The Tide: Breakwater (Tide Series Book 2) (3 page)

She spotted a man with a ruddy complexion decked out in black combat fatigues. “Miguel!”

Miguel waved and rushed through the crowd to them. “Good to see you all are okay.” He patted Maggie’s head and then led them between cots filled with the wounded to the rest of the Hunters. Kara silently repeated their names, forcing herself to remember the people she’d only just met. There was Hector Ko with his sharp jaw and his characteristic intense expression. And Renee. Dom had told her Renee was a former gymnast and fellow CIA operative.

Kara and Sadie made their way to Eric’s cot. His arm was in a sling, and his face was still scrunched in lingering pain. He and his girlfriend Shauna had been saved by Meredith while hiking the Appalachian Trail. Shauna now stood by Eric, and Renee sat on the edge of a cot next to her. An IV tube led to Renee’s left arm. Bandages covered half her face and her left arm, but there was still a hard, determined look in her eyes.

Hector greeted the group. “I got word from one of the Army guys that the Skulls breached one of the south gates. Something riled them up, and the defensive units couldn’t beat back the surge.”

More gunfire boomed outside the building, emphasizing Hector’s claim.

Another two Skulls began beating on the skylights. More screams erupted from the crowd. Sadie gasped, but she didn’t cry out.

Kara gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “We’re going to be okay.”

“You know how to use a gun, right?” Miguel asked her.

Kara nodded. Thoughts of the Skulls she’d been forced to kill swam through her mind. She had hunted with her father before and had logged plenty of time at the gun range. But the Skulls had provided ample opportunity to use those skills in a manner Kara had never imagined. Aiming a firearm at a person was not something that felt good or natural to her, but the Skulls had given her no choice.

“She most definitely does, man,” Eric said. “That’s how she saved our asses.”

Miguel unholstered his pistol. “This thing has a bit of a kick. You’ve used a handgun before?”

“I can handle it,” Kara said.

Miguel narrowed his eyes.

“Come on,” Renee said. “She’s Dom’s daughter. That’s good enough for me.”

“All right. We’re desperate here.” Miguel showed her how to chamber a round and change the magazine. “If shit goes down, I can trust you to use this rationally, right?”

“I promise.” Kara took the handgun.

“I don’t want your father to be pissed at me for giving you this.”

“Got it.”

“And watch your fire. This placed is filled with people.”

“I know, I know.” Kara held the gun at her side. She wanted to help these people. The last thing she would do was heedlessly risk their lives. “I won’t take a single shot unless absolutely necessary, and only if I know I’m completely in the clear.”

More gunfire sounded off outside. Several more Skulls clawed at the skylight.

“Here’s the thing, if our Army friends can’t hold these assholes off out there and they start dropping in on us, this is going to be a bloodbath,” Hector said. “We need clear firing lanes, and we need the people somewhere we can secure easier.”

“All right, see if we can get some help doing that,” Miguel said.

Hector nodded and ran toward the nearest soldier with a radio. The conversation was brief, but the soldier seemed to agree with Hector’s assessment. He spoke into the radio, and the soldiers started massing people near the locker room doors leading into the gymnasium.

“Sounds like the Army’s getting vehicles in position for us to exit out the east side of the building,” Hector said when he returned to the group. He raised his voice to be heard over the din of gunfire outside and panicked voices inside. “They’re going to try and route these bastards, or at least distract them so we—”

The clatter of breaking glass exploded from above, and shards rained down from one of the skylights.

Kara stepped in front of Sadie to put herself between her sister and the busted skylight. Two Skulls fell and smashed against the polished wood floor. Their bodies crumpled with a sickening thud. More yells and cries from the civilians filled the room.

Hector and Miguel strode toward the fallen Skulls. The soldiers on the running track aimed their rifles. One of the Skulls grunted and raised its torso, pushing itself up with one twisted hand. It wore the dirty green scrubs of a nurse or doctor. But the creature no longer had any interest in saving lives. Hector ended the creature with a single shot to its head. The second made no movement. Kara figured it had died on impact.

A third and fourth landed on the others. The Skulls both picked themselves up. Mangled and broken limbs didn’t seem to dissuade them from pursuing their prey. As they limped forward, Miguel and Hector again took careful shots to put them down.

Three more fell from the broken skylight. Two of the soldiers nearest the creatures’ landing point shot enough rounds into the beasts to keep them down before they recovered. Everything in the gymnasium quieted for a moment. No other Skulls dropped from the ceiling. Sadie’s fingers gripped the back of Kara’s arm.

“We’re going to be okay,” Kara said.

Gunfire erupted outside, louder than before. As if someone had turned a faucet on full blast, Skulls poured through the broken skylight. The sheltered civilians’ voices cried out, almost drowning out the sound of battle. Kara’s hand trembled as she held the handgun. She watched Miguel and Hector lead the efforts to quell the incursion. Even Renee fired her SCAR into the pile of Skulls despite the IV tube still attached to her arm.

One of the Skulls ducked under the gunfire and charged toward the civilians. A braid of matted brown hair whipped behind its head while it ran. The soldiers ceased their firing, too afraid of hitting the people they were trying to protect. Kara sprinted at the Skull, desperate to intercept it. She unlocked her handgun’s safety as she ran. Maggie started to bound after her until Sadie grabbed the dog’s collar.

Throwing herself between the crowd and the Skull, Kara fired her handgun. The recoil sent the weapon high and shook her arms. The shot went wide, blasting a small hole in the cinder-block wall, and the Skull let out a shrill howl. It lunged, claws cutting the air.

Kara steadied herself and fired again. Ready for the recoil, she readjusted and let off a second and third round. This time, she hit her mark. The Skull twisted and fell with freshly formed holes in its face and shoulder. With no time to celebrate, Kara spun and fired at the next Skull bounding from the center of the gym. It slumped, and momentum carried its mutated body forward.

Miguel ran to her side. Hector and Renee stood in front of people too injured to leave their cots. With no civilians in their firing lanes, Miguel and Kara let loose.

“I got left,” Kara said and aimed at one of two Skulls running on busted ankles.

Miguel nodded. He played his muzzle across the other. The creatures fell under Kara’s and Miguel’s fire. The soldiers on the overhead running track sprayed the mass of Skulls in the center of the gymnasium floor, and the Hunters picked off any Skulls that escaped the onslaught.

Kara’s slide clicked back, and she changed to a fresh magazine. Her ears rang, muddling the intermingling sounds of enclosed gunfire and the shrieks of those she strove to protect. Each time a Skull charged and she brought it down, she grew more comfortable with her borrowed weapon, adapting quickly to its iron sights and weight.

It seemed as though the flow of Skulls was dwindling to a trickle. She glanced across the room to ensure Sadie was still safe. Her sister was kneeling behind Renee and Hector with an arm draped across Maggie. Shauna was reloading a pistol she’d been borrowing since their initial trip to Detrick, while Eric stood behind her with his arm in a sling.

Maybe it was the ringing in her ears, but it seemed to Kara that the gunfire outside had lessened. Maybe the Army had actually regained control of the base. The hot ball of adrenaline burning in her chest kept her heart racing, but a slow tingling crept through her—a spreading sense of victory. She rubbed her ears, and her hearing settled.

“Nice shooting,” Miguel said. “Tell your dad I’ve found a replacement for him on the team.”

A smile spread across her face, but it quickly dissipated when she surveyed the faces of the others behind them. Most huddled with loved ones, eyes wide, brimming with tears. Others stood frozen by shock.

Kara shuddered and strode toward Sadie to make sure she was all right. But thoughts of her own mental health flooded her mind. She recalled the first time she’d killed one of these so-called Skulls, just days ago. The guilt was overwhelming, and her stomach twisted into a painful knot as she realized how many she’d ended since then.

She paused, shivering. Miguel placed a hand on her back. It felt inhumanly cold and heavy, until she recalled he had a prosthetic limb. The artificial forearm and hand were relics of his past service. While the cost of war manifested itself physically on Miguel, she wondered what psychological scars he might carry. Would she be like him someday—seemingly unaffected by the death and destruction around them? She felt certain the damage she had accumulated from this war against the Oni Agent would run deep within her. The guilt of ending someone’s life, someone who was a victim—someone like her mother. A sick, innocent person who’d been affected by a bioweapon. Someone who hadn’t
chosen
to fight her.

“You all right?” Miguel asked.

Gulping, Kara managed a nod and then wrapped her arms around her sister. If bearing these weights on her conscience meant her sister lived, she would readily sacrifice her mental and physical health. The Hunters rushed about the room with the medics and nurses, ensuring no one had been injured by the Skulls or any ricocheting rounds.

Kara exhaled slowly and stared at the gaping skylight. A clear blue sky lay beyond, and sunlight poured through. Somehow, they’d done it; they’d kept the beasts from harming any of the others sheltered here. They’d been lucky the Skulls had done most of the work for them by falling three stories to the floor. If they’d broken through at ground level, Kara, the Hunters, and the rest of them might not have been so lucky.

As if on cue, the doors to the east side of the gym burst open.

––––––––

I
n the
Huntress’s
medical bay laboratory, Lauren Winters adjusted the stage on her light microscope. The persistent hum of the lab’s ventilation system kept her company while she deposited a histology slide under the scope’s lens. Peter Mikos stood beside her, anxiously awaiting their first magnified glimpse at the autopsied tissue they’d obtained from Brett Fielding’s brain—the first Hunter victim of the Oni Agent. Even before they’d biopsied the tissue, they could see the empty spaces formed by the infectious proteins, the prions, that had taken residence in the gray organ.

Flicking the scope’s light source on, Lauren leaned over the eyepiece. White empty spaces, voids left by the spread of the disease, made the thin slice of tissue appear like Swiss cheese. That was why prion diseases were categorized as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies—they attacked the brain, turning it into something with the texture of a sponge.

“Take a look,” she said and let Peter position himself over the scope.

“Shit. This is awful. I can’t believe the disease progressed this fast in such a short time.”

“Bioweapon engineering at its finest,” Lauren said. She slipped another slide under the scope. “Markers of astrocytic gliosis are stained a dark brown here.”

The stain indicated regions of central nervous system damage and marked the destruction of cells crucial to the health and stability of the brain. All across the sample, dark splotches littered the tissue. She flicked another switch on the scope to turn on the microscope’s camera. An image of the damaged tissue stabilized on a nearby computer monitor.

“That brain tissue looks more torn up than Dresden after World War II,” said Peter.

“And that might be an understatement,” Lauren said. She typed a command on the keyboard and brought up the results of an earlier test. Several graphs displayed across the computer screen. “Check out these results.”

“Ah, a luminescent immunoassay,” Peter said. “So the more prions present, the darker the blue.”

“Exactly,” Lauren said. “I ran the samples in our spectrometer to assess how much light the solution absorbed.” Sure enough, their tiny samples had turned the solution a deep midnight hue, and the spectrometer readings confirmed the high concentration of prions present in the samples.

“So you think we can attribute the aggression of the Skulls to these prions?”

“I think so,” Lauren said, holding up one gloved hand. “Prion disease has been documented to cause confusion, hallucinations, dementia, and personality changes among other neurological alterations.” She ticked off the symptoms on her fingers. “It’s not farfetched to think these prions have been selected and engineered to cause extreme aggression.”

“I suppose that’s especially true if Chao’s and Samantha’s reports on the Oni Agent’s early development in the Amanojaku Project are accurate.”

“That’s what I’d guess. If researchers have been working on this since World War II, that would explain how it does what it does so successfully.”

“Just think if these people had been focused on developing treatments for diseases like cancer, malaria, or even the flu. Healing instead of killing...”

“I know,” Lauren said. “What a waste of intellect and scientific progress.”

“And now we’re wasting our time cleaning up their mess. Instead of worrying about all the maladies Mother Nature throws at us, we also have to fight off what humans are engineering to destroy each other.”

Lauren nodded, silent for a moment. “I suppose we could keep waxing philosophical about the ramifications of biological weapons, but that doesn’t help us right now.”

“Fair enough,” Peter said. “So back to business: We can eliminate the nanobacteria that cause the extra-skeletal formations and produce the prions in the Skulls. And if we do that soon enough, we can prevent neurodegeneration and the resulting aggressive tendencies.”