Fast (63 page)

            Cairns grabbed the hatch handle and twisted.

            The handle didn’t budge. His eyes opened wide in surprise.

            Fuck.

            ‘Open the door. Open the
frigging
door!’ screamed Gould, trying to push past Cairns to reach the door handle.

            Cairns rammed the back of his elbow into Gould’s face. He felt the crunch of Gould’s nose breaking. The scientist tumbled backwards. Blood shot from his nose as he staggered against the hand railing.

            The last two gunmen wheeled on the stairs, knee-deep in water, and opened fire into the corridor. The creatures thrashed just six feet away.

            Cairns ignored the wild, panicked firing of the gunmen fighting for their last few seconds of life. His eyes roamed over the hatch again.

            There is no locking mechanism on this hatch. It’s just stuck.

            He shouldered his rifle and threw his full weight into the effort.
Open…up…you…son-of-a
….

            The handle turned an inch, and then started slowly grinding open.

            Straining, Cairns felt something heavy strike the platform under his boots. The entire platform shuddered. He didn’t stop straining at the hatch. Now all four gunmen were shooting. In the confined space, the noise sounded stunning.

            A gunman was torn from the landing. There was screaming. Blood splattered up the wall beside Cairns, but he didn’t stop straining at the handle.

            Shlick!

            The handle suddenly spun in his grasp. The door thrust open under his weight. He leapt through, finding Gould almost climbing up his ass.

            ‘It’s open, fall back!’ yelled Cairns. The water frothed pink with lumpy pieces of human.

            The surviving gunmen barreled through the open hatch as a creature lurched up onto the platform. The last man dove headlong through the hatch. As the man hit the floor, Cairns slammed the hatch and dogged the handle.

            The hatch shuddered a fraction of a second later. Then, for a few moments, there was nothing but the sound of harsh breathing and water dripping from wet fatigues. Only three gunmen had made it through the hatch.

            The hatch shook violently again.

            ‘That won’t hold them long,’ warned Gould, his voice quavering. ‘They’re going to get in here.’

            Cairns listened. He slowly turned to the source of a new sound. It was coming from
within
the confined maze of corridors warrening the area they had just entered. He checked his wrist monitor. The second green light had died.

            With a deft flick of two clasps, the wrist monitor dropped to the floor. Cairns unlimbered his weapon and turned squarely towards the noise.

            ‘They’re already here.’

#

Coleman sprinted down the corridor.

            Take the pain to the enemy.

            He smiled grimly. He sprinted towards the sound of sustained gunfire. It was the sound of P190 assault rifles, the sound of Cameron Cairns having his ass kicked.

            Coleman recalled the layout of the surrounding labs with snap-shot clarity. He knew Cairns’s path. He knew from which direction the creatures approached. And he knew that if Cairns approached in a straight line towards the diving arena, he would intercept them in the staff lunch room.

            Coleman turned left without slowing. Apart from surprise, the surveillance cameras were Third Unit’s only advantage. And the advantage of surprise was about to disappear….

            He dashed into a lunchroom filled with surprised gunmen.

            Causing mayhem was normally King’s specialty, but Coleman was ready to take a crack at the title. He burst into the lunchroom from the side entrance.

            The gunmen were spread all over the room, moving across Coleman’s path. He counted at least five terrorists, including Cameron Cairns and Francis Gould. As he entered the room, two of the gunmen were looking in the wrong direction.

            Only Gould immediately spotted Coleman. He raised a hand, shouting a warning….

            But Coleman was already upon the closest gunman. The man had just reloaded a fresh magazine into his P190. He spun towards the sound of Coleman’s footsteps. He was just four feet away when Coleman lifted his colt and fired.

            The bullet entered the terrorist’s mouth, punctured his upper pallet and exploded out the back of his head like a mini-volcano. The man’s head snapped backwards as his body’s inertia kept him spinning. The dead man’s weapon clattered across the floor.

            In one move, Coleman scooped up the sliding weapon and dove into a small kitchenette on his left. The gunmen returned fire. Hitting the floor behind the serving counter, Coleman felt like he’d trespassed onto a shooting range.

            The kitchenette disintegrated like he was in an earthquake.

            Coleman was the earthquake’s epicenter.

            Crockery and broken glass smashed down on him. Two cabinet doors flew from their hinges. A tap blasted off the sink, sending water spraying upwards. Coleman lay as flat as a pancake as the bullets shredded the kitchenette around him.

            Don’t stop. Keep moving.

            He jumped up and returned fire.

            He was aware of men taking cover all over the room, but he didn’t really care. He held down the P190s trigger and swept the room like he was blowing leaves off a lawn.

            His bullets cut a horizon of destruction across the room as he scuttled towards the exit. The large self-service coffee machine in the center of the room jerked and bucked as bullets ripped away its plastic shell. Clouds of instant coffee blossomed sideways from the machine.

            Before the terrorists could gather themselves to return fire, Coleman was sprinting from the room.

#

Gould crouched behind the coffee machine as the Marine leveled the room with gunfire.

            He felt the machine twist and buck as bullets raked its surface.

            A second after the Marine finished firing there came a pregnant pause, like a break in an orchestral score, and then Cairns’s stupid gunmen returned fire.

            Gould pressed his fingers to his ears, moaning at their stupidity. Gould wasn’t a military genius, but he knew a royal cock-up when he heard it.
Bloody fools! They’re going to kill us all.
Clearly the Marine had provoked the gunmen into returning fire. A shooting match was the last thing they needed. A group of trigger-happy gunmen was not the key to survival.

            ‘Stop firing!’ Gould yelled into the mayhem.

            The firing snapped off.

            Gould still had his back pressed hard up against the coffee machine. A bullet had passed through the machine just an inch from his ear. Instant coffee powder funneled from the hole and landed on his shoe.

            ‘Hold your fire! Hold your fire!’ yelled Cairns. ‘It’s just one man.’

            Leaning sideways, Gould peered further around the side of the machine.

            The dead gunman’s corpse lay twisted up on the floor just a few meters away. Gould saw the man die. His head popped like an egg in a microwave. The blood spray actually went up and onto the ceiling.

           
He got out of this the easy way.

            Cairns retrieved the dead gunman’s ammunition.

            Maybe I should try to escape on my own
, thought Gould.
I could give Cairns the slip, then make my way back to the offices, and then
….

            Even as Gould calculated escape, he knew it for a futile fantasy. He’d never make it alone. Even if they all turned back now, they would never cross the flooded offices and reach the stairwell in one piece. They would all die on this dry island in the middle of the flooded basement.

            ‘I
told
you this was a bad idea,’ whined Gould, looking across the lunchroom to Cairns. ‘They’ve got us right where they want us now!’

            Cairns snapped back at Gould. ‘Shut up. We just need to stay intact until the next distraction starts operating.’

            Gould shook his head miserably as the inevitable began. From all around the lunchroom, the sounds on incoming creatures began echoing through the entrances. It sounded like a pack of wilder beasts had suddenly been herded into the corridors. Everyone in the room became perfectly still.

            ‘We need to move,’ said one gunman.

            ‘Which way?’ demanded another.

            Cairns rose slowly from retrieving the dead man’s ammunition. He slipped the ammunition into his body armor and cocked his head, listening to the creatures. ‘They’re everywhere. They’re all around us.’

            Cairns pointed to Gould while keeping his eyes on the nearest doorway. ‘How long until the Quarantine Center distraction takes full affect?’

            Gould checked his watch, but he already knew the answer. ‘Not soon enough.’

            ‘We need to move,’ whined the first gunman again.

            ‘Wait,’ snapped Cairns, turning his head and trying to pinpoint the closest source of movement. ‘We can’t sneak through them. We’re going to have to fight our way out.’

            Lovely. Just frigging lovely,
thought Gould.

            The sounds got closer. The gunmen turned and covered every doorway.

            ‘Stand ready,’ ordered Cairns. ‘Ready….’

           
Closer.

            Gould took a deep breath and held it. He suddenly felt the damaged coffee machine hissing and buzzing against his back. It was trying to make a coffee.

            Closer.

            The creatures were almost upon them, and Gould was sitting against the only vibration-causing fixture in the room!

           
Well, that’s just bloody peachy
.

            He reached up and frantically pushed every button on the machine he could find. Gould found the cancel button a split second before the first creature reached the lunchroom. The machine hiccupped once and then stopped churning.

            The creature completely filled the doorway. It curled its tentacles up around the doorframe and hung half-in, half out of the room.

            The gunman covering the door stood three meters from the creature, blinking like trying to wake from a nightmare. The man’s hands shook on his weapon. Everyone in the room stared at the spectacle of the terrorist and the creature standing face-to-face.

            Gould recognized the unsolvable problem immediately. The man couldn’t move, but they all needed to escape this room right now to survive. Three heart-thumping seconds later, the gunman reached the same conclusion.