Matt Reilly Stories (22 page)

Zak
Pennebaker didn’t need three degrees to figure out that one. It came out in a
blurting flurry.

‘It
started out as a supersoldier project, special ops stuff involving “Go” drugs,
amphetamines, biomechanics and brain-chip grafting. All on human subjects. But
the human subjects didn’t work out. The ape subjects, however, worked very,
very
well.’

‘Ape
subjects?’
Mother said in disbelief.

‘Yes,
apes. Gorillas. African mountain gorillas to be precise. They’re twice as
strong as human beings and the grafting technology worked perfectly with them.’

‘Not
quite perfectly,’ Hulk said, indicating the state of the observation platform.

‘Well,
no, no, not in the end,’ Pennebaker mumbled. ‘But when the apes took so well
to the tech, the project morphed from a special forces operation to a
frontline troop replacement project.’

‘What
do you mean?’ Schofield asked.

‘The
ultimate frontline trooper—lethal, vicious, remorseless, yet totally obedient.
And best of all, totally
expendable.
No more letters from a grateful
nation to grieving parents. No more one-legged veterans protesting in DC. Hell,
no more veterans full-stop—the government would save billions in entitlements
alone. Imagine you’re a general, facing a frontal assault, it’s a lot easier to
send a thousand purpose-bred apes to their deaths than fresh-faced farmboys
from Idaho.

‘And
that’s the best part, we bred the gorillas ourselves in labs, so we aren’t even
thinning the natural population, committing some crime against nature. They are
the first custom-made artificially-produced armed force in the history of
mankind. You could send them into hostile territory and they’d never question
the order, you could send them on complete suicide missions and they’d never
complain.’

‘How
the hell do you manage that?’ Hulk asked.

‘The
grafting technology,’ Schofield answered.

Pennebaker
seemed surprised that Schofield would know about this. ‘Yes. That’s correct.’

‘What’s
grafting technology?’ Mother asked.

Schofield
said, ‘You attach—or
graft
—a microchip to the brain of your subject. The
chip is biomechanical, semi-organic, so it attaches to the brain and becomes
part of it. Grafting technology has allowed quadriplegics to communicate via
computers. Their brain engages with the chip and the chip sends a signal to the
computer.
But...
I’ve heard it can also work the other way round ...’

‘That’s
right,’ Pennebaker said. ‘When an outside agent uses a grafted microchip to
control
the subject.’

‘Jesus,
Mary and Joseph,’ Mother sighed. ‘Poindexter, you musta read a million books in
college filled with words I couldn’t even understand, but didn’t you just once
think about reading
Frankenstein?’

Pennebaker
responded, ‘You have to believe me. The results were astonishing, at least at
the start. The apes were perfectly obedient and shockingly effective. We taught
them how to use weapons. We even created modified M-4 assault rifles for them,
to accommodate their bigger hands. But even when they lost their guns, they
were
still
hyper-effective—they could crush a man’s head with their bare
hands or bite his whole face off.’

As
Pennebaker spoke, Schofield stole a glance at his four men guarding the
north-south catwalk. None of them had moved.

He
keyed his UHF channel: ‘Astro? Hulk? Any contacts?’

‘Not
a thing from the north, sir.’

‘Ditto
the south, sir. It’s too quiet here.’

Schofield
turned back to Pennebaker. ‘You’re saying you tested these things against human
troops?’

Pennebaker
bowed his head. ‘Yes. Against three companies of Marines that we had brought
here from Okinawa. What are you guys?’

‘Marines,’
Mother growled.

Pennebaker
swallowed. ‘The apes annihilated them. Down on the battlefield and also on the
island proper. Five hundred gorillas versus 600 Marines. It was a hell of a
fight. The gorillas lost heaps in the opening exchange, but they just weathered
the losses without a backward step. The chips in their heads don’t allow for
ineffective emotions like fear. So the apes just kept coming, climbing over
the piles of their dead, until the Marines were toast.’

Mother
pushed her face—and pistol—into Pennebaker’s. ‘You call a Marine
toast
again,
fuck-nut, and I’ll waste you right now.’

Schofield
said softly, ‘And fear is not an ineffective emotion, Mr Pennebaker.’

Pennebaker
shrugged. ‘Whatever. You see, it was then the apes started doing ... unexpected
... things. Independent strategic thinking; killing their own wounded. And then
there were the more
unseemly
things, like cutting the hands off their
vanquished enemies and piling them up.’

‘Yeah,
heard about that,’ Mother said. ‘Charming.’

‘And
then they turned on you,’ Schofield said.

‘And
then they turned on us. The most unexpected thing of all. While we were
looking the other way, observing the exercise, they sent a sub-team to take
this tower. Took us by surprise. They’re smart,
tactical.
They
out-thought us and now they own this ship and the island. Marines, welcome to
the end of your lives.’

‘We’re
not dead yet,’ Schofield said.

‘Oh,
yes you are. You’re completely screwed,’ Pennebaker said. ‘You have to
understand:
you can’t beat these things.
They are stronger than you are.
They are faster. Christ, they’ve been
bred
to fight for longer, to stay
awake for ninety-six hours at a time—four days—so if they don’t kill you
straight away, they’ll just wait you out and get you later, like they did with
the last few regular Marines. Add to that, their technological advantages—Signet-5
radio-locaters, surgically-implanted digital headsets—and your headstones are
practically engraved. These things are the
evolution
of the modern
soldier, Captain, and they’re so damned good, even their makers couldn’t
control them.’

Mother
shook her head. ‘How do you geniuses manage to keep doing things like this—?’

Without
warning, a voice exploded in Schofield’s earpiece: Astro’s voice.

‘Oh
God no, we missed them! Shit! Captain! Duck!’

Standing
with his back to the main hangar, Schofield didn’t turn to verify Astro’s
warning.

He
just obeyed, trusting his man, and dived to the floor—a bare instant before a
black man-sized
creature
came swooping in over his head and slammed to
the floor right where he’d been standing.

Had
Schofield remained standing for even a nanosecond longer, the K-Bar knife in
the creature’s hand would have slashed his throat.

The
creature now stood before him and for the briefest of moments Schofield got a
look at it.

It
was indeed an ape, perhaps five-and-a-half feet tall, with straggly black hair.
But this was no ordinary jungle gorilla. It wore a lightweight helmet, from
the front of which hung an orange visor that covered the animal’s eyes. On the
helmet’s rear were some stubby antennas. Kevlar body armour covered its chest
and shoulders. Wrist guards protected its arms. And in a holster on its back
was a modified M-4.

Goddamn.

But
that was all Schofield got to see, for right then the ape bared its jaws and
launched itself at him—just as it was shot to bits, about a million bits, as
Mother and Hulk nailed it with their MP-7s.

Then
Astro yelled:
‘Marines! Look sharp! They’re not coming in via the catwalk!
They’re coming at you from across the ceiling!’

Only
now did Schofield stand and spin to check the ceiling of the hangar near his
tower.

Coming
across it, using the complex array of pipes, lights, pulleys and rails that
lined the hangar’s ceiling, was a phalanx of about forty black gorillas, all
dressed like the dead one and moving across the superhigh ceiling with ease.

And
then Schofield’s horror became complete as the nearest ape—hanging upside-down
from three of its four limbs, raised its free hand, levelled an M-4 at the
tower and opened fire.

* * * *

SECOND
ASSAULT

HELL
ISLAND

1600
HOURS

1
AUSUST, 2005

* * * *

VII

The
apes moved across the ceiling with incredible speed, clambering across it
faster than a human could run across land. And the fact that they were more
than a hundred feet off the floor didn’t seem to faze them at all.

Schofield’s
Marines opened fire and the first three gorillas dropped off the ceiling in
explosions of blood, shrieking.

But
the others just kept on coming, firing as they advanced.

The
man beside Schofield, a young private known as Cheese, was hit square in the
face and thrown backwards. Another Marine was hit in the chest and flopped to
the floor.

Then
the force of apes split and started to fan out around the tower, like an ocean
wave washing around a rock.

Mother
was busy unleashing a withering volley of fire at three of the incoming beasts
when a fourth ape landed with a thud on the open window-ledge of the tower
right next to her and threw itself at her from the side.

Ape
and Marine went sprawling across the floor, struggling violently, desperately.
Since both had lost their guns in the tumble, this would be the worst kind of
battle: hand-to-hand, to the death.

Now
Mother was strong but the ape was stronger and it quickly got the upper hand,
headbutting her hard and then throwing her against a nearby table. With a
roar, the ape hurled itself at her, aiming its bared teeth at her nose…

…only
to catch one of Mother’s grenades in its mouth. Mother had whipped it around
and jammed it into the creature’s jaws.

‘Get
a taste of this,’ she said, releasing the spoon and rolling away a second
before the gorilla’s head simply exploded, transforming instantly into a shower
of red spray.

The
force of gorillas was now converging on the high tower from all sides, raining
automatic fire on the Marines inside it—who returned that fire with interest.

Then
the gorillas started leaping en masse down onto the tower’s observation
platform—in one instance, four of them crash-tackled one of Schofield’s
Marines, taking him down with their bare hands. One gorilla was ripped to
shreds by the Marine’s final spray of fire, but the rest got him. The hapless
man fell screaming, covered by the frenzied apes.

Given
the gorillas’ suicidal frontal-assault strategy, their numbers dropped fast.
Forty had quickly become twenty, but even then the numbers game was still in
their favour: Schofield’s ten-man Marine team was now down to seven, three on
the tower, plus the four over on the catwalk supplying cover fire.

‘Marines!’
Schofield called. ‘Get off this tower! Back to the catwalk! Now!’

He
began to retreat—pushing Zak Pennebaker in front of him—loosing three shots as
he did so, dropping three gorillas that had just landed inside the tower. But
the three apes didn’t die; they clawed after him despite their wounds and it
took
six more shots
to neutralise them all.

A
gurgled scream as the Marine beside Schofield was shot in the throat. He fell,
and even though he was already mortally wounded, two gorillas descended on him
with a fury, firing their guns into his body, tearing at his face with their
hands.

Jesus
...
Schofield’s
eyes went wide.

Of
the six Marines who had stepped onto the tower, only he and Mother remained.

They
retreated, with Pennebaker between them, back across the gangway-bridge to the
long north-south catwalk, chased by the twenty gorillas.