King’s plan worked. The creatures reacted immediately. They swarmed up and over the forklift, obscuring Coleman’s view of King struggling at the controls.
Coleman dashed to the pool. He dropped and slid on his knees to a stop beside Forest. He reached into the pool and grabbed Forest’s fatigues. ‘It’s okay, Forest. I’ve gotcha, baby. I’m pulling you up. You’re gunna be fine.’
Coleman pulled Forest from the pool as smoothly as he could. Forest screamed with his eyes, but kept his teeth locked together. Blood ran everywhere.
Coleman knelt over his friend and looked for bullet wounds. If he’s taken any hits from the super-bullets….
Coleman didn’t finish the thought. He looked into Forest’s face. Forest struggled to breathe. He couldn’t even speak. Blood bubbled from his nose now too.
He’s hurt bad. He’s got internal injuries.
Water ran off Coleman’s face and dripped into Forest’s. King passed behind them in the forklift.
Spinning on his knees, Coleman tried to see how King could possibly expect to escape that rolling deathtrap in one piece.
Three creatures swarmed all over the forklift, tearing away anything not bolted down. They would start on the protective cage any second. The forklift wobbled valiantly ahead, struggling to maintain its speed, rocking side-to-side under the creature’s frenetic onslaught.
But not for much longer, thought Coleman as a hydraulic pipe tore free from the forklift. Green hydraulic fluid jetted from the ruptured pipe.
The forklift skewed to one side, veering towards the pool. King hit the brakes, but it was already too late. The fork shot out over the edge of the pool. First the left front wheel, then the undercarriage scraped over the edge.
The forklift jerked to a stop, teetering over the water. King threw his weight against the door, but it only came open wide enough for his head and left arm to emerge. He struggled against the door, squirming his massive torso through the tight aperture. His body protruded halfway out when the forklift began tipping into the pool.
‘King! Get out of there!’ Coleman hollered across the pool.
The forklift toppled straight into the water with King stuck halfway out of the cage.
Coleman was up and running before he knew what he was doing. He sprinted around the pool and past the demolished scuba trolley, scooping up a heavy-duty steel trolley shelf that had landed near the pool. It was the only heavy object in his path.
Gripping the shelf at either end, he launched himself into the pool headfirst.
He hit the water just seconds behind the forklift. The shelf dragged Coleman straight down through the clear blue water. The forklift tumbled through the water ahead, trailing a dozen streams of turbulent bubbles. Coleman saw King’s struggling shape still trying to escape. He angled the shelf to pull him into the bubbling wake of the forklift.
It’s not fast enough.
He wasn’t gaining on the forklift’s descent. He wasn’t going to catch the yellow tumbling mantrap.
In seconds his lungs were burning, his head spinning, his ears throbbing from the sudden pressure change, but he held onto the heavy shelf and kept going down, down, down. He needed to pinch his nose to equalize his ears, but he didn’t dare let go of the shelf. It was the only way he could match the descent of the sinking forklift.
He wasn’t coming up without King. He’d made that decision the moment he hit the water.
In the last of the fading light, he saw something break away from the forklift.
Please let that be King!
It was King. But King wasn’t swimming. He just floated in the water column, turning limply in the turbulence from the forklift’s rapid descent.
He’s passed out. He used the last of his energy to escape the cage.
Twisting the shelf into an even tighter angle, Coleman let his body cruise down towards King. As he reached his friend, he dropped the shelf and caught the back of King’s fatigues.
King was a limp weight. Drowning, but not yet dead.
But now neither of them had an air source and they were a long way from the surface.
Coleman remembered the oxygen bottle in his fatigues pocket. He had used the bottle to escape the underlab with the templates. It should have a few good breaths left in it.
He fumbled the bottle from his pocket. Twisting the small air valve, he tilted the mask to make an air pocket, then pressed his face into the pocket.
The oxygen rushed into his lungs, pushing back the haze of a fast-approaching blackout. The oxygen also fed the part of his brain proposing a fundamentally important question.
How am I going to get King back to the surface?
Then he felt something wrap around his neck. He lurched away, turning to see how close the creature was, but it wasn’t a creature. It was the thick nylon tether from the claw.
Vanessa, you are magnificent!
Coleman remembered the underwater video feeds continuously playing in the dive room. She must have been monitoring Coleman’s descent using the video feeds, and following his path with the claw.
Coleman grabbed a firm hold on King’s wrist, wrapped his other arm around the tether, and immediately felt the life-saving jerk of Vanessa reeling them back towards the surface.
#
Vanessa’s eyes were glued to the monitor.
The screen was mounted in the north-east corner of the pool room.
It was the monitor she had used to track Alex’s descent into the aquifer. Standing with the templates on the floor between her ankles, she now used it to track his and King’s progress to the surface on the claw. On the screen, the Marines looked like two action toys being lifted by a piece of string.
She was so focused on the screen that she didn’t notice the men enter the pool room. The first she knew about it was the stunning pistol-whip to the back of her skull.
She toppled forward. The claw controls spilled from her hands. As she hit the floor, she realized someone had snuck up and struck her from behind.
She didn’t know what to go after first, the claw controls or the templates. And the pain in the back of her head felt like someone had smacked her with a house brick. Lurching forwards on her knees, she grabbed the claw controls and then spun towards her attacker.
Attackers, she corrected in her mind as she restarted the claw’s progress up through the aquifer. She needed to keep the control toggled upwards for the claw to stay in motion. She didn’t have time for any of this! She needed to get up to the habitation level to help David and the others!
The men standing over her, even with water pouring from their features, were instantly recognizable.
Cameron Cairns and Francis Gould.
Cairns bent and picked up the templates. Vanessa watched his hand curl around the handle of the case. It seemed absolutely ludicrous that everything Third Unit had fought for could be taken away by that one simple gesture. And it was a simple gesture, an unchallenged gesture, because in his other hand, Cairns held a Berretta pistol pointed at her face.
Cairns’s gaze fell to the claw controls. His eyes swept across the pool. He looked up to the monitor showing the underwater feed.
Vanessa kept her thumb on the button raising the claw, waiting for Cairns to look down from the screen and kick the controls from her hands.
Instead, Cairns handed Gould the pistol.
‘Watch her,’ said Cairns. ‘Let her finish what she’s started.’
Gould waved the pistol at the claw controls. ‘Keep going, pull them up.’
#
The claw suddenly stopped pulling Coleman and King.
What’s going on? Why has she stopped?
With a yank that almost broke Coleman grip, the claw began pulling again. Coleman looked up, trying to see if anything had snagged the claw, but all he could see was an expanding rectangle of light growing rapidly larger as the claw drew them back to the pool surface.
Coleman’s lungs begged for air, but he could let go of neither King nor the claw
to use the air bottle.
Almost there, almost there, almost there….
His face broke the surface and he sucked in a massive breath. At the same time, Vanessa maneuvered the claw to drag Coleman and King to the far edge.
Coleman used the tether to haul himself and King from the pool. At the side of the pool, kneeling over his unconscious friend, he checked King’s pulse. His hands felt numb from gripping the tether. He couldn’t feel a thing, let alone any weak pulse that King might still possess.
Coleman pinched King’s nose, cupped his chin, and tilted his head back. He delivered five fast mouth-to-mouth breaths.
Nothing.
‘Don’t you dare lie down and die on me!’ Coleman yelled in King’s face. ‘Don’t you dare!’
Coleman leant forward and delivered another five quick breaths. He moved over King’s sternum and started pulmonary resuscitation.
Almost immediately King’s body shuddered. He stuttered out a mouthful of water and began breathing weakly. He didn’t regain consciousness, but Coleman didn’t give a damn.
He’s alive, and that’s enough.
Looking up, glancing first towards Forest, Coleman saw Vanessa kneeling with her hands on her head and a pistol pressed savagely into her temple.
Francis Gould was holding the pistol to her head.
Vanessa stared directly at something, someone, behind Coleman.
Still on his knees, exhausted, Coleman turned slowly to his right and found Cameron Cairns standing beside him. Cairns held the templates. He nodded down at King.
‘I thought he was dead for sure,’ smirked Cairns. ‘You just never give up, Marine. You could be a god-damn Olympian.’
Instinctively, Coleman lurched out with his right hand for the templates. Cairns idly swung the templates from Coleman’s reach.
Coleman saw the lightning-fast kick coming, but he couldn’t dodge the attack from down on his knees. Cairns’s boot landed squarely, rocking Coleman’s head savagely backwards.
Coleman saw the bright flash of stars as he crashed senselessly backwards.
#
Vanessa saw Cairns kick Alex hard in the face.
He hit the floor and didn’t move.
Cairns reached out and caught the tether. He pulled the tether down and squatted, blocking her view.
What’s he doing to Alex?
The answer came in one word. Cairns stood and pointed to the claw controls. ‘Up.’
Gould thumbed the controls, raising the claw and dragging Alex up into the air by the tether wrapped around his neck.
They’re hanging him! They’re killing Alex!
Alex immediately started thrashing on the end of the tether. Cairns signaled Gould to stop raising the claw when Alex’s boots kicked the air four foot from the pool room floor. Cairns turned his back on Alex’s struggles, job finished, and picked up the templates.
For a moment, Cairns stared at Gould and Vanessa as though reaching a decision. He turned and left them.
Gould glanced uncertainly towards Cairns’s retreating back. Cairns disappeared through the north hatchway.
All Vanessa could think about was Alex dangling on the end of the claw, his struggles growing weaker every second. Do something. If you’re such a genius, stand up and solve this problem.
She rose to her feet, keeping her eyes locked on Gould’s. Vanessa had never experienced hatred in her life like she felt right now for Francis Gould. She had never thought she would feel this way about another human being, but right now she truly wanted to kill this man. Gould retreated a step, reading her expression, obviously suspecting that she might try to overcome him physically. The overwhelmed look on Gould’s face gave her an idea.
He’s paranoid. That’s what has kept him alive up until now. That’s what made him such a good spy.
Gould’s index finger tightened on the trigger.
‘Wait,’ urged Vanessa quietly, raising one hand and pointing to the hatch where Cairns had just exited. ‘He’s left you. Think about that. Why would he do that?’
‘It’s another one of his stupid head games,’ spat Gould. ‘He’s leaving me to kill you. He doesn’t think I can do it.’
‘You’re wrong,’ she said, holding her palms upwards to gauge the sprinkler pressure. ‘The sprinklers are stopping. If you shoot me, you’ll be the only source of vibrations left. He’s leaving us here as a distraction for the creatures while he escapes. He’s sacrificing you to increase his own chances.’
Gould’s face clouded for a second. ‘We’ve already started a bigger distraction. It should be taking full affect right now. That’s where all the creatures are going.’
David! He means the Evacuation Center.
Vanessa chocked down the anger that made her want to leap at Gould and tear his face off.
She raised her eyebrow skeptically. ‘Right, the Evacuation Center. Are you willing to bet your life that every single creature in the Complex is distracted? If you pull that trigger, you’re going to find out. Why else did Cairns give you that pistol and leave you behind? Because he trusts you? No way. Because he knows it will be the end for both of us. If you shoot me, you’ll be killing yourself too.’
Gould started nervously glancing over his shoulder.
Vanessa pressed on, raising her voice, seeing that Alex’s boots had almost stopped kicking. ‘We’ve got about fifteen seconds until these sprinklers cut out. Then you and I are both fair game to the creatures. I bet that right now Cairns is heading somewhere safe.’
Gould wiped water from his eyes, then turned and ran.
The moment Gould turned, Vanessa lunged for the control box. She lowered Alex to the floor and then dashed over to unwind the tether from his neck.
His face flushed bright red. It took him a few seconds of giant gasping breaths before he could even try to sit up.
‘Wait a second,’ urged Vanessa. ‘You almost suffocated. Just take it easy a second.’
He forced himself up and started staggering towards Forest. His voice was a painful-sounding croak. ‘We need to move Forest and King somewhere safe.’
Vanessa thought for a moment. ‘I know a place. It’s close. Let’s get them onto the diving platform.’
As Alex dragged first Forest and then King over to the platform, Vanessa checked the diving equipment and found two full-face masks still attached to buoyancy vests and air tanks. She glanced at the air pressure gauges. Both tanks were nearly empty, but they would do for the short trip she had in mind. The important thing was that both sets had a full-face enclosed regulator for breathing.
When she carried the equipment back, Forest was moaning and King was starting to come around.
‘That’s not enough dive sets,’ said Alex. ‘And these two can’t dive. They can’t even stand up.’
‘They’re not going to dive,’ said Vanessa, rushing back across the room for more equipment. ‘We’ll be towing them. Remember when I told you that we had accidents in the aquifer before? These are rescue dive-sets for recovering unconscious divers. We’ll strap the full-face masks onto them and then we’ll breathe using the secondary air regulators. These straps go around their shoulders. We’re not going far.’
It took them a minute to loop everything together. Strapped under Alex, King nodded that he understood what was happening. He wore an air mask and a weight belt to keep his body from interfering with Alex’s fins.
Fully dressed in her own dive gear, Vanessa set the diving platform to a slow descent and then bent to attach herself likewise to Forest.
In seconds, all four disappeared under the water.
#
Coleman followed Vanessa’s fins underwater.
It proved hard work dragging King, but her plan worked. The two incapacitated Marines hung suspended below the divers.
After a minute’s swimming, Coleman checked his dive gauge. He and King had seven minutes of air remaining in the tanks from the equipment’s last use. The gauge also indicated they swam due west.
&nb
sp; When Coleman looked forwards again, Vanessa was ascending. Coleman followed and broke the surface beside her.
But the surface of what?
Coleman lifted up his mask just as Vanessa raised a flashlight from the water.
A cave. We’re in an underwater cave.
‘Roll onto your back,’ she instructed. There’s a beach further in. We can pull them up where the water gets shallow.’
They quickly found the shallow water and dragged King and Forest onto the beach. The beach made a sandy half-moon crescent on the cave floor.
‘This is the closest underwater cave to the pool room,’ she said, breathlessly dragging Forest. ‘I think they’ll be safe here.’
‘Okay,’ said Coleman, checking King was stable. ‘You’re going to stay here and look after these two. I’m going to stop the creatures reaching the Quarantine Center.’
‘Wait,’ said Vanessa. ‘Before everything got crazy in the pool room, I think I discovered how to stop the creatures.’
Coleman spun on his knees in the sand. ‘How?’
‘Sex. The answer is sex.’ Vanessa raised her hand to cut Coleman off. ‘Just listen. Remember when I explained about linked traits in a genetic pattern? Well, sexual traits are profoundly ingrained in genetic patterns. They override all conflicting traits. Gould couldn’t untangle the need to reproduce from the creatures’ genetic patterns.’
‘How does this help us?’
‘The creatures are sessile in the reproductive phase. They don’t move when they are trying to reproduce. And their reproductive phase is triggered by an airborne pheromone. If we can release the pheromone, it will be like hitting the creatures’ off switch.’
‘Can you synthesize the pheromone?’
She nodded. ‘In the entomology lab near the rec reserve. I can make as much as we need.’
Vanessa’s tablet started beeping. She tilted the device on her hip to read the screen. ‘I synchronized the countdown to my tablet. We’ve now got less than fifteen minutes before the containment door to the Quarantine Center opens and lets the creatures in. I’m not sure how I can distribute the pheromone in time once I synthesize it.’
Fast Page 40
