Fast (13 page)

            She stopped checking behind herself and just ran. The creature sounded like a rolling car-wreck chasing her down the corridor. She passed the emergency wall-panel display. The panel showed a snapshot schematic view of activated emergency systems. The whole panel blazed with red lights. Systems looked compromised over the entire Complex. Even on the habitation level.

            David!

            Vanessa felt her personal dilemma suddenly expand to cover the entire facility, including her son.

            The creatures are everywhere.

            Just after the wall panel came the smaller ECS panel that she was looking for. The panel was labeled:
Emergency Corridor Sterilization
.

            Without slowing, she bashed her fist into the glass panel.

            White sterilizing agent exploded from the walls like a hundred ruptured gas pipes. All down the corridor, plumes of white gas hissed into her path. She didn’t know if the sterilizing gas would affect the creature, but anything was worth a try. She glanced back and saw flashes of the creature coming through the gas.

            No good. It’s still coming.

            Looking forward through the gas she saw the containment door start rolling down from the ceiling. It was twenty meters away and halfway down when she spotted another major obstacle in her plan to survive the next sixty seconds.

            The door to the fire stairs was shut.

In the time it took her to yank open the door, the creature would be on her.

            Vanessa ignored the logical part of her brain that insisted she was as good as dead.
Don’t give up. Never give up. Maybe I’m faster than I think. Let’s find out….

            At that exact moment, the elevator doors opened in the antechamber ahead. Four soldiers occupied the elevator. Their eyes widened when they spotted her.

            ‘Down!’ bellowed the middle soldier. His voice sounded very familiar. ‘Get down now, Vanessa!’

            Vanessa dove down, seeing what they planned to do, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to stop moving! She crawled commando-style towards the soldiers as they opened fire down the corridor - shooting
right over the top of her
.

            She kept crawling as the soldiers kept firing. The entire corridor filled with the roar and light of gunfire. When the firing stopped, Vanessa had reached the elevator.

            She was looking at a pair of brown boots in the elevator’s entrance. She followed the boots up and saw the face. Now she recognized the voice
and
the face.

Exhausted, she managed to ask between great sucking breaths, ‘What…the hell…are
you
doing here?’

#

Coleman helped his ex-wife to her feet, but kept his boot jammed against the bottom of the elevator door. He didn’t want any more mystery-destination elevator rides. The rest of Third Unit trained their assault rifles on the elevator ceiling.

            Thank god she’s alive. Now I just need to find David.

            The entire carriage shuddered under Coleman’s boots. The creatures were peeling away the ceiling like a sardine can lid.

            ‘Everyone out,’ he ordered. The fluorescent carriage lights started flashing. ‘Let’s go – move, move!’

            Vanessa backed from the elevator as the Marines rushed out.

            Third Unit surged into the security antechamber. Forest, King, and then Marlin rushed past, ducking away from the carriage ceiling. They spread out around the room and prepared to blast the elevator when Coleman got clear.
            ‘Hold the doors open,’ shouted Vanessa. She’d recovered her breath enough to jerk a fire extinguisher from the wall. She dashed towards the lift.

            ‘No, wait –’ Coleman said, but he never finished his sentence.

            The entire lift surged up under his boots, tossing him into the air.

            ‘Hol-ly shit,’ Coleman warbled as he landed on his heels, amazed and stunned by the incredible force that could jerk an elevator around like a yoyo.

            He thrust out a hand, but two more powerful jerks came so close together that he couldn’t recover his balance. He lost his footing and fell awkwardly on the carriage floor. The breath
whumped
from his body. Worse, and with a dreadful feeling of helplessness, Coleman realized his boot no longer jammed open the elevator doors. The doors started closing. He couldn’t reach the controls. He couldn’t block the doors. He couldn’t even get onto his hands and knees.

            He was literally bouncing off the elevator floor.

            Vanessa dove forward, thrusting the base of the fire extinguisher through the closing gap.

            The doors hit the extinguisher and started opening again.

            ‘Come on,’ she yelled. ‘Get out of there, Alex!’

            Coleman gave up trying to stand. He scrambled towards the doors and used the momentum of the next floor-surge to propel himself through the gap. He landed hard on his hands and knees outside the elevator.

            ‘Get ready to shoot the extinguisher!’ Vanessa yelled before Coleman could even rise. She heaved the fire extinguisher into the elevator and then, madly reaching her arm into the lift, fumbled with the control panel for the second that the elevator wasn’t jerking up and down. ‘Shoot it now! Shoot the extinguisher!’

            Coleman drew his colt and aimed.

           
Blam!

            His bullet pierced the extinguisher a fraction of a second before the lift jerked again. As the carriage doors closed, the fire extinguisher flew into the air with foam spewing from its pierced cylinder.

            Now Coleman lay on the floor looking at Vanessa’s trainers. Their positions had completely reversed. She reached a hand down to help him up.

            Accepting the offered hand, Coleman stood up and checked her over for injuries. As well as being his ex-partner and mother of his child, she was the person Coleman’s platoon had been tasked to protect under any circumstances. Vanessa’s stolen genetic templates had triggered the entire operation.

            Flushed and breathing hard from her flight from the creature, she seemed to be in good physical condition. She still had the long lithe muscle tone of a regular swimmer, and she had certainly been moving at a cracking speed down the corridor ahead of the creature.

            ‘Thanks,’ Coleman said. ‘That was fast thinking. You saved my ass.’

            ‘What the hell are you even doing here?’ Vanessa repeated, throwing up her hands. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

            Coleman looked her straight in the eye. ‘I thought you might have those answers. Why don’t we start with David. Where is he?’

            ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out!’ Vanessa stalked past Coleman and picked up the receiver of a red emergency telephone mounted near the fire stairs. There were no buttons to dial numbers. ‘This should automatically call the admin hub and then redirect to the evac center.’

            Vanessa listened, frowned into the receiver and the tapped the reset button a few times. ‘It’s not working. These things are meant to be unbreakable.’

            ‘Where was David supposed to be when the evac sounded?’ insisted Coleman. ‘In school?’

            Vanessa shook her head, hanging up the receiver. ‘No, he had a class excursion to the rec reserve. He would have been there.’

            ‘The rec reserve is on the west side, right? So he had to cross the habitation level to get to the evac center.’ Coleman remembered the carnage of people moving across the pedestrian loop.
Was David in that?

            ‘Yes. They would have cut across the northern section of the loop then past the cinema and the big eatery to reach the tunnel entrance. What is it like up there? Is anybody hurt?’

            The Marines all swapped glances, but they waited for Coleman to answer.

            ‘Yeah, Vanessa. Lots of people are hurt. Lots are dead. Hundreds, maybe. We walked into a full-scale massacre. I didn’t see David.’

            Vanessa’s mouth gaped open, speechless.

            ‘That’s because he made it,’ said King quietly. ‘He’s in the evac center.’

            ‘How do you figure? asked Coleman.

            ‘She just said he would have come through the north section of the loop,’ King explained. ‘We were just there, and there wasn’t a single body. Everything was still intact. The creatures were drawn to our skirmish in the south. Anyone passing through the north would have had a pretty clear run.’

            Forest was nodding his head. ‘That’s right. And Harrison and Sullivan were herding everyone through there. No way they left kids behind. Not an option.’

            They’re right,’ said Coleman, sorry he wasn’t clear-headed enough to have seen it himself.
We might have saved his life without me even realizing it. Trying to help those people probably helped David reach safety.

            Vanessa still looked unsure. ‘This Harrison, would he have left anyone behind in the panic?’

            All four Marines shook their heads emphatically.

            Coleman knew Harrison well. ‘Never. Harrison wouldn’t leave anyone. He’s got David. I’m sure of it.’

            Vanessa slumped against the wall. ‘Thank God for that. David’s very competitive, like his father. He would have tried to be first to reach the evac center. So what now? Tell me what’s going on here.’

            Coleman quickly assessed their surroundings. They were in the outer security antechamber of the corridor that provided access to the research level. There were three exits: the elevator behind Coleman, the fire stairs on his right beside Vanessa, and the huge containment door across the room. The containment door had sealed shut. It looked impenetrable.

            He hadn’t forgotten about the creature that almost caught Marlin in the stairwell just two levels up. It could be heading down the stairs this very second, ready to burst into the antechamber. He made two quick hand-gestures. King turned his rifle to cover the elevator while Marlin and Forest took defensive positions covering the stairwell door.

            ‘Vanessa, move away from that fire door.’ Coleman waved his rifle towards the dead creature. ‘There’s one still in there probably.’

            Vanessa pushed herself away from the wall and crossed to the dead creature. ‘I sent the elevator to the basement. The fire extinguisher should distract those things a few minutes.’

            She squatted beside the messy remains. Coleman joined her. This was the first time he’d seen a creature up close and not moving. Lying on its side, it looked as big as a horse.

            ‘So what is it?’ tested Coleman. ‘Where’d they all come from? An experiment?’

            Vanessa shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen these things before. They’re no legitimate part of any research conducted here. But I know
what
they are, and I know
who
made them.’

Vanessa glanced meaningfully at his uniform. ‘But first, you had better tell me in exactly what capacity you’re here. Deal?’

            Coleman raised an eyebrow, but didn’t bite at the impersonal comment.
Can’t she set aside her feelings about the military for even one minute? A Marine probably
just saved our son, and she’s still suspicious.