Matt Reilly Stories

by Matthew Reilly

  Buck Broyles just shrugged. ‘Sorry, boys. But you aren’t my responsibility anymore.’

  ‘You son of a bitch…’ Sanchez breathed.

  During this exchange between the men, Schofield assessed his options and quickly found that there was nothing available. This time they were well and truly screwed.

  But then as he gazed at his ring of captors, he noticed that every single one of them wore a silver disc clipped to his lapel.

  The silver discs, Schofield thought. That was it...

  And suddenly things began to make sense.

  That was how you stayed safe from the apes. If you wore a silver disc, the apes couldn’t attack you. The discs were somehow connected to the microchips in the apes’ heads, probably by some kind of digital radio signal —

  A digital radio signal. Schofield sighed inwardly. Like the binary beep signal Mother had picked up earlier. That was how the Buck had been remotely commanding the apes: with digital signals sent directly to the chips in their brains.

  The silver discs probably worked the same way—which was how Pennebaker had been able to enter the fray before to give Schofield information without having to fear the apes.

  ‘Mother,’ Schofield whispered as he raised his hands above his head. ‘Still got your AXS-9 there?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Jam radios, all channels, now.’

  Mother was also in the process of raising her hands—when suddenly she snapped her right hand down and hit a switch on the AXS-9 spectrum analyser on her webbing, the switch marked: signal jam: all ch.

  The Delta man beside her swung his gun around, but he never fired.

  Because right then another very loud sound seized his attention.

  The sound of the apes awakening.

  * *

  The effect of what Mother had done was invisible, but if one could have seen the radio spectrum it would have looked like this: a radiating wave of energy had fanned out from Mother’s jamming pack, moving outward from her in a circular motion, like expanding ripples in a pond, hitting every wave-emitting device in the area, and turning each device’s signal into garbled static.

  The result: the silver discs on the ID badges of Knox, the DARPA scientists, the Buck and the Delta team all instantly became useless.

  * *

  From his position in the elevator shaft, Schofield saw what happened next in a kind of hyper-real slow motion.

  He saw Knox in the ammo chamber with the army of deadly apes looming above him; saw the three apes nearest to Knox suddenly leap down at him, jaws bared, arms extended, slamming into him, throwing him to the ground, where they fired into him with their M-4s at point-blank range.

  In the face of their gunfire, Dr Malcolm Knox was turned into a bloody mess, his body exploding in a million bullet holes. Grotesquely, the apes kept firing into him long after he was dead.

  Complete pandemonium followed ... as the rest of the ape army leapt down from the mountain of crates looking for blood.

  * *

  Different people reacted in different ways.

  The DARPA scientists in the chamber spun, eyes wide with horror.

  In the elevator shaft, the Delta team also turned, shocked, Gordon and the Buck among them.

  Schofield, however, was already moving, calling, ‘Marines, two hands! Now!’

  As for the apes, well, they went apeshit.

  * *

  Freed from the grip of the silver discs, they launched themselves at the DARPA scientists in the ammo chamber, crashtackling them to the floor, clubbing them with the butts of their guns, tearing them apart—as if all their lives they had been waiting to attack their makers.

  Screams and cries rang out.

  Zak Pennebaker ran for the door to the elevator shaft, crying, ‘Buck! Do something!’, before he himself was crashtackled from behind and assailed by six, then eight, then twelve apes.

  He disappeared under their bodies, arms flailing, screaming in terror, before he was completely overwhelmed by the hairy black monsters.

  In the elevator shaft, Flash Gordon and his team of Delta scumbags were caught totally by surprise.

  Gordon whirled back to face Schofield, bringing his pistol back round—

  —only to see both of Schofield’s Desert Eagle pistols aimed directly at his own nose.

  ‘Surprise,’ Schofield said.

  Blam!

  Schofield fired.

  * *

  The apes were now rushing for the door, all three hundred of them, angry and deadly, heading for the elevator shaft.

  While they did so, Schofield’s Marines did battle with the Delta force surrounding them.

  It was a short battle.

  For Schofield’s men had obeyed Schofield’s shouted order—’Marines, two hands!’—so that by now they all held guns in both their hands: an MP-7 in one and a pistol in the other.

  The five Marines whipped up two guns each— and suddenly they’d evened the odds against the ten-man Delta squad encircling them.

  The Marines fired as one, spraying bullets outward, dropping the distracted Delta squad around them.

  Six of the Delta men were killed instantly by head-shots. The other four went down, wounded but not killed.

  The only bad guy left standing was the Buck, mouth open, gun held limply at his side, frozen in shock at the unfolding mayhem around him: the apes were completely out of control; Knox and his scientists were dead; and Schofield’s men had just nailed their Delta captors.

  A call from Schofield roused him.

  ‘Marines! Up the ladder! Now!’

  As his Marines climbed skyward, Schofield grabbed the ladder last of all, shoving past the immobile Buck.

  After he was ten feet up, Schofield aimed his pistol at a lever on the big round safe-like door set into the wall of the elevator shaft.

  ‘History lesson for you, Buck,’ Schofield said. ‘Happy swimming.’

  Blam.

  Schofield fired, hitting the lever with a spray of sparks.

  And at which point all hell really broke loose.

  * *

  The lever snapped downward, into the release position.

  And the big ten-foot-wide circular door was instantly flung open, swinging inward with incredible force, force that came from the weight of ocean water that had been pressing against it from the other side.

  This door was one of the floodgates that the Japanese had used in 1943 to flood the tunnels of Hell Island. A door that backed onto the Pacific Ocean itself.

  A shocking blast of seawater came rushing in through the circular doorway, slamming into the Buck, lifting him off his feet and hurling him like a rag doll against the opposite wall of the elevator shaft, the force so strong that his skull cracked when it hit the concrete.

  The roar of the ocean flooding into the elevator shaft was absolutely deafening. It looked like the spray from a giant fireman’s hose, a ten-foot-wide spray of super-powerful in rushing water.

  And one more thing.

  The layout of the subterranean ammunition chamber meant that the incoming water flooded into Chamber No. 2, where the three hundred apes now stood, trapped.

  The apes scrambled across the chamber, wading waist-deep against the powerful waves of whitewater pouring into it.

  The water level rose fast—the apes continued howling, struggling against it—but it only took a few seconds for it to hit the upper frame of the doorway to the chamber, sealing off the chamber completely, cutting off the sounds of the three hundred madly-scrambling apes.

  And while they could swim short distances, the apes could not swim underwater.

  They couldn’t get out.

  Ammunition Chamber No. 2 of Hell Island would be their tomb—three hundred apes, innocent creatures turned into killing machines, would drown in it.

  * * * *

  XIX

  Four gorillas, however, did make it out of the hall before the water completely covered the doorway.

  They got to the elevat
or shaft and started climbing the ladder, heading up and away from the swirling body of ocean water pouring into the concrete shaft beneath them.

  * *

  Higher up the same ladder, Schofield and his team scaled the shaft as quickly as they could.

  The roar of inrushing water drowned out all sound for almost thirty seconds until—ominously—the whole shaft suddenly fell silent.

  It wasn’t that the water had stopped rushing in: it was just that the water level had risen above the floodgate. The ocean was still invading the shaft, just from below its own waterline.

  ‘Keep climbing!’ Schofield called up to the others, moving last of all. ‘We have to get above sea level!’

  He looked behind him, saw the four pursuing apes.

  Fact: gorillas are much better climbers than human beings.

  Schofield yelled, ‘Guys! We’ve got company!’

  Three-quarters of the way up the shaft was a large horizontal metal grate that folded down across the width of the shaft—notches in its edges allowed it to close around the elevator cables. When closed horizontally, it would completely span the shaft, sealing it off. It was one of the gates the Japanese had created to trap intruders down below.

  Schofield saw it. ‘Mother! When you get to that grate, close it behind you!’

  The Marines came to the grate, climbed up past it one at a time—Astro, then Bigfoot, then Sanchez and Mother.

  With a loud clang, Sanchez quickly closed one half of the grate. Mother grabbed the other half, just as Schofield reached it...

  ... at the same time as a big hairy hand grabbed his ankle and yanked hard!

  Schofield slipped down six rungs, clutching with his hands, dropping six feet below the grate, an ape hanging from his left foot.

  ‘Scarecrow!’ Mother shouted.

  ‘Close the grate!’ Schofield called.

  Immediately below him, the ocean water was now charging up the vertical elevator shaft. It must have completely filled the ammo chamber— so that now it was racing up the only space left for it to go: the much narrower elevator shaft.

  ‘No!’ Mother yelled. To shut the grate was to drown Schofield himself.

  ‘You have to!’ Schofield shouted back. ‘You have to shut them in!’

  Schofield glanced downward at the enraged gorilla clutching his left foot. The other three apes were clambering up the ladder close behind it.

  He levelled his pistol at the gorilla holding him—

  Click.

  Dry.

  ‘Shit.’

  Then suddenly he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to find someone hovering next to his face, level with his head, someone hanging upside-down!

  Mother.

  Hanging fully stretched, inverted, her legs held by Sanchez and Bigfoot up at the grate, herself holding pistols in both hands.

  ‘No heroic sacrifices today, buddy,’ she said to Schofield.

  She then opened fire with both her guns, blasting the ape holding him to pieces. The ape released him, Mother chucked her guns, grabbed Schofield by his webbing and suddenly, whoosh, both Mother and Schofield were lifted up the shaft by Sanchez and Bigfoot, up past the half-closed grate, where once they were up, Astro slammed down the other half and snapped shut its lock.

  The three remaining apes and the rising water hit the grate moments later, the water pinning the screaming apes to the underside of the grate until it rose past them, swallowing them, climbing a further ten feet up the shaft, before it abruptly stopped, having come level with the sea outside, now forbidden by physics from rising any further. Schofield’s Marines gazed down at the sloshing body of water from their ladder above, breathless and exhausted, but safe, and now the only creatures—man or ape—still breathing on Hell Island.

  * * * *

  XX

  Four hours later, a lone plane arrived on the landing strip of Hell Island. It was a gigantic Air Force C-17A Globemaster, one of the biggest cargo-lifters in the world, capable of holding over two hundred armed personnel, or perhaps three hundred sedated apes.

  Its six-man crew were a little surprised to find only five United States Marines—dirty, bloody and battle-weary—waiting on the tarmac to greet them.

  Its co-pilot came out and met Schofield, shouted above the whine of the plane’s enormous jet engines: ‘Who the hell are you? We’re here to pick up a bunch of DARPA guys, Delta specialists, and some mysterious cargo that we’re not allowed to look at. Nobody said anything about Marines.’

  Schofield just shook his head.

  ‘There’s no cargo,’ he said. ‘Not anymore. Now, if you don’t mind, would you please take us home.’

  ________________

  Unpublished Interview

  This is an edited version of an interview Matthew Reilly did for Ansett Australia’s Panorama in-flight Magazine for the Nov/Dec1998 issue.

  It remains unpublished.

  1. When you sit down to write a book, do you know the ending?

  Yes. I don’t even begin writing a novel until I have the last scene of the book firmly pictured in my head. This has a lot to do with the kind of book that I write. My books have a lot of twists and narrow escapes in them and to effect these things, you have to know what you’re going to do well in advance. Hence, for me, planning everything out early (even if not quite to the last detail) is very, very important.

  2. Do you write from experience?

  As anyone who has read any of my books would tell you, this is a pretty silly question. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who has done the things that the heroes of Contest and Ice Station, do! When you write about a guy killing aliens and sliding underneath speeding hovercrafts and destroying nuclear submarines single-handedly, it’s hard to say that you are basing it on your own life experiences!! No, I must say that my books are firmly placed in the realms of my dreams. Even more than that, what my heroes do, are things that I wish I could do if I were ever put to the test.

  3. How do you develop characters in your books?

  Developing characters is not an exact science. Sometimes they just come to you in the dead of night, at other times you have to work on a character for a few days (or weeks, or months) until suddenly it clicks. My short answer is: I don’t have a particular process that I use to develop my characters. The only thing I know about character development is this: you know when a character works, and you know when one doesn’t. I just don’t accept one of my characters until I’m know that he or she works. Take, for example, my favourite character in Ice Station, a female United States Marine known as ‘Mother’. Mother isn’t her real name, that’s her military nickname or call-sign, and it’s short for, ah… er… ‘Motherf***er’. She is six feet two inches tall, has a completely shaven head, a foul mouth and a heart of gold. The minute I created her, I knew she worked.

  4. Why do you write?

  That’s an interesting question. I don’t write to change the world, or to change peoples’ minds for that matter. I write for entertainment’s sake – and entertainment’s sake alone – and yet I firmly believe that I am, in some way, enriching peoples’ lives. There is a place in society for entertainment and the joy to be found in taking a break from the real world and diving into complete and unabashed fiction. And when you view novels alongside other entertainment forms (like, for instance, movies), novels have one unique edge ‘the limit is your own imagination. I mean, how often have you heard someone say, “The movie was okay, but it wasn’t as good as the book.”. I think this one of the reasons Ice Station has sold so well, and in particular, at airports. If you’re going on a long plane ride, you want to be transported out of the real world for a few hours. That’s what I do.

  5. What is most difficult about the writing process for you?

  Creating new and interesting stories and twists is perhaps the most difficult part of the writing process for me. Once I have the story in my mind, I’m fine, but I put a lot of pressure on myself to come up with a good story. I be
lieve that in 1989 the stakes were raised in terms of high-octane, adventure fiction and the strength of ideas that that form of fiction must involve. So what happened in 1989? Simple. The publication of a book called Jurassic Park. After Michael Crichton came up with the idea of genetically-engineering dinosaurs, the bar was set a little higher for all thriller writers out there. So getting an idea that is a cut above the rest is the most difficult (because it is the most crucial) thing for me.

  6. What keeps you going?

  Hmmm. Good friends and family. Whether I’m angry and upset because my editor wants to cut my favourite scene or whether I’m over the moon because Ice Station is on the bestseller list, I find that my friends and family are always there to support me. They cheer you up when you’re down and they bring you down to earth when you start to get a little uppity! And if all else fails, I just go out and see the biggest, blockbuster action movie I can find (Rush Hour with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker recently cheered me up immensely!).

  7. Where do you find inspiration or does it find you?

  To be brutally honest ‘ and this is going to sound really, really weird ‘ I find that my greatest moments of inspiration come when I am sitting in a darkened theatre watching one or both of my parents performing in a show put on by our local amateur musical society! I know, it sounds crazy! But on about five separate occasions, when I have been stumped on a plot point or just contemplating a new story, I have gone to the theatre to watch them perform, and suddenly it hits me. Bizarre, I know, but you asked!

  8. (question missing for original text)