The Tide: Breakwater (Tide Series Book 2) (30 page)

“Don’t I know it!” Dom picked up his pace, desperate to climb above the panel he and the Hunters had leapt from moments ago.

Another Skull smashed against the wall, followed by a second and third. They leapt with abandon, fueled by the hunt, by hunger. Fear of the dark unknown or of heights evidently meant nothing to them.

The wails and earsplitting screams continued. Another hit the ladder below Dom. Its claws fought for purchase. This one didn’t disappear into the murky darkness like the others. It grabbed hold of the ladder and began climbing.

Dom snatched his HK45C from its holster with one hand. He used his other hand to grip the ladder, and he leaned back enough to let loose three rounds into the Skull. One of the bullets connected with the beast and knocked it backward, its grip on the ladder lost. Its cry of rage whined away as it disappeared.

“Made it!” Jenna yelled. A sudden square of blinding white light burst from above. The bright sunlight silhouetted her, and she exited onto the roof.

A brief howl caught Dom’s attention. Another Skull, short but with long, skinny limbs, leapt into the darkness. He watched it disappear, guessing it too had fallen to its death.

Spencer followed close behind Jenna. Dom found himself envying the spryness of the younger Hunters. His palms burned, his arms shook, and his legs felt like they were giving out from under him. He was too old for this shit.

Just when the feeling was coming back in his legs, a bony apparition reached up and grabbed his boot. The beast hung off the ladder below. Dom kicked the creature in its face. It growled and snapped, its serrated teeth crunching together. Dom brought his leg up. He smashed his boot into its face again, and the Skull cartwheeled backward.

With the sun streaming inside, he watched the creature fall onto a growing pile of Skulls at the bottom of the shaft, like a portal to hell. Above, there was salvation, clouds rolling across a blue sky.

The salty air drifting in washed away the scent of death. Sweat dripping down his forehead, he squinted and climbed toward the sunshine, ignoring the clatter of the Skulls below.

Jenna and Spencer offered their hands and yanked him from the tunnel, locking the panel back into place as soon as he was on the roof. The sweet thrum of chopper blades beating the air masked the screeches of the beasts pounding on the hatch.

“Alpha, we’re coming down,” Frank’s voice sounded over the comm.

“Copy.” Dom motioned to Jenna and Spencer to follow him across the roof to where the AW109 was descending. The chopper sent waves of dust and air undulating over them. “Bravo, this is Alpha. What’s your sitrep?”

“All aboard and safely out to sea, Captain,” Renee’s voice answered.

“Well done, Bravo.”

Dom stole a glance toward the basin where the sailboats and the yard patrol craft were churning the water. The
Huntress
waited in the bay, ready to guide the boats toward Kent Island. They were so close to escape, so close to establishing a safe zone.

The side door of the chopper burst open when its wheels touched down.

Miguel and Andris stood at the opening, their hands outstretched and ready to help Alpha. Jenna jumped aboard, followed by Spencer. Dom reached to grab Miguel’s hand, but a sudden rumble and shaking of the roof caused him to fall flat. He picked himself up and wondered briefly if they were experiencing an earthquake. A terrifying bellow sounded from behind. Turning his head, he saw the Goliath break through the service elevator shaft. Brick and masonry scattered. The beast pummeled its way out of the building. Blood still seeped down its chest and graying skin. The skeletal plates along its limbs appeared an even sicklier yellow once exposed to the unadulterated sunlight. Its bloodshot eyes locked on Dom, and it roared, its howl rising above the thump of the blades.

As it extricated itself from the ruins of the elevator shaft, the other Skulls spilled out around it like demonic ants, relentless and starving. Dom picked himself back up and leapt aboard the AW109. His hands met Miguel’s and his boots hit the floor of the chopper. The Goliath barreled forward.

Dom slapped the side of the fuselage. “Let’s go!”

The chopper started to lift, dust kicking up over the oncoming wave of Skulls led by the Goliath. Frank pulled back on the cyclic, and the chopper banked away from the roof, toward the bay, toward safety.

There was a moment of calm, too soon ripped away as the Goliath leapt from the roof, its thick fingers stretching for the side door. The chopper jerked, but the creature’s dagger-like claws crunched onto the lip of the door. It held onto the side of the chopper, hanging with one hand and pounding on the side with the other. More Skulls leapt off the roof, jumping like lemmings. Most fell short, splattering against the ground six stories below. Four latched onto the Goliath, climbing its jagged back as the beast smashed its fist against the bird’s fuselage.

The chopper tilted, listing to the port with the uneven weight of the monsters. A red light flashed on Frank’s display panel, and alarms echoed through the cabin.

“We’re going down!” Frank called. “Brace yourselves!”

But Dom didn’t brace himself. He wouldn’t let the rest of his team go down in flames. He wouldn’t lose another Hunter.

He knew what he had to do. He tore open the side door, and the wind beat against his body.

“Chief, what the hell are you doing?” Miguel yelled.

“Captain!” Andris called.

Dom ignored them and took a deep breath. The chopper shuddered, losing its battle against the excess weight. The Goliath stared at Dom and let out another thundering roar. Spittle and blood flew from its mouth. Its tongue whipped against its jagged teeth. The smaller Skulls swarmed around the Goliath’s shoulders and head, leaping at the open door.

But Dom was ready for them.

––––––––

“A
nything else I can do to help?” Glenn asked.

Lauren gazed around the medical bay. She ran through the inventory list for the OR and the triage they’d set up. “No, I think we’re ready.”

“God, I hope so,” Thomas said. He’d joined the medical team to help them prepare for whatever happened with the apparently botched rescue attempt at the Naval Academy. He pulled a cigar from his pocket and chewed the end.

The rest of the medical team finished setting up their stations with gauze, antibiotics, and chelation therapeutics.

“Need anything else, Lauren?” Peter asked.

“Just be on standby,” she said. She paced between the empty patient beds and wondered how many of them would soon be filled. Thoughts of their diminishing inventory troubled her. Even if they had the beds, even if they could hold the midshipmen and any survivors from the rescue, would they have enough supplies? They still needed to restock from their stymied trip to help the
Queen of the Bay
.

“While we’ve got some time, can I show you something?” Sean asked Lauren, interrupting her ruminating.

“Make it quick.” Lauren stopped her pacing and stood in front of the lanky epidemiologist. He wore a worried expression.

“Of course.” He motioned her over to a computer station. The other scientists, Glenn, and Thomas followed. “So I know it was a while ago that you asked me to do some pattern analysis on the Oni Agent outbreak, but we’ve been a little busy.”

Lauren thought that was an understatement, but she gestured for Sean to continue.

“I managed to finish the simulation based on all the data I got from news reports and everything Samantha, Chao, and Adam passed on to me from the electronics workshop.” He pulled up a map of the globe. “And here are the results.” He clicked on it, and a bevy of red circles appeared across the continents. “These are where I tracked down our patient zeros.”

“Wait, hold up,” Thomas said, the cigar poking out of his mouth. “Zeros? You mean like multiple? I’m no scientist, but I thought there’s only supposed to be a single patient zero.”

“Right,” Sean said. “That would be the case in a naturally occurring outbreak. But we know the Oni Agent isn’t natural.”

Lauren pointed to each of the red circles on the map in turn. Washington, Sydney, Moscow, Beijing, Berlin, London...the list went on. “This was some kind of coordinated effort?”

“Looks like it, huh?” Sean said.

“So the IBSL’s failure wasn’t the sole cause of the outbreak,” Glenn said. “Someone or something else was behind it.”

“That would be my guess,” Sean said. “The IBSL might have been part of its spread, but it was probably just a small cog in the machine.”

“Christ,” Thomas said. “Any other major findings? I want to get this to Chao and send what we have to Detrick.”

“I’ve created a time-lapse simulation tracking the Oni Agent’s worldwide spread.” He saved a file to a flash drive and handed the drive to Thomas. “But I don’t have anything else concrete. Just remember to tell Detrick these are all projections and simulations based on the data I have. It might not be a hundred percent accurate.”

Thomas nodded and pocketed his unlit cigar along with the flash drive. “Will do. Good work, Sean.” He left the medical bay.

“I’ll get out of your hair now, too,” Glenn said. His gaze lingered on Lauren, and she returned a knowing nod, his touch still hot in her memory. “Let me know if you need me later for anything.” He smiled at her. “And I do mean anything.”

“Thanks,” Lauren said. “Will do.”

She watched him leave with his characteristic swagger. His defined back muscles flexed and undulated against his tight T-shirt, and she imagined her hand caressing his skin once more. She shook the thoughts from her mind and turned back to the display with Sean’s results.

“Keep on this when you have time,” she said. “And let’s see if you can dig a bit deeper. Find out not just where these outbreak epicenters happened, but
how
. I want to know why no government had any idea what was going on until it was too late.”

“You got it, Doc.” Sean turned back to the computer to adjust his simulation software.

Peter and Divya were already working at another computer terminal. She’d trained her team well. Even knowing the Hunters would return within the hour, the medical team used every spare minute to push their research forward. They knew they didn’t have time to waste when it came to finding a cure or vaccine to combat the prion component of the Oni Agent.

She stepped up to the screen where Peter and Divya worked. A list of three-lettered abbreviations appeared across the screen. She recognized what the letters represented—each symbolized an amino acid, one of the building blocks of a protein. “Are these the sequences Detrick gave us on the prions?”

“That’s right.” Peter brushed a hand through his dark hair and left it on his neck. “And we got some strange results running this through our bioinformatics software.”

Lauren’s brow creased. She leaned toward the screen. “How so?”

“The results indicate the prions consist of sequences similar to those found in sheep and goats.” Divya moused over to the bottom of the results report. “But not a significant match with bovine-derived prions.”

For a moment, Lauren considered this fact. The media had made mad cow disease—or bovine spongiform encephalopathy—seem like an enormous threat to human health over the past several years. “You’re surprised that the prion isn’t more similar to those found in mad cows?”

“Right,” Divya replied.

“Thing is, Chao and his team told us the protein complex—what we now know as a prion—came from World War II-era technology in Japan,” Lauren said.

Peter fidgeted with a button on his white coat. “Okay, right, but I’m not sure I follow how that relates to cows. Does it have something to do with the Japanese agricultural industry?”

“It could.” Lauren lifted her shoulders in a noncommittal gesture. “But I think the more likely answer is the simplest. Scientists and researchers didn’t actually identify mad cow disease until the 1980s. However, prion disease in sheep has been documented for centuries, and goat scrapie was identified sometime before the war.”

“Ah,” Divya said. “So the Japanese scientists selected those animals knowing some protein—or chemical or something—was causing them to go mad.”

“Then they isolated it and modified it to work in humans,” Peter said. “Insane. And while the media has been focused on a mad cow disease outbreak, someone was working to make mad sheep or goat disease a reality, huh?”

“Looks that way,” Lauren said. “So does that inspire any great ideas from either of you on how we stop the prions?”

Divya and Peter looked at each other, then Lauren. They both wore defeated expressions.

“I know, I know,” Lauren said. “We aren’t going to have a magic bullet, but keep these new findings in the back of your mind while we dig through more science papers on the subject.”

“Of course.” Peter nodded before turning back to the screen.

The comm panel beside the hatch to the medical bay buzzed, and a small light shone, glaring red. Lauren ran to it and picked up the attached handset. “Medical, this is Lauren.”

“Chao here. All survivors have been evacuated and are en route. ETA to the ship fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Is the quarantine station prepped?”

Lauren glanced around the medical bay once more. Soon the chamber would be filled with civilians and midshipmen. Those that were free from injury and passed the diagnostic assays the medical team had developed would reboard their boats and head directly to Kent Island. But those that weren’t so lucky would become residents here until they were cured of the Oni Agent—or, if it was too late, succumbed to it. Her team stood at attention, all eyes glued on her, and she pressed the handset to her ear.

“Yes,” Lauren said. “We’re ready for the survivors.” She swallowed hard. Another thought percolated through her mind. “What about the Hunters?”

“Bravo team will be arriving with the survivors.”

“And Alpha? Charlie?”

“They’re...experiencing some difficulties right now. I’m not sure when they’ll make it in.”

“Copy,” Lauren said with cold, professional detachment. “Anything else?”

“No, but I’ll call again when the first boats arrive.”