And
while they could swim short distances, the apes could not swim
underwater.
They
couldn’t get out.
Ammunition
Chamber No. 2 of Hell Island would be their tomb—three hundred apes, innocent
creatures turned into killing machines, would drown in it.
* * * *
XIX
Four
gorillas, however,
did
make it out of the hall before the water
completely covered the doorway.
They
got to the elevator shaft and started climbing the ladder, heading up and away
from the swirling body of ocean water pouring into the concrete shaft beneath
them.
* *
Higher
up the same ladder, Schofield and his team scaled the shaft as quickly as they
could.
The
roar of inrushing water drowned out all sound for almost thirty seconds
until—ominously—the whole shaft suddenly fell silent.
It
wasn’t that the water had stopped rushing in: it was just that the water
level
had risen above the floodgate. The ocean was still invading the shaft, just
from below its own waterline.
‘Keep
climbing!’ Schofield called up to the others, moving last of all. ‘We have to
get above sea level!’
He
looked behind him, saw the four pursuing apes.
Fact:
gorillas are much better climbers than human beings.
Schofield
yelled, ‘Guys! We’ve got company!’
Three-quarters
of the way up the shaft was a large horizontal metal grate that folded down
across the width of the shaft—notches in its edges allowed it to close around
the elevator cables. When closed horizontally, it would completely span the
shaft, sealing it off. It was one of the gates the Japanese had created to trap
intruders down below.
Schofield
saw it. ‘Mother! When you get to that grate, close it behind you!’
The
Marines came to the grate, climbed up past it one at a time—Astro, then
Bigfoot, then Sanchez and Mother.
With
a loud clang, Sanchez quickly closed one half of the grate. Mother grabbed the
other half, just as Schofield reached it...
...
at the same time as a big hairy hand grabbed his ankle and yanked hard!
Schofield
slipped down six rungs, clutching with his hands, dropping six feet below the
grate, an ape hanging from his left foot.
‘Scarecrow!’
Mother shouted.
‘Close
the grate!’ Schofield called.
Immediately
below him, the ocean water was now
charging
up the vertical elevator
shaft. It must have completely filled the ammo chamber— so that now it was
racing up the only space left for it to go: the much narrower elevator shaft.
‘No!’
Mother yelled. To shut the grate was to drown Schofield himself.
‘You
have to!’ Schofield shouted back. ‘You have to shut them in!’
Schofield
glanced downward at the enraged gorilla clutching his left foot. The other
three apes were clambering up the ladder close behind it.
He
levelled his pistol at the gorilla holding him—
Click.
Dry.
‘Shit.’
Then
suddenly he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to find someone
hovering next to his face, level with his head, someone hanging upside-down!
Mother.
Hanging
fully stretched, inverted, her legs held by Sanchez and Bigfoot up at the
grate, herself holding pistols in both hands.
‘No
heroic sacrifices today, buddy,’ she said to Schofield.
She
then opened fire with both her guns, blasting the ape holding him to pieces.
The ape released him, Mother chucked her guns, grabbed Schofield by his webbing
and suddenly,
whoosh,
both Mother
and
Schofield were lifted up
the shaft by Sanchez and Bigfoot, up past the half-closed grate, where once
they were up, Astro slammed down the other half and snapped shut its lock.
The
three remaining apes and the rising water hit the grate moments later, the
water pinning the screaming apes to the underside of the grate until it rose
past them, swallowing them, climbing a further ten feet up the shaft, before it
abruptly stopped, having come level with the sea outside, now forbidden by
physics from rising any further. Schofield’s Marines gazed down at the sloshing
body of water from their ladder above, breathless and exhausted, but safe, and
now the only creatures—man or ape—still breathing on Hell Island.
*
* * *
XX
Four
hours later, a lone plane arrived on the landing strip of Hell Island. It was
a gigantic Air Force C-17A Globemaster, one of the biggest cargo-lifters in the
world, capable of holding over two hundred armed personnel, or perhaps three
hundred sedated apes.
Its
six-man crew were a little surprised to find only five United States
Marines—dirty, bloody and battle-weary—waiting on the tarmac to greet them.
Its
co-pilot came out and met Schofield, shouted above the whine of the plane’s
enormous jet engines: ‘Who the hell are you? We’re here to pick up a bunch of
DARPA guys, Delta specialists, and some mysterious cargo that we’re not allowed
to look at. Nobody said anything about Marines.’
Schofield
just shook his head.
‘There’s
no cargo,’ he said. ‘Not anymore. Now, if you don’t mind, would you please take
us home.’
________________
This
is an edited version of an interview Matthew Reilly did for Ansett Australia’s
Panorama
in-flight Magazine
for the Nov/Dec1998 issue.
It
remains unpublished.
1.
When you sit down to write a book, do you know the ending?
Yes.
I don’t even begin writing a novel until I have the last scene of the book
firmly pictured in my head. This has a lot to do with the kind of book that I
write. My books have a lot of twists and narrow escapes in them and to effect
these things, you have to know what you’re going to do well in advance. Hence,
for me, planning everything out early (even if not quite to the last detail) is
very, very important.
2.
Do you write from experience?
As
anyone who has read any of my books would tell you, this is a pretty silly
question. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who has done the
things that the heroes of Contest and Ice Station, do! When you write about a
guy killing aliens and sliding underneath speeding hovercrafts and destroying
nuclear submarines single-handedly, it’s hard to say that you are basing it on
your own life experiences!! No, I must say that my books are firmly placed in
the realms of my dreams. Even more than that, what my heroes do, are things
that I wish I could do if I were ever put to the test.
3.
How do you develop characters in your books?
Developing
characters is not an exact science. Sometimes they just come to you in the dead
of night, at other times you have to work on a character for a few days (or
weeks, or months) until suddenly it clicks. My short answer is: I don’t have a
particular process that I use to develop my characters. The only thing I know
about character development is this: you know when a character works, and you
know when one doesn’t. I just don’t accept one of my characters until I’m know
that he or she works. Take, for example, my favourite character in
Ice
Station
, a female United States Marine known as ‘Mother’. Mother isn’t her
real name, that’s her military nickname or call-sign, and it’s short for, ah…
er… ‘Motherf***er’. She is six feet two inches tall, has a completely shaven
head, a foul mouth and a heart of gold. The minute I created her, I knew she
worked.
4.
Why do you write?
That’s
an interesting question. I don’t write to change the world, or to change
peoples’ minds for that matter. I write for entertainment’s sake – and
entertainment’s sake alone – and yet I firmly believe that I am, in some way,
enriching peoples’ lives. There is a place in society for entertainment and the
joy to be found in taking a break from the real world and diving into complete and
unabashed fiction. And when you view novels alongside other entertainment forms
(like, for instance, movies), novels have one unique edge ‘the limit is your
own imagination. I mean, how often have you heard someone say, “The movie was
okay, but it wasn’t as good as the book.”. I think this one of the reasons Ice
Station has sold so well, and in particular, at airports. If you’re going on a
long plane ride, you want to be transported out of the real world for a few
hours. That’s what I do.
5.
What is most difficult about the writing process for you?
Creating
new and interesting stories and twists is perhaps the most difficult part of
the writing process for me. Once I have the story in my mind, I’m fine, but I
put a lot of pressure on myself to come up with a good story. I believe that in
1989 the stakes were raised in terms of high-octane, adventure fiction and the
strength of ideas that that form of fiction must involve. So what happened in
1989? Simple. The publication of a book called
Jurassic Park
. After
Michael Crichton came up with the idea of genetically-engineering dinosaurs,
the bar was set a little higher for all thriller writers out there. So getting
an idea that is a cut above the rest is the most difficult (because it is the
most crucial) thing for me.
6.
What keeps you going?
Hmmm.
Good friends and family. Whether I’m angry and upset because my editor wants to
cut my favourite scene or whether I’m over the moon because Ice Station is on
the bestseller list, I find that my friends and family are always there to
support me. They cheer you up when you’re down and they bring you down to earth
when you start to get a little uppity! And if all else fails, I just go out and
see the biggest, blockbuster action movie I can find (Rush Hour with Jackie
Chan and Chris Tucker recently cheered me up immensely!).
7.
Where do you find inspiration or does it find you?
To
be brutally honest ‘ and this is going to sound really, really weird ‘ I find
that my greatest moments of inspiration come when I am sitting in a darkened
theatre watching one or both of my parents performing in a show put on by our
local amateur musical society! I know, it sounds crazy! But on about five
separate occasions, when I have been stumped on a plot point or just
contemplating a new story, I have gone to the theatre to watch them perform,
and suddenly it hits me. Bizarre, I know, but you asked!
8.
(question missing for original text)
9.
What is your ultimate goal?
Well,
to be really honest, my ambitions are actually rather modest. Ambition No.1:
selling the movie rights of Ice Station to a big Hollywood studio and seeing
Tom Cruise (or Nicolas Cage) playing the lead in a $100 million, two-and-a-half
hour, action-movie extravaganza (I’ve just optioned the movie rights to my
first book
Contest
and it’s gonna be a ripper of a movie — lots of CGI
aliens and edge-of-your-seat action). That’s not too much to ask for, now, is
it? Second to that, oh, I don’t know, maybe getting to Number 1 on the New York
Times bestseller list. As I said, very modest ambitions, really.
10.
Why do you write the kind of stories that you do?
Easy.
Because I like to read those kinds of stories. I like the books I read to be
fast-paced, roller-coaster rides to hell and back, so I write fast-paced,
roller-coaster rides to hell and back!
11.
(question missing for original text)
12.
What am I working on now?
I
am about halfway through my next novel, a monster action-thriller called
Temple. It is set in South America, in the jungle where the Amazon rainforest
meets the Andes mountains. It is really fast-paced read (faster than
Ice
Station
, but also a lot darker and more sinister). The villains will be
nastier, the action will be bigger, and the subject matter even more intense.
How’s that sound?