth chattered. But he didn’t let up. The Imp on his chest, its dazed eyes gazing about, loosened its grip for a second. Dom grabbed it by its thorny ankles and swung it headfirst into the tree. Its head burst open, sending flecks of bone and brain spraying across the broad leaves. Dom smashed his boot into another Imp attacking Meredith. He slammed its chest against the rough bark until blood seeped out of its busted ribs and the corners of its mouth.

With an Imp still on his shoulders relentlessly attacking his helmet, he reached up and grabbed the spikes poking from the monster’s spine. Yanking it off him with one hand, he pulled away the creature hugging his leg with the other. He smashed the two monsters together, slamming their heads into each other until their eyes rolled back.

After discarding the Skulls’ limp bodies, Dom rushed to Meredith.

“You okay?” he asked between gasping breaths.

“I’m—What the hell happened to you?” she asked with wide eyes. “You need help.”

Dom scanned her flesh and was relieved to see he couldn’t find any gaping wounds. Her neck was still fully intact. “Let’s help the others first.”

He pulled out his sidearm as Meredith shouldered her rifle. A wail sounded from overhead, and he spun in time to see an Imp launch itself at him from a tree branch. But before Dom could readjust his aim, the little monster disappeared in a spray of red mist.

“Got your back, boss,” Renee said, her rifle pressed against her shoulder. She joined Meredith and Dom, and they fired salvos that cut into the leaves and tree trunks, annihilating several of the Imps bounding at Glenn.

Glenn nodded his thanks. He sprinted to where Dom had lost his rifle and tossed the weapon to him. Dom caught it with one hand and stowed his pistol.

“Hunters, on my position,” Dom called over the comm link. Terrence and Jenna were still engaged in hand-to-hand combat with two Skulls, but Miguel raced to meet them, blood already drying across his face. Andris came next.

“You see the tails on these fuckers?” Renee asked, peering down her sights.

“Yeah,” Dom said. “Glad to know I’m not crazy. Been thinking of them as Imps.”

“Sounds about right.” Renee took a shot at another. Its head exploded, and its body crumpled into a pile of leaves.

As more of the Skulls snuck through the foliage, the Hunters picked them off with clean shots. But there would be no easy way to shoot the monsters without risking hitting Jenna or Terrence. Strapping his rifle across his back, Dom ran at them.

“Cover me,” he commanded over his shoulder. Bullets punched through the trees around him, finding their homes in other Imps stalking the Hunters. Dom ignored them and set his sights on the two embattled crew members.

He joined the fray by ripping his knife into an Imp attacking Jenna. The blade pierced the soft flesh under the Imp’s chin, spilling blood over its chest plates, and Dom used the carcass to batter at a diminutive Skull still fastening its claws around Terrence’s arm. The Imp looked around, apparently annoyed at being interrupted, and Terrence used its momentary confusion to pound the monster with his pistol. Once the creature fell from his arm, Terrence fired three shots into the monster’s face.

Dom’s chest heaved as the waning effects of adrenaline were purged from his body. He shouldered his rifle again, scanning the darkness, waiting to hear the rumble of the ground as the large creatures that had passed them by earlier responded to the sounds of battle. But instead, all he heard was a single chirp from a bird hidden high in the canopy. Others soon joined in its chorus as if they were singing the praises of the Hunters for a battle well fought. The buzz of insects resumed in a relentless wave, almost as overwhelming as the humidity Dom sucked down with each breath.

His nerves still sparked with electricity, prepared to fight again at a moment’s notice. But as the noise of the jungle returned, so too did the pain from the wounds he’d suffered. He winced as he limped beside Terrence and Jenna, joining the others.

“Chief, let me take a look at that,” Miguel said, eyeing his cheek.

“No time,” Dom said, brushing away the Hunters’ hands. “We’ve got to get to that ferry. I don’t want you to worry about me until everyone’s safe on that damned river.”

“Good chance you’re infected, though,” Glenn said, giving Dom a stern look. “We’ve got to treat you.”

“That can wait,” Dom said. “I’m not holding us back. Let’s move first, treat later.”

Meredith was already rummaging through her pack, ignoring his command. “Dom, do it for our benefit then.”

Dom let out a breath, his nostrils flaring. But Meredith’s logic burned through the fog of his anger. She was right. The chelation worked to kill the nanobacteria in the Oni Agent only if the infection was caught early on. If he delayed the chelation therapy, there’d be no stopping the Oni Agent from ravaging his body. Instead of offering an apology, he rolled up his sleeve and bared his arm to Meredith. “Fine. One dose of chelation treatment, but that’s it for now.”

“You’re the fussiest patient I’ve ever seen.” Meredith shook her head, withdrawing a prepared syringe from a plastic wrapper. She pushed the cold needle into his skin and depressed the plunger. “Done. Didn’t take that long, did it?”

“Thanks,” Dom managed through teeth still gritted in waning fury. He was about ready to command the team to get moving again before he remembered the human cries of pain he’d heard before. “Who else needs the treatment?”

The group looked at each other, sharing sullen looks. No one rolled up their sleeve for a dose of the preventative therapy.

“This is serious,” Dom said. “The clock is ticking. I don’t want one of you turning.”

Still, no Hunters volunteered themselves.

“I heard someone scream,” he said, his eyes narrowing, glaring at each of them in turn.

Glenn shrugged his huge shoulders. “Wasn’t me.”

“Same,” Miguel said, holding up his prosthetic arm. Some of the silicone flesh hung off it in a ragged chunk. “This was the only thing that got bitten, and the last I heard, the Oni Agent isn’t transmissible through an artificial arm.”

“Renee? Terrence? Jenna? Andris?” Dom asked.

Renee shrugged. “Nothing.”

“You got to me right in time,” Jenna said.

“Same,” Terrence said. “I mean, damn, I’d tell you if I got scratched or something.”

“No problems here,” Andris said.

Dom locked eyes with Meredith.

“Don’t look at me,” she said.

Dom couldn’t understand why none were volunteering. Maybe he was losing it. Maybe he was going crazy. “Did anyone else hear those screams?”

No one responded until Renee gave him a noncommittal look. “I mean, I might’ve heard something, but I’m not sure.”

“Yeah, Chief,” Miguel said. “I was a little focused on the Skulls...which, can we talk about those things for a second? They were all like four feet tall or under. What the hell was up with that? And the tails?”

“Imps,” Renee said. “Dom already named ’em. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were goddamn monkeys.”

“We can save that talk for once we’re on the ferry,” Dom said. “I want everyone to do a thorough inspection of themselves, make sure you didn’t get any cuts that might’ve gone forgotten in the heat of the battle. Got it?”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” the crew responded.

Questions hovered over Dom’s mind like gulls around the Huntress as they pushed through the jungle toward the river. Miguel was right. There was something off about the Skulls that had attacked them, but they didn’t have time to investigate that mystery. And most disconcerting, Dom still was certain he’d heard a person cry out during the attacks. Why would the Hunters hide an injury from him? He might’ve been insistent on moving to get his people out of danger rather than treating his injuries right away, but he hadn’t hidden anything from them.

He shoved those questions to the back of his mind as they broke through the trees and made it to the edge of the river. The dual-hull prow of the car ferry rose above them, silent and formidable. For now, there was only one question that needed to be answered: Could they get this ship running?

“Captain!” Renee shouted. She appeared like a flash before he could react, intercepting the attack meant for him, and a full-sized Skull rammed into her. Her head thumped against a tree trunk with a sickening crack. Helmet or not, the momentum alone would’ve been enough to send her brain bouncing around inside her skull.

Wild anger exploded in Dom. She had blocked an attack meant for him, and as the Skull stood over her unconscious body, he charged it with a yell to rival the monsters’ battle cry.

His hands found the Skull’s bony cheeks, and he twisted its head, cracking bone and vertebrae. Everything before him seemed to turn red. His muscles quaked as he threw the Skull’s head against the trunk over and over until it was a pulpy mess.

“Dom, it’s dead!” Meredith said, yanking on his shoulder.

Chest heaving, Dom let the beast go. Its spike-covered body slid to the forest floor, and it came to rest at Renee’s feet. He vaguely felt the monster’s blood dripping down his skin as he knelt next to Renee. He touched the side of her face, leaving bloody prints.

“Terrence, Glenn! Can you help carry her?” Meredith yelled.

“Come on, Renee. Come on, stay with me,” Dom said. Terrence and Glenn rushed to put together a makeshift stretcher out of two large branches and a tarp in a matter of seconds.

“Careful,” Meredith said, “she might have a neck injury.”

Or worse, Dom thought but didn’t say. The other Hunters crowded around him, ready to carefully load Renee onto the stretcher. His fingers pressed against her wrist, searching for a pulse.

-16-

Meredith already felt safer knowing they were out of the jungle. Even if they couldn’t get the hell out of here in the ferry itself, maybe there were working vehicles aboard it. Worst-case scenario, she recalled the lifeboats hanging off the side of the ship. Any vehicle was better than traveling through that hellhole of a jungle by foot.

As they clambered up to the deck, Renee was still unconscious and unmoving. There was no telling what kind of internal damage she’d taken to save Dom from that surprise attack. Meredith also made a mental note to keep a close eye on Dom. She’d served with him on enough missions to sense when something was up. He’d rarely lost his cool, and what she’d seen moments ago frightened her almost as much as the Skulls. Was the pressure causing him to crack? The crew had started this mission unflinchingly following his orders, but she wasn’t sure how long that would last if this worrisome behavior continued. Dom didn’t see or hear things that weren’t real, and he never flew around in a blind rage.

Blood still streamed down Dom’s cheek as the Hunters reached the first deck of the ferry. He ignored his injuries as the others fanned out around them, with Glenn and Terrence lugging Renee on her stretcher. A warm wind blew over Meredith, carrying with it the smell of rain. She looked up and saw the stars had disappeared, blanketed by a layer of clouds.

Meredith directed her gaze to the deck of the ferry. The Hunters stood amid a jumble of vehicles. Cars of models Meredith didn’t recognize sat between mud-covered trucks and rust-pocked vans. A few large military-like transports towered above the other vehicles like rocks jutting from frothing breakers, while motorcycles and scooters had been fit in every available space.

The vehicles near the bow had been crammed together. Several motorcycles lay on their sides or under the tires of SUVs and vans. Many of the smaller cars had been crushed like accordions. Evidently when the ferry had beached itself, the landing had been violent.

“To the pilothouse,” Dom said, surveying the wreckage with his rifle. “Huntress, this is Dom. We made it to the ferry. Chao, we might need your assistance getting this thing moving.”

“Copy that,” Chao replied over the comm link. “We’re on it.”

“One more thing.” Dom’s timbre changed as he continued, “We have a casualty. Renee’s unconscious. Keep Lauren on standby.”

Still on point, Miguel weaved between the vehicles toward an open hatch that led to another set of ladders. They traversed to the next deck. Tarps and canvas sheets were strung up like lean-tos all along the walkways. Meredith saw black singe marks on the deck from what looked like bonfires. Large cast-iron pots were suspended above charred logs. She also spotted several propane tanks attached to camping grills.

“Is this recent? Was someone living on here?” Meredith asked.

The tarps flapped in the wind, smacking against the deck and bulkhead.

“Maybe,” Glenn said. “But those pots and fires were probably here long before the outbreak.”

“People were cooking on a boat?” Jenna asked.

Glenn nodded. “Yep. It’s not uncommon—or at least it wasn’t—for people to travel all the way down the Congo on these ferries. It sometimes took weeks to go from one end to the other, stopping at every little town on the way. People who couldn’t afford to rent a cabin inside were forced to live, cook, and eat out here.”

“Let me guess,” Miguel said. “You read that in one of your books.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Glenn said, sounding wounded.

Meredith didn’t doubt the Hunter for a moment. The former Green Beret could always be found with a book in hand between missions.

“We’ll need to check these decks carefully later,” Dom said. “But for now, let’s set up shop upstairs.”

The trickling of blood along the captain’s cheeks hadn’t slowed. A knot of worry tightened in Meredith’s gut. Yes, they definitely needed to hurry—if not for the mission’s sake, then for Dom and Renee. They continued winding up the steps to another door that led to the pilothouse. The glass canopy surrounding the bridge appeared covered in dust.

Miguel tried the hatch leading inside. “It’s locked,” he said.

Andris perked up. “I’m happy to open it.”

“Miguel tries first,” Dom said. “Quiet as possible.”

Miguel tried picking the lock, but the tools jangled uselessly in the keyhole. “No luck.”

Dom glanced at Renee. “Fine, then. Andris, you’re up.”

Andris stuck in a crumb of plastic explosive into the keyhole. “Very quiet, I promise,” he said, setting the detonator. He motioned for the team to take cover, then set off the explosive.

Meredith braced herself for a hollow boom to echo from the hatch, but instead she was met only with a low thump. Smoke drifted from the keyhole, and the door slowly groaned open on its own. Miguel and Andris burst into the room, and Meredith followed. A rotten stench threatened to make her gag. She scanned the chart table and the chairs strewn about. Her heart climbed into her throat when she spotted a human shape in the corner, and she darted toward it, her gun barrel never straying from its aim at the person’s chest.

But as she drew near, she saw it wasn’t a Skull. Rather, it was the decomposed remains of a normal human still wearing a soiled jacket and trousers. The body had been left untouched by Skulls, and flies swarmed the carcass’s skinny limbs and gaunt face.

“Must’ve locked himself in here,” Meredith said when Andris joined her.

Andris turned away, retching. Once he recovered, he called over the comm link. “Clear. No contacts. Just a body.”

The others filtered in. Terrence and Glenn cleared off the chart table and put Renee down atop it.

“Bury that guy at sea,” Dom said, “and make it quick.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Glenn said. He and Miguel took the corpse out of the pilothouse. A moment later, Meredith heard a distant splash, and then the two returned.

“Huntress, this is Dom, do you read?”

“Loud and clear,” Chao reported back.

“Got info on ferries operating in the Congo?”

“I have a whole list of different classes. Any idea what the name of the boat you’re on is?”

Meredith scanned the pilothouse for a clue. Several documents lay scattered across the deck where Glenn and Terrence had tossed them when setting Renee down. She found a logbook, picked it up, and brushed the dust off its cover.

“It’s the Soleka,” she reported over the comm link, spelling the name out for good measure.

“Copy,” Chao said. Silence hung over the link for several seconds. “We got a hit. Okay, pulling up the specs on this baby now...and we’re good to go.”

Dom took over the controls at the pilothouse. Chao walked him through starting the massive diesel engines. Meredith wished Dom would let someone else take care of dealing with the engines while she tended to his wounds, but he seemed determined to get his crew on the open river before he looked after himself.

The engines gurgled, and the bulkheads rumbled. Meredith pumped a fist in the air. They’d done it. They were finally free of this damn jungle. But that small victory disappeared as a soul-crushing grinding reverberated through the ferry. The grinding was followed by a sound coming from the engine room Meredith found even more disheartening: silence.

“Damn it!” Dom slammed his fist on the controls near the throttle. He clasped both hands on his helmet and cursed again under his breath. Turning to the Hunters, he seemed to compose himself again. “Huntress, Dom. Engine is a no-go.”

Chao’s voice broke over the comm link. “Probably going to need to do things manually then. There’s no telling how long that engine’s been neglected.”

“Okay, okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” Dom surveyed the members of the team who were still on their feet. “Terrence, you’re staying up here with me. You get to patch me up so the rest of you don’t have to worry about me keeling over. We’ll keep watch over Renee and any Skulls looking to board. Meredith, you’re in charge of Bravo. The rest of you will follow her. Get to the engine room, find out what the hell is going on, and get that thing online. If you can’t figure it out in half an hour, we’re taking the lifeboats.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” they responded. Meredith could sense the lack of enthusiasm in their replies. Dom’s flagging confidence seemed contagious. Meredith could see the confusion and worry eating at Dom. She wanted to take him aside and talk with him like they used to as partners in the field, but there wasn’t time.

“Get moving,” Dom said. Blood still dripped down his face and soaked into his fatigues.

She hesitated a moment longer and then said over the comms, “Huntress, this is Bravo One. Meredith leading.”

“Copy,” Chao replied.

“Can you guide us to the engine room?” she asked, already stepping down the ladders back to the lower decks. The others followed her, scanning the flapping tarps and abandoned cooking stations.

“Roger, Bravo One,” Chao said. “I’m streaming helm-mounted cams to my screen. I’ve got some idea of what your ferry should look like. Go down one more deck, then head astern. That should lead you to the engine room.”

“Copy.” Meredith hopped off the ladder. The rest of the crew caught up at the deck where they’d first boarded the ferry. She eyed the jumble of cars, vans, and trucks shoved together.

There was no easy path through.

“Miguel—” she started.

“I know, take point.”

She couldn’t tell if it was purely good humor or a touch of resentment lacing his words. Andris shot Miguel a look of disapproval at his tone that indicated to her maybe it wasn’t just a simple joke. She might’ve fought by these people since the outbreak, but she was still new blood to them. Still a bit of a stranger.

The Hunter moved to the front of their small pack and started climbing over the hood of a sedan. He stomped on the roof of an SUV then slid between two vans with crushed hoods. The others followed, one by one. Every time the wind rustled against the tarps or the waves caused the ferry to creak, Meredith paused and probed the darkness for any signs they weren’t alone on the ferry.

Progress was slow, but they made it to the stern without major incident. A formidable metal hatch emblazoned with the word ENGINE caught Meredith’s eyes as she scrambled over yet another crumpled sedan. They were almost there. As Miguel led them over a fallen motorcycle, Meredith’s boot slipped out from under her. Gravity pulled her down, and her head slammed against the side of a panel van. A dull thud echoed through her helmet, and her ears rang slightly as she struggled through her momentary dizziness.

A hand grabbed her arm. “You okay?” Jenna said, holding onto an SUV’s door handle for her own balance.

“I’m okay, just—” She stopped, inhaling sharply. “Holy shit. Bravo, hold up.”

The Hunters froze, shouldering their rifles automatically and ducking into firing positions. Meredith bent low to examine the thing that had caught her eye. Beside her, Jenna gasped. Bones. Piles of them under the vehicles. Marrow sucked dry, teeth marks all over them. Everywhere she looked, she found more.

Meredith pulled herself onto the roof of a nearby SUV, sliding over its hood to crouch next to Miguel.

His gaze was fixed forward, and he used a single finger to point to the ENGINE hatch. A pile of broken femurs and ulnas, ribs and clavicles, skulls and vertebrae was stacked against the bulkhead and gunwale like firewood. A wave of nausea trickled through Meredith as she considered just how many people had died here.

But something else nagged at the back of her mind, something more frightening. Miguel turned to her as if he too had the same crippling fear. The scene was almost too familiar, like a tableau from a nature documentary. The way the bones were arranged in a pile made it seem like something had dragged the bodies back here to devour them.

“A predator, bringing food back to its den,” Meredith whispered.

Miguel, as ever, cut to the heart of the matter. “Fucking hell. Do you think it’s coming back?”

-17-

Dom grimaced as Terrence sprayed the lacerations on his cheek with an antibiotic solution. Each drop sizzled on his torn flesh. Terrence applied several strips of bandages coated with a coagulating agent to stop the bleeding.

Dom batted him away, growling, “Okay, nurse, that’s enough.”

“Dom, Bravo One here. We stumbled on something...interesting,” Meredith called over the comm link.

“What is it?” Dom said, his voice coming out gruffer than he’d intended.

“We’ve got some kind of feeding ground down here, Chief,” Miguel answered.

“Open a stream so I can see,” Dom said. He held up his left wrist. Terrence had already bandaged his forearm, and he looked like a mummy. He ignored them and focused on the smartwatch he wore, the only part of his arm that wasn’t covered in gauze or medical tape. The small screen fizzled to life with a piece of tiny text proclaiming MIGUEL RUIZ. The camera view panned back and forth over the bones as Miguel scanned the remains.

“Never saw Skulls act like that in the States,” Terrence muttered, looking over Dom’s shoulder at the smartwatch’s screen. “Think those Imps are responsible?”

“Could be,” Dom said. Terrence was right. All the Skulls they’d encountered before now tended to eat and run. Maybe the remains hadn’t been collected by the Skulls. Maybe humans had disposed of them here. But he found it difficult to come up with a good reason someone would stow human remains on a car ferry.

“Should we proceed?” Meredith asked.

He chinned his comm link. “Proceed as planned. But the moment you run into trouble, turn back.”

“Aye, aye,” Meredith responded.

Dom watched the Hunters gather around the engine room hatch, preparing to enter.

“This is weird, Captain,” Terrence said. He applied a new bandage to one that had already bled through. “If you don’t mind me saying.”

“No, no, weird is right,” Dom said. Those massive Skulls he couldn’t be sure were Goliaths or not. The trail of human remains in the jungle. The Imps ambushing them from the treetops. The screams that the others had claimed not to hear.

“Probably the most accurate thing I’ve heard all night,” Dom continued through gritted teeth as Terrence peeled away another bandage.

“I’ve been thinking,” Terrence said. “Those Imps...I don’t think they were human.”

Dom grunted as Terrence changed the dressing. These damn wounds weren’t closing up, and the blood loss was starting to make him worried.

“Hear me out, Captain. All kinds of viruses pass between humans and primates. Like SSIV. That’s where HIV came from, right? And Ebola, rabies, all those things can move between monkeys and people.”

“I wish to God you were wrong, but I think you’re on to something. Huntress, did you get all that?”

“Copy,” Chao responded. “I’ve already sent word to the medical team to investigate. Samantha’s talking to them now. I’ll send you updates as we get them.”

“Good,” Dom said. He didn’t want any more surprises on this mission.

He glanced at his smartwatch and watched Andris step back from the hatch after setting a breaching charge. A loud pop echoed through his comm link, and he saw smoke drift from the hatch as the door popped open, clanging against the bulkhead. The Hunters plunged through the darkness and into a chamber leading to the engine room.

“Godspeed and be safe,” Dom whispered as he stared at Renee’s still form, praying that none of the others would end up like her—or worse.

***

“What’s going on?” Kara asked. A million thoughts zoomed through her mind. Was her dad okay? Did something go wrong with the research?

Sean shook his head and then ushered a young boy into the Huntress’s mess hall. Connor was the son of Rich and Tammy, both survivors that the Hunters had rescued from Mass Gen in Boston. They’d almost starved to death, and the Hunters had saved them just in the nick of time. The young boy rubbed his puffy, red eyes. His face was still wet with tears as Sean patted his back.

“Navid and Kara will take care of you,” Sean said. “I heard they were looking for someone to play some games with.”

“What kind of games?” Navid asked. “It’s not like we have Chutes and Ladders or—”

Kara elbowed him. “Sure thing. How about I grab some paper and pens and we can start with Tic-Tac-Toe or something?”

Connor’s head bobbed even as his bottom lip trembled.

“Navid’s pretty bad at it,” Kara said. “How about you, Connor? Are you better?”

Again, Connor’s head bobbed, and Kara stood, taking his hand from Sean’s. She guided him to the seat across from hers. Navid’s eyes were wide. He suddenly appeared withdrawn and shy, like he’d never talked to a kid in his life. She left him there for a moment and walked back to Sean.

“What’s up with him? And what about his parents?” Kara whispered to Sean at the hatch to the mess hall.

“Mom’s going into cardiac arrest again. Dad’s still too weak to handle the boy. It pretty much took all my strength to get the kid out of the med bay so Lauren, Peter, and Divya could do their work without him interfering. If you could give us a couple of hours...”

“Got it,” Kara said.

“Thanks,” Sean replied. “I know this isn’t glamorous or anything, but you’re a lifesaver.” He jogged back into the corridor. His footsteps faded away as the hatch swung shut.

Kara grabbed a pen and some napkins then returned to Connor and Navid. To her surprise, Navid was already getting along great with Connor, despite his initial shyness.

“My favorite Power Ranger is definitely the red one,” Navid said proudly.

“No, blue is better,” Connor said. “Plus, the Blue Ranger drives the Triceratops Dinozord. The Red Ranger’s Dinozord is stupid.”

“Man, those are some harsh words. You’re picking on me, Kara’s picking on me—I can’t win tonight!” Navid said in mock exasperation.

Kara smiled as she settled into the seat next to Connor. “Maybe Connor and I will go easy on you in this first game and let you win.”

“No,” Connor said. “We definitely won’t do that.”

Kara drew four lines on one of the napkins.

“I want to get a glass of water,” Connor said, his legs kicking as he sat on the chair. He slipped off, his shoes clunking on the deck.

“I can get it for you.”

“I can do it myself,” Connor said and then ran off to the galley.

Kara stood. “I think I’m going to follow him in there anyway.”

“Good idea,” Navid said.

Kara started toward the kitchen and then paused. “Man, I really thought we were going to do something more important than babysitting.”

Navid’s happy expression dimmed. “Careful what you wish for.”

***

Lauren held an ice pack against Tammy Weaver’s forehead. The EKG rose and fell in quick spikes, beeping incessantly. Tammy, her husband, Rich, and their fellow survivor from Boston, Alex, had only just been stabilized from the brink of death. Again. With Tammy experiencing a wild bout of tachycardia—a drastically increased heart rate—Lauren wondered, not for the first time, if all their efforts to help these people were hopeless.

“Is she going to be okay?” Rich said, sitting up in his bed. “Doc, please, help her!” He still looked like a skeleton himself, even though the color had finally begun flooding his cheeks again.

“Peter!” Lauren said. “Keep him out of my way!”

Peter grabbed Rich’s shoulders and, with all the gentleness of a polar bear, pushed the man back into bed and against his pillow. “She’ll be fine, but you need to give the good doctor her space, got it?”

Lauren couldn’t understand what was wrong with Tammy. The symptoms were obvious—the fast heart rate, her skin awash in pallor, her fatigued responses to questions—but the cause was not. Had Tammy been her patient in any other setting, she might’ve had access to a forty-year history of medical records that could clue her in to the underlying causes for Tammy’s current condition. All three survivors had caught the flu within the past day, no doubt due to their weakened immune systems. But while Rich and Alex had responded well to a constant fluids drip through their IVs, Tammy had not. Her symptoms had only grown worse.

“Paddles?” Divya asked, gesturing to the compact defibrillator in a case attached to a bulkhead.

“Not yet,” Lauren said. “Vagal maneuvers first.”

She adjusted the ice pack on Tammy’s forehead. If at all possible, she wanted to avoid drastic measures. She hoped to slow Tammy’s heart rate by stimulating the vagus nerve.

“Tammy, I need you to cough,” Lauren said.

Tammy’s hands clenched together over her chest, and her lips pinched together as though she were in pain. “I...can’t...I...”

“Please, Tammy, cough,” Lauren said, mustering all the calmness she could into her voice. She refused to let her worry and exhaustion seep into her tone while dealing with the patient. But it was difficult to drown out the tension and anxiety she felt radiating off Rich. His eyes seemed to bore holes into Tammy as he muttered something.

Lauren glanced at Rich while adjusting the ice pack again. Rivulets of cold water dripped down Tammy’s face as her eyes searched the ceiling. “Rich,” she started in a soothing voice. His head jerked to face her. “Does Tammy have any preexisting conditions I should know about?”

“What?” Rich asked, his eyes wide.

“Preexisting conditions. A history of heart disease, a pacemaker, anything like that.”

“Why? Is she—”

“Rich, please answer my question,” she said with more of an edge.

“Yes, yes,” Rich stammered, his fingers clenching around his bedsheet. “She had a heart attack or episode or something. Early. At thirty. Her family has a history of heart disease.”

“Okay,” Lauren said, ever mindful of the accelerating rate at which Tammy’s heart was beating. The woman’s eyes glazed over before rolling back. She gave a subtle nod to Divya. The other doctor took the defibrillator from its case on the bulkhead.

“Does she have a pacemaker?” Lauren asked Rich as the defibrillator buzzed to life, charging.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so, or are you sure?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure!”

Lauren inhaled deeply, took the paddles from Divya, and placed them on Tammy’s chest. Her palms were growing clammy as she situated the paddles, ensuring they were in the right spots. Then she looked at Divya, and the doctor’s eyes narrowed as she gave her nod that the defibrillator was ready.

The Hunters were risking their lives in the Congo, searching for a clue to the cause of the outbreak. Lauren had a million experiments going on that she hoped would result in a cure or vaccine. And yet she had to ignore those immense pressures and work to save the life of a single survivor. No matter what else was happening in this world, even as millions died from the Oni Agent, she’d save every damn life she could.

Starting with this one.

Lauren pressed the pads against Tammy’s chest. “Clear!”

-18-

The sooner Frank left the Helicopter Flight Training School, the better.

“Come on, old boy,” he said. “You’re in such a bad funk, the Skulls can smell it.”

He’d scrounged up all the food and water he could carry. There had been no more ammunition and nothing else of interest but a couple of locked closets in one of the offices. He might have been able to open them, but the time that would require and the noise it would make wasn’t worth the effort. He just wanted to leave.

After clearing the bookshelves from the front door, he whispered a prayer for Leonard’s family, wishing they might find peace in death, away from the Skulls, away from this hellish nightmare on Earth.

A noise caused him to whip toward the office farther down the hall. His hand found his pistol, leveling the weapon at the open doorway. It had sounded like something had fallen in the closet out there.

The door was still locked, and Frank didn’t want to risk attracting any undue attention by noisily breaking it down. The clattering could have been anything. Skull, mouse, or some inanimate object choosing that moment to take a swan dive. It didn’t matter anymore. Escape was within reach. He stowed the handgun and then checked his pocket. The door keys jingled against each other as he patted them.

Cracking the front door open slightly, Frank peered into the moonlit airfield. He counted at least a dozen Skulls rambling between the nearby planes and choppers. An unrecognizable chunk of fuselage rested on a scorched patch of earth next to the carcasses of what must’ve been the jet’s engines. Another regional jet, a 120-foot Boeing 717, had been T-boned by a smaller plane, tearing the Boeing 717’s entire tail section from the fuselage. Seats and wires hung from the open tube like the rotting guts of a beached whale. What was left of the smaller plane lay nearby, pieces of its wings and engines scattered about the grass.

Frank could only imagine the terror of the passengers. Many of them were still lingering at the airport. At least fifty Skulls meandered near the airplane wreckage at the opposite end of the terminal. They posed no immediate threat, but Frank knew a single gunshot—or a whining chopper engine—would call those Skulls over here faster than a group of feral cats running toward an open can of Fancy Feast.

He’d decided to make his getaway in a Bell 206L4 with a patriotic red, white, and blue paintjob. Between the chopper and him were two vans, an aircraft fueling truck, and an SUV parked in front of the training school’s office.

Frank tiptoed out of the front door and let it close slowly behind him, careful to muffle the click from the door meeting the frame. He crept to the SUV. Leaning around the rear bumper of the vehicle, he eyed the Bell. The chopper practically gleamed in the moonlight, calling his name. He yearned to get his fingers back on the cyclic and pull that bird toward the stars.

Frank ran toward the chopper, trying to stay light and quiet on his feet. A Skull with a bony blade where its forearm should have been noticed him. The Musketeer Skull swiveled in his direction, and Frank dropped to his belly. He froze, holding his breath. The Skull’s face roved back and forth, its eyes seeming to pierce the darkness with uncanny certainty. Its lips drew back into a snarl, and a low growl rumbled from between its jagged teeth.

Come on, buddy, you haven’t seen anything. It’s just the wind. Just the goddamned wind. Got it?

The Skull finally turned away, and Frank breathed a sigh of relief. He ran at a stoop. He didn’t bother to glance at the monsters until he made it to the chopper and pressed himself against the cold metal fuselage. His chest heaved as he caught his breath. The click of claws on asphalt and the rattle of bone plates echoed around him. He peeked through the cockpit to see the Musketeer Skull wandering on the other side of the chopper. A group of six other Skulls were scattered around a pair of bubble-shaped Robinson R44s.

Frank dug into his pocket and grabbed the Bell’s key. The soft tap of metal against metal rang out, sounding deafening to his ears, and he froze again, peering through from one side of the chopper to the other to ensure the Skulls hadn’t noticed.

A second Skull, this one dressed in the tattered uniform of a National Guardsman, was now veering toward the Musketeer. Neither seemed to have noticed the noise.

Frank opened the cockpit door as quietly as he could then slipped inside, shutting it behind him. Perspiration beaded across his forehead as he cozied into the pilot seat. He settled his pack into one of the passenger seats and then studied the controls. His mind reviewed all the things he would normally check before attempting a flight: oil, fuel, battery, lights, clutch cables.

Unfortunately, the Skulls didn’t care about pre-flight checks. He didn’t have time to do a full inspection. His fingers moved over the controls, preparing to engage the engine starter button on the end of the collective. As his quaking finger touched the plastic, a loud roar caught his attention.

He jerked, expecting to see one of the Skulls clawing at the glass cockpit. Instead, he watched as the sword-armed Skull collided with the National Guard monster. They growled and snapped at each other like crocodiles fighting over prey. The Guardsman threw the Musketeer into the chopper’s fuselage, and it rang out like a bass drum. In response, the Musketeer stabbed out with its jagged, sword-like appendage, piercing a weak point in the Guardsman’s shoulder armor. Blood wept from the wound as the Skulls howled, clawing and biting.

Frank shrank into the pilot’s seat, praying neither of them would see him. The clamor drew the attention of the other Skulls nearby, and one by one, the monsters moved toward the fighting duo, cocking their heads and tensing the gray muscles under their bony plates as if they were choosing which side they’d join in the fight.

The Musketeer landed another blow on the Guardsman, and more blood poured from its fresh wound. But the Guardsman seemed to become enraged, whipping about wildly and dragging the other Skull to the asphalt. They became an entangled mess of scraping talons, gnashing teeth, and spiked limbs.

Patience, old boy, Frank thought as his fingers twitched toward the controls. Patience is a goddamned virtue.

He sat like a statue as the Skulls tumbled across the tarmac. One would die soon, and the fight would be over. The others would return to their aimless wandering, and he would have a little more space to start the helicopter before they all descended on him. But movement across the tarmac caught his eyes. The Skulls lingering near the crashed passenger jets had decided they too should investigate.

Maybe waiting wasn’t such a good idea. As it stood, only a half dozen Skulls were nearby right now. If he waited, there’d be another forty, fifty, maybe a hundred bored monsters looking for anything to pique their interest.

Frank eyed the fuel gauge. At least that looks good.

He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes for a brief second, then jammed down the starter button. The engines thrummed to life, and the rotors accelerated as Frank carefully pushed the throttle forward.

The Musketeer and Guardsman forgot about their scuffle and targeted all their animosity toward the chopper. The other Skulls broke into a mad run, closing the distance between them and the chopper faster than Olympic sprinters.

Frank’s fingers started to shake, but he tried not to throttle the bird too hard. Fracturing the fragile blades now would be a death sentence.

“Come on, baby, come on,” Frank said as the engine roared louder. Everything seemed to be working well, and all fluid levels were at least adequate for the flight he had planned. Finally, something was going right.

The Musketeer, either smarter or braver than the others, climbed up on the backs of its brothers and then sprang at the chopper. It started to climb the cockpit, thrashing its lone fist and ramming its head against the glass. Pieces of its horns chipped off as the monster bashed its skull over and over against the canopy. Cracks fissured across the glass.

“No ticket, no ride, you ugly bastard!” Frank flipped on the chopper’s navigation lights, flicking them on and off to blind the beast. Maybe it would become confused and lose its balance.

But he had no such luck. The monster beat the glass harder, and the fractures spread, threatening to block Frank’s view out of the cockpit.

“All right, baby, we can’t wait any longer. Hope you’re warmed up.” He pulled up on the collective, and the helicopter pitched up. Its skids scraped a couple of feet as a side wind caught the bird. The mob of Skulls followed. The Guardsman jumped onto the side of the chopper, clinging to the door with one claw and bashing a side window with the other.

Frank jerked the cyclic, trying to shake off both monsters. The Musketeer’s claws scraped at the cracked glass as it fought for purchase, and Frank tilted the chopper slightly to the side, still only a few feet above the ground, desperately trying to lose the monster before it broke in.

The Musketeer straightened, finding a handhold. It renewed its attack, bringing one hand up to bash the cockpit. But it lifted its hand too high, and the accelerating rotor blades sheared off the Skull’s sword-like forearm with a violent thwack. Blood spurted from the maimed limb, but the injury did nothing to assuage the monster’s unyielding fury. It slashed the bloody appendage against the cockpit again as the Guardsman resumed its own assault on the side window.

Six more Skulls wrapped their talons around the chopper’s skid, crying with animalistic hunger. Frank had flown some tough missions with the Hunters, but he didn’t look forward to flying with a pack of Skulls beating down the door.

Cracks crisscrossed on the window where the Guardsman was throwing his spiked fists into the glass.

“Here comes the rodeo,” Frank said. “Hope none of you were cowboys.”

He jockeyed with the cyclic and collective, rocking the chopper back and forth, shaking the expensive piece of machinery like it was a steroid-riddled bull fifteen feet in the air. A few Skulls lost their grip on the skids and tumbled down, cracking against the tarmac. Their skeletal plates burst open, spilling blood and guts over the asphalt. The Guardsman and Musketeer still battered the chopper, and Frank swerved hard to the right.

In response, the Guardsman punched its fist through the glass. Shards sprayed Frank’s face. The Skull’s claws swished by Frank’s nose as he recoiled. He tried to keep his hands around the cyclic, but the Guardsman’s slicing talons kept him leaning to the right.

“What did I say about free rides?” Frank yelled.

He pitched the chopper hard to the left then drew his leg back and gave the Skull a powerful kick. His boot connected with the Skull’s chest, and it wheeled backward, catching nothing but open air as it fell.

“Good riddance,” Frank said. He turned his attention to the Musketeer. The cockpit’s glass was still intact, but only just.

He pushed the chopper down and forward then jerked it immediately backward. Momentum carried the Musketeer, and Frank watched its body soar, limbs flailing. It crumpled against the brick wall of the office. Its head blew apart in fragments, and as it slumped to the grass, it left a smear of gore, glinting in the navigation lights of the chopper.

Frank had done it. It felt good to be back in the pilot’s seat, no longer traipsing through the woods or playing hide-and-go-seek with hordes of bloodthirsty creatures.

And then he saw something that ripped away any feeling of victory, any shred of pride at his fancy flying. In the window of the office, a face appeared, glowing in the lights from the chopper. It looked at the chopper with big, round eyes. No horns crowned its head. No fangs curled from beneath its lips. Instead, a messy tangle of blond hair crowned the young girl’s face as she gawked at the helicopter. Her breath fogged the glass, and she pressed a small palm against it.

Frank groaned, realizing full well what he’d done.

There’d been two pink suitcases. And that noise in the closet? Good God, he’d condemned that girl to death. She’d lost her father to the Oni Agent. Then her mother and sister. And now she was alone, with no food, no water, and a horde of Skulls roiling around outside, rowdy as a crowd of soccer hooligans thanks to his escape.

As the Skulls descended on the school from all over the airport, joining their brethren in a mass of rattling limbs and unholy screams, Frank realized he might as well have used the single bullet left in his gun to kill that girl himself.

She was as good as dead, and it was all his fault.

-19-

Congealed oil slurped at her soles with each step Meredith took. She picked up a soiled rag from a bucket coated in black grease. “It’s oily as hell in here. Think we got a leak?”

Miguel used the back of his hand to wipe away the grime from a set of gauges on a control panel. “Fuel levels look good. Oil levels, too. Think the gauges are busted?”

At one of the huge oil sumps along the bottom of the hulking diesel engine, Andris was bent over a fist-sized rubber plug. “This engine is like something out of the seventies, no? It is old. Maybe that is all. Too aged to function.”

“All the same,” Jenna said, scanning the engine room with her rifle, “I’d rather get this thing working than hike through that jungle.”

“I thought you liked hiking,” Miguel said as he peered at another gauge. “Didn’t you do Mount St. Helens?”

“Sure,” Jenna said, tapping her fingers against the stock of her rifle. “Did the Great Himalaya Trail, too. Wish I could’ve done Everest, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening anytime soon.” Her eyes caught Meredith’s. “Weren’t you on the Appalachian trail before the outbreak hit? How’d you like it?”

Meredith used the soaked rag she’d found to clean the sludge off the jointed pipe. “I was running from some CIA spooks, and the Skulls were already on the radio. It wasn’t exactly a pleasure trip.”

“Right. Those little details,” Jenna said breezily. “Maybe when this is all over, you and I can do the Appalachian trail together. That is, if you think it’s worth redoing the trail without the threat of Skulls.”

Meredith was surprised at the invitation and looked up at Jenna. The woman appeared as serious as a Skull. “If we can save the world from Skulls, I’ll do any damn hike you want.”

“Deal.” Jenna offered a pleasant smile before returning to her work.

As Meredith cleaned the pipe’s joints, she found no dripping leaks to indicate an engine failure. The Hunters continued their banter as they worked, their tasks intermittently interrupted by Chao coming over the comm link to tell them to check out some gauge or dial or other part of the engine.

Meredith couldn’t quite bring herself to join in their casual conversation. Each time the ferry creaked or she heard a rodent scurrying along the deck, a tingle of fright cut through her. The Hunters were joking around about Miguel’s old habit of buying cars he intended to restore—classic American muscle cars. Apparently, his attention span hadn’t lasted much longer than picking out which car he was transporting home for the weekend, so he had a small collection of rust buckets and shells of vehicles sitting in his garage.

“You never got a single one of ’em fixed up, huh?” Jenna asked, still staring down the sights of her rifle as she faced the hatch.

Andris let out a short laugh. “I imagine his house looks worse than the deck of this ferry.”

Meredith stood from the pipe, straightening her back. “How the hell do you three act so calm when there are goddamn monsters frolicking in that jungle and we’re stuck here in the den of some Skull that’s probably more awful than anything we’ve seen so far?” She held out her hands, exasperated. “I don’t get it.”

Andris shrugged. “Put it this way, yes? Would you rather we run around screaming? I would rather we not.”

Miguel rubbed the back of his neck. He stared at the control panel for the engine. “It’s just...this is how we do things, okay?”

Chao’s voice sounded over the comm link before Meredith could answer. “Still no luck on the engine?”

“Nada,” Miguel said.

Meredith chinned the comm link to the public channel. “Dom, this is Meredith. We’re lost down here.”

“No progress?” he asked.

“The engines look as good as the Huntress’s, Chief,” Miguel said.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jenna added.

Miguel gave her a sideways glance. “Well, they look like they work and give every indication they should, at least.”

“Got anything else you can try?” Dom asked.

“Afraid not, Alpha,” Chao said. “They’ve tried troubleshooting everything I can think of.”

Meredith looked around at the others. Their faces were drawn, no longer feigning the air of nonchalance they had earlier. They knew what would happen if they couldn’t get the engines working. They’d be relegated to the shoddy lifeboats with their tiny motors and oars. She wondered if the fuel in those things would make it halfway up the river. Then they’d either row or walk, and neither option sounded appealing.

Before she could suggest that they throw in the grease-soaked towel, a shrill noise rent the night air. It sounded like some demonic trumpeter calling an army to battle. The fear in Meredith’s gut gripped her tighter, winding around her insides like a boa constrictor.

“What fresh hell,” she murmured, bracing herself for whatever came next.

***

Dom pressed the night-vision binos to his eyes and scanned the forest. He saw the trees shifting again, like the wake of a shark circling just under the water’s surface. Whatever was moving those branches aside was coming closer. He guessed they were the same things he had glimpsed earlier through the thick foliage. A plunging sensation of nausea dragged itself through Dom’s belly, leaving a smear of fear and worry in its wake. Every nerve tingled.

“Hunters, get your asses to the lifeboats,” he ordered. “We need to move!”

A voice groaned, and then Renee shifted on the chart table of the bridge.

“She’s waking up, Captain!” Terrence proclaimed. He leaned over Renee’s face, brushing a blond lock of hair out of her eyes. “Renee, can you hear me?”

Renee’s mouth opened, and her eyes blinked. One of her hands reached out as she licked her lips. “What’s...what’s going on?”

“Terrence, help me with her,” Dom said, grabbing one end of the makeshift stretcher, his heart pounding. He was relieved beyond words that Renee had regained consciousness, but the monsters were closing in. He judged they had less than ten minutes to get to the lifeboats. Terrence lifted from the other end, and they hoisted Renee. Dom’s muscles strained as they took her out of the pilothouse. One of his wounds split open, blood seeping from a laceration in his arm. Agony coursed through the reignited injury, but he ignored it, trusting the flood of adrenaline to wash his pain away.

When they reached the dingy wooden lifeboat with its single outboard motor, Dom climbed inside and helped Terrence lower Renee onto one of the benches. Boots clacked against the metal ladders behind them as the rest of the Hunters arrived.

“Get in!” Dom said, wasting no time in greetings. The others climbed into the boat.

“What’s going on, Chief?” Miguel asked.

Dom shoved a pair of binos into the Hunter’s hand and pointed to the jungle before hopping out of the lifeboat. Miguel held the binos to his eyes and stared into the darkness of the Congo forest for a moment. His jaw went slack.

“What the fuck is that?” Miguel asked.

“No idea,” Dom said. He spun the wheel of the lifeboat’s release mechanism so it was swinging out over the water, ready to drop into the river. “I’m going to lower it, then I’ll jump in after you.”

“I got it, Dom,” Meredith said, rising from her seat in the lifeboat. “You’re injured.”

Dom shook his head, looking at Renee. She was still struggling to come out of the fog.

“No, I got you all into this,” Dom said. “I’m getting you out.”

As the boat started its slow descent, a voice broke over the comm link. “Alpha, this is the Huntress,” Thomas said.

“Alpha One here. I read you loud and clear,” Dom said, still rotating the wheel. It squeaked with each turn, protesting against the movement. Rust flaked off, coating his gloves. “We’ve got unidentified contacts moving our direction, and the ferry is a no-go, so we’re taking a lifeboat.”

“Might not need to,” Thomas said. “I have a guess about that ferry of yours. You got a couple of minutes?”

“Couple of minutes is stretching it,” Dom said through gritted teeth.

“Remember that time I took you fishing?” Thomas asked.

“Look, Thomas, I’m not in the mood to settle the score on who caught the biggest marlin—” Then it hit him. Dom let go of the wheel. “Goddammit.”

“Ah, you remember now, don’t you?” Thomas said. Dom could practically hear him grinning, a cigar clamped between his teeth.

“Terrence, I want you in the bridge, ready to start this hunk of shit up at a moment’s notice,” Dom said over his shoulder. He was already running aftward. “Set your watch for five minutes. Got it?”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Terrence replied.

Dom set the timer on his smartwatch to match. Memories of his fishing trip with Thomas whirred through his mind. After renting a boat out of Key Largo, they had spent the day motoring around the glistening waves of the Atlantic. But on their way back, just a mile from shore, the motor had died suddenly, stranding them.

It had turned out there was nothing wrong with the motor itself. Someone had set up illegal crab fishing pots. One of the ropes tying a pot to a small gray buoy had gotten tangled in the propeller and forced the motor to a stop. It had taken Dom and Thomas a good fifteen minutes to defoul the prop. If something similar had happened here, he’d have to fix it in less than a third of that time.

Without another thought, he ran to the stern of the ferry and jumped over the side, diving into the murk below.

The muddy water rushed past Dom, tearing at his bandages. Ice shot through his vessels as the cold enveloped him. He opened his eyes. While he could barely see his hands in front of his face, a chorus of mysterious sounds greeted him, reminding him of the SCUBA diving trips he had once relished. Clicks and gurgles rubbed against his eardrums as he pulled himself through the water, following the muck-encrusted hull along the stern.

His hands traced the rusted, grimy metal. A shiver crept through his flesh, caused by a combination of terror and cold. The strange underwater sounds had sent his imagination running wild. Were there crocodiles in the river? And could they be transformed like the Imps had been? Good God, what would that look like?

Dom tried to push those nightmarish fantasies from his mind. He was down to four minutes. His hands touched something long and slimy. His instincts, primed by his increasing terror, made him think he’d discovered a waterlogged python.

But he didn’t recoil. Instead, his fingers followed the rope until he found one of the massive exposed propellers of the ferry. The rope was indeed entangled around the prop, just as Thomas had guessed. Dom glanced at his smartwatch. Time was slipping away. His lungs burned as he pulled his knife from its sheath and worked it into the rope. The slippery algae prevented him from getting a good grip, and he made several attempts before the blade finally bit into the rope.

One by one, the strands snapped.

Dom eyed his watch. Three minutes, and he was not even halfway through. He would not make it much longer without another breath. If he couldn’t finish this, the Hunters would have to escape in the damn lifeboat after all. The murky water gurgled louder in his ears. It was almost as if the Congo itself were mocking him, telling him it would eat him and his crew, chew them to pieces, and spit them out.

He couldn’t save Renee. He couldn’t save his crew. He’d pushed them mercilessly, tirelessly into unknown territory against unknown enemies in a quixotic quest to vanquish an enemy that could only be seen under a high-powered microscope. He yelled a curse into the depths of the river, and the words came out as a stream of bubbles, unheard by anyone.

-20-

“Screw this,” Meredith said, standing up in the lifeboat. She shed her pack and rifle. “I’m not waiting any longer.”

“Meredith!” Terrence yelled from the bridge. “Don’t! I’ve got to send the lifeboat off in two minutes!”

Meredith didn’t bother answering him. She sprinted across the deck and then threw herself over the stern. The water swallowed her in its icy grip a second later. She bobbed at the surface. A ghostly pain stung the spot where her ear had been shot off, but she ignored it as she searched for a sign of Dom.

Bubbles burst about ten feet from her position. She swam toward them and then dove. Her hands reached Dom before she saw him. He spun on her with his knife in one hand. She caught his wrists, fighting against him, and then pulled his head close to hers until she was peering into his icy blue eyes. Those eyes narrowed a second before he turned back to his work. She understood what that meant. He wanted her to leave, to return to safety, but he also knew there was nothing he could do to stop her from helping. Almost immediately, she realized what he was doing and started sawing away at the rope from the other side.

They worked feverishly. Meredith’s thoughts were centered on the man she loved, laboring next to her at a dizzying pace even as her lungs screamed for more oxygen. Dom was acting like a demon had possessed him, first claiming to have heard human cries in the jungle, then going crazy on the Skull that had attacked Renee, and finally diving in here alone despite his injuries.

Why couldn’t he ask for help? Didn’t he trust her?

Maybe something had possessed him.

Fear. Hopelessness. Regret.

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter right now. The final sinews of rope snapped, and the bulk of the algae-sodden cord drifted to the river bottom, disappearing in the clouds of silt. The rest of the rope was still wrapped around the prop, but it hung loosely now. Meredith and Dom scrambled to untangle it. With the tension gone slack, it finally came off and snaked away beneath them.

Meredith and Dom kicked for the surface. They exploded from the water, reaching for the hull. Meredith found a handhold and hoisted herself up, screaming in her comm link as soon as she had air in her lungs.

“Terrence! We got it! Don’t launch the lifeboat!” She threw herself over the gunwale and reached down to lend a hand to Dom.

“Start the ferry!” Dom roared.

“You got it!” Terrence called back over the comm link.

Meredith stood half-hunched over, her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. Goose bumps prickled her flesh, and she fought against the chill as she straightened, water still sluicing off her soaked fatigues.

Dom clasped her shoulder. “Thanks.”

Meredith raised a single eyebrow. “Thanks? That’s all you have to say?”

A glimmer of a smile twitched at the corners of his lips. It grew wider as the engines growled to life.

“You did it, Chief,” Miguel said over the comm link. “You fucking did it.”

“Terrence, full reverse,” Dom said.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” came the cheerful response.

The ferry’s engines rumbled louder, and water churned in violent eddies along the stern. There was only one problem—the ferry wasn’t moving.

Dom didn’t need to say anything. Meredith sprinted up the ladders with Dom shadowing her. Meredith pressed her binos to her eyes and scanned the forest. It didn’t take her long to spot the shaking tree limbs and scattering birds. Something big was coming their way, but that wasn’t all. Violent shrieks and blood-curdling howls pierced the din of the ferry’s engines. The noise had called all the nearby Skulls for a potential feast.

Meredith’s heart hammered in concert with the screaming Skulls. “We’ve got three minutes max before those things get here.”

The engines roared louder as Terrence adjusted the thrust on the beached ferry.

“What’s going on, Terrence?” Dom yelled, shouldering his rifle.

“I got this,” Terrence yelled through the open door of the pilothouse. “Brace yourselves!”

The ferry jerked suddenly. Metal groaned, and the wrecked cars on the bottom deck crunched together. They had made it. They were free and floating in the river. Meredith hooted in victory, unable to contain her joy. Despite every loss and disaster it had taken them to reach this point, she would never turn down the opportunity to celebrate when she could.

Terrence guided the ferry into the middle of the churning waters. Jenna, Andris, and Glenn stood at the gunwale near Meredith, scanning the shoreline. Miguel helped Renee back into the pilothouse. She still seemed out of it, stumbling as she walked. But besides the bruises covering her skin, she looked okay—at least externally. Meredith guessed she’d suffered a nasty concussion. Lauren could confirm that when they gave the medical team their sitrep.

The Skulls’ continuous chorus had not let up, and Meredith refused to let her guard down until they were safely moving. As Terrence swung the prow of the ship away from the riverbank, Skulls trickled out from the jungle. They surged into the water, their voices echoing across the waves. The current swept most of the spike- and bone-plate covered monsters away.

But not all of them.

“My God,” Jenna said, her voice sounding weak against the din.

Miguel crossed himself and then shouldered his rifle again.

“Don’t fire unless they look like they’re going to board,” Dom commanded.

Normally, they would open up on the terrifying creatures indiscriminately. But this time, there were simply too many. All the ammunition they’d brought wouldn’t be enough to put a dent in the horde crashing through the shallow waters along the bank.

“Full forward, Terrence,” Dom said.

Terrence leaned over the wheel in the pilothouse and pushed the throttle all the way forward. The engines emitted a long growl before settling into a watery gurgle as they drove the ferry up the river.

Meredith’s finger rested on the trigger guard. The ferry’s acceleration was much too slow for her comfort. She readied herself for yet another desperate fight.

A shrill, animalistic cry sounded out above the yells of the Skulls throwing themselves into the water. Meredith’s eyes flicked to the trees where the cries emanated from. Through her optics, she saw smaller Skulls—the Imps. Their long arms coursed with gray muscle between the thin plates covering their limbs. Bumpy ridges covered their foreheads, and their eyes glimmered with a hot intensity. Diabolical tails swished back and forth, stitched with menacing spikes.

“Fuck,” Jenna muttered. “I used to think monkeys were cute.”

One of the small monsters swung on a branch from its prehensile tail, shrieking madly.

“Is that one doing what I think it’s doing?” Meredith asked, keeping aim on the beast.

“I think so, sister,” Miguel said.

“Spread out,” Dom said. “Open fire if they try to jump.”

Before he could finish the order, the swinging Imp flung itself into the air. It soared over the Skulls drowning in the river’s depths. Its lanky arms pinwheeled, claws splayed and teeth bared. Meredith opened fire. Bone chipped and fragmented, and the impacts sent a gout of blood and gore gushing from the wounds. The Skull’s limp body smashed against the hull of the ship and then splashed into the river. The water swallowed the corpse.

“This is not how I remember Planet of the Apes,” Miguel said.

“I’d laugh at the damn things if they weren’t so damn vicious,” Glenn said.

The other creatures in the trees cried out in anger and unadulterated bloodlust. They launched an all-out airborne assault on the ferry. Bodies twisted and fell as the Hunters levied volley after volley into their determined ranks.

But still they threw themselves at the ferry, growing even more incensed and ferocious with each of their brethren they lost. Meredith’s rifle shuddered against her shoulder as she poured rounds into the stubborn bastards. All it would take was one of those monsters making it past the wall of lead. And then, with a hollow thud of bone against metal deck, one did just that. Then another. Then a third. The Imps hit the ferry like hail straight from hell.

“Miguel, don’t let those bastards get into the pilothouse with Renee,” Dom growled.

“Yes, Chief!”

While Jenna and Glenn continued their increasingly futile efforts to ward off their attackers, Dom gestured to Meredith to watch the ladders. She tensed, waiting for the telltale clatter of bony claws against metal as the creatures scrambled toward them. The first monster that showed its jagged face received a three-round burst from her rifle. She wheeled around on another one when its claws curled around the lip of the gunwale. Bullets peppered the creature and the bulkhead beside it. Dom sprayed another three Imps with lead.

There was a brief reprieve. The bark and chatter of their rifles quieted as they searched for their next targets. The chorus of the howling Skulls on the shore continued, but Meredith used every ounce of focus she could muster to concentrate on the light tapping of footsteps from the lower decks where the brunt of the creatures had landed.

On the shore, a tree trunk broke in half, pushed aside by a massive claw as if it had been nothing more than a stalk of corn. A loud roar blasted through the jungle. Another thicket of trees bent outward and then burst into splinters as the behemoth at last came into view. Its eyes, each the size of a human head, locked onto the ferry, and Meredith could see the throbbing red blood vessels in the monster’s sclera. Its skull was sloped and elongated, punctuated by bony protrusions, and it wore a crimson beard around its mouth—no doubt the remains of its last meal. The rest of its body was still shadowed in the darkness of the woods, as if it didn’t want them to experience the full terror of its monstrous form.

Not yet.

“What in the hell is that?” Glenn said.

Meredith had never seen the big man so shaken, so terrified. The enormous creature opened its mouth to reveal a set of fangs large enough to put holes in the ferry. It let out a bellow that shook the glass in the portholes and resonated in Meredith’s bones. Never had she felt so small and insignificant.

Andris patted his tactical vest out of habit, but it would take more than a little C4 to take that thing down.

Meredith’s voice sounded thin as she asked, “Terrence, how fast can this ferry go?”

-21-

Frank pulled back on the collective, sending the chopper higher. The navigation lights no longer illuminated the child in the window of the training school’s office, but he couldn’t forget her face.

Keeping the chopper low, Frank flew to the other end of the airport at a slow, deliberate pace, still trailing a parade of Skulls. He had more than enough fuel to reach Kent Island, and the helicopter was working beautifully. If he made it there alive, he could reunite with the Huntress. The crew would undoubtedly be hurting without the help of a handsome, hilarious pilot. He’d be part of the mission to stop the Oni Agent, saving countless lives around the globe.

But right now, only one life nagged at his conscience. No matter how logical, no matter how much it served the greater good, he could not leave that girl behind. He would rather risk his own life and this perfectly good helicopter than escape knowing he had let her die.

At the end of the runway, he waited for the mass of Skulls to clamber over the wrecked fueling trucks. The Skulls’ cries drifted up around the chopper, but Frank wasn’t scared anymore.

He’d been scared when he thought it was just his life at stake. But now that he’d seen that girl alone and frightened, he was pissed off. These monsters didn’t care that she was just a kid. They didn’t care that her parents and sister had already been taken away from her.

But Frank did care, damn it.

He steadied the chopper into a hover, still waiting for the monsters to pile up under him. If he timed it right, he could lead them away like some kind of badass Pied Piper and then soar back down to rescue the girl before the ignoramus Skulls even knew they’d been duped.

“Come on, ya’ land lubbers. Follow the big tasty meal in the sky.” He bobbed the chopper up and down, flashing the navigation lights, ensuring he did everything in his power to put on a good show for them.

He flew back and forth over the Skulls. A couple of them jumped, claws raking the air and coming up empty, before disappearing back into the horde.

The plan was working. He might save that girl yet.

He swooped the Bell down over the crowd again, playing them like a rock star hyping up a crowd. Frank guessed this mosh pit was a fraction more dangerous than the ones at a heavy metal concert. But even as the attention of a hundred Skulls fell on him, he noticed a stubborn pack that hadn’t strayed from the training school. At least three dozen were pressed against the front wall of the building. They scratched at the windows and doors.

Those ones must’ve seen the girl when Frank did. They wouldn’t soon give up on the promise of a meal so close to their claws.

Frank’s hands wrapped so tight around the cyclic that his knuckles turned white. Sweat dripped from his forehead in rolling beads as he squinted, watching the Skulls assault the office. It wouldn’t be long before they broke the windows.

His fingers tapped the handle of his pistol. One bullet. One measly bullet.

Frank realized he had another weapon, a better weapon. And just like that, he had a new plan. It was idiotic. Absolutely foolish. But the other alternative was to let that poor girl get torn apart by a storm of bony talons and gnashing teeth.

“All right, boys and girls, fasten your seatbelts because things are about to get a bit...bumpy.” Frank pushed the cyclic, adjusting the pitch of the chopper until it leaned forward aggressively. He accelerated toward the swarm outside the office. The chopper engine wailed, straining, and a strange sense of delight and terror twisted through Frank’s gut like he was traveling down the first drop on a three-hundred-foot rollercoaster. He toyed with the collective, dropping the bird until the blades chewed up the overgrown wildflowers and long grass.

“Good. It looks like no one’s taken a goddamn lawnmower to this place in weeks!”

In seconds, he had narrowed the distance between himself and the office. The chopper’s blades sliced into the first Skull’s body, tearing limbs from its torso and turning its head into a pulpy mess. The ridiculous maneuver was something out of a Hollywood action movie, and yet it worked. Frank imagined himself a Liam Neeson-type out to save a helpless child as he ground his teeth and pushed onward.

The rotor blades broke into the ranks of the Skulls, cutting them into fragments of fractured bone and crimson gore like chunks of meat in a food processor. Unfortunately, the fragile blades could only withstand so much stress. More wailing creatures fell to the slicing blades as he made another pass at the beasts, spreading flesh and blood across the tarmac. Only a dozen Skulls remained as Frank spun the chopper around to make a third attack. The bird accelerated, swooping low again, and he jockeyed with the controls until he was on a collision path with the nearest monster.

But this time, instead of just blood and guts, the blades kicked up dirt and grass. He had misjudged, and they scraped the ground, first bending, then warping, and then fracturing. One of the blade fragments impaled a Skull, and another cut through a torso, separating the creature into bleeding halves. Frank lost control. The nose of the chopper hit the earth, and Frank’s harness dug into his chest and shoulders. The fuselage tumbled across the grass, smashing into the Skulls. Pain surrounded Frank like a blinding flash of light. Glowing snowflakes sparkled in his vision. Glass shattered, sprinkling him with thousands of tiny daggers as he was tossed about in the cabin, and metal groaned and screeched.

The bird slowed, sliding sideways. Frank’s vision wavered, teetering between darkness and the jarring red throb of the chopper’s interior emergency lights. His fingers fumbled for the harness. He felt around clumsily, the pain still echoing through his body. The harness unclicked, and he fell from the seat. He stared through the broken window on the pilot’s side of the chopper. A window that now faced the sky. A thousand tiny diamonds glimmered in the black.

He heard a crackle and felt a whoosh of heat.

Fire bad, said a voice inside his head. Frank jolted upright. He clambered over the seat to the broken window. Every joint seemed to resist his movements. The jagged shards of glass still lining the window bit into his flesh, drawing blood, as he hoisted himself from the cabin. Smoke irritated his eyes as the flames licked higher, dancing over the chopper’s interior.

But the crackling fire wasn’t the only sound piercing his muddled senses.

The howls of the Skulls he’d led away from the office redoubled out as they ran from across the airport. The burning chopper was acting as a lighthouse. And those monsters weren’t the only ones growling and shrieking. A handful of Skulls were still standing amid the bloodied debris of thrown limbs and heads from his desperate attack, continuing their assault on the office as if nothing had happened.

One of the Skulls turned his direction and cocked its head, horns gleaming in the crimson glow of the spreading flames. Its mouth opened, and all the fury of hell escaped its gray lips as it bellowed. The monster sprinted straight toward Frank. His hand reached for the gun, but with the monster’s loping gait, a single shot through the thing’s face wouldn’t be easy.

Frank climbed on top of the chopper and whipped open the side door. Black plumes of oily smoke enveloped him, threatening to send him into a coughing fit. He reached past the dancing flames and grabbed the strap of the duffel. He yanked it out even as fire leapt across its canvas. It was weighty and ungainly, filled as it was with canned goods and water bottles.

Perfect.

After leaping off the chopper, Frank tested the weight of the bag, swinging it in low arcs, tongues of flame still jutting from the bag like a terrifying medieval weapon. A charging Skull lowered its head and spread its claws wide. Frank could practically see the monster’s nerves firing and its muscles tensing under its organic armor as it prepared to leap at him.

Steadying himself, Frank narrowed his eyes and took in a deep breath. The monster pounced. Frank swung the burning bag at it. The flames hissed and fanned as the bag slammed against the Skull. The creature’s claws and spikes snagged the bag from Frank’s grip. The Skull hit the ground, rolling. The water bottles spilled from the torn bag, but the burning canvas remained tangled in the Skull’s spikes. As it scrambled and batted at the flames, the conflagration spread to the surrounding grass, catching on the weeds dried out by neglect and the changing seasons. The beast growled in agony as its body was slowly consumed by the only thing hungrier than the Skulls.

“I always liked my Skulls well done,” Frank muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead. He turned and ran toward the office.

A new pain shot through him, stabbing through his heart and sending him gasping. The other Skulls were gone. And on the sidewalk lay the shattered remains of the front door.

-22-

Lauren pressed the defibrillator paddles against Tammy Weaver’s chest again. She delivered another jolt of electricity through the woman’s body. Tammy’s eyes rolled back, and her limbs twitched. The EKG machine whined and beeped in an uneven rhythm. As Divya recharged the defibrillator, Lauren prayed the woman wouldn’t need the aid of the crash cart again. She could almost see Tammy’s soul trying to leave her body. Maybe it was delirium brought on by exhaustion, or maybe she’d grown far more spiritual with all the death she’d been surrounded by lately, but Lauren silently pleaded with that soul to stay put.

“Ready,” Divya said in a low voice as the defibrillator indicated another full charge.

Lauren lowered the paddles to Tammy’s skin and delivered another burst of electricity. The woman’s body jolted then went rigid.

Come on, come on, Lauren thought.

And then the most beautiful sound in the world pierced the thrum of the Huntress’s idling engines and Rich’s pleading and the medical team’s hushed voices as they planned what to do next. Tammy’s EKG resumed a normal, healthy rhythm, beeping with a soft, consistent beat. Lauren’s shoulders sagged. The pent-up anxiety escaped her through a long exhalation. Divya met her eyes, a smile full of bright-white teeth breaking against her warm-brown skin.

“She’s stabilized,” Divya said.

“She is,” Lauren said. “She is.”

“Oh, thank God,” Rich said. “And thank you, Lauren. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Rich leaned over and grabbed Tammy’s hand. She remained unconscious, but she was breathing on her own, and all vital signs on her biomonitors indicated she would be all right for now.

“Peter, Divya, can you watch her?” Lauren asked.

The two doctors nodded. Peter didn’t bother to look up as he recorded everything that had just happened in Tammy’s digital medical charts on a nearby computer. Lauren stood for a moment by Rich’s bedside, offering him a sympathetic look as she gazed into his eyes. They brimmed with tears.

“Is she out of the woods?” he asked, his voice scratchy.

“She’s stabilized, but it’s going to be a long road to recovery. Your immune systems are all shot, and that’s probably going to keep causing problems. But I promise you, we’ll do everything we possibly can. If you remember anything else about her medical history that might be useful, please let me know.”

Rich nodded glumly, still holding Tammy’s limp hand. Normally, Lauren would wait by her patients’ bedsides, ensuring all their questions and concerns were answered. But she had more than just the lives of the Weavers’ weighing on her shoulders. She turned from the beds and ducked through the hatch to the lab. There she found Sean, his reddish hair messy, leaning over a computer screen next to the incubator with the organ-on-a-chip they’d set up to test the Phoenix Compound.

“It’s done,” he said in almost a whisper.

***

Kara sat at the mess table with Connor bouncing in the seat next to her. Earlier, she’d been convinced that sleep was beyond her grasp. Now, relentless tendrils of exhaustion were seeping through her. Only Connor’s delight at having two new friends to play with prevented her from acting on the almost overwhelming urge to retreat into her bunk and pass out.

Navid, looking equally tired, held his head in his hand as he moved a white pawn across a chessboard. Connor laughed when Navid took his fingers off the piece and hungrily moved his knight into the pawn’s space, knocking it over with an exaggerated flourish.

“Come on, Navid!” Connor said. “This’ll be the fourth game I win.”

Kara chuckled. The boy had bragged about being the chess champion on his grade-school team. Kara could tell Navid had gone easy on him for the first couple of games, but now Navid was playing in earnest—and still losing to a ten-year-old.

“I’m slipping,” Navid said, rubbing his eyes. “No amount of coffee is going to make me a better player at this point.”

“You weren’t that good anyway,” Connor said with a laugh.

“Whoa, those are some fighting words,” Navid said, a grin cutting across his face.

The boy stood on his chair, and Kara reached out to steady him as he held up his fists. He exclaimed, “I know tae kwon do. I’m a purple belt!”

“Oh, man,” Navid said, “if your tae kwon do is as good as your chess, I already know who would win that fight.”

The boy gave a wide smile that Kara couldn’t help but mirror. Navid, too, was beaming despite his drowsiness. Connor had gone through far too much in his family’s quest for survival than any child ever should. Despite it all, he still found joy and a bit of childlike bravado that Kara found she had to admire.

All of that was quickly shattered when Sean burst into the mess hall.

“We’ve got the results of the experiment,” he said, half out of breath.

Kara jolted from the table, her heart already hammering, and Navid joined her, scooping Connor up.

“An experiment?” Connor said, missing the gravity of the situation. “Like Bill Nye the Science Guy stuff?”

“Not quite,” Kara said, striding toward the mess hall’s exit. She wanted to pepper Sean with questions about the results, but the most important one bubbled to the surface of her mind first. “How are Connor’s parents?”

“They’re okay.” Sean guided them into the corridor. “Lauren said Connor could see them again. Tammy’s stabilized.”

“Oh, good,” Navid said. They all marched back to the med bay, and the boy sprinted to his parents as soon as they were through the hatch.

A flutter of longing trickled through Kara as she watched Rich wrap his arms around Connor and lift him up into the hospital bed. Her father was somewhere out in the Congo on his quest to stop the Oni Agent. She knew that was important—but shouldn’t his family be important too?

Sean guided her and Navid into the lab before she could become too distracted by her thoughts. Lauren was already working on something in one of the biosafety cabinets. She didn’t even bother to greet them, so entranced by whatever it was she was doing.

Sean turned a computer screen to face them and slumped onto a nearby stool, looking defeated. “Here’s what we found.”

“No,” Navid said, taking in the information with a glance. “Goddammit, no.”

Kara’s heart sank as she read the graphs and charts displayed on the monitor. The Phoenix Compound had done nothing to stop the spread of the prions from the Oni Agent. In fact, the prion levels had risen throughout the duration of the experiment, spreading and destroying the cell population in the plastic chip.

“What do we do now?” Kara said, looking around at Lauren, then Sean, then Navid. As far as she was concerned, these were the best scientists in the world—maybe the only scientists left in the world—and it was up to them to find a cure or vaccine for the Oni Agent. She wanted them to have the answers. The Phoenix Compound had succeeded wildly in the computer simulations, but in the real world, it had failed. She didn’t understand why, and judging from the looks on their faces, neither did they.

Her father was wandering through the jungle chasing an unknown enemy. The science team faced a microscopic enemy that still eluded their best efforts. And no one seemed to have any idea what to do. They were lost. All of them.

And soon, as the Oni Agent devoured the last remaining survivors, humanity would be lost, too.

-23-

Dom leaned over the gunwale, his rifle trained on the gigantic monstrosity staring out of the trees at them. The monster bellowed loud enough to drown the noise from the straining diesel engines driving the ferry through the churning waters. Human-sized Skulls and tiny Imps still leapt from the riverbanks and the trees, caught up in their fervor and throwing themselves into the swirling current. The monstrous Skull picked up a normal one and swallowed it in a single gulp.

“What the fuck?” Miguel said.

The others still held a perimeter around the pilothouse. But even through their focus on defending the position, they appeared shaken by the colossal Skull.

“Is that...is that a goddamn Goliath?” Jenna asked, her voice weak, shaky.

“No,” Dom said. “That thing’s too fucking big to be a Goliath.”

“Then what is it?” Glenn asked.

Meredith scanned the ladders with her rifle, her finger still twitching next to her trigger guard. “The thing looks like Godzilla’s Skull cousin.”

“All I know is I don’t want to stick around to find out,” Jenna said.

“Agreed,” Dom said. “Terrence, full ahead!”

Terrence steered the ferry deeper into the river, out of reach of the titanic Skull. The monster roared again. Its mouth looked like the entrance to a cave. Somewhere off in the distance, another bellow thundered in response. A third, then a fourth joined in the chorus. Was it instinct, or were they actually communicating with each other?

“Don’t tell me there are more of ’em,” Terrence moaned, his hands tight on the wheel.

“Of course there are,” Dom said. “Wouldn’t want to make this mission any easier, would we?”

The monster continued to stare at them, but it didn’t give chase. The ferry turned around a bend in the river, blocking Dom’s view. He heard the echoing thuds of the creature stomping through the jungle once more.

“Titan,” Miguel said, swiveling around to face the ladders leading up to the pilothouse again.

“Huh?” Andris asked.

“Titan,” Miguel repeated. “That’s what those things are.”

“Then call me Perseus. Let me at ’em if those things come after us,” Glenn said through the corner of his tightly pressed lips. He locked a grenade case into the launcher mounted under the barrel of his gun.

“Son of Zeus or not,” Dom started, “don’t get any big ideas. We’ve got enough trouble on our own ship.”

The Hunters waited. The Imps were still around here somewhere, skulking around the lower decks. Dom played his rifle over the shadows, his nerves on fire with anticipation. His ears perked with each creak of the ferry and slap of a wave against its hull. Normal Skulls wasted no time in running after prey. The monsters the Hunters were accustomed to hardly ever prowled around silently, either. Could these ones be different somehow? If they truly had been monkeys once, had the Oni Agent affected them differently?

What the hell were they up to? The seconds ticked by, and still nothing happened. Maybe they were setting up an ambush, waiting for the Hunters to let curiosity get the better of them. Even so, Dom expected to hear the patter of their feet on the wrecked cars below.

“Dom...?” a tentative voice called from the pilothouse.

Dom turned slightly and looked at Renee through the open door. Under the bruises covering her face, he saw a worried expression. She held out a hand, pointing back at Dom.

No, not at him. Above him. He swung his rifle up to the roof of the pilothouse. One of the monkey-like Imps was hanging there by its prehensile tail.

“Son of a bitch,” Dom said, stepping back.

The monster hissed and then sprang at him in a flurry of claws and slicing talons. He fired, and bullets lanced into its lithe frame, cracking through bone and tearing flesh. The little monster slammed against the bulkhead. Its body slid to the deck, leaving a trail of blood. It collapsed in a mangled heap of limbs, its maw hanging open. Even as the air escaped the defeated Skull’s lungs in a whispered death rattle, more Imps appeared along the roof of the pilothouse, hooting in a wild chorus. The bastards had crept all the way up here for a beautiful sneak attack. Dom would’ve admired their intelligence if they didn’t appear ready to rip his throat out.

“Open fire!” Dom roared.

The Hunters’ rifles blazed. Bullets punched into the Imps as the Hunters sidestepped their airborne attacks. They parried dagger-like claws with their rifles and kicked out with heavy boots. Dom brought down Skull after Skull. For every one he killed, another seemed to take its place. He clicked the selector on his rifle to full automatic and sprayed the relentless beasts with a wave of lead as he retreated toward the gunwale, eager to put extra space between him and the beasts.

His rifle’s bolt locked back. Empty.

A Skull landed on the deck in front of him. Only three feet tall, it reared back and then pounced. Dom slammed the stock of his rifle against the monster’s chest, and it let out a high-pitched wheeze as it flew backward. To Dom’s astonishment, it forced itself back to its feet and prepared for another attack. The little bastards were tough despite their size.

“Dom! Look out!” Meredith yelled as she jammed a fresh magazine home in her own rifle.

Another Imp took advantage of Dom’s inattention and leapt from the roof. At the same time, the Imp he’d injured leapt at him from the deck. Both creatures aimed for Dom’s neck. He held his rifle sideways to block their attacks. The monsters collided with the rifle, and they clung to it, their heads snapping forward and their jaws gnashing. Dom crushed them between the bulkhead and the rifle. Their armor split open, releasing a spray of crimson liquid. It rained against Dom’s face, but he ignored the gore and let their bodies drop.

“Reloading!” he yelled.

The curses of the other Hunters and the chatter of their rifles sounded all around him as he changed the magazine. The others remained focused on the creatures pouncing on them from the roof. Miguel sprayed a blast of the Drooler-like acid from his prosthetic, dousing several of the Imps. Their weakened armor was no match for the bullets, fists, and rifle stocks that butted against them. The monsters fell in waves.

Dom was reconsidering his initial assessment of their intelligence when the scratch of claws on metal sounded from the side of the ferry. A group of Imps was scaling the hull, using the portholes, rivets, and pockets of rust to reach the Hunters’ position.

“Behind us!” Dom bellowed, hoping to be heard above the din of battle. He’d underestimated his enemy again. He was slowing down, both his body and his brain. Was he losing it, or was he just getting too old for this war? He sent a spray of bullets at the attackers, knocking them into the water. Their bodies disappeared with a splash, but dozens more were climbing up toward them.

“The ladders!” Meredith yelled, firing near the pilothouse. The creatures were coming up from the ferry’s interior now, too.

They’d set a trap—a coordinated attack.

“Fucking hell!” Glenn said as an Imp batted the weapon from his hands. Miguel knocked the creature aside with the butt of his rifle, but the distraction had left an opening for two more creatures to attack. Dom sprinted at them, afraid to fire. He couldn’t risk hitting one of the Hunters. Instead, he clubbed the beasts with elbows and fists.

Even as Dom helped Glenn and Miguel, he heard Andris and Jenna cry out. He picked up two Imps descending on Miguel, grabbing them by their necks. They flailed in his grip, and their tails whipped about wildly, threatening to flay his skin. But Dom ignored their struggling and slammed their heads together. Both creatures went still, and Dom threw their lifeless bodies over the gunwale.

He rushed to Andris and Jenna. The two stood back-to-back, firing and kicking out at the circle of Skulls encroaching on them. Bullets ricocheted off the deck and pinged against bulkheads. Dom picked off a monster perched on the gunwale then brought down another.

“Help!” someone else cried.

Dom turned to see Meredith, cornered and alone, her back against the pilothouse’s bulkhead. A group of six Imps slunk toward her. She fumbled to load a magazine into her rifle, but one of the Skulls’ tails twitched out, snapping against the magazine. It clattered on the deck and skidded away from Meredith.

“Meredith!” Dom yelled. He shouldered his rifle, firing at the creatures as he ran at them. But a sudden tornado of slashing claws came at him from his left side, and he was forced to juke out of an Imp’s warpath. The monster deftly followed him, losing no momentum.

Dom struck out at the creature’s head. The Imp ducked under the rifle’s stock and bared its teeth in a menacing snarl. Dom defended himself against another rash of attacks, desperate to turn the fight in his favor so he could get to Meredith. But in his periphery, he saw more creatures encircle Meredith as she tried to get a new magazine in place. His anger and guilt burned through him with the hot intensity of a desert sun.

There was no way he would reach her in time.

-24-

Meredith pressed her back against the bulkhead as if it would suddenly give way and let her retreat into the safety of the pilothouse. Her fingers trembled as she tried to reload the rifle again. The monsters didn’t let up. Each time she had the magazine in place, an Imp would rush her or whip its spike-covered tail to thwart her efforts. It was as if they were toying with her—or maybe getting revenge for all the other creatures that now lay dead across the deck.

She couldn’t fall now. Not like this.

Blood trickled from the stitches on the side of her head where she’d lost her ear. The wound had broken open again. Soon, she feared, that wouldn’t be the only bleeding injury on her body. Another creature thrust its blade-like claws at her, and she beat it away with her rifle, smashing the thing in the face over and over. As the monster reeled back, three more flew at her. She couldn’t raise her rifle in time to shield their blows, and she winced, waiting for them to tear into her skin.

But instead, she heard the pop of a handgun. Three, four, five times. A creature hit her chest, and another flopped against her legs. But they didn’t bite or claw at her. They were dead.

Two creatures turned on Meredith’s savior, but they too were ended in a barrage of bullets that plunged through their bodies. Their limbs jerked with each impact, and Meredith used the opportunity to finally reload her rifle. Her magazine clicked into place, and she pulled the bolt back on the rifle. Lining up the nearest Skulls in her sights, she riddled the monsters’ bodies with bullets and sent them sliding across the deck already wet with blood.

“Thanks!” Meredith called to Renee, who was leaning out of the pilothouse. The woman had one hand on the bulkhead to steady herself, and she looked positively drained from the effort it had taken to stand and take out Meredith’s attackers.

Renee simply nodded before aiming at another Imp leaping up the ladders. Her arm shook slightly. The recoil of her pistol made her whimper, but her aim was true. Nearby, Dom hammered the final Imp attacking him. It seemed the tide of battle was finally turning. The last few Skulls went down with ease.

When Renee lowered her weapon, her legs wobbled unsteadily, and she collapsed into the pilothouse. Dom rushed to her side, disappearing beyond the hatch. Meredith stood to help, but movement in her periphery caught her attention. One more Imp crawled over the side of the ferry, and Meredith fired on it. Her shots went low. Rounds cut into the creature’s legs, sending it sprawling, its limbs bent at odd angles, fractured and pulpy. It flopped forward and dragged itself toward Meredith, pulling its mangled body through the messy remains of its comrades.

The stench of the Congo River intermingled with the coppery odor of blood and the pungent smell of gunpowder. Meredith aimed at the stubborn creature. The more she looked at it, the more she could see the animal it had once been. She recalled a time when she’d been at the Smithsonian National Zoo after a run through DC. She had always felt bad for the orangutans, gorillas, and other primates behind the glass walls and cages. There was something soulful in their eyes, something intelligent when they looked through the glass, meeting her gaze as they sat among the artificial branches and leaves of an exhibit that was no more a vibrant jungle than Meredith’s living room had been. Those animals might have had good reasons to be there. Scientific study. Rescued from illegal exotic animal trade. Education. But that made no difference. There had been a yearning in their expressions—to live, to be free.

The Imp lifted a bloodied paw. Its pupils dilated, growing wider against its mask of bone and cartilage. The Oni Agent had been as unforgiving to it as it had been to any number of humans, forcing the creature into some kind of abominable evolution. The Imp was no more a monkey any more than a velociraptor was a bird. Meredith sucked in a breath and centered the Imp’s snarling face in the crosshairs of her sights. She squeezed the trigger. As the creature’s fingers gave a final twitch, Meredith turned, her chest heaving, and surveyed the carnage. She made her way to Andris, Jenna, Glenn, and Miguel. The others were all covered in a mixture of sweat, blood, and bone fragments.

“Everyone okay?” she asked in a hushed voice as they covered each other’s backs near the pilothouse.

“Okay is relative, wouldn’t you say?” Glenn replied.

“No bites,” Miguel reported.

Jenna held a gloved hand up. There were tears in the fabric as she rotated her wrist, but no blood. “Looks like I’m clean.”

“You do not smell clean,” Andris said.

“Can it, comedian,” she shot back.

“Are we sure they’re gone?” Meredith asked.

The Hunters quieted, their laughter dying away, as they scanned the deck. Meredith surveyed the pilothouse’s roof then trudged back to the side of the ferry, stepping over the corpses littering the deck. Her boots slurped with each step, and she tried to ignore the sickening sound. A low moan sounded from her feet. She aimed at a beast whose bottom legs had been blown off. Its arms were a mess of sinew and claws. One orbital cavity was empty, and it looked up at her with a single bloodshot orb. Its half-broken jaw chattered uselessly, and Meredith couldn’t help but whisper a short prayer for the thing before kicking it overboard.

“Any more contacts?” Dom’s voice came over the comm link.

“Negative,” Meredith said. A flurry of other negatives confirmed that the ferry was clear.

“Everyone, inside the pilothouse. Let’s regroup.”

The Hunters trudged through the open hatch. Meredith left the carnage behind and closed the hatch hard, locking it into place. Dom was kneeling next to Renee. He held a bottle of water for her. The others cracked open their own canteens, chugging thirstily as Terrence valiantly stood at the helm, guiding the ferry with only the aid of moonlight.

“No other injuries?” Dom asked, helping Renee take another sip. The Hunters shook their heads. Dom eyed them with skepticism. “Are you sure?”

“We’re good, Chief,” Miguel said.

“Did you check?” Dom asked.

“Of course we did,” Miguel said. “We’re one hundred-fucking-percent.”

Dom grunted. Meredith watched him, searching for signs that he was about to crack. He’d always been careful, but this was bordering on paranoia.

After two decades of partnership, both in the field and, at last, in love, Meredith had thought she knew him. But the look in his eyes, the half-feral glint, was something she didn’t recognize. It was like looking at a stranger.

And it frightened her to the core.

***

Dom held Renee as she shook in his arms like a child.

“I’m cold,” she said. “So cold.”

He touched her forehead with the back of his hand. She was burning up. He’d checked her over again for open cuts or scratches, but he couldn’t find anything other than bruises. So why was she so sick? Renee was always the first one through the door and the last one on her feet. To see her like this, shivering and fragile, made him almost frantic with worry.

“Huntress, Dom here, do you copy?” Dom asked.

Meredith crouched beside him, clearly eager to help. He shook his head subtly, warning her off. Renee was his responsibility.

Instead of leaving, Meredith reached out to hold Renee’s clammy hand.

Chao’s voice crackled over the comm link. “Huntress here. We read you loud and clear.”

“Put Lauren on the line.”

“Is everything—”

“Get me Lauren now!”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Chao said. “One moment, please.”

Static sounded over the link before it fell silent. A couple of the others crowded around, but Meredith waved them away, gesturing for more space.

“My head’s killing me,” Renee said, massaging her temple. “Does that mean...am I...?”

Renee didn’t finish her sentence. She held her hand in front of her face, studying it. Dom knew what she was looking for. Fever. Headache. Both signs the Oni Agent had taken hold. If that was the case and they didn’t act soon, the nanobacteria component of the Agent would produce an unstoppable wave of prions that would destroy Renee’s brain permanently.

“Get a dose of chelation therapy ready,” Dom said. Meredith immediately began unwrapping a syringe from their limited supply. The therapy would stop the nanobacteria in its tracks—as long as they caught it in time. When Renee had initially fallen unconscious, there hadn’t been time to administer a dose. They’d been in such a rush to get to the ferry.

But now Dom regretted his decision.

His comm link crackled. “Dom, this is Lauren. What’s going on?”

“Renee’s awake,” he began.

“Oh my God, am I glad to hear that.”

“But she’s got a headache and fever, and a nasty knot on her head. Meredith’s prepping the chelation treatment now, and—”

“Don’t!” Lauren said.

The alarm in her voice sent another shockwave of worry through Dom.

“You know the risks of chelation treatment, right?” Lauren asked.

“Bone density loss and internal bleeding,” Dom said. He remembered all too well. Kara had nearly bled out after she’d been dosed in the med bay.

“Exactly. If you give Renee the treatment, it could kill her.”

Dom looked at the dark bruises under Renee’s eyes. She blinked slowly, as if each small movement pained her. They’d removed her helmet, so she hadn’t heard what Lauren had said. But judging by the looks on the others’ faces, the rest of the team clearly had.

“Understood,” Dom said as calmly as he could. He stood and walked away from Renee so she couldn’t hear him. In a hushed voice in the corner of the pilothouse near Terrence, he asked, “So what am I supposed to do?”

“You checked her over for lacerations, right?” Lauren asked.

“Yes. Nothing,” Dom asked, pacing beside Terrence.

“I want you to check a few things for me. Does she have bruising under her eyes?”

The dark circles made Renee look like a raccoon. “Affirmative.”

“And what about behind her ears?”

Dom furrowed his brow and strode back to Renee. She looked up at him as he bent beside her and swept a lock of hair from the side of her head. “Don’t worry,” he said as he studied the pooling bruises stretching from her ears to her scalp. Over the comm link, he said to Lauren, “There’s a bit of bruising.”

“Okay, okay. I can practically guarantee she’s suffered a concussion even without seeing her.”

Dom nodded. “Which can explain the headache. But what about the fever?”

“Also a symptom of a concussion.”

“Damn,” he said, frustrated. There were simply too many similarities between an Oni Agent infection and a concussion. “Is there any way to know for sure that it’s a concussion and not the Oni infection?”

“Not with one hundred percent certainty.”

“Then isn’t the risk of giving her the therapy worth it?”

“I’m not sure,” Lauren said. In his mind’s eye, Dom saw her chewing her lip in thought. “Check something else for me. Then maybe I can give you a better assessment.”

Miguel and Jenna were whispering in a corner, and Andris shot Meredith an apprehensive look.

“All right, Doc,” Dom said. “What next?”

“Do you see any fluids coming from her nose or ears?”

Dom didn’t have to squint to see the dried scarlet trails from Renee’s nostrils. “Blood from the nose, for sure.”

“Nothing else?”

“No...wait, hang on a second.” Dom grabbed a flashlight from his tac vest and shone it at Renee’s ear. It illuminated a thin trail of clear fluid seeping from her ear canal. “Clear fluid from the ear.”

“Damn it, damn it, damn it.” Lauren sighed. “She might have a skull fracture.”

“What do we do for that?”

“Honestly, there’s not much you can do. Most of the time, these things eventually heal on their own. Your best bet is to keep her upright so any fluid drains away from her brain. Anything else would need to be surgical, and you guys aren’t equipped to deal with that.”

Dom couldn’t keep the skepticism from his voice. “So keep an eye on her and hope she gets better?”

“That’s about the best I can offer,” Lauren said.

That wasn’t what he needed to hear. Dom’s gut churned with anxiety as he looked at Renee’s pained expression. He wanted to help her, but he felt useless. “Where does that leave us with the chelation treatment?”

“The chelation therapy is going to drastically decrease her bone density, so even the slightest bump can exacerbate her head injury. If there’s already a meningeal tear leading to cerebrospinal fluid—the clear stuff you saw coming from her ears—it would get worse. More leakage increases the risk of a neurological infection. Basically, she’d be more fragile than a porcelain doll.”

“And if she starts bleeding internally...”

“Exactly,” Lauren said. “Any current subdermal bleeding or even ruptured arteries or veins in combination with the skull fracture could lead to severe bleeding into the space around her brain.”

Dom balled his hands into fists, frustration tearing through him. If Renee had been infected and he didn’t give her the treatment, she was doomed to become a monster. And regardless of whether she’d been exposed to the Oni Agent, the chelation therapy might kill her. It was an impossible choice—and Dom was running out of time to make it.

-25-

Frank ran from the screams of the dying Skull as it burned beside the wrecked helicopter. His heart threw itself against his ribs with the ferocity of a caged lion as he ran for the flight school.

She had to be alive. She had to be.

He leapt over the appendages of the Skulls he’d mowed down with the chopper and almost slipped in their blood. His boots slammed onto the concrete sidewalk leading up to the door. Shapes were already moving toward the rear of the office. He rushed through the doorway and picked up the broken bat he’d left stuck in the Skull formerly known as Leonard Craft. Four Skulls pounded their clawed fists against a closed door down the hall. They roared in hunger, their cries deafening in the enclosed space.

Frank held the fractured bat like a sword. “Hey, you ugly pieces of shit!”

They ignored him, fixed on their prey behind the door.

“Don’t ignore me! My ego is fragile.” He loped forward. “C’mon, there’s more meat on one of my arms than there is on that whole little girl. Come on!”

A Skull turned. Its eyes locked on him, and its lips curled into a rattling snarl. A soldier’s helmet still sat atop its head, and though its camouflaged fatigues were shredded, a utility belt hung around its spiked waist. Frank saw the holster was empty. A damn shame.

The beast let out another growl before running to meet Frank. Frank thrust the bat out, and the creature cried out in agony. The splintered wood lanced through the Skull’s eye and buried itself in the monster’s brain. Its body went slack almost immediately, but Frank didn’t stop there. He used his forward momentum to drive the dead beast into the other three monsters. With their focus still on the office door, they toppled sideways, caught almost completely unaware. Frank gave a final, powerful shove, throwing them into the open door of the kitchenette. He slammed the door. As soon as it shut, the beasts threw themselves at it. The impacts shook dust and paint flecks from the ceiling and doorframe like a soft snowfall.

Frank turned to the locked closet. He knocked on it gently and attempted to sound calm even as adrenaline made his fingers twitch. “I’ve come to get you out of here. Let’s go for a nice helicopter ride, huh?”

Silence.

“Come on, open up,” he said more urgently. “We got to get away from the monsters, okay?”

Again, nothing.

A claw burst through the kitchenette door. The bony fist tore away a piece of wood, and a head appeared through the hole, saliva roping off the monster’s bared teeth.

Frank didn’t bother asking the girl to open the door a third time. Instead, he reared back, ready to finish what the Skulls had started. He slammed his shoulder against the closet door. Pain rocketed through him as the door gave way. Peeling away a few jagged splinters, he peered inside.

Something crashed against his skull and sent him sprawling.

“What the—”

He twisted, shielding his face with his hands as his unseen attacker struck again. Sharp pain lit up his arm as a piece of wood stabbed through his flesh.

“Christ!” Frank rolled away and then stood, fists up like a boxer.

But instead of a monster licking its lips in preparation for its next meal, he saw the little girl from the window wielding a broken piece of the door, ready to swing.

“I’m a human!” Frank said, holding his hands out in a supplicating gesture. “Look, I’m healthy. I’m not one of those monsters!”

The girl seemed to consider this, lowering her weapon for a moment. She couldn’t be over nine or ten, Frank realized. Dark stains marred the front of her hooded sweatshirt.

“But you’re a stranger,” she said. “Daddy always said—”

A loud howl echoed down the hallway along with the sound of more splintering wood.

“We need to go!” Frank yelled.

He wrapped an arm around the skinny girl’s waist and dragged her into the hall. She struggled in his grip, scratching at his arms and yelling. Behind them, the Skulls freed themselves from their temporary prison. Their footsteps pounded down the hall as Frank ran through the lobby and burst out of the front door.

He let the girl drop to her feet but kept a firm grasp on her wrist with his left hand. With his other hand, he dug into his pocket for the helicopter keys. He matched the first chopper, a Robinson R44, with its key. The door opened with a satisfying clunk. He slid into the pilot’s seat and hoisted the girl up after him. After closing the door, he started the ignition and was greeted by the growling of the engines.

The Skulls barreled out into the night, searching the tarmac for their escaped prey. It didn’t take long for the sound of the chopper’s blades to attract them.

“I’m not supposed to go places with strangers!” the girl yelled, pounding on the door.

“Introductions later,” Frank shouted. “Escaping now!”

The girl started crying. “We can’t leave them! Where’s my mom and dad? Where’s Erica?”

Frank couldn’t tell whether hysteria and shock had eclipsed her undoubtedly horrific memories or if she truly didn’t know yet. “I’m sorry, but they...weren’t there. You were all alone.”

His fingers curled around the cyclic and collective as the first Skull reached the chopper. It banged its fists against the door. Its open mouth slid over the glass, leaving a trail of sticky saliva.

“No!” the girl yelled. She tugged harder on the door handle. “They were there! We have to go back!”

Frank pulled on the collective, and the chopper lifted, hopping over the grass as the Skulls threw themselves at the bird. More screams rent the air. The other Skulls from across the airport were eager to join the party, and apparently they’d invited the Skulls from the neighboring woods, too.

The girl sobbed as the chopper climbed unsteadily. The three beasts from the office still clung to it, throwing the craft’s balance off. If he tried to take off too quickly, he risked a sudden change in pitch that could grind the chopper blades into the tarmac. He jockeyed with the controls, trying to shake the monsters as the girl’s sobs became frantic screams.

“Stop!” Frank yelled. “I need to focus here.”

The chopper bucked wildly, its skids bouncing against the tarmac as one of the Skulls rammed its head against the glass protecting the cockpit. If the kid didn’t stop crying soon, she was going to pass out. And if Frank didn’t have some quiet in the cockpit, he was going to wreck this bird.

“What’s your name?” Frank said, his voice short.

“Huh?” the girl managed through a wracking sob.

“Your name. What is it?”

She sniffed. “Leigh.”

“Okay, Leigh,” Frank said. “I need your help. I want to make it out of this alive. You want to live, too, right?”

Sniffling, she bobbed her head, looking up at him through tangles of blond hair. The Skull clinging to her side door continued battering the fuselage.

“I want you to do something scary. When I tell you to, I need you to open the door.”

“I can’t! There’s a monster outside!”

“Do it hard. We’re going to fling him off, okay?”

Her bottom lip quivered, but she nodded again.

“Okay, Leigh. You and I can do this together. Say it with me. We can do this.”

“We can do this,” she echoed.

The horde of Skulls was only a dozen yards away now. Soon they’d be on the chopper, throwing their bodies at it in a deluge of bone-covered limbs and demonic horns. There would be no chance of escape then.

“Now get ready,” Frank said, his knuckles turning white as he grasped the cyclic. “One, two, three, now!”

He jerked the chopper to the left. For half a second, Leigh seemed frozen by fear, her thin fingers wrapped around the door handle. But she let out a high-pitched yell and threw the door open, knocking the Skull backward. Between Frank’s maneuver and the door crashing into the Skull’s chest, the monster lost its grip and fell. Frank twisted the cyclic hard again to shake off a second Skull.

He took them higher. One last Skull still rocked the craft, holding on with one hand as it beat the glass with another. Frank shook the chopper to the left, then the right, putting it into a slight spin. The Skull flailed. Its claws scratched uselessly across the cockpit as it lost purchase and fell. The waves of Skulls beneath them crashed together, trampling the fallen Skull and filling in the void where the chopper had been only moments ago. The only things pursuing them into the sky now were the monsters’ frustrated hunting cries.

“We did it,” Leigh said, though no hint of joy or victory tinged her words. She stared at the flight training school office. “We did it.”

The school grew smaller as they flew away, and distance concealed the gruesome nightmares of everything that had taken place there. He could guess what she was feeling in that moment. They’d both lost their families at that forsaken airport. It didn’t matter how—an unfortunate accident or the Oni Agent.

All that mattered was the gaping holes left in his soul and hers that would never be filled.

-26-

Lauren opened the hatch, grateful to be returning to the lab. Taking care of dying patients and consulting with Dom on first aid for the Hunters had proved more than a minor distraction from research on the Phoenix Compound, and she was eager to get back to work.

In the lab, Kara, Navid, and Sean were staring at a computer monitor. Kara turned as Lauren approached. At first, she wore a smile on her scarred face, which Lauren found strange given the failure of their previous experiment. That smile soon faded.

“Are you okay?” Kara asked.

Lauren’s brows pinched together for a moment. She must’ve looked as frazzled and exhausted as she felt. “I’m fine.”

“And the Hunters?” Sean asked.

“Renee suffered a concussion. The others are all okay.”

She didn’t want to go into more details until she found out what Dom decided to do about Renee’s treatment. Instead, she focused on what she could help with now—the work on the Phoenix Compound. The computer monitor showed a couple of molecular formulas she didn’t recognize.

Lauren pointed at the screen and asked, “What’s going on here?”

Kara gestured to Navid. “He figured out why the Phoenix Compound failed.”

That explained Kara’s earlier smile. Lauren was ready to rejoice in any victory, no matter how small, but she had to maintain a healthy level of skepticism. “What’s your hypothesis?”

“It’s pretty simple,” Navid said. “The compound itself is probably as effective as the simulations predicted against the prions. We just missed something obvious.”

Lauren almost asked him why he thought that, but an idea burned through the fog of exhaustion and distraction steadily growing inside her. “The blood-brain barrier. That’s it. How could I have forgotten?”

“Exactly. That has to be it,” Navid said with enough confidence Lauren would’ve mistaken him for a scientist with twice the experience and age. “The brain-on-a-chip model replicates all the physiological phenomena, including the barrier that separates blood from extracellular fluid flowing into the central nervous system.”

“Navid told me that’s the body’s way of preventing drugs, pathogens, and other foreign substances from getting to the brain,” Kara added.

Lauren nodded. “That’s right. The blood-brain barrier has made it notoriously difficult for the development of drugs and therapies that target neurological disease. It shouldn’t have been a surprise we ran into a problem there. Question is, how do we fix it?”

When she saw Navid, Kara, and Sean beaming, she knew they already had an answer.

“This is what I was doing my PhD work on,” Navid said. “Drug delivery to the brain. I made nanoparticles that used cell uptake mechanisms to transport molecules across the barrier.” Navid’s grin twisted into a frown. “The only problem is I used synthetic polymers to create the nanoparticles. It worked great, but we don’t have the equipment or supplies on the ship.”

“But we might have an alternative,” Sean said.

Kara bobbed her head. “We searched through some of the medical research papers we have access to.”

“And?” Lauren asked.

“We found something,” Navid said. “Bovine serum albumin.”

“That protein is common enough. I think we have a hefty supply on the ship,” Lauren said. “But what will you do with it?”

Navid motioned to the computer screen and then to an assortment of tubes and beakers set up inside the biosafety cabinet. “With a little bit of engineering, I think I can coat the Phoenix Compound with albumin.”

“I see,” Lauren said, nodding. Albumin was commonly referred to as a “drug taxi” because of its ability to help difficult-to-deliver drugs find their targets within the human body. She understood exactly what he had planned now. “So you’re going to use albumin as an invisibility cloak to deliver the Phoenix Compound.”

“Exactly!” Navid said, snapping with his good hand.

“It’s like the hobbits sneaking into Mordor!” Sean exclaimed. “Dropping the ring into Mount Doom to stop the spread of the evil Oni Agent!”

Lauren refrained from rolling her eyes and settled for letting out a slight chuckle. “You can call it whatever you like as long as it works.”

The trio nodded, already settling back into their stations at the microscopes, computers, and cramped lab bench. Never in her life had Lauren thought she would be in charge of a ship-based lab with a young woman who had barely started college, a graduate student whose PhD work had been cut short, and an epidemiologist with an undying love of Lord of the Rings—all working together to stop an apocalyptic biological weapon. She would’ve laughed had the situation not been so dire. But as she watched them engrossed in their experiments, she couldn’t help but feel a trickle of pride. Science—the pursuit of truth, chasing knowledge for the good of humanity—had a way of bringing people together.

Dom might fight in the field, but she knew the real war was happening in this lab.

***

Masses of trees on the rolling, distant jungle slopes blotted out a clear view of the horizon, but the deep, star-studded black of night was giving way to softer shades of purple and blue. The promise of daylight and a new morning normally inspired a glimmer of hope in Meredith.

But today was a stark exception.

Meredith took a long sip from her canteen. Water trickled into her dry throat, but it wasn’t enough to quench her thirst. She settled into a seat near Terrence and replaced the depleted magazines on her tac vest. Dom was scouring through the team’s first aid kits with Glenn. She didn’t envy his position. Renee’s life was more or less in his hands, and she could practically see the tension in the air between the Hunters in the pilothouse. Dom handed Renee a few pills, which she swallowed with evident effort. Once she’d choked them down, they had whispered back and forth, their words lost to the thrum of the diesel engine.

Meredith’s stomach twisted as she watched him pull out a syringe. Glenn gave him a knowing nod and helped hold Renee’s arm steady as Dom inserted the needle into her flesh. He depressed the plunger, said something else in a low voice to Renee, and then handed the used syringe to Glenn.

Dom stood, leaving Glenn to watch over Renee, and he trudged toward Meredith, his head hung low.

“You gave it to her?” she asked as he approached. By the look on his face, it seemed as if he already regretted his decision.

Instead of answering, Dom motioned her to follow him to a corner of the pilothouse near a window covered in black grime. There, she leaned against the bulkhead with her arms crossed. The first hints of dawn filtered into the grungy windows, accentuating the deep grooves and wrinkles in Dom’s face. A solid layer of dirt and dust coated the scruff along his chin and jaw. The bandages on his arms were a sickly golden color, stained by the muddy river and dried patches of blood. He looked every part the battle-worn soldier, and she imagined his appearance mirrored the weariness weighing on him now.

But when he locked eyes with her, there was a fire behind his steely blue-gray irises that spoke of his mental fortitude, the strength he relied on when leading the Hunters into battle. He placed a hand over his heart. “I decided to wait on the chelation therapy.”

The way he emphasized the pronoun gave Meredith pause. “But she didn’t want to. Did you give her a placebo or something?”

“Of course not,” Dom said. “She said she’d rather risk her own death than risk the lives of the crew. I told her I wouldn’t let it get to that point, so I gave her some painkillers and antibiotics. She’s in bad shape, Mere.”

Meredith narrowed her eyes, hating the creeping suspicion she felt regarding Dom’s decision. She hadn’t realized how strongly she felt about giving Renee the chelation therapy until after Dom’s choice had been made. “You sure that was the right move?”

“Nothing in this business is one-hundred percent.” He grabbed her hand, playing his fingers between hers. “You know that as well as I do. But given our intel, I believe I made the right call to preserve our assets in the field.”

The subtly facetious delivery of that line almost made Meredith laugh. Their handlers at the CIA had always refused to acknowledge that Dom and Meredith were actual humans, not just assets, and the duo had often mocked the way their handlers told them to retrieve other “assets” from compromising situations. That usually translated to saving their fellow agents’ asses because shit had hit the fan. His use of their inside joke gave her slightly more confidence that Dom’s mind was still there.

Her guard melted. “I want to believe you made the right choice.”

“So do I.” He held her hands flat against his palms and massaged the tops of her fingers with his thumb. “I don’t think Renee is infected.” His thumb paused on the nail of Meredith’s index finger. “What’s the one surefire symptom? The one part of the puzzle she was missing?”

Her eyes shot instinctively to Renee’s hands, folded in the woman’s lap as she sat against the bulkhead.

“Calcification,” Meredith said. “Right.”

Dom nodded. “If you see the nails start turning yellow and bony growths forming, you don’t have much time. Renee’s nails are completely clean. Should something change, we act immediately. For now, the best thing we can do is let her rest.”

“Okay,” Meredith said.

“I think we’re doing what’s best for her.” He let her hands go and turned to look out over the river. “I’m not crazy, right?”

Meredith was taken aback. “I, uh, don’t think so. At least, what you just said makes sense.”

“No,” he said. “That’s not what I mean. Look, Meredith, I’d never ask this of anyone else on the team, but I need your honesty. No sugarcoating it.” He took off his helmet and brushed his hand through his sweat-matted hair. “I thought I heard a person cry out in the forest when those Imps attacked. I swear to God. And I’ve had this terrible feeling that something’s been watching us—or maybe that we’ve forgotten something. But I just can’t put my finger on it.”

Meredith hesitated, her lips pressed into a thin, straight line. “No, I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“For a former field agent, you’d be an awful poker player. You do. You think I’m crazy.”

Meredith turned her head away. “No, not exactly. Not crazy. But I’ve noticed you’ve been off.”

Dom smoothed out his hair then replaced his helmet. “All right, that’s what I was afraid of.” He sighed. “Look, I know what I heard. I know what I’ve seen. And I’ve learned to trust my instincts. But if you have an ounce of doubt in me, I’m worried the others might, too.”

“You want me to do something about that?”

“No, no. That’s my job. But here’s the deal.” He leaned in closer. “If you really think I’m off my rocker, if I’m going all Colonel Kurtz and this really is my Heart of Darkness...well, you know me better than anyone else out here.” He exhaled with deliberate slowness, his chest deflating. “Shit, you probably know me better than I know myself.”

The songs of unseen birds filled the cabin as dawn light burst over the jungle’s canopy. Leaves in the distant branches of trees swayed and danced as if they were greeting it. Meredith couldn’t tell if it was from Titans stalking through the forest or just the innocent rustle of the wind. In her mind’s eye, she saw Dom leading them through the burned husk of Bikoro, past shuttered and bombed-out homes and ruined markets into the den of an unknown enemy with equally unknown strength.

Was he up to the task? Did she trust him?

“Meredith?” Dom asked, breaking her reverie.

“If you turn into Kurtz, I can be your Marlow. I’ll bring you back from the darkness,” she promised.

One way or another, she would not let him go down that path.

-27-

Frank banked the Robinson R44 hard over the Chesapeake. Whitecaps glinted in the unobstructed sunlight, while sea craft ranging from twenty-foot sailboats to a luxury cruise liner floated on the bay. Some of the ships showed signs of life, people struggling to survive in the only safe place they knew: the open water.

Columns of smoke rose from towns lining the coast, and if Frank looked hard enough, he could see sidewalks tattooed in crimson splotches beside the burned-out shells of cars and restaurants, clothing stores and coffee shops, gas stations and schools. Society had collapsed in on itself, brought to its knees by the monsters prowling the streets and flitting through parks and forests, their heads tilted curiously as they watched the chopper fly by.

A Goliath clobbered its way through a pack of Skulls then rammed its shoulder into the front of a house. A plume of dust rose as wood and glass shattered, spraying across the Skulls clamoring to get in. The Goliath disappeared into the structure, and Frank watched helplessly, imagining the desperate screams of the house’s inhabitants. He could do nothing for them but watch the Skulls rush inside. He turned away from the slaughter and looked at Leigh. Dirt covered her cheeks and sweatshirt, and her eyes were still swollen and red from crying. She used the back of her hand to wipe a trail of snot dripping from her nose.

Frank expected her to continue her statue-like vigil in silence. But she surprised him. “My dad...my mom, my sister. They’re gone, aren’t they?”

“Well—”

“I’m not a baby,” Leigh said. “I know they’re dead. I saw them. I know I said all those things when we were leaving, but...but I know what happened.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Leigh’s brows scrunched as her eyes roved over the landscape. “Not with a stranger.” She looked at Frank, seeming to consider him. “I don’t even know your name, or why you were at the airport, or anything about you.”

“I understand. We don’t have to talk.”

A long beat of silence passed before Leigh broke it again.

“So, what’s your name?” she asked tentatively.

“Frank,” he said. “Frank Battaglia.”

“How do you know how to fly helicopters? Did you know my dad?” the girl asked.

He could see the thoughts behind her red-rimmed eyes, the question she was really asking. He knew because when his wife and son had left him, he had clung to every memory, recited every story to anyone willing to listen. Leigh didn’t care about Frank’s skills as a pilot—she wanted to hear something about her dad. She wanted something to hang on to, anything to remember Leonard when he’d been himself, the loving father she remembered instead of the monster he’d become.

“I’m sorry,” Frank said, unable to bring himself to lie. “I never met your father.”

Letting out a soft sigh, Leigh gazed down as she wrung her hands. Frank could see the calm before the storm in her defeated expression.

“You wouldn’t believe it, but I worked in the very same office before your dad took it over,” Frank began.

He told her about his first solo flights. How he served in the National Guard. And about his wife and son, about how much his boy used to love staring out over the Potomac Valley when they were up in a helicopter, watching all the tiny cars below.

And then he told her about losing them both.

He couldn’t help himself. Everything was too raw, too real. The ghosts haunting the Manassas Helicopter Flight Training School had hitched a ride with him.

Frank forced a wide smile. “I’m a hell of a talker, huh? Bet you didn’t think you’d get a free show with the flight.”

But Leigh didn’t smile. Instead, she looked up at him, tears brimming in her puppy-dog eyes, and gave his hand a gentle pat. “I’m sorry about your family.”

“Me too,” Frank said, his grin fading. He banked the chopper over the Chesapeake as a flock of gulls beat the air, trailing after the boats wallowing below.

“I don’t ever want to land,” Leigh said, leaning against the window and peering down.

“You ever seen a bird fly while it’s sleeping?” Frank asked her.

Leigh shook her head. “No, it’d crash!”

Frank shrugged. “That’s why we got to land eventually.”

“But I don’t want to. We can’t.” Leigh’s face turned red, and her eyes gleamed with the threat of more tears.

“Don’t worry,” Frank said. “I know a place that’s safe from the monsters, where people are still living and protecting each other. That sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

“Are you telling the truth?”

“I’m more honest than Abe.”

“Fine,” Leigh said. Then she scowled. “Will those monsters ever go away? I want to go back to school. I want to see my friends again. I want to see Grandma and Grandpa.”

There was no shielding her from the truth, not when they had a literal bird’s-eye view of civilization’s ruins, the drifting smoke and dancing flames, the packs of Skulls, Goliaths, and Droolers roaming the Earth. He couldn’t tell her everything would be all right. She wouldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t either.

“Things don’t look good,” Frank said, “but I’m part of a group trying to stop the monsters.”

Leigh tilted her head, considering him skeptically. “Really?”

“More honest than Abe,” he repeated.

She looked away. “Those monsters. They hurt my dad. They made him one of them. And then he...he took my sister and mom.” When she turned to face Frank, there was a fire burning in her light-blue eyes. “I want to help you stop them.”

Frank was taken aback by the sudden fury. “That’s real brave, Leigh, but I’m dropping you off with a friend. She’ll keep you safe.”

Midshipman Rachel Kaufman was a trusted ally. She might also be his only way of getting in touch with Dom and the others. Dom had given her a radio capable of secure communication with the Huntress, and Frank prayed she would still be on Kent with the device.

But as they drew closer to Kent, he saw Coast Guard cutters drifting through the bay. A menagerie of green transport trucks idled on the south end of the island, and several Black Hawks sat on a wide parking lot next to a hotel surrounded by golden sandstone walls. The sight of the military mobilizing forces on the island sent shudders through his flesh as he recalled the way General Kinsey had suckered the Hunters into the trap at the NIH.

Going into Kent Island as Frank Battaglia might not be the best plan.

He turned to Leigh. “I think I’m going to need your help after all.”

“Okay,” Leigh said. “I’ll do it. Anything.”

“You a good actress?”

She nodded.

“Then let me tell you how we’re going to have to do this.”

Frank relayed his impromptu plan to her, hoping the young girl would follow through. Their lives might very well depend on it. Minutes later, they touched down at the small airport on Kent. Soldiers rushed in around them, brandishing weapons, no doubt leery of anyone landing on the island with potentially contagious passengers. The soldiers shouted at them as the chopper blades wound down, and Frank gave Leigh a final reassuring glance.

“Ready for this?”

Her head bobbed. “Yeah, I can do it. Just got to pretend you’re my dad.”

“Exactly.” He unlocked the chopper door, stepped out, and was immediately assaulted by a squad pointing weapons at him and probing him for any signs of a Skull infection. The intensity of the search, the aggressive voices and commands, unnerved him, and he could only imagine how Leigh was feeling. He prayed she was as strong as he thought she was.

For his sake. For her sake.

***

Navid rotated a glass flask. Tiny translucent beads swirled in a solution as he studied the temperature reading on the hot plate under the flask. “You can never check the temperature too many times.”

“Too hot, and they all denature and melt. Too cold, they don’t form,” Kara said, repeating the words he’d told her earlier.

A smile crossed Navid’s face. “Right. And the speed—”

“Is just as important,” she finished for him.

She had followed his every move, sticking closer to him than his shadow. This morning, she had known nothing about polymer synthesis or nanoparticle formation or albumin. Now, Navid figured, she could repeat this whole damn procedure on her own. It had taken him the better part of a year of PhD work to perfect the process. He took a certain amount of pride in knowing his new pupil was ready to apply it herself.

“Hopefully,” he said, “if we got these beads right, they’ll contain pockets of the Phoenix Compound.”

“Kind of like paintballs?” Kara asked.

“Yeah. The albumin particle coating should help deliver the compound past the blood-brain barrier. Either it’ll work perfectly, or else we’ll discover that I wasted the last five years of my research.”

“It’ll work,” Kara said with stoic confidence. Navid wished he shared it. Too many experiments had failed during graduate school. The ambient humidity could entirely derail nanoparticle synthesis in a lab. Leave the hot plate on too long—even just a couple of minutes—and the beads disappeared, melting into the solution as quickly as they had appeared. Make the solution too acidic or too basic, and the precious pharmaceutical cargo the beads were supposed to hold might be destroyed.

Navid switched off the hot plate and turned off the stirring mechanism. The white pill-shaped magnetic stirring rod froze in place within the flask.

“Dinner’s ready,” he said as he lifted the flask from the plate. He let it cool on a lab bench.

Lauren turned from a nearby computer monitor. “Divya and Sean are prepping another organ-on-a-chip. Should be ready soon.”

Sean gave a thumbs-up from a stool next to the biosafety cabinet where he and Divya sat. “Right-o.”

Once the beads had settled enough, Navid slowly poured the flask’s contents into a set of plastic tubes. “Can’t be too careful. We don’t want to lose any of this. The stuff in this tube cost more than I made in a year on my graduate student stipend.”

“Yikes,” Kara said.

He deposited the tubes into a centrifuge machine and closed its lid. The tubes began to spin at over ten thousand RPM. “This will collect all the beads on the bottom so we can just pour the excess liquid off,” he explained for Kara’s benefit. He was enjoying being a teacher—or maybe she was just an exceptional student. Once the timer beeped, he showed Kara the results, holding the tubes, one by one, up to the fluorescent lights. “See the tiny pellet? The beads have stuck together to form one big clump.”

He gave the tubes to Divya and Sean. The scientists took over the experiment, administering the new nanoparticle-coated Phoenix Compound to the organ-on-a-chip within their biosafety cabinets. A long, slow breath escaped Navid. This had to work. He didn’t have the luxury of repeating an experiment dozens of times, troubleshooting it as he went until he finally achieved results worth publishing in a dusty academic journal that four or five people might read.

This time, his work mattered. Success meant saving millions of lives. He’d pursued a PhD in the hope of making a difference. It was a bitter irony that his dreams would only be realized during the darkest of nightmares.

“Yo, Navid, you with us?” Kara asked, snapping her fingers.

“Yeah, sorry. Just lost in thought.”

She shot him a sympathetic glance. He gave her a smile he hoped look strong and reassuring.

“Looks like you two are done for now,” Lauren said to them, interrupting the moment between them. “Want to go grab a bite to eat? I need to mull something over with the two of you.”

“With us?” Kara raised a questioning eyebrow.

“My other scientists are busy,” Lauren said, nodding to the rest of the team embroiled in work. “And this requires fresh, creative minds. The rest of us crusty old lab rats are too set in our ways.”

“Happy to do what we can,” Navid said.

They followed Lauren through the medical bay, where Peter was studying their patients’ charts. He gave Lauren a subtle nod, indicating Tammy was still stable and recovering. But the woman’s heart troubles weren’t what frightened Navid. Maybe her near-death experience was the sign of some pathogen boiling over in the woman’s body. A transmissible virus or bacteria could wreak as much havoc aboard this ship as the Oni Agent.

He pushed the thought from his mind as Lauren ushered them into the passageway leading to the mess hall. When they reached it, the doctor encouraged them to find a table while she ducked into the galley. She returned with a tray full of MREs and glasses of water. Sounds of ripping plastic and clunking plasticware permeated the air as they dug into their meals.

“I’ve got something I need to show you.” Lauren took a gulp of water and then set a computer tablet on the table between them. She pressed Play on a video. The screen fizzled gray before lighting up in mottled greens and blacks.

“The Hunters’ cam feeds,” Kara said.

In the shaky feed, Skulls scurried around branches and roots, jumping with the adeptness of acrobats. They were diminutive, but they possessed far more strength than a child—even a child turned Skull.

“It can’t be...” Navid looked up from the screen and locked eyes with Lauren. “The Oni Agent is zoonotic.”

“That’s what we think. Those things were monkeys. The Hunters are calling them Imps. Navid, you’re the neuro expert—does that make sense to you?”

Navid nodded. “It does. That’s what scared me back in Mount Vernon, when I voted to inject Maggie with the chelation treatment.”

“Why does it matter if monkeys can become Skulls? The Phoenix Compound is going to work. I know it will,” Kara said.

“I think eventually we can make it work,” Lauren said. Navid noted the hesitancy in her voice. “But there are a couple of things I need to know. First, how likely is it that the Oni Agent can spread between animals and humans? Is this just a one-off affecting this specific species?”

“If it spreads to primates,” Navid started, trying to keep his voice from shaking as he considered the implications, “then there are bound to be dozens of other species affected. It’s not like HIV or something that can only be passed between animals of a very similar genetic and chemical makeup. Prions are far more resilient. I mean, think of Mad Cow disease. The prions that make cow brains look like Swiss cheese do the same thing to humans. And they can affect everything from sheep and goats to mice.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Dark clouds hung behind Lauren’s eyes. “In suburban America, the human Skulls probably slaughtered most of the surviving pets and livestock. Might be why we didn’t notice so many animals-turned-Skulls there.”

Kara’s eyes widened, and she dropped her plastic fork into her mac and cheese. “But in the Congo...”

“There are hundreds of species that know the jungles better than we do. Thousands, millions of animals maybe, that might have been affected,” Lauren said.

Navid’s brain skipped into overdrive. “My God. The Oni Agent has done unpredictable things to people. Droolers, Goliaths. What in the hell is it going to do to animals?”

-28-

The low chugging of the diesel engines was comfortingly familiar to Dom. It reminded him of his days at sea before the Huntress, back when he was first learning to sail. The stench of boat fuel evoked a deep-seated nostalgia, and he pictured the gulls squawking overhead as he worked on his first yacht. When he had purchased the boat using his discretionary funds as a CIA officer, it had been a mess. Mildew covered the shredded vinyl upholstery in the lower deck cabin. Half the gauges at the flying bridge were cracked, and most didn’t work at all.

It was an ugly boat. But it was his boat. Weekends of work went into making the craft first seaworthy, then presentable. After a couple years, he had made it downright luxurious. The craft fit in with the crowds of luxury boats clustering in harbors from the Grand Cayman Islands to small island towns off the coast of Croatia.

Meredith had told him she’d only sail with him when the yacht no longer looked like it was a shipwreck waiting to happen. And on one blustery day in mid-October, decades past, Dom had taken her up on that offer.

“It’s so nice,” she had said. “It’s a damn shame you can’t throw a party on here.”

“No kidding,” Dom had said. “Would love to show this beauty off.” He had shown her the small galley, the heads, and the cabins on the lower deck. As she toured the craft, he had noticed a glint in her eyes, like there was something she was thinking but not telling him. They had gone back up to the aft deck, where the cool autumnal breeze blew over them, bringing with it the scent of brine.

“What do you think?” he had asked.

“Boss ain’t going to like it,” she had said. Meredith had never been one to mince words, then or now.

“I even put in my own money on this one.”

“Yeah, yeah, but they’re still not about to let you cruise the world in this looking for terrorists. It’s too...James Bond.”

“But that’s what makes it work. It’s a mobile safe house.”

A furrow had crossed Meredith’s brow, and the wind had tousled her hair. Dom remembered how her hair had shone that day, rivaling the red of a sunset. It hadn’t been important then; he’d seen her as nothing more than a close friend and work partner. It made all the difference now. She had started him on the path leading to the man he was today, and the task he’d given himself to fight the Oni Agent almost singlehandedly.

“You need something more,” Meredith had said. “Something to justify using this ship.” A mischievous grin had cut over her face. “That second guest cabin is pretty swank. I mean, it’s bigger than my apartment. How do you feel about a laboratory at sea?”

And just like that, the seed had been planted. Although the yacht was long gone, the things he’d learned aboard it had helped him choose the Huntress and her crew.

But this ferry was nothing like the ship he’d grown to love. It lurched like a dinghy in a monsoon even with the gentlest of waves on the Congo. Creaks echoed up and down its superstructure, and the smell of death rode with the boat like a ghostly passenger. Besides the odor of diesel, the only thing familiar about this craft was its crew.

“Looks like we got a couple of followers,” Meredith said, staring out a porthole. Several Skulls were loping along the shore. Most of the monsters that tried to keep pace with the ferry had fallen away. Either they had drowned in the murky depths of the winding river, or the knots of branches and roots had become too much for them. Foliage snagged their spikes and jutting bony appendages, snaring them and slowing them until they could no longer keep up.

But the three still chasing them were the Olympic champions of Skulls. They ducked under tree limbs and used their claws like machetes, cutting through vines and leaves blocking their path.

“Andris,” Dom said, turning to the Hunter.

Andris turned from his perch on a stool beside Renee’s still form. He nodded, slowly standing, and grabbed his MK11. He trod to the hatch of the pilothouse and opened the door. Bracing himself on the handrails, he sighted the Skulls. Three quick suppressed shots later, the monsters lay in heaps of bone and blood, their bodies ready to be retaken by the voracious jungle. With no apparent joy, Andris sat himself next to Renee again and set to cleaning his rifle. Glenn dabbed at Renee’s forehead with a wet rag in an attempt to cool the fever that had taken hold.

Dom eyed Renee’s hands. No sign of yellow or bony growths. If she had been infected with the Oni Agent, the bones in her fingers would have long since protruded into wicked, hooking claws. Glenn peeled back one of her eyelids and shone his flashlight, checking for the spider-webbing crimson vessels signaling the onset of an Oni Agent transformation. Her eyes were clear but unfocused.

Dom’s stomach lurched with a wave of worry and hunger. Should eat. Can’t eat, Dom thought. Terrence shot Dom a worried glance from his post at the wheel. The ferry slowly curved around another clot of wrecked fishing boats. Dom waved Terrence’s concern away.

He needed to be doing something, anything.

“She’ll be okay,” Meredith said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

The small bit of comfort Meredith offered did nothing to stem the tide of anxiety and guilt. He felt as though everything he had done, from that first yacht to now, had been building up to this moment. He’d started the chain of events that had led to the deaths of those who had trusted him. He approached Renee with quiet footsteps so as not to disturb her.

Andris scooted aside and let Dom settle into a spot on the deck next to the woman. Her eyelids fluttered slightly. Veins burned blue beneath the sickly pallor of her flesh. Her mouth worked, opening and closing as if she was trying to say something. She licked her cracked lips. Whatever was eating her insides, the antibiotics and other precautions Lauren had suggested seemed to be doing very little.

An unexpected smile inched over her face. “When I was a girl,” she said, “I wanted to be a pirate.”

Dom tried to smile back. “And that’s why you became a Hunter?”

Renee let out a laugh. It sounded more like the ratcheting cough of an eighty-year-old man suffering from emphysema. “No, that’s why I became a gymnast.”

She’d told the crew stories of the Olympic aspirations that had never come to fruition, but her gymnastics background had always been part of her. From the way she carried herself with a certain grace aboard the Huntress to her uncanny poise and quick reflexes in the field, there was no doubt about her athletic prowess. In his mind’s eye, Dom saw her leaping up the ladder to the IBSL, climbing toward the oil derrick on their first mission involving the Oni Agent. Her hands had met each rung with the surety of a gecko scaling a wall, carrying upward as if gravity itself had reversed its pull.

But now that strength was fading. Maybe gone.

“You became a gymnast because you wanted to be a pirate,” Dom echoed. “Not sure I follow the logic.”

“Oh, the logic’s there. Just got to open your eyes,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “How else can I make ready the sails and swing on ropes down from the crow’s nest? Gotta climb the rope ladders and leap aboard an enemy ship, you know.”

“I’m sorry you had to settle for the Huntress.”

“I’m not,” Renee said, her smile quivering wider. “Not one bit. Being a Hunter is so much better than being a pirate. You’re not just my crew; you’re my family.”

Dom pressed his lips straight, biting the inside of his cheeks.

“Don’t mean to get sappy on you, Captain,” Renee continued, “but there are some things that need to be said.”

“I’m sorry I got you hurt,” Dom said. “I’m sorry we didn’t turn back.”

Renee scowled. “Don’t say that. We can’t turn back. Not now. Not when so many lives depend on us. We don’t give up, and we don’t back down. Never. If you had tried to anchor us in the middle of the ocean to wait for this storm to blow over, I never would’ve forgiven you.”

“You would have mutinied,” Dom said with a dry chuckle. “Or you would’ve taken a Zodiac and gone on to fight the Skulls by yourself.”

“Until my last bullet,” she agreed. Renee coughed and then shot Dom a scornful look when she saw the pity etched across his face. “Stop that. I know what you’re thinking. If you had tried to drag me back to the ship through that horde, we’d all be dead.”

Dom didn’t acknowledge her scolding. “We’ve never operated in such a vacuum of intelligence.”

“No,” Renee said. “We’re used to someone doing the dirty work for us. Telling us where to go, who to take out, what to retrieve. No one else is going to do it for us anymore. We’re on our own.”

For a moment, fierce strength radiated through her eyes with all the brilliance of the sun. “We are what the world needs right now, Captain. We are the last resort.”

Then the strength faded, burned out just as quickly as it had ignited. Dom grabbed one of her hands, feeling the clamminess of her palm. “It’s going to be okay,” he said.

“You’re a terrible liar.” She made a playful gesture as if to punch him in the shoulder. On any other day, the blow would’ve left a bruise. But not today. Then her expression softened. “I’m about to get sappy again. Forgive me, okay?”

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

Renee’s fingers clenched tighter around Dom’s. “My dad left us when I was a kid. Not man enough to stick around, I guess. I wished I had a father like you.”

Dom’s shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes, unable to meet Renee’s gaze. She was all of thirty years old, but technically young enough to be his daughter. He’d never realized that he’d become a father figure to her, and the knowledge opened a hole in his heart, flooding him with emotion.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I failed you, Renee.”

He half expected her to scold him again, or to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. Anything would have been better than the silence that followed.

Her eyes stared at nothing. Vacant.

Renee’s fingers fell limp from his hand. He picked up her wrist and placed his ear above her mouth.

No pulse.

No breath.

With two fingers, Dom closed Renee’s eyes.

The rest of the crew stared, frozen. The tension in the air crept into Dom’s shoulders. His muscles quivered, and he closed his fingers so tightly around Renee’s wrist that they ached.

Not another one. Lost to the Skulls. Lost to the Oni Agent.

Renee was dead because he’d pushed her too hard, relied on her too much.

She’d taken the hit meant for him.

She’d thought of him as a father.

He couldn’t become a sniveling mess. He was supposed to be a soldier, a leader. A fighter. Strong as a boulder against the wind.

But this wind blew with ice and sand. It was wearing him down. The Hunters had lost so many. And now they’d lost Renee.

The ripples of her death spread in the pilothouse. Meredith trudged over to Dom and slumped beside him. She rested her head on his shoulder. Glenn wrapped his huge arms around Jenna, who buried her face into his chest. Andris stared blankly out the window, mumbling some prayer in Latvian and staring at the stars. Terrence punched his fist against the wheel, cursing under his breath even as a tear rolled down his cheek. Miguel rubbed his hand over his prosthetic, his eyes clenched tight as if he could will the tears not to flow.

Dom looked around, watching his team fall apart. Their numbers were depleted. The government had turned its back on them. Their families and friends had perished in the Oni Agent outbreak.

And still they chugged deeper into the Congo, closer to the place where he prayed and hoped they would find answers.

If they didn’t find what they were looking for in Bikoro, if Renee had died for nothing, Dom wasn’t sure he could go on fighting.

-29-

Meredith leaned against Dom and tightened her arm around his shoulder. He sat like a statue. His eyes stared straight ahead at some point only he could see.

The Hunters had witnessed death. Too much of it. Meredith had only just become a Hunter herself, and she hadn’t known Renee long. But the apocalypse had a funny way of bringing people closer together. Never had she imagined trusting so many people with her life in so short a time.

But now, watching the grief-stricken faces, the wracking sobs, pounding fists, and muttered curses and prayers, she felt like a stranger. Seeing the Hunters fall apart made her realize that although she was nominally a member of their ranks, she wasn’t really one of them. Meredith felt strangely alone and unnerved, as if she’d walked into the wrong room at a funeral home and intruded on someone else’s grief.

Waves lapped against the hull of the ferry. The ship rocked, and the broken windows around the pilothouse let in the songs of the jungle. Rustling branches. Territorial howling of primates—or were those Imps? Birds calling into the darkness. And the faraway hunting cry of a pack of Skulls.

Another shrill sound broke through the pilothouse. Meredith jumped to her feet, her heart thumping wildly. Dom’s focus turned to her, and he pressed a finger to his earpiece. The others quieted, each listening to the words coming through their comm links, sharing expressions of disbelief.

“Alpha, this is the Huntress,” Chao’s voice crackled over their comm links. “You’re not going to believe who we’ve got on the line.”

“Did y’all miss me something fierce?” Frank said in an affected Texan accent.

Silence met his remark. This should've been a moment for celebration. Frank had returned from the unknown, and apparently he had survived with his sense of humor intact.

Dom let out a slow sigh. “Frank. Good to hear from you.”

“Dom, you don’t sound—” Frank’s joking tone vanished. “Good God, Captain, did something happen? Something did happen, didn’t it?”

“It’s Renee.”

The line went silent. Static sizzled over the comm link for a moment.

A new voice picked up. “Dom, come again? What’s wrong with Renee?” Lauren said.

“She’s gone,” Dom said.

“Passed out again? What’s her pulse rate?”

“Lauren, she’s gone.”

“She...did she turn?”

“No, no. She’s not a Skull. She’s just dead.”

Another beat of silence. Meredith waited, wishing there was something she could do. Something she could say. But again she was reminded of how she was still an outsider. These people had served beside each other in secrecy for years while she sat behind a desk. All that time, she’d been sending the Hunters on covert missions without even knowing their names.

“I'm so sorry to hear that,” Lauren said, her voice shaky. “If she passed that quickly, it would’ve been impossible for you to get her to the ship on time. Even if you had, there’s likely nothing we could’ve done to make a difference.”

Dom nodded as if the doctor could see him. The others seemed to accept Lauren’s assurances, either because they wanted to or they truly believed them. But Meredith saw the doubt in Dom’s eyes.

Dom didn’t believe in impossibilities. He made the impossible happen. And worse yet, Lauren had mentioned there was “likely” nothing she could have done. That added bit of probability would leave a festering wound in Dom’s psyche for weeks, maybe months.

But to Dom’s credit, he stood and paced to the chart table. He set his smartwatch on the table, and it projected a map onto the surface showing the East Coast of the United States, the Atlantic Ocean, and the coast of Africa.

“Frank, I’m glad to hear your voice,” he said. “Thought we lost you, too. How did you find us? And more importantly, how do we get you back?”

“Long story short, I rescued a little girl, pretended to be her dad to get onto Kent Island, and then found those midshipmen we saved from Annapolis. They still had that radio you gave ’em. Oh, and I met Shepherd here, too. They said they’d help get me to the Huntress. We’re not quite sure how to get a chopper all the way to Africa. You wouldn’t happen to have one on hand, would you?”

“As a matter of fact, we do. We’ve got a Coastie Huey they were nice enough to leave behind when we evicted them out of the Huntress.”

“How in the hell...you know what? No. I won’t ask. Tell me later. Send me your coordinates, and I’ll work with Shepherd and the gang to see if I can get my ass over there.”

Dom looked at Renee and touched the screen of his watch. The map vanished. “Make it fast, Frank. We’re hurting without our personal airline again. Chao, send Frank those coordinates.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Chao’s voice rang out over the comm link. He went on, his tone somber. “We’ve got more news for you.”

Meredith’s heart sank.

“What is it?” Dom asked, locking eyes with Meredith as if she would know.

“I wanted to give you all a heads up,” Lauren answered. “I spoke with Navid about the Imps you saw. With Kara’s help, we sifted through the research literature. From what we know—and despite what we initially thought about Mad Cow disease—transmission of prions between different species is actually rather difficult and uncommon.”

“But the Oni Agent itself is what’s spreading, not prions, right?” Meredith asked, unable to keep from speaking up.

“Right. Since the Oni Agent is both the contagion and the prion factory, it might be able to jump between species more easily than previously studied prion diseases.”

“Apes and primates can become Skulls then?” Meredith asked.

“That’s our best guess.”

Meredith scratched the bandage over her ear. “What about other animals?”

“We don’t know how the calcification aspect of the Oni Agent might work in other animals, but we think the prions should only affect mammals. Still, from primates to wild dogs, there are about four hundred different mammalian species.”

“Moral of the story,” Miguel said, “we got to watch our asses better.”

“Yeah, you could say that,” Lauren said.

“Understood. How about updates on the Phoenix Compound?” Dom asked.

“Navid designed a delivery system that theoretically gets it past the blood-brain barrier. Divya and Sean are testing it now.”

“Good. Anything else to report?”

A chorus of “No, Captain” rang out over the line.

The brief communication ended. Meredith took comfort in hearing of Frank’s return, but the cloud Renee’s death had cast still hung heavy over the Hunters. The promise of being one step closer to a real cure did little to buoy their moods against the threat of hundreds of species of creatures turned Skull. All around, the Hunters shared glum looks—Dom included.

The glow of the sun spread like a distant wave breaking over gray clouds and the verdant canopy of the jungle. Already Meredith could feel the heat of the unrelenting sun burn through the windows and onto her skin.

Dom crouched near Renee. He put a hand on her shoulder as he stared at Glenn and Jenna. “Prepare her for a burial at sea.”

The duo nodded. Jenna disappeared into a storage closet and returned with a plastic tarp. Glenn helped her wrap Renee’s body in it.

“How long until Bikoro?” Meredith asked Terrence.

The man studied the charts lying on the rust-pocked table near him and peered through the cracked glass over several gauges. “At this rate, we’ve got anywhere from three days to a week or more depending on the conditions of the river.”

“Why, you got a hot date with the chief?” Miguel asked.

“Yeah, this is such a romantic cruise.” Meredith forced a grin. It seemed humor was Miguel’s best tool to deal with crises. But it wasn’t enough right now. No laughter, no smiles from the others. Bruises and scars covered their skin, but it wasn’t the physical injuries that worried her.

Dark thoughts could be as infectious as any plague, and emotions could fester like an untreated wound. After a week trapped on this boat, she doubted any of them would be in good shape to take on whatever awaited the Hunters in Bikoro.

***

Soldiers’ boots crunched over the gravel road outside the empty diner where Frank sat. He handed the radio to Rachel, and she stowed it in her pack. Beside her was Rory. Leigh sat sullenly next to Frank, and Shepherd was in civilian clothes on a chair at the end of the booth. Shepherd, it seemed, was determined to keep a low profile, biding his time. General Kinsey had accused him of some pretty damning stuff, and Shepherd was keeping his head down until the general pardoned him or declared him dead.

“So they’re almost seven thousand nautical miles away,” Frank said to the group. “Anyone on Kent invent teleportation while I was away?”

“Seems like someone did, but they only let Skulls use it,” Rachel said. “Damn things keep attacking.”

Shepherd scratched at the graying stubble along his chin. “That chopper you landed here with isn’t going to make it across the Atlantic, is it?”

“Not unless we turn it into a boat,” Frank said.

“You could take a boat. Catch up to the Huntress,” Rory said. “I’d be happy to help. Rachel and I can sail.”

Frank sighed. “How long do you think a transatlantic sail from here to the Congo is going to take?”

“Say you get two hundred nautical miles a day, at best.” Rachel played with a dusty fork, scratching it along the table. “With favorable winds, maybe fifteen or twenty days on a forty-foot catamaran. Longer on a monohull.”

“Not fast enough,” Frank said. “The Hunters will be in Bikoro before we’re even a quarter of the way over the ocean. Apparently they discovered new types of Skulls over there, and I’m not going to let them traipse back through a jungle full of monsters when I could be flying them out.”

Leigh squirmed next to him.

“Don’t worry, you’re safe from those things here,” Frank said.

“I’m not scared,” Leigh said. “But you’re going to leave me, aren’t you?”

Frank looked at the others as if they would know what to say or do. She was right. He was abandoning her here. There was no safe way to drag her across the Atlantic with him.

“I’m sorry, Leigh,” Frank said. “We don’t have a choice. But you did good. You helped me get on the island, and now, because of that, I’m going to do what I promised. I’m going to help fight those monsters.”

Leigh’s bottom lip trembled, but she sat up straighter. “Okay, but you have to keep that promise.”

“I will,” Frank said. “With the help of these good people, I’m going to find a way to reach Africa.”

Shepherd nodded, as did Rachel.

Rory dragged his finger over a paper map he had unfolded over the table. “To get there in time, you’ll have to fly. It’s too far for a helicopter, right?”

“Right,” Frank said.

“Damn.” Shepherd glanced out the diner’s dusty window. Across the road, a small airfield sat with military and civilian aircraft parked along the meager runway. “No way we’re taking a plane out of there. Military keeps watch twenty-four, seven.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “I wouldn’t want to steal a plane from Kent anyway. The people here need those resources.”

Rachel tapped her fingers on her fork, and Rory massaged his temple, all of them racking their brains. There had to be some way to cross the ocean without losing weeks of valuable time. As they had all learned with the Oni Agent rampaging across the world, too much could change in a week.

The rumbling chug of a single-prop plane echoed over the road. A white Cessna started down the runway, headed off for some surveillance or transport mission.

An idea popped into Frank’s mind. It was a long shot. Dangerous. Maybe suicidal. But if it worked...

“Anyone know where the closest FedEx facilities are?”

-30-

The shrouded body sank with a gurgle of bubbles in muddy water. Meredith watched Renee disappear into the Congo River. The Hunters stood at the stern of the ferry as the sweltering afternoon heat burned off the last wisps of humid fog. This wasn’t a proper burial at sea, but they’d had little choice. A body would decompose quickly in this heat. This was the best they could do for her now.

“The world should know the sacrifices she made,” Meredith said.

“Wish we could tell everyone there’s someone fighting for them,” Dom said. “It’s not a matter of personal pride or ego. Renee never wanted a medal or anything. She just wanted to do good and help people. But it stings that she died in disgrace, that people out there think we’re traitors. The army, the CIA, whoever the hell is out there pulling all these strings—they’ve got a lot to answer for.”

Miguel joined them, offering a bleak smile. “That’s what’ll make kicking their asses all that much sweeter, Chief.”

“Yes,” Andris said, his gaze frozen on the spot where Renee had slipped beneath the surface. “I will enjoy watching the fear in their eyes before I pull the trigger.”

A Skull loped along the shore, screaming. Several more joined it. But the ferry chugged onward, leaving the beasts tangled in the roots and foliage. At least the jungle hampered the Skulls as much as it did the Hunters. Meredith thought about the trails she’d loved to hike back home. How much longer until nature, ever hungry, reclaimed the parks, the suburbs, even the cities?

She leaned over the railing. The wake of the ferry lapped against the shore. Even if they survived this madness, even if they stopped the Oni Agent, what then? What if it was already too late for man to take back the world?

Jenna was by Glenn, their heads bowed in silence. Miguel’s forced good cheer had faded, and he stood in tense, gloomy silence. Andris had ducked back into the pilothouse to join Terrence. She had started to think of these people as friends, maybe even family, but it seemed they didn’t feel quite the same way. The bonds formed between them had developed over years, and there was nothing she could do to make up for that.

She stood next to Dom. Wind whipped across them both, kicking up the short wisps of dirty-blond hair he’d let grow in. Dark smears covered his face—dirt he’d never had the time or water to spare to clean off. He said nothing to acknowledge her presence, but soon she felt his rough, calloused fingers intertwine with hers. Even if everything else went to shit around them, she prayed that they would at least have each other.

“Maybe this is the wrong time,” Meredith started, “but what happens after all this is over?”

“We rebuild,” Dom said.

“No, I mean us. Am I with you just because we’re fighting the Oni Agent together? Just because of circumstance?”

Dom brushed a finger along the railing, and his eyes traced over the dark water below. He said nothing.

“Is this relationship real, or just an escape for us when everything else is going to hell?”

“I’m shit at this, Mere,” Dom said.

She paused, watching him, waiting for him to continue, and he looked at her, his eyes meeting hers again.

“I’m not good at this relationship stuff. I think...I think Bethany would’ve told you that much. You probably know that much.” He squeezed her hand. “I never thought about us as much more than partners.”

“Not even friends?”

“It was work. It was always work with me. Even the people—like you—that I thought were my closest friends. I couldn’t get past seeing how relationships affected my career.”

“You mean benefited it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I do. That’s why Bethany, my goddamn wife, for Heaven’s sake, was always a low priority when my relationship with her came against work. Do I accept a new assignment or take a trip with her?”

A heavy weight settled in Meredith’s gut. She was ready for him to tell her that he could never change that. That he was wired that way, and he couldn’t promise anything.

“And now,” he began again, “I know how stupid I’ve been.”

His words surprised her as he continued.

“I lost years of my relationship with my family, with my daughters, that I’m never going to get back. Hell, I took you for granted, but I promise I’m not going to do that again.”

“So when this is all over—”

“When this is all over, I hope to God you’ll still want to be with me,” he said. “When we’re through with the Oni Agent, I want to be on a beach with you and my daughters and Maggie and never leave your sides again.”

“A beach?” Meredith asked, a bit of her loneliness fading away. “You already decided without consulting me?”

“I told you I was shit at this.”

She laughed, placing her hand on his arm, and laid her head on his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her in close.

“A beach is fine,” she said. “A beach is just fine.”

***

Dom tried to close his eyes. He lay next to Meredith on a makeshift mattress of ragged blankets and tarps they’d pulled together from around the ship. He heard rustling from other spots in the pilothouse. Sleep was a difficult foe to conquer these days. He kept replaying his last conversation with Renee, her words floating through his mind like a cloud of dandelion seeds on the wind. Gentle, peaceful, delicately beautiful. He wished he had said more to her, expressed his admiration for her as a Hunter and a leader. Gratitude for her friendship and support. Love.

“You awake?” Meredith whispered. Moonlight played across her face, revealing eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. Her hands were folded under her head.

“I’m exhausted, but goddamn it if my mind won’t listen to my body.”

Meredith let out a low chuckle. “Isn’t that the truth? I never—”

A thump sounded outside, like something clunking against metal. Glenn straightened at his position behind the wheel. Miguel jumped to his feet, and Terrence sat up, blinking and confused.

Andris and Jenna were both on watch. His voice broke over Dom’s comm link. “Captain, I heard a suspicious noise. Jenna and I are going to investigate.”

“Copy,” Dom said. “We heard it too.”

He strapped on his tac vest and body armor then grabbed his rifle and his helmet. Meredith and the others did the same. The noise might have been nothing more than a falling branch slapping against the deck or the ferry hitting a rotting log just under the water’s surface. But Dom had long since learned to assume the worst where Skulls were concerned.

The ferry jerked and then crawled to a halt. Sickening grinding noises echoed up from the engine compartment, shattering the illusion of the peaceful night. The entire vessel stopped as if an invisible hand had grabbed it, and Dom fell forward, barely grasping the chart table in time to steady himself. Meredith grabbed his shoulder for balance.

Miguel was not so lucky. His helmet cracked against a stanchion. The impact rang out hollowly, but the Hunter quickly got back to his feet. “Damn, Glenn, where’d you learn how to drive?”

Glenn’s brow furrowed as he played with the ship’s controls, trying desperately to get the engines back online. “You don’t think the damn props are fouled again, do you?”

“I don’t want anyone going out there in the dark to fix them if they have,” Dom said. He chinned his comm link. “Andris, Jenna, report?”

“Negative,” Jenna replied. “Can’t seem to find anything.” There was a beat of silence. “Wait a second, what is—”

A blast of gunfire drowned out her words. Dom ran out of the pilothouse, scrambling down the ladders to their position. Another salvo flashed against the dark night. Meredith and Miguel’s footsteps pounded behind him.

“Glenn, Terrence, stay on guard,” Dom said over the comm link.

“You guys have all the fun,” Miguel muttered.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Terrence said, talking over Miguel. “We’ve got eyes on you from up here.”

More gunfire blasted.

“Jenna, Andris, what’s going on?”

“Those damn Imps,” Jenna said. “A few of them landed on the portside.”

Dom searched the open sky. “Where the fuck did they come from? The nearest tree branches are a good twenty yards away.”

“No idea,” Jenna said. “Spotted at least a half dozen.”

Meredith scanned the shoreline with her rifle. “Don’t see any contacts on either side of the river.”

“Nothing in the trees,” Miguel said.

They continued running over the deck, dodging between cars toward where Jenna and Andris stood. The duo aimed into the shadows with their rifles, but there were no more flashes of gunfire.

“By my count, there is still one left,” Andris said. “Not sure where he went.”

A screech on Dom’s left side answered that question. An Imp flew at him in a storm of fur and bone and claws. He dropped, barely dodging the creature. Its body slammed against the side of a van, puncturing the rusted metal. The agile monster wasted no time in leaping at Dom again.

Meredith tried to fire at it, but the Imp was too fast. It zigzagged as it bounced, becoming a white blur. Dom’s muscles tensed. The monster wailed as it soared at him with talons aimed straight for his neck. Again, Dom dodged and tried to bat the creature away. The Imp ducked. Its tail whipped out, catching Dom’s rifle and knocking it out of his hands. The weapon’s strap dug into his shoulder as the rifle slapped to his side.

Dom tried to sidestep the little beast. His boot caught on a loose piece of luggage, and he hit the deck hard. Pain radiated through his shoulder. Meredith battered the Skull with the stock of her rifle. She fired on it but succeeded only in adding a series of holes in an already-beaten Civic.

“Chief!” Miguel said as he ran toward Dom.

“I’m fine!” Dom yelled back. He stood, ready for the creature’s next assault. This time he wouldn’t let it catch him off guard.

The monster stared at him, seeming to size him up, its yellow eyes glowing. Another screech sounded behind him, and he was forced to spin. His rifle came up just in time to block the slicing claws of another Skull.

“I thought you said there was only one!” Dom said.

“I may have made a slight miscalculation, Captain,” Andris replied. “My sincere apologies.”

The sounds of bone cracking against metal rang out as Dom parried the strikes of the second creature. He heard the grunts and yells of Miguel and Meredith as they tried to catch the first. The Imp attacking Dom bounced from vehicle to vehicle, teasing him like the ruthless monkey it had been. Its tail lashed out, forcing Dom to stay on his toes. He wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Animals turning to Skulls! It was like some sadistic joke.

But joke or not, this Imp wanted him dead.

The monster surged at him again, and Dom clenched his jaw. Not this time, asshole. He swung his rifle at where he guessed the Imp would dodge. Dom was rewarded by the crack of metal against bone. The monster flew into a car window. Safety glass rained down on its body as it slumped into the front seat. Dom sprinted toward the car, drew his knife, and stabbed straight into the monster’s tiny chest. The metal cracked through overgrown ribs, and blood sputtered out between the fissures in its skeletal armor. The one good thing about these bastards being so little was that their armor was nothing compared to the strength of human-sized Skulls.

Satisfied it had died, Dom turned from the creature to see Meredith and Miguel cornering the last Imp. Its eyes darted between them, waiting for one of them to make a move before it threw itself at the Hunters’ faces. Dom twisted his rifle up and fired at the beast. It crumpled in a pool of its own blood.

“Damn, Chief, stealing my kill?” Miguel said, lowering his gun.

“Just making sure it’s the Skull that gets killed and not you,” Dom replied. “Hunters, on me. Any other contacts?”

The group prowled together, forming a circle on the deck. They waited in silence as they probed the darkness with their NVGs, but nothing else attacked.

“Glenn, Terrence,” Dom said. “How’s it look up there?”

“Can’t see anything on the forward deck,” Glenn said.

“Good,” Dom said. But dread flowed through him like a poisonous snake. Nothing forward. From the pilothouse, their view was limited, and that meant...

“To the stern! Now!”

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, the ship quaked. It began to move toward the shore.

“Terrence, Glenn?” Dom asked, confused. Had the engines miraculously restarted on their own?

“That’s not us, Captain,” Glenn said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on!”

Dom ran. He leapt over the bodies of dead Imps. His boots landed in the dried remnants of gore and death from their earlier battles. Spent bullet cases kicked up at his feet. His heart hammered, pulse thundering in his ears. He skidded to a stop as he reached the stern.

Then everything—the moving ferry, the smaller Skulls attacking out of nowhere—made sense. And with that understanding came a fear so powerful, Dom almost froze in abject horror.

Almost.

-31-

Frank knelt in front of Leigh and gave her a hug. “You’re going to be all right. You’re in good hands, and you’re a tough kid.” He looked up at Rory. “Make sure she gets all settled in before you run back to the airfield.”

“You got it, boss,” Rory said.

Leigh wrapped her skinny arms around Frank. “My dad said that when someone does something nice for me, I should do something nice for them. So when I grow up, I’ll find you and pay you back for saving my life.”

Frank pulled back and put his hands on her shoulders. “You don’t owe me anything. You’ve done more than you can ever know to help me get back to my friends.” He winked. “That Oscar-worthy acting alone might’ve saved the lives of many more people than we can count in the future.”

Leigh smiled, but Frank could tell she didn’t quite believe him.

“Rory’s going to take you to meet some other kids on the island who need your help,” Frank said. “You can be a big sister to them. You want to pay me back? That’ll be more than enough.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. Leigh offered a slight nod. “I promise.”

Rory guided the girl away from where Shepherd, Rachel, and Frank stood on the sidewalk outside the diner. They jogged down the gravel road to one of the island’s grade schools, which had been turned into an orphanage. From what Rachel had told Frank, they took in children like Leigh who had lost their families to the Skulls. Leigh glanced over her shoulder and gave Frank a final wave.

“All right. Speaking of acting, Midshipman Rachel Kaufman, you’re up next,” Frank said.

Rachel bounced up and down, hyping herself up. An elderly couple carting a wheelbarrow full of canned goods to an aid dispensary gave her a strange look.

“I know you need to get into it, but maybe tone down the Rocky impersonation, eh?” Frank said.

Rachel’s cheeks flushed. “Got it, got it. Okay, let’s do this.”

She marched at a brisk pace. The fatigues she’d been issued by the island’s makeshift garrison forces lent her an air of importance. Children playing ball in a parking lot stopped and watched her. One of them pointed, but Rachel ignored them. Frank followed her lead, trying to act like he was in a hurry. Of course, he was in a hurry.

The gates of the airfield rose before them at the end of the road. Two soldiers cradled M16s at a checkpoint. One stepped forward.

“Ma’am, I need you to stop right there,” the soldier said.

“We’ve got a situation,” Rachel said. “Potential civilian rescue.”

“We haven’t been notified of any immediate missions.”

She gave him a steely look. “You have now.”

Frank tried to mimic her expression, but he thought he probably just looked constipated. Rachel handed the guard a memo. Shepherd had forged Colonel Gregory Stockholm’s signature onto a new memo they’d drafted detailing an urgent helicopter search-and-rescue mission.

The soldier read the paper then narrowed his eyes as he examined Frank and Shepherd. “Why in the hell do you have civilians with you?”

Now it was Frank’s turn for a little role-play. He snapped to attention. “Lieutenant Leonard Gerald Craft, former member of the Virginia Air National Guard 192nd Fighter wing. I’m the one that flew in the Robinson last night.”

“The 192nd flies F-22A Raptors, not helicopters.”

“And unfortunately Raptors aren’t available on Kent,” Frank shot back. “Not great for rescuing civilians, either.”

The soldier looked at Shepherd next with a wary expression. “Little old to be flying, aren’t you?”

“Retired but not dead.” Shepherd scowled. “Twenty years in the First Heli flying Hueys out of Andrews. I still know what I’m doing.”

Frank wanted to applaud. Shepherd had missed his calling as an actor. He sounded like John Wayne. “Now can you let us through? We’ve got to get that bird in the sky. Got a whole family waiting for us outside Annapolis.”

“Where’s the rest of your rescue team?” the second soldier asked. “One midshipman ain’t going to cut it.”

Boot steps pounded down the street as Rory sprinted toward them. A pack bounced against his back, and he held another, larger bag under his right arm. “Ready to go!” he yelled, waving at them.

“There’s the rest of the team,” Frank said.

One of the soldiers looked up at Frank, concern in his eyes. “Just the four of you guys? Those monsters are even more dangerous than they look.”

“Trust me,” Frank said, “I know how to tango with ’em.”

The other soldier gestured into the airfield. “Then good luck and Godspeed.”

They ran to the Robinson, and Frank whipped open the side door. He helped Rory with his luggage. “Found everything?”

“Yep,” he said. “This stuff is goddamn heavy.” He slumped into a rear passenger seat. “But I grabbed an inflatable lifeboat, and we should have plenty of ammo.”

“Good,” Frank said, flicking the ignition switch. The rotors spun slowly. As they accelerated, the engines whined and their beat drowned out all other noise in the cabin. Frank handed everyone a headset. “Look, this is your last chance. I appreciate you guys getting me to the chopper, but you really don’t have to go. I can handle this on my own. Only takes one man to fly a helicopter.”

“Absolutely not,” Shepherd said. “The only way you’re making it to the Huntress is if you can refuel it somewhere. The airbases will be a lot more responsive to an army colonel like me than they will be to a covert ops guy whose service record has been classified.”

“And what if Kinsey told the people over there about you and us Hunters?”

“That’s a risk we’ll have to take.”

Frank glanced at the other two in the backseats.

“And you two?”

Rachel scowled as she fixed her harness. “There’s no way in hell you’re leaving us behind. Kinsey’s people have this place under control now.”

“And besides,” Rory added, “if you have to make an ocean landing, who the hell will sail your lifeboat?”

“Do either of you even know how to sail?” Rachel said with a raised brow then looked at Shepherd. “Pardon my bluntness, sir.”

“Forgiven,” Shepherd said.

“All right,” Frank said. “Suit yourselves.” He glanced out the cockpit and saw one of the guards marching toward them. He was yelling something, but his voice was lost in the churn of the rotors. “Looks like United Hunters Airlines is going to make an early departure. Everybody strap in. Could be a bumpy ride.”

Frank pulled back on the cyclic, and the chopper lifted from the tarmac. The soldier continued waving, trying to beckon them back to Earth, but Frank pretended not to notice. He turned the radio off for now and banked away from Kent. They flew low over the coast, skimming the trees and the water to stay out of radar.

But no one pursued them. They probably didn’t deem him important enough to worry about. They wouldn’t expend their resources trying to chase him down. The real ones risking their asses were Shepherd, Rachel, and Rory. Shepherd had already given up on his plan to return to Fort Detrick when he’d heard that General Kinsey had installed his own garrison commander there. If he showed up at his old command now, he would be court-martialed or sent back to that underground prison in Virginia. The two midshipmen, however, risked dereliction of duty. Rachel insisted that she didn’t care, but Frank still worried.

They had all agreed on one thing: It was vital they did everything in their power to support the Hunters’ mission. It might be the only way to stop the Oni Agent and whoever was responsible for it.

Waves crested below, breaking into whitecaps near the shore. Trees rustled as the rotor wash flowed over them. Several Skulls emerged from the woods and gave chase, but they soon became discouraged as the chopper outran them. Frank flew inland, over the ruins of once-thriving towns and abandoned housing developments. Craters pocked the highways, and grass grew wild and high in untended lawns. Skulls were sifting through the rubble, searching for food. The monsters often cranked their heads up and looked hungrily at the chopper. A Goliath pushing aside sedans and trucks as if they were toys grabbed a chunk of concrete and threw it. Frank deftly avoided the missile, but he would feel a hell of a lot better when they could put more distance between them and the monsters.

Soon they approached the destination Frank had in mind: Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall Airport. A control tower jutted from a crisscross of terminals and runways. Planes were parked at their terminals as if they were ready to load their next batch of passengers. Many more lay in pieces in the grass near the edge of two runways, and ambulances and other emergency response vehicles were scattered across the tarmac. As they drew closer, Frank could better see the smaller objects spread between planes and vehicles. Bodies. More accurately, skeletons, torn apart and picked clean of meat. Lumbering between the corpses were the cause of those people’s deaths.

“Please tell me we aren’t landing in the middle of all these Skulls,” Rachel said.

“Nope,” Frank said cheerfully. He nodded to a hangar marked with huge black letters along the side that read Air Cargo Center. Several regional cargo planes and larger international planes, painted with the logos of various shipping companies, sat outside. And between them, Skulls wandered like ants at a picnic. “We’re landing in the middle of those Skulls.”

-32-

Meredith had seen some terrible and awe-inspiring things in her life, but nothing compared to this.

“Holy shit,” she breathed.

The monstrosity rose out of the water. Its nostrils flared flat against its bony mask. Its eyes—goddamn near the size of basketballs—stared with an eerie calmness unlike the wrathful gaze characteristic of the Skulls. Imps hung off the monster by their spindly claws or skeletal tails. Massive horns roped out of the behemoth’s head, and bulky spikes stuck out from its shoulder, following a line down to its fists. The face of the creature looked vaguely like that of a gorilla’s, but this monstrous mutation was beyond anything she’d seen the Oni Agent achieve.

It was a goddamn Titan.

A nervous tingling crept through Meredith’s skin. She couldn’t believe this was the natural result of the Oni Agent. This was something far worse than the Goliaths and Droolers. The scientific explanations Lauren’s team had discovered for those creatures simply couldn’t apply to the Titan. Goliaths were the result of the abnormal bone growth affecting the pituitary glands and growth hormones. Droolers resulted from the Oni Agent overstimulating the cells and gastric glands in the stomach lining of some Skulls, increasing acid production to absurdly high levels. Droolers and Goliaths were simply side effects of the Oni Agent rearing up in some Skulls akin to how pharmaceutical drugs affected different people in various ways.

But the Titan was too enormous to be the result of out-of-whack growth hormones, and it would take a hell of a lot more than a few overactive cells to produce a monster of that size. Whatever this monster was, it seemed to be the evidence of some twisted genetic experiment. Something like the Titan couldn’t just be a side effect of the Oni Agent; it had to be deliberately designed.

Narrowing its eyes, the monster’s gaze swept over the Hunters. It regarded Meredith with an almost inquisitive glance, and she could practically feel the intelligence radiating off the creature. Its hands gripped the stern of the ferry, claws puncturing the deck, and cars slid toward it as the creature put its weight on the boat. Heavy bangs and thuds of crashing metal sounded out. But the Titan seemed unperturbed, almost lazy.

A hand grabbed Meredith’s shoulder, dragging her backward, and she tumbled into Dom’s chest. A delivery truck scraped past where she had been standing seconds ago.

“You all right?” Dom asked.

“So far,” Meredith said. She pushed herself up and then quickly sidestepped to avoid a Volkswagen with a cracked windshield rolling toward her.

“What the hell do we do, Chief?” Miguel called over the din of scraping cars. Imps hopped from the shoulders of the Titan. Their screeches were loud enough to rival the jarring crash of metal against metal around the tipping ferry.

Meredith could barely hear Dom’s order over the comms. “Open fire and move to the bow!”

She shouldered her rifle and took potshots at the Titan’s face. Between firing, she used a hand to steady herself on the railing, following it toward the bow.

“I don’t think bullets will cut it!” Andris barked between salvos. Jenna swept her rifle over a car, blasting at the smaller Skulls. Their bodies went cartwheeling away.

“No problem!” Glenn locked a grenade case into his barrel-mounted FN40 grenade launcher. The grenade flew from the wide barrel with a whoomph. It collided with the Titan’s chest in a furious ball of smoke and fire. Chips of bone flew from the cloud of billowing gray like shrapnel.

But as the humid breeze scattered the smoke, Meredith’s heart dropped. The devastating explosion would’ve leveled a squad of Skulls. It would’ve demolished a Drooler. And even a Goliath would have—and had—fallen to such a blast.

The Titan didn’t seem to notice the fresh cracks on its chest plates. It continued to look at the Hunters with that placid, almost sympathetic stare, as if this were all just a boring game. They would have to waste far too much ammunition—ammunition they were already low on to begin with—to even stand a chance of bringing this abomination down.

“No way. No fucking way.” She fired a three-round burst into the monster’s face. Bullets pinged off the thick armor, chipping off only a few insignificant fragments.

Miguel was aiming for the creature’s eyes like her. Their rifles chattered, and spent bullet casing rolled across the deck.

“To the lifeboat!” Dom yelled, his voice breaking over the comm link. “Starboard side.”

An Imp bounced toward Meredith. She drew her aim from the Titan and caught the Skull in her optics. The rifle kicked against her shoulder as she fired, but the rounds plunged into the rusted shell of a sedan as the monster leapt with all the deftness of a practiced acrobat.

The ferry lurched just as the Imp hurled itself at Meredith. She had no time to adjust her aim, and she ducked under the creature’s slashing talons and fanged maw. The monster collided with the gunwale behind her, and Meredith used the stock of her rifle to bash the back of the creature’s skull. It screamed at her, twisting its head around, and spittle flew over her tac vast. But another heavy blow launched the monster out over the river, and she heard the satisfying plop of its body dropping into water.

“Mere!” Dom’s voice bellowed.

Meredith turned to see a truck sliding sideways toward her. There was no time to get out of its path. She dropped, pressing herself flat to the deck. Rubber skidded on the wet metal of the deck. She willed herself to sink into the deck as the heavy four-by-four moved overhead. A piece of metal snagged on the back of her jacket and tugged her with the truck.

“Help!” she yelled into the comm link.

Meredith struggled, trying to find anything to help free her from the suicidal truck’s path toward the river. All around, cars were splashing into the river while the Imps screeched like cheerleaders from hell. She imagined the vehicle crashing into the water, tumbling into the darkness at the feet of the Titan. She would either drown or be crushed.

Not great.

“I’m stuck under this goddamned truck!” Meredith yelled again.

“Hold on!” Dom called back.

She listened for his boots, but the chaos prevented her from hearing anything more than the crashing vehicles and squawking Skulls. Then something dove under the car beside her.

“I got you!” Dom yelled, his face covered in specks of blood and mud. With one hand gripping the frame of the truck, he grabbed the jacket where Meredith couldn’t reach and pulled. The busted metal groaned as he tugged, but she was still stuck.

Gravity pulled the truck—and Meredith—down the slope of the deck.

“Shit!” she gasped. She could see the water now. The truck obscured most of her view, but she judged she had maybe a dozen yards before the river took her.

“It’s not coming loose!” Dom said, tugging at her jacket. His eyes narrowed, and his face scrunched in determination as he hung onto the bottom of the truck to keep pace with her. He pulled a knife from his thigh sheath and swiped at the fabric with the blade, but the jacket was designed to be tough.

Another vehicle crashed into the river, and water plumed up, splashing Meredith and Dom. They were fifteen feet from the stern, then ten feet. Five feet.

Meredith’s legs dangled in open air as two of the truck’s wheels fell over the side. Dom heaved one last time, and the jacket ripped. Meredith scrambled over to him as the truck plummeted into the water. Dom scrambled to his feet, and Meredith jolted up. The Titan ignored the unfolding drama.

“What the hell is it doing?” Dom asked as they dodged past another sedan.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” Meredith said. It was too strange, too calm. It displayed none of the usual relentless aggression she expected from a Skull. It seemed content just to sabotage the Hunters’ efforts of traveling down the river.

“Hey, Chief! Meredith!” Miguel’s voice crackled over the comm link. “Lifeboats are ready. You two lovers, get your asses up here.”

The rattle of gunfire echoed out. Meredith and Dom bounded between cars. Puddles of blood pooled along the deck, and bones crunched as cars rolled over the corpses of the Imps. Miguel waved at them from near the starboard bow. The rest of the team waited with their rifles scanning their surroundings. The groan of protesting metal sounded louder, and the Hunters jumped for handholds as the stern tilted sharply.

Meredith and Dom pushed forward, climbing the almost forty-five-degree angle. Most of the vehicles had already plummeted off the stern or were piled up against the gunwale where the Titan pressed down with its massive palms. Meredith’s muscles burned with each step, and pain stabbed through her left shoulder. She ignored the building agony for now. Painkillers could wait until she was off this godforsaken deathtrap of a boat.

“The fuck is that thing doing?” Terrence held a rope securing the lifeboat.

None of the Hunters fired at the Titan. The best they could hope to achieve was to plug the creature’s eyes and blind it. But from their vantage point and the angle of the ferry, the pilothouse and the rest of the passenger decks blocked the view of the monster’s face. The bow crept higher, and water made its way up the deck. The ferry was going under. They were sinking.

“On the lifeboat. Let’s move now!” Dom roared.

The Hunters leapt aboard the flimsy wooden boat. Meredith jumped onto one of the seats, and it cracked under her weight. She feared what the rotting seat meant for the condition of the craft.

At Dom’s order, Terrence began lowering the boat. The ropes whipped through the pulley system holding the lifeboat against the side of the ferry, and the craft began a free fall toward the river. A moment later, it hit the surface. Water sprayed up in huge fans. A leak sprung up almost at once through the bottom of the boat, and a puddle soon formed at Meredith’s boots.

“Here I come!” Terrence yelled, leaping from the ferry. His hands whirled as he fell and then plunged into the water. He disappeared into the murk in a ring of bubbles. Then he bobbed up, gasping for air and kicking to remain above the surface against the heavy burden of his equipment.

Meredith reached out and clutched the back of Terrence’s tac vest. She hauled him toward the lifeboat and helped him in.

Miguel tried to start the outboard motor, but nothing happened. Again, he pulled on the starter cord. Nothing.

“Shit’s fucked, Chief!”

Meredith grabbed an oar. “Time for a little a workout! Help me out here!”

Andris picked up the other oar, and they pulled the oars through the water, creating small eddies behind them as they propelled the boat away from the ferry. Meredith’s shoulder lit up in pain with each stroke, but she didn’t stop. Excitement and adrenaline numbed the agony. She let her left arm hang loosely and focused on drawing power from her right.

The Titan’s gaze never left the sinking ferry. Meredith couldn’t imagine the strength it took to so effortlessly sink a ship like that.

“He’s not even giving us the time of day,” Terrence said.

“Damn, sink our ship and ignore us?” Miguel said. “You think the guy would at least try to kill us or something like a normal fucking Skull.”

“Careful what you wish for,” Jenna said.

“Yes.” Andris grunted between strokes with the oar. “I do not want to face that thing again.”

“That’s not the only thing we’ve got to worry about,” Meredith said. She scanned the shore, wondering how many creatures were hidden among the foliage and shadows, waiting for them. “What the hell are we going to do now?”

“Keep heading downriver.” Dom surveyed the winding Congo with his night-vision binoculars. “Best thing we can do is put some distance between ourselves and the wreck. God only knows how many of those bastards are going to come swarming around here.”

“And let’s hope God is the only one who ever knows,” Meredith said, her back muscles aching and her left arm still on fire as she pulled the oar through the water. “I certainly don’t want to be around to find out.”

-33-

Frank circled over the Air Cargo Center as Skulls lumbered about like they were lost in a desert without a drink of water. They glanced lazily at the chopper, and one or two gave a half-hearted chase. It seemed they had almost become accustomed to aircraft flying just out of their reach.

“Is it there?” Frank asked.

Shepherd lowered his binos and nodded. “Sure is,” he said in a gruff voice. “Several of ’em, if I got the right plane. And you’ve got your choice. FedEx or UPS.”

“Brown’s not my color. Let’s go for the FedEx model. Got that, friends?”

“Yes, sir,” Rory and Rachel said in unison. Frank sighed inwardly; those kids made him feel old.

“And everybody understands what we’re about to do?” Frank asked.

A flurry of affirmatives met his ears through his headset.

“Excellent.” Frank put on his best commercial airliner pilot impression. “Thank you all for flying Badass Airlines—”

“I thought it was United Hunters,” Rory interrupted.

Frank coughed and continued. “I said, thank you all for flying Badass Airlines, servicing all the locations where other pilots are too afraid to go. We’re beginning our descent into Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The time is half-past-we’re-about-to-kick-some-Skull-ass, and the temperature is a balmy holy-shit-is-the-adrenaline-kicking-in-already.”

Frank gave his passengers the cheesiest grin he could as he yanked back the controls. The chopper flew low over the Skulls on the tarmac, and the monsters began slowly trailing after them. He swept in front of the Air Cargo Center.

“Kick those doors open!” Frank boomed.

Rory and Rachel opened both doors.

“Smoke out!” Frank said.

All three of his passengers dropped drab olive-green canisters out of the chopper. Rotor wash kicked up the smoke from the grenades, dispersing it until Frank put enough distance between the bird and the smokescreen. The Skulls still followed hungrily after them. The chopper flew low enough for the din of the growling voices and chilling shrieks to pierce the drone of the thumping blades and roaring engines.

Frank’s heart thumped in rhythm with the blades. As he maneuvered the chopper deftly over the monsters raking at the chopper’s belly, his body and mind became one with the machine. He banked hard left, flying on instinct and ignoring the instruments and alarms blaring at him, telling him he was too low. Frank sent the helicopter forward at a breakneck speed. The blades spun in a fury, just feet away from the unforgiving tarmac. They sliced through several Skulls, and for half a second, Frank considered pulling the same maneuver he had performed to clear away the Skulls back in Virginia.

But last time he’d had only his own life to risk in the chopper. He adjusted the cyclic, and the chopper leveled out. Dozens of Skulls followed in its wake.

“Ready?” Frank boomed. But it wasn’t really a question. He put the chopper down hard, and it jolted against the asphalt. The bird bounced once, twice, and then Frank yelled, “Bail out!”

He killed the engine. The rotors still spun, winding down. He undid his harness and ran. Shepherd, Rachel, and Rory were already sprinting toward the plumes of smoke near the Air Cargo Center. Their packs and weapons slapped against their backs. Several yards before they reached the smoke, Shepherd held up his fist.

The others halted, snatched M84 grenades from their belts, and pulled the pins. On Shepherd’s mark, they lobbed the flashbang grenades at the mob of Skulls. As the grenades sailed through the air, Frank saw a funny-looking Skull, round and squat, with appendages as bulbous as overfilled water balloons ready to burst under its plates. Another wore a highlighter-yellow vest characteristic of the flight operations crew, and another had the shredded remnants of a backpack hanging off its shoulders. But among the bone plates and bloodshot eyes, the curling horns and overgrown shoulder blades, behind the masks of skeletal growths and the claws, he had to squint to even recognize these creatures as human. The Oni Agent had worked overtime on these people. Left undisturbed, it had devoured their humanity.

And if they didn’t get a move on, the Skulls would devour him and his friends.

“Go, go, go!” Shepherd’s voice broke through Frank’s dark reveries, and he was spurred into action. He sprinted into the cover of the smoke. Loud bangs and flashes of light chased them into the clouds of gray, and they heard the frustrated cries of the Skulls as the M84s cast confusion in their ranks. It might buy them just enough time to make this plan work.

And if not, Frank felt the slap of his side holster against his hip. Bullets would do the trick. It felt good to finally have more than one. But he didn’t fancy trying to defend the Air Cargo Center against the hordes of monsters chasing them now. Frank charged ahead of the small group, leading them by memory to the hangar. As their feet pounded the asphalt, a Skull loomed out of the smoke.

At first it didn’t seem to notice them. Instead of waiting for it to realize there was a tasty snack running its way, Frank raised his pistol, aimed straight at the monster’s face, and pulled the trigger. He was too close to miss. Red mist sprayed from the exit wound of the blast. The monster’s body went limp and crumpled to the ground. Rory and Rachel leapt over it. Neither gave it a second glance.

Frank’s lungs burned as he ran. He forced himself to keep his head straight and eyes alert. The apocalypse was wearing on him, and he hadn’t had a good night’s rest or a solid meal since he had become separated from the Hunters weeks ago. The call of his bunk on the Huntress was almost motivation enough to keep him going.

A few other Skulls emerged through the fog. One bared its teeth when they approached. Its hooked fangs protruded from its mouth like scythes waiting for a harvest. But it would harvest no more. Rory jammed the barrel of his rifle into the monster’s mouth and levied a blast into the soft flesh. Its head exploded, splashing the others with gore. They lashed out with blades and bullets, killing any of the creatures that pushed through the smoke in their search for prey. They carried on wordlessly. There was no hoot of victory, no cry of terror among them.

Frank knew that if they thought too much about what they were doing, what they were about to do, the sheer ludicrousness of it all would overwhelm them. But they had no other choice if they wanted to reach the Hunters. Not without enlisting the help of the military, and from what Frank understood, Dom’s last encounter with the US armed forces hadn’t been a pleasant conversation over tea and cookies.

Another Skull rambled out of the smog. The tall, lanky monster wore a ragged basketball jersey with spikes poking through the torn mesh fabric. Bulls fan, huh? Frank thought, strangely pleased to see a familiar sight of his team. At least the damn thing isn’t as dumb as it looks. The Skull dragged a leg with each step. Frank figured it had a broken ankle—until he saw there was no ankle to be broken. The Skull was making do on a bloodied and bony stump like some kind of demonic pirate. He almost felt bad when he shot the thing twice through its nasal cavity and it slumped forward. It turned its head, still not quite dead, and Frank pulled the trigger once more.

“Argh,” Frank growled. “No booty for you.”

Soon the smoke cleared, and they stood in front of the open hangar of the Air Cargo Center. A dozen different planes waited inside, ranging from a large Airbus 300 to smaller single-prop planes for regional deliveries.

There it was, a Cessna Caravan. The sight of the nearly forty-foot-long single-prop plane sitting on its three-wheeled landing gear brought a fleeting smile to Frank’s face. “Okay, kids, you know what to grab, right?”

The midshipmen nodded in unison.

“Check out the maintenance workshop back there.” Frank pointed to a door in the hangar. The duo ran off, grim determination painted across their faces.

The low growls and wails of the Skulls resonated in the cavernous space. Their voices bounced off the walls, distorting the sound. With the smoke still clotting the entry, it was almost impossible to tell how far away the horde was. Wherever they were, Frank knew time was not a luxury they had. He scanned the hangar, looking for a fuel truck.

“The turboprop on the Caravan is about the best workhorse you’re going to find in here,” Frank said. “It’ll drink anything from diesel to aviation fuel.”

“And that won’t kill it?” Shepherd asked.

“It’s kinda like eating nothing but bacon cheeseburgers. Not the best thing in the world, but if we’re in a tough spot and that’s all we get, this baby will get us out.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Good. Now get that fuel truck over here, and let’s fill her up.” A cursory glance showed the aircraft was in as good of condition as to be expected with no one to maintain it. He popped open the door and jumped into the pilot’s seat. His gaze roved over the instrument panels and gauges. A check of the battery revealed it was still good, and he shouldn’t have a problem starting the engine once he had filled the fuel tanks.

Across the hangar, he heard the low gurgle of the fuel truck’s engine. Shepherd parked it near the tail of the plane. Frank hopped out of the plane and helped him attach the ground wire to the aircraft. Then they dragged the fuel hose from the truck and inserted it into the fuel valve.

“Good,” Frank said. “We won’t start it up until everything else is ready to go. As soon as we get that thing running, it’ll be like ringing the dinner bell. And I’m not interested in feeding those bony bastards tonight.”

“How far will a single tank get the plane?” Shepherd asked.

“About twelve hundred miles if we’re lucky. With the reserve tank, we should almost double that.”

“I’d prefer it if Badass Airlines offered a nonstop flight to the Congo, but I’ll have to settle for a few layovers,” Shepherd said.

A jarring scrape of metal against concrete echoed throughout the hangar. Frank winced and looked toward the source of the noise. Rachel and Rory were pulling a cart loaded down with the gear and parts he’d sent them to find. The spare fuel tank was dragging a metal fuel line across the ground.

“Careful with that!” Frank said, jogging toward them. “Got everything?”

“Think so,” Rachel said. She brushed the sweat from her forehead with her grease-covered hand. “Will these work?”

Frank eyed the pump and fuel tank. “They’ll have to. Now we got to do a little remodeling. Remove everything that isn’t strapped down and throw out all the seats we don’t need.”

For the next thirty minutes, they toiled inside the cabin of the Caravan, detaching seats from the floor with the tools they had found around the hangar. Soon the floor outside the Caravan was littered with undelivered packages, extra seats, panels, and trash. Next Frank had them remove several of the floor panels to reveal the Caravan’s fuel tank.

“All right, put the reserve tank here.” Frank gestured to a spot. “Secure it with some cargo straps, and then put the pump here.”

They struggled to lift the tank into the fuselage. Even though it was empty and constructed of a lightweight alloy, its awkward shape and size didn’t make the task easy. Eventually they had it in place and secured as best they could atop the ribbing of the other fuel tank.

The smoke outside the hangar had dissipated, revealing the tarmac still teeming with Skulls. Most lingered around the chopper. Some peeled at the seats and doors as if they were trying to figure out where the humans had gone. Shafts of sunlight pierced the blanket of clouds, illuminating the horde and making it appear as if they had been sent from above.

“Well, that’s irony for you,” Frank muttered under his breath.

“What’s that?” Rory asked as he threw another piece of flooring out of the plane.

“Ah, nothing. We just need to get the hell out of here.”

“Anything else we can remove?” Rachel asked.

Frank looked around the cabin again, then out at the tarmac. Several of the Skulls were looking their way. “I think we’re out of time.”

One of the Skulls walked toward the hangar. Its head cocked back and forth curiously. Shreds of a puffy down jacket hung from its spikes.

“Nobody move too fast,” Frank said. “But cover me while I fill these damn tanks.”

Frank slipped out of the cabin. The others positioned themselves around the plane with their rifles shouldered. He could almost feel the tension between them as he crept to the fuel truck. The Skull in the puffy jacket was still a good couple hundred yards away. After a sharp intake of breath, Frank turned on the fuel truck’s pump. It gargled to life with a low drone that echoed over the concrete floor of the hangar.

“Come on, sweetheart, let’s do this fast,” he said, patting the fuel nozzle as it filled the main tank. He peeked around the front of the truck and saw the jacket-wearing Skull starting toward the hangar in a loping gait now. The monster threw its head back and belted out a high-pitched shriek that carried over the clamor of its confused brethren.

“Battaglia, we got company,” Shepherd said.

“Wanna shut him up?” Frank said as he handed the fuel nozzle to Rory. The midshipman inserted it into the spare tank. “Just be careful around the fuel.”

Shepherd nodded as he closed one eyed and sighted up the Skull. He squeezed the trigger, and a burst of suppressed shots lanced into the Skull’s down jacket, sending up puffs of blood and feathers. The monster’s shoulder kicked back, then its head. Bleeding, it collapsed onto the tarmac. Four more Skulls turned their heads, spied the dead one, and then stared at the Caravan. They too filled the air with their voices, and soon other Skulls joined the burgeoning hunting cry.

“Son of a bitch,” Rory said, shouldering his rifle. Rachel followed, and the two joined in delivering salvo after salvo into the ranks of the dozens of Skulls now charging their position.

Frank watched the gauges and tapped the fuel nozzle. “Come on, baby. Come on. Fill this sucker up.”

The truck’s pump continued churning as the tide of Skulls careening toward the hangar grew. Bodies fell, quickly trampled by the others. Frank’s heart crept into his throat. The monsters were going down fast, but they were replaced even more quickly by the beasts descending on them from all corners of the airport. Bullet casings pinged against concrete and bounced off the Caravan’s fuselage. One Skull made it into the hangar, but it was shredded by a fusillade of bullets.

The fuel pump stopped.

“We’re full!” Frank tore the nozzle out of the spare tank. He threw it to the floor of the hangar and removed the ground wire. “Get your asses in here, and let’s go!”

The others climbed into the cabin. Shepherd slammed the door shut and locked it as Frank jumped into the pilot’s seat. Adrenaline and his pounding heart made it difficult to study all the gauges in front of him. His vision became tunneled, and his fingers trembled. He flipped the switch to turn the fuel pump on and was rewarded with a light indicating adequate fuel pressure.

“Moment of truth,” he said, pressing the starter switch. The IGNITION ON button lit up as the engine whirred to life. The propeller blades accelerated until they turned into an almost invisible blur. There was a whole list flowing through his mind of other gauges and switches he should be checking. But the Skulls once more forced him to abbreviate that list. They had fuel, the brakes were off, and the prop was spinning. For now, that was all that mattered.

“Can we get flying now?” Rachel said, worry tingeing her voice.

“That’s the plan!” Frank said, pushing the throttle forward.

The plane moved slowly, straight out of the hangar and toward a Skull leading the charge. Frank winced as the creature leapt onto the wing and bashed one of the windows. Two more followed the other’s example, climbing on top of the plane and tearing at the panels. No one said a word, but Frank could see Shepherd clinging to his seat as a half-dozen other Skulls threw themselves at the plane.

Hell no, Frank thought. We haven’t even made it out of the hangar. This doesn’t end here.

He eased the throttle farther forward, and the plane accelerated past taxiing speed. The Caravan’s wheels bumped over another Skull, and one of the monsters clinging to a wing fell off. As they exited the hangar, he turned the plane toward the nearest runway.

The sight that met them sent a knife twisting into his gut, and Rachel let out an audible gasp.

Hundreds of Skulls were running at the plane like a living avalanche. The Caravan couldn’t survive that. No matter how fast it went, hitting that many monsters would damage it beyond repair. Even if the plane somehow took off, it wouldn’t be in the air for long. Frank gritted his teeth. He knew what he had to do. It was why he’d chosen to take this plane. He turned the Caravan away from the runways and headed straight for the overgrown grass surrounding the tarmac. Then with a silent prayer, he pushed the throttle to its limits.

“Uh, the runway’s over there,” Rory said, his voice shaking.

“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” Frank said with a smirk.

“This ain’t no Delorean, Battaglia!” Shepherd said.

The plane shook as they picked up speed. Another Skull fell from the wing, and a second bounced off the fuselage, unable to find a handhold. Three more were still clinging to various points on the aircraft.

“Seriously, what the hell are you doing?” Rory yelled over the whine of the turboprop.

“Told you this thing is versatile!” Frank said back. “Runway or not, this beast can take off!”

As the words came out of his mouth, the wheels hit the grass. They lost precious speed immediately, but the bucking of the plane was enough to knock loose another Skull. Only two remained—plus the hundreds running at them. Frank pulled back on the controls, easing the nose upward with the shifting elevators. A good thirty, maybe forty Skulls were barreling straight at the plane through the grass as if they were in some warped jousting match.

Not exactly an even fight, boys, Frank thought. They were a hundred yards away, and the plane still hadn’t achieved the speed necessary for takeoff. He shoved the throttle, but it had nowhere else to go. The plane jolted as it hit another rut.

Fifty yards away now, and the plane’s nose pointed up again. But then the Caravan bounced again, tilting slightly. One wing grazed the grass, dangerously close to digging into the dirt. If it did, they would find themselves in a tangled wreck and would be lucky to be alive when the Skulls tore them from the charred fuselage.

Twenty yards now, and Frank had the plane running straight again. His arms shook as he leaned forward, gritting his teeth, as if that would help the plane up into the air.

Ten yards, and one of the monsters leapt at them. It had gotten overeager and had no chance of even hitting the plane. When its body returned to the earth, its comrades ran over it, burying it into the dirt.

Then, just yards away from the mob, the plane took off. It climbed into the sky even as the scrape of claws against metal rattled through the fuselage. One of the remaining Skulls on the wings fell away and plummeted to its death. The final stubborn bastard clung to the wing with its claws wrapped around the metal. Wind whipped at the tangles of knotted hair on its gnarled scalp. It wasn’t doing much damage, but the excess weight and compromise to the plane’s aerodynamics wouldn’t help them cross the Atlantic.

“Ever seen that episode of The Twilight Zone?” Frank asked Shepherd.

Shepherd looked pale, and sweat dripped down his forehead, streaming from his matted-down hair. “The one with the monster on the plane’s wing, but the guy with the gun is the only one that sees it?”

“That’s the one,” Frank said. “Think you can shoot that thing?”

Shepherd nodded. He rose from his seat and used one hand to hold himself upright as they entered a patch of turbulence. When it settled, he unlocked the door and kicked it open. The rush of wind threatened to tear it from the cabin, and Shepherd drew his pistol. He fired six shots straight into the Skull. One of the bullets plunged into the sheet metal of the wing, but the rest hit their mark. Fragments of bone flew from the Skull’s ribs and arm. Its mouth opened as if it was letting out a pained scream, but its voice couldn’t be heard over the wind’s roar. Its claws slid across the wing, and at last its body disappeared.

Shepherd fought against the wind resistance and shut the door again. He locked it then slumped into his seat and wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. “That was the scariest goddamn thing I’ve done in my career. And I’ve gone toe-to-toe with Goliaths. I hate heights.”

For once, Frank didn’t have a quip. He merely nodded his thanks and then glanced at the midshipmen. “How are you both doing?”

Rachel gave him a shaky thumbs-up. Rory held his hand over his mouth as if he was about to vomit.

“Hang in there,” Frank said. “Don’t think we kept any barf bags, so be careful.”

Rory cringed then swallowed hard. He wrapped his arms around himself as if to fight off the nausea. “There’s a reason I joined the navy and not the air force.”

Frank couldn’t help but laugh. There was freedom in flying. And now, as he soared above the wasteland that Maryland had become, he appreciated that freedom more than ever. As they drew closer to the coast, closer to the lapping waves of the Atlantic, he prayed that freedom would last. Maybe fortune would still favor him long enough for him to return to his crew, to his home aboard the Huntress.

-34-

Lauren tapped on the metal lab bench, leaning over Divya’s shoulder with Peter and Sean beside her. Divya’s hands were deep in the glove box. Though the bulky protective gloves made her hands appear almost three times as large as normal, she manipulated the forceps, tiny tubes, and organ-on-a-chip devices with the dexterity of a brain surgeon.

Lauren wasn’t the only one to have noticed.

“My, my,” Peter, the ship’s actual surgeon, said. “I think you missed your calling. You should have trained with me.”

“I’m not a cut-and-paste type of gal,” Divya said. “I prefer talking to my patients, not chopping ’em up.”

“That’s not all we do,” Peter said.

Lauren grinned and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, sometimes you’re forced to fill in medical charts.”

“I’m helping you all with the science now. Isn’t that good enough?”

“Helping?” Sean asked. “Seems more like you’re doing a primo job of distracting Divya.”

Peter waved their jibes away with a pretend scowl. Lauren appreciated the attempts at easing the tension, but she could see past their facades of humor and forced smiles. Each wore dark circles under their eyes. Peter’s wrinkles were more pronounced than ever, and Divya’s nut-brown skin seemed a shade or two paler. Sean’s hair was matted and greasy, giving away the fact he hadn’t had a chance for a proper shower or sleep in the past couple of days. They were operating on fumes.

Normally Lauren would send the team off in shifts for rest, but they wouldn’t listen now. None of them had left the lab for more than a few minutes since Navid’s breakthrough. And she didn’t blame them.

As Divya manipulated the organ-on-a-chip devices, she set up the tiny clear tubes that piped liquid in and out of the chips to get a read on what was going on in the invisible, biochemical world contained within them. This final data should tell them whether or not they had vanquished the prions produced by the Oni Agent and eliminated any chance of neurological changes in the host.

Peter stroked the stubble along his chin, and Sean wrung his hands together nervously, over and over. Lauren kept tapping on the lab bench. She tried to tell herself to stop, but after a moment, her fingers began drumming again as if they had a mind of their own.

“Okay,” Divya said, taking a long breath. “Everything’s hooked up. In just a few minutes, we’ll have our final tally of prion concentrations within each chip.”

“Very good,” Lauren said. “In the mean—”

One of the patient call buttons went off from the med bay, ringing in the lab. Lauren looked through the clear acrylic partition to see a corresponding light buzzing beside Rich’s bed. But when Lauren saw his panicked expression, she knew it wasn’t Rich who needed a doctor.

“Christ,” Lauren said. “Tammy’s in trouble again.”

She hung up her lab coat and rushed into the med bay.

“Something’s wrong, Doc,” Rich said.

Lauren glanced at the EKG. Tammy’s pulse appeared normal. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth hung open. She pressed a stethoscope to the woman’s chest to listen for abnormalities in her breathing. Nothing seemed to be amiss.

“Did you notice any specific symptoms?” Lauren asked. There were no obvious signs the woman was doing any worse off than she was before.

“I just got this feeling. You know, when you’ve slept beside a person for fifteen years, you just know something’s off. I mean, I know she’s asleep, but it’s like she’s in pain.”

Lauren studied Tammy’s face. If she stared long enough, she could almost see what Rich was talking about. Maybe it was how Tammy’s eyes were pressed together or her fingers curled into loose fists at her side.

She chewed her bottom lip, letting her mind wander through the problem. Preexisting heart problems, starvation. Tammy’s immune system had been compromised, as evidenced by her blood workups. Her white blood cell count and immunoglobulin levels were low.

Something was wrong. Desperately wrong.

And it wasn’t just Tammy.

Lauren’s stomach twisted into a painful knot. It was the dark realization she’d felt in medical school, back when she’d missed an exam question on an obvious symptom in a patient. Only this was worse. Way worse. She had been so focused on Tammy’s near-brushes with death that she had neglected the conditions of her other patients. While Tammy had suffered the most obviously, none of them had truly recovered from the effects of starvation.

Even though they had all been on the brink when they had been rescued from Boston, they should be up and walking around by now. They would still need a careful eye on their diet and caloric intake. Maybe they would even need a bit of physical rehabilitation. But right now, the trio Dom had found in that Mass Gen Lab—Rich, Tammy, and Alex—were all still bedridden. That wasn’t right.

Under the burden of her own sleep deprivation and the pressure of Operation Phoenix, Lauren had missed something.

“What’s wrong, Doc?” Rich asked. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Lauren said.

Taking a breath to ease her own anxiety, Lauren grabbed Tammy’s balled hand and forced her fingers to lay straight. The woman’s fists had been curled so tightly her fingernails had been digging into her palms. Splotches of red blood sank into the white sheets of the hospital bed.

But it wasn’t the blood that sent a shrieking cry of alarm resonating in Lauren’s head. Adrenaline flooded her blood vessels in a raging tide that caused her hands to shake. For the sake of her patients, she let out all that pent-up anxiety and worry in a single breath then hit the patient call button to get the rest of her team’s attention.

They turned from the biosafety cabinet, and she beckoned for Peter and Sean. Divya could finish the experiment on her own. Sean opened his mouth, presumably to ask her what was happening, but one glance at Tammy answered his question.

“I’ll get the chelation agents,” Peter said, jogging at once to a refrigerator full of medical supplies.

“Sean, I want a full antibody workup on everyone in the medical bay,” Lauren said.

“You got it.”

Lauren took a deep breath. “And that includes us.”

When Tammy had come to the Huntress, she had been teetering on the edge between life and death. Her body had been little more than a skeleton. But Lauren remembered thinking that at least the woman hadn’t been injured. And while she had been a patient in Lauren’s care, she had never seen another Skull, much less been scratched or bitten by one.

So why, Lauren wondered as she examined the jagged yellow nails growing from Tammy’s fingers, did it look like she was turning into a Skull?

***

Kara brushed Maggie’s head then traced her hand over the dog’s shoulders. Fur coated her hands when she pulled them away. Navid held the soggy tennis ball, ready to throw it across the cargo bay for the umpteenth time. He cranked back his hand then paused. A look of concern washed over his face.

“Is she okay?” Navid asked.

Kara laughed. “Never owned a golden retriever, have you?”

“Nope,” Navid said. “Never had a dog.”

Brushing her hands together, Kara let the fur float away. Maggie nipped at it as if she wanted to eat the balls of fur. She probably would have, too, had Sadie not been holding Maggie’s collar.

“No, girl,” Sadie said. “That’s nasty.”

“Maggie sheds like it’s her job.” Kara picked a strand of fur off her shirt. “Gets all over your clothes. We had to vacuum the house like twice a week.”

“Why would you want to own a dog that does that?” Navid asked, seeming genuinely perplexed.

“How could you not?” Sadie asked. She hugged Maggie close and pressed her cheek against the dog. Maggie’s tail beat the air, and she gave Sadie a wet kiss over the side of her face. Then the bug of excitement took over, and the dog’s tail whipped faster as she frantically slurped her tongue over Sadie’s face. “Settle down, girl!”

Navid threw the ball, and Maggie jumped for it, bounding into the shadows of the bay. “Okay, I kind of get it.”

“I mean, seriously, how could you not want a creature who shows that kind of unconditional love?” Kara said.

For a moment, Navid looked stricken. Maybe Kara had once again hit too close to home. She tried to give a reassuring pat on the back, but the gesture was a bit awkward.

Crap, she thought. I’m not sure what the hell I’m supposed to do.

But despite her lame attempt at reassurance, Navid recovered his smile. Maggie pranced back to them, holding her head high, and Navid bent to welcome her. She wound between his legs, providing the comfort and momentary happiness Kara couldn’t seem to offer.

“All right, girl,” Navid said as he threw the ball again. Maggie’s nails clicked on the deck as she hurried after it. “Fur or not, I would definitely take one.”

The hatch to the cargo bay opened with a clang. Hurried footsteps sounded down the ladders, and Kara spun. Her heart hammered in her chest. Nobody walking that fast would be coming with good news.

“Kara, Sadie, Navid!” Sean called. “I’m going to need all three of you.”

“Did you get the results from the test? What do you need us to do?” Kara was ready to get back to work again. Whatever it was, she was happy to contribute, happy to do anything to help the crew’s mission. But by the look on Sean’s face, she could tell help wasn’t what he needed them for.

“I need to run a blood test on each of you.”

“Why?” Navid asked.

Sean frowned, his brows drawn together as if he didn’t quite believe what he was saying. “Lauren said we need to check for the Oni Agent.”

-35-

After building up a legacy of covert operations and countless successful missions aboard the Huntress, Dom was reduced to captaining a leaky lifeboat.

He watched the first and second decks of the ferry succumb to the Titan’s assault. Water rushed over the remaining vehicles and flooded into the cabins. The Titan let go and allowed the water to finish the job. The monster looked on lazily as more water filtered into the top decks and poured through the pilothouse as the ferry sank. Soon the only evidence the vessel had been there at all was the mad rush of bubbles streaming to the surface.

The desire to end that thing’s life welled up in him. But he didn’t want to waste any more ammunition than they had to, and judging by the way the Titan had withstood their firepower, it wouldn’t crumple easily. Maybe there were some things in this jungle, in this world now, that were better left undisturbed. Their time and lives would be better spent avoiding things like the Titan rather than trying to engage them alone and stop them through brute force. Maybe some parts of the world were just lost to the Oni Agent, and that was the depressing new reality.

“Anything following us?” Dom asked Andris, who was scanning the river and surrounding jungle through the scope in his MK11.

“Nothing I can see, Captain,” Andris replied.

Dom surveyed the jumble of knotted trees and brush with his binos. “Anyone else spot contacts?”

“Negative,” Jenna responded. Terrence hadn’t seen anything either.

“Can’t see shit,” Glenn huffed as he rowed, having taken over for Andris.

“Only contact I see is the big asshole that sunk our boat,” Meredith said. Her voice sounded strained as she heaved on the oar.

Terrence kept his rifle shouldered but gave Meredith a look of concern. “Shit, what was I thinking? You want me to row?”

Dom knew the answer to that question.

“I’m good,” Meredith said. Her cheeks puffed out with each breath. “You can go do something else manly like watch for Skulls.”

“What the fuck is he doing?” Jenna asked. She said it almost dreamily. She had one foot perched on the edge of the lifeboat and the other in the water slopping about the interior of the little craft. Her rifle remained fixed on the Titan, and she stared through the optics as if daring it to make a move.

Dom joined her. “Truly isn’t like any Skull we’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe it’s not a Skull,” Chao weighed in over the comm link.

“It’s got the bones to say it is,” Miguel said.

“Samantha and I have been watching through the vid feeds, and we think this is something similar but different.”

Samantha’s voice cracked over the comm link next. “It’s like Dr. Manhattan. Adam is always going on...” she trailed off then corrected herself, “Adam said that the big blue guy from Watchmen became extra powerful because of a nuclear experiment gone wrong. Maybe the Titan is a result of some kind of experimentation gone wrong with the Oni Agent.”

“Or maybe it went just right,” Miguel countered. “Maybe that thing is exactly what the twisted bastards who created it had in mind.”

Dom scoped the shore nervously. What other dark surprises might come careening out of the jungle? But an unexpected glimmer of hope burned through the fog of uncertainty. “If that’s truly the case, and some group’s escaped genetic experiment is running wild here, then we’re on the right trail.”

“Good,” Meredith said. “Because I’m more than ready to meet the asshole who set me up with Kinsey and Lawson. Whoever started this mess is getting my boot in their ass.”

A humid wind whipped around the lifeboat. Despite the warmth of the African jungle, Dom couldn’t help the shiver tracing over his skin. Water still soaked his fatigues, and the humidity prevented them from drying. His crew was in equally bad shape. And as the bubbles streamed and popped from the sunken ferry, Dom pictured the bags of ammunition, food, and fresh water they had been forced to leave behind in their desperate escape. Somewhere below the surface, a happy school of fish would discover enough MREs and ammunition to conquer the other river-dwellers.

Dom almost laughed. He gave himself a mental shake. This was no time for jokes.

“Chao, any updates on Frank’s position?” he asked, clinging to the hope that their pilot might be able to drop by with some much-needed supplies.

“Good news, Captain. He’s in the air now. Unfortunately, he’s got to make at least two pit stops on his way to us.”

“Glad to hear he made it out of Maryland safely. Wish him Godspeed and good luck from us, will you?”

“You got it, Captain.”

Dom looked to Meredith. Even in the dim moonlight, he saw the flush in her cheeks and the grimace on her face. Each stroke took them farther from the capsized ferry and the Titan, but the effort was taking its toll on her. It was the subtle way the corners of her lips twitched and the furrows in her forehead. He remembered that same look from when she had twisted her ankle during a half marathon they had run together almost two decades ago. She had refused to give up at the ten-mile mark, instead pushing on to the finish—and making her injury all the worse for wear.

“Hey, Mere?” he asked hesitantly. “Might be good to let Terrence row, if only to reserve your strength for later. What’ll happen when I need you to save my ass but you’re too exhausted to fight?”

She seemed ready to say no, her mouth forming an O and her brows pinching tighter together, but then she let the oar go and motioned for Terrence to take her spot. The man did so, putting his back into each stroke. Meredith let out a sigh as she shouldered her rifle and scanned the horizon.

A loud crack splintered the air overhead. The Hunters immediately spun to face the potential threat. Instead, they were greeted with lightning cutting across the darkness. A storm had taken them. Another blast of thunder sounded, and the river and trees lit up like day had broken.

In the flash of light, Dom saw something that chilled him to the core.

The Titan was no longer watching the river. Instead, its eyes locked on the lifeboat.

And the monster, which had previously seemed almost bored, now looked furious.

Damned furious.

It pushed through the waist-high water. Its arms hung at its sides, claws clinking with each step. The rattle of its massively oversized plates sounded like concrete slabs slamming together. Its mouth was open, and a rope of saliva twisted out, thicker than the vines in the nearby trees. Each monstrous tooth was large enough to make a Goliath piss its tattered pants. Dom imagined the number of living creatures that had been ground between that set of fangs.

The monster’s tongue licked across its cracked white lips. It was more snakelike than the flat shovelhead of a tongue most primates had. Yet another anomaly in this abominable creature. But Dom didn’t have time to dwell on the observation. The Titan’s jaw opened wider, and it let loose a bellow. The roar shook the leaves, and Dom swore he could see ripples in the water, moving with the force of wind and noise belching from the monster.

It had taken the Hunters ten minutes of intense paddling to make it this far down the river. But in less than a minute of relentless bellowing and stomping through the river, the Titan had already made it half the distance the Hunters had rowed.

There would be no outrunning it in the open water.

“To shore!” Dom yelled.

If the Skulls hadn’t heard the commotion of the attack on the ferry, they would be bounding from miles away toward the action now. All the uncanny calmness of the Titan had been replaced by a creature hell-bent on catching the Hunters.

Good God, he thought. Had the thing thought they’d gone down with the ship before? Had that been why it was so calm?

The idea that this thing might be thinking and feeling any emotions beyond a normal Skull’s capacity for hunger and hate almost frightened him as much as the sight of the Titan bearing down on them now. Almost.

“Open fire!” Dom yelled.

The Hunters who weren’t rowing let loose a barrage of armor-piercing rounds directly into the monster’s face. It shielded its eyes with one clawed hand. Bullets ricocheted and smashed against the hard bone. The beast churned forward, but the gunfire had slowed it down just enough that Dom thought they could at least make it to the shore.

Another crash of lightning burst overhead. This one scorched a tree not more than twenty yards from the lifeboat as the Hunters neared the shore.

The Titan was within two or three arms’ length from the lifeboat. They wouldn’t make it in time.

“Abandon ship!” Dom yelled for the second time in the hour. The group splashed into the water. Rain pounded all around them as they swam. The Titan raised its car-sized hands, readying an overhead swing. Its fists flew down and crushed the lifeboat.

A few broken shards of wood bobbed up as the Titan’s eyes roved the shore. Already, the Hunters were scrambling through the muddy banks toward the shelter of the trees. They turned when they reached the bank, shouldering their rifles to cover Dom and Meredith.

A fierce salvo of rounds flew from their rifles, peppering the Titan’s face. It swatted at the bullets like it was warding off a swarm of gnats. Its eyes squinted, cracked eyelids blinking over the strange golden irises. More bullets cleaved into its palm, and it let out another bellow that rivaled the cracking thunder. The sound almost bowled Dom over as he and Meredith scrambled up the bank.

Dom felt the movement of air before the Titan’s fist struck. He moved on instinct more than thought, rolling himself and Meredith to the side. Wet dirt and wood sprayed his face from the blow. If he hadn’t moved, they would have both been dead. Another frustrated roar screamed against his eardrums, threatening to burst them. He could barely hear the spray of rounds flying from the other Hunters’ weapons.

Then the creature’s roar cracked into a gurgling whimper. Dom glanced up as he and Meredith ran for the snarled roots where the others waited for them. He turned to see the creature pressing one palm to its face. Blood streamed between its fingers.

“Yes!” Jenna yelled. “Got its fucking eye!”

The Titan bent over as if reeling in pain. Water splashed against its shins, and it made pitiful sniveling sounds. Dom wasted no time in sympathy. He urged the Hunters on. There was no time to celebrate this small victory as the group pushed into the jungle.

“Miguel, take point! Half a kilometer inland, then we travel east. Follow the river!”

“On it, Chief!” Miguel charged ahead. He leapt over a fallen tree and landed in a bush. He rolled back to his feet as the others hurdled over the trunk. Past whipping vines and low-lying branches, they ran for their lives.

Dom bounded beside Meredith. As they ducked under tree branches and hurdled over ruts, he saw a wince of pain cross her face with each loping step. Whatever had happened to her fighting those Imps on the ferry, it was coming back to bite her now.

“You okay?” Dom asked between breaths.

“Sure,” she said, not sounding at all convincing.

They had no time to argue. The cover of the jungle canopy and the torrential rain hid them from the monster—at least, that was what Dom hoped. It also meant they couldn’t quite see where the Titan was. The only reason Dom knew the behemoth was moving again was because of the trembling ground. Ripples formed in stagnant puddles, and tree limbs shook, rattling leaves together more fiercely than if a monsoon were tearing through.

The beast was drawing closer. The footsteps stopped every once in a while as though the monster were reassessing its route. But invariably, it somehow knew where they were. Branches fell and crashed through the canopy. Birds took flight. Animal cries filled the air, warning each other of the threat.

The trees barely slowed the Titan. It barged through them, bending trunks like stalks of corn. Claws scythed through the air like oversized machetes, leaving a clear-cut trail of destruction in its wake.

Dom risked a glance over his shoulder, past Glenn and Terrence. The Titan’s face was visible for a moment. It had ducked low, bounding forward in a hunched pose. Blood dribbled from its right eye. Rage shone out of its left.

Once again, that demonic eye caught Dom’s. The Titan lunged and pulled a tree from the ground. It cocked back its arm and then flung the missile as if it were playing fetch with Cerberus. The tree shed dirt, leaves, and branches as it flew.

“Miguel, look out!” Meredith boomed as she and Dom ducked.

Miguel twisted to hide behind a bulkier tree as the Titan’s makeshift spear blasted past the Hunter. The thrown tree broke, splitting into two pieces that slammed through the forest and then skidded through mud and underbrush. The Titan was not deterred. It snagged another tree and threw it with one arm, and as everyone dove to dodge that one, it lobbed another.

Dom rolled to the side as yet another tree crashed through the forest. He picked himself up barely in time to avoid a rotting trunk exploding to his right and lost sight of the others in the resulting spray of saplings, soft wood, and dirt. A rush of air pummeled him as a trunk speared the ground to his left. Gasping and zigzagging between the trees for cover, he doubted they could play this game for long. Sooner or later, the Titan would score a direct hit.

And if running wasn’t going to work, there was only one other option.

-36-

Meredith squinted through the darkness. She brushed off wet debris from her face. Rain dripped through the leaves, splashing her skin. Her shoulder screamed, fighting every move she made. Even when she kept her arm still, the pain burned through it. She’d probably dislocated it. It was functional for now, but just barely so.

Somewhere amid the Titan’s volley of trees, Dom’s voice broke through her comm link. “Blind that asshole!”

Gunfire burst in muffled flashes and growls. Meredith tried to lift her rifle, but her left arm couldn’t bear the weight.

“Shit,” she muttered. Definitely dislocated.

She ran sideways, keeping an eye on the Titan’s looming form and watching for the next lobbed projectile. Fumbling with her rifle, she pressed the stock to her left shoulder and tightened her fingers around the grip. It had been years since she had trained to shoot from her weaker side, but she hoped it was like riding a bicycle. Peering through the optics was awkward on that side. She tried to sight the Titan’s eye, but the monster whipped its head about as if it knew what the Hunters were trying to do. Unlike other Skulls, which seemed to relentlessly attack even when missing eyes or limbs, this one seemed to understand and protect its vulnerabilities.

Another tree flew past Meredith and impaled the ground. She could barely make out the other shapes flitting through the forest. Gunfire exploded from one spot, then a Hunter would run and reappear somewhere. She prayed no other Skulls or monsters made it to their location before they escaped the Titan. A pack of Skulls would make short work of the Hunters, spread out as they were.

Another roar blasted from the Titan’s cave-like mouth. It used a hand to shield its eye as more gunfire spat from the Hunters’ weapons, and the bullets caught bone and flesh instead. The beast continued forward. Every step it took closer to them, the risk that it would lash out with those terrifyingly large claws and rip one of them in two increased.

“New tactic!” Meredith said, trying not to stumble over vines lying across her path.

More gunfire split the air.

“Agreed,” Dom said. “Hunters, on my position.”

The Hunters’ salvos continued to beat at the Titan. The beast truly was an apex predator—and it could think critically. Tentatively, its hand inched down as if it was testing whether it was safe to leave its eye unshielded. Meredith fired another burst into the monster’s face to show it was not. The beast’s hand returned to its eye, and it stumbled on, crashing through the trees.

“On my mark,” Dom’s voice came over the comm link again. “Check your smartwatch!”

Meredith twisted her left wrist and saw at once where Dom was. She backed toward his position.

“Meredith!” he called. This time his voice didn’t come over the comm link. She saw him in her periphery and ran to him. He covered her with a blast of gunfire.

“Changing!” Jenna yelled out. The click of her magazine preceded another burst from Glenn and Terrence. As the group regained sightlines on each other, they continued battering the monster with gunfire.

“Nobody run again without knowing where at least one other Hunter is,” Dom said. “Andris, Meredith, I want you to flank the bastard. Hold your fire. We’ll distract it and keep it facing this way. You blast its eye when I tell you.”

“Understood,” Meredith said. She was ready to end this game. Her shoulder burned, but she bit back the agony. Sweat beaded on her forehead and dripped into her eyes, stinging. She hoped the Titan felt as much pain as she did. Dom directed the others farther into the forest, and off she ran again, this time with Andris by her side.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Meredith said.

“We make a good team, yes?” Andris leapt over a log like a goddamned gazelle. He appeared to be coping with the crazed running and jumping much better than she was. “Every time we go on a mission together, we kick some Skull ass.”

“So far,” Meredith said. “But let’s not jinx it.”

“No jinxing here,” Andris said. “Only squeezing of triggers.”

If it was a joke, Meredith had a hard time laughing right now. The pain in her shoulder was spreading, and her chest felt tight. It was difficult to keep her right hand around the rifle because her fingers had gone numb and gotten clumsy.

They slowed to a trot, and Meredith struggled to catch her breath. Her lungs still burned as she gulped down air. Dom’s group took potshots at the monster, drawing it forward. In a few moments, it would pass by Andris and Meredith. They would have only seconds to sight up its good eye while its focus remained on attacking Dom and the others.

“Here we go,” Andris said, his sniper rifle, steady and straight, pressed against his shoulder.

Meredith tried to support her weapon, but her left arm still shook. She had trouble keeping her optics lined up with the monster’s eye.

The others are relying on you, she thought. Dom is relying on you. Kick this bastard’s ass.

The Titan took another step. The resulting earthquake threatened to worsen Meredith’s already shaky aim, but she refused to let anything come between her and her target.

The other Hunters opened fire, and the Titan briefly dropped its hand to reach for another arboreal missile. It hadn’t noticed her or Andris yet. She squeezed the trigger. Beside her, Andris’s rifle bucked as he took a shot. But then something happened that neither of them had expected.

The creature was falling, but Meredith didn’t think she or Andris had landed a killing blow. She couldn’t believe their good fortune. Maybe the earlier shot to its eye had injured its brain, but for whatever reason, the Titan was down.

“What’s going on?” Andris said, following the Titan with his rifle, ready to shoot.

Meredith pointed to the thick vines wrapped around its ankle. “How could it blow past trees and a goddamned vine trip it up?”

Meredith zoomed in on the creature’s entangled legs. It wasn’t vines, but a net made of chain links. Where the hell had that come from?

She didn’t have long to consider the absurdity of it. The Titan started to push itself up. Meredith’s pulse thumped in her ears, and for that brief moment, all other thoughts fell to the back of her mind. There was nothing else in the world except Meredith, her gun, and the Titan.

Her finger rocked the trigger. The stock bucked against her shoulder, and bullets flew from the rifle. Time seemed to slow. A brief glimmer of surprise flickered in the Titan’s single working eye. Its mouth opened to bellow—not in anger, she thought, but protest. Its cry seemed to say, “This isn’t how it was supposed to go.” An uncannily human look crossed its hideously deformed face.

And then a massive ball of fire erupted all around the creature. The resulting flash of light rivaled that of the lightning bursting overhead. The concussion hit Meredith next, throwing her backward. Her helmet snapped against a tree trunk, and Andris flew beside her, his rifle catching his strap. The two fell in a tangled mess. Meredith pushed herself to a kneeling position. Her vision was still blurred, and her ears rang, but she scanned the forest, still trying to locate the source of the explosives.

When Andris recovered, she asked, “Did you do that?”

Andris rubbed a knuckle in his ear. His voice sounded muddled in her ringing hearing, but she could read his lips well enough to get the idea. He was as surprised as she.

Slowly, her hearing returned. Flames licked the body of the Titan. The fire crackled and sizzled as rain dripped through the forest canopy. Tendrils of smoke wound from cracks in the Titan’s armor, and the odor of charred flesh stung Meredith’s nostrils. It made her stomach turn, but she shakily kept her rifle trained on the monster.

“Count off!” Dom yelled through the comm link. Meredith waited anxiously as one by one, the Hunters reported in. Everyone was accounted for. She breathed a sigh of relief before Dom demanded, “Who the hell is responsible for the explosives?”

No one answered. Dom led the others as they circled around the Titan. Uncertainty was painted on their faces. Like her, Meredith guessed they were wondering if the thing could really be dead. She studied the monster’s body. Its fingers twitched, and she expected the giant to spring back up, still smoking, to start its unforgiving assault on them once more.

The Titan’s head lifted slightly, its jaw slack. Meredith braced herself for another deafening howl. Her finger hovered near her trigger, ready to lance the thing with gunfire straight through its eye. But instead, only the long rattle of air escaping its lungs rushed out, followed by a dribble of blood seeping down its lips.

“You seriously didn’t do that?” Meredith asked Andris.

“I wish I had,” he said. “But I lost most of my toys on the ferry. I have some C4 left, but not quite enough to pull something like that off.”

They soon realized it had been more than the explosion that had killed the beast. Long iron pikes studded the ground near the body. Most of the spikes had been bent or smashed by the creature’s heavy armor. But the few that had pierced its flesh had done their job well.

Meredith shuddered. Chain-link nets. Explosives. Rudimentary spike traps. What the hell was going on?

“Is it...is it actually dead?” Jenna asked.

“I hope to God it is,” Miguel said. “I’m tired of playing tag with that motherfucker.”

“You and me both, brother,” Terrence said.

Eerie howls rang out through the night. Skulls had heard the gunfire and explosives. There was no telling how long it would be until the monsters swarmed their position.

“Out of the frying pan...” Glenn let his words trail off.

“Back on track,” Dom said. “Miguel, take point. Glenn, Terrence, rearguard. We’re going quietly from here on out.”

There was no backup. No lifeboats, no choppers, no Zodiacs. Nothing. This time, the Hunters were well and truly on their own. Dom didn’t have to tell the rest of them this. There were no more lifelines. They either took the long way back home—or continued toward their goal.

Having made it this far, with their target only a day or two away by foot, she could see the steely look of determination in each of the Hunters’ eyes. Were they resilient, or merely too stubborn to give up? Retreat was a safer choice, a more sensible choice. They were far too ill equipped to invade a secret organization’s laboratory or base both in terms of armaments and intel.

Amid the crack of lightning and pounding rain, the distant howls of Skulls continued all around. It was impossible to tell which direction they were coming from. But there was another sound—one she recognized. It could have been mistaken for the snap of twigs, but Meredith knew what it was.

Nearby, in the darkness of the jungle, an unknown number of weapons had just been cocked. The Hunters weren’t the only ones sneaking around tonight.

-37-

Dom sighted up the first figure to emerge from the brush. Dozens of them had crept up on them from every side. Water streamed over their horns and cracked bony plates. Then he noticed the guns.

“Fucking Skulls with guns?” Miguel muttered over the comm link.

Every goddamned one of their weapons was pointed at the Hunters. If he or any of his crew fired a shot, it was no longer just claws or teeth that would find his flesh.

“Do not fire on us,” one of the Skulls said with a heavy accent. “We are here to help.”

Dom squinted, peering closer at the nearest Skull. He saw dark skin under the bony plates covering its body. And the plates themselves weren’t held together by sinew and flesh, but rather fabric and metal links. These were people wearing the repurposed armor of dead Skulls.

But that didn’t mean they weren’t monsters.

In Mount Vernon, he’d rescued his daughters and Navid from a crazed group of marauders led by a wicked man named Rick. Those bastards had carved bone plates from Skull corpses and worn them as disgusting decorations.

But these people hadn’t just fashioned a helmet or chest plate and called it good. They had entirely encased their bodies like macabre suits of armor.

“We must hurry,” a woman said in a firm voice. “If we do not move, even our disguises will not protect us for long.”

Unlike the others, she let her AK-47 fall to her side. She stepped toward Dom, confident but unthreatening. He recognized her as a fellow leader. Whatever she did, however she felt, her followers would react accordingly. With all the other insane unknowns swirling in his mind, at least he had discovered one thing: This was not a woman to piss off.

“Who are you?” Dom asked.

She lifted the Skull mask from her face. A long scar stretched over her cheek. Half of her flat nose had been torn and left a gaping void where her left nostril used to be. It was an old injury—one endured far before the Oni Agent outbreak, as evidenced by the uneven but healthy scar tissue around the edges of the wound. She stopped and stood before Dom, offering her right hand. Dom clasped it. She squeezed back with a power that matched her confidence.

“I am Alizia Mudimbe”—she gestured with a wide hand to her armored compatriots—“and these are the Citizens Defense Force.”

“Captain Dominic Holland. These are the Hunters.”

A shining smile broke over Alizia’s face. “Captain?” she began with a laugh. “I hope it was not that old ferry you were captain of.”

“God, no. You saw that wreck?”

“My people watched it sink, yes. We saw you fix it. We saw you board it. We saw the creature hunting you.”

A dark cloud lifted from Dom’s mind. The voice he had heard in the woods when the Imps had ambushed them had been from a human.

“How many of your people did you lose following us?” Dom asked. “Back near Soyo...”

Alizia bowed her head. For the first time, her confidence seemed to flag. But it lasted only a second before the resilient fire burned bright in her eyes once more. “Just one man. A father. He left two children behind. Someday they will meet him in Heaven, but today is not that day. So come. Come with us.”

The howls and hunting cries of Skulls continued. Rain sluiced down Alizia’s arm as she held out a hand, beckoning Dom and the Hunters to follow her. He noticed that none of her people were aiming their weapons at the Hunters anymore. Instead they watched the jungle.

“We have food, shelter, first aid supplies, and ammunition,” she said. “Please, come.”

But Dom didn’t need convincing. Try to make a wild last stand against the monsters, or follow these people? There wasn’t much of a choice to be made. If they had wanted him and the Hunters dead, their corpses would already be lying on the ground. And since these people had survived in the jungle this long, maybe they knew something that would help him find out what was going on in Bikoro.

Dom looked to Meredith. Always the voice of reason. If he had missed something, she would have been the one to see it. She gave him an assenting nod.

“We’ll go,” Dom said. The Hunters, their fatigues soaking wet and covered in mud, didn’t protest.

“Good,” Alizia said. “I can see you have more questions. We will be glad to answer them once we are safe.”

The deep bellow of a Goliath sounded above the shrieks and squawks of the other Skulls.

“The demons will soon be here. Let’s go!”

The Civilian Defense Force members escorted the Hunters, jogging along on all sides. At first, as they wound through the forest with Alizia at the lead, it made Dom nervous to be surrounded by these unfamiliar armed troops. But the people behind the Skull masks kept their focus firmly on the dark shadows, constantly scanning for contacts.

Without warning, the group veered right. A flickering light shone in the distance, and Alizia headed toward it. It grew brighter as they swerved between the trees. As they drew nearer, it became more apparent that the light bloomed from a cave of sorts. Dom followed Alizia inside, nearly blinded until his eyes adjusted. The light had been nothing more than a couple of gas lanterns held up by two other CDF members. These two wore no skeletal armor; instead, they had on soiled fatigues with a faded jungle pattern.

The CDF filed in behind the Hunters, and the two men in the fatigues pulled a large lever. A door slammed over the entrance, letting in only a trickle of rainwater that coursed under it in a thin stream. Not long after they were all marching through the manmade cave, heavy footsteps pounded overhead, and silt shifted between the wooden slats covering the ceiling of the tunnel.

“Don’t worry,” Alizia said. “It will hold unless one of those giant demons stomps on us.”

“That’s reassuring,” Dom said. He could tell Alizia wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not. She didn’t bother asking, and he didn’t clarify. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure. This entire situation was so strange that he didn’t know what to think.

The group slowed from a jog to a steady march with the two men with lanterns leading them onward. Intersections branched off before them, presenting a winding maze of choices. Alizia’s men never hesitated, guiding them right then left then right again, constantly twisting down different pathways. Soon the tunnels opened into a wide cavern with barren rock walls. The lanterns cast shadows that danced over the ceiling and floor. Those shadows unnerved Dom. He half-expected a Skull to bore its way through the wall and lunge at someone. But the CDF members didn’t seem concerned. Their ease told him they were well accustomed to these underground passages.

Dom’s muscles burned from their march, and the back of his throat and tongue felt sticky and dry. A musty scent permeated the corridors, and his wet fatigues had grown cold and very uncomfortable. They entered another large dugout room reinforced with steel and wood beams. Here, strings of lights hung from the ceiling. They wavered, growing dimmer and then brighter like fireflies. He half-expected to see the place lit up by candlelight, but the lights were powered by electricity. Dom marveled at the makeshift shelter.

All along the walls, cots and blankets were lined with people, mostly the elderly and children. A few cots held people whose limbs were wrapped in bandages or splinted. Soft voices murmured all around them. Older people—those who had not been on the mission with Alizia—moved between the beds and offered bowls of soup to those who appeared to be patients.

The sight reassured Dom. These weren’t the type of people who had taken his daughters hostage. These were survivors who seemed to have formed a community in the bowels of this hellish world. It reminded him of how civilians had banded together on Kent Island, and a spark of hope flamed brighter within him. They soon entered another chamber filled with wooden crates. Some bore the names and logos of foreign aid groups like the Red Cross and UNICEF. Several people stood around the crates as if they were guarding them.

“Unload and get some food,” Alizia said to her warriors. “Does anyone need medical assistance?”

Meredith’s lips tightened, but then she let her face relax. “Think I dislocated my shoulder.”

“Ah, we can deal with that.” Alizia called over two nurses and pointed at Meredith.

They sat her down at the foot of one of the beds and probed her shoulder. She grimaced, and Dom felt a tinge of worry as he watched them rotate Meredith’s arm before jamming it into her socket. Meredith’s eyes closed, and her face turned white, but she didn’t cry out. After taking a few pills the nurses gave her, she returned to the group, touching her shoulder gingerly.

“I guess that’s better,” she said. “Feels like hell, though.”

“Good,” Alizia said. She turned to one of the warriors. “Kofi, come with me.”

The man set aside his mask and limb armor on a wooden rack. Other CDF soldiers followed as Alizia walked between them, whispering words of encouragement and thanks to each. She reached Dom and his ragtag group last.

“If you will, I would have you and your group follow me,” Alizia said. “Kofi and I have much to discuss with you.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Dom said. “Do you have any water or food you can spare?”

“It would be my honor,” she said. She turned and walked away, her long braids swaying over muscled shoulders.

Meredith strode next to Dom as they wound through another passage. “Is this real? I mean, I feel like after everything we’ve been through, this is the last thing I’d expect to find in the middle of the jungle.”

“What’s your read on these people?” Dom asked.

“I don’t think they’re a danger. They want something, though, no doubt about it.”

“My thoughts, too,” Dom whispered. “Keep your eyes and ears out.”

“Never turn ’em off. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“Had to ask anyway.”

Meredith grinned slightly. “Of course.”

The passage led to a door that Kofi held open. Dom and the Hunters entered a chamber with a squat table. Blankets and mats were scattered around it.

“Please, have a seat,” Alizia said and motioned to the mats.

It took everything in Dom’s power not to simply collapse. He tried to settle himself on the ground comfortably and had to lean on the table for support. His back ached, though he fought to keep his spine straight. The door shut when the last Hunter sat, and Kofi disappeared into the passage.

“You have caused quite the commotion in my jungle,” Alizia said as she sat across from Dom. The dim electric lights were reflected in the beads of sweat dripping over her pronounced cheekbones.

“Your jungle?” Dom asked. “Are you militia?”

Alizia laughed. Not in a menacing way, but more in the carefree manner of friends seated over drinks at a bar. “The looks on your faces. I’m sorry. This is your first visit to the Congo, isn’t it? We are not all paramilitary warlords here.”

“You got me,” Dom said. “It’s a little too easy to believe the worst in people when the world has turned to shit.”

“Ah, I will not disagree there.” Alizia paused as Kofi came back into the room. Several other CDF members followed him bearing bowls of food. They passed them out to the Hunters. “Please, eat.”

The Hunters willingly obliged. Dom tried not to scarf the food down as messily or noisily as Miguel, but the salty broth and bread was surprisingly delicious. Kofi sat next to Alizia, and they too dug in. It seemed to Dom as if they hadn’t had a proper meal in at least as long as the Hunters.

Miguel spoke, his mouth still full, talking mid-chew. “Let me ask you all something. We’ve seen this before. The bone plates used as armor and shit. What do you do to make sure it doesn’t, you know, infect you?”

Alizia grinned. “You treat it like any medical equipment. Sterilize it with heat, boil it. Bleach it. Leave it to sit for a week.”

“That really works?” Miguel said. “Hate to be the guy who tries his armor for the first time, and it doesn’t.”

“We do what we must to survive,” Alizia said.

Dom paused between bites, slowing now that he had filled his belly. “How have you all survived so long down here?”

Alizia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I will be happy to answer all your questions. But first, I would prefer to know better who I have invited into my house.”

“You had scouts follow us down the river.” Dom wasn’t sure yet what he could tell her. He was used to operating covertly. It probably didn’t matter now, since the CIA and the military had turned on them, but old habits were hard to break.

“We did,” Alizia said. “But I don’t understand why a small group like yours dares venture into the Congo. I saw the news reports. We heard the stories of how the rest of the world has burned.” Her face screwed up in a sorrowful expression. “I am especially sad to hear about the state of New York. It is where I was educated before returning here. My second home.”

Dom nodded and said diplomatically, “And I’m sorry to see what has happened to this beautiful country.”

Again, Alizia laughed. “There is no need for falsehoods. This country, for the most part, was already in the middle of the apocalypse long before the demon plague. We have lived in constant fear of marauding groups of rapists, killers, and slavers who call themselves militias. At least now, the CDF no longer needs to defend the victims of those crimes. It would seem the bravado of those pigs was no match for the hunger of demons.”

“So you were operating before the Oni Agent?”

“The Oni Agent?” Alizia asked. “This is what you call the plague destroying our people?”

“It is,” Meredith replied. “And we’ve taken to calling your demons ‘Skulls.’”

Kofi crossed his thick arms, tattooed with leopards, and huffed. “Skulls? That, too, is a fitting name. But I think ‘demons’ is more accurate.”

“And why is that?” Dom asked, raising a brow.

“Because I have seen firsthand the way the demons possess people. And I know where the wicked men are that have conjured these monsters.”

-38-

Rough air buffeted the Cessna Caravan, and the fuselage groaned and quaked. Gray skies coursed with distant lightning and the dark sheets of falling rain. Soon enough the weather would hit them, and there wasn’t much Frank could do about it. They had already tapped into their spare fuel tank. The nearest land mass was still a hundred miles away, and there was no telling if they would have the fuel to land at Lajes Field in the Azores Island, their planned pit stop on this leg of the journey.

Frank tried to appear calm as he looked back at his passengers. Rory had both hands wrapped tightly around the edges of his seat. Rachel wore a stern expression, but the nervous sweat beading on her forehead and dripping from her hair belied her confidence.

Next to him, Shepherd fiddled with the radio. “I miss having a goddamned military radio. Could’ve used SINCGARS to see if someone was still alive on the island.”

“If they are alive, they should be monitoring VHF guard,” Frank said, no longer trying to sound like a relaxed commercial airlines pilot. He’d given up that shtick three hundred miles ago when no one laughed. “At least, that’s what I would do if I were them. I’d want to know about any goddamned aircraft in my vicinity.”

“I hope you’re right,” Shepherd said.

Lightning exploded again. From the intensity of the cracking electricity and the churning blanket of clouds rolling toward them, Frank guessed a rather formidable storm system was driving itself up along the Atlantic. Without any kind of weather service, the best he could do was make a judgment based on his intuition and experience. He didn’t like what either was telling him.

“Let’s start broadcasting an emergency landing request,” Frank said. “Keep it going until we get Lajes to respond.”

“And you want me to do the honors?” Shepherd asked.

“You’ve got clout,” Frank said. “I’m just a glorified taxi driver.”

“I have a feeling Kinsey would disagree with both my rank and title now.”

“Then let’s hope they don’t know about that out here yet.”

“Amen to that,” Shepherd said, adjusting the knob on the radio to a 121.5 MHz frequency. He held his mic near his mouth and depressed the call button. “Lajes Field air traffic controller, Cessna November-niner-niner-eight-charlie-bravo on easterly approach, requesting clearance for an emergency landing.”

The only response was another rolling wave of thunder.

“Keep it going,” Frank said. “We’ve got a long way to go, and I want to hear them talk before we land.”

Shepherd nodded and repeated the message. A rough wind grabbed the Caravan, and the plane dropped several yards. Frank’s stomach lurched, and Rachel gasped—the first sound she’d made in over an hour. They pushed through the turbulence, and the first splashes of rain peppered the windows and windshield.

Again, Shepherd repeated their request for an emergency landing. His words continued, over and over as the storm worsened. Frank wanted to take the plane higher, but with a max altitude of twenty-five thousand feet, there wasn’t much higher he could go. The storm cell seemed to approach a jaw-dropping thirty thousand feet or more. He had no choice but to continue through it. It took every ounce of concentration he had to keep the plane flying straight against the wind. Hail pounded the plane like bullets.

“Oh God, oh God,” Rory chanted, his voice panic-stricken.

Shepherd continued his mantra. “Lajes Field air traffic controller, Cessna November-niner-niner-eight-charlie-bravo on easterly approach, requesting clearance for an emergency landing.” This time the words came out quicker, more desperate.

Again, the plane dropped unexpectedly. The engines whined, and lightning sliced through the air close enough to make Frank’s hair stand on end. Come on, answer, he thought. Please.

Frank wanted to say something to calm his passengers. But no words came to mind. No jokes were funny or even lame enough to ward off the anxiety of flying half-blind through a storm.

Shepherd requested an emergency landing once more, sounding exasperated.

Onward they flew. Frank hadn’t bothered hooking up a gauge to the spare tank to assess the fuel levels. His only method of discerning the remaining fuel was to listen for the sloshing of the liquid within the ugly metal canister. Maybe it was the storm, or maybe it was his growing sense of despair, but it sounded to him like the fuel was almost gone.

“Lajes Field air traffic controller, Cessna November-niner-niner-eight-charlie-bravo on easterly approach, requesting clearance for an emergency landing,” Shepherd said with the same despairing tone as before.

But this time, something broke through the static. Something that sounded impossibly like a human voice.

“Lajes Field air traffic controller, say again,” Shepherd said.

“Civilian aircraft November-niner-niner-eight-charlie-bravo, ident,” a voice called back.

Shepherd looked at Frank quizzically. Frank kept his eyes on the sky before him and reached toward a little button on their plane’s transponder. He pushed it in so the Lajes Field air traffic controller could track their location.

“Thank you, civilian aircraft,” the voice from Lajes said. “Cleared for landing upon arrival.”

Rachel and Rory cheered. Shepherd cracked a smile, but Frank couldn’t believe how easy it had been. “You all put up much more of a fuss when the Hunters wanted to get into Fort Detrick.”

Shepherd’s relief faded. “I recall. You think something’s fishy about this?”

“No telling until we’re on the ground,” Frank said. “And right now, we don’t have much of a choice. We’re going down either way.”

Another five minutes of flying through wind-whipped clouds and rain gave them their first sighting of actual land. Frank spotted the islands first. The bright beacons of the Lajes Field’s runway lights blinked in the distance, showing him the path for landing. They had power! It was such a little thing he had always taken for granted, but he was more thankful than ever for those flashing lights.

“We’re going to make it,” Rory said, as if he still wasn’t sure of what he was seeing.

Frank said nothing. Most aircraft accidents occurred at takeoff or landing, not in the air. The storm had given them a hellish ride, and it would only make the landing worse.

“Everyone hold on tight,” Frank said. “I want you in crash positions just in case. Nothing wrong with the plane, but it’s going to be rough. Got it?”

He received unenthusiastic replies from his passengers.

“Still don’t see any activity down there,” Shepherd said. “I’m not sure what we’re getting ourselves into, but I hope we aren’t in for any surprises.”

“No Skulls, at least,” Frank said. “At least, none that I can see.”

“Nothing yet,” Shepherd said. “Thank God for islands.”

“Thank God the Skulls haven’t learned to swim,” Frank added.

Frank had traveled here before en route to deployment in Afghanistan on a DC-130. He had recalled the lines of USAF A-10s, KC-10As, and KC-135s along with a detachment of USMC F/A-18 Hornets and V-22 Ospreys. He had admired the rows of Portuguese Air Force planes and choppers, along with the constant revolving door of commercial aircraft that had found their way through the Azores Islands crossing the Atlantic. But as they descended toward the base, the only planes on the tarmac bore the red-and-green insignias of the Portuguese Air Force and a few commercial airliners.

“Where are our guys?” Shepherd asked, immediately noticing the lack of a US military presence.

“Bet we are about to find out.” Frank gently pulled back the control column for the main wheels to hit the runway first, then pushed the plane down hard to break the surface tension of the water pooling over the runway. Rachel yelped in surprise. With the flaps up, the plane decelerated. It bucked a little until they slowed to a stop.

You still got it, Battaglia, he thought.

“Lajes tower, Cessna November-niner-niner-eight-charlie-bravo landing complete,” Frank said. “Requesting further instructions.”

“Don’t move,” the controller responded. “We’ll come to you.”

Frank undid his seat belt and looked about the cabin. “Everyone okay?”

Rachel and Rory offered tentative nods. Rain battered the plane and hammered the windows. Another column of lightning split the sky. Several pairs of headlights appeared from a dark hangar. The growl of engines rivaled the din of the storm as military trucks surrounded them. Shapes moved on the tarmac, and spotlights shone into the Caravan’s cabin, blinding Frank when he tried to look out.

A voice boomed through a megaphone. “Open your aircraft!”

Frank shoved open the door. Wind and rain pelted him, threatening to throw him back in. He held his hands palms out.

“Take one step out onto the tarmac. No more. Just one step, or we will fire!”

Frank did as commanded with his hands up. He shivered, and goose bumps popped up along his arms as water drenched him. Shepherd, Rachel, and Rory exited next. It wasn’t long before the shapes silhouetted against the lightning swarmed them. Rough gloved hands peeled back his eyelids and shone flashlights into his pupils. They poked his face and pulled up his sleeves.

Then they grabbed Frank’s shoulders and guided him, along with the others, to the back of one of the trucks with half a dozen soldiers. A canvas cover sheltered them from the storm. Before they even sat, the truck took off, its diesel engine gargling. When the vehicle stopped again, a man in black fatigues opened the flap and beckoned them out.

This time, the soldiers moved slower, more relaxed. They helped Frank off the truck and offered hands to Rachel, Rory, and Shepherd. The truck had taken them into one of the hangars, and the door’s hydraulic system groaned as the hangar shut. Pounding rain still echoed against the metal roof of the hangar, and after a soldier offered emergency blankets to the group, another man sauntered toward them.

“Colonel Elias Ronaldo,” he said, offering a hand in turn to each of them. He spoke English with a smooth but perceptible accent. “Welcome to Lajes. It has been some time since we have seen Americans. It is a pleasure to see you all here.”

Shepherd introduced himself first, spelling out his full rank and command, and the others followed.

“Welcome. I am surprised to host a fellow colonel. A US Army garrison commander, too! And even more surprised you have such a meager escort.”

Frank wondered how much they should tell this man. For better or worse, Shepherd made the decision for him.

“Truth is, we’re not here because of me,” Shepherd said. “We’re trying to get our pilot back to his crew.”

“And where is his crew?” Ronaldo asked dubiously.

“Last we checked, Africa.”

At first Ronaldo’s eyes widened in surprise. Then he rubbed his hands together. “Okay, let’s make a deal.”

-39-

Lauren stood frozen at the lab computer. The Huntress rocked slightly, exacerbating the nausea wrapping its tendrils around Lauren’s guts. She refused to believe what she was seeing. It couldn’t be true. Not after all the advancements they had made against the Oni Agent.

They had learned antibiotics could slow its spread, and they had designed an antibody assay that detected it in people. Then the chelation treatment she had developed successfully killed the nanobacteria component of the agent. And now, with the Phoenix Compound, they had a real, viable candidate for the complete eradication of the prions the Oni Agent left behind in its victims’ brains.

“God, no. That...that can’t be right,” Peter said.

Divya’s brown eyes were wide, and she shook her head slowly. “Should I redo the tests again? Is there an error?”

“This is the third goddamn time we ran the tests. I performed some controls on old samples we had, too,” Lauren said, her heart thrashing against her ribcage. It was almost impossible to admit what they were seeing. “Every goddamn person on the ship has contracted the Oni Agent.”

“No, no,” Peter said. “I still don’t believe it.” He held out his hand to display his nails. “Do you see any bony growths? And my eyes?” He peeled back his eyelids. “No red. No bloodshot sclera.”

“Not like Tammy,” Lauren said. “But you’ve got to remember, her immune system is compromised. The levels of Oni Agent in the rest of us haven’t reached the concentration they have in her. It seems like it’s slower in healthy individuals. As if our immune systems are actually battling it.”

“Which means maybe we can stop the agent on our own, right?” Divya asked hopefully.

“Doubt it,” Sean said. “Look, something’s changed here. None of us should have the agent. Navid, Kara, Sadie—hell, even Maggie—shouldn’t have it anymore. Everyone in the med bay, except for Spencer, should be clean. We never even got scratched or bitten. I mean, it doesn’t make sense.”

Something about Sean’s statement struck Lauren. She paced the lab as the others argued about whether the data were accurate or not. Maybe their tests had gotten contaminated. Maybe the antibody assay wasn’t as precise as she had once thought, and it was picking up a different molecule unrelated to the Oni Agent.

She stared into the med bay, where her patients lay in their beds, trusting her to protect them. Every person on this ship—from Dom’s kids to the engineers—relied on her to keep them safe, to make sure all research they performed on dangerous pathogens and toxins never escaped the highly protected laboratory facilities.

Yet somehow, she had failed them.

She gazed at Spencer. He was resting, half of his body still covered in bandages to protect his Drooler-burned skin from infection.

“Spencer,” Lauren muttered, a thought striking her tired brain.

“What was that?” Peter asked.

“Spencer should’ve been the only one receiving treatment for the Oni Agent.”

“Right, we established that,” Peter said, his brow furrowed.

“But he wasn’t bitten or scratched,” Lauren said. “He was sprayed.”

“The acid,” Sean said, collapsing onto a stool.

“Exactly,” Lauren said. “The Drooler’s acidic spit should be far too harsh of an environment for the Oni Agent to survive. Or at least, that’s what I would’ve assumed with any normal virus or bacteria. But somehow a trace amount of the Oni Agent survives in it. From what we observed in Terrence and Spencer, the Oni Agent took much longer to manifest in them. We stopped the initial development of it in plenty of time to keep them both healthy.”

Peter didn’t quite seem to be on board her train of thought. “But—”

“But we actually made it worse,” Sean said, cutting the older surgeon off. “Oh, God. We made it much worse.”

“It’s our worst fear about Ebola come true,” Divya said.

“Explain,” Peter said.

“We always feared Ebola might go airborne,” Divya said. “But most scientists thought the scenario was unlikely. Others asserted that if it did, the virus would probably be much weaker.”

“How lucky,” Peter said sardonically.

Lauren pointed to the results on the computer monitor displaying a positive match for Oni Agent in every crew member and passenger aboard the Huntress. “That scenario may have just played out on our ship.”

“Evolution like that doesn’t just happen so quickly, does it?” Peter asked. But by the look in his eyes, Lauren could see he already knew the answer.

“I’m afraid it can. Hospitals are breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains. I think we’ve unwittingly done the same thing. The Oni Agent is a perverse result of human medical engineering. Why shouldn’t we expect it to react differently than natural pathogens?” Lauren crossed her arms over her lab coat. She steeled herself for what she was about to say. “If we start investigating it, we would probably find an Oni Agent strain that can live through a Drooler’s acid can also develop a resistance to antibiotics. We might’ve provided the perfect environment to select for these more resilient strains, which are now airborne.”

“I’m willing to bet you’re right,” Sean said. “It’s a weaker form, which aligns with the airborne Ebola theory. But it’s still the Oni Agent. Just, like Oni Agent, Strain Two.”

“We need to treat everyone immediately,” Peter said, already taking off his lab gloves and heading for the patient chamber.

“You’re absolutely right,” Lauren said. “But will this strain still respond to the chelation treatment?”

***

Navid stood in the med bay, clutching a laptop. The crew lined up in the corridor outside, snaking into the bay to receive shots of the chelation treatment from Lauren’s crew. He had almost completed a PhD and had performed research at a world-renowned institution, but now he felt like a child holding a security blanket in his arms as if it could protect him from the reality of the evolving Oni Agent.

He should’ve known it was a possibility. Working in hospital-based labs in Boston, he had grown accustomed to the stories of resistant bacteria strains. Now he was witnessing firsthand the terror that such pathogens could cause. His admiration for Lauren’s team only swelled as he watched them care for their patients. He was a mere scientist in training, and laboratory work was all he could do. Lauren’s team had each mastered their respective fields, while providing thorough patient care as clinicians.

He wanted to do something, anything to help these people.

But he couldn’t.

Lauren gave a shot to Chao, the last crew member in her line. The communications specialist nodded his thanks before exiting through the hatch. Then Lauren joined Navid.

“This is pretty bad, isn’t it?” he asked.

“It is,” she said with brutal honesty, “which makes your job all the more important.”

“I’m not sure I’m the one you all should be trusting with this.” He opened the laptop, and the monitor sparked to life. It showed his calculations and schematics for ramping up the Phoenix Compound production, along with synthesizing more of the albumin shells that allowed the compound to travel through the blood-brain barrier.

Lauren placed a hand on Navid’s shoulder. “What’s on your mind?”

“I don’t know if I can do this. I mean, you all have decades in the field. You know how to do science, how to treat people. And I haven’t even written my dissertation.”

“Dissertations don’t save lives,” Lauren said. She pointed to the computer screen with the Phoenix Compound data. “This does.” Then she gestured to each of the doctors moving among the patients. “We each have our specialties. But I don’t care if a PhD follows your name or not—on this ship, you are the expert on neurological disease mitigation and treatments.”

Navid wasn’t convinced. “What if I can’t do this? What if I let you down?”

“Everyone did their part searching for the Phoenix Compound using the FoldIt program. But I’ll be damned if I wasn’t surprised when Kara discovered it. And you were the one that helped get the Phoenix Compound out of the computer and into the lab. Now I want you to get it out of the lab and into the patients. If the chelation treatment doesn’t work, people will be waiting on the Phoenix Compound. It may be the only thing that can save us.”

“Understood,” Navid said. “I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will.” Lauren offered a reassuring smile and squeezed his shoulder.

An excited bark drew Navid’s attention to the hatch. Maggie entered, her tail wagging, with Kara and Sadie in her wake. Sadie looked frightened as Divya dabbed a spot on her arm to prepare her for the chelation treatment shot. Kara held Sadie’s hand. Navid’s anxiety that he wasn’t good enough to complete this research fell away at the sight. People’s lives depended on him.

Kara’s life depended on him.

“I’ll get the Phoenix compound and albumin shell synthesis running by tonight,” Navid said. “That’s a promise.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Lauren said. “And as soon as we’re finished out there, we’ll join you in the lab to help.”

Navid donned a white lab coat and took a deep breath. He had been pursuing a PhD in the hopes of someday developing treatments that could change the world and save thousands, if not millions of lives. Today was the day he would do just that.

-40-

“You know where the people are who created the Oni Agent?” Dom asked. He’d had to ask Kofi to repeat his statement. He couldn’t believe this man held the answers he had almost lost his team to discover.

Alizia shook her head, her braids waving. “No, that is not quite what he said.”

“To be clear,” Meredith said, “you all know these are not demons conjured by warlocks, right? These demons—Skulls—result from a biological agent created by scientists.”

Kofi laughed. “Yes, of course. While a few of the people here might believe in witches and magic, we are not so superstitious.” He placed a hand over his heart. “I was trained in medicine. I’m a nurse by trade. I studied through an exchange program in Johannesburg.”

“And I was a human aid worker. A member of the local Red Cross,” Alizia said. “Only I learned very quickly that aid packages and foreign money wouldn’t stop the bandits and bastards.” She slapped her palms against the table. “But that’s not what we really want to talk about now, is it?”

“No,” Dom said, “you’re absolutely right. We are here to discuss the future. The future of your country, the future of mine. The future of the whole human race, if we’re lucky.”

Alizia folded her hands together like a practiced diplomat. “Agreed. Which brings us back to our first question. Who are you, and why are you in the Congo?”

Dom considered the long version of the story, from his initial investigation of the abandoned oil rig, to General Kinsey’s betrayal in Bethesda, to their decision to single-handedly pursue the origins of the Oni Agent to the ends of the Earth. They had learned much over the past weeks, and they had sacrificed more.

In the end, he simply said, “We’re the people who want to drag all these demons back to hell.”

Alizia rubbed her hands on her knees. “Ah, now we are talking the same language. You all are American. There is no doubt about that. But judging by your unorthodox mode of transportation, you don’t belong to the American armed forces.” She paused then added, “Or if you are, you’ve been abandoned out here.”

Dom wanted to trust these people. But he would not forget the lessons he had learned from Kinsey. Maybe they wanted something from him. Maybe they would even betray the Hunters. But at this moment, there was precious little he could do about it. The Hunters were at the mercy of the CDF’s superior numbers, and any attempt at armed conflict would end in a slaughter—both for his people and theirs.

“Fairly accurate observations,” he said. “To make a long story short, we are intelligence and special operations contractors. For the sake of our self-preservation, I would prefer not to go deeper than that. We used to be in the employ of the United States government, but we’re currently operating independently.”

“Running away?” Alizia asked with a raised brow.

“In part. But mostly we’re after the people responsible for the Oni Agent. It might be the only way anyone back home believes we aren’t the enemy.”

“And why would they believe that?” Kofi asked, his eyes narrowed. One of his hands slipped toward a pistol holstered at his hip. How in the hell was Dom supposed to convince these people they’d been framed?

“I was an officer in the CIA,” Meredith said before Dom could answer. She motioned to the Hunters. “This is the team that ran my contracts. Right before the outbreak, someone planted damning false information in intelligence agencies around the globe. We’ve narrowed their location down to two possible targets. One of them is a compound near Bikoro.”

Meredith gave Dom a sideways glance, and he waved a hand for her to continue. Cat was already out of the bag, he thought. She flicked a button on her touchscreen smartwatch and used the miniature projector to cast an image on the table before them. It showed a summary of everything Chao and Samantha had discovered, ranging from the subversion of intelligence groups around the world to the strange activities reportedly going on in Bikoro and Baghdad. “I know this isn’t definitive proof, and I understand your doubts. But we’re desperate to stop these people. We aren’t with them. I swear it.”

Alizia’s expression gave nothing away. She cupped her hand over Kofi’s ear, and the two conferred for a moment. Dom worried they were about to be kicked out of this stronghold. At least their bellies had been filled first.

But to his surprise, Alizia smiled. “Yes, we figured you weren’t part of the group conjuring our demons. Those men and women come in on helicopters. Nothing so unreliable as a river ferry.”

“Then will you tell us where those people are?” Dom asked. “We need to infiltrate their base as soon as possible.”

Alizia leaned across the table, her expression turning serious. “We will do better than that. We will take you to them.”

“And then”—Kofi smashed his fist into his open palm—“we will destroy them.”

“My people operate on their own,” Dom said. “Working with another group we’ve never trained with may prove hazardous to both of us.”

It was an understatement. Trying to rein in amateur fighters—no matter how determined—would be like herding cats. He wouldn’t be able to predict when they would charge heedlessly into a gunfight or when they might run, leaving the frontlines of a battle hopelessly unsecured.

“Don’t worry. I’m not a fool,” Alizia said. She clapped Kofi’s shoulder. “Not like this one. Most people here have no formal military training. I’ll give you that. But we have something you do not.”

Dom raised a brow.

“We know these jungles. No maps will help you. You may be good at infiltrating military bases and computers and God knows what.” She placed her hand flat on her chest, and her disfigured nose flared. “We can help you. Let us.”

“All right,” Dom said hesitantly. “I want to thank you for your hospitality. For taking us in and protecting us from the hordes out there. But I need to discuss this with my team.”

“Of course,” Alizia said, already standing. Kofi joined her. “We will give you all the time you need...as long as that time is no more than a couple of hours.”

Dom nodded as they left. He understood the message. She didn’t have the supplies to host their group forever. Not when she had her own people to take care of. But if they agreed to achieve their shared goal of eliminating the base or lab or whatever it was in Bikoro, then her investment of time and resources toward the Hunters would be worth it.

When the door shut, Miguel piped up at once. “Let’s do it. Chief, we’ve got ourselves an armed escort straight to the enemy.”

Glenn folded his thick arms across his chest. “I don’t know. What if they’re unreliable? What if they shoot us in the back? I mean, where the hell have they gotten all these supplies from?”

“She was a foreign aid worker,” Jenna countered. “She probably knew where all the corrupt government officials in the area were keeping the supplies that were supposed to go to these people in the first place. Besides, you saw their hospital setup. They wouldn’t waste resources on children, elderly, and invalids if they were like Rick’s people.”

The group went on debating the merits of working with Alizia’s group. Eventually, Dom put a hand up to silence them.

“The most important thing to consider,” Dom said, “is that Alizia and the CDF are not working for our real enemies in Bikoro.”

“I doubt it, Chief. They’re relying on foreign aid leftovers and shit they took from local militias, not supplies from some well-funded government agency,” Miguel said. “Unless this is all a real damn good ruse.”

“Yeah, my gut tells me they’re legit,” Jenna said, running a hand through her short hair.

Creases formed in Glenn’s brow. “I want hard facts, not gut feelings. But I’m not sure how the hell else we can really vet them short of getting a polygraph down here. On the other hand, why not just take us captive now? Drug us or shoot us or something, right? Unless they want to walk us right into this base they’re talking about and hand us over for some kind of bounty.”

“Possible,” Meredith said. “If that’s the case, this might be our only chance. Do we shoot our way out and follow the river back to the Huntress? Or keep on heading to Bikoro?”

Dom nodded. “We’ve already lost Renee, and I’m not losing anyone else. We need to minimize risk. Maybe Alizia and the CDF are on our level—but if they’re not, we’re screwed.”

“We just talking our way out of this, Chief? Tuck our tails between our legs and go home?”

“No way in hell. The CDF is just another variable we need to consider. But no matter what, we’re getting into those labs, and we’re taking all the intel we can.” Dom turned to Meredith. Together, they had infiltrated homegrown fanatic groups in Oregon. Delved into Soviet-bloc countries to sniff out Gorbachev’s remote bioweapons research labs. Acted like James Bond in Egypt to scout out Iranian counterintelligence agents. There was no one else he’d rather have at his side during a tricky operation. “You up for playing spies again?”

-41-

Meredith wanted to demolish the people responsible for the Oni Agent as much as anyone else in the room, but the Hunters’ mission didn’t end in Bikoro. They needed to know who they were bringing to justice, and she doubted this was the only place they had set up shop.

It was time for a little intelligence gathering.

“I am happy to hear you will work with us,” Alizia said.

“We share the same goals,” Dom said. “We want these people removed from your land. And preferably from the entire goddamned planet.”

Kofi smiled at that.

“But before we dive in, there are a few things we need to know,” Dom continued. “Meredith is our expert in intelligence matters.”

“Right,” Meredith said, smoothly stepping into her role. “We’ll need time to scrape as much data off their intranet as possible. That means access to any computers on site.”

“Of course,” Alizia said. “The CIA officer wants her intel before we get our revenge.”

“You got it,” Meredith said, recalling when she had first sent Dom and his group to the IBSL. They had discovered no one there except for a lone survivor who had proved useless in providing any information pointing to the real culprits of the Oni Agent. “I thought we’d caught these bastards once already. But they’re like cockroaches. Scattering and then showing up somewhere else. I want to know where else they’re hiding so we can stamp them out for good.”

“That’s reasonable,” Alizia said. “So how can we help?”

“We’re not going to run in there with guns blazing,” Dom said. “As soon as they realize there’s a security threat, they’ll lock everything down.”

“So we want to do this quietly,” Meredith said. She noted Kofi’s disappointment. “I promise you’ll have plenty to blow up later. But first, we need the lay of the land.”

Alizia unrolled a hand-drawn map on the table. “We’ve had a few opportunities to explore around the base.”

Meredith was skeptical. “And they haven’t spotted you?”

“No,” Kofi said. “Like she said, we know the jungle. They do not. They thought they could establish this base and the jungle wouldn’t notice. But the jungle notices everything.” He grinned. “And we listen to the jungle.”

“That’s great. What do you know about their defenses?” Dom asked.

“Right to the point, like a good American.” Alizia drew a rough map of the base and the forest surrounding it. “No water access. Only a single roadway that ends here.” She pointed to a spot almost a mile away from the actual base. “I believe they have a helipad here. Most of the base is built below the ground, so there aren’t any obvious electric fences or lookout posts.”

“I’m sure they’ve got cameras, though,” Dom said. “Got to have some way to keep an eye out aboveground.”

“They do,” Alizia said. “We’ve sent a couple of patrols through the area. We found cameras here, here, and here.” Her index finger stabbed the map at various spots. “But we tried not to make it too obvious we were snooping. So I’m sure there are plenty we did not see.”

“That’s probably true,” Meredith said. “If I were securing a place like that, I’d have backups for every damn camera out there.”

Dom frowned at the map. “So if everything is underground, how do you get in?”

“There are several entrances controlled by what looks like keypads.” Alizia indicated those entrances. “And there are these two entrances as well.” She circled a large circular door that opened to the sky. “This is where we believe the helipad is. And this”—she drew a large rectangle—“is for those giant demons.”

“The Titans?” Meredith asked, nonplussed. “Like the one you caught in that trap?”

Kofi nodded.

“Why in the hell are Titans crawling in and out of that place?” Miguel asked, rising angrily to his feet.

“You’ve been around the Skulls for a while, right?” Alizia asked.

“You could say that,” Dom responded.

“Then you’ve no doubt noticed the creatures you call Titans are different,” she continued. “We’re not sure what they are. Humans turn into demons. We’ve seen the animals of the forest perverted by the agent, too. But those Titans...they are something entirely different.”

“That’s what we were afraid of.” Meredith tamped down her excitement. Now they were starting to get somewhere. “I wouldn’t call them geniuses, but the Titan we encountered seemed smarter. More poised and cautious than your typical Skull.”

“That is what we have observed,” Alizia said. “They seem to lead the Skulls around them, and the smaller monsters are naturally attracted to them.”

Meredith’s eyes scanned over the massive door on the map that Alizia had drawn. “Do you know how many of these things there are?”

Kofi let out a sigh. “No. We kill one, and then they release a new one from that gate.”

“How many have you killed?” Dom asked.

“Four so far,” Alizia answered. “And each time, within a couple of days, one comes lumbering out again, like they’re growing them in vats down there.”

“They probably are,” Miguel said.

“Wait, wait,” Meredith said. “How do they know when one of those things dies? Do they track them somehow?”

“It would seem so,” Kofi said. “We dissected one and found some kind of electronic devices. We don’t know what they were for. Tracking? Mind control? There’s no limit to the evil these men will do.”

“Do you have any samples of the devices?” Dom asked, leaning forward, his eyes keen. The tests and data Samantha and Chao might run on those devices would be priceless.

“No,” Alizia said. “We destroyed them. We feared they could be used to find us.”

Meredith’s shoulders slumped. “Fair point. So we can approach—” She stopped mid-sentence. All eyes turned to her, and she had to remind herself to breathe. “Holy shit. If they replace those Titans every time one comes out, that means they’re going to open that door again soon.”

“What, you want to run in under the feet of one of those Titans?” Terrence asked. “Even I ain’t that brave or stupid.”

Miguel’s eyebrows rose. “And that’s saying a hell of a lot.”

Terrence shook his head and gave Miguel a light punch in the shoulder.

“It’s risky,” Dom said in a flat tone. He leaned over the table and gestured to the other doors Alizia had drawn. “What about these entrances? What are they like?”

“Mechanical doors. Guards,” Alizia said. “Usually three to four of them nearby.”

“And the keypads?” Dom asked.

“About chest-height on the frame of each door.”

Meredith combed a hand through her hair as she considered what they had learned. Her fingers came away coated in dirt, and she brushed them on her pant leg. Maybe using the Titan’s gate was too suicidal. Besides, the base would no doubt have all eyes on the giant as they released it. And if the swarms of Skulls drifting through the jungle were attracted to the beast, then the people guarding that might have extra reinforcements on those doors.

An idea popped into her head. “Do they still guard the other doors when they release a Titan?”

Alizia paused to consider the question. “No, I don’t think so. Last time, they released a Titan, our scouts didn’t see any patrols near the normal entrances.”

“Too scared of the Skulls to stay outside,” Kofi said.

“Okay, good,” Meredith said. “I think I’ve got an idea. And if it works, we should be able cause a distraction that doesn’t arouse too much suspicion.”

“And how do you think we’ll do that?” Dom asked.

A grin spread over her face. She couldn’t help it. The plan she had in mind might not be perfect, but given what they were working with, it was their best shot at success. She’d used a similar strategy once before, when she’d tasked the Hunters with infiltrating a network of mines in Syria. They’d tapped into the emergency alarms and simulated a fire deep within the mines. Most of the extremists roosting in the mines had run straight for the exits even though there wasn’t a hint of smoke. They would need something like that to draw people out of the base. Something that would force their hand.

“How are you going to do it?” Meredith said, echoing Dom’s question. “We’ll use their Titan, of course.”

***

Alizia had a few of her people turn the makeshift command center and dining room into a workable barracks for the Hunters by dropping off sleeping bags and a few spare bedrolls. Dom settled next to Meredith. He radioed Chao and Samantha to apprise them of the situation.

“Yeah, we can handle any security issues you face remotely,” Samantha said once he’d finished briefing them.

“Excellent,” Dom said. “We’ll try to get you access to their intranet, too. Let’s pull as much data as we can.”

“You got that right, Captain,” Samantha said. Dom imagined her gulping an energy drink when she was silent for a beat. “Chao’s got some other news for you.”

Chao’s voice broke over the comm link. “Frank’s on his way to Cape Verde with Shepherd, Rory, and Rachel.”

Dom couldn’t help pumping his fist. “Fantastic news. How did he manage that?”

“The Portuguese Air Force still had control of Lajes Field. Our military hightailed it out of there a couple weeks ago. Probably part of Kinsey’s plan to concentrate his remaining forces.”

“Timeline makes sense. What did Frank have to do to convince them to help?”

“Not much, according to him. They were happy to help anyone trying to make a difference. They’ve been cut off by their own government and haven’t heard a peep from the EU or the US. But they did ask us to do something for them when we find out who the hell is behind this mess.”

“Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

“Tell them where to drop some goddamn bombs,” Chao said with a laugh.

“Seems like a good deal to me,” Dom said. He let the tension relax from his shoulders as he settled against the cold stone wall. It was always reassuring to have allies in the world, no matter their strength or size. “Does Frank have an ETA?”

“Assuming refueling in Cape Verde is as easy as it was in the Azores, late tomorrow.”

Dom nodded, glancing at the map on his smartwatch. “Good. I’m sending you all the location of our presumed target. We’re planning to hit it at 2100 hours. I want Frank to prepare the Huey and take it out to meet us.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Any other news on the Huntress?”

A long beat of silence stretched over the comm link. Dom knew what the calm before a storm sounded like. A sharp intake of breath from Chao. A sigh. Then...

“I’m going to let Lauren explain.”

-42-

Later that night, Dom lay awake, his thoughts churning like white-water rapids.

The Oni Agent was airborne.

Kara had it. Sadie it. Every member of his crew. Even the damn dog had it.

And for all he knew, everyone out here might be infected. How long would it take for the Oni Agent to weasel its way out of their bones and force them along the slow march to becoming Skulls?

His hand found Meredith’s in the darkness, their fingers intertwining.

“It’ll be okay,” she said quietly. “Lauren will take care of your girls.”

“I shouldn’t have left them,” Dom said, his voice heavy. “I shouldn’t have dragged us into this godforsaken jungle.”

“Stop beating yourself up,” Meredith said. “Maybe we’ll find something in those computers tomorrow. These people created the Oni Agent, right? So maybe they have a cure, too.”

“Maybe,” Dom said. “I’m looking forward to wringing their necks until we’ve gotten every scrap of intel.”

“Save some for me.” Meredith squeezed his hand, and he traced a thumb along her knuckles. She rolled over and brushed a kiss across his lips. He let himself be lost in her embrace for a moment, but all too soon he gently pulled away.

“We should get some sleep,” he said.

She sighed and settled in next to him, one arm draped across his chest. “We never seem to catch a break, do we?”

There was nothing he could say to that. With the threat of an airborne Oni Agent and their most dangerous mission just ahead—not to mention half a dozen Hunters sleeping nearby—even a single, stolen moment of happiness felt like a luxury they could ill afford.

Soon, Meredith’s breathing slowed into a soft, even rhythm. Eventually, after a few false starts, he drifted off too. He hadn’t realized he had fallen asleep until a storm of voices woke him. He jumped upright and checked his smartwatch. It was 0600. Meredith jolted awake beside him, and they both reached for their holstered pistols.

“What the hell’s going on?” Miguel asked, his bloodshot eyes peering around the room.

The door burst open, and members of the CDF rolled in. Dom thought something was wrong until one of them turned and smiled.

“Good morning,” he said in stilted English. “Breakfast at your leisure. Alizia requests your presence in one hour. She has allotted you each ammunition that she says will fit your weapons.”

The smell of warm beans and rice was enough to draw Dom from his bedroll. He forgot about his sore muscles for the moment and sat at the table. No one said a word as they scarfed down their meal. He felt a little guilty, hoping that no one had to go hungry because of the Hunters’ presence here. Soon, they would be back on the Huntress. Back with his daughters. Back where he belonged.

The rest of the day was a blur of activity. Loading magazines. Cleaning weapons. Going over plans until they were ingrained, step-by-step, into each of their minds. As the hours wound down toward evening, there was little else he could do to prepare for what lay ahead. He checked his pack for the fourth time in the CDF’s armory.

“You sure they’ll release a replacement Titan tonight?” Dom asked Alizia.

“I cannot be certain. But the last four were released between twenty-four and forty-eight hours after we killed one.”

He took a deep breath and glanced at Meredith. She was back to her warrior-queen persona with a half-head of hair braided away from her face and a fierce smile on her lips. “You ready?”

Meredith tightened the straps on her pack and secured her rifle’s strap. “One hundred percent.”

“Miguel, you know when to call me,” Dom said.

“Three days after our first date—no more, no less, Chief.” Miguel smirked but turned serious when Dom shook his head slowly. “Soon as we see the Titan’s door open and Mommy and Daddy kick him to the curb.”

“Close enough.” Dom laid a hand on Miguel’s shoulder. It was usually Renee who led Bravo. With her gone, Miguel was the most senior of the Hunters. “I’m counting on you tonight. They’re all counting on you.”

“Wouldn’t lead you or them wrong, Chief.”

“Kick some ass out there.”

Miguel held his fist out, and Dom tapped his knuckles against Miguel’s.

Kofi sidled up to them. He had an AK-47 strapped across the Skull chest plate he wore, along with a bandolier of magazines and grenades. “Don’t worry, Captain. If this man is no good, our people will be more than happy to pick up the slack.”

“’Fraid there won’t be any slack for you to pick up,” Miguel said, grinning again. “But you’ve got the right spirit. You might make a good Hunter yourself.”

Kofi’s nose wrinkled as if he was offended. “Hunter? I am a vegetarian. I can’t believe you would suggest anything like that.”

“You serious, man?” Miguel said.

Kofi burst out laughing, and Dom turned, leaving the two men to bond. The adrenaline rush before a mission did funny things to people. Dom turned serious. Meredith went a little bit Thunderdome. And Miguel turned into even more of a joker. At least Miguel and Kofi were too caught up in the tradition of bravado, psyching each other up, to be scared.

Dom joined Meredith and Alizia at the armory’s entrance. “Let’s do this.”

Alizia led them into the main tunnel. They passed the makeshift hospital chamber. Those serving as nurses and doctors nodded at Alizia, Dom, and Meredith. Several elderly individuals moving about the room with the aid of canes held out their hands. They closed their eyes, offering prayers and blessings. These people, no matter how injured, how busy with their own jobs, seemed to sense something important was about to happen.

Hope swelled in Dom’s chest. Somehow, just knowing that they would carry with them the well-wishes, prayers, and thoughts of an entire underground community made this mission seem even more important. This world was protected by the goodness and dedication of a select few. Dom felt proud to be walking with Alizia. Proud that she had offered to help, and proud to work side-by-side with another segment of humanity resisting the onslaught against the world. There still might be a lingering doubt, a voice in his head ingrained by his years in covert ops telling him to keep one eye on her. But his instincts, too, had been honed over the decades, and after everything he’d learned from his time with her and the CDF, he found himself yearning to trust her, to know that she really did share the same goals as him of bettering this world.

Soon Alizia guided them to narrower tunnels. The low ceilings forced them to duck as they walked. Dom’s broad shoulders scraped the walls. He fought back the creeping sensation of claustrophobia and pushed on into the darkness.

“This way,” Alizia whispered, shining a small penlight to the right. They passed another two intersections until they reached a tunnel so small it forced them to their bellies. One by one, they crawled along the gradually ascending tunnel.

Humid wind rushed past Dom. It sucked away the cool underground air he had come to enjoy. With the wind came the sounds of birds and drone of insects. They were almost to ground level again. Then Alizia’s penlight went out.

“We are here,” she said in a low voice. She rolled back a stone the size of a manhole cover. Once Dom and Meredith exited, she replaced it and pointed westward. “The door we will enter is that way.”

They dropped low and lay flat on their bellies once more. Dom didn’t want to take any chances in case there were cameras along the perimeter. The dense ferns, shrubs, and vines growing among the snarls of roots gave them enough cover if they proceeded cautiously. But that also meant two kilometers of crawling, which was why they had taken off earlier than the rest of the Hunters and the CDF.

Time passed at an agonizingly slow rate. Dom’s joints ached. He was getting too old for this kind of shit. Way too old. Miguel and Jenna should be out here crawling around in the mud and leaves like slinking reptiles. But only he and Meredith had the decades of experience needed for a mission as risky as this.

And when he offered a quiet nod to ask if Meredith was okay, she nodded back, even breaking a slight smile. Hell, she seemed to be almost enjoying herself. Maybe after years of sitting at a desk, she relished the chance to get her hands dirty again.

***

Meredith watched the spindly legs of the giant spider walk over her skin, straight up her arm, heading toward her face. Please, please, please, don’t do that. But the hairy bastard couldn’t read her thoughts. And even if it could, Meredith guessed it wouldn’t give a shit anyway. She tried her best not to scream as the little monster crawled up her cheek. She wanted to swat it, to bat it off her face. To yell and curse at it.

But she couldn’t. She reminded herself the thing was no worse than the harmless little spiders that used to make their home on her condo’s porch. Just...bigger. The scent of the wet air stoked her memories of home. The webs on her porch had always glistened after a rain, making intricate, beautiful art. When the rain splattered against the roof, she would sit inside, listening to its gentle drumming as she read a book curled up on a chair.

Except that was just some nostalgic fantasy. She almost laughed aloud. How often had she actually had the downtime to relax like that? Meredith had spent the majority of the last decade at work, cooped up in her office while Dom and his people were out in the field. She had often wished to join them on a mission, just to get a taste of the old life.

Be careful what you wish for, she thought as she crawled through the mud.

The tickling continued as the spider roamed over her. It wasn’t that she was afraid of spiders, but damn. This thing was huge. The beast traveled over her helmet then down her back. She twitched her shoulders, trying to shake it off.

How long had they been moving? Even through her gloves, it felt like her hands had gone raw. Her rain-sodden fatigues were chafing against her legs and arms. Every inch forward seemed like another eternity. They were progressing slower than the moss growing up the tree trunks.

Meredith looked ahead to the shadowy form of Alizia. The woman still wore her Skull armor, yet she didn’t rattle like one of the creatures when she moved. She was quieter than a serpent. If this woman really was leading them to the enemy’s base, neither Meredith nor Dom could have done any better. Alizia truly did know the jungle as well as she’d claimed.

After what seemed like hours, Alizia paused. She made a slow, subtle gesture to direct Dom and Meredith to her side. They crawled over. With only her eyes, Alizia indicated a spot up ahead. Through the meager opening between tree trunks and leaves, Meredith caught movement. Her heart jackhammered against her ribcage. Three men in gray uniforms stood beside a door swathed in camouflage netting.

This was it. This was really it. The base outside of Bikoro existed, and they were about to infiltrate it.

Then she willed her pulse to slow.

About to infiltrate was an overstatement. Now came the waiting game. Only when the Titan was released to replace its dead brother would the Hunters and the CDF execute their distraction. Then Meredith, Dom, and Alizia could sneak into the base. No more crawling. No more spiders.

But for now, waiting. Lots of waiting. Hours of it.

Insects bit and stung her, crawling over her exposed skin and wriggling beneath her clothes. They were sucking her life out like so many miniscule vampires. And she couldn’t swat at a single one.

At some point, her muscles and joints locked up. She wiggled her toes against the insides of her boots, desperate to keep the blood flowing. Eventually her stomach rumbled in hunger. Alizia and Dom’s guts joined in the chorus, as if all three of their bodies had rebelled and were trying to compromise their position. The hours dragged on, and the deepest of nighttime darkness swallowed the forest. Meredith pressed her tongue against the back of her throat. Dry. She moved her mouth slowly. Dreadfully slowly.

Finally, her lips tugged at the nozzle coming from her pack, and she sucked in a little water. She tried to ration it out, mentally keeping track of sips. When her stomach grumbled again, she wondered how long they would have to go without so much as a nibble of a protein bar. Her eyelids felt heavy, reminding her of her restless sleep the night before.

The ground trembled, and leaves rained down on them from the trees. For a wild moment, Meredith thought that her stomach had caused it. Her fingers shook from the pounding of adrenaline. This was it. The massive doors at the other side of the base were be opening, releasing the Titan into the wild.

-43-

Kara snapped a tube in place on the nozzle of a glass flask. “This connects to the vacuum pump, right?”

“Right,” Navid said, his nose scrunched in concentration. “And this”—he connected a round-bottom flask with three necks attached to other tubes and glass appendages—“will be where the magic happens.”

“Not magic,” Kara said. “Science!”

Navid laughed. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. “Sorry, but that sounds a bit cheesy.”

“Fine, set up the synthesis yourself.” Kara narrowed her eyes and backed away from the fume hood where they were working, trying to appear stern.

“I didn’t mean to offend you.” Navid’s eyes grew wide with worry. “I just—”

Kara tapped him playfully on the arm. “I’m just giving you shit. Got to do something to lighten the mood.”

Navid let out a long sigh. “Thank God. You’re scary when you’re angry.”

“I’ve heard that before.” Kara grinned proudly. She watched Navid turn on a compressed air line, and the liquid in the three-neck, round-bottom flask bubbled. “Is that it?”

“That’s it. We’re good for now.”

They took off their lab gloves and washed their hands on the way out of the lab.

While Divya and Sean worked in the isolation portion of the laboratory, only Peter and Lauren tended to the patients. They were changing Spencer’s bandages now.

“Hold up,” Kara said. “Let’s see if they need any help.”

Navid’s ears grew red, and he scrubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Oh, man, yeah, you’re right. We should do that.”

They walked through the aisle between the patient beds. Every hour more of the beds were filled, and soon they would run out. A grim silence filled the bay. Most patients slept in feverish fits. Sweat glistened across their faces and soaked into their beds. An image of Sadie in one of those beds flashed through Kara’s mind. She wondered how long it would be until the Oni Agent grabbed her, too. How long could a healthy immune system fight this new airborne strain? She shivered.

A hand brushed her arm. “It’s okay,” Navid said, as if he could read her mind. “We’ll be fine.”

She forced herself to relax. Thinking about her sister always had this effect on her. She hated appearing weak. Especially in here, in front of Navid and Lauren, where she was supposed to be helping. She didn’t need them to worry about her. Didn’t want them to. They had bigger things to worry about.

Connor was sleeping in Tammy’s arms, snoring softly. Kara frowned. He wasn’t supposed to be doing that. Lauren and her crew had already strapped the woman’s arms down in case the chelation agent failed.

Kara’s thoughts turned to her mother. Maybe she was still stuck in their home’s basement, wasting away, nothing but hunger and hatred in her prion-addled mind. The cold grip of terror tightened on her chest. Worse was the possibility her mother had escaped and was one of the monsters devouring the few survivors clinging to existence out there.

“Kara?” a soft voice said. “Everything all right?”

Kara looked up to see Lauren. She appeared concerned as she cut a fresh strip of gauze to place over Spencer’s burns.

“Oh, sorry, I must have spaced out for a second,” Kara said, trying to cover her lapse. Somehow she’d managed to walk across the entire room without realizing it. “We just wanted to see if we could help with anything.”

Lauren gave her a look filled with sympathy. Kara hated it.

“Why don’t you and Navid go take a break somewhere?” Lauren said. “I appreciate all your hard work, but you two really deserve a rest.”

That wasn’t what Kara wanted to hear.

“Maybe Lauren’s right,” Navid said.

Kara’s face flooded with heat. She couldn’t tell if she was angry or embarrassed or...goddammit, what if they were right? Her shoulders sagged, and her chin slumped against her chest. Maybe she should rest. They obviously didn’t need her here, getting in the way, begging for a task like a little kid.

An animalistic growl abruptly sounded from her right. Instinctively she whipped around. It was coming from one of the patients.

She sprinted across the bay before the others moved. They hadn’t fought the Skulls—she had.

With a lunge, she pounced at Tammy’s bed. The woman’s eyes were open, bloodshot and peering around hungrily. She lashed against her restraints. Saliva sprayed from between her teeth and splattered against Connor’s face. He was frozen, his mouth muttering something incomprehensible.

As Kara threw her weight against the woman, desperate to prevent her from tearing into her son with her teeth, she heard the word slipping from the boy’s mouth, over and over again.

“Mommy...Mommy...Mommy?”

The woman growled in response, bellowing above the beep of the EKGs and the rattle of her bed as she struggled.

“Sedatives!” Lauren cried.

Kara pressed her palm against the woman’s cheek, forcing her head to the side. The restraints on the bed groaned.

“Son of a bitch!” Peter snapped, adjusting the drip on the woman’s IV. “This should’ve kept her knocked out for a goddamn week.”

The boy wailed, pounding on Kara. Hitting her like she had made his mom angry. Like she was hurting his mom. The boy’s small fingers tangled in her hair, ripping it from her scalp.

“Navid!” Kara yelled. “Take the kid!”

At once Connor was pulled off her—along with a handful of her hair. Tammy’s jaws worked slower, slower. Her bellows became low growls as Lauren tightened the woman’s restraints and Peter monitored the IV drip.

Kara’s chest heaved as she caught her breath. Her limbs shook with the fading effects of adrenaline. “Didn’t...didn’t she get the chelation treatment?”

“Yes,” Lauren said. “She did.”

“Then...then it’s not working?”

Lauren didn’t have to say a word. Her silence was answer enough.

***

Frank thanked the gods for the clear skies. Zeus, Horus, Anu, Yahweh, Jupiter, Thor. Every damn one. By the time they had convinced Colonel Ronaldo of who they were and what the hell they were doing flying a relatively small FedEx plane across the Atlantic, the storms had abated enough Frank felt safe taking to the air again. Most of the trip had gone smoothly, and now he had spotted the flecks of green that signaled their next stop.

“There it is. Cape Verde,” Frank said. There was a hollowness behind his sternum as they drew in closer. None of their radio calls had been answered, but Frank didn’t want to dwell on what that said about their chances of an easy layover.

“What’s it like down there?” Rory asked.

“Never been,” Frank said. He eyed the archipelago nation as they approached. “But I heard it’s nice. Beautiful little volcanic mountains, beaches. Might want to visit now while the prices are cheap. You’ve got your pick of islands, each with their own airport. Badass Airlines services all of ’em. All of ’em that don’t have Skulls, that is.”

“Let’s just pray one of them isn’t infested,” Shepherd said.

“And what if they all are?” Rachel asked.

“Vacation doesn’t last forever. Not even for the Skulls,” Frank said.

The sun glinted off metal structures on the nearest island. A long stretch of black asphalt was bordered by rocky outcroppings and sandy beaches. Some of the volcanoes that had formed the islands were still active, with eruptions occurring in the past several years, but Frank was more concerned about the Skull activity. They could cross this island off their list.

“Fuel on the spare tank good?” Frank asked.

Rory gave the tank a smack. “Seems like we’ve still got a decent amount.”

The Caravan veered over the first airfield. From a distance, it looked as if a herd of animals were grazing in the tall grass. But the local goats and monkeys didn’t walk around on two feet, nor did they have bony plates covering their bodies.

“So that one’s not going to work,” Rachel muttered.

“Got a head count?” Frank asked.

“Maybe three or four dozen on the runway alone,” Rory said. “Why?”

“If all the airports are like this, we’ll want to choose the one where we have the least of these bad boys to shoo away.”

The midshipmen didn’t seem to like that answer. Frank steered the Caravan over the rest of the island. They soared past a rolling green-and-brown landscape that led to a stretch of squat hotels near a harbor. Skulls wandered the beaches, streets, and the small university campus.

He directed the Caravan to the next island. This one was much smaller, just a ramshackle town and docks that wouldn’t suit sea craft much bigger than one of the Huntress’s Zodiacs. Frank counted six or seven Skulls wandering between the houses, then saw an overgrown field surrounding a dirt runway. Two single-prop planes sat in the sun, and the nearby hangar seemed to be stocked with oil drums and what looked to Frank like several gas cans.

“Only a couple attendants on hand. Think we can make this work?” he asked.

“I’m ready to stretch my legs,” Shepherd said. “I think this trip has killed any love I had for flying.”

“Good news is we’re only two-thirds done with it,” Frank said. “So you’ve got plenty of time to learn to love it again.”

“Doubtful.”

Frank took the Caravan down, and the landing went as smoothly as it could on a half-gravel, half-dirt runway. Two Skulls lumbered with a lethargic gait toward them.

“Rory, Rachel, take care of our guests,” Frank said. “Shepherd, you and I are on maintenance duty.”

The midshipmen dropped out of the cabin door with their rifles swinging to their shoulders. Each took a couple of shots. Bone chips and dust flew off the Skulls, then rounds caught their faces, sending them tumbling backward. Frank ignored a distant cry from another Skull. He waited for a chorus of replies, but none came. That was a good sign. Together, he and Shepherd wheeled over the fuel cans.

“Wonder how all the Skulls got to these islands,” Shepherd said.

“Airfields and ports,” Frank said as he turned on the fuel pump. “I bet people came, scratches and all, trying to find safety in paradise, but turned it into hell instead.”

The midshipmen continued their patrol around the Caravan. Sporadic gunfire announced the occasional visitor, but it didn’t take more than fifteen minutes to refuel and reload.

“Who’s hungry? We have time to visit the airport McDonald’s,” Frank said when they returned.

Rory looked around as if he expected the fast-food restaurant to pop up on the otherwise empty airfield. “A Big Mac never sounded so good.”

Frank shook his head. Sarcasm was completely lost on the poor kid.

They took off with little fanfare. The weather held out with only occasional turbulence and light rain—nothing to rival the storm they’d fought to make it to Lajes Field. When he judged they were within a hundred knots of the Huntress, he had Shepherd use Rachel’s radio to call on the ship’s encrypted line.

“Badass Airlines?” Chao’s voice came back. “You sure do think highly of yourself.”

“And my passengers, Chao. You saying they aren’t badass?” Frank looked around the cabin for smiles but got only eye rolls.

“You’re going to get a chance to prove it,” Chao said. “We’ve had a bit of an issue with the Oni Agent going airborne.”

“A bit of an issue?” Frank said, the buoyant happiness in his chest deflating. So much for his welcome-home party. “I’m not a doctor, but it sounds like you’re understating the issue. I’m normally in favor of getting things airborne...but not the Oni Agent.”

“Yeah, well, it’s become enough of a problem that Lauren doesn’t think you all should actually come into the ship.”

Frank heard groans from the passenger seats. “Then how the hell do I get to my new ride?”

“You all can stay on the deck of the Huntress. We’ll have supplies brought to you. And don’t worry, Lauren’s already planned out how they’ll be decontaminated and packaged, so you all won’t catch anything. Uh, hopefully.”

Frank really didn’t like the uncertainty in Chao’s voice. But what choice did he have? “And after we load our chopper, the plan is just to fly straight to Bikoro?”

“Hi, Frank!” Samantha’s voice broke in to their conversation. “Missed you!”

He smiled. “Hey, Sammie.”

Chao cleared his throat. “To answer your question, yes. You’ll need to leave pretty much immediately.”

Now Shepherd groaned. “More flying...”

“And I’ve got some more bad news for you,” Chao said. “There isn’t exactly a clear place to land. The entire shore is infested.”

“We’ve dealt with ’em before,” Frank said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“This is worse,” Samantha said. “It’s like Lollapalooza down there.”

As they drew closer to the Huntress, Frank flew the Caravan along Soyo’s harbor. It was indeed blanketed by Skulls. Goliaths stood among them. One tossed a smaller Skull at the Caravan. Frank had to admit Chao and Samantha were right. He’d never dealt with groupies like this before.

He turned the Caravan around, swooping low and wide over the trees and the ruins of Soyo. “It doesn’t look like we’re going to find an airfield. As some of you may or may not be aware, the Huntress is most definitely not an aircraft carrier.”

“What’s the plan then, Captain?” Shepherd said gruffly.

“Rory, you still have that emergency inflatable lifeboat handy?”

“Uh, yep,” he said unenthusiastically. “I mean, yes, sir. It’s right here.”

“Keep it that way.” Frank eyed the waves splashing along the Huntress’s hull.

-44-

The men in gray tapped on the keypad. Dom squinted, trying to see which numbers they hit, but one of the soldiers was blocking his view. The doors opened with a hiss, and the dull glow of red battle lights streamed out.

With another groan, the doors snapped shut, and the men were gone.

A slow, heavy drumbeat walloped through the night. With each beat, the ground tremored slightly. The Titan was on its way out.

The hunting cries of Skulls grew louder. A few small pops—they might have been gunshots or snapping trees—echoed in the distance. It sounded like the Hunters and CDFs’ distraction was working. They were riling up the Skulls, drawing them to the Titan. It was an enormous gamble, but the payoff would be worth it should they succeed.

“Bravo, Alpha here,” Dom whispered. “Guards abandoned post. How’s the herd?”

“Chief, they’re wilder than a mosh pit at a heavy metal concert,” Miguel said. “Kofi’s got his boys and girls herding ’em like cattle, and we’re setting up shooting positions in the trees outside the Titan’s pit.”

“Excellent,” Dom said. “Goes without saying, but—”

“Be careful,” Miguel finished for him. “You too, Chief.”

If all went as planned, the herd of Skulls would descend on the Titan before the thing even left its pit. Its mere presence could block the base doors. The Skulls would flood the opening, and the guards would be forced to muster around that entrance, all their focus on beating back the invading Skulls. Even if the monsters didn’t make it into the pit, it would draw the base garrison’s attention. And the cacophony of riled-up Skulls would help drown out any noises Dom, Alizia, and Meredith made skulking through the facility.

Miguel’s voice sounded over the comm link again. “Alpha, Skulls are inbound. It’s now or never.”

Dom rose to a crouch. Alizia drew herself to her knees, and Meredith shouldered her rifle, ready to cover them. “Let’s roll!”

Dom sprinted to the door. He pressed himself flat against the windowless metal. Meredith gave him a thumbs-up, and then Alizia dashed to meet him. As she ran, he held his smartwatch up to the keypad. There was nowhere to insert the remote access transmitter that would connect the keypad to Samantha and Chao.

He stepped away from the keypad and scanned their surroundings with the rifle. “It’s like we thought,” he said when Meredith joined him. “Can’t hack it remotely without access.”

“All right, no problem,” she said. She took her multitool from her pack and pried up the lip of the keypad. It came loose at one corner but got stuck. More prying didn’t seem to help.

“Correction—slight problem,” she amended.

“I got this,” Dom said. He wheeled back his rifle and slammed the stock against the pad. Several keys broke, but the panel fell away, attached only by wires. It felt good to release so much energy after crawling and lying on his belly all day. But Dom didn’t take too long to gloat about the small win. He inserted the transmitter onto a silicon chip behind the keypad.

“Huntress, Alpha. Ready to short the door,” Dom said.

“Gaining access...” Samantha paused over the comm link. “Now!”

The door hissed open. Alizia started to step in, but Dom grabbed her shoulder. He shook his head. “Hold up. It’s our turn to lead.”

He took a handful of loose soil and tossed it in the opening between the doors. The green glow of lasers reflected on the specks of dust. “Huntress, we got trip alarms. Please advise.”

“Don’t set them off,” Samantha said. Dom could imagine her smirking.

“Hold on,” Chao said. “We still have local control over their door security.”

The lasers fizzled off.

“Thanks,” Dom said. “Now we can go.”

“Good to have you on our side,” Alizia said as she took her first tentative steps into the corridor. Dom followed with Meredith close behind.

“Got a readout on our security situation inside?” Dom asked over the comm link.

“Hard negative, Captain,” Samantha said. “All that keypad gave us is door security. We’re completely blind inside. You need to get access to their intranet if we’re going to be at all helpful.”

“Can do, will do,” Dom said.

Dull red lights reflected off the metallic walls of a long corridor. It ended in a T-intersection about a hundred yards away. On both sides, a multitude of doors lined the walls, but there was no activity evident. The place appeared ghostly empty. Had everyone already moved toward the Titan’s hold?

Dom directed them, one at a time, to make their way down the corridor. Each sign they passed was written in Russian, Farsi, and English. That helped support their hypothesis that this was some kind of Russian-Iranian endeavor. They passed doors that led to bunks, storage, spare mechanical parts, boiler rooms.

Dom signaled for them to pause outside a room labeled Garrison Quarters 3A. Maybe they had a computer in there. Something to connect to the base’s network. He wrapped his fingers around the door handle as Meredith prepared to clear the room. Alizia waited, her rifle at the ready.

Dom counted down and then pushed the door open. Meredith and Alizia flitted in with Dom behind them. Several rows of bunks stood sentinel in the cold room. Glaring fluorescent lights burned over the neatly made beds. Tables lined the wall. Cards and poker chips lay scattered about them as if a game had been interrupted.

No people. No computers.

Dom nodded toward the exit, and the trio went back into the hall. The next door was labeled Bathrooms, so they skipped it. Dom prepared to check another door, when the clatter of boot steps echoed from the T-intersection. Voices called out in Russian. He ushered Meredith and Alizia into the bathroom.

After gently closing the door, Dom pressed an ear against it, listening for the marching to pass. Then he heard something else. A cough. He turned to Meredith and Alizia. They shrugged and pointed to one of the stalls. A toilet flushed, and the door opened.

They had no time to hide.

Alizia seemed to have already made that evaluation herself. She lunged toward the door as a rotund man waddled out, brushing the wisps of a comb-over with the back of his hand. When he saw Alizia, his jaw dropped and his eyes went wide. No sound came out. Dom would’ve thought the man had died standing if not for the slow, dark discoloration of his khaki pants spreading from his groin and puddling on the floor.

The thud of wood against bone cracked out. Blood sprayed from where Alizia snapped the man with her rifle’s stock. He crumpled, flopping to the floor in a smelly mess. Dom had gotten used to Alizia’s armor, but the man must’ve thought some demented Skull had infiltrated the hideout and come for revenge.

“We need to hide him,” Dom said. He snatched a pair of zip-tie cuffs from his pack.

“I can gag him,” Meredith said. She cut off the sleeve of the man’s shirt and wrapped it around his head, tightening until it pressed between his lips.

“He is a heavy man,” Alizia said as she lifted his legs.

Dom grabbed the man by his shoulders. “No doubt about it.”

“To the stall?”

“No,” Dom said. “Someone is likely to find him there. The storage room.”

Meredith waited by the door, cracking it open slightly. “All clear.”

She held it open for them, and they took the man through the hall to the storage room. There they stuffed him between lengths of cord, ductwork, and coils of chains. Dom moved a few toolboxes in front of the unconscious man’s form.

“As soon as someone finds him, we’re toast,” Meredith said.

The dull chatter of weapons and the roars of Skulls filtered through the halls as they moved on. The thick layers of earth and concrete and metal muffled the noise, making it sound like someone was watching an action movie behind a closed door. They made it to the T-intersection as another patrol of guards stomped down the hall. The trio ducked into one of the recessed doors. Four soldiers jogged by. Each carried a rifle over their back and wore full battle regalia as if they were going to war. Given the sounds still raging outside, they probably were.

Dom paused at the intersection with Meredith and Alizia. He had expected to see another hall running parallel to this. Instead, the intersection opened up into a circular chamber. It must have been five or six stories deep, wrapping around another inner chamber. The inner chamber was walled off with only a select few panes of glass along catwalks several stories below where Dom stood. All along the catwalks, soldiers ran. They seemed to be heading toward the southern side of the facility, no doubt on their way to reinforce those fighting the Skulls. Men and women in white coats or gray uniforms jogged to various stations. Two men rushed along one catwalk with a stretcher between them. The soldier on it writhed in pain, holding his side. Even from his distant vantage point, Dom could see the glistening of blood as the man desperately tried to cover his wound.

Dom searched the nearest catwalk and spied a sign that read Microscopy Laboratory.

Dom pointed; Alizia and Meredith nodded. They tiptoed along the catwalk, pressing themselves to the wall. Dom prayed they were invisible to those below them. The constant clatter of footsteps made it hard to gauge whether anyone was closing in on their position.

Only a few monitors served as lighting in the lab, filling the room with an eerie blue radiance. Several microscopes were set up on the lab benches. A few larger pieces of equipment stood like silent statues in the corners. Dom recognized them as a scanning electron microscope and a transmission electron microscope. Thankfully, no one was working with any of the instruments.

Dom walked to a monitor hooked to a workstation. He moved the mouse to kick the computer out of hibernation and plugged in one of the transmitters Chao and Samantha had developed.

“Huntress, Alpha,” Dom said. “We’re in.”

“Copy, Alpha. We’re getting a network read,” Samantha called back. “Yep, it’s a hit. Let’s see what we can dig into. You guys hang tight. Don’t go anywhere, all right? This is going to be kind of slow since we’re limited to data transfer rates through USB.”

Alizia drummed her fingers on her rifle, shifting her weight from foot to foot. The only radios she and her team had were big handheld squawking things that didn’t perform well in covert ops, so she’d been relegated to operating solely by listening to Dom and Meredith.

After several agonizing minutes, Chao’s voice crackled over the comm link.  “Alpha, we might have something for you guys.”

***

“Don’t leave us hanging,” Meredith said. “What is it?”

“First off,” Chao said, “we got a blueprint of the facility from the data we’ve recovered so far. I’m sending it to your smartwatches so you have some idea of where you’re headed.”

Meredith eagerly watched the progress bar on her smartwatch. It slowly filled until a tiny map popped up. If she flicked the screen, she could scroll between each floor.

“Great work,” Dom said. “What else?”

“There are a couple labs near you that might be good targets. I’ve marked them on your map. Even more interesting, we have one room that’s cordoned off,” Chao said. “Lots of security. The door locks and fingerprint scanners and iris checks leading into the room make me think this is a high-value asset.”

Meredith scrolled to the highlighted room. It was two floors below them, down a hall branching from the main concourse. A smaller chamber led off the main space. Judging by the blueprints, they were looking at a bedroom with an attached bathroom.

“Why would they secure a bedroom like that?”

“It’s not just a bedroom, though,” Chao said. “There are all kinds of network lines piped into that place.”

Their main goal had been to steal as much data as possible. But an asset like this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Leaving it behind would be like leaving the largest present under the Christmas tree wrapped.

“We need to go down there,” she said.

“Fill me in,” Alizia said. “I hate this silent treatment.”

Dom quickly summarized what they had found. Alizia quickly agreed with Meredith.

Dom took a deep breath. For a second, Meredith figured he would refuse. “Chao, Samantha—think you can get us in undetected?”

“You kidding, Captain?” Samantha said. “Consider it done. We’ll start rerouting security now.”

“Copy,” Dom said. “How long do you need?”

“This is some tricky shit,” Samantha said. “Like two cans of Red Bull tricky. So give me twenty. And don’t come back and say, ‘You have ten.’ That routine’s old.”

“That’s not up to me. Alpha, what’s going on outside?”

“Skulls pouring in, soldiers pouring out. Titan looking confused as fuck. It’s just kind of standing there, blocking the doors. The soldiers are yelling at it, and the Skulls are climbing all over it. It’s some weird fucking shit, Chief. Weird fucking shit.”

“So does this mess look like it’ll be cleaned up any time soon?”

“Maybe when a Skull learns to fly.”

“Careful what you wish for. We’re looking for twenty more minutes at least of a distraction,” Dom said. “Will the Skulls provide that?”

“Yeah, yeah, I think so. They’re like a bunch of drunk frat bros on spring break.”

“Copy,” Dom said. “And Miguel?”

“Yeah?”

“I know you like to party, but stay out of this one, okay?”

Dom left the data transmission device plugged into the computer; Samantha and Chao could trigger it to fry remotely if someone else tampered with it. The thing would look like a worthless USB drive should someone retrieve it before they did. Meredith pushed the lab door open. The group sped down the catwalk, keeping their footsteps light. A low explosion roared somewhere deep within the base, followed by more rattling gunfire. A howl echoed up the catwalks.

Maybe a Skull had gotten in. Or worse, something inside had gotten loose. Either way, she couldn’t expend their focus on what might be. She concentrated on what they needed to do now.

A scientist burst up a set of stairs behind them. Dom wasted no time in clocking the man in the face. He fell into Meredith’s waiting arms, and she dragged him away from the stairs.

Dom grabbed one of the man’s arms, and Alizia clutched the other. They carried him toward the next laboratory. According to Meredith’s smartwatch map, this one was many times larger than the last. She covered Dom and Alizia as they crept toward it with the unconscious scientist’s shoes slapping against the catwalk. She winced with each clang, praying that everyone else was too focused on the battle raging outside to notice the strangers in their midst.

Meredith nudged the lab door open. The sterile scent and the hum of the fans pushing air through HEPA filters reminded her of the labs back at Langley. With one hand, she pushed the door open the rest of the way. Dom and Alizia dragged the knocked-out scientist inside and then scanned the room with their rifles. White coats hung on the wall beside them, and stacks of gloves and shoe covers in boxes rested on a nearby shelf. A line on the floor marked the beginning of the designated clean area.

The trio ignored the sterile procedures and barged through the glass doors leading to the adjoining lab. Again, no one was working at the lab benches, computers, or biosafety cabinets. The dull-red glow of emergency lights reflected off metal shelves and refrigerators.

There was a smell that Meredith couldn’t quite recognize. As she scrunched her nose, trying to recall where she’d smelled the odor before, she helped Dom and Alizia secure their hostage’s wrists and place a gag. Meredith took out three more data transmitters and plugged them into the nearest computers.

“Huntress, Alpha two,” Meredith said. “Transmitters in place. Got a connection?”

“Connection secured,” Samantha’s voice chimed back. “Picking up some interesting data. We’re finding loads of encrypted lab journals, so keep it up.”

“Actually, can you guys sit tight for a few minutes?” Chao asked. “We’re running into some security issues. We might need you to reposition the transmitters.”

“Copy,” Dom said.

From one corner of the cavernous lab, a bright blue glimmer shone on the ceiling. It undulated like the reflection of the moon on the ocean. Meredith prowled toward the source of the light. Behind a lab bench, she discovered a row of glass cylinders. Each was over ten feet long. Her nerves tingled as she drew closer and made out the shapes suspended within the blue liquid. Bodies, roughly the size and shape of humans.

But the things in those chambers were definitely not human. She recognized the growths jutting from the cheekbones and shoulders. Stubby claws protruded from the hands, and their muscles were hideously overdeveloped. The size and ape-like features of them made Meredith wonder if these were some sort of chimeras. The creatures were curled in fetal positions with umbilical cords stretching to the tops of the chambers.

“A Skull,” Alizia said, drawing close to Meredith.

“No,” Meredith said. “It’s a Titan. An embryonic Titan.”

Her pulse thundered in her ears, wondering at the years of genetic engineering and Frankenstein-like work that must have been required to create these creatures.

“Good lord,” she said. “What in God’s name possessed these people to do this?”

“Don’t know,” Dom said. “But I’m itching to find out. Chao, Samantha, any updates on the security issues?”

“Think so,” Samantha said.

“Clear to proceed to our target?” Dom asked.

“Clear on our end,” Chao said. “But according to our feeds, there are four people guarding the room. A command was just issued over the base’s intranet asking for another six. Maybe some kind of escort.”

“Damn,” Dom said. “Think they’re on to us?”

“Hard to say,” Chao said. “Our connections haven’t been interrupted. Maybe they’re just reacting to the Skull breaches.”

“Maybe,” Dom said, but Meredith could tell he wasn’t convinced.

“Should we forgo the target?” she asked.

“We cannot let them get away,” Alizia said. Her words came out in a growl, and she slapped one of the glass chambers. “This whole place is the devil’s work. We’ve got to destroy it—and everyone in it.”

Meredith wasn’t sure that destroying the facility would be necessary or even advisable. Leaving it operational might mean they could scrounge more evidence on the real enemies in this war. Even if they tried to destroy the entire facility, she didn’t know if they had the firepower.

“For now, let’s get what we came for,” Dom said.

Alizia narrowed her eyes. She didn’t nod or show any other sign of agreement as she followed Dom back to the entrance of the laboratory. Meredith made a mental note to keep an eye on her as they positioned themselves near the exit to the hall once more.

“Alpha, Huntress,” Chao’s voice came over the comm link. “More reinforcements are on route. That makes a total of sixteen people if you don’t hurry.”

“Understood,” Dom replied. “Meredith, take point.”

Meredith crept to the door and inched it open, listening for any telltale signs of incoming troops. “All cl—”

An enormous boom shook the facility. Dust fell from the ceiling, and the explosion echoed down the corridor. The sounds of screeching metal and crackling fire hit Meredith with an almost palpable force.

“Alpha,” Miguel said over the comm link. “We got a problem.”

-45-

Dom stuck his fingers under his helmet to reposition his comm link. He choked down the dread threatening to strangle his voice. “Copy. What’s the issue?”

“A group of Goliaths got worked up by the gunfire,” Miguel said. “Some of the soldiers came out with RPGs. They missed, and now the goddamn Goliaths are trying to bash down the interior doors. Oh, and there’s a fire in the Titan pit.”

“What’s the Titan doing?” Dom asked.

“He’s going nuts. Swiping at Skulls and soldiers alike. It ain’t pretty.”

“Christ,” Dom said. “Anything else?”

“That not enough for you, Chief?” Miguel asked. “Just Skulls as far as the eye can see.”

To Meredith and Alizia, Dom said, “We’ve got to hurry.”

Meredith nodded and leaned out the door into the corridor. “Clear.”

Dom gave them the signal to move. Meredith flitted out, followed by Alizia. Dom went last, covering the group from behind. Clattering footsteps rang all around them. Alarms blared, and the distant thump of gunfire continued. The smell of burned plastic and smoke drifted through the air. When a cadre of men and women in what looked like firefighting gear sped past, Dom, Meredith, and Alizia ducked down a side corridor until the coast was clear again. Another explosion sounded, ensuring that the base’s personnel stayed distracted.

At least the Titan and the Skulls are doing their job, Dom thought.

Their team rushed down two flights of stairs and along a network of catwalks and hallways, following the path illuminated on his smartwatch’s minimap. They paused just out of range of the security cameras. Four guards flanked the door.

“Huntress, Alpha One here,” Dom said in a whisper. “We’re outside the target location. What’s the status on security?”

“Video cameras are looping,” Samantha replied. “It will be real obvious if someone is paying attention, but it’s the best we could do. Door locks are still up, but we can disable ’em when you give word. It’ll be noisy when we do, though, so you might want to eliminate any witnesses before then.”

“Copy,” Dom said. He turned to Alizia and Meredith. “Got any bright ideas on how to remove those guards from their station?”

“Shoot them,” Alizia said with no hint of sarcasm.

“This is supposed to be a covert operation,” Meredith said. “I was hoping for more furtive tactics.”

“We don’t have time for furtive,” Alizia said. She gestured toward the end of the catwalk. The six guards Chao had promised were running at their position.

“Shit,” Dom said. They didn’t have access to knockout gas or other non-lethals that could take out the guards. There wasn’t time to brainstorm alternatives. Dom didn’t relish taking human lives, even if he was certain they were accomplices to the wrong side of history. But he knew what he needed to do to succeed today, to ensure they came away from this mission with the tools and information necessary to save the hapless victims around the world who’d had no say in becoming a part of this shadow war.

They’d have to kill the guards.

He wheeled around the corner, swinging his suppressed rifle to bear on the first guard. A burst of gunfire caught the man in the chest. The rounds knocked him backward, and Meredith took out the second guard. The third went down under an attack from Alizia. The fourth guard adjusted his aim and fired. But his fire went wide, flinging into the wall as Dom’s rounds lit up his side. The man dropped, and his submachine gun clattered to the floor.

“Get those locks open now!” Dom barked into the comm link. As Chao had warned, the heavy locking mechanisms on the door ground and whined. The footsteps from the approaching guards grew louder as the pneumatic locks began to move. Finally, the door swung open.

They charged inside, and Dom closed the door behind them. The locks automatically engaged. Yells sounded outside, along with pounding fists.

“Keep ’em out,” Dom said to the techies.

“We’ll do our best,” Samantha replied.

“Meredith and Alizia, guard that door. If it so much as opens a crack, you know what to do.”

“Damn right we do,” Meredith said.

Once Dom was satisfied the door would hold for now, he surveyed the room. The place perplexed him immediately. A computer desk sat at one corner with speakers playing soft classical music. He thumbed a transmitter and plugged it into the computer. His nerves still sparked with electricity as he waited for someone to jump from the closet or the half-opened bathroom at the other end of the chamber. A hospital bed complete with rails and an IV rack stood in the center of the room. Lush green potted plants were dotted around the room, and a kitchenette held a mix of cooking instruments and dozens of orange pill bottles. An empty wheelchair rested in another corner next to a pair of oxygen tanks.

The place looked like a nursing home.

“Who the hell lives in here?” Meredith asked, glancing sideways as she guarded the door.

Alizia kept the muzzle of her gun steady and her eyes firmly set on the door as she asked, “And where are they now?”

Dom’s heart pounded faster. “Huntress, you getting a read on the latest transmitter?”

“Yeah,” Chao said. “This is real strange, Captain. Most of the communications so far have been a mix of English, Russian, and Farsi.”

“Makes sense, given our theory about the people behind this mess.”

“But that computer you just linked up isn’t connected to the intranet, and half the files are in Japanese.”

“Japanese?” Dom asked. His mind raced back to the first time they had encountered the Oni Agent on the IBSL platform. The research they’d uncovered there had been a relic of Unit 731’s bioweapons program in Tokyo from World War II. The project had been co-opted by the United States, before being abandoned after the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 in Geneva. He had a hard time believing the Japanese government was still involved. Their intelligence agencies and defense forces were compromised just like everyone else’s.

“Didn’t a bunch of Japanese ministers commit suicide after the attack? I don’t think they’re behind this.”

“Exactly,” Chao said. “There’s no evidence that the Japanese government is involved—just this one individual. We’ll start getting this translated. The entries look like they’re part of a journal or lab notebook or something.”

The pounding at the door quieted. Dom didn’t like it. “Alizia, back away from the door.”

“Oh shit,” Samantha said. “Just intercepted a message. Whoever was in that chamber is on the move. Being escorted by half a dozen guards.”

“Damn,” Dom said. “But if the target is no longer here, why the hell did they send reinforcements?”

“Christ!” Chao shouted. “We lost the data connection from the microscopy lab. Hard disconnect. Someone must’ve pulled it out!”

Before Dom could respond, something clinked against the door.

“Find cover!” Dom bellowed. He dove behind the hospital bed and flipped it on its side. Meredith ran to a support pylon, and Alizia ducked into the alcove near the wheelchair.

A low pop sounded, followed by a growling roar. White sparks flew around the edges of the door, and then the whole thing erupted from its pneumatic locks. It careened into the room and crushed the kitchen table. Splinters exploded from the destroyed furniture like shrapnel as smoke clogged the entryway.

Dom’s ears rang. He saw Meredith mouthing something, but he couldn’t make it out. Gunfire lanced into the room, chewing up the walls and plunging into the hospital bed. A round crashed into a stanchion near Dom, spraying his face with bits of concrete.

He returned fire, half-blind, sighting up a silhouette shifting through the smoke. A quick squeeze of the trigger sent three rounds blasting into the moving shape. He was rewarded with the clang of a gun falling to the floor and a man rolling out of the gray clouds, his eyes locked open and his fingers outstretched.

One down.

Alizia shouted curses in French as she unloaded a magazine into the darkness. Rounds pinged off the cement walls. Her blind firing led to another pained groan. Then three men surged through the smoke, their rifles barking, causing Alizia to shrink back. The wheelchair beside her was torn up by their salvo.

Meredith whirled around the pylon, catching the men by surprise. Bullets took down two of them before they could so much as turn on her. The third was protected by his downed comrades. He threw himself to the floor and aimed at Meredith. Dom couldn’t get a clear shot at his torso or head, so he fired on the solder’s gun instead. The man dropped his rifle. Dom finished him with a shot through his throat.

The smoke cleared. Dom ran to a support column near the exit. He peered down his optics, scanning the hallway. Another four guards were waiting outside. One fired on him, and he drew back. Bullets cracked into the cement, fragments bursting around him.

“Cover me!” Meredith said.

Alizia leaned out and hosed the hallway with rounds. Dom joined her as Meredith sprinted to the doorway. With her new vantage point, she took down the first guard. His body flopped to the ground, and Dom took advantage of the others’ surprise by moving up beside Meredith, firing all the way until he brought down two more guards. Before they could silence the final soldier, he screamed something in Russian over his radio.

Dom’s Russian was a little rusty, but he was pretty sure they were screwed. Covertly sneaking around the base no longer mattered, but his resolve to find their missing target had grown.

The clatter of more footfalls echoed down the hallway. Reinforcements weren’t far. Dom’s mind raced. He pictured the map Alizia had drawn on the table. If he’d been in charge of extracting a key asset from a compromised facility, there was one place he would have headed first.

“Huntress, Alpha One. Do you have eyes on the helipad?”

“That’s an affirmative,” Chao replied. “I can override the security to the helipad and highlight the most direct route there for you on your smartwatches.”

“Do it. Any word from Frank?”

“He had to land the Caravan in the water, but everyone’s alive and well. He’s got the old Coast Guard Huey, and he’ll be in your vicinity within the hour.”

“Good,” Dom said. He changed his magazine. Alizia and Meredith kept the guards hunkered down with well-timed shots. “How’s the data looking?”

“It’s hard to tell how deep we are into their systems,” Samantha said. “We haven’t had time to parse what we’ve got. We’ve been too busy combatting firewalls and other counter-hacking measures.”

Dom was thankful that the talented computer specialist kept the techno-jargon to a minimum for once. “Anything to help combat the new strain of the Oni Agent? That’s got to be our first priority.”

“No, afraid not,” Samantha said. “I tried delving through some of their medical data, but we’ve still got to translate it, too. It’s a mess, Captain.”

“Damn.” Dom paused. He heard more noise from the corridor, leaned out, and fired. Rounds pinged, glancing off walls and support columns. More men charged down the hall. Two fell immediately to a barrage levied by Dom, Alizia, and Meredith. He ducked back into the room. “I’m not sure how much more time we have here, and we can’t hold these guys off for long. We’ve got to do something drastic.”

“Got it,” Samantha said. “Drastic is my specialty. I can cut their power, but we’ll lose data transmission.”

“No good,” Dom said. “How about fire suppression? Can you selectively activate that?”

“Uh, let me see...yes, yes! Tell me when, Captain!”

“Now!”

White foam sprayed over the soldiers, blanketing them from head to toe. They screamed, clawing at their faces in alarm.

“Let’s go!” Dom boomed. He stepped from behind the column, his rifle chattering. Meredith and Alizia followed. Bullets lanced into the foam-covered soldiers before they could clear their eyes. One fell in their path, and Dom leapt over him. His ears rang from the enclosed gunfire and persistent wail of alarms blasting throughout the facility. More footfalls sounded from somewhere within the latticework of catwalks, but his muffled hearing made it difficult to pinpoint.

Then a new sound broke through his ringing ears. A roar that shook the catwalk beneath their feet.

“Christ,” Meredith said. “As if this couldn’t get any worse.”

“Demons. There!” Alizia said, pointing over the catwalk. A squad of soldiers yelled at each other in Russian and then fired down a dark corridor. Their muzzle flashes cracked like vicious lightning. A hellish chorus exploded against the sound of gunfire.

Skulls hurtled out of the shadows. Their scything claws dug into the soldiers, ripping them into shreds of sinew and flesh. Their agonized cries lasted for only a few seconds before they were silenced. One Skull lifted its head back and howled. Strings of red hung from its yellowed teeth.

More soldiers descended on the crowd of Skulls. Flames licked out of the corridor.

“Bravo,” Dom asked. “How many Skulls are headed our way?”

“More than we can count, Chief,” Miguel said. “Not exactly sure what’s going on, but the Titan is holding the doors open. Got some nasty wounds, but the Skulls, Droolers, and Goliaths are attracting most of the fire.”

“Everyone up there safe?” Dom asked.

“So far. Hunters and CDF are in the trees. We’ve been out of the battle since we got the Skulls riled up.”

“Can you draw them off our position without risking yourselves?” Dom asked.

“I’ll think of something.”

“Good,” Dom said. “We’re headed to the helipad. Meet you on the other side, brother.”

“Be careful you don’t break a hip, Chief.”

Gunfire and Skull yells filled the chamber. Dom crouched beside Alizia and Meredith as he studied his smartwatch. A grenade exploded in the tunnel the Skulls were pouring from. The tide of Skulls seemed to temporarily abate, but that didn’t slow Dom’s racing heart.

“Here,” he said, pointing to the map on his watch. “We take this door, follow the corridor through this bay, and then we’re at the helipad.”

“You make it sound easy,” Meredith said.

“We’ll make it easy,” Alizia said through gritted teeth. She placed a fresh magazine into her AK-47.

They barreled down the catwalk. The gunfire intensified behind them. An enormous bellow rocketed up, followed by the sounds of bodies smacking against concrete. A Goliath had bulldozed its way through the makeshift blockade. Skulls filed in as it smashed several of the soldiers still struggling to keep the creatures back. Behind them strode a smaller beast that hissed and spat. Its gurgling was barely audible over the din of its comrades, but Dom had trained himself to recognize the warning signs. A vile spray coursed from the creature’s maw, dousing the remaining soldiers. Their agonized screams drowned out the Skulls momentarily as the Drooler sauntered forward and let out another blast of burning acid.

“Good God,” Meredith said. “Glad to be up here right now.”

“There’s the door!” Alizia said, charging ahead. She rammed into it, flinging the door open. Their footsteps resounded off the metal walls of a long chamber. White coats, cleanroom suits, and gloves were stacked at the end of the hall. A decontamination chamber separated by acrylic doors confirmed what Dom suspected.

He glanced at the smartwatch again. “Is this thing right? We’re supposed to be heading into a bay, not a lab.”

“This is strange.” Meredith studied the signs on the decontamination chamber. “These indicate positive pressure with respect to the outside environment. I would’ve thought they were trying to keep the Oni Agent or whatever inside the lab. But apparently they’re more concerned about keeping outside contaminants from getting in.”

“Too bad for them,” Alizia said, opening the door to the decon chamber. A red light flashed a warning. A robotic voice droned on in several languages. English came last.

“Warning. You are risking contamination of Protocol C-12. Warning. You are risking contamination of Protocol C-12. Please, do not proceed.”

Alizia pushed through the next door. Warm air rushed out, buffeting Dom as he and Meredith followed. It brought with it the sterile smell of labs and hospitals, along with a harsh white light. But other than the smattering of lab equipment along the walls, it looked very different from any lab Dom had seen before.

“Holy shit,” he said, a hollowness settling behind his sternum.

Enormous glass cylinders made a semi-circle in the middle of the floor. Metal scaffolding reinforced them, and a tangle of tubes and hoses protruded all along their circumferences. Each cylinder was several stories tall. Two were empty. But in the other eight, sleeping Titans were held in suspended animation. They floated in the same blue fluid as the embryonic monsters Dom had seen in the smaller lab, and their eyes remained closed, pinched tight as bubbles drifted from their nostrils.

“This place is a goddamned monster factory,” Meredith whispered.

“We need to destroy them,” Alizia said. “These things can’t keep being released. We won’t survive.”

Dom nodded. They were well past the point of silent subterfuge and data theft now. He ran to a bank of terminals at the feet of the slumbering giants and slammed in a transmitter. “Huntress, Alpha One. We need to shut down these units ASAP.”

“Aye, Captain,” Chao replied.

“Also, you’re recording our cam feeds, right?”

“Yep,” Samantha said.

“Good. I want Kinsey to see this.” Dom studied the computers. One of the monitors displayed Cyrillic characters. Nothing he could recognize, but it was yet more evidence that the Russians were involved.

“The translations are coming out wonky,” Samantha said, “but I think I located a command that’ll do the trick.”

“Does it shut down these facilities?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Samantha said, “but judging by the number of prompts that come up after you select ‘terminate,’ it seems like it’s pretty important.”

Dom didn’t hesitate to give the order. There were some things that just shouldn’t exist in this world, and the Titans were at the top of the list.

Dom, Meredith, and Alizia peered around the vast chamber. A few scientists were working at another bank of monitors near a different entrance. But with the size of the chamber and the huge cylinders between them, the scientists might as well have been in another city.

“Do we stick around to watch the fireworks?” Meredith asked.

“No,” Dom said, regretting he couldn’t stay to witness the destruction. “We need to get to the helipad. If their VIP is flying out of here, I want it to be our chopper he’s on.”

“Then let’s not waste any more time.” Alizia started to wind between the Titans’ chambers.

The nearest Titan’s eyes opened. It moved in slow motion within the fluid, but its speed made it no less powerful. The giant monster pounded one fist against the side of the chamber. Fissures formed all along the length of the tube. Water seeped out slowly at first and then burst in huge sprays. The pressure of the liquid was too much. Glass and fluid exploded everywhere, showering Dom, Alizia, and Meredith.

Dom grabbed Meredith before the current of blue liquid swept her across the floor. His fingers latched around her wrist, and he fought against the rushing water, leaning into it. Together, they caught hold of one of the many stanchions intended to support the Titans’ chambers, stretching up like the skeletal remains of some metal beast. Alizia was too far away to reach. She flailed in the water until she too found a handhold.

The scientists began to scream. They ran frantically between computer consoles and doors. Several guards opened fire on the freshly awakened Titan. Another three sprinted from the catwalk, fumbling for grenades. The Titan shook itself off and lumbered as if it were drunk. Its claws clanked against metal as it grabbed hold of a beam below the catwalk. It groaned under the creature’s weight. Rivets screamed and popped. Dust sifted from the ceiling.

With one violent swipe, the creature knocked the soldiers off their perch. Their bodies flew through the air, bounced off the wall, and landed in the now-ankle-deep liquid. The Titan’s eyes scanned the lab, peering at the bodies and then at the chambers holding its brethren. One of the other Titans’ eyes opened, and it locked gazes with the freed one.

Dom couldn’t tell whether it was recognition or hunger he saw in their expressions. The freed Titan’s jaw opened, and it let out a grating yell that boomed against his eardrums.

Then the monster charged.

-46-

Kara wiped the sweat off her forehead. Navid gave her what seemed like a forced smile as he helped another crew member into a patient bed. Already the bay was looking like it had after they had evacuated the Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Except now every single one of them was infected with the Oni Agent.

“Is it getting hotter in here?” Kara asked Navid. She dabbed a cloth over Connor’s head. He had finally cried himself to sleep. She knew full well what it was like to lose a parent to the Oni Agent, and she prayed this boy wouldn’t have to learn.

“Hotter?” Navid said. His face seemed a much paler brown than usual, and his eyes looked bruised and heavy. “I hope that’s all it is. You doing okay?”

“Sure,” Kara said. A shiver snuck through her flesh. She wasn’t certain if it was fear or something more sinister at work. She cast a sidelong glance at Lauren and Peter. While Divya and Sean had enlisted Kara and Navid to help them take care of patients, the two senior members of the medical team were sifting through data. Chao and Samantha provided a constant stream of documents from the Bikoro facility. Most came through butchered by translation, but Peter and Lauren still doggedly searched them for any information on treating the airborne variant of the Oni Agent.

“The Phoenix Compound will work,” Navid said, almost as if he were trying to convince himself as much as her.

“All we have is a few cell experiments and computer simulations, and then we’re just going to throw it in people. That would never fly in the real world, right?”

“You’re right.” Navid let out a sad laugh. “But this is the real world now. The FDA doesn’t exist anymore. No one has the time or money for animal testing. I can’t believe the whole drug development process I learned in school no longer applies, but I don’t think we have a choice. Lauren’s going to have to use the first batch of Phoenix Compound on these people.”

“When will it be finished?” Kara asked.

Navid checked his watch. “Got maybe ten minutes left.” He rubbed his wrist absently, gazing at the patients groaning in their beds. Divya and Sean flitted between them to give increased dosages of the chelation treatment. But everyone here had already received that therapy once before. All they were doing now was delaying the inevitable.

“You think this will work?” Kara said.

“I hope so.”

“I’m not interested in hope. I’m trying to be realistic.” Kara hung another IV bag onto a pole, readying it for Divya. “I mean, if Lauren doesn’t find anything from Bikoro and the Phoenix Compound doesn’t work...”

“I know,” Navid said. He stuck a syringe needle through the rubber stopper of a bottle of the chelation therapy and pulled back on the plunger. His eyes narrowed as he focused on the small lines in the syringe. “Ready!” Sean grabbed the needle and treatment from Navid. He nodded his thanks before moving swiftly to another patient. He turned back to Kara and said heavily, “If this doesn’t work, if nothing works, then we’re screwed.”

“Yeah,” Kara said. “We’ll end up like them. Like my mom.”

“Like Abby,” Navid agreed.

The hatch to the med bay opened. Maggie waddled in. The dog’s tongue lolled from the side of her mouth, and she walked with what looked like a pained gait. Her tail swiped slowly left and right, no longer enthusiastic. Sadie followed. The sight of her sister made Kara gasp.

She ran to the girl and brushed back her hair. Sadie’s bloodshot eyes stared at her glumly. Kara pressed the back of her hand to her little sister’s forehead. Heat poured from it.

“I don’t feel good,” Sadie said. “And I don’t think Maggie does either.”

Kara rushed her sister to one of the last empty beds. Maggie groaned as she tried to stand on her back legs to get into the bed with Sadie. But the dog couldn’t muster the strength. Navid scooped her up and placed her at Sadie’s feet. The dog curled up, letting out a long sigh.

Sadie’s eyes closed. Kara grabbed her hand.

“Am I going to turn into a monster?” Sadie asked. “I don’t want to. I don’t want...”

Her words trailed off as exhaustion took hold, and Kara squeezed her hand tighter. Someone clasped Kara’s other hand.

She turned to see Navid, his face wrought in concern. “The Phoenix Compound will work. It has to.”

He spoke with a new confidence. One that hadn’t been there moments ago. She wanted to argue with him, to question his newfound certainty. To tell him to stuff his lies and false reassurances.

But looking at Sadie’s face, seeing her chest rise and fall with shallow breaths, she decided to believe Navid was right.

He had to be.

***

Frank piloted the Huey over the jungle. If he stared long enough into those trees, he could see the occasional Skull looking back, wondering when fresh food was coming its way.

No snacks for you, he thought as he followed the Congo River toward Bikoro.

“We going to get there in time?” Shepherd asked from the rear cabin. He had an M240 mounted on one side of the chopper. On the other side, Rachel manned a similar setup. Rory sat in one of the empty seats, checking over their stowed rifles and ammunition should they need to land and leave the chopper. Frank hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

“If Dom and company can hold out a little longer, we should make it there in the next half hour,” Frank said.

“Assuming we have the correct coordinates,” Shepherd said.

“Assuming that, yes,” Frank said. “I don’t think Bravo would’ve gotten that wrong, though.”

“Not doubting their abilities or competence,” Shepherd replied. “But I don’t see anything out here besides a jungle and a river. Where the hell is this facility?”

Frank’s patience was wearing thin. Between Shepherd’s grumbling and Rory’s constant nausea, he felt like a stereotypical dad threatening to turn the car around if everyone didn’t settle down. “If they avoided detection for years, I wouldn’t expect it to be obvious.”

They flew on with the rushing wind, only the heavy thump of the rotors and the chopper’s engine breaking the silence between the ragtag crew. Then Frank saw something over the horizon—a flash of orange light.

“Did you see that?” Shepherd asked.

“Yes, I saw the very bright light,” Frank said with a touch of sarcasm.

More flashes. Then tendrils of dark smoke slithered into the sky.

“That’s definitely not natural,” Frank said. “Bet those are our people.”

Shepherd pressed a button on the radio. “Bravo, Charlie. We’re under thirty minutes out from your position. Sitrep?”

Miguel’s voice broke over the comm, sounding ragged and out of breath. “Goddamn good to hear from you. We’re struggling out here, fighting off both Skulls and assholes. CDF have taken some casualties. Andris used up the rest of his C4 blowing up a couple of stubborn Goliaths, and now he’s pouting. Says he can’t wait until Frank gets here with more.”

“What’s the status on the Titan?”

“Dead,” Miguel said. “At least, the first one is.”

Shepherd frowned and pressed the call button. “Come again? I didn’t catch your last. There’s more than one Titan?”

A hollow chuckle crackled over the line. “Yeah, you could say that.”

***

Meredith covered her face as shards of glass hit her. The Titans battled in a gargantuan display of power and horror. It was like watching two ancient gods grapple in hand-to-hand combat. Meredith had never felt smaller or more afraid.

The Titans stomped over the floor, crushing computers and lab equipment. The spikes jutting from their backs scraped the walls, and when one tossed the other into the side of the chamber, it tore down a catwalk. Soldiers plummeted from it. Their bodies were soon trampled by the warring Titans.

“We’ve got to get past them!” Meredith said, pointing to a door beyond their tree-trunk-sized legs.

Gunfire exploded from one of the catwalks. Meredith ducked beside Dom instinctively. But the first salvo hadn’t been directed at them. Rounds pinged off the skeletal armor of the Titans.

“Don’t they know how to stop their own monsters?” Alizia cried.

Another door opened several stories above them. A soldier emerged carrying gray cylinders that looked to be RPG-32s meant to disable tanks and armored personnel carriers. One of them mounted an RPG on his shoulder, and the screaming of the rocket-propelled grenade was followed by billowing smoke and fire. Flecks of bones and chunks of red flesh rained down on them. The hit Titan wavered, now missing a considerable portion of its chest and shoulder. The second beast used the opening and drove the other creature into the wall while pummeling it with its fists. Another RPG screamed overhead, blasting into the second Titan.

“Now’s our chance!” Dom yelled above the din.

Meredith, Dom, and Alizia sprinted between the Titan chambers. Creaking glass forced Meredith to look up. She felt an emptiness in her stomach as she stared at the fractures forming in yet another tank. The same sounds came from a second, then a third.

All the Titans were awake.

Glass shattered. Soldiers cried out. Gunfire cut into the water near Meredith’s feet, and she ducked behind one of the fragmenting chambers.

Another RPG blasted into the first Titan’s ruptured chest. The creature began to fall. Dom and Alizia reached the door under the shadow of the falling giant, but Meredith was almost a dozen yards away from the exit. There was no way she would make it in time. She caught a glimpse Dom’s face as he realized it too. Then the dead Titan crashed against the floor, sending up a wave of blue liquid.

“Meredith!” Dom bellowed.

“I’m alive!” She wondered how long that statement would hold true. The other Titans’ tanks gave way, shedding glass and fluid. She hid behind the dead Titan’s arm to avoid a fresh onslaught of gunfire coming her way. “But I need some cover!”

“On it!” Dom yelled.

He and Alizia let loose a salvo, causing the soldiers to recoil. The other dying Titan stumbled. Its bloodied claw reached for the men who were attacking it. Meredith took advantage of the unexpected help and clambered over the chest of the dead Titan. She slid down the other side. Dom grabbed her elbow and hauled her clear of the beast. The Titan’s crimson blood intermingled with the blue suspension liquid, becoming a sickly purple soup.

She and Dom joined Alizia at the exit. He smiled and brushed a smudge of something from her cheek. “You ready to get out of here?”

“More ready than ever,” Meredith said.

Dom rammed the door open, leading with his shoulder. The liquid at their feet rushed into the corridor. Behind them, the other Titans began to free themselves, roaring as their glass prisons shattered.

“They’ll destroy each other and this place better than we ever could,” Alizia said with a devilish grin.

“As long as they don’t destroy us,” Meredith said, slamming the door shut.

Their boots slapped against the puddles on the metal floor. They were close to their goal now, and every step brought them closer to the truth.

If they were fast enough.

If they survived.

“Bravo, any sight of choppers taking off?” Dom asked as they began to climb up the stairs toward the helipad.

“Not yet,” Miguel said. “Engines are roaring, though. You gotta hurry.”

“Copy,” Dom said. “Charlie, what’s your ETA?”

“Fifteen minutes until we hit Bravo’s position for a brief layover. Another stop at your helipad, then we’ll be reaching our final destination at the Huntress after a beautiful sunrise ride over the Congo.”

They reached a curve in the hallway. As they came around it, gunfire exploded. Over the waves of lead plunging into the walls, Meredith heard the beat of helicopter blades. They couldn’t waste more time in another gunfight.

“I got this,” Meredith said, unclipping an M84 grenade. “Flashbang going out.”

She pulled the pin and threw it down the hall. It bounced once as she took cover behind the bend in the hallway. Squeezing her eyes closed, she waited until she heard the muffled explosion of the stun grenade before darting out to open fire. Dom stood at her back, covering her. They unleashed a torrent of rounds into the blindly firing soldiers and then barreled past their writhing bodies.

Glaring white lights and churning air flooded from the open door at the end of the corridor. Spotlights covered two Russian Mil Mi-8 helicopters as people loaded cargo crates into their side doors. More crates and oil drums were stacked nearby. The people in this silo-shaped underground helipad moved about like bees buzzing around a hive.

Dom flashed a hand signal, telling without words what Meredith needed to do next. She rushed to the first crate. Dom and Alizia took positions behind nearby ones. Meredith surveyed the men and women stacking metal cases into the choppers. They were foot soldiers carrying out orders. She didn’t care about them. Her eyes quickly found the two who stood out from the crowd. One man loomed above the others. His head was shaved bald, and he wore a black beret with a patch on the front of it that Meredith couldn’t quite make out. She noticed the same patch on the left shoulders of those working around the man. His chest puffed out each time he yelled something at one of his underlings. He had no other insignia on his uniform—nothing to give away his rank or allegiance. He didn’t need any badges to show he was in charge.

Near him, a doctor or scientist in a white coat pushed a wheelchair. A wizened old man of Asian descent sat in it. Tubes snaked out of his nostrils to an oxygen tank, and an IV line was taped in place over his left hand. It led to an IV bag secured to his wheelchair along with a couple of other machines Meredith guessed were keeping this man alive. Barely.

“I think we found our VIP,” Meredith whispered.

The man in the beret pointed at the door they’d come through just moments before, barking more orders.

The soldiers around him immediately dropped into firing positions. Their rifle muzzles roved back and forth, seeking a target. The man in the beret sent three soldiers to flank the right side of the crates and another three toward the left. Another six crept up the middle of the helipad. Meredith, Dom, and Alizia were slowly being boxed in on three sides.  

Footfalls echoed from the hall behind them. The shadows of more soldiers stretched down the corridor. The ground began to shake, and cacophonous bellows erupted from deep within the base. It wouldn’t be long before the Titans joined the party.

-47-

Lauren surveyed the medical bay. So many patients. So much confusion and worry. One by one, the signs of the airborne Oni Agent were showing up in the crew members. And one by one, she and her team were forced to put them in medically induced comas. She wondered how soon it would be before Peter, Divya, or Sean could no longer help. How long before their eyes pulsated with burst blood vessels and their fevers intensified to the point of delirium? How long before the Oni Agent took them all?

“Goddammit!” Peter yelled. He slammed his fist on the lab bench, rattling the keyboard and monitor he was using. Was his anger a natural reaction to the stress they were all under, or was he starting to lose himself to the Oni Agent? “This research is useless. I haven’t found anything, Lauren!”

A deep, dark pit formed in Lauren’s stomach. It threatened to swallow her whole. The fact that they had found nothing relevant in the medical and research records Chao and Samantha had recovered could mean only one thing.

If the Bikoro facility hadn’t documented these changes in the agent, then she and her team had inadvertently provided the unique environment for the Oni Agent to evolve. Treating it with the chelation therapy and using antibiotics liberally had resulted in an agent far more resistant to their treatments than even its diabolical creators had managed.

“What have I done?” Lauren asked, slumping onto a stool. She pulled her fingers through her hair. She imagined feeling her nails grow out and scrape her skull with the budding points of claws. “I’ve screwed us.”

“No, no,” Peter said, scratching at the stubble on his cheek. “It’s not your fault. It’s not our fault. We didn’t create the agent. And how could we have guessed it would change so quickly? This is beyond our abilities, Lauren. It’s beyond what we ever dreamed.”

“Beyond our wildest nightmares.” Lauren pressed her palms against her eyes. She had failed the Hunters. She had failed Glenn. Her throat tightened as she imagined him returning to the ship to find they had all turned. “We have to tell Dom they can’t return to the Huntress. They cannot get infected. If they do...then all of this is for nothing.”

Peter looked ready to protest. But then his expression softened, and nothing but sorrow filled his eyes. “You’re right.”

“I’ll have Chao and Samantha relay the message. But only when the Hunters’ mission in Bikoro is over. I don’t want them to be more distracted than they already are.”

“Sounds prudent,” Peter said, sounding more like his usual slightly uptight self.

Lauren’s mind stormed with thoughts. So many lives hung in the balance. She remembered how Ivan and Scott went from colleagues to bloodthirsty monsters. And now she would bear witness, for as long as her mind and body held out, to the complete annihilation of the crew by the agent.

Navid and Kara were working beside Divya and Sean with the patients. Making them comfortable. Treating their symptoms. It was the best they could do. Faced with almost certain defeat, still they chugged on as if there was hope, as if they could make a difference. Sadie lay on her hospital bed, impossibly small and fragile as her body struggled to fight off the infection. Maggie was curled at the girl’s feet, experiencing the same pain and confusion as her human family.

Lauren turned away and scrolled through the data on her computer once more. None of the new documents appeared to be any more helpful than the last batch. But she resolved to fight the Oni Agent until the end.

A small beep sounded from the synthesis equipment Navid had set up. The first batch of the Phoenix Compound was done. It went against everything Lauren had been taught to use a drug in a human patient without extensive testing. But they had no choice.

Peter stood, walking cautiously over to the lab bench as if the glass flasks and tubes were vipers, coiled and ready to strike. “Do you want to do the honors, or shall I?”

“I will.” Lauren reached under the hood for the flask where the microparticles containing the finished Phoenix Compound were held. She unhooked the flask from the rest of the apparatus and eyed the liquid inside. If this didn’t work, then everyone aboard the Huntress would be dead—or worse—before Dom and the Hunters returned.

***

Gunfire exploded in the distance, punctuating the roar of the choppers. Dom ducked into a tower of crates. The man in the beret grabbed a Russian-made Vityas-SN submachine gun from the chopper nearest him. He aimed the weapon over the cargo crates. He yelled commands at his troops, though his words were lost to Dom in the din of the helicopters.

Dom had half-expected the man to take off with whatever he was loading onto those two choppers. But if he hadn’t yet, that meant there might be something vital in the remaining crates, something that the man didn’t want left behind. And if something was important to them, then it was important to Dom.

First, they had to escape the trap closing in on them.

Although the soldiers clearly knew intruders were somewhere nearby, Dom, Meredith, and Alizia still hadn’t been spotted. It was their only advantage. But it wouldn’t last long. If they didn’t act soon, they would be cornered—and likely slaughtered—while the big Russian escaped with the crates and the elderly Asian man.

At the very least, he wanted to know who the hell they were. “Huntress, Alpha. We’re surrounded. Things are about to get dirty. Did you get a vid capture of the man in the beret and the one in the wheelchair?”

“Roger, Captain,” Chao said. “Facial recognition search says the big one is Pyotr Spitkovsky. Not sure if it’s an alias, but we’ll find out soon. Didn’t get a clear enough view of the man in the wheelchair to find a match.”

“Copy. Shit’s about to go down. Make sure Frank gets his ass over to us with reinforcements, got it?”

“Aye, aye, Captain. Frank’s en route to picking Bravo up now.”

“Good. Over.”

Meredith’s eyes narrowed as she shouldered her rifle. “Any bright ideas?”

“Got more flashbangs?”

“One,” Meredith said.

“I’ve got three.”

Alizia let a toothy grin cross her face. “That sounds like a bright idea to me. Flash, shoot, done.”

“I want the guy in the wheelchair and the Russian, Spitkovsky, alive,” Dom said. “If anyone has answers, it’s them.”

Dom motioned for silence and then handed Alizia an M84. At his signal, they each pulled the pin and threw their grenade at the soldiers nearest their respective positions. Dom tossed the fourth toward the choppers, hoping it would catch Spitkovsky off guard and slow their progress in loading the two helicopters. The grenades clunked against concrete, and several of the soldiers yelled warnings to their comrades.

Dom and the others covered their ears. They waited for the high-pitched pop and flash of light and then popped up to open fire. Dom’s gun rattled, bullets ricocheting in the hallway. The soldiers marching down it found no cover from the relentless storm of lead. Four who hadn’t reacted in time to the flashbang went down without ever seeing Dom. Two others uncovered their eyes, fumbling for their rifles.

Bullets clattered against their body armor, but enough of the rounds found unprotected flesh. Dom drew satisfaction from each man who hit the ground and stayed there. Rage filled him, blocking out the sorrow he normally felt when forced to kill. No matter how justified, taking a human life never felt good. But at that moment, as a swirling tornado of fire filled his chest and the cacophony of the ongoing gun battle exploded around him, regret and guilt took a backseat.

He had to capture Spitkovsky. Had to take him back to the Huntress. Nothing else mattered.

Meredith had dispatched two of the soldiers crawling from the right. Alizia had taken down one on her side. The other three men left on their flanks had apparently shielded themselves from the flashbangs. Each was posted behind a wooden crate, exchanging fire with the two women.

Beyond them, Spitkovsky took potshots at Meredith and Alizia. He gripped a rail extending from one of the choppers. One boot was already inside. The men and women in white coats threw a few more crates into the second helicopter, while two of them lifted the man in the wheelchair toward Spitkovsky’s chopper.

Dom tried to guess the risk of a direct assault on Spitkovsky. The Russian fired another salvo at Meredith’s position, and Dom dove to a different stack of crates to stay out of the man’s sight. Bullets rang against the crate where Alizia had hunkered down.

Spitkovsky cursed and grabbed the wheelchair the white coats appeared to be struggling with. He pulled it single-handedly into the craft. In a matter of moments, they’d be airborne, taking with them everything Dom had come here to find.

Everything the Hunters had done to get here, every sacrifice they had made, every life they had lost, would be worthless if that chopper took to the air. They’d be back to the starting line with only a few poorly translated computer files to show for it.

Dom wouldn’t let that happen.

“Meredith, Alizia, cover me! I’m going in!” He aimed at a white coat. With a squeeze of the trigger, he sent a burst into the man’s back. The man’s arms tensed, and his head snapped back. He let out a gargling yell and then slumped out of the open chopper door.

Spitkovsky wasn’t prepared for the sudden shift in weight. The wheelchair tumbled sideways, spilling the old man onto the concrete. He wouldn’t be in great shape after a fall like that, but at least the chopper wasn’t going anywhere. Spitkovsky hopped out and scanned the darkness. Dom ducked behind the crate and then crawled to a stack of oil drums. From there he fired into the flanks of two soldiers too concentrated on Alizia and Meredith to notice him.

A man’s pained yell sounded behind him. Meredith or Alizia had taken out another of the goons. Spitkovsky grabbed the old man’s wrists and pulled him up with one hand. In his other, he scooped up the wheelchair.

Dom took advantage of the moment and fired on one of the soldiers trying to assist with the wheelchair. When the man crumpled, Dom charged forward. Spitkovsky turned at the sound of Dom’s footfalls.

At first, Spitkovsky’s eyes widened in surprise, but then he began to smile. It was a knowing grin. Like he had somehow seen this coming. Like he had expected Dom.

Spitkovsky ignobly dragged the old man onto the floor of the helicopter’s cabin. A soldier hopped in beside him, but Spitkovsky pushed him back out and pointed at Dom. The soldier turned, wheeling his gun on his new target.

But Dom wouldn’t be stopped. Couldn’t be. He threw his shoulder into the soldier, knocking him backward. The chopper lifted off, and Dom jumped. He heard the hiss of bullets cracking through the air behind him. A couple stray rounds pinged off the side of the chopper.

He let his rifle fall to his side. The strap caught on his shoulder, and his fingers stretched toward the rail along the chopper’s open side door. He snagged it and swung himself in as the helicopter lurched into the air.

Spitkovsky whipped his submachine gun up. The gun rattled as Dom ducked, going low to tackle the big Russian. He caught his adversary in the knees, and the submachine gun went up, firing into the fuselage. Bullet holes pocked the ceiling. Through his pounding pulse and the heat filling his head, Dom thought he heard Meredith call his name.

Spitkovsky hit the floor hard. His elbow smacked against an empty seat, and he lost his grip on his weapon. Dom stood over him, cocking his fist back. He pictured Renee, the way the fever had slowly broken her fierce spirit. He pictured Owen torn in half, Brett transformed by the Agent, and Hector impaled by a Skull. Adam lost to those savage men in Virginia, Ivan and Scott killed by Kinsey’s people. He saw the thousands of Skulls the Hunters had faced to get here and imagined the people they’d once been. Every painful memory, every vengeful thought, every bit of burning anger raged through his brain, traveling through his nerves and erupting into his knuckles.

Dom swung.

But Spitkovsky dodged.

The punch went wide.

The Russian laughed as Dom stumbled forward, carried by the momentum of his own punch. Then a sickening crack exploded as the man’s fist connected with the side of Dom’s face.

Dom’s vision went blurry and turned red as he caught himself on a chair. Another punch sent his teeth rattling, the taste of blood flooding his mouth. The drone of the helicopter’s engines sounded muddled. Dom tried to hold his hands up to defend himself. Dizziness threatened to overtake him as his brain rattled inside his skull.

He was too tired. Too slow. Too old.

Spitkovsky’s fingers wrapped around Dom’s neck, crushing his windpipe.

“Captain Holland,” he said, tightening his grip. He spoke clear English with the touch of a Russian accent. “You’re more stubborn than a cockroach. Do I need to teach you how to die?”

Dom clenched the man’s wrists. He squeezed, trying to loosen the fingers. But Spitkovsky lifted him so that Dom’s feet no longer touched the floor. Blackness crept into his vision. His head pounded with the heavy beat of a bass drum, and his lungs burned with furious intensity.

Below, the ground fell away. The chopper was taking him away from Meredith. If that happened, Spitkovsky would win. They would rise from the hidden helipad, rise above the forest, and disappear.

Then a spiky shape jumped into the chopper. Spitkovsky twisted in surprise. Skull or human, Dom didn’t care what had joined them. He leveled a kick into the man’s groin. To his credit, Spitkovsky loosened his fingers only slightly. But slightly was more than enough for Dom.

He shot his arms between Spitkovsky’s and spread them, breaking the man’s grip entirely. Dom rammed Spitkovsky, and the man hit the back of the pilot’s seat. The chopper wobbled as the pilot yelled in alarm. The old man in the wheelchair let out a wheezing cry. His hands grasped feebly for a free seatbelt as his unsecured wheelchair rolled toward the open side door.

But a hand grabbed the old man before he fell. It was the same person who had saved him, too. Alizia locked a harness around the wheels of the chair. Dom offered her a nod of thanks as he drove an elbow in Spitkovsky’s neck.

The chopper continued to rise. The pilot seemed determined to get them out of here even if all hell was breaking loose in his helicopter. Dom slammed Spitkovsky against the pilot’s seat again. The chopper rocked perilously close to the walls of the underground helipad, shaking as the pilot struggled to regain control. Dom fought to hold his grip on Spitkovsky as the huge man kicked and punched. Blow after blow landed on Dom, but he wouldn’t let that stop him now. Not when victory was literally within his grasp.

Just knock this guy out, tie him up, and we’re out of here, Dom thought. We win.

He fought through the pain and thrashed Spitkovsky against the bulkhead. The chopper shook, and the screech of metal against concrete screamed out. Helicopter blades scraped against the side of the silo, fragmenting into deadly shards. The chopper shuddered and dropped, falling sideways. Alizia braced herself. Dom wrestled to control Spitkovsky even as the rocking of the chopper threatened to throw them both out. Spitkovsky’s face was turning purple. His eyes bulged, and his hands flopped in a final failed effort to break Dom’s grip.

Almost there, Dom thought. Almost there.

The alarms in the helicopter’s cockpit shrieked, and lights flashed. Burning plastic and the smell of smoke hit his nostrils. The cabin tilted sideways, and Dom was forced to reach one hand out, grabbing the pilot’s seat for balance. As the chopper banked, he saw a soldier and two white coats still locked in battle with Meredith below. They looked up at the shrieking chopper, their eyes wide with fear. Meredith ran for cover, sprinting like a deer. One man held his hands in front of his face, as if that would save him, just as a spear of broken rotor impaled him.

Cargo boxes flew around the cabin. An agonized scream sounded as the fuselage ground against the helipad. The unhealthy cries of the failing engine pierced Dom’s eardrums.

Dom was thrown from the chopper. His head clunked against the ground. He could almost feel his brain slamming against bone. Pain rocked through his head, shredding his vision.

Spitkovsky pulled himself from the wreckage of the chopper. His chest heaved, and blood covered his face. Wind washed over Dom as the second chopper lowered itself again. Gunfire rattled from its open side door, and Dom tried to crawl away, tried to find shelter behind a crate as broken as his own body. Pain lit up one of his legs as he drew it behind the collapsed crate. The chopper came in low enough for two soldiers to reach down and help Spitkovsky into it. Once they hoisted him inside, another reached down into the ruins of the downed aircraft, presumably for the old man in the wheelchair.

Dom coughed, spitting blood across his chest. He tried to reach for his rifle, but the electric pain shooting up his shoulder paralyzed him. His fingers felt numb, useless. Blackness shrouded his vision, throwing him into a world of shadows.

Then his world disappeared entirely.

-48-

“No!” Meredith yelled. Heat flashed across her face, and her vision tunneled. She could barely see Dom in her periphery as she stepped over him. A distant place in her brain cried out, telling her to check on Dom, make sure he was still alive.

But another, louder voice screamed at her to fulfill the mission. Dom would haunt her for an eternity if she didn’t take care of their objectives.

The soldier stepped out of the chopper and bent to recover the old man from the wreckage. Meredith lined him up in her sights. A fire coursed through her guts. All the injuries she had suffered since the outbreak seemed to hurt at once. Bruised ribs. Shot-off ear. Cuts and tears, lacerations and heavy blows from the creatures created by these people, these abominable villains.

She squeezed the trigger, and the soldier’s body dropped. He disappeared into the pile of twisted metal. Another soldier on the helicopter spotted her and aimed.

No you fucking don’t.

She fired first. His body slumped from the chopper and tumbled into the tongues of dancing flame. Two more soldiers positioned themselves at the open side door and fired on her. She dove behind a crate. Bending around the corner, she fired back. Two more men hopped out and reached to grab the old man. His body lay motionless, a useless sack of blood and flesh. A plastic hose still snaked from his nostril to his oxygen tank, which was perilously close to the ravenous fire. Meredith thought about firing at that tank, causing an explosion that would take out all the hostiles at once.

But to do so would forfeit the old man’s life. And Dom would not be happy about that. She would not be happy about that. The old man might hold the key to this mess. He might know something about the IBSL out in the Atlantic, or the cryptic note that had sent her on this wild goose chase, or why her boss, David Lawson, thought she had somehow been complicit in the spread of the Oni Agent.

Instead, she sighted the first soldier in her optics and fired until his body hung halfway out of the chopper, swinging in the rotor wash. The second man withdrew, but he didn’t find shelter fast enough to avoid the bullets streaming from Meredith’s rifle.

But even with those soldiers dead, the goddamn helicopter didn’t leave. They wouldn’t abandon the old man, no matter how Meredith tried to beat them back. The side door closed momentarily, and her bullets pinged against it. Some caused spiderwebbing cracks in the windows; others ricocheted uselessly. She was determined to send a message.

And in response, the side door cracked open once again. This time it wasn’t a soldier with a rifle. Spitkovsky had mounted a Kord-12.7 mm heavy machine gun. Throaty thumps blasted from the Russian-made machine gun as it released a torrent of rounds. The bullets crashed into the helipad, tearing up fist-sized chunks and spraying Meredith with concrete shards. She crawled behind the crates and oil drums. Bullets turned the wooden crates into splinters, and the contents were reduced to scrap. Whatever these people had been so diligently trying to salvage seemed to matter very little compared to the old man.

Meredith scurried behind a wall of metal gun cases. She wanted to return fire, to take Spitkovsky out, but she knew as soon as she poked out from behind shelter, her head would turn into a mist of blood and bone.

That was the thing about the heavy guns. You didn’t even have to aim very well. One hit from those rounds, and she’d be dead.

“Bravo, Charlie, anybody,” Meredith yelled into her comm link.

A burst of static answered her plea. The ground lurched beneath her feet. Concrete cracked, and a huge slab spiked upward as if the Earth had skipped millions of years of tectonic shifts and decided a mountain needed to be right here, right now. Just as soon as it had risen, the mound of concrete disappeared, and cracks fissured away from a sinkhole.

Something shot up from it.

A hand, Meredith realized with dread. A Titan’s hand.

Claws reached up, scraping blindly. The rattle of the machine gun stopped, and the thrum of the chopper’s engine hit a crescendo. She risked peering from behind the stack of gun cases to see the helicopter lifting off once again. The raking claws of the Titan darted out like a striking snake.

If Meredith had hoped to enjoy the irony of Spitkovsky being killed by his own creation, she was disappointed. The chopper slipped out of the Titan’s reach, leaving Meredith alone in a pit of smoke, fire, and a thrashing Titan desperate to escape its underground prison. The monster pushed its head through the hole. One of its eyes was missing, and long gouges cut canyons into the right side of its face. It must have been one of the survivors from the Titan grudge match back in the gigantic laboratory chamber.

“Meredith!” a voice called out, shaking slightly.

She shot from her hiding spot, running to the burning helicopter. Alizia shakily stood from the wreckage. Rivulets of crimson streamed across her brow. Ash and soot covered her bruised skin, and she limped, favoring one leg. The old man was slung over her back. Meredith couldn’t tell whether he was alive or dead.

Meredith held out a hand to help the woman, but Alizia shrugged her off. “Get Dom,” she said.

She didn’t need to be told twice. The ground shook beneath their feet as the Titan pushed its shoulder up, trying to free itself from the concrete and rebar. It let out another roar that threatened to burst her eardrums. She ignored the noise and heat and acrid smoke stinging her nostrils.

Ahead, Dom lay under broken fragments of wood. Gray dust from the concrete covered him, sticking to the blood covering his flesh and fatigues.

“Dom!” Meredith yelled as she ran to his side. “You have to wake up!”

He didn’t move. The Titan roared louder. Huge globs of red saliva flew over her head. Alizia, gasping for air, set the skinny old man down at her feet. She took a knee beside Dom.

“There’s no way out,” Alizia said.

Meredith’s eyes raked the ground as if a tunnel would appear if she glared at it sternly enough.

But instead of a way out, they were rewarded only with a cacophony of demonic voices shrieking from the top of the silo. All along the perimeter of the helipad’s aboveground entrance, where concrete met foliage, Skulls of all shapes and sizes peered down. Their howls carried up in answer to the Titan’s bellows. Several Goliaths loomed above the Skulls leaning over the precipice. Droolers gargled, acid oozing over their chests. Imps bounced, excited, ready to feast on human flesh.

“You did this!” Alizia yelled at the Titan. “You ugly bastard!” She unloaded her magazine into the Titan’s face. Bullets lanced into the exposed flesh of its wounds, and it yowled an agonizing wail that shook Meredith to her core.

She’d faced almost-certain death before, but things had never felt this final, this hopeless. She held Dom’s head in her lap, brushing the blood and dust from his forehead. She wanted to break down and sob. But even at the end, the wrought-iron control ingrained by decades of intelligence work wouldn’t let her be overwhelmed by emotion.

“I’m sorry, Dom,” she said as the ground rumbled and a spike from the Titan’s shoulder burst free.

Alizia slapped in a fresh magazine. “Get up! We must fight!”

Meredith planted a kiss on Dom’s forehead and struggled to her feet, exhausted and bloody. Alizia limped over until they were back to back. The first Skull careened from the lip of the helipad. Its claws flailed, and they fired on the beast, riddling it with bullets before its body collided with the concrete.

More Skulls followed, leaping with wild abandon. Meredith and Alizia swiveled on their heels. They killed the first few creatures that survived landing among the burning chopper and torn metal. The unluckiest Skulls landed in the Titan’s pit, where they were crushed, bludgeoned, or ground into a paste between the beast’s molars. But a few made it onto the concrete platform unscathed.

“Not today!” Meredith yelled.

Her gunfire impaled two of the beasts’ heads, ending their miserable existence. Alizia’s wild shots smacked against the chest armor of another. Rounds traced up its body until the bullets pierced its nasal cavity and sent it sprawling. A Goliath raised its fists in the air. Firelight gleamed off its bony carapace as it flexed limbs adorned with scything spikes. Its legs coiled as it prepared to lunge. The Skulls swarmed, churned on by the mob’s aggression. Their cries filled the silo, echoing against the walls, ringing until Meredith almost wished both of her ears had been shot off.

Then another noise pierced their voices. Something sharper. Something mechanical.

The Goliath froze. Its large eyes rolled back. It plummeted onto the helipad. Meredith stood protectively over Dom, ready to fire into the Goliath. But it was dead.

The mechanical sound continued. More monsters fell in flashes of light. And as their voices died down, Meredith recognized the throaty bark of a machine gun and the heavy beat of a helicopter. For a moment, she feared the Russians had returned.

But as more Skulls fell away, the chopper that appeared wasn’t the Russian Mil Mi-8. It was the Huey. From the open side door, the Hunters fired into the masses of Skulls. The chopper rotated above the helipad as both side-door-mounted M240s cut into the mob.

Meredith thought she saw someone waving to her. She couldn’t understand why they weren’t communicating through the comm link, until she realized the damn thing had fallen from her ear in the turmoil. She reached under her helmet to push it back into her ear canal and was greeted with a myriad of voices.

“I can hear you,” Meredith yelled back. “Bravo, Charlie, I can hear you.”

She almost wept as the chopper lowered, stopping just short of the Titan’s grasping hands.

“Stay clear, Meredith,” Andris’s voice came back.

She watched the Hunter lean out from the side door and throw a small package into the Titan’s gaping maw. The giant beast didn’t seem to notice as it continued the struggle to free itself. It reminded Meredith of when she would accidentally swallow a gnat while running along the Potomac. A minor nuisance, but no real threat.

But the package Andris threw at the monster was no innocuous insect. Meredith shielded Dom with her body, and Alizia dragged the old man beside them. A rumbling explosion sounded from beneath the earth. The Titan roared and then went silent. Its mouth lolled open, and Meredith half-expected fire and smoke to come rolling out.

Instead a river of blood gushed as the creature’s head fell back. The block of C4 had done its job. The Huey swooped closer. Miguel and Jenna leapt out of the side door and rushed to Dom. Glenn came out next with a stretcher. All Meredith’s senses were overwhelmed as a mixture of relief and pain washed over her. She stumbled beside Miguel and Glenn as they lifted Dom onto the stretcher. Jenna offered her a shoulder to lean on, and Alizia limped beside them, carrying the old man over her shoulders again.

Billowing smoke chased them into the air as they rose from the pit. Skulls still swarmed around the helipad, unperturbed by the Titan’s bloody death. As the chopper gained altitude, Terrence tended to the wounds on the side of her face. Pain scorched her skin as he cleaned and dressed the freshly opened cuts. But she didn’t care. She held Dom’s wrist as they passed over the CDF members. Alizia leaned out of the chopper, letting out a piercing whistle to her people. They retreated into the tunnels and hideaways under the trees, disappearing into the safety of their underground network.

They would escape. The Hunters were safe.

And beneath her fingers, under the dirt and grime covering Dom’s wrist, she felt a pulse.

-49-

“Shepherd, you see where those fellows were flying?” Frank asked.

“Northeast is all I got,” Shepherd responded. “Didn’t see them land anywhere.”

“Damn,” Frank said.

Frank would’ve tried pursuing them in other circumstances. But not with Dom’s life on the line. The captain was still unconscious. The other Hunters staunched his bleeding and applied bandages, but after what he had been through, there was no telling what kind of internal injuries he had. They needed to get him to the Huntress and into the medical bay.

“Huntress, Charlie. We’re on our way. Minor injuries to several of the crew. But one high-priority case. Dom is unconscious and bleeding.”

“Copy,” Chao said. “We’re, uh, experiencing some difficulties here.”

He frowned. The unflappable Chao had actually sounded nervous. “What’s that?”

“I’m going to patch Lauren through.”

A long moment of silence passed over the comm link. Frank listened to the beat of the rotors and the muffled voices from the cabin.

“Frank, are you there?” Lauren asked, sounding worried. “I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure returning to the Huntress will be safe.”

“Anything’s safer than trying to land with the Skulls on the shore. They aren’t exactly full of hospitality, you know?”

“We’re still dealing with the spread of the airborne Oni Agent.”

“Yeah?” Frank said. “I figured it hadn’t gone away in a few hours. But Dom needs your help.”

“There’s a bigger problem. The chelation therapy failed. We’ve got one Hail Mary left.”

“Is it working? Don’t sugarcoat it.”

“Possibly. All the simulations—”

“Sugar on shit still tastes like shit. Give it to me straight, Doc.”

“The truth?” Lauren said. “I don’t know, but we’ll find out in a few hours.”

Frank glanced at his flight chart. “You don’t say? It’s going to be about two and a half hours until we land. It would be real nice if we got the all clear to head below deck. I got a few people back here who could use a good meal, a shower, bed, and, you know, some medical attention.”

“One way or another, we’ll know something by then.”

“Knowing something is better than nothing. Let’s call it a deal.”

The next two hours went by in a hypnotic blur. Dom’s eyes fluttered halfway open at one point, a fact Frank learned when Meredith and a few of the others chattered in hopeful excitement. But the captain fell back into the pit of unconsciousness, and his eyes remained closed for the rest of the journey.

The verdant jungle passed below with an uncanny stillness. Murky brown waves lapped against the muddy banks of the Congo. Trees and branches intertwined, forming a tangled blanket over the ground beneath their reaching limbs. Besides the occasional explosion of birds launching into the sky, there were almost no signs of Skulls. Humanity might be losing its battle with the Oni Agent, but nature, on the other hand, seemed to be taking things in stride. The planet was already adapting, devouring the void people had left behind.

As they drew near Soyo, Frank wondered how long it would take for the trees and plants to cover the charred remains of vehicles, scattered bones, and gunfire-scarred buildings of the port city. The crash-landed Caravan had long since disappeared below the waves. Skulls looked up lazily at the chopper. Some ran, following it halfheartedly until they hit the shore.

Frank could sense the anticipation coursing through his passengers like static electricity in the air after a summer storm. They tensed in their seats, eyeing the sleek gray ship as they drew near. An alarm warned Frank of his depleted fuel. They had no more reserves and, whether or not Lauren wanted them there, they had to land.

The wheels touched down on the helipad with a jolt, and Frank killed the engines, letting the rotors wind down.

“Huntress, knock, knock,” he said. “We’re home.”

***

Lauren took a deep breath. Beeping EKGs and the hushed breaths of her patients created a soft, discordant symphony around her. She crept toward Tammy’s bed and gripped the bedrails while she studied the woman.

Peter joined her side. He checked each restraint. “Still tight. Shall we do this?”

“Nothing else to lose now,” Lauren said. She injected the solution into the woman’s IV line and watched the green line on the EKG bounce more rapidly. Tammy’s medically induced coma was coming to an end.

“Oni Agent antibody levels are consistent with before,” Peter said.

“As if I need the reminder,” Lauren said. “But just because the antibodies are still there doesn’t mean the agent itself is.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I have to be right.” Lauren surveyed the bay. The other Boston survivors were still under. Spencer rested in his bed, eyes half-closed beneath the bandages covering his burns. Lauren thought she saw the color returning to his cheeks. Though he had a fever, his temperature had dropped a degree.

Maybe...just maybe...

Sadie lay in another bed. The girl hadn’t yet woken, and her sheets were tangled around her small frame. Maggie had been muzzled and her leash attached to one of the posts on Sadie’s bed in case the agent took the dog, too.

Lauren felt the heat break across her own skin, followed by periodic bursts of the chills. Her body was doing its best to fight the Oni Agent. But her immune system couldn’t do it alone. The doses she’d administered to herself and others were based on cell culture experiments and computer simulations. Hardly the stuff of commercial-grade pharmaceuticals.

“Here we go,” Peter said softly.

Tammy’s eyes fluttered. Lauren held her breath, her chest tightening. Tammy’s eyes focused on hers, and her mouth moved. Lauren tensed, bracing herself for the inhuman screams that would follow. Her knuckles grew white as she clenched the bedrail tighter.

“Where...where am I?” Tammy asked. “Where’s Connor?”

The tight feeling around Lauren’s chest disappeared. She grabbed the woman’s hands, holding them in hers. “He’s right here. Peter?”

Peter took the boy from his bed and laid him next to his mother. Connor woke from his nap, rubbing his eyes.

“Mom?”

She wrapped her arms around him in a tight squeeze. The boy hugged his mother back, and tears streamed from her eyes.

“I...I’m not sure what happened,” Tammy said. “The last time I think I woke up, I was angry and hungry and confused. I remember red shapes moving around. I felt like I was in danger. I didn’t hurt anyone, did I?” The woman began to sob, pressing her face against her son’s shoulder.

“It’s all right,” Peter said. “It’s over now. You and your boy will be fine.” He turned to Lauren with a wide grin on his face. “It worked. The Phoenix Compound works!”

Lauren wasn’t ready to celebrate yet. One case might be a fluke, a happy accident. One by one, the other Boston survivors were roused. All awoke healthy but disoriented. Lauren and Peter moved among the crew, waking all those who had been put under. None of them showed signs of turning into Skulls. Lauren finally let the waves of victory wash over her.

“I can’t believe it,” Lauren said. “It did work.”

She walked to the laboratory’s hatch. Kara, Navid, Divya, and Sean were toiling over the next batch of the Phoenix Compound. With a rap of her knuckles on the acrylic window, Lauren caught their attention. They turned to her, and when Lauren flashed a smile, their faces broke into answering grins. Navid wrapped Kara in a hug, and Sean pumped his fist into the air.

Kara wasted little time in shedding her personal protective equipment. With Navid by her side, they strode to Sadie’s bed. Lauren shadowed them as Kara brushed Sadie’s hair back. She pressed the back of her hand against Sadie’s forehead.

“She feels cooler!” Kara said. “The fever broke.”

Sadie opened her eyes. They shone, lucid and healthy. No more vibrant, pulsating blood vessels. No yellow on her fingernails, either.

“Kara?” Sadie said. “I’m thirsty.”

“That’s normal,” Lauren said. “Just drink some water, okay?”

A look of horror spread across Sadie’s face. “Where’s Maggie?”

As if in reply, Maggie’s tail beat against the legs of the bed. The golden retriever jumped, her front paws landing on the bed. She tried to work her tongue through the muzzle to slurp Sadie’s face but only succeeded in spraying drool over the girl.

“Ew, Maggie!” Sadie cried.

Lauren’s body ached, and her muscles quivered. God, it must’ve been a day or more since she’d so much as stuffed an energy bar into her mouth. The allure of a bed had never felt so strong. Glenn would be back soon, no doubt equally exhausted, and the temptation of falling into bed with him and sleeping for a week was almost impossible to resist.

Kara undid the dog’s muzzle. Maggie placed her front paws on the side of the bed, tail whipping Kara and Navid’s legs, and bathed Sadie in the love that only a dog could give.

Kara hugged her sister and then threw her arms around Navid’s neck. “You did it! You’re a hero, Navid!” She pecked him on the cheek, and the young scientist’s face turned pink.

Navid stood in stunned silence. A slight smile worked across his face. Before he finally spoke, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “This isn’t my victory. It’s all of ours.”

“Damn right,” Peter said, sauntering over to them. “And I’m buying a round of drinks for everyone. The best that money can buy.”

“And what exactly can that buy right now?” Lauren asked.

“Instant coffee from the galley!”

Lauren wanted to laugh, but the terminal on the bulkhead buzzed. She picked up the handset. “Med bay, Lauren here.”

“Frank’s back,” Chao said, “but Dom’s still out.”

At once, the elation flowing through Lauren dried up. It was back to work. They had to save the captain. God only knew where they would be without him. “Peter, Sean, Divya. Stretchers. Helipad. Now!”

The group rushed out of the med bay and up the ladders. A wind whipped against Lauren’s white coat. Sunlight warmed her skin, and she breathed in the salty ocean air. Her feet pounded across the deck toward the chopper as the rotors decelerated and the side door opened. Divya and Peter ran ahead with their stretcher.

“Here!” Meredith yelled from the Huey. She and Glenn helped hoist Dom out and onto the stretcher.

“Take him into the OR!” Lauren ordered. “Peter, go with them. You know what to do!”

Peter and Divya rushed away with Dom on the stretcher.

“Anyone else?” Lauren asked.

“The rest of us can walk on our own,” Meredith said. Soot and mud obscured her face. Rivulets of blood dripped from under her helmet where Lauren and Peter had worked to fix the ear she had lost. She’d popped at least a couple of stitches. “But we’ve got a guest that needs stabilization.”

A woman Lauren didn’t recognize leapt from the Huey next. She wore bleached pieces of Skull armor, and bruises mottled her dark skin. She helped Miguel lift an old man onto Lauren’s stretcher.

“You must be Alizia,” Lauren said.

Alizia nodded a curt greeting. “This man needs help. Not that he deserves it.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s older than my great-grandmother, God rest her soul, and he has something to do with the Oni Agent. Everything’s wrong with him.”

“Anything I can help with?”

Alizia gave a noncommittal shrug. “His oxygen tank got left behind, and he was hooked up to an IV. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine.”

“Thanks,” Lauren said, nonplussed.

Miguel helped her take the man down to the med bay. “Mr. Wrinkles here was Alpha’s VIP target. Might have some good information. Better get him talking.”

“I’ll do my best.” Lauren pushed open the med bay’s hatch. There was a crack in the curtain blocking the window to the OR. Peter was already extracting a bullet from Dom’s leg. Divya seemed focused on a wound in his abdomen. Sean hovered behind them, offering assistance as needed.

With Miguel’s help, Lauren lifted the old man into a bed. He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds.

“Grab that oxygen mask,” Lauren said, pointing Miguel to a supply cabinet, “and attach it to that tank.”

“You got it, Doc.”

Miguel handed her the mask, and she placed it over her new patient’s face. After placing a clip on his fingers, she watched his pulse on an EKG monitor. A bit slow, but he’s alive, she thought. She had to try three times before she could get an IV needle into one of his rubbery veins. After washing the dried blood off him, she checked for any signs of internal or external bleeding.

When she was satisfied the old man would live, she gowned up for surgery and joined her medical team as they worked on Dom. They had experienced a staggering array of victories and setbacks over the past few days. But the Phoenix Compound worked. Soon enough, they would share their results with everyone left in the world to receive them. They would change the course of the battle against the Oni Agent.

But that could wait.

She had one more life to save.

One more, and then the rest of the world.

-Epilogue-

The shrill chirp of alarms hit Dom’s ears. He jolted upright, gasping for air. His chest burned with each shallow breath. Hands pressed against his shoulders, and a deep, rumbling voice said his name. Panic filled him as he clawed at the wrists of his attacker. A swirling rush of blood pulsated through his vessels, churning with the effects of adrenaline and shock.

Spitkovsky was going in for the kill again.

He looked up into the hazy, gray-haired face of his enemy. But then Dom recognized the way the man’s brow furrowed in concern, the unlit cigar perched between his lips. His first mate, the man he had left in charge of the ship.

“Thomas,” Dom said. His voice sounded unfamiliar, scratchy. “What...am I...the Huntress?” He jolted upright again, shoving Thomas off. Dull pain throbbed across his body, resonating in every joint. But he didn’t care. “Where are my girls? Where’s Meredith? The Phoenix Compound!”

“They’re fine. They’re all fine. The Phoenix Compound worked, as far as Lauren can tell.”

Adrenaline kept his heart pounding at a million beats per minute, but he willed himself to breathe slower, to let the warmth of relief calm his panic. “How about you? How’s the shoulder?” Dom asked. Thomas still had a bandage over his shoulder, though he no longer wore a sling.

“Better than your leg,” Thomas said.

Dom lifted his sheet. White gauze covered his calf. He tried to move his toes, but pain scorched through his muscles. Dom cursed. He couldn’t be out of the game. Not now.

“Where’s Lauren?”

“Here!” the doctor said, jogging between the other beds toward him. Dark bags hung under her eyes, but she wore a bright smile. “You feeling okay?”

“I’m shot,” Dom said. “And my ribs feel like shit. But knowing you’re safe makes it all okay.” His eyes widened as his memories flooded back to him. “Did we get Spitkovsky and the old man?”

Lauren chewed her bottom lip. “Spitkovsky got away. Miguel and Meredith told me they saw his chopper fly northeast, but Frank didn’t have the fuel to pursue him. Plus, they had some important cargo to get back here.” She offered him a sympathetic smile.

“Tell me there’s some good news,” Dom said with a cough.

“That’s to be determined,” Lauren said. “The old man’s alive, but—”

“Can I walk?” Dom asked.

Lauren raised an eyebrow. “Does it matter if I say no?”

“Not really. Got a crutch?”

Thomas helped Dom slip his legs over the side of the bed, and Lauren gave him a crutch to lean on.

“As your doctor, I do need to say you should be off your feet. You risk reopening that wound, and that muscle needs to heal.”

“Appreciate the advice,” Dom said as he slipped the crutch into his armpit and shakily stood. He put his weight on his right leg and took his first tentative step. “But I need to see the old fart I almost died trying to capture.”

Lauren nodded, walking slowly across the med bay with him. Miguel and Jenna stood near a bed, guarding the patient there, but as Dom drew near, they beamed.

“Chief!” Miguel said. “Glad to see you on your feet.”

“Come to see our new friend?” Jenna asked.

“That’s right,” Dom said.

He took another painful step forward. He grunted each time he used the crutch. His ribs felt like they were about to shatter every time he took a breath.

The old man lying in the bed appeared harmless. Liver spots covered his bald head, and deep wrinkles grooved his features. His skin practically hung off his bones, and his arm looked like it would break if Dom shook the man’s hand too hard. He found it difficult to believe this senior citizen might be a key piece of the puzzle.

But judging by Spitkovsky’s interest in the old guy and the nursing-home-turned-high-security fortress, this man was far more important than he seemed.

“Who the hell is he?” Dom asked.

“Guy hasn’t spoken to us,” Miguel said. “Been sleeping the whole time.”

“Yeah,” Jenna said. “We’ve been watching him since we brought him down here. Maybe he’s just pretending?”

Lauren shrugged. “As far as I can tell, he’s not in a coma. Neurological function seems normal.”

“Any idea who he is?” Dom asked.

Thomas put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe I better take you to Chao for this one. They’ve uncovered some, uh, interesting stuff. Want me to grab a wheelchair?”

Dom glared at him. “Is that a joke?”

“Yeah, kind of,” Thomas said with a smirk.

Side-by-side, they limped out of the med bay and into the corridor. Several Hunters and crew members gave Dom a proud salute as they passed. Progress was slow and painful. The fire in his calf grew hotter, and he guiltily thought about Thomas’s offer to get a wheelchair. His pride pushed him to keep walking on his own two feet, but he wondered if it wasn’t time to start accepting some help. His crew—his family—wouldn’t think he was weak, not after what they’d all been through together.

Before they reached the workshop’s hatch, Dom heard the clatter of claws scampering on the deck. He spun as best he could to see Maggie charging toward him.

“Whoa, girl!” Sadie said, tugging on Maggie’s leash. Rachel and Rory trailed her. Kara followed behind them with Navid at her side—and he seemed to be dangerously close to holding Dom’s daughter’s hand. Dom glanced at the young man suspiciously, and Navid shoved his hands in his pockets.

Kara squeezed him gently, careful to avoid his injuries. Sadie had no such inhibitions, and Dom gritted his teeth against the pain as he hugged her back. It was worth it. He had never felt so relieved in his life. The girls were safe, and he was with them again.

“Nice to see you again, Captain,” Rachel said.

“We were all rooting for you, sir,” Rory added.

“Thanks for your support, midshipmen,” Dom said, regaining his composure. “Getting a tour of the ship?”

“The royal treatment,” Rachel said. “Sadie’s been our personal tour guide.”

“You still thinking about joining the crew?” Dom asked.

“There’s a part of me that does,” Rachel said. “But my duty is waiting in Kent with the other midshipmen. I owe it to them to do what I can to keep that place running and safe.”

“Yeah,” Rory said. “This ship is great, but we belong there. If we can find a way back.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” Dom said. He turned to Navid next and nodded.

“Good to see you up and about, sir,” Navid said.

“Likewise,” Dom said. “You did good work with the Phoenix Compound.”

“I was pleased to do my part,” Navid said.

Dom gave his daughters another hug. There were too many moments in his journey through the Congo when he thought he would never be this close to them again.

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you all,” he said. He could no longer hold back the happy tears budding in his eyes. He was done fighting a never-ending battle against his own heart. “I want to stay with you, but first I’ve got to take care of a couple things, okay?”

“Okay,” Sadie said. “We’ll be in the mess. I can make you a hot chocolate if you want.”

“I’d love that. I promise I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Come on, everyone! Let’s go!” Sadie said cheerfully.

The group disappeared, with Maggie leading the way down the corridor.

“They’re good kids,” Thomas said. “You know, when you were in the OR, I told Kara not to worry because her old man is tough. He won’t give up. You know what she said?”

Dom looked at him expectantly.

“She said, and I quote, ‘No shit.’”

Dom couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s my girl.”

He and Thomas made their way to the electronics workshop. He wasn’t ready to jump back into planning their next mission. He wanted to spend time with his girls and Meredith. His crew deserved rest—and so did he. Thomas helped Dom over the lip of the hatch into the workshop. Glowing monitors displayed an array of text documents, chemical formulas, and images of Titans in various states of growth. Chao sat at his desk; Shepherd was in a chair next to him. Samantha leaned over them, pointing at one of the screens. Meredith and Alizia stood behind her. They all turned when the sound of Dom’s crutch announced his entrance.

“Dom!” Meredith said. She ran to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her lips found his, and he welcomed the unexpected kiss. Warmth filled him from her touch, and the world melted away. It made him feel young and naïve and happy. But when Meredith pulled back, the moment passed, and he found himself in an all too familiar reality.

He straightened his back and braced himself for their report.

“Your people have been busy,” Alizia said. “I’m impressed by the resources you have on this ship. I never would’ve guessed you had all this at your disposal based on the dirty mongrels I found on the river and took into my home.”

“You plan on staying aboard long? We could always use another Hunter as talented as you.” Dom made the request half in jest. He truly believed she’d be a valuable member of the team, but he knew what she would say.

“Of course I cannot,” Alizia said. “I wanted only to gain closure from our mission. Frank has promised to fly me back to the CDF.”

“I understand. Chao and Samantha will outfit you with a satellite radio. If you ever need us, call.”

“And I hope you will do likewise,” Alizia said. “We’re a humble group, but once we have ensured those men will never use our home as their shitting ground again, we’ll do what we can to clean up the rest of the world. You have my promise.”

Dom gave her a solemn nod. “Glad to hear it. Chao, what’s our situation?”

“As we suspected,” Chao began, “the Titans were the next stage in Oni Agent research. We haven’t translated all the documents, so there’s probably more to find. But the research on the Titans wasn’t new. Apparently, the Russians have been pursuing this kind of human genetic engineering work since the 1960s. Most of their early experiments focused on blending the genes from various lower primates to create chimeras. It wasn’t until recently that they combined that research with the Oni Agent.”

“I’m sure this information will be invaluable to Lauren’s team when you finish the translations,” Meredith said.

“That’s the hope,” Chao said. “The software we have only goes so far. Glenn has been helping.”

“Excellent,” Dom said. Glenn might not look it, but he was a polyglot who learned languages in his spare time for fun. “Did you find anything to help us treat the Oni Agent?”

“Maybe,” Samantha said. She pointed to one of the monitors. The blue glimmer of the screen cast an ethereal glow over the tattooed vines and roses on her arm. “They were doing some kind of research that removed the prion portion of the Oni Agent, leaving only the nanobacteria.”

“Why would they do that?” Dom asked.

“Beats me,” Samantha said. “But here’s where things get interesting. The Russian guy, Colonel Pyotr Spitkovsky, is a really bad dude. We finally found some shit on him. Took Meredith’s access to old CIA files and Shepherd’s credentials to infiltrate the military intelligence databases, but we put together a narrative of sorts.”

Chao pulled up a file on one of the monitors. It showed the ugly, square face of Spitkovsky. “It’s no secret that the Soviets kept pursing forbidden research after the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.”

“We have documented evidence provided by Soviet defectors through the 1970s and 80s to back that up,” Samantha added.

“Spitkovsky apparently led a clandestine division called Biological Health Research that continued past the Soviet era and was absorbed into the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” Chao said. “Some of this was lost in translation, but it sounds like his research was focused on something called the ‘Human Machine’ project.”

“I’d guess most of his history with the military was redacted or modified,” Meredith chimed in. “Everything we found in his records looks pretty similar to the files of the spooks I worked with at the CIA.”

Dom scanned the document. Meredith was right; it was full of varied career trajectories and strange military involvement that didn’t make sense unless it was fabricated or full of holes. “How the hell has he been operating in secret for so long?”

“Honestly, we don’t know,” Meredith said. “He was a political prisoner for the past decade. As far as we knew, Putin threw him in some dark cellar in Siberia for seditious conspiracy against the state.”

“It’s hard to believe a man could orchestrate something like the Oni Agent’s spread from a prison cell in Siberia,” Dom said. “Is it possible that this guy’s imprisonment was just a cover to get other intelligence agencies off his trail?”

“Maybe,” Meredith said. “That’s certainly not unusual. But we usually caught those kinds of things in the agency. I think there really was some bad blood between this guy and Putin.”

“We’ll keep it in consideration,” Dom said. “So who the hell is the guy in my med bay?”

Samantha took a sip from an open energy drink can. “Shigeru Matsumoto,” she said.

The name sparked a dim memory. Dom had heard it before, but he had trouble remembering where.

The IBSL.

Unit 731.

Holy shit.

“He created the Oni Agent. He was the original scientist on the Amanojaku Project,” Dom said. The words sounded distant, as if someone else were saying them. His whole body went numb with the powerful realization of who he now had on the Huntress.

Shepherd nodded. “After they cancelled the bioweapons programs at Detrick in the seventies, his records vanished. Guess now we know where he ended up.”

“Goddamn,” Dom said, cracking his knuckles. The man who had truly started this mess was still alive, and he was on Dom’s ship. “Goddamn.”

“We already created a data package of the vid feeds we got in the Congo and the Bikoro facility,” Samantha said. “Everything we know about Matsumoto and Spitkovsky is in it, along with all the data we managed to stream from the facility before the whole place went dark. I’ll include the protocol for synthesizing the Phoenix Compound, and then we can send it to Kinsey.”

Dom shook his head. “I don’t want to share this with him yet.”

“Why not?” Meredith asked.

“We might only get one shot to show the world we’re not the villains,” he said. “I’m not convinced Kinsey can be trusted to help us do that.”

“Dom’s right,” Shepherd said. He rubbed a pair of white scars on his wrist. “When I was waterboarded, the man who was carrying it out told me he was Kinsey’s boss. I’m still not sure if it was a bluff meant to intimidate me or not. Either way, we don’t know who to trust. If someone intercepts our message, who knows how much of it will actually get through to him.”

“Before we do anything, I want to have a little talk with Dr. Matsumoto. He owes us an explanation.”

“That’s the understatement of the century,” Meredith said.

Dom still couldn’t quite believe it. They had unlocked a treasure trove of data from the Bikoro facility, and they had captured the architect of the original Oni Agent experiments. To top it off, the Phoenix Compound actually worked. Lauren thought they might even be able to adapt it as a vaccine, so no one would have to use the risky chelation treatment again.

But they still had to find Spitkovsky. For all he knew, the man might be mobilizing his allies to launch a massive offensive to whatever was left of the world. Humanity wouldn’t survive it.

His throat tightened as if the bony hands of a Skull were squeezing him. The immensity of the tasks ahead threatened to overshadow the slim chances he saw of them actually succeeding.

But as Alizia studied the reports on Matsumoto, Dom knew it wasn’t just the Hunters who had skin in the game. Even if they couldn’t get through to Kinsey, they had a militia ready to fight beside them in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They had Frank’s new allies in Portugal, waiting for some communication from the outside world to tell them where to strike. They had the midshipmen and civilians banding together on Kent Island, doing everything in their power to protect the defenseless.

Meredith brushed her hand against his, and her fingers curled against his palm. He had her. He had the Hunters. And as long as he could hobble around, as long as the med bay could still treat patients, as long as this ship could still float, they wouldn’t stop fighting back.

Dom looked back at an image of the stone-faced Russian man who had managed to escape him. Injured or not, Dom wouldn’t rest until they found him and ended his crusade against mankind.

Wherever you are, Spitkovsky, Dom thought, you’ll never be safe. We’re coming for you.

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The End of Book 5 in The Tide series.

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Thank you for reading The Tide: Iron Wind! If you enjoyed this book, would you please leave a review?

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The Tide adventure continues in Book 6, Dead Ashore. You can check it out here:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MZF29NV

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I love to hear from readers! If you want to get in touch, there are a number of ways to reach me.

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About the Author

Anthony J Melchiorri is a scientist with a PhD in bioengineering. Originally from the Midwest, he now lives in Texas. By day, he develops cellular therapies and 3D-printable artificial organs. By night, he writes apocalyptic, medical, and science-fiction thrillers that blend real-world research with other-worldly possibility. When he isn't in the lab or at the keyboard, he spends his time running, reading, hiking, and traveling in search of new story ideas.

Read more at http://anthonyjmelchiorri.com and sign up for his mailing list at http://bit.ly/ajmlist to hear about his latest releases and news.