All the butterflies were well and truly exposed.
Vanessa ran for the door, still carrying the canister for good measure. Halfway across the lab, she heard her tablet on the workstation start beeping.
It meant that the Quarantine Center’s containment door was lifting. Right now, the creatures were surging into the Quarantine Center.
She groped at the wall beside the lab door and yanked up the locking mechanism.
‘This is for you, David.’
The door hissed open to one side.
She halted as the butterflies surged through the doorway around her. The unthinkable had just occurred to her.
What if I made a mistake? What if I’ve made some fundamental error in my rush? What if this doesn’t even work?
The butterflies were already away. More than half of them had pelted over her shoulders, under her arms, through her legs. It was too late to do anything now.
‘Fly fast, you magnificent little bastards,’ she yelled after the butterfly cloud. ‘Fly fast!’
Cairns charged at Coleman with the steel bar.
Coleman realized this was no longer a civilized slugging match. With a steel bar involved, someone was going to get very hurt, very quickly.
Unfortunately, he was on the wrong side of the steel bar equation. He had a slim window of opportunity to disable Cairns. Once Cairns placed a few solid hits with that bar, it was all-over red-rover.
Coleman needed to get that steel bar out of play in the next few seconds.
To think that I had him finished off in a choke hold and I had to let him go.
Coleman feinted one way and then dodged in the opposite direction. The steel bar whooshed past. When the bar’s trajectory was safely passing his left shoulder, he dropped a quick right hand jab into Cairns’s jaw, catching Cairns on the way past. Cycling his fist, he slammed another hit into Cairns’s kidneys.
Cairns reeled instinctively way from the painful blow. He hefted the steel bar around in a big sideways baseball swing.
At the same time, Coleman followed through with a lightning-fast side kick.
It was a dangerous ploy to stay within the bar’s range, but he needed to disable Cairns before the bar started breaking bones.
And I need to hit Cairns hard to bleed the momentum off the bar. If that thing connects, I’m going to fold like a cardboard cut-out.
Coleman prayed his kick landed before Cairns could get the steel bar into dangerous play again.
The bar was only halfway through its swing when Coleman’s kick slammed squarely into Cairns’s taunt stomach. Cairns’s breath whooshed away.
Dropping to the floor, Coleman swept his leg around in a wide arc. His boot caught the back of Cairns’s heels.
Cairns feet shot forward. He seemed to hang in the air a second and then, smack, he landed flat on his back. His skull savagely whiplashed the floor.
Nicely done, thought Coleman.
He pinned the steel bar down with his left boot.
Now the bar was out of play and he was going to kick the living crap out of Cameron Cairns. Cairns still gripped the pinned bar. He blinked up at the ceiling, looking dazed from the skull impact.
Let’s see him swing a bar without any fingers.
Coleman lifted his right boot, spun on his left heel, and stomped down with all his strength on Cairns’s hand.
But the hand was gone. Cairns had let go of the bar.
At the last second, Coleman realized his mistake. Cairns wasn’t as messed-up as he looked.
And now it was Coleman’s turn to lose his footing.
Instead of pulverizing Cairns’s fingers, Coleman found his legs swept out from under him. He had just fallen victim to the exact attack he’d launched on Cairns.
In one smooth move, Cairns found his feet and snatched up the bar.
Oh, crap!
Now Coleman rolled for his life as Cairns brought down the steel bar like he was chopping wood balanced on Coleman’s head.
The bar smacked into the floor.
Coleman had just rolled out its path, but not fast enough to avoid a savage kick that followed through into his rib cage.
With a series of fleshy cracks, Coleman felt his ribs fracture. Cairns’s steel cap boots had done almost as much damage as the steel bar.
The kick flipped Coleman onto his back. Pain flared down his side. Cairns brought down the bar in another big chop.
There’s no avoiding this one. One way or another, he was about to take a big hit from the bar before he could regain his footing.
Struggling to stand, Coleman threw his arm up to deflect the bar. His left hand took the full force of Cairns’s blow.
The bones snapped like matchsticks. Pain tore up his arm, both from the breaking bones and the force of the impact. The hand was useless now. Pain was one thing, but every time that bar connected, pieces of his body stopped working.
Sacrificing his hand allowed Coleman back on his feet. Now he just had to use the opportunity to best affect. He needed to deliver a fast crippling blow, something Cairns wouldn’t expect.
He spun and lashed out with a low side kick. The kick was aimed at Cairns’s knee joint.
But Cairns’s knee was a moving target while his body drove the bar in a horizontal swing at Coleman.
Coleman missed.
Cairns didn’t.
The steel bar connected –
— smashing Coleman squarely across the chest with a soul-shaking thwunk.
Coleman crashed back down to the floor. It took all his will-power to just roll over. He pushed himself up on his hands.
I can’t breathe. I can hardly move!
Coleman felt Cairns standing over him, bringing up the steel bar. This is it. I can’t move!
As the bar came down, Coleman tucked down his head and hunched his shoulders. The bar hit hard, skidded off his shoulder blades and bounced off the back of his head. Coleman’s elbows gave and he collapsed down onto his stomach again.
The world jolted out of focus for at least three seconds. He lay senseless. He only knew he was lying on his stomach and had just been hit by something very hard. His mouth felt like he had been kicked in the teeth by a racehorse. His right cheek was smooshed down against a wet floor. His own left hands, bloodied and useless, swung in and out of focus.
Then, like a bad dream, his situation rushed back into his forebrain.
Cairns just clobbered me.
A sound drew Coleman back to the present. The metallic sound of Cairns dropping the steel bar.
Coleman lifted his head. Cairns stumbled towards the templates.
He thinks I’m done. He thinks that last hit finished me. It almost did.
The entire lab blurred in and out of focus for a second.
Coleman drew his colt and propped himself up on his left elbow. He sighted on Cairns’s back.
‘Stop right there,’ he slurred. ‘I’ll pull this trigger and kill us both before I let you take those.’
Cairns turned and lifted a small pistol.
No. It’s not a pistol. He’s holding a flare gun. It’s probably what he used to ignite the surfactant that killed Marlin. If he pulls the trigger, this place will go up.
The two men held their weapons trained on each other. Cairns’s face was blank, but his eyes flicked down to the flare gun.
At that second, as Cairns’s studied the flare gun, Coleman noticed something almost directly to Cairns’s left. He had only a moment to register what he saw before Cairns squeezed the trigger.