Matthew Reilly - Hell Island

“Did the Japs use those gates in ’43?” Sanchez asked.

“They did. But a small team of special-mission Marines braved the rising waters and using primitive breathing apparatus managed to close the ocean gates, saving five hundred Marines.”

“How do you know this?” Bigfoot asked.

Schofield smiled weakly. “My grandfather was a member of that special team. His name was Lieutenant Michael Schofield. He led the team that held back the ocean.”

Schofield leaned back, staring at the map.

“The ammunition chambers…” he said. “If they’re like other World War II-era chambers, they’re big, hall-sized caverns. If we could lure the apes into one of them, we could seal them all inside and—hmmm…”

“What about finding the Buck and whoever else is behind this?” Sanchez said.

“Too risky. They could be anywhere on the island. They are also currently trying to kill us. No. We’ve been on the back foot all day. It’s time we got proactive, it’s time we set the agenda. And the way I see it, if we can pull this off,” Schofield said, “maybe they’ll find us. So what do you say, folks. Want to become gorilla bait?”

AT EXACTLY six p.m., the five Marines exited the Nimitz via the submarine docking door, swam over to the nearby shore and for the first time that day, set foot on Hell Island. The Nimitz loomed above them in the darkness, a dark shadow against the evening sky.

Schofield and his team quickly found an entrance to the underground tunnel system—a sixty-year-old cracked concrete archway that stank of decay, dust and the fearful sweat of soldiers long gone.

Inky darkness loomed beyond the old concrete arch.

Before they entered the tunnel network, Schofield stopped them.

“Okay, hold here for a moment. There’s only one way this can work, and that’s if they’re right behind us.”

He reached for his throat-mike and pressed “Transmit,” opening up his regular radio channel.

“But they’ll know where we are…” Astro said, alarmed.

“That’s the whole point, kiddo,” Mother said.

Schofield keyed his radio, put on a worried voice: “Delta Leader, come in! Flash… Flash Gordon! You still alive out there? This is Scarecrow. Please respond!”

He received no reply from the Delta team.

But he did get another kind of response.

A terrifying howl echoed out from the flight deck of the Nimitz.

His transmission had been detected.

The gorillas were coming.

And they didn’t take long getting there.

They swarmed off the Nimitz, an army of fast-moving shadows.

Zeroing in on Schofield’s radio signal, the three hundred apes converged on the tunnel entrance, howling and roaring.

Schofield’s team charged into the tunnel system, pursued by the monsters. It was scary enough moving through the dank concrete passageways—but doing it with an army of deadly creatures on your tail was even worse.

“This way,” Schofield said, referring to his map.

He was heading for the two massive gun emplacements of Hell Island. The two big guns—twelve-inch behemoths—were positioned on a pair of cliffs pointing east and south, designed to ward off any approaching fleet.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely correct: he was heading for the ammunition chambers buried underneath and in between the gun emplacements.

Through the tunnels they ran.

The gorillas caught up, firing and roaring. Schofield’s team fired behind themselves as they ran, picking off the apes, never slowing down. To slow down was to die.

Then abruptly they came to a freight elevator.

“This is it. We’re beneath the first gun emplacement,” Schofield said. “This elevator was used to feed ammunition to the guns from the chambers down below.”

Like the concrete world around it, the elevator was old and clunky, rusted beyond repair. It didn’t work, but that didn’t matter.

“Quickly, down,” Schofield ordered.

One after the other, they swept down a rusty ladder that ran down the elevator shaft.

Moving last of all, Mother grabbed the ladder just as an ape came leaping out of the darkness, grabbing her gun-hand.

She pivoted on the ladder and hurled the gorilla free—allowing it to take her gun, but flinging it out into the elevator shaft. The gorilla sailed down the shaft, disappearing into blackness, its shriek ending with a dull thud somewhere down there.

“Hurry up, people!” Mother called downward.

They hustled down the ladder.

On the way, Schofield found a huge iron door set into an alcove. Its Japanese markings had been painted over with English: ORDNANCE CHAMBER ONE.

Unfortunately, access to the door itself was obstructed by a cluster of heavy crates and boxes. They’d never get to it.

Down another level and they came to the bottom of the elevator shaft. Here Schofield found a second huge iron door marked ORDNANCE CHAMBER TWO. Not only was it free of obstructing crates, it was unlocked. Also here was a large circular pressure door that looked like the entry to a giant safe. It was easily ten feet in diameter.

Schofield ignored this circular door, pushed open the heavy iron door to the ordnance chamber and pulled a glow stick from his belt.

Beside him, Sanchez extracted a flare gun and raised it.

“No,” Schofield said sharply. “Not here.”

He cracked the glow stick—illuminating the room around them with its haunting amber glow—and suddenly Sanchez saw the wisdom of Schofield’s words.

The room around them was enormous, high-ceilinged and concrete-walled, with floor space roughly the size of a basketball court. A network of overhead rails ran along its ceiling, dangling chains and hooks. An identical door lay on the far side, leading to a second elevator shaft that fed the other gun emplacement.

And piled up in its center, like an artificial mountain sixty feet tall, was a pyramid-shaped stack of wooden crates. Each crate was marked in either Japanese or English with DANGER: EXPLOSIVES or DANGER: FLAMMABLE. NO NAKED FLAMES.

In fact, Schofield couldn’t recall seeing the word “danger” so many times in the one place.

“This is what we wanted,” he said in a low voice. “Come on.”

His team hustled inside.

THE APES arrived at the second ammunition chamber a minute later.

The first few must have been recon troops—for the first time that day they were cautious, checking things out, as if suspecting a trap.

They saw Schofield and Mother clambering up the mountain of wooden crates, heading for a catwalk near the ceiling—presumably to join the others up there, although they couldn’t be seen. The recon gorillas ducked back outside, to report back to the others.

Thirty seconds later, the onslaught came.

It was spectacular in its ferocity.

The ape army thundered into the ammo chamber in full assault mode.

Screaming and shrieking, moving fast and spreading out, they stormed the subterranean hall—not firing. The scouts had informed the others of the flammable contents of the hall. They’d have to do this without guns.

The ape army leapt onto the mountain of crates, coming after Schofield and Mother with a vengeance, coming to finish them off.