Blood Apocalypse - 04 (33 page)

Once she had calmed, she pulled him to her and kissed him deeply. He tasted of sweat and blood and spent gunpowder, and it was the most wonderful kiss she had ever experienced. Her heart leapt with joy as he picked her up and carried her across the war torn battlements that once was the Groom Lake base.

Between sobs of relief and tears of joy, she finally pulled his ear to her and whispered, “Take me home, Jack. Please. Take me away from all of this.”

He stopped in the middle of the battlement and stared at her with the saddest eyes she had ever seen. For a moment she felt her stomach sink and she knew what was coming. She had seen this moment too many times in her visions and she wanted nothing more than to run away.

THIS was the moment she had been dreading since they were mated and she first saw the visions of the dark threat rising. This is where he tells her that there is a threat out there bigger than the Sicarii. This is the moment where he tells her that their child cannot be safe in a world where a madman runs free that can rise to threaten them all. This is the moment where he sets her down and tells her that he cannot come with her to raise their child together, where he can be a wolf with her. This is where he walks away from her and leaves her with her heart torn from her chest.

She felt the hot tears running down her cheeks before the moment ever came, her heart already beginning to break when he took his first breath and pulled her close to him.

“I thought you’d never ask.” He kissed her again and squeezed her tight, lifting her from the ground and slowly spi
nning her.

*****

Mitchell and Max stood side by side as Tufo and Adolfo bolted the cart to the wall of the underground facility. The Sicarii struggled against the silver chains, but the coin held him, draining him of his power. His eyes were crazed as the realization set in that he was about to be confined for eternity.

“You cannot do this!” he screamed. “This is not right!” He stared directly at Max.

“Not right?” Max asked. “You were going to kill off the majority of the human race and enslave the survivors as food, and you think this isn’t a just punishment?”

“NO!” he screamed and pulled at the chains again. His stump rubbed raw against the silver, the meat smoking. “Do not do this…” he cried.

Mitchell nodded as two operators grabbed the steel doors and pushed them closed with a clang. They listened to the beep of the concrete truck as it backed into place and two men began angling the dump spout to direct the flow of mix down the walkway to fill the stairwell.

“The other side is sealed as well?” Max asked.

“It was never completed,” Mitchell replied with a sigh. He rolled his neck to ease some of the tension. “It’s solid rock on the other side. That stairwell went down to the bunker and the bunker was supposed to be some kind of antechamber to a larger chamber. The whole project was scrapped before anything else was started.”

“So a steel vault buried in stone, sealed with concrete,” Max stated. “Hopefully, it will be enough.

“For a while, anyway.”

Diane approached from beside the concrete truck. “Colonel, we have a report from your techs.”

Mitchell sighed again. “What now?”

“It’s not good, sir. I think we destroyed the base.”

Mitchell gave her a confused look. “We have some minor damage here and there, and I know HQ and the bunker took a few hits, but other than some broken glass and some equipment that can be replaced.”

She shook her head, “No, sir. Not the
structures
, the base itself.” She pulled a sheet from a folder and handed it to him. “If you’ll recall, sir, we had a lot of nuclear testing out here prior to building this facility?”

Mitchell nodded, “Yeah, you told me that. That’s why we have all the underground bunkers.”

“Well, it seems that with all of the fighting, the weapons fire and that huge pit, we stirred up soil deep enough that it’s back in the air.”

“What’s back in the air, Major? I can’t read this report.” He handed it back to her.

“The radiation, sir. The fallout that settled in this area decayed and was eventually covered. We stirred it back up.” Mitchell shook his head, still not entirely understanding. “We’re going to have to abandon the base, Colonel.”

“Looks like we’re moving back to Tinker, Matt,” Mark said as he patted Matt’s shoulder, “Way to break the base, buddy.”

Mitchell shot him a go-to-Hell look.

26

The next day—

Mitchell pulled every string he could to get Diane put in charge of the black ops going on at Groom Lake. McAfee arranged for those projects to be relocated to Nellis Air Force base temporarily until Diane could choose her own executive officer and establish a more permanent residence at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.

While the squads and crews packed to return to Tinker, Mitchell and Tufo went ahead to prepare for their return. Their injured and the bodies of their dead brought with them on the plane and being offloaded. They made the short flight back to Oklahoma City and pulled up to the old hangar to find Laura standing outside, hands on hips and tapping her foot.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Matt asked.

“Beats me,” Mark answered as he pulled into the hangar.

“You decide to come back and they turn the damned lights back on? Is that how this works?” she asked sardonically.

Matt shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

“They cut the power here days ago, Matt. I came by to get my stuff, found out Mueller’s family is here and they cut the damned power on us…then a friggin werewolf just
appears
out of nowhere below decks, then just before you come back, >poof< the lights are back on!”

Matt’s eyes grew wide and he shot Tufo a surprised look. “The power was off? How long?” he asked excitedly.

Laura shook her head. “I don’t know. A few days. Why?”

“And there’s a wolf down below? You’re sure she didn’t get out?” He began running for the stairwell door.

“Yes, I’m sure. And yes, I locked down the elevators,” she reported. “Whatever it is, it isn’t going anywhere.”

“What the hell’s going on, Matt?” Mark asked, checking his sidearm.

“Alpha One, Mark. From back in the day,” he explained.

“I thought you killed her!” he exclaimed.

“Apparently not.” Matt unlocked a weapons locker. “Fuck!” he exclaimed. All of the weapons had been taken to Nevada. He checked his sidearm. He had one magazine. “What do you have?” he asked Tufo.

“One and a spare.”

“Cover the door. I’m going down.”

“Not without backup you aren’t,” Laura said trying to move to a position to stop him.

Matt turned to her and stared her in the eye. “This is my screw up. I need to fix this.” He walked to the stairwell then turned again. “Besides…I should have freed her a long time ago.” And then he was inside leaving Laura and Mark topside questioning everything.

Matt worked his way down the stairs, listening intently for any sounds. He checked all of the first level, then went to the second. Going room to room he found where someone had been sleeping in different rooms and using the different items in the rooms that were usable.

He reached the third level and saw where someone had been digging around and scavenging for food. He came out of the cafeteria and silently entered the kitchen. That was when he saw her. She had found a man’s shirt and had it draped over her, but left it open and unbuttoned. When Matt first laid eyes on her, his heart skipped a beat. Tasha’s words came back to haunt him and he felt his inner wolf pull at him to be near her. All of those years of hatred washed away with a single glance of her and he had to fight an overwhelming desire to scoop her into his arms.

She was digging around in an overhead cupboard, looking for something. Nude, other than the oversized shirt, her muscular legs were made more shapely as she tip-toed to snoop around the upper shelf.

Matt moved slightly to the side to better see her and she caught the movement with her peripheral vision. She spun around and stared at him staring at her. His lopsided grin disarmed her momentarily until a flood of memories came back to her. Her heart raced as she remembered running for her life through streets and alleys, black sedans and men with uniforms chasing her. She remembered men in tactical gear firing at her and her ducking and weaving trying to dodge them. She didn’t know what she could have done to bring this kind of attention from the military…she had always been so careful in the past…going deep into the woods when the full moon was near and she couldn’t control the wolf that she would become, but they were on her now. The dirty streets, her burning lungs, her legs hurting so badly…the dark alleyway that lead to…
nothing
! She had been trapped!

Her heart raced once more as the flood of memories came back to her and she began to hyperventilate. Her eyes widened as she looked at him.

“Don’t be scared,” Matt said, extending his hand. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

It was HIM! It was that same voice…the same voice that echoed in her mind every time her eyes were shut and she tried to sleep. The same face! The same eyes!

Matt stepped closer and saw the absolute terror on her face and gently shook his head. “No…no, I won’t hurt you. Tasha said—”

“No,” she whimpered. “Not again.”

Flashbacks appeared in her mind, scene after scene, over and over, the same man, the alley, the same eyes, a gun, the flash of light, darkness…her knees became weak and her hands trembled as she began to back away from him.

“Please, stop. I promise. I won’t hurt you.” Matt did his best to reassure her.

Suddenly she stopped backing away and lowered her head, her eyes growing amber in the dimming light of the kitchen. “No,” she growled. “You won’t.”

EPILOGUE

The sun set upon the now quiet desert, the humans having long since abandoned their outpost of solitude. The residual r
adiation that their battles had brought to the surface, driving them away, now settling again to decay through time and weathering, an unseen danger to the local wildlife.

As the desert sands began their nightly cooling, a lone co
yote, scavenging through the debris left behind, hoping to find some scrap to make a meal, spots movement in the distance. He rolls his ears forward and listens intently. With the scampering beats of rabbit’s feet against the hardpan, he bolts. Fresh meat!

His heart races as he approaches the small tufts of dust ri
sing into the twilight. He cuts as the animal zigs, then zags. As the coyote closes on the rabbit, something from the earth itself wrapped around his leg and stopped him in his tracks, flipping in midair and knocking him to his back.

With a startled yelp, the coyote flipped to bite at whatever it was that attacked the attacker. His sharp canines lashing out at the soft flesh that locked onto his leg and was now dragging him back toward the hole in the sand. With yipping cries for help, the wild dog scraped with its front legs for purchase as his teeth slashed at the hand clamped to it.

The creature in the dirt reached with another hand and grasped a handful of fur from the coyote’s back and pulled it further into the sand before the dog felt teeth sink into its neck. Its head slashed back and forth in struggle, growling, as this dark creature drained its life blood from it. The wild dog continued to struggle, fighting for every breath until its heart stopped beating and it fell limp in the creature’s arms.

The coyote fell to the earth, completely drained, its eyes dull and lifeless. The dark creature rose from the dusty sand and stepped into the moonlight.

The dark vampire stared at the moon and laughed. A deep, dark, hearty laugh before turning to the west. “Food awaits,” he muttered.

He looked down at his tattered clothing and shook his head. “No, this won’t work at all. Perhaps something more appropriate was left behind before the hunters left.”

“Don’t take too long, lover,” a silky and sensual voice said. “We have a lot of work to do…”

Damien smiled inwardly as he headed toward the remains of the Groom Lake base to make himself more passable in the h
uman world.