Operation: Last Dawn

Chapter 2: Part 1: Alone

Date: June 16, 2045

Time: 1600 Hours

Location: South American Jungle, Sector 4

Darius Kane swung violently back and forth beneath the dense jungle canopy, swearing with enough vitriol to scorch the surrounding foliage. His primary chute was hopelessly shredded and tangled in the upper limbs of an ironwood tree, suspending him nearly twenty-five feet above the ground. The harness straps bit viciously into his shoulders and hips, leaving his boots kicking uselessly at empty air.

“Oh, for the love of God!” Darius roared, twisting in his rig.

Below him, the racket had already drawn an audience. Roughly ten infected creatures—pale, hollow-eyed, with blackened veins crawling beneath their skin—swarmed around the base of the trunk. They clawed frantically at the bark, snapping their teeth and groaning in guttural, hungry rasps as they reached up toward him.

“This f*****g sucks!” Darius yelled down at them, venting every shred of pent-up rage into the humid air. “First that damn kid is late to wheels-up. Then we get shot out of the goddamn sky. Then my chute decides to make friends with a redwood, and now *this*? I swear somebody upstairs has a personal vendetta against me!”

Growling under his breath, Darius reached down to his tactical holster and drew his sidearm. He gripped the weapon tightly, lining up his sights while swaying in the harness.

“Eat lead, you ugly motherfuckers.”

*Crack. Crack.*

Two clean double-taps punched through the foreheads of the closest two infected, dropping them instantly into the ferns. Darius shifted his aim, compensating for the swinging momentum of his parachute lines.

*Crack. Crack. Crack.*

Three more crumpled into the mud, their skulls shattered.

“I need a drink,” Darius muttered through gritted teeth, adjusting his grip. “A whole damn bottle of bourbon after this shit.”

*CREAK.*

Above his head, the heavy branch anchoring his suspension lines groaned under his combat weight. Darius froze, his eyes darting upward. “Oh, don’t you dare—”

*CRACK-SNAP.*

“Oh, f**k—”

The branch gave way completely. Darius plummeted through a tangle of vines and foliage before slamming hard onto his ass on the muddy jungle floor. The impact knocked the wind clean out of his lungs in a sharp wheeze, sending a jolt of pain straight up his tailbone. Before he could even roll over, the three remaining infected lunged from the brush, snapping their jaws as they rushed him from three sides. Still on his back, Darius raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger.

*Crack!* The first one took a bullet straight through the eye socket and collapsed mid-stride.

*Crack!* The second caught a round in the throat, staggered, and took a second shot between the eyes that dropped it into the dirt.

Darius pivoted the muzzle toward the final infected charging straight at his face and pulled the trigger.

*Click.*

The slide locked back on an empty chamber.

“f**k!”

Darius tossed the empty gun aside as the creature threw its full weight onto him. Foul breath washed over his face as rotten teeth snapped inches from his nose. Darius shoved his left forearm hard against the creature’s throat, locking it in place while clawed fingers tore into the Kevlar over his ribs.

“Die, you piece of s**t!”

With his right hand, Darius ripped the heavy combat knife from his chest rig. In one fluid, brutal motion, he drove the serrated steel blade straight up through the underside of the creature’s jaw, angling into the brain stem. The infected convulsed once, went completely limp, and collapsed on top of him.

Darius shoved the dead weight off his chest with a disgusted grunt. He rolled onto his knees, planted his boots into the mud, and hauled himself upright. Breathing heavily, sweat stinging his eyes, he wiped the dark residue off his blade against his pant leg.

The jungle suddenly fell deathly quiet. Then, breaking the silence, came the crisp, steady sound of slow applause.

*Clap. Clap. Clap.*

Darius spun on his heel in an instant, dropping into a combat crouch with his knife flipped into a reverse grip, ready to gut whatever had managed to sneak up on him. He stopped dead in his tracks. Standing just twenty paces away, leaning casually against the mossy trunk of a towering kapok tree, was a petite woman. She wore rugged, weathered field gear that hugged an athletic frame, but what caught Darius entirely off guard was the fiery auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid and a pair of piercing, vivid blue eyes watching him with cool amusement.

Darius stood frozen, covered in mud, sweat, and parachute cord, holding a bloody combat knife like a madman. His brain short-circuited. *Holy hell,* Darius thought, his irritation evaporating in an instant. *She is completely my type.*

Darius slowly lowered the knife to his side, cleared his throat, and managed an awkward, lopsided grin.

“Oh. Hi.”

The woman tilted her head slightly, her blue eyes gleaming with quiet intrigue.

“Hi.”

She pushed off from the kapok tree, moving with a fluid, soundless grace that set off immediate warning bells in the back of Darius’s tactical mind. She didn’t stumble over the snarl of roots, nor did she flinch at the mangled corpses littering the mud. Stopping just ten feet away—comfortably outside of standard lunging distance—she tilted her head back toward the shattered canopy above, then looked down at the shredded nylon harness clinging to his shoulders.

“That was one hell of a fall,” she remarked. Her voice was calm, low, and smooth, carrying an unsettling steadiness for someone standing in the middle of a fresh slaughter.

Darius’s smirk returned, widening into his trademark swagger even as his bruised tailbone throbbed in protest. He twirled the combat knife casually in his grip before sliding it home into the sheath on his chest rig, though his hand remained close enough to clear leather in a fraction of a second. “I’ve had worse,” Darius said, rolling his broad shoulders. “Takes more than a bad landing to put me in the dirt. Now tell me, beautiful—what’s a woman like you doing out here all by her lonesome?”

Her piercing blue eyes didn’t waver. She gave him a slow, calculating once-over, taking in the tactical cut of his civilian clothes, the spent brass scattered in the ferns, and the calluses on his knuckles. “I wasn’t wandering,” she replied coolly. “I was tracking your descent. Saw the smoke plume from across the ridge.” Her gaze locked onto his. “You’re one of the men from that unmarked transport that got shot out of the sky.”

Darius’s easy expression didn’t slip, but his internal threat assessment dialed up a notch. An unarmed civilian wouldn’t have spotted the vector that fast, let alone walked straight toward the sound of heavy gunfire without backup. “Guilty as charged,” Darius said, resting his thumbs lightly against his tactical belt. “Name’s Darius. Darius Kane.” He gave her a sharp, assessing grin. “And you are?”

The woman’s expression remained an unreadable mask. A faint, knowing tilt curved the corner of her mouth, neither welcoming nor hostile, as she shifted her weight and let one hand drop toward the strap of her utility rig. The jungle around them seemed to hold its breath as she parted her lips to answer.

“The name is Maeve Callahan.”