When Marlin said shortcuts he meant they would have to use explosive cutting charge. Coleman keyed his headset. ‘Fifth Unit, this is Captain Coleman. Head for the pool room, Stevens. We are en route to rendezvous with you there.’
‘Okay. Habitation level pool room,’ came the reply. ‘En route, Third Unit. Glad you’re still alive, Captain.’
‘Captain.’ Forest jerked his head towards the revolving door.
Coleman spun around, ready to fire, but the door and the corridor beyond were completely empty. All the creatures had disappeared. One second they were there, cramming together, trying to smash through the door, and the next moment they were gone.
Their sudden disappearance dumbfounded Coleman. He stared towards the nearly demolished door. His emotional roller coaster of adrenalin and fear hadn’t been ready for this.
‘Where did they all go?’ asked Marlin.
‘Who cares?’ King said. ‘They gave up. That’s good enough for me.’
Coleman doubted it. The entire door looked almost torn from the wall.
Wait, the door’s not empty. What’s that movement?
He cautiously approached the creaking wreckage. At least a dozen brown butterflies fluttered inside the revolving door. Monarch butterflies. He recognized their wing patterns.
‘They were almost through,’ he said, thinking about the creatures as he watched the butterflies. ‘Why would they just stop?’
Three hundred meters away, Fifth Unit sprinted back through the dormitory corridors.
Erin Stevens ran point. Behind Stevens came Goldsmith and Cheng.
Only three of them escaped the north stairwell. Only their training kept them alive.
Stevens tried not to think about the stairwell’s confined space. The last three minutes were almost indescribable. If he thought about it, he might vomit. He had to keep a clear head and stay focused on their one important task. After the confusion of the northern stairwell, focusing his mind on achieving one single task was a relief.
They just had to reach the pool room.
He knew their chances of survival greatly improved if they joined up with Third Unit. If he could be fighting beside any single person in the United States Armed Forces, it would be Captain Alex Coleman.
Fifth Unit ran wildly, their boots pounding the floor.
Stevens glanced over his shoulder. His heartbeat thumped in his ears. He tried to look everywhere at once. Goldsmith and Cheng were still behind him.
He caught a warning look from Cheng. Cheng lifted his weapon.
Stevens snapped his head around and saw six gunmen blocking the passageway.
The gunmen were dressed in grey fatigues. Every inch of their clothing and equipment matched the walls. The only part not concealed was their eyes.
Stevens read their intention in those eyes.
He raised his hand. ‘No. Wait —’
All six gunmen opened fire.
Stevens was minced where he stood. Bullets tore through his body armor like cardboard. His flesh exploded outwards from every entry wound. Cheng and Goldsmith didn’t even fire a shot. Chunks of their flesh tore away as though bitten off by a giant invisible mouth. Cheng’s body twisted on the spot and thumped the wall. He slid down the wall and left a fat red stain.
Goldsmith’s head disintegrated. His body dropped instantly. His helmet and headset radio slid along the floor towards the gunmen.
The lead gunman stopped the sliding helmet under his heavy grey boot.
Pulling down his mask, Bora revealed a face that looked like its strong, eastern European features had been traced on a balloon, and then the balloon over-inflated so that everything seemed slightly out of proportion, but perfectly suited to his big hands, muscular arms and brutish physique.
He lifted the helmet and shook out the remains of the Marine’s skull. After listening to the headset radio for a few seconds, he tossed the helmet back towards the dead Marines.
Behind Bora stood a gunman with a rifle unlike any of the others. The weapon was longer than their FN P190 submachine guns. Its fat, tubular design had no obvious magazine. The gunman carried it with a lot more care.
Bora spoke to the man with the strange rifle, pointing to the Marines’ mangled remains.
‘Did you get all that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The man came forward and aimed the rifle one at a time at the dead bodies. Then he aimed at the pieces of flesh stuck to the walls.
‘Got it all now,’ reported the man. ‘Are these the bodies we’re using?’
Bora nodded distractedly. He knelt to place his left palm on the floor. His eyes slowly unfocused. The gunmen froze. Bora reached out his right hand and splayed his fingertips against the wall. The gunmen could have been statues. They weren’t even breathing. Their eyes locked on Bora like he was a voodoo priest predicting their future.
Which, in a way, he was.
Bora snapped his fingers and stood up, triggering the gunmen to breathe again. ‘You know what to do with them. Go now. Exactly as I explained. We have about forty seconds.’
Four gunmen rushed forward and gathered the Marines’ equipment. They dragged the bodies away by the heels.
The articulate voice of Cameron Cairns came over Bora’s headset. By now Cairns should have complete control of the administration hub, and soon the entire Complex.
‘Bora,’ radioed Cairns. ‘The last Special Forces team is heading to the pool room. Make sure they never leave it.’
‘Yes, sir. We’re on our way.’
Cameron Cairns lowered his radio with a satisfied smirk.
He stood in the communications room in the eastern wing of the admin hub. The comms-room measured the size of four of its surrounding offices joined together. Two parallel workstations crowded with comm-tech coordination hardware divided the room.
This was his center of operations, secured because of the equipment it contained, chiefly of which, suspended from the ceiling, hung a six-meter-wide digital display screen.
Connected to the screen and packed wall-to-wall in the surprisingly compact room was enough hardware to track every radio signal in the Complex. Whenever the Special Forces spoke into their radios, Cairns heard the message and saw their location appear as a red blip on the large screen. The screen also displayed their average speed and direction of travel.
For the last eight minutes, he’d listened and tracked with growing satisfaction the radio messages from the Marines dying all over the Complex. It was a symphony of slaughter.
It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard.
In another time, in the basement of an abandoned textiles factory, a young Cameron Cairns had trained as an underground code catcher, listening for the ticks and clicks of the enemy’s radio messages. The work had seemed a waste of his talents at the time, but he had nonetheless applied himself to the task with the alacrity of a man who knew that life’s best investments were of the mind. The experience taught Cairns the value of intercepting radio communications.
But Cairns had chosen this particular room for an additional reason.
During an emergency evacuation, the control of all mechanical services in the Complex defaulted to this comms-room. Ordinarily, the last evacuating staff member would transfer all system controls to the Evacuation Center, but Cairns intervened in the process. Two dead bodies slumped over their workstations sported matching bullet wounds to the backs of their heads.
With the comms-room secured, Cairns directed Francis Gould in the control of almost every system in the Complex. Sitting across the room, reluctantly working an arm’s length from one of the dead staff, Gould toiled right now in that process.
Gould’s insipid presence irked Cairns. For the moment it was necessary. The only expert authority on the creatures, Gould had taken pains to ensure he remained indispensable, doling information grudgingly and insisting in personally overseeing the mechanical operations inside the Complex. He was a tight-lipped little runt, but when the time came, Cairns had been fantasizing about how he would dispose of Gould. He would start with heat….