Carlie Simmons (Book 4): The Gathering Darkness (15 page)

Chapter 43

Carlie heard the squelch in her earpiece
and then the cavernous roar outside to her left. The shock wave rippled through
her muscles and the fluorescent lights flickered temporarily as rivulets of
dust streaked down from the ceiling. Instantly, she fired two rounds into the
door and then furiously kicked it open, slamming the backside into a mutant
that crashed into the computers. Mitchell was directly ahead standing beside
his spent weapons. He had one hand on a remote control device as he turned and
saw Carlie enter. With the front sight on his head, she squeezed the trigger at
the same time a mutant lunged from her right side, sending her into the door
frame. The round caught Mitchell above the clavicle, causing him to fall back
onto the desk and drop the remote.

Carlie’s rifle was jammed against her vest
as she struggled to fend off the ferocious creature. It was holding onto the
barrel, snapping its frothing jaws at her. She twisted her hips violently in a
Judo throw, flinging the mutant off her while releasing her weapon. The
creature landed on a table while Carlie transitioned to her pistol and shot it
in the upper lip then turned and shot another one running at her from the
right.

Mitchell had one hand clamped on his wound
while floundering around on the floor for the remote. The mutant behind the
door stood up and leapt forward onto Mitchell’s back. It snarled, leaning in
near his neck, its open jaws ready to snap off a hunk of flesh from behind his
ear. Mitchell tried with outstretched hands to grasp the remote but Carlie bounded
over and kicked it away. As the creature’s teeth began to press into his flesh,
Carlie slammed her heel into the head of the mutant then fired off a round into
the side of its skull, the blood and bone showering down onto the ground near Mitchell’s
face. He sat up, hastily brushing the goop off his ear. If possible, she wanted
the man alive so she could learn if he had set any other plans in motion.

Carlie reached down and grabbed the remote
and turned off the detonator then removed the batteries from the rear. She
stood a few feet away with her pistol fixed on his head as the man slowly rose
to his feet.

“It’s over,” she said.

Mitchell balled his fists and ground his
teeth. “The battle has just begun. My men at the dam will soon cripple that
facility and then your precious Fort Lewis will be finished.” Despite his
obvious pain from the bullet wound, Mitchell’s eyes were wild and bloodshot
while his limbs trembled from the stimulants raging through his veins.

As Carlie moved to the communication
station, she felt something grip her ankle as the mutant she had shot through
the jaw began thrashing at her. Carlie shoved it away and fired two rounds into
the back of its neck but couldn’t return to covering Mitchell in time. She felt
a sharp jab of pain in her forehead from the laptop Mitchell had flung in her
direction. The blow drove her back into a desk, causing her to lose her grip on
her pistol. Carlie shook her throbbing skull and returned to a fighting stance
as he made a dash at her, this time swinging furiously at her face. She deftly
blocked his strikes and countered with a right hook to his jaw then a fluid shin
kick to the back of his leg which brought him crashing to the floor. Carlie
slammed her boot into his chest but he only let out a sickening groan and then
jumped back on his feet. She knew he had to be in tremendous pain and operating
on more than adrenaline at this point.

She pulled out her blade and sidestepped
his next assault, slicing him across the back of his left arm. He was like a
rabid dog, getting more enraged with each wound, but his intensity didn’t waver.

Mitchell withdrew his own knife and smiled
at her. “Alright, my pretty little whore, I will match blades with you and dice
your fine face to shreds.”

Carlie closed the gap between them before
he could move and slashed him across his blade hand, slicing through tendon and
causing him to drop the weapon. She had no intention of dueling with him. This
had to end now. Mitchell swung with his other fist, seemingly unaffected by the
rush of blood pouring from his wounds. Carlie ducked to the left and she came
back with a slash to his neck, just missing the carotid, followed by a thrust
into his abdomen. He backpedaled with a sickening gulp as his legs buckled.
Mitchell resumed his forward assault as if he was possessed by the same
electrical charge as his deranged mutants. If he was going to bleed out it was
going to take a while and he could inflict serious damage before he went down. Her
precision strikes should have ended this conflict already but Mitchell rushed forward,
his body bent low in an all-out effort to tackle her. She met his charge with a
wide slash that cut him across the right shoulder but he locked his arms around
her waist in a bear hug. She was inches from his growling face as he laughed
and snarled, baring his teeth, his eyes wide with some kind of hurricane-like malevolence.
She was gazing into a black vortex that existed to consume others—a hunger that
had devoured countless lives. Beyond the pain in her ribs, she felt the pit of
her stomach growing sick like she had swallowed black tar. He lifted her boots
off the floor slightly as the force of his grip began constricting her breathing.
Her chest heaved and she yelled out in fury while driving her blade into the
side of his ear until the hilt was buried, her own face contorting from the
might she exerted.

Mitchell immediately dropped her and
staggered back, his eyes widened in amazement. He tilted his lopsided head then
collapsed to the floor, his drug-ravaged body still twitching. She stood ready,
her fists clenched, wondering if he was going to spring back up somehow. Carlie
gazed in wonder at his death throes, eyeing the crimson fluid leaking out of
his ear and his body finally ceasing to move like some spent locomotive. Once
his convulsions stopped, she leaned against the wall, her arms trembling. Her
ribs were aching and she pressed gently on her side to check on the damage then
moved her hand along the contusion on her forehead. She stood huffing in air
then glanced around the room to make sure there were no more surprises.

Returning to the front of the operations
center, she retrieved her pistol and swapped out the magazine with a fresh one.
Carlie sat down on a leather swivel chair and dragged a sleeve across her
sweat-soaked cheeks. Then she snapped her head up and swung around to the main communications
console, flipping through the remaining knobs that hadn’t been destroyed. After
running through various channels she came across the low chatter of a soldier’s
voice at the dam yelling at the troops to cease fire as the enemy scourge was
swept away in the floodwaters.

Carlie stared at the body count in the
room and hallway around her then reached down and grabbed her rifle off the
ground. As she proceeded towards the door to check on the others outside, she
saw Shane, Jared, and Amy walking around the corner.

“It’s over,” said Shane. “The rest of
Mitchell’s men and the remaining mutants were taken out just before they got to
the medical center in B-Wing.”

“And the perimeter—did you stem that
breach?” she said, easing up the grip on her M4.

“For now; nothing’s getting through that
pile of rubble,” said Jared, rubbing his chin. “Shane excels at makin’ a mess
of things.”

They all went back inside the room, taking
in the sheer amount of damage and the splayed corpses strung out in every
direction. Shane walked over and stood beside Mitchell then glanced around at
the mutants. “I’m not sure which monsters are worse.”

“I’m sure,” said Carlie, staring down at
Mitchell.

“It seems like this pandemic didn’t
cleanse the world of evil after all—only magnified it,” said Jared.

“Can you imagine what things would have
looked like if he had succeeded,” said Amy.

“We could have lost everything today—all
that we have fought for during these many months. One man’s twisted will nearly
brought this place down,” Carlie said. “And here, we’ve always held out that
the virus was our greatest threat when, in fact, it’s our own kind. Seems like
little has changed.”

“What hasn’t changed is that we also have
bad-asses willing to go the distance with tyrants like this,” said Shane,
moving beside her and brushing a lock of hair from her cheek and nodding back
towards Amy and Jared. “And that is what makes me get up each day to greet the
sunrise and continue the fight—the people on my right and left.”

Carlie patted Shane on the shoulder while
nodding at the others. “Let’s get the comms fully restored and see what Duncan
needs on his end. The day’s not over yet.”

Epilogue

Once they regrouped at Fort Lewis, Duncan
took over the command and ordered a general assembly to honor the fallen. Four
days after the battle on both fronts, a funeral service was provided for the
fifty-seven men and women who lost their lives. Lavine was buried in a grove of
sycamore trees near the edge of the base as he had requested in his personal
journal while Kulovitz was laid to rest at the rear of the compound in a small
cemetery for other members of Duncan’s beloved fellow fighters from the 1
^stSpecial Forces. A rotating garrison of soldiers was assigned to the Grand
Coulee Dam, whose energy output had only been reduced by one-sixth with the
collapse of the third generating station. And for a while, the hilltop beside
the dam was unofficially renamed Duncan Summit for the narrow escape he made
during his defiant swim in the raging rapids.

The day after the service, Carlie strode
up the stairs to the roof of D-Wing where she often went alone to contemplate
the future and enjoy the feel of the moist saltwater breeze drifting in from
the coast. This time, the rest of her closest friends were there for a small
gathering and they stood quietly taking in the plum-orange skyline to the west.
She saw Eliza beside Jake and the two twin girls as they shared their common interests.
Jared and Amy had their arms around each other’s waists while Duncan, Pavel,
and Matias were arguing over their preferences for whiskey as Pavel poured from
a bottle.

Carlie sidled up next to Shane,
interlacing her fingers with his. She looked up at him, their eyes meeting in a
warm embrace. He pulled her close as they looked out to the setting sun. Carlie
saw Matias looking back at her while a slow smile crept over his tan face. He
raised his whiskey shotglass in a toast to her before turning around. She
recalled his words from before the battle:
Love is the solution to most
problems in life
—
finding that one love of your life that you would cross
an ocean to be with.
She looked at Shane, his eyes taking her in, and she
leaned her head onto his shoulder. “I’d cross the ocean for you a thousand
times over,” she whispered while he kissed her softly.

For the first time since she lived in
Arizona, Carlie felt like she had found a home—a place that was more than an
edifice designed as a refuge against the perils of the world. She let out an
easy exhale, feeling her body relax. Carlie watched a flock of seagulls
overhead making their way to the coast and, for once, forgot about the
uncertainty of the future.

During the ensuing months as winter transitioned
into spring, the tight-knit community at Fort Lewis began to rebuild and they resumed
their acquisition missions for research equipment, food, and medical supplies.
Then one afternoon in late April, Pavel announced that he and his team of
tireless researchers had made the breakthrough on the initial antidote. Now,
their attention would be focused on obtaining primates for testing the vaccine
and seeing if their toil and sacrifice would finally come to fruition.

With the warm months ushering in migratory
birds and emerging wildflowers, there was a renewed sense of hope amongst the
personnel at Fort Lewis and for a time, people slept easier and occasionally remembered
what it was like to smile without effort.

About the Author

JT Sawyer is the pen name for Tony Nester.
Tony is a fulltime survival instructor and the author of numerous non-fiction
books and DVDs on survival. His training school is the primary provider for the
Military Special Operations community and he has served as a consultant for the
NTSB, FAA, Travel Channel, New York Times, Outside Magazine, and the film
Into
the Wild.
For more information, visit apathways.com.

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One
Final Mission
,
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