Fast

by Shane M Brown

  If King tried to move, the gunmen would cut him down; if he stayed still, the creature would tear him apart.

  Lying flat on his back, King couldn’t see the creature approaching over the steel hump. He could certainly hear it though.

  King twisted awkwardly as the churning water started flecking his face. He struggled to peer around the steel lid. More water splashed down on him from the creature’s thrashing approach. He touched a wet spot on his cheek and then looked at his fingers. Realization dawned across his dark features.

  ‘Ah, Captain, where’s that second hostile?’

  Coleman decided not to tell King for the moment. ‘Sit tight, King. You’re okay.’

  Marlin crouched beside Forest in the change-room corridor’s arched entrance. He heard the lie and stared hard at Coleman. King was in deep trouble and everyone knew it. King looked back at Marlin for confirmation.

  Coleman shook his head slightly at Marlin. Don’t do anything stupid, Marlin.

  ‘Don’t worry, big fellah,’ lied Marlin. ‘It’s a long way off.’

  King rested his head back. The churning water soaked him now. He lifted his rifle over his face to keep the splashing water from his eyes.

  Coleman stopped thinking of all the ways they were in trouble and scanned the room for options. He spotted something where the tiles had been blasted away near King’s boots. A cord ran under the floor, previously concealed by the tiles. Coleman followed the path of the cord in both directions.

  After a second he keyed his radio so he wouldn’t be heard by the gunmen. ‘Marlin, Forest, I want you to get out of here. Open that hatch and get moving.’

  ‘You want us to leave you in there?’ Forest cut in incredulously.

  ‘We’re not leaving you trapped in there,’ Marlin stated flatly. He was speaking to Coleman but staring at King.

  Coleman insisted. ‘I’m about to try something pretty wild. Get in that wall and start moving. Trust me.’

  Marlin pulled a fresh magazine of ammunition from his combat vest. He caught King’s eye, and then slid the ammunition along the tiles.

  King slapped his wet palm down on the sliding ammo. Water trickled from his elbow and wrist. He lifted his hand and pointed one thick finger steadily at Marlin. ‘See you soon, Romeo.’

  ‘It’s the sixth cubicle,’ Marlin said, pointing back at his best friend. ‘Don’t be late.’

  King awkwardly slipped the magazine into his fatigues. ‘Long live the King, baby. I’ll be there.’

  Marlin blinked once at King and then ran for the access hatch. Forest hesitated for a moment. He looked from King to Coleman and then lowered his gaze as though making a hard decision. He disappeared from the archway.

  King pivoted and squinted at Coleman through the water splashing all around his prone form. Looking into King’s intelligent face, Coleman realized King knew all along how close the creature was getting.

  King smirked back. ‘Pretty wild? Wilder than this?’

  Coleman nodded and started inching along the wall to his right. His goal was a small panel set about three meters further along into the wall.

  ‘Get ready to run, King.’

  ‘Run where? When?’

  ‘Trust me,’ urged Coleman. ‘You’ll know when.’

  The creature thrashed closer to the pool edge. Once its tentacles found traction it would be right on top of King.

  Coleman had about four seconds to act. He lunged to his right, in plain sight of the gunmen, and hoped his hunch about the wall panel proved correct. He yanked down on the single lever inside the panel and dove back for cover.

  The result was immediate.

  The machine beside King started unrolling the heavy plastic pool cover. The front of the pool cover, an aluminum rail, started pushing the creature away from the edge, away from King. The creature’s tentacles smashed into the pool cover, tearing away the aluminum rail in seconds, but it was already getting thrust back towards the gunmen’s end of the pool. Behind the aluminum rail, solid strips of interlocking plastic kept pushing the creature further and further away.

  The cover pushed the creature halfway down the pool before the gunmen understood Coleman’s action. As one they opened fire. The room filled with the thunder of multiple submachine guns, but most of the creature’s bulk remained concealed underwater from their firing line.

  Coleman jerked his head around the locker while the gunmen were distracted. King’s reprieve would last only a few seconds.

  It’s time to play the wild card.

  Coleman swung his CMAR-17 towards the ceiling and opened fire.

  He wasn’t shooting at the second creature. He aimed at the plexiglass around the Pave Hawk. The plexiglass the helicopter had almost smashed through when it crashed into the plug.

  The damaged plexiglass splintered and cracked. Huge chunks dropped away and smacked onto the rigid pool cover. His rifle ran dry. Coleman slapped home a fresh clip of ammunition.

  As he started firing again, three things happened. The weapons inspector’s corpse cartwheeled down and whumped onto the extending pool cover. Two gunmen surged from the doorway and charged up either side of the pool.

  And the helicopter started shifting.

  In an explosion of sparks and a horrendous screech of tearing metal, the US Marine Corps Pave Hawk helicopter fell out of ceiling.

  #

  Dr Vanessa Sharp stood frozen to the spot.

  Three monsters were trashing her laboratory.

  There was no other way to describe the spectacle.

  ‘My god,’ she breathed.

  She should be concerned about the entire population within the Complex, but only one thought gripped her mind.

  David.

  Was her son safe or in as much danger as herself? Where these things on every level?

  Please god, let him be safe. Let him be sealed up in the Evacuation Center.

  She needed to find him, and to do that, she needed to survive the next sixty seconds.

  Vanessa had been checking all her staff were evacuated when the creatures swarmed into her main lab. Now they were attacking her centrifugal separator. The separator half collapsed and bucked under the assault like a drunken mechanical bull, driving the creatures berserk.

  Vanessa Sharp was five foot nine. Living underground hadn’t quite bleached the tan from her skin. With her dark green eyes and wide smile, the media often described her as attractive. This always surprised her. For the last twelve months, more and more she imagined herself evolving into some kind of permanent underground denizen. A perfect manifestation of Darwin’s law of natural selection, her research and laboratory were the strongest pressures defining her appearance. She kept her brown hair short enough not to interfere with any of the lab’s safety equipment. Her clothes had to be comfortable and practical, yet tight enough not to catch in pieces of moving apparatus. Today she wore white Adidas sneakers, brown cargo pants with big pockets over each thigh, and the lime green Ralph Lauren polo shirt she’d brought from the gift shop. Vanessa was the Head of Genetic Research, and no single person had done more to improve the quality of life for developing countries in the last three years.

  She also liked to swear when the occasion presented.

  ‘Fuuuck,’ she breathed quietly.

  The creatures finally ripped the separator from its power supply. Vanessa reached into her pocket for the small remote control. Glancing down, she thumbed through the remote’s settings until she found what she was after. She hit the activate button.

  The multi-function remote activated the bank of rotary agitators a little way across the lab. The agitators whirred to life and accelerated to full speed.

  The creatures reciprocated, launching themselves at the agitators.

  This had been Vanessa’s survival technique of the last few minutes: activate something to distract the creatures, take a few steps, activate something else, take another few steps….

  Thankfully, the creatures’ choice of target had been i
mmediately apparent. Vibrations. The creatures attacked anything that hummed or ticked or spun.

  Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet reached her telephone.

  Vanessa was now two-thirds of the way across the lab. Her primary research area was a massive circular laboratory packed with specialized genetic research equipment. She could monitor and activate most things remotely. More important with every step however, and spaced around the lab, were the exits to her nine sub-labs. This entire network of core labs was interconnected by a system of corridors with descending plexiglass pathogen barriers.

  She knew her life could be seconds from ending, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the creatures. Call it professional curiosity. Like the volcanologist approaching flowing lava. These creatures represented her lava, the dangerous end of her science. The moment she saw them, she knew it was her science that had produced these abominations; these were the corrupted results of her stolen research materials.

  The creatures were less than fifteen feet away when she finally heard the feminine voice come over the lab’s audio system:

  This is a level three containment emergency. This laboratory will seal in ten seconds. Nine…eight…seven…

  She could have kissed the owner of that voice. This was her chance. The creatures’ rampage had finally triggered the labs to seal as a safety precaution. Her remote device couldn’t control the plexiglass barriers. The barriers could only be opened from a computer workstation or by one of the manual controls mounted shoulder-high beside every exit. Vanessa had designed it that way.

  Now she needed to get the timing right. She watched the six plexiglass barriers descending around the main lab.

  She took a deep breath. The exit to E-lab was twenty feet away.

  Wait…wait…NOW!

  She took off sprinting towards E-lab.

  …six…five…four…

  The creatures launched straight after her, but she only concentrated on beating the plexiglass. The barrier descended fast. Maybe too fast? Getting under the barrier was going to be a very close thing. She decided she’d rather be crushed to death than share the fate of her centrifugal separator.

  …three…two…one…

  She dropped, hit the floor and slid. Her legs, hips and torso slipped under the gap, but her head didn’t make it. She felt the barrier clip her nose and clamp onto her forehead. The vice-like pressure was excruciating. She twisted her head to the side and heaved against the plexiglass. The bottom edge of the barrier viciously scraped her scalp. Her head squeezed under. The barrier joined the floor as the creature collided into the plexiglass only inches from her face. She scooted away on her butt as the plexiglass bowed towards her. Her head spun from the near-death experience. A small gash cut through her right eyebrow.

  The plexiglass started cracking.

  It won’t hold.

  The creature wedged itself against the barrier and began pushing outwards. Its limbs were twelve hydraulic jacks applying steadily-increasing pressure against the barrier. The one-inch-thick plexiglass functioned as a barrier to micro-organisms, not marauding man-eaters.

  As Vanessa turned and ran, she heard the plexiglass barrier shatter behind her.

  #

  ‘Holy shit!’ yelled King as the helicopter fell.

  Coleman shoved off from beside the locker as the helicopter plummeted. King scrambled to his feet. They sprinted towards the changing rooms.

  Dropping through the air, the seventeen meter long Pave Hawk looked as big as the pool itself.

  The unrolling pool cover never stood a chance. The last moments of its existence just amplified the Pave Hawk’s impact.

  It made a much bigger wave.

  Water roared from the pool in every direction. The gunmen sprinting up both sides were smashed sideways. The wave had nowhere to go, so the force pushed their bodies straight up the walls like water sloshing up the sides of a bathtub. The wave thrust the creature through the doorway into the midst of the gunmen.

  Coleman only glimpsed this unexpected and highly-satisfying outcome as he and King tumbled from their feet. He glimpsed King disappearing under the wall of water moments before his own legs swept sideways. A blurred view of the ceiling washed into a world of flailing limbs and muffled sound. The wave caught his body armor, rolling him underwater along the floor. His assault rifle smacked up hard under his chin. Floor tiles flew past his eyes. His body pounded into the floor once, twice, three times, then he realized the last jarring impact was his body hitting the back wall of the pool room.

  He thrust out his arms, but it felt like trying to stand up in a giant washing machine.

  He felt himself getting dragged back towards the pool with the retreating water.

  If he ended up in the pool he was as good as dead!

  Coleman scrabbled with his hands on the tiled bottom but there was nothing to grab. Suddenly his boots hit the steel lid that King had sheltered behind. He lunged out with his left hand and caught the edge of the lid. His body swung around and stretched out underwater, hanging from the lid.

  For a second it took everything he had just to fight the current, but then the flow dropped away and he found himself kneeling in just inches of water.

  Light and sound instantly assaulted his senses. The room was brighter without the Pave Hawk blocking the skylight. The surprised gunmen down the far end were firing into the creature just thrust into their ranks. Two gunmen struggled in the pool.

  Through a confusing haze, a suddenly recognizable face appeared. A huge man stood at the far end of the pool, calmly refitting his radio earpiece. He watched Coleman intently, ignoring the men struggling in the pool. He appeared to have raised himself from the water just moments before Coleman.

  The man carried a P190 Mark 2 strapped across his chest, but he hadn’t fired. Being the first to recover from the wave, he had the advantage over Coleman, but for some reason he hadn’t yet claimed that advantage.

  Bora met Coleman’s gaze. It was a strange moment, almost as though Bora reluctantly congratulated Coleman on the helicopter stunt.

  Bora’s eyes flicked to Coleman’s right.

  It was King, struggling to his feet. King had ridden out the wave by gripping the bottom of the service vent.

  Coleman glanced at King and then back in time to see Bora raising his Mark 2.

  ‘King, run! Go!’ yelled Coleman, already dashing towards his friend. Water spouts exploded around their boots as Bora opened fire.

  The two Marines dove towards the changing room entrance as bullets smacked into the wall behind them. They hit the wet floor side by side and slid straight into the change room.

  Coleman jumped to his feet and counted the shower cubicles as he ran.

  ‘…four, five, six – here!’

  He shouldered open the door and spotted the open access hatch.

  King didn’t need any encouragement; he dove straight through the hole.

  Coleman ducked in after him and then spent a few precious seconds fitting the access panel back into place. Hopefully the gunmen wouldn’t notice the access hatch on their first search of the change rooms. He could already hear them storming the change rooms and kicking open cubicle doors.

  Neither Marine spoke. They didn’t dare draw the gunmen’s attention. King switched on his flashlight. They had standing room only in very narrow passage heading north. The passage was crowded with pipes and ducts. King shuffled side-on down the passage, easing his rifle away from metal pipes as he squeezed and ducked through the obstacles.

  Any sound would give them away. To Coleman, even the water dripping off his soaked fatigues sounded alarmingly loud.

  He glanced nervously backwards every few steps. It wouldn’t take the gunmen long to find their escape route. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but Coleman knew the danger of being caught in this tight passage. He sensed it like an instinctive vulnerability up the middle of his back. They needed to get out of here quickly.

  In the darkness ahead, a block of light appeared. Ma
rlin squatted in the passageway, opening a hatch from inside the wall. He scanned the area beyond and then climbed quietly through the block of light. Forest emerged from the darkness and followed. They kept their actions noiseless. As King crouched through the exit, Coleman heard the gunmen open the access panel behind him.

  ‘Go-go-go!’ hissed Coleman as a submachine gun appeared through the hole.

  Coleman dropped and scrambled towards the exit as the passage filled with ricocheting gunfire. Halfway out the hole, he felt King’s powerful hand grab the back of his body armor. With a grunt, King swung Coleman’s entire body out of hatch.

  The moment Coleman’s boots swung clear, Forest poked his CMAR-17 back through the hatch and returned fire. When he stopped firing, only silence filled the passageway.

  Forest gingerly slid the access hatch back into place. ‘I don’t think they’ll follow us through here. They’ll have to backtrack and go around.’

  Coleman found his feet and slapped King’s beefy shoulder. ‘Thanks for the ride, big-guy.’

  Marlin looked up from his skirmish map. ‘We’ve come out north of the admin hub. This is still the pedestrian loop, but now on the north side.’

  Coleman understood what Marlin meant. Despite the complexity of the administration hub, the habitation level was a fairly simple design. In the center of the level, the administration hub was contained within a huge rectangle of open space that stretched right to the edges of the Complex. This open space circled the level like a race track scattered with water features, communal lounges and eateries. The area gave residents a place to stretch their legs between the shops and arcades that lined the outer walls.

  When Third Unit first entered the Complex, they had encountered the evacuees fleeing through the southern section of this same loop. Third Unit had cut straight through the middle of the admin hub and emerged into the northern part of the loop.

  The four Marines regrouped with their backs pressed to the admin hub’s north wall.

  ‘Okay,’ declared King. ‘What the fuck is going on in this place?’

  ‘What are those things?’ hissed Marlin. ‘Are they animals or what?’