Free Extinction Age by Nicholas Sansbury Smith Page B

emotion he had spent most of his life
trying to bury. Now, after all hope seemed lost, it had arisen from the grave.
He decided then to embrace it. To stop hiding behind his armor and weapons. He
could be more than just a soldier.
    Beckham gave Kate a meaningful look, and reached down to help
her up.
    “Where’d you find her?” Kate asked as they walked up the
stairs. “The woman you brought back.”
    Beckham stopped mid-stride, remembering the nightmarish lair
beneath New York.
    “Reed?”
    He shook his head and turned partially toward her.
    “If you’d rather not talk about it, I understand,” Kate said.
    “It’s okay,” he said. “We found her in the sewers. There were
hundreds of survivors down there. Maybe more. I don’t know.”
    Kate squinted, her features tensing. “What do you mean there
were survivors?”
    Beckham could see she was trying to understand, but nothing
he said could describe the true horrors his team had stumbled upon beneath the
streets. There was no simple way to explain what he’d seen, and the thought of
admitting to her that he’d killed the human prisoners made him feel queasy.
    “Reed, you can tell me. I can handle it.” Kate swept a strand
of brown hair behind an ear. “I need to know.”
    Beckham didn’t want her to feel responsible. The burden she
carried was already heavy enough to send a normal person over the edge. She’d
blamed herself for the Variants since the deployment of her bioweapon. If she
knew what they were doing and what he had tried to stop…
    “If I’m going to design another weapon, I need to know
everything you do. I’m assuming what you saw is no different than in other
cities. I already know they are going underground to avoid sunlight.”
    “That’s not the only reason,” Beckham replied, a bit too
fast. He closed his eyes, sucked in a breath and exhaled. “They store their
food down there, Kate.”
    When he opened his eyes, Kate had taken a step back. “Store
their food?” Her blue eyes widened as she realized what he meant.
    “We discovered a lair of human prisoners. There were hundreds
of mutilated survivors that the Variants were feeding on. We saved Meg, but…I
was forced to kill the others.”
    Kate cupped a hand over her mouth. She whimpered into her
palm and then peeled it away. “I’m so sorry.”
    Beckham wrapped his arms around her. “It’s not your fault.
The blame rests solely on that bastard Gibson.”
    “No,” Kate said, pulling away. She sobbed and wiped away a
tear. “If VX9H9 had killed all of the Variants, this would never have happened.
There wouldn’t be any lairs. You wouldn’t have had to kill anyone .”

    Meg jerked awake and reached for her
axe that wasn’t there. The movement sent the most awful pain of her life
searing through her legs. She gritted her teeth, but a whimper slipped through.
Behind blurred eyes, she saw a bank of lights. Her mind went blank a moment
later, the agony shutting off her brain.
    When she woke again, she felt nothing. If it weren’t for the
nurse staring down at her, she would have thought she was dead. A warm,
reassuring smile touched the sides of the young woman’s face.
    “This might sting,” the nurse said. She reached forward with
a needle that looked more like a small knife.
    Meg didn’t bother protesting. She couldn’t even if she wanted
to. She watched as the nurse inserted the tip into her arm. It hurt as bad as
she thought it would. Her muscles knotted, tensing around the needle. She
blinked, a tear falling from her eye, and then there was darkness.  
    The third time she woke, she was alone. Her body felt
strange, like it wasn’t hers anymore. She knew it was the drugs.  In the
past she would have refused them. She was an all-natural kind of a gal, but a
lot had changed in the last month. Her husband was dead, and the world was full
of monsters. She drew a deep breath in an attempt to calm her nerves.  The
door squeaked open a moment later and a bearded man