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  A tail lashed out, slicing clean through Daniel’s forearm.

  Blood sprayed the wall. He dropped to his knees and roared in agony.

  “Daddy!” little Joey cried out.

  The tail lashed down again. It sliced through Daniel’s shoulder and stopped in the middle of his chest. He wavered on his knees. One didn’t need to be a trained paramedic to recognize it was a killer blow, though he still attempted to throw a groggy punch with his dying breath.

  “No!” Karen screamed.

  Her mind snapped back to reality. It would all mean nothing if she didn’t keep running. She spun and desperately sprinted up the stairs, clutching her son. Her world shattered. Her husband gone. She glanced back down once she had ascended two more flights. The creature had picked up Daniel’s corpse and repeatedly smashed it against the bannister, brutally and sadistically. She had no frame of reference for what was unfolding.

  Four deep breaths took her to the entrance of the roof. She thrust open the door and burst out into the bright sunshine. She spun and slammed a dead bolt shut on the roof door, expecting the creature to plow through it at any moment.

  Adrenaline and fear flooded her veins, and she slowly backed away from the door. There was nowhere left to run.

  Thrashing sounds and screams came from apartments below her feet, but the door to the roof remained quiet.

  No creatures. At least, not yet.

  A minute passed. Then another.

  Karen’s legs gave way and she collapsed to her knees on the shingled ground. Joey cried into her shoulder.

  Shrieks filled the air, seemingly from all parts of the city.

  Broken, she peered over the railing on the roof. Through her tears, she had a panoramic perspective of San Francisco.

  Smoke billowed out of several high-rise buildings. Sirens blared, though the cops in the two police cars she could see had clearly been slaughtered. Creatures bounded along every street within view, in all directions, like scattering cockroaches. They crawled over ferries in the bay, swamped Fisherman’s Wharf, and tore apart tourist-filled trolleys, now soaked in blood.

  All she could think was how long she had left to live. How long Joey did. Sooner or later, the same heavy footsteps that announced the death of her husband would come her way.

  But until then, she’d be forced to witness the death of San Francisco.

  Chapter Four

  Frantic staffers rushed in and out of the White House Situation Room, panic across their faces. The usually orderly command center had devolved into utter chaos.

  President Amanda Brogan sat rigid in her chair at the head of the conference table, her eyes fixated on the dizzying on-screen reports of the carnage happening countrywide and worldwide. She squeezed the chair’s arms in a white-knuckled grip.

  She had only been passively watching Cafferty’s mission when the world had suddenly turned on its head. They had planned to monitor Hurricane Melyssa and deal with the damage. Now, the barely believable had become a barbaric reality. Damage beyond anyone’s imagination. She’d funded Cafferty for his fight against the creatures, but nobody expected a mass attack this soon or of this magnitude. None of the dozen staff members around the table uttered a single word.

  Vice President Webster shook his head. He had the pallor of a corpse, a blank expression, and his usually immaculate gray hair sagged from him constantly running his hands through it. For the first time in his life, the motormouthed New York politician appeared lost for words.

  Only a few hours earlier, Brogan had been watching Tom Cafferty’s mission in the Nevada desert with feigned interest. Now, she was shaken, terrified, watching America fall, city by city. Devastating creature attacks in San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Detroit, and Atlanta. Reports of new cities under siege poured in every few minutes. Countless creatures had risen in unison, sweeping through streets and cities at a lightning pace.

  One by one, news broadcasts from each city went dark, but not before the president had witnessed footage of thousands, maybe millions, of people dying at the hands of these monsters. Bitten. Slashed. Gouged. Methodically murdered. Bullets were essentially useless, though Cafferty had already warned her of that. The oxygen level and light that had protected humanity in the past were clearly no longer deterrents. The creatures had evolved faster than ever imagined to tolerate life aboveground. The rising had begun.

  The president activated the national Emergency Broadcast System and quickly declared martial law, militarizing all local police and fire and mobilizing all armed forces.

  Not that it would matter.

  From what she’d seen, cities were falling at ferocious speeds. Any attempt to fight back was met with a swift end, and more frighteningly, it appeared that the creatures knew exactly what they were doing, what targets to hit and in what order. They were relentless and coordinated, first attacking power grids and infrastructure, then slaughtering the masses. Dozens of cities within the span of a half hour.

  “Madam President—” the secretary of defense said.

  “Wait,” she snapped back.

  The country, the world, was entering unchartered territory. She needed time to think, and fast, as people were dying at a rapid rate.

  Television reports streamed in from around the world of the same occurrence. Sydney, Auckland, Toronto, Manchester, Delhi, Cape Town. She slammed her fist on the table. It was almost as if Albert Van Ness had this day planned all along. But he didn’t plan this. He couldn’t have. The twisted old man was safely locked away on a prison rig in the middle of the Atlantic, unlike the population currently being annihilated.

  A young aide, visibly trembling in his charcoal suit, put down a phone and turned to her. “Jacksonville, Indianapolis, and Columbus, too, Madam President. God knows where else.”

  “Call Tom Cafferty,” Brogan bellowed. “Right now.”

  The former mayor had the weapons to fight back. She had funded him to the tune of a billion dollars. The government needed those weapons now. And it was becoming clear that she’d need Cafferty for another mission, one he would not want to hear.

  The aide leaned down to punch in the number. As he did, the overhead lights, screens, and phones flickered off.

  Darkness swamped the situation room.

  Brogan sucked in a sharp breath. On her watch, the country was falling. Just like the White House, she was also powerless.

  The ominous conclusion was that the creatures were rising in Washington, D.C., too, taking out electrical plants just now and then undoubtedly, methodically butchering the population.

  A few seconds later the backup generators kicked in and the White House stuttered back to life.

  “Get me Cafferty!” she commanded.

  General Robert Emmer, a short balding man who had the nickname “911” because of his ability to deal with emergencies calmly, pushed through the door. “Madam President, creatures have reached Lafayette Square. We need to evacuate the White House now.”

  “We’ll be safe in this bunker, General,” she replied.

  “No, ma’am, I don’t believe we will.”

  Brogan was taken aback at the bluntness of his reply.

  “You and Vice President Webster need to accompany me to Marine One. Air Force One is standing by, ready.”

  “General, I am not abandoning the—”

  “Madam President, we’ve lost the ground war,” the general interrupted. “The only safe place to be is in the air or on the sea. Evacuating the White House is not optional.”

  The gravity of his words sunk in.

  A look of realization spread across President Brogan’s face and she rose from her chair. “General Emmer, order the navy to launch every ship we have and the air force to scramble every single plane. Save as many of our armed forces as we can!”

  The feed from the major D.C. TV networks went dark one by one, and one by one the White House phone lines stopped ringing.

  “They’ve reached the Smithsonian!” a voice called out in the
background. Panic began to spread in the Situation Room.

  “Attention, everyone, we are evacuating the White House now!” President Brogan bellowed out. “General, get as many staffers in the choppers as possible.”

  Secret Service grabbed the president and vice president by the arms and the group bolted up the stairs and out of the entrance hall. Brogan was half in a daze at the unfolding events. Everything had happened so fast, so unexpectedly.

  When they crossed a short section of lawn toward Marine One, whose propellers were already spinning, Brogan jolted to a stop.

  A thick line of creatures approached down Pennsylvania Avenue, chopping down the fleeing citizens. Thousands of them. Heading straight for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Like they knew their destination. No orders would save people right now.

  Vice President Webster wheezed up the steps and entered the chopper.

  Brogan had no choice. She grimaced at the distant screams, the sporadic gunshots that split the air that she knew wouldn’t save anyone.

  The creatures would be here in less than a minute. White House staffers raced across the lawn to reach other choppers. There was no way they’d make it in time.

  With a silent prayer, President Brogan scrambled into the chopper, and Secret Service strapped her in tightly. The door slammed shut and Marine One immediately lifted into the air as creatures barreled through the White House gates.

  Brogan let out a deep breath and peered out the window. Sickness swamped her stomach. Bile filled her mouth. She couldn’t figure a way out of the onslaught.

  Hundreds of creatures reached the White House and smashed through the windows—windows that were expected to stop machine-gun fire—crawled up the walls, and clambered over the roof. Guards, marines, and Secret Service briefly held firm outside the West Wing before the avalanche of creatures overwhelmed them.

  As Marine One sped across the sky to rendezvous with Air Force One, Brogan and Webster stared out the windows, shocked.

  The death toll below was incomprehensible. America’s capital was lost. More though, America was lost. The world might be lost.

  Humanity . . .

  She knew this wasn’t simply a one-off attack. America and the world faced an apocalypse. A fight for survival against an unyielding enemy. Humanity was facing its own extinction.

  “Is Tom Cafferty in the air?” President Brogan finally said.

  “He is, Madam President,” General Emmer replied.

  “I need to speak to him, General. Now!”

  Chapter Five

  The Black Hawk carrying Cafferty and his team thumped through the clear blue sky toward Las Vegas. It was now a race against time to reach the military jet on the Nellis Air Force Base runway. He peered through the window, down to the Calico Basin, where thousands of creatures—barely visible through a thick cloud of dust—bounded over rocks and through the sparse plains toward the western edge of the city, like an approaching dust storm, ready to wipe Las Vegas off the face of the earth.

  Cafferty let out a long, resigned sigh of sadness. He then closed his eyes for a moment to compose himself. It was all too much to bear.

  Everyone on the chopper had at least one family member or friend in the cities that had reportedly come under attack—how could they not, when pretty much every American city had been a site of slaughter? The black throng would reach Vegas in minutes, tearing into over half a million residents and tourists.

  There was nothing Cafferty’s team could do beyond a heroic yet suicidal charge.

  And while they could at least take out some creatures with them, millions could not. Perhaps billions more were still in the firing line of tails, teeth, and talons.

  So as they flew toward doom, Tom knew it was a mistake. They had to retreat to a safe place.

  But is any place safe?

  The fact was, probably not.

  Another soul-destroying fact made him sick in the pit of his stomach. All the team’s meticulous planning in the United States had been destroyed in less than an hour. They had barely begun their mission of destroying nests around the world, and now it was moot.

  We dragged our feet. Van Ness kept his weapons from us. And now we’re going to die because of him.

  This wasn’t an exaggeration. They didn’t have the ability to take on this many creatures. Arms production had started in earnest only after the new prototypes had been tested and approved. Cafferty reckoned they had two thousand laser guns and ten thousand strobe grenades manufactured. Two thousand guns would barely create a dent in Las Vegas, let alone throughout the world. And the strobes were clearly useless now that the creatures had evolved to tolerate light and oxygen.

  How did they evolve so fast?

  Cafferty’s mind drifted back to the creatures’ cavern underneath the New York City subway system three years ago. Those pregnant women cocooned, being kept alive, being tested on by the creatures. Then the newer, smaller creatures that were more tolerant of oxygen and light. And now this.

  These monsters crossbred species in order to exterminate humanity and managed it at a schedule that would have boggled Darwin’s mind.

  Pandora’s box was open and would never ever be closed again.

  Bowcut rested a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll regroup and fight back, Tom. We’ll find a way.”

  “No, Sarah,” Cafferty replied. “No. We’ve lost. I’ve lost.”

  Ellen squeezed her husband’s hand tight. She glanced back out the window at the carnage below. “God help them.”

  Munoz looked up from his tablet. “Tom, it’s accelerating. Half of Europe has dropped off the grid. It’s carnage in Rio, Jakarta—”

  “Enough!” Cafferty snapped back, rubbing his temples.

  “I’m just saying, Tom. This many simultaneous attacks across the world? Attacking power grids and infrastructure first, then genocide? This isn’t coincidence.”

  “What are you saying, Diego?” Ellen asked.

  “This is strategy. This is command and control. Tom, this is higher intelligence.”

  Cafferty’s hands tightened into fists.

  “Van Ness never said the creatures were this smart,” Diego continued.

  Cafferty put his head down, beaten. “Oh yes, he did. He knew this day would come, unless we destroyed them first. He knew all along. That’s why . . .”

  Cafferty’s mind drifted back to Van Ness’ plan to annihilate the nests with thermonuclear weapons, killing millions of people in the cities above along with them. The plan Cafferty and his team had stopped.

  Would the madman’s mass murder have prevented the even greater genocide now unfolding worldwide?

  He fought back vomit threatening to spew forth. But he could feel it churning inside him. The failure. The guilt. The anger. He switched his gaze to the window and looked downward.

  The Black Hawk passed over the first Vegas neighborhood. Creatures infested the streets, smashing through house windows and charging after anyone in sight. It took only seconds for the poor people to meet a swift end. Or maybe they were the lucky ones. Some vanished in a swarm of creatures, much like David North in the Jersey tunnel. The painful reminder sent a shudder through his body. In hindsight, that day was merely an appetizer to what was happening below.

  It was a violent, gruesome tableau, made all the worse by the silence in which he experienced it from so far up.

  The chopper banked and roared toward northern Vegas. As far as he could see, every place had been swamped by the first wave, which was probably more like a first tsunami.

  They passed over Boulder Junction and neared the Strip. Even from here, as he attempted to view the length of the road, the fresh damage was obvious. At least half the windows on the Luxor hotel’s tall black pyramid were smashed. Creatures crawled around the giant Sphinx outside, surrounded by bloodstained corpses. Farther ahead, smoke billowed out of the MGM Grand. Corpses floated in the fountain outside the Bellagio. Red clouds surrounded their bodies in the crystal-clear water.

  The
attack had reached Treasure Island. This gave Cafferty his first snapshot of the creatures hitting civilization en masse. The windows of the tall red hotel burst out in quick succession. Some had probably attempted to seek shelter in their rooms. It was clearly futile. Tom’s imagination painted the picture of the creatures smashing through the doors, grabbing the occupants, and forcefully throwing them through the glass. Just like how they threw the passengers out of the Z train car three years earlier.

  Anyone attempting to escape on foot toward the old town met the same fate as the people on the outskirts of the city.

  Blood raged along the Strip’s gutters.

  Creatures roamed supreme, darting around every corner, racing into other casinos’ entrances, like the Pink Flamingo. The only place that remained untouched at this point was Circus Circus, but in a manner of minutes, it, too, would be overrun.

  Those tourists have no idea what’s about to hit them . . .

  Chapter Six

  Mike Gianno walked along a corridor to his high-roller suite in Circus Circus. He grasped the hand of a lady he knew only as Cindy. She was wearing a tight red dress showing her voluptuous curves. Maybe thirty years old. He wasn’t sure. She was most definitely out of his league, but his natural charm had clearly won her over.

  This morning, he’d dressed to impress. Skinny jeans. A white linen shirt, unbuttoned to the center of his chest, ensuring he flashed his thick gold necklace. It was most likely real, too. He avoided tucking his shirt in to conceal his growing potbelly. A classic fat guy trick. The short sleeves flashed his inked biceps. He wasn’t exactly ripped, but for a balding man approaching his midforties, he thought he looked pretty good. Distinguished, even.

  To complement his appearance, a squirt of Stetson cologne had given him a woodsy, citrus aroma compared with his competition at the casino bars: morbidly overweight desperados with cigarettes constantly jammed between their lips. He didn’t need to sink that low. The thought disgusted him. He’d upgraded to e-cigarettes long ago. And the ultimate ace in his pocket: he had a suite in the hotel. Women love suites, is what he had heard. He also had the decency to put his wedding ring in the safe, so all good there.