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            Bora yelled, ‘Fall back, you two. Get those doors closed.’

            Both gunmen abandoned their reload and turned to run as the creatures reached the outer doorway. A tentacle tripped the man on the left, and on his way down he lurched out desperately, searching, grasping. He grabbed his companion’s leg for support. The second man fell, tripped by the first wildly grasping gunman. He rolled on his hip and kicked out at the screaming face behind the grasping hands. His boot heal connected with the man’s cheek, splitting a wide gash, but the man didn’t let go. They both started sliding towards the outer doorway.

            ‘Help me!’ pleaded the entangled gunman, clutching his companion’s leg like a lifeline. ‘Shoot it!’

            ‘Let go,’ yelled the man being dragged by his leg. He reached out and frantically searched the passing wall. His fingers found a small ventilation grill. He shoved his fingers through the slots and gripped tight. His body jerked taunt and lifted off the floor. The grill immediately started buckling from the wall. The creatures swarmed over each other in their rush to cram through the outer doorway. ‘Let…me…GO!’

            He kicked out again, this time targeting the hand gripping his fatigues. Bones snapped under the terror-fuelled kick.

            The hand let go. The snagged gunman was dragged screaming under the creatures.

            The second man didn’t stop to watch. As soon as the weight left his legs, he scrambled towards the inner cinema doors -

            - just as they slammed in his face.

            The slamming doors cut off Bora’s view of the creatures and the two prone gunmen. He didn’t have a choice. Those two men were already as good as dead.

            ‘Get up on the seats beside the doors,’ Bora directed his flanking gunmen. ‘Get ready for them to come through.’

            Bora ignored the wet screaming beyond the doors. ‘Lock those doors. We need to slow them down long enough to use our weapons.’

            The two gunmen who had slammed the inner doors searched for a way to lock them.

            They weren’t fast enough. Or, Bora realized, the doors weren’t meant to lock.

            Of the four gunmen in the cinema, two were trying to lock the swinging doors. Two more leapt up onto the seats, preparing to fill the corridor beyond with crossfire.

            With a floor-shaking
CRACK
, the swinging doors caved into the cinema. It felt like someone ram-raided the cinema with a pickup truck. The doors slammed into the two gunmen trying to lock them.

            The man on the right flew straight backwards, arms windmilling, legs bicycle-kicking. He crashed into the armrest three rows up from Bora.

            The second gunman was less fortunate.

            The door on
his
side ripped completely off its hinges. It struck the gunman with a bone-crunching
thunk
! The man flew backwards. The door flew after him. The man landed. The door landed on top of him like a giant coffin lid.

            Standing sideways in the aisle, looking down his weapon-sight, Bora watched the unfolding chaos. He forced himself to wait. His first instinct was to start firing the moment the doors caved in, but he resisted the powerful urge.

            Raw firepower wasn’t going to carry the day.

            His aisle position provided the only view into the corridor.

            The doorway framed a scene that would disturb the hardest head-case. It was a snapshot into hell. A legless torso came first through the doorway, bouncing into the cinema ahead of the wall of chaotic motion. The first gunman trapped in the corridor had lost both legs. The rest of his flesh flapped from his body. The torso landed in a seat and toppled forward.

            The second gunman was still trapped
under
the creatures. He was now just a fleshy red paintbrush.

            The gunman under the door moaned and tried to shift the weight pinning him to the aisle. He couldn’t see the horror show just three meters from his boots. If he had any sense, he would have kept still.

            The first creature through the corridor leapt onto the door. Its limbs wrapped under the door and found the moaning mess beneath. Panicked cries came from under the door.

            ‘Fire!’ yelled Bora, determining the pinned gunman was as good as dead.

            The two gunmen on the seats fired down into the aisle, right into the creature’s body. The creature spent its last few seconds tearing at what was under the door. With a horrific ripping of flesh, the creature yanked the man from under the door in four different directions.

            As the creature collapsed, the gunman on the seats to Bora’s left started firing into the corridor. He barely had his weapon on-target before a second creature charged over the seats towards him.

            It clambered over the seats with astonishing speed. Every blurred movement seemed random, but a thousand random movements striving for the same purpose was disturbingly effective. The gunman retreated awkwardly over the seats. An armrest caught his boot heal.

            He fell backwards.

            Bullets streaked across the ceiling as he toppled. Cement dust rained down. The man desperately tried to squirm backwards, impossible over the fixed armrests. The creature climbed over the man, concealing his struggles in a tent of tentacles.

            Bora moved a few feet up the aisle, searching for a clean shot of the distracted hostile. He caught a glimpse of the man’s head locked in the creature’s mouth. The huge mouth jerked up and down, pounding the man into the seat. On the third jerk, the gunman’s head came off like the cork from a champagne bottle.

            Bora saw a clear shot where the bulbous body rested over the back of two rows.

            He fired.

            Vital chunks of the creature’s body tore away. He released the trigger, and was correcting his weapon’s recoil, ready to fire again, when the next creature appeared in his peripheral vision through the doorway.

            It ignored Bora. It sensed closer prey.

            The gunman knocked flying by the doors pulled himself to his knees.

            Bora held his fire, watching the kneeling gunman race to swing his weapon on target. Every second stretched into slow motion as Bora’s senses worked overtime to assimilate the unfolding events.

            The gunman kneeling in the aisle had no chance.

            The creature slammed into his chest before his Mark 2 came even halfway up. He tumbled backwards down the aisle with the creature coiled around him. The struggling mass halted in the aisle just three meters up from Bora. Resisting the urge to fire into the pair, Bora focused on the creature attacking the gunman on the seats. Its killing frenzy made it vulnerable. It would take a few seconds for the struggle at his feet to run its gruesome course.

           
Take this one out, and there’s only two left.
Bora squeezed his trigger and sent another cluster of bullets pounding into the creature’s vulnerable abdomen. White fluid gushed over the red velvet seats. The creature slumped over the decapitated gunman, its tent of tentacles collapsing from the rapid loss of bodily fluid.

            At the same time, the second gunman on the seats fired into the struggling mess in the aisle.

            One left.

            Bora spun on the ball of his right foot, panning his weapon sight across the doorway.

            The last intact gunman did likewise, standing on the seats further up the aisle to Bora’s right, aiming into the corridor and waiting for the last creature to emerge.

            He didn’t have to wait long.

            The creature burst through the doorway and for a moment filled both sets of weapon sights.

            The gunman opened fire. Bora didn’t.

            Hovering his finger over the trigger, Bora watched the creature turn and charge up over the seats towards the weapon fire. Its movements looked as fluid as a massive octopus crawling over a coral reef.

            The gunman saw he couldn’t stop the creature in time.        

            He jumped into the next row of seats. He’d seen what happened to the last guy caught on the seats. Nimbly negotiating the head rests, he half-jumped, half-ran down the rows.

            The vibrations must have pinpointed his location.

            A tentacle snapped forward. Swinging up between his thighs, the barbed limb shredded the man’s groin. The gunman pitched forwards as his lower body jerked backwards mid-flight. His stomach smashed straight down into the back of a seat, knocking out his breath. He rolled forward over the seat, clutching the strips of flesh between his legs.

            ‘Shoot it! SHOOT IT!’ he screamed, lying sideways over two seats, hands between his legs.

            Bora watched and waited, ignoring the man’s pleas, unwilling to risk attracting the creature with ineffectual gunfire.

            Sidestepping between rows, he paralleled the creature path.

            Seeing that Bora wasn’t firing, the gunman lurched up from the seats -

            - and straight into the descending creature.

            The creature’s head smashed onto the man’s stomach, pinning him back onto the seat.

            His screams were short and sharp, impossibly louder each time, as though he couldn’t quite believe what was happening and every new injury was a surprise despite everything that had come before. The creature looked like it was trying to burrow right
through
the man. As it reached its killing frenzy, spurred by the man’s frantic struggling and thumping fists, its tentacles started tearing entire seats right off the floor, throwing up a snowstorm of red fabric and yellow padding that partially obscured the grisly assault from Bora.

            Bora slipped in a fresh ammunition clip. Two seats flew through the air and tumbled into the aisle on his left. He saw a clean shot and took it.

            As he fired, the creature’s abdomen dropped between two rows of seats and into an area widened by its own destruction. Bullets stuttered harmlessness into the seats further back.

            That’s torn it.

            Bora realized his mistake instantly. He had just become the greatest source of vibrations in the cinema. The creature reared up from between the rows and came straight at him.

            He couldn’t run left or right. The space between the rows to his left was blocked by tumbling seats; right led to the solid cinema wall. Bora had already witnessed two men attempt to race the creatures
over
the seats. The result was terminally undesirable.

            He dropped to the floor and looked under the seats. A steel frame braced every forth seat to the floor. Something that used to be a man lay under the seats further up the incline. Most importantly, however, there was enough room to crawl.

            Bora took off crawling. He scrambled down the incline as the first tentacle tore into the seats over his head.

            Crawling as fast as possible, he still moved slower than the creature. His senses told him the creature covered the seats above him like a net. The message came loud and clear through the steel framework. Tearing fabric and buckling plastic armrests sounded just inches from his head.

            The creature’s mouth appeared between the rows above him. He scrambled further down the incline. His vibrations sent the creature crazy.