All personnel evacuate immediately, this is not a drill…All personnel evacuate immediately, this is not a drill…
Peter jumped to action. He’d been trained for this. He knew what to do.
‘Pencils down students, we’ll finish the drawings later. No, just leave them on your table and make two lines at the door. Now we are going to walk, not run, to the Evacuation Center. You all know where that is.’
The passageway outside the classroom led south through the administration hub, across the pedestrian loop to the Evacuation Center.
Peter stood in the short corridor just outside the classroom. Ushering out the last child, he heard screaming coming from back inside the hub.
Real screaming.
And then other noises that came straight from hell.
Nina Holland, his teacher’s aide, looked stunned by the sound.
Peter grabbed her arm, pressing his fingers savagely into her muscle. The pain cut through her shock long enough for her to listen.
‘Get the children to the Evacuation Center. For God’s sake go!’
Peter turned as he heard something come scrabbling into the corridor behind him. The creatures that surged into the end of the corridor looked beyond horrific.
‘Run!’ he yelled. ‘Run, Children — EVERYONE RUN NOW!’
Turning to face the things, he heard the clatter of small shoes fleeing down the corridor behind him.
Of all a teacher’s duties, one duty Peter held above all.
He must protect the children.
The school was close to the underground evacuation tunnel. He wouldn’t need to distract the creatures long. In one smooth motion, he unclipped the fire extinguisher from the wall and lifted it above his head like a club. The creatures charged.
Peter Crane’s jaw clenched as he watched them come. He blinked twice and then they were on him.
He held them back nine seconds longer than any single person up to that point.
Sprinting up the western stairwell among dozens of screaming and panicking people, Michael Simms struggled to keep his glasses on.
It was absolute chaos. It was a nightmare.
The creatures surged up the fire stairs behind them, tearing another two people from the pushing crowd. Michael saw a woman trip and get yanked through the gap between the metal steps. Her body squished like play-dough through the small gap.
Pain and death flared everywhere.
And butterflies. The stairwell above their heads swarmed with butterflies.
Then people started pushing back down the stairs. Michael saw the creatures coming down the stairwell too!
I’m trapped in between. The creatures tore into the terrified crowd like sharks joining a feeding frenzy.
Michael wasn’t a brave man, but he recognized a royal cluster-fuck when he saw it.
Up or down, it’s all the same. I’m not staying here.
Michael chose up. It proved the last choice he ever made.
Captain Coleman leapt down from the helicopter.
He dashed forward to make room for the six Marines jumping down behind him. The weapons inspectors would stay with the aircraft until he gave the all clear.
Privates Tremaine and Gill ran over from a second Pave Hawk, giving the Okay hand-signal. Their personal radios were as vulnerable to the facility’s jamming hardware as everything else. The C-Guards had directional antenna to reduce friendly jamming inside the Complex, but at best their radios would be unreliable.
Team assembled, Coleman led Third Unit towards the main entrance.
His goal was clear. Third Unit would enter the habitation level via the front entrance, secure the central administration hub, and then sit tight while the weapons inspectors completed their investigation. The inspectors would enter once the labs were secured. The rest of the facility would be encouraged to function as normal.
Across the roof, four other FAST units reached their designated entry points.
Coleman’s was the only team not accessing the facility via the elevator plant rooms. Instead, ahead, a four meter high cement hump curved around the large helicopter pad and framed the main entrance.
Two sliding glass doors nestled right in the center of the hump.
Coleman reached the automatic doors.
The doors parted and released a cool wave of air-conditioned air.
Third Unit jogged through in tight single file formation, passing an unmanned security foyer and continuing down the wide flight of stairs to the open habitation level.
Coleman knew what to expect at the bottom. The habitation level’s layout resembled a big square wheel. In the middle sat the administration hub. Surrounding the hub was the pedestrian loop — mostly open space. Enclosing the pedestrian loop, the outer walls functioned like a shopping plaza dotted with services and amenities. The simple design gave residents plenty of free space.
Coleman reached the bottom of the stairs.
He stopped and stared, absorbing the bloody pandemonium unfolding before him.
‘Holy crap,’ he breathed. His sense of reality derailed at very high speed. What he was seeing couldn’t be real, but judging by the Marines’ stunned swearing behind him, he knew they witnessed the same spectacle.
What in the name of all things holy?
It was like a scene from a horror movie.
The creatures chasing and eating people looked the size of lions.
Each creature possessed a mass of tentacles like a dozen thrashing anacondas. A large tapered head sprouted from this tentacle nest. When the creatures caught a victim, the head blossomed open, revealing a mouth wide enough to swallow a wild boar. Concentric rows of inward-pointing teeth lined this crimson cavity.
Like a Great White Shark, realized Coleman.
Fleeing the creatures, the human content of the level emptied chaotically across the pedestrian loop towards its south-east corner, towards the evacuation tunnel entrance. Or at least they tried to. Many weren’t making it, and still more people were emerging from the western stairwell. The distance from the western stairwell to the evacuation tunnel measured at least four hundred meters. No refuge from the creatures existed in between. The loop’s only feature this side of the glass-walled administration hub were four large, leafy planter boxes.
Essentially, the evacuees made their desperate escape across a four hundred meter long killing field. At least thirty creatures stood in their path. People were getting mauled. People were getting dragged. Coleman realized that every hump of thrashing limbs was somebody being torn apart. Only the sheer number of people weaving through the bedlam reduced casualties. Some creatures seemed unsure where to attack first and missed their chance.
All this flashed before Coleman in a second, but only one question seared into his mind.
Where is David? Where is my son?
Coleman desperately searched the faces and shapes of the fleeing people. No children. Had the children already reached the evacuation center, or were they cut off and trapped somewhere, forgotten in the panic and unable to compete against the hordes of terrified adults?
Vanessa won’t let that happen. She’s got him. She loves our boy more than life itself. She’d already have him in the evacuation center.
But what if she didn’t or couldn’t? What if she was trapped herself, unable to reach him? Coleman imagined David terrified and alone somewhere, or perhaps fighting for his life this very second. Where would he be?
Coleman realized he was panicking, freezing up, completely forgetting his training and everything he was meant to do. But it was his boy….