The Tide (Tide Series Book 1) by Anthony J Melchiorri

barricaded himself in from the outside.”
    “How’d he go unconscious?”
    Renee hesitated. “When we blasted the door to gain entry, I think he was a bit too close.”
    “Shit. What did you do with him?”
    “Terrence and Andris are carrying him.”
    Two less guns guarding their movement. “Be careful.”
    “Copy, Captain. It stinks something fierce down here. Like diesel.”
    A new voice piped up over the comm. “Bravo, this is Chao. Sounds like you’re near the generators.”
    When the radio chatter ceased, Dom directed his squad forward. They passed by the ominous bioreactors standing as silent sentries in the corridor and drew near the splattered curtains. Dom signaled Scott and Jenna to follow his movements. Ready to provide fire support, they shouldered their weapons.
    Dom yanked back the ragged plastic curtains. He pushed through the remnants of a second curtain and stepped out into a large space filled with more lab benches, microscopes, biosafety cabinets, glassware, and a host of large bioreactors lining a wall. Shattered beakers and flasks lay across the tiled floor. Perspiration dripped across his forehead and smeared his biohazard suit’s clear visor. He didn’t mind the small inconvenience if it was protecting him from whatever turned people into those Skulls.
    Dom bent and picked up a set of night-vision goggles complete with a camera. He surveyed the room again. “This must be where the video Webb sent us came from.”
    “There was definitely a Skull in that video.” Jenna crept to his side. Her gun’s muzzle swept across the equipment and a bank of dark monitors. “No sign of them now. You think the one that attacked Brett was all that was left?”
    “Somehow, I doubt it,” Miguel said. He pressed a button on one of the computers lining a bench top. “Instead of trying to turn the power on, why don’t we just scrap these things for the hard drives and get the hell out of here?”
    “We could,” Dom said. “But that’d eat up a lot of time, and I’m interested in the storage space we can’t access by yanking their drives.”
    “What do you mean?” Scott said.
    “I’m not convinced everything is stored on these.” Dom patted one of the computers. “I want to dig into this platform’s intranet, see what’s on the network. Maybe we can access any VPNs or rout out a connection to the mainland. That might help us find the assholes behind this mess. We can’t do any of that without power.”
    “Makes sense,” Miguel said. “I’d rather find out everything we can about this damn place so we don’t have to come back.”
    “Agreed,” Jenna said. “Even if we killed all those damn Skulls, this place is by far one of the creepiest we’ve been to.”
    Glenn was scouring through the drawers. “Found a couple more notebooks.”
    “How about some biological samples?” Dom asked.
    Miguel nodded and pulled a biocontainment canister from his rucksack. The lockable aluminum cylinder contained several insulated layers to protect biological samples from the external environment and ensure whatever went into the device stayed in the device. He marched to the walk-in cooler near a series of biosafety cabinets. “Start in here?”
    “Sure thing,” Dom said. He wrapped his fingers around the cooler door’s handle. Miguel set the canister down and shouldered his weapon to affirm his readiness.
    Dom jerked the cooler open. A sudden wail filled the lab space, and a creature pounced from within. Miguel fired, but his shots missed. Clad in the remains of a biosafety suit, a Skull pounced forward, swinging its skeletal limbs. Miguel threw an arm up to deflect the Skull’s talons. The beast knocked the gun from his hands and drove him to the floor.
    Dom wanted to fire, but he couldn’t risk firing accidentally shooting the Hunter. He dropped his gun and pulled his knife from the sheath wrapped around the leg of his biosuit.
    The Skull screamed. Saliva flew out of its mouth and covered