David Golemon: Ripper

“What in the hell is that noise?” Virginia asked as she placed her ear against the steel door. “Is that scratching?”

Gloria joined Virginia at the vault’s barricaded door and also placed her ear against the cold steel.

“What could it be doing out there?” she asked.

Suddenly they heard hammering against the door. They realized immediately that it was not flesh against steel, but metal upon metal. It started at the upper corner of the door, paused, and then started again. Virginia stepped back and looked upward. She heard the banging stop and then begin once again. Her eyes widened when she saw the corner of the door nearest the solid steel threshold opposite the locking mechanism vibrate from the continued hammering.

Henri sat up in Sarah’s arms, stilling the hand of Dr. Gilliam as she placed another makeshift bandage on his hip. Farbeaux cocked his head and listened.

Virginia walked up to face the door as the blows became louder.

“Shit,” she said as she realized what the beast out in the hallway was attempting to do.

“The tungsten hinges for the vault door are on that side, aren’t they?” Henri asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes,” Virginia confirmed just as they heard the almost muffled sound of something hitting the door with a ping and then a thump.

“It’s taking the door off at the hinges,” Virginia said as she pulled Gloria Bannister away from the door.

“If it would make you feel better young Sarah, even I would welcome your Jack Collins at this particular point.”

Sarah stood, easing the Frenchman’s head down, and with strength she didn’t know she had, started pulling Henri by the lab coat’s collar toward the back of the vault.

“We’re not catching a break here,” Virginia said as she also started pulling Gloria in the same direction as the others. After they had reached the back of the vault, Virginia started examining what they had to fight with. She counted ten more of the small spears. There were also cowhide shields and slingshots, but no rocks.

“The instrument of death you’re looking at Dr. Pollock,” Henri said motioning toward the small spears, “is far more dangerous than it looks. It’s called an assegai. I had a few in my own collection at one time. I believe it’s a very appropriate weapon for our circumstance.”

“Why is that Colonel?” Gloria asked as she pulled two of them off the wall.

“It’s a brutal close-in stabbing weapon, which I believe is the sort of battle we are about to fight.”

“Damn it, I hate it when he’s right,” Virginia said as she also removed two assegais from the wall and handed one to Denise who hefted it and tested the weight.

Sarah placed Henri against the rear wall, but he fought against her in order to stand. She cursed and helped him do so.

“I think I would much rather go out standing my dear,” he said as he reached down and took Sarah’s small hand, bending with considerable pain and kissing it.

McIntire reached up and, not caring if the others saw her movement, kissed Farbeaux deeply on the lips. “There, we’re even, you ass,” she said smiling and stepping away to get the last two spears hanging from their steel holders.

Henri’s shocked face registered his surprise as he watched the small woman hand him one of the assegais.

“I’m going to go down fighting. I have decided I very much want to live,” Henri said as he looked at Sarah and winked, not knowing if she could see the gesture in the darkness. “If only to have you visit me in prison,” Henri finished as he braced himself against the wall just as Virginia announced with a fear-laced voice that the second and middle set of hinges just fell to the floor outside the vault door.

As the five trapped people prepared to make their final stand, the beast outside threw them a curve as its animalistic impatience must have overwhelmed its intelligence. It started pulling on the eighteen-inch-thick vault door. At that very moment Europa got the power back on just as the thick steel was ripped away from the frame. They heard as well as saw the large locking rods slide out of the door, but they had nothing to slide into.

“If it weren’t for bad luck, we wouldn’t have any luck at all,” Virginia said as the lights in the vault illuminated a sight they hadn’t wished to see — the beast raising the two-ton steel door over its head and tossing it out into the corridor.

Brave Virginia, so scared she was furious, was the first to move as she charged the beast before it had a chance to recover from throwing the door. The nuclear sciences engineer stabbed outward with the four-foot-long assegai. The razor-sharp tip slid easily into the creature’s abdomen and struck its liver. It howled in pain and reached down and snapped the Zulu spear off, leaving its tip imbedded in its stomach. The beast came into the vault. Denise Gilliam, forgetting Henri’s advice, threw her spear and it struck the mercenary in the shoulder where it immediately ripped it free. The creature caught Virginia totally off-guard by swinging the shaft end, and it struck her across the chest, sending Virginia crashing into the steel wall of the vault.

Gloria stabbed next and hit the thing in the upper thigh. Again it cried out in pain, but it still kept coming. It swung at the CDC doctor, but she easily moved out of the way.

Sarah started forward, but Farbeaux grabbed her and threw her back, sending her crashing into the enclosure where Cetshwayo was laid out in his temperature-controlled sleep. Henri charged, moving slowly due to his loss of blood, but charge he did. He planted the spear deep into the giant’s chest, pulled it free, and then struck at it again. The beast was so shocked at the sudden and vicious strikes that it half turned and kicked out with its leg. The giant’s foot struck the Frenchman and sent him flying the length of the large vault where he hit the wall and bounced off, striking the floor and remaining still.

The once-upon-a-time soldier roared in triumph as it regained the initiative and came on. The defenders saw their fate moving toward them and would have liked to have continued the fight but knew they had nothing left to fight with.

Suddenly the vault erupted with bright flashes of light and the creature turned away from its intended victims only to be met by a withering wave of gunfire from outside the doorframe. At least a hundred and fifty rounds struck the future of soldiering, with the bullets that struck its head dropping the already wounded beast in the doorway. The next thing they saw was a large man in black Nomex battle dress jump atop the still moving creature and empty a full magazine into it.

Sarah held Farbeaux and Gloria roused Virginia from the floor. Denise Gilliam stepped forward and looked up at the man still standing atop the downed beast.

Captain Carl Everett winked at a still-reeling Virginia Pollock.

“You want to really apologize for that cheap shot you gave me in the football game, Doc?”

Virginia shook her aching head, trying to clear it further. “Okay, I did it on purpose.”

“Uh huh,” Everett said as he hopped down from the back of the dead mercenary. “You owe me and my men here dinner … no, a lobster dinner.”

“I’m not that sorry,” Virginia said as she hugged the blonde captain. The vault filled with the remnants of Everett’s fire team who had finally made it to the armory on level forty-two and were now assisting with a wounded Farbeaux and the others.

“Okay, we have to get these people out of—”

Everett saw the giant shadow rise from behind him. He saw the reaction of every person still inside the vault when the beast they thought they had killed rose from the supposed land of everlasting peace they had sent him to.