CHAPTER 13

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
 
After a fall, your entire body is tightly wrapped in a blanket of pain. But it’s usually not aches and pains from the impact, but from every muscle in your body tightening all at once in anticipation of the impact. While the concrete parking deck rushed towards Victor’s face, he couldn’t decide if he was more concerned with scraping flesh off his face or the tiny demon which clung to his boot.
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Instead of reaching his hands down to break his fall, he extended his arms forward like Superman ready to slide into home plate. His chest hit the deck first, knocking out what little air he held in his lungs. Next his chin hit the solid surface and bounced his head up as he passed through the threshold while McCune held the cargo net corner flap open for him.

In less than a second, McCune resecured the cargo net to the doorway frame. Rios, with the strength of a World Cup winning goal, kicked the creature attached to Victor’s boot. Victor slid off the landing, through the air over several steps and into Doc’s mighty Korean arms, who gracefully caught him and softly sat him on the lower stairway switchback.

The creature disconnected after Rios punted the demon and bounced with a crunch off the brick wall breaking several ribs and other unseen bones. Falling to the floor unfazed by the blunt force trauma, the thing fought against itself to flip off its back. It flailed its tiny arms and legs, screaming in frustration, desperately scratching chunks of paint and concrete with its boney fingers until it was on its feet again ready to attack.

The youthful Gen 2 zeroed in on Rios and lunged from him with jaws wide open at an impossible angle, full of jagged teeth and a lashing black infected tongue.

“Pinche Cabron!” Rios cursed in pain as the creature clamped its jaws onto his forearm.

The thrashing creature hung from Rios’ forearm, as he lifted it up and punched the toddler in the face as hard as he could.

“Get this puta off of me!” Rios screamed for help.

Darkness grabbed ahold of the legs of the creature that was frantically clawing at Rios as it continued to thrash its head viciously. Rios punched it again while Darkness pulled, but the demon was like a dog playing tug-of-war with a rope toy.

Gritting his teeth in pain, Rios gave up on hitting the creature and sunk his Marine Corps issued KA-Bar into its tiny neck until the wet blade protruded out the other side. The Gray, still unfazed by pain continued to thrash, while Rios held the knife, until the jerking little creature eventually cut off its own little head.

Rios slumped against the far wall, holding his arm in pain.

The rest of the team took aim at the bulging cargo net that threatened to give way as tiny sharp boney claws and sharp snapping teeth begun fraying nylon straps.

Beckett and Raymond shot tranquilizer darts into the thick mass of Gen 2’s that fought each other to get through the doorway. There were so many of the little creatures that they blocked the sunlight from the door opening, darkening the stairway.

“Give me another gun!” Beckett yelled.

“Reload me!” Raymond reached for a new dart gun.

Victor and Darkness reloaded tranquillizers and handed loaded guns back to Beckett and Raymond as fast as they could. While the cargo net shook and heaved until finally the shrieking had stopped, and a pile of drugged Gray toddlers lay outside the door.

Breathing heavy, with a massive adrenalin high, they looked at each other in shock at how quickly that had transpired. Beckett stood slowly stretching his back and looked towards Doc, who was tending to Rios.

“Was he bit?” Beckett asked the corpsman.

“Hell yes, I was bit!” Rios cursed. “You didn’t see that thing hanging off my arm?”

“Take off your MOPP suit.” Beckett commanded.

“There’s a lot of infected blood in here Staff Sergeant.” Doc argued, motioning to the splattered wall and thick black pools on the floor.

“Now!” Beckett yelled and walked over to help take Rios’ long black rubber gloves off, then unzipped the thick charcoal filled over garment. They pealed the coat off carefully to expose his bare skin that was red and bruised with two small half circles.

“It doesn’t look like the teeth punctured your suit, bro! I think you’re going to live.” Doc said, slapping Rios on the shoulder. “Here, take Motrin and drink water.”

“Seriously? Motrin? Come on Doc!” Rios grinned.

“Changing your socks might help too.” The large Korean added with a wink. Knowing that taking Motrin, drinking water, and a change of socks was the most common antidote to any ailment in the Marine Corps. “But seriously, that thing was right in your face. I need to keep a close eye on your arm, and I’ll be taking your temperature every thirty minutes.”

The entire team was staring at Rios. Worry painted their grim faces. The quiet was deafening. Victor felt responsible. He shouldn’t have risked such a stupid stunt. The reward of subduing the Gen 2’s was worth the risk to himself, but not the risk of a Marine. He felt like he should apologize but didn’t know what to say. Luckily, Raymond broke the uncomfortable silence.

“So, Darkness. About that last hand.” Raymond said, giving the Marine a nod. “What cards did you have? You know I beat you, right?”

Darkness shook his head disappointed. “Mister special liaison man, nobody likes a sore loser in cards.”
 
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Keeping their guns cautiously pointed at the pile of Grays, McCune and Darkness stood at a ninety dree angle from Victor and Raymond to avoid any sort of fratricide if one of the little Grays started to squirm.

Wearing thick rubber gloves, Victor and Raymond triaged the pile of Grays. Some were deceased, due to an overdose of sedatives from being stuck with multiple tranquillizer darts. Thirteen toddler Grays that were still alive and sedated, were carefully restrained by flex-cuffing their small wrists behind their backs and wore sinched sandbags over their tiny heads.

The thirteen bound infected specimens were placed into the cargo net, that they had previously used as a doorway barrier, then wrapped and secured with carabineers ready for transportation that was five minutes out.

Victor wore his pack, ready for his extraction.

“Do you think Rios should go with me to the lab?” Victor asked Beckett in a hushed voice with their backs turned to the team. “They could run a blood test on him just to make sure he didn’t get contaminate.”

“And if he is infected?” Beckett staired at the horizon. “There’s nothing they could do for him and he wouldn’t want to be caged up like a lab rat.”

“Understood. But, if he starts showing any of the symptoms of fever, headaches, insomnia, paranoia, hostility, make the call.” Victor warned.

“If it comes to that, we’ll take care of our own.” Beckett said with a hint of sadness. “Our team made a pact with each other when all of this crap started.”

Victor was going to ask what kind of pact, but it was self-explanatory. The Recon team had watched the world crumble around them as humans transformed into horrible monsters. Victor wouldn’t want to suffer the dehumanizing fate either but didn’t have a group of strong warriors that would be willing to euthanize him out of mercy.

The more Victor thought about it, the more he internally debated on what he would do if he had become infected. Would running away into the wild to transform into a savage beast that could one day return to hurt your loved ones be a selfish option? Children putting their father down, was completely out of the question. Nor would he ask Erica to do the deed. He always considered suicide a dishonorable coward’s way out, but what if you knew that your life was already over? Infection had a one hundred percent turn rate; nobody was immune to becoming a Gray.

But that analogy was regarding the original pathogen. As far as Victor had known, there had not been a human survivor of a Gen 2 attack. Even more reason to get these creatures to Erica at the USAMIIRD. It was possible that a bite wound from a Gen 2, wouldn’t be an absolute death sentence. There could be a treatment or a vaccine?

A yellow smoke grenade was tossed into the parking deck center, breaking Victor’s thought process. He could hear Darkness, communicating with the pilots of the inbound helicopters directing them to fly in from the west and touchdown facing east. A helicopter can lift off easier facing into the wind, Victor remembered from a time long ago, when he used to mark helicopter landing zones in Afghanistan.
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Victor turned to Becket and nodded. “Good luck tomorrow. I’ll see you back at the island.”

A tandem rotor CH-47 Chinook touched down on the parking deck kicking up an artic whirlwind of dust and loose paper. The crew chief ran over to Victor pulling a long green nylon rope with a large eyelet at the end. Victor held up a carabineer that held the cargo net closed and clipped it into the end of the rope.

Victor gave the team a departing wave, and a fist bump to Raymond as he crossed the parking deck towards the waiting helicopter that advertised their position more than the kill-o-matic’s blaring loudspeaker on the racetrack below.

The crew chief was right behind Victor as he climbed up the loading ramp into an empty fuselage that could uncomfortably fit thirty troops and equipment. Victor hadn’t even tossed his pack onto a fold-down canvas bench seat yet before the helo lifted off causing him to take a wide step and reach his arm out to catch himself.

The CH-47 Chinook was one of the strongest helicopters in production before the Dark Day, able to lift ten tons with its twin engines making light work of the cargo net full of drowsy Grays swaying from the rope below the helicopter.

Towards the front, the crew chief handed Victor a headset that was tethered to the cockpit wall with a long tangled black cord. He put on the headset so he could hear the aircrew’s intercommunications.

“Thanks for the lift sir.” Victor said into the mic, announcing that he was on comms.

“No problem, we’ll be on ground in about an hour. Sit back and enjoy the ride.” The pilot said into the static filled speakers. When the pilot was done talking, heavy metal music started playing in headset, causing Victor to smile and bob his head to the fast rhythm. Looking into the cockpit, Victor noticed headphone wires had been spliced into the intercom terminals. Tricks of the trade to counter travel boredom, he thought, but this had to be done carefully so the aircraft didn’t accidently broadcast music over the command net and had to be wired just right so any inter-aircraft communication would mute the music so they could talk in case of an emergency.

The crew chief held onto the machinegun as he leaned out an open window trying to view the cargo below. Victor decided to take the window on the opposites side to watch the wintery landscape of Delaware and Maryland go by underneath him.

Navigating the helicopter was simple using easily distinguishable landforms. Victor noticed the pilot was following the Elk River south as it opened wide into the northern part of the Chesapeake Bay. Gradually the shoreline became more congested with manmade structures until the skyline of downtown Baltimore came into view. Six hundred thousand people lived in Baltimore before the Dark Day. Victor wondered how many were still alive, and how many had turned into the relentless infected enemy who was in a genocidal war against humans.

The pilot flew south around the downtown metropolitan of Baltimore then cut west towards interstate 70 that would lead them to the USAMIIR laboratory facility. Buildings grew shorter the further away from downtown the helicopter traveled. Victor continued estimating the population per square mile, human versus infected. Fighting against the unfathomable population of Grays that populated the planet, seemed like an unwinnable war, not in his lifetime anyways.

Grays had the strategic advantage in every way possible. They outnumbered the human tens of thousands-to-one, if not more. Grays could hear better, run faster and were completely immune to privations that slow humans down. They didn’t care about weather patterns, needing of shelter, comforts to build morale. Even lethal projectiles, didn’t slow the infected.

The only advantage that humans had, was that Grays could be outsmarted once they were studied for patterns, behaviors and vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Which is why Victor had considered the mission to capture 2nd Generation infected to be top priority above all. They were the single greatest threat to humanity.

Victor leaned out the window to visually check on the cargo net full of Grays swaying below the helicopter when he noticed movement on a flattop roof of an upcoming building.
It was a human.

Victor was about to wave, when he noticed the person was holding a long brown tube cradled in an arm. In the other hand the person pushed in a green football sized object, then shouldered the tube.

“RPG!” Victor yelled into his headset microphone that interrupted a fast beat Slipknot track. “Contact Right!!! RPG Right side at two o-clock!”

But it was too late. Unlike the movies, RPG rockets do not have a soft casual trajectory with a pluming smoke trail that is easily avoided by the good guys who have plenty of time to dive for cover. Instead, an RPG rocket motor propels the explosive warhead at nearly one thousand feet per second.

Victor had enough time to wrap his wrist around the open window’s safety strap before the rocket slammed mercilessly into the rear engine.