Matthew Reilly: Hell Island

Moving in the lead of her desperate fleeing team, Mother threw open a bulkhead door in the great wall, to reveal that the catwalk continued beyond it in a straight line, only now suspended over a second hangar bay, the forward one.

Mother froze in the doorway.

“God have mercy…” she breathed.

Schofield came up alongside her, looked beyond the doorway into the forward hangar bay.

“Oh… my… God…”

This hangar bay had no indoor battlefield, just regular planes, trucks and jeeps on its wide bare floor.

What it did have, however, were about 350 gorillas standing on the floor of the gigantic hangar bay, milling around the remains of Condor’s 82nd Airborne unit.

Schofield looked down in time to see the lead ape yank Condor’s rifle from the Airborne leader’s dead hands, raise it into the air and roar in triumph.

Then—Schofield didn’t know how; it was almost as if it had a sixth sense—the lead ape turned and looked up and stared directly in Shane Schofield’s eyes.

It was like stumbling into a lion’s den while the lion was eating a meal.

The lead ape let out a loud roar and the crowd of gorillas around him moved at once in response: they started scaling every available ladder—some even scaled the giant dividing wall itself—heading for the catwalk on which Schofield’s team now stood.

RUNNING IN the rear, Sanchez arrived at the doorway in the dividing wall just as Schofield came charging back out through it.

“What—?”

“Back this way,” Schofield said, not even stopping.

“But they’re still back there—”

“We’ve got a better chance against this group than that one.” Schofield and the others shoved past Sanchez, heading back south, heading aft.

Ever doubtful, Sanchez had to look for himself—and he saw the multitude of apes surging up at him from the forward hangar bay. “Goddamn…”

“Sanchez!” Schofield called back. “When you decide to join us, lock that door behind you!”

Sanchez locked the door, then blew the lock for good measure, then turned and followed the others.

Schofield ran back down the high catwalk—having squeezed past his team until he was once again in the lead—now heading aft and once more confronted by the original smaller squad of gorillas.

“Mother! Astro! Bigfoot! Rolling leapfrog formation!” he called as he went by. “Full auto. Do it.”

He was running full tilt now, MP-7 raised.

Running and firing down the catwalk, Schofield took down three of the twenty apes charging at him along the same walkway.

Once his gun went dry, he hit the deck, dropping to his belly, allowing Mother to hurdle him and do the same—run and fire with a fury.

She nailed six more, then dropped to her belly… at which point Astro hurdled her, guns blazing.

Then Astro ducked and Bigfoot hurdled him, and thus the four of them took down the small gorilla force in a textbook turnaround maneuver, and suddenly they were alone in the vast space.

Not for long.

The larger gorilla force had started banging on the door in the dividing wall. Then, with a loud mechanical groaning, a large vehicle-access door down on the floor began to roll upwards, opening…

“Scarecrow! What do we do!” Mother yelled. “I’ve never been in this kind of situation before!”

“We stay alive, any way we can! There! ”

He pointed at the aft-most elevator on the starboard side of the hangar. It was a giant thing, a huge hydraulic open-air platform that hung off the side of the carrier, designed to lift entire planes from the hangar deck up to the flight deck.

Today, a gangway branched off the outer edge of the massive elevator, stretching down to the dock of Hell Island.

“The gangway!” Schofield called. “Go!”

The six-man Marine team reached a long ladder that connected the high catwalk to the floor of the hangar, slid down it one after the other, Schofield leading the way.

The main gorilla force was now flooding into the aft hangar bay like bats out of hell. Their numbers were incredible, they literally poured through the access door from the forward hangar, then clambered over the muddy fake battlefield, climbing up and over the trenches and barbed wire, guns firing, teeth bared.

It was, quite simply, the most fearsome assault force Schofield had ever seen.

Armed, enraged, and completely lacking the fear of death—any human force that saw these things bearing down on it would in all likelihood just go to water.

Schofield was almost at the exterior elevator, only fifty yards away, when something completely unexpected happened.

The elevator began to rise.

“Oh no… no… ”

The great platform lifted fast, taking the gangway with it. As the elevator rose up and out of sight, heading for the flight deck, the gangway leading to dry land dropped down into the water with an ungainly splash.

“They—” Bigfoot gasped. “Son of a bitch…”

“Next plan?” Sanchez said.

“Stay moving.” Schofield scanned the area for another escape. “Always stay moving. While you’re moving, you’re still in the game. If you stop, you’re dead. Never stop.”

As he spoke, he saw two large transport trucks parked over by the wall. “Those trucks! Get in and make for the flight deck!”

The squad split up, racing for the two trucks. They were five-ton troop transports, with high canvas awnings covering their rear trays.

Schofield and Bigfoot dived into the cab of one truck; Mother, Astro, Hulk and Sanchez jumped into the other one.

As Schofield slid into the driver’s seat, he spun to check on the scientist, Pennebaker, to see if he was keeping up—

—only to see Zak Pennebaker skulking into a side door of the hangar thirty yards away, on his own, preferring, it seemed, to handle this disaster by himself. He disappeared through the door.

“What the—?” Schofield frowned. But he didn’t have time to ponder the issue. The apes had cleared the battlefield and were now advancing across the open deck like the army of darkness.

Schofield gunned the engine.

The two trucks roared to life, shot off the mark, heading for the upward-spiraling vehicle ramp that led to the flight deck—a journey that involved briefly driving back toward the ape army and racing the oncoming army to the ramp’s wide doorway roughly halfway between the two forces.

It was a dead-heat. Mother’s truck reached the ramp’s doorway just as the ape force did.

The first gorillas launched themselves at her truck, clutching onto any handhold they could find, just as it sped inside the rampway. Eight of them got a grip on it.

It was worse for Schofield.

Driving behind Mother, he got to the ramp entrance two seconds too late. The ape army swarmed across the doorway, blocking it, and suddenly he had a decision to make: plough through the mass of hairy black beasts, or turn away.

Screw it.

He ploughed right into the seething horde of apes, slamming through their ranks with his big five-ton truck.

Squeals, shrieks… and gunfire as the apes opened fire.

A barrage of bullets shattered Schofield’s windshield—apes went flying left and right—some banging against the truck’s bullbar, others disappearing under it, more still grabbing onto its sides and climbing aboard it—the truck bumping and bouncing.

Schofield ducked as gunfire assaulted his cab, slamming into the headrest of his seat.

It was too much fire. Driving head-on toward it, he couldn’t keep control of the truck. He couldn’t get to the rampway.

He yanked on the steering wheel, veered away from the ape-filled doorway… now with no less than twenty-five apes hanging from his truck!