David Golemon: Ripper

Ellenshaw slowly lowered the weapon and took a breath before he passed out from lack of oxygen. He felt his knees weaken and caught himself as he saw Jack struggling to get up. He quickly forgot about his own feeling of nausea at what he had just done and rushed forward to assist the colonel. He knelt beside Collins and helped him to his feet, where Jack took one and then another deep breath, each one more agonizing than the one before it.

“Good thing I didn’t stay put, huh? That fella was treating you like a football.”

All Collins could do was nod his head.

“Well, let’s get the water flowing again,” Ellenshaw said. Jack nodded still in dire pain from the broken ribs.

Suddenly the overhead lights blared to life, filling the reactor room with such a bright luminescence that it stunned the two men. Charlie lowered his eyes, the light nearly blinding him as it shot through his glasses. Immediately after that the scram alarms started, and the warning bells began decrying the stoppage of distilled water to the cooling pumps. Then came the shock of their lives as Europa announced in her sexy voice, making the message sound trite and flippant, “There are fifteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds left till core meltdown. Repeat, there are now fifteen minutes, five seconds remaining till core meltdown.”

“Oh, shit,” Ellenshaw said as he held Collins upright. “We have plenty of time, right Colonel? I mean, we just have to switch on the cooling pumps right?”

He suddenly felt Jack move as he started struggling against Charlie’s grip. As Ellenshaw looked down he saw the colonel’s face go flush. He tried to see what it was Collins was seeing, and then he did.

Standing not thirty feet away with its huge arms at its side was the creature once known as Smith. In his right hand both men saw something in the bright light. As Smith smiled, the creature allowed the six large fuses to slip from its grasp and strike the floor at its feet.

“Uh, what are those?” Charlie asked staring at the six large tubular-shaped sticks.

Jack coughed up blood but managed to get the words out as he looked up at the gloating Smith, who stood with a large and sickening smile on his elongated face.

“They’re … four … hundred.… amp fuses.”

“And what are the fuses for?” Charlie asked slowly, getting a horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“The … cooling … pumps.”

“I take it that’s bad?”

Jack again coughed up blood and then fell to his knees.

“Well, why the hell not?” Ellenshaw said, feeling all alone and not exactly ready to face the hulking giant before him.

All around him the sound of the alarms increased as Europa continued her countdown from five minutes.

Will Mendenhall placed his weight against the giant steel door, knowing his body couldn’t possibly fend off that much beef. The beast struck the door once more, and Mendenhall lost his footing when the space between the door and jamb widened by a foot. Will caught his balance and then pushed back, using the very weight of the door as leverage. But the beast pushed back before the door could seal itself. This time Mendenhall flew back as if tossed by an angry child. His back struck something in the dark and the impact sent a sharp jab of pain jolting through his entire body. After striking the large object, he slid down to the floor where his head came to rest next to something that smelled like an old worn-out tire. As he lifted his head from the tiled floor, he saw the large steel door standing ajar. Will in a panic raised his arm and tried to find a handhold to assist him to his feet. Instead of finding something solid, his hand wrapped around something that rattled with a metallic sound as something broke and he and his failed rescuer fell back to the floor.

“Damn it!” Will shouted as he just knew that the beast was coming straight through the door at him. He struggled to frame the open door in his vision and noticed that the door hadn’t moved since he had been knocked down. The sound of the beast was gone. Mendenhall reached down and pulled up the object he had grabbed a hold of before it broke away and saw that it was a belt of large-caliber ammunition.

“Damn, these are fifty-caliber machine gun rounds,” he said beneath his breath as he finally managed to pull himself to his feet. He checked the door once more and stepped forward. He slowly turned as his eyes finally adjusted to the near darkness of the vault. As his eyes widened he saw the giant torpedo bomber rising majestically above his head. There were more lined up on either side of the first. “Wow,” was all he could say as he took in the doomed aircraft of Flight 19. The planes looked down with their empty canopies like they were cyclopian eyes angrily watching an invader to their cave.

Will examined the contents of the vault and saw that the ammunition belt he had grabbed was dangling from the loading port underneath the left wing. Then his eyes spied the three barrels of the Browning fifty-caliber machine guns protruding from the wing’s edge. His eyes roamed to the right wing and he saw three more barrels sticking out there. He looked over and saw a large battery-powered cart. It was used for moving heavy loads. Then he glanced up at the magnificent-looking aircraft once more.

“Jesus, Ryan, where are you when I need you? This is just about right up your alley.”

Mendenhall again looked from the Grumman TBF Avengers to the electric cart with the tracked drive system. A plan started to form.

Just as Will started moving on his idea, sharp, ear-shattering blows started coming from down the corridor. The beast was again at work on Virginia’s vault and this time it was using tools.

Mendenhall was running out of time to help his friends survive the darkest night of their lives.

Sarah, Farbeaux, Denise Gilliam, Virginia, and Gloria Bannister liked the silence even less than the pounding or twisting of the locking wheel on the vault’s door. The beast outside was roaming around the corridor and every once in a while it would slam its great fists into a wall in frustration at not being able to get at its enemy. Then its rage would move off farther along the corridor as if it were looking for something, or someone, else.

“I have a sneaking suspicion that our friend is out there doing that problem-solving thing we discussed earlier,” Henri said as he allowed Denise to change the rough material covering his wounds. The doctor looked up and saw that Sarah was looking at her while she held Henri’s head in her lap. Gilliam shook her head negatively. “Please, Doctor, you can tell her what it is you’re thinking,” Farbeaux said as he looked up into the bruised face of Sarah.

“Okay, Colonel. If we don’t get you upstairs in the next half an hour, you’re going to bleed out on us. You not only tore out your stitches on the outside, but you somehow managed to break open the three I had to put into your arterial artery in your hip.”

“I can’t imagine how that happened, Doctor,” he said as he continued to look into Sarah’s face. She again pulled his blonde hair out of his eyes and then smiled. “I guess the prospect of life in one of your federal prisons wouldn’t look too bad about now.”

“Knock it off, Henri; we’ll get you out of here,” Sarah said.

Henri decided to risk Sarah dropping his head onto the cold steel flooring. “I don’t think Jack the giant killer is going to come this time little Sarah.”

McIntire looked away as the reality of losing Jack struck once more. She turned and with the smile still weakly planted on her lips looked down at the Frenchman.

“He’s been late before.”