Fast (12 page)

            ‘Go-go-go!’ hissed Coleman as a submachine gun appeared through the hole.

            Coleman dropped and scrambled towards the exit as the passage filled with ricocheting gunfire. Halfway out the hole, he felt King’s powerful hand grab the back of his body armor. With a grunt, King swung Coleman’s entire body out of hatch.

            The moment Coleman’s boots swung clear, Forest poked his CMAR-17 back through the hatch and returned fire. When he stopped firing, only silence filled the passageway.

            Forest gingerly slid the access hatch back into place. ‘I don’t think they’ll follow us through here. They’ll have to backtrack and go around.’

            Coleman found his feet and slapped King’s beefy shoulder. ‘Thanks for the ride, big-guy.’

            Marlin looked up from his skirmish map. ‘We’ve come out north of the admin hub. This is still the pedestrian loop, but now on the north side.’

            Coleman understood what Marlin meant. Despite the complexity of the administration hub, the habitation level was a fairly simple design. In the center of the level, the administration hub was contained within a huge rectangle of open space that stretched right to the edges of the Complex. This open space circled the level like a race track scattered with water features, communal lounges and eateries. The area gave residents a place to stretch their legs between the shops and arcades that lined the outer walls.

            When Third Unit first entered the Complex, they had encountered the evacuees fleeing through the southern section of this same loop. Third Unit had cut straight through the middle of the admin hub and emerged into the northern part of the loop.

            The four Marines regrouped with their backs pressed to the admin hub’s north wall.

            ‘Okay,’ declared King. ‘What the
fuck
is going
on
in this place?’

            ‘What are those things?’ hissed Marlin. ‘Are they animals or what?’

            ‘They’re no animal I’ve ever seen,’ Forest said. ‘They’re killing machines. This place is making killing machines. And our friends back there with the Mark 2’s are mopping up whoever the creatures miss.’

            King disagreed. ‘Anyone smart enough to breed these creatures would make a very big cage to keep them in. This must be an accident.’

            ‘Either way,’ Marlin said. ‘We need some serious backup.’

            Coleman was only half listening. He’d missed out of reaching the intercom by only a few seconds. He still didn’t know what was happening with the evacuees, and if David and Vanessa were even among them. The last time he had anything like a plan, it had been to rendezvous with Fifth Unit. Fifth Unit hadn’t reached their rendezvous point. Coleman suspected the gunmen had ambushed Fifth Unit in a surprise attack like the one in the pool room.

            ‘We can’t stop now,’ Coleman reasoned, coming back to the conversation. ‘They’ll be circling around. They’re well organized. Did you see the way they stopped firing when –’

            ‘Here they come!’ barked Marlin, lifting his rifle. But he didn’t mean the gunmen.

            Two creatures appeared to the east, scrambling around the corner of the admin hub. They stopped less than one hundred meters down the wall from Third Unit.

            Coleman grabbed Marlin’s rifle before he could fire.

            ‘Hold your fire,’ hissed Coleman. ‘Everyone stay quiet.’

            Third Unit froze. Coleman didn’t take his hand from Marlin’s rifle. Forest also had his rifle raised. His finger twitched over his trigger. King still had his back against the wall, his rifle covering the access panel.

            The creatures stopped outside the hub. They didn’t charge at Third Unit. Instead, they spread their tentacles to cover the largest floor space possible. This was the first piece of non-aggressive behavior Coleman had witnessed, but he wasn’t about to hang around and start taking notes.

            ‘Alright,’ he whispered. ‘Very quietly, we are all going to –’

            The access hatch in the wall was suddenly kicked out by a gunman. They had taken the chance and snuck through the wall space after all. The hatch was right between King and Forest. The panel flew from the wall and
clattered
to the floor.

            Forest reacted instantly, turning and spraying the wall with gunfire as the gunman tried to leap out.

            The gunman took three rounds straight in the chest and fell back through the access hatch.

            King swung his CMAR-17 into the hole and blasted the passageway beyond. He held down the trigger, giving everyone in the cramped passageway a piece of the action.

            The creatures charged at Third Unit.

            That’s torn it.

            ‘Come on – let’s move,’ yelled Coleman, seeing his plan to quietly avoid the creatures had literally been shot down. ‘To the stairwell, let’s go!’

            Directly across the pedestrian loop stood the north stairwell and elevator. Beyond that lay the dormitories where Fifth Unit had last been heard retreating from the creatures. Third Unit sprinted towards the stairwell. The creatures changed directions to intercept. Coleman spotted the problem in a second. Third Unit were vulnerable to the gunmen about to emerge from the wall space.

            ‘Keep running,’ ordered Coleman as he skidded to a stop halfway to the stairwell.

            As Third Unit raced ahead, Coleman fired wildly at the creatures. Both creatures changed course, heading directly for him. When the creatures were less than fifteen feet away, he sprinted after Third Unit again. Ahead, Third Unit raced into the stairwell. A second later, Coleman saw them all charge
out
of the stairwell again.

            Last out, Marlin spun and slammed the stairwell door. Something in the stairwell smashed into the door with enough force to tear off hinges. The heavy door nearly split in two under the incredible force. Coleman didn’t need to ask what they had found in the stairwell.

            ‘Go for the elevator!’ he yelled ahead, seeing the huge elevator standing open just a little further on.

            Coleman looked over his shoulder to check if his plan had worked. The creatures were now right behind him, blocking the gunmen’s line of fire.

            Third Unit waited in the elevator.

            ‘Run, Captain, Run!’ yelled Marlin, his hand hovering over the elevator controls.

            The doors started closing.

            Coleman lowered his head and put on a burst of speed for the closing doors. He turned his shoulders at the last moment,
just
squeezing sideways through the doors before they closed. He caught his momentum on the elevator’s back wall, then doubled over from the exertion of his power-sprint.

            ‘Check…ammo….,’ he puffed out between breaths. Hands fell to ammunition supplies.

            ‘I’m low,’ Marlin said. King tossed Marlin an ammunition magazine.

            Coleman scanned the elevator. It measured at least twice as large as a conventional office-building elevator, otherwise it looked fairly standard.

            The elevator started moving.

            ‘Where the hell are we going?’ demanded Coleman. ‘Who pushed the button?’

            ‘We didn’t touch anything,’ replied Marlin. ‘I just closed the door. Someone must have called it from a level below us.’

            Coleman desperately read the elevator controls:

                                                Level 1 – Habitation

                                                Level 2 – Engineering (Restricted)

                                                Level 3 – Research (Restricted)

                                                Level 4 – Basement

            ‘We want to get out, not go deeper,’ Coleman said, searching for an override switch.

            The entire elevator shuddered.

            Marlin looked at the ceiling. ‘You
must
be kidding me.’

            Something heavy began tearing into the top of the lift. The screech of twisting metal sounded like a thousand fingernails down a blackboard. The elevator jerked around under their boots.

            Coleman gave up on the controls. It was just one thing after another. They blundered from one near miss to the next. They needed to gain some control of the situation, because their luck wouldn’t last forever.

Vanessa sprinted down the corridor.

            The creature pursued
right behind her
, a tidal-wave of thrashing spines rolling towards her heels.

            She stole another wild glance over her shoulder.

            It proved all bad news.

            But Vanessa loved life, and she’d be damned if this
thing
was going to tear it away from her. She continued leading the creature in a convoluted path through the sub-labs, hoping to lose or outrun it.

            Unfortunately, the core labs were programmed to close behind the evacuating staff, so soon only the three meter wide decontamination corridors would be accessible. Emergency orange navigation lights on the floor and ceiling flashed in the same direction she ran.

            If she didn’t escape the research level soon, she’d be trapped.

            Sprinting through A-lab, she searched for anything that could help. Every lab was packed with stainless steel equipment, white benches, rows of instruments and experiments…nothing helpful. Every lab had two exits. Outside A-lab she spotted a tall mobile shelving unit against the left wall. Using her body’s momentum, she toppled the shelving into the creature’s path. She was running again when the shelves crashed down behind her.

            The creature hit the shelving unit like a semitrailer busting through a balsa-wood roadblock. The unit disintegrated under the impact.

            The creature pursued just fifteen feet behind her. In the back of her mind, behind the voice screaming to
run faster!,
Vanessa wondered how many of these things were loose in the Complex. Might she run straight into another creature and get trapped between them? She seemed to have lost the other two back in F-lab.

            She tore through B-lab and cut left, thumping the barrier control on the way out. Now she ran up the long northern decontamination corridor, one of only two exits from the core labs. The plexiglass barrier from B-lab descended behind her.

            She glanced over her shoulder, praying she’d trapped the creature in B-lab.

            No such luck.

            The creature rounded the corner behind her, its abdomen jackknifing across the floor like a racing dog in full sprint losing its rear footing.

            It now pursued Vanessa up a long corridor with only one exit: the massive outer containment door. Beyond the containment door, the security antechamber served the north elevator and stairwell. She had another hundred meters to run. The door would start closing any second. If she didn’t get through that door, she would run straight into a dead end.