Goddamn.
But that was all Schofield got to see, for right then the ape bared its jaws and launched itself at him—just as it was shot to bits, about a million bits, as Mother and Hulk nailed it with their MP-7s.
Then Astro yelled: ‘Marines! Look sharp! They’re not coming in via the catwalk! They’re coming at you from across the ceiling!’
Only now did Schofield stand and spin to check the ceiling of the hangar near his tower.
Coming across it, using the complex array of pipes, lights, pulleys and rails that lined the hangar’s ceiling, was a phalanx of about forty black gorillas, all dressed like the dead one and moving across the superhigh ceiling with ease.
And then Schofield’s horror became complete as the nearest ape—hanging upside-down from three of its four limbs, raised its free hand, levelled an M-4 at the tower and opened fire.
* * * *
SECOND ASSAULT
HELL ISLAND
1600 HOURS
1 AUSUST, 2005
* * * *
VII
The apes moved across the ceiling with incredible speed, clambering across it faster than a human could run across land. And the fact that they were more than a hundred feet off the floor didn’t seem to faze them at all.
Schofield’s Marines opened fire and the first three gorillas dropped off the ceiling in explosions of blood, shrieking.
But the others just kept on coming, firing as they advanced.
The man beside Schofield, a young private known as Cheese, was hit square in the face and thrown backwards. Another Marine was hit in the chest and flopped to the floor.
Then the force of apes split and started to fan out around the tower, like an ocean wave washing around a rock.
Mother was busy unleashing a withering volley of fire at three of the incoming beasts when a fourth ape landed with a thud on the open window-ledge of the tower right next to her and threw itself at her from the side.
Ape and Marine went sprawling across the floor, struggling violently, desperately. Since both had lost their guns in the tumble, this would be the worst kind of battle: hand-to-hand, to the death.
Now Mother was strong but the ape was stronger and it quickly got the upper hand, headbutting her hard and then throwing her against a nearby table. With a roar, the ape hurled itself at her, aiming its bared teeth at her nose…
…only to catch one of Mother’s grenades in its mouth. Mother had whipped it around and jammed it into the creature’s jaws.
‘Get a taste of this,’ she said, releasing the spoon and rolling away a second before the gorilla’s head simply exploded, transforming instantly into a shower of red spray.
The force of gorillas was now converging on the high tower from all sides, raining automatic fire on the Marines inside it—who returned that fire with interest.
Then the gorillas started leaping en masse down onto the tower’s observation platform—in one instance, four of them crash-tackled one of Schofield’s Marines, taking him down with their bare hands. One gorilla was ripped to shreds by the Marine’s final spray of fire, but the rest got him. The hapless man fell screaming, covered by the frenzied apes.
Given the gorillas’ suicidal frontal-assault strategy, their numbers dropped fast. Forty had quickly become twenty, but even then the numbers game was still in their favour: Schofield’s ten-man Marine team was now down to seven, three on the tower, plus the four over on the catwalk supplying cover fire.
‘Marines!’ Schofield called. ‘Get off this tower! Back to the catwalk! Now!’
He began to retreat—pushing Zak Pennebaker in front of him—loosing three shots as he did so, dropping three gorillas that had just landed inside the tower. But the three apes didn’t die; they clawed after him despite their wounds and it took six more shots to neutralise them all.
A gurgled scream as the Marine beside Schofield was shot in the throat. He fell, and even though he was already mortally wounded, two gorillas descended on him with a fury, firing their guns into his body, tearing at his face with their hands.
Jesus ... Schofield’s eyes went wide.
Of the six Marines who had stepped onto the tower, only he and Mother remained.
They retreated, with Pennebaker between them, back across the gangway-bridge to the long north-south catwalk, chased by the twenty gorillas.
Once on the catwalk, Schofield checked his options. The gorillas, still using the pipe-riddled ceiling as their means of travel, were angling toward the south end of the catwalk, leaving Schofield with only one choice.
‘North,’ he ordered. ‘To the bow! Go!’
The six remaining Marines—Schofield, Mother, Astro, Sanchez, Bigfoot and Hulk—charged along the catwalk, heading forward, their boots clanging on the walkway.
Seconds later, the gorillas arrived at the catwalk and started their pursuit, exchanging fire with the last man in the Marine squad, Sanchez.
The catwalk ended at an immense steel wall that bisected the hangar deck. The enormous hangar stretched for nearly the full length of the ship, but it was cut in the middle by this watertight wall, so if the carrier ever flooded, only one hangar bay would be lost.
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.
* * * *
VIII
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 manoeuvre, 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 guerrilla 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-spiralling 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!
The truck swung in a wide circle away from the rampway, across the open area of clear deck-space at the southern end of the hangar.
Suddenly, with a roar, an ape bounced down onto the bonnet of the truck and blam! Schofield nailed it with one of his two .45 calibre Desert Eagle pistols, throwing the creature off the truck.
Then another ape swung in through the driver’s side window with its gun raised and—blam!— Bigfoot fired across Schofield’s body, sending the gorilla flying away with a yelp.
Then two more apes hung down from the roof of the cab—their heads appearing upside-down, with their M-4s extended—only for Schofield to fire repeatedly up into the ceiling of the cab, hitting the two apes in their chests through the metal of the roof! The pair of apes convulsed violently before sliding off the speeding truck.
‘Boss! We can’t keep this up!’ Bigfoot called. ‘It’s only a matter of time till they overwhelm us!’
‘I know! I know!’ Schofield yelled back, searching for an option.
The big truck swung in its wild circle, absolutely covered by gorillas, flinging some of them clear with the centrifugal force.
Then Schofield saw the port-side exterior elevator.
It was on the ocean side of the ship. Right now, on it was an F-14 Tomcat fighter jet, attached to a low towing vehicle.
Schofield’s eyes lit up. ‘Hang on.’ He gunned the engine and broke out of his circular line of travel, cutting a bee-line for the port-side elevator.
‘What are you doing!’
‘Just get ready to jump…’
They hit the open-air elevator doing sixty, just as two more gorillas jumped down onto the truck’s running boards and wrenched off the doors on either side of the cab—only to be blown away a second later by Schofield and Bigfoot firing across each other.
‘Now!’ Schofield yelled ...
…and he and Bigfoot dived out of the speeding truck, landing in twin rolls on either side of it…
... while the truck continued straight on and shot off the edge of the exterior elevator, sailing through the air, wheels spinning, still covered in a mass of black gorillas, before it crashed down into the sea with a gigantic splash.
Schofield and Bigfoot lay on the open-air elevator, gasping for breath.
‘You okay?’ Schofield asked. ‘Still got all your limbs?’
‘Uh, yeah, I think so…’
Schofield spun, to see the full ape army staring at him from the other side of the hangar, eighty yards away.
They roared as one and charged.
‘Oh, Christ…’
* * * *
IX
At the same time as Schofield was sending his truck to a watery grave, Mother’s truck was sweeping up the access ramp to the flight deck, bearing eight apes on its roof and outer flanks, and being chased by about a hundred more on foot.
I
t was like escaping from the underworld, pursued by all of its demons.
Mother floored it, slamming the ascending truck into the outer walls of the spiralling ramp-way, losing a couple of apes that way.
In the tray at the back of the truck, Sanchez, Astro and Hulk were doing battle with four apes that had just swung inside.
Sanchez shot one in the chest, while Astro disarmed another and kicked it through the side canvas of the truck, but Hulk wasn’t so lucky. The other two apes took him on together, and in the scuffle one managed to shoot him in the stomach.
Hulk roared in pain—just as the two apes did something totally unexpected: they yanked him off the back of the speeding truck, jumping with him, without any thought, it seemed, to the injuries they themselves would suffer.
Astro saw it all in a kind of surreal slow motion.
He saw Hulk’s eyes go wide as the big man fell to the ramp behind the upwardly-racing truck, gripped by the two gorillas.
Then he saw the onrushing army of apes overwhelm Hulk, choosing to use their M-4s as clubs rather than guns. Astro winced as he lost sight of Hulk amid the mass of black hair.
But even then, not every ape stopped to join in the mauling of Hulk—the rest just kept running, clambering around the gorillas battering Hulk’s body, still chasing the fleeing truck.
‘Jesus ...’ Astro breathed.
* *
And then wham! Mother’s truck burst into grey daylight, into the pouring rain assaulting the flight deck. Uncountable raindrops hammered its windshield.
The four remaining gorillas on the truck made their move.
They converged on the cab in a coordinated manner—swinging down together from the roof, one arriving at each door, the other two landing on the bonnet of the truck, right in front of Mother, guns up.