‘No. He’s fine at the moment, but we’re about to go under, Captain. We’re under siege. We’re all going to be dead very soon of we can’t think of something!’
The line was quiet for a moment, and Harrison realized Coleman hadn’t known up until now if his son had survived to reach the Evac Center.
Coleman came back on the line. ‘What’s you status, Corporal?’
Harrison keyed his headset radio so Sullivan could hear the conversation with the Captain. ‘We’ve got about four minutes until this place is overrun. The creatures are busting apart the top-deck right now. We can’t hold them.’
‘Communications?’
‘The blackout is still up,’ answered Harrison, getting a nod of confirmation from Dana. ‘We’re broadcasting a message, but there’s been no gap in the C-Guards. Captain, I’ve got nearly two hundred evacuees in here, including children. Any chance of an evac?’
The line was quiet for a moment. Harrison suspected bad news was coming.
‘Harrison, listen carefully,’ said Coleman. ‘This line isn’t secure. The Complex has been overrun by terrorists. I estimate their force now to be approximately twenty-five gunmen. They’re being led by Cameron Cairns. The creatures are plant-based. They were grown by Francis Gould using Dr Vanessa Sharp’s original stolen templates. Harrison, the creatures are attracted to vibration sources. I repeat, the creatures are attracted to vibrations. They will attack any source of vibrations. You need to shut down everything making vibrations in the Evac Center.’
‘Already on it,’ replied Harrison, pointing at Dana. ‘I’m redirecting the teams to shut everything down right now.’
‘Harrison,’ Coleman continued. ‘I don’t care what it takes. Sabotage everything if you have to, but shut down every system with moving parts. Then keep everyone quiet and still. With all the vibrations from the main Complex, that should keep you safe if you can do it fast enough.’
‘Understood, sir. But one thing. About the terrorists. There was something about their weapon fire. I’ve never heard gunfire like that.’
‘I know. I heard it too. I’m starting to suspect there is more going on here than we realize. More than just the creatures and the templates. Listen, Harrison. We haven’t got time to talk. You need to shut everything down. I mean everything. Get started right away. And Harrison, tell David that his mother is safe, and that I’m here, and that we’ll be coming to get him very soon.’
‘You bet.’
‘Vanessa - stay safe!’ called out Dana from behind Harrison, but the line was already dead.
Harrison released the talk button. His mind whirled with everything he’d learned. Their immediate goal stood clear. Thanks to Coleman, they now had a chance.
He activated the emergency Center-wide speaker system and bellowed into the microphone.
‘Listen up, everyone! We know how to stall the creatures! We need to shut down every moving system. Every single system in the Center needs to be shut down or destroyed. And I mean NOW!’
Chapter 8
Coleman lowered his hand from the intercom.
Vanessa was right up beside him, staring into the intercom as though she had expected to hear David’s voice.
He caught Vanessa’s attention. ‘What are the chances Cairns is monitoring that line?’
‘Unlikely,’ she answered. ‘It’s a direct line running from the school to the Evac Center. Staff insisted on it before they agreed to bring their families here. It doesn’t get redirected through the admin hub, so it can’t be blocked. It would have to be physically severed. I doubt Gould even knows about it. He didn’t exactly have time for children.’
She glanced at the intercom. ‘Can your people shut down all the systems in time?’
Coleman hoped so. ‘If it’s humanly possible, Harrison will do it.’
‘But there’s a flip side,’ said Vanessa. ‘What’s the next largest source of vibrations after the Evac Center?’
Coleman understood her meaning. ‘That would be us and the terrorists.’
Vanessa nodded. ‘More and more creatures are going to come looking for us now.’
‘I’m happy with that if it keeps David safe,’ said Coleman. ‘We need to locate Fifth Unit’s communication pack and call for help.’
Coleman joined King and Forest outside the classroom. He followed the short corridor until it opened into a familiar arcade. North and south ended at revolving doors. The south door was where Coleman had used his combat knife to slow the creatures. He could also see the corridor that led to the pool room.
Maybe it was paranoia residue from the first ambush, but he felt suddenly vulnerable.
The far side of the arcade beckoned from across twenty meters of exposed, tiled floor. Besides the two revolving doors, six exits served the oval arcade. Three down the east and three down the west. It looked textbook ripe for an ambush.
In the middle stood some kind of digital directory tower. About the size of a phone-booth, it provided the only cover for anyone crossing the arcade.
Wait, signaled Coleman back down the corridor.
Forest grasped Vanessa’s arm. She didn’t know their field signals.
Coleman scanned the arcade entrances once more before darting towards the directory. He cut straight towards the feature, moving low, his CMAR-17 ready to return fire. Reaching the directory, he almost slipped. Recovering awkwardly, he pressed his back against the smooth feature and checked his footing. He’d almost slipped in water from the overflowing pool room.
He signaled the others to come. Forest dashed across the open space.
Vanessa crouched to come next.
Coleman jerked up his palm to halt her from starting her maneuver. King pulled her back into concealment. Coleman had heard something. Quiet talking sounded from behind the directory board. No, wait, it was the directory board. Twisting, he studied the board over his shoulder. The touch-sensitive screen had been activated. Coleman searched for how to shut down the recorded monologue that he’d accidentally triggered. The board now showed a complicated wire frame diagram. After a moment’s study, he realized the rotating digitized model represented the entire research Complex.
Almost the entire Complex, Coleman corrected himself. The model’s designer wasn’t aware of the military’s hidden additions.
Coleman found the control to pause the display, halting the audio mid-sentence and freezing the wire frame diagram. Part of the diagram caught his attention. It was the way the electrical conduits ran vertically through the Complex. The main power room occupied the basement, but local transformers and switchboards interrupted the electrical conduits on every level. Coleman memorized the pattern of electrical subsystems before he signaled Vanessa to start moving.
As she scurried across the gap, Coleman examined the three passageways heading to the west.
The middle passage led to the pool room and the Pave Hawk wreckage. No joy that way. He already knew the pool room was a hazardous obstacle to cross. The passage further south headed back into the administration hub proper.
After glancing around the directory, Coleman sprinted diagonally towards the third passageway.
At the same time, King made his move to the directory. Forest came just seconds behind Coleman.
Coleman read the large white on blue sign just inside the passageway:
CAFETERIA
Breakfast 7am - 9am
Lunch 11am - 1pm
Dinner 6pm - 8pm
Below the sign was a bloody handprint. Someone fleeing from the cafeteria had left their mark.
With a sense of deepening apprehension at what he might discover, Coleman sidestepped down the wall, peering into the cafeteria.
It resembled a high school or university cafeteria. Potted plants and vending machines dotted among the large rectangular tables. Judging by the number of discarded dinner trays, breakfast was in full swing when the creatures attacked. Coleman imagined the horror as the creatures tore through the patrons. The evidence lay e
verywhere.
Bloody shoeprints covered the cafeteria’s tiled floor where small groups had fled around the room away from the creatures, unable to escape through the tightly-packed crowd blocking the exit.
A macabre work in crimson surrounded the exit itself. Blood stains painted panic and mayhem. People had been pushing from the back. At one stage the crowd fell. People had slipped over in the blood trying to regain their footing.
Others had tried less conventional escape routes.
Coleman noticed scuff marks up the vending machines where people had desperately tried to climb away from the creatures. A man wearing a bright yellow Hawaiian shirt lay crushed under a toppled vending machine. His was one of the few bodies still intact.
‘There’s pieces everywhere,’ murmured Forest. ‘How many are in here?’
King said, ‘You’d have to do a head count.’
Coleman knew that King was being quite literal. You would have to actually count the number of heads in the cafeteria to work out how many people all the limbs and bodies belonged to.
‘How did blood get up there on the ceiling?’ asked Forest, gaping upwards.
‘I can think of plenty of ways,’ answered King.
Vanessa wasn’t speaking. Her eyes took in the details, but the emotions weren’t reaching her face anymore.
Coleman scanned the community notice board, desperate to focus on anything but the carnage. The notice board made it worse. Coleman’s uncle had once claimed that a careful observer could infer a lot about a person from their bookshelf. The type of books on display and there order on the shelf revealed their owner’s character. Coleman had discovered this same principle applied with notice boards. The social culture in a large organization stood revealed through its notice board. Book groups, exercise classes, chess competitions, swimming comps - like nothing else, seeing the notice board reinforced in Coleman the pointless waste of human life scattered around the cafeteria.
Thank god David and Vanessa weren’t sharing breakfast in here when the attack started.
He shook off the awful feeling and pointed out the stainless steel serving station down the far end. Beyond stretched the kitchen.
‘Stay close to the wall,’ he urged, edging along under the notice board. The others followed closely, negotiating fallen pot plants and toppled chairs.
They ducked under the serving counter and wove quickly through the kitchen.
‘Here,’ said Coleman, indicating a plastic roller door at the rear of the kitchen. A small motor at the top raised and lowered the door.
Forest quietly slid across the door’s two deadbolts. King disengaged the small motor with his multipliers. Coleman secured his CMAR-17 and drew his colt.
He pointed to the roller door’s base. ‘Knife.’
Forest knelt and slid his combat knife under the door. He twisted the handle, lifting the door an inch. When no reaction resulted, Coleman slipped his fingers through the gap and lifted the door another three inches. He pressed his cheek to the floor and spied underneath.
Beyond stretched the northern section of the pedestrian loop. They crossed this area before, but fleeing after the pool room skirmish, Coleman had absorbed only the barest details. The area beyond the door resembled an open-plan airport VIP lounge. Furniture stretched away for about fifty meters, surrounding a marble fountain. Mostly cane easy chairs and marble coffee tables surrounded the fountain, but a few large couches and solid wood chairs dotted the mix. The furniture was arranged in circles. Or rather, it had been; it lay all over the place now. People had also been breakfasting out there when the evac started.
Thirty meters to Coleman’s right sat some kind of small motorized vehicle linked to a train of pallets. It resembled a golf buggy towing a row of open-sided dumpsters. The procession had been abandoned.
It all looked clear.
Their goal lay across the lounge area.
Two entrances provided access to the dormitories recessed behind the north wall. Both passageways linked back to the north stairwell.
Coleman groaned inwardly. It was too much open space to cross. He lifted the roller door halfway open.
‘Is there another way?’ asked Forest. ‘It’s pretty exposed.’
King didn’t comment either way.
‘I’m open to suggestions,’ offered Coleman. ‘But we need to move now.’
There were no options. The upper section of northern stairwell was Fifth Unit’s insertion point and the best place to start tracking them.
Coleman touched Vanessa’s arm. ‘We’ll cross to the fountain first. I’m up front. You come straight after me.’
She nodded and took position beside Coleman.
Coleman waited for King and Forest to get ready. ‘Cover us until we reach the furniture and then start your move.’
Coleman struck out towards the fountain. After fifteen meters he dodged among the furniture, sidestepping couches and overturned coffee tables. He glanced back to check Vanessa’s progress. Forest and King wove a path behind her, keeping a protective triangle around Vanessa.
Coleman sensed something amiss.
He stopped.
The layout of the furniture ahead appeared wrong. Three cane couches were out of order. Strangely enough, even chaos had a pattern, and this wasn’t it.
Vanessa bumped into Coleman. ‘What the…?’
Then it all happened.
Three gunmen leapt from concealment behind the couches. Arranged in a semi-circle, they had hidden about fifteen feet apart to avoid friendly crossfire. The gunmen hardly straightened before Third Unit reacted.
Coleman fired his colt. The power of the bullet jerked up his arm, and a fraction of a second after, snapped back the terrorist’s head.
The bullet collapsed the man’s forehead into the frontal lobe of his brain.
Forest swung his CMAR-17 to the left and grouped three bullets squarely into his target’s chest. The terrorist hadn’t even raised his weapon before he tumbled backwards into a magazine stand. The entire stand collapsed under the gunman, burying him in periodicals and newspapers.
King fired on the move. His first round punched through a couch. A puff of yellow stuffing marked where the bullet exited the back of the couch and slammed into the gunman’s hip. The second and third bullet found the man’s solar plexus and right lung.
The gunman stumbled backwards, but didn’t fall.
King closed with his target like a higher-order predator. In three steps he leapt over the couch. On his downward flight, still fully in the air, he smashed his CMAR-17 into the terrorist’s face. His full weight carried the blow. The bridge of the gunman’s nose smashed straight back into his sinus cavity. The man collapsed backwards over a marble coffee table.
Coleman saw King flying through the air, ramming his weapon into the terrorist’s face. The gunman couldn’t recover, but King wasn’t finished. He redefined the word overkill.
King rolled on the ground and found his feet over his collapsed target. He grabbed the gunman’s bloody chin. With a sickening wrench, he snapped the man’s neck.
The entire violent exchange lasted four seconds. The three terrorists hadn’t gotten off a single shot.
But even as Forest’s target fell into the magazine stand, as King had launched himself into the air, Coleman knew that these three gunmen weren’t alone. They represented the trigger of a much larger trap.
Gunmen poured from the northern dormitories. At least nine sprinted towards the pallet train, firing as they ran.
Forest was immediately hit.
Turning towards the new attack, Forest was blasted off his feet. He spun in the air and crashed down hard.
The couch behind King erupted in clouds of yellow stuffing. Two horizontal lines of submachine gunfire streaked towards him. He dove towards the overturned marble coffee table. Tilted up on one end, the table served as a marble shield. He smacked down on his hands and knees behind the solid square of marble just as the bullets pounded across the marble table
top.
Coleman threw his full bodyweight into Vanessa, knocking them both sprawling behind the fountain. Bullets filled the air where she had stood gawping seconds before.
‘Forest’s down! Forest is down!’ yelled Coleman into his radio. ‘I got nine gunmen running for the pallets!’
Vanessa scrambled towards the fountain.
Coleman popped his colt over the first tier of the three-tiered fountain and snapped off two fast shots. It was too dangerous to look over the edge and see if they had done any good.
Next he heard a terrible sound. It was a Mark 2 submachine gun firing fully automatic behind his position. Had they missed a hidden gunman? If so, the gunman now had a clear line of fire on Third Unit’s exposed flank. Coleman spun onto his back and swung his colt around, praying he could drill the new threat from his position behind the fountain.
But his pistol sights only found King.
When King dove for cover, he must have landed within reach of the dead terrorist’s dropped gun, because two seconds later he popped up from behind the marble tabletop and opened fire again with the submachine gun back at the terrorists.
King grimaced as he cut loose. He hosed the entire clip at the running targets. His huge muscles strained to keep the weapon’s recoil on target. He discharged ninety rounds in under three seconds.
They were three seconds of ear-splitting thunder.
Coleman saw two terrorists go down under the 5.7 mm rounds. They were the only two who hadn’t reached hard cover behind the pallets. Their legs were blown out from under them. The other seven gunmen including Bora ducked down behind the pallets.
Damn! Damn! Damn! thought Coleman.
Bora’s intention was clear: he was ensuring Third Unit couldn’t reach the dormitories or retreat back to the cafeteria kitchen. Also, the closer range far better suited the terrorists’ submachine guns.
As the two wounded terrorists began hauling themselves towards the pallets, Coleman looked back through the furniture for Forest.
Forest was dragging himself towards the collapsed magazine stand. Beside the stand stood a dispensary counter for returning trays, like at a fast food restaurant. The narrow counter was loaded with cutlery and napkins and empty plastic serving trays. It was mounted on a marble block about the height of two telephone books.
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