Fast

by Shane M Brown

  She hit the enter button and watched the final product rotating as a 3-D model on the screen. There was a slight hiss off to her left as the synthesizer started processing her pheromone. It would only take seconds before she had enough pheromone to fill the Complex ten times over.

  Vanessa smiled. Because Vanessa loved biology.

  Now came the show-stopper.

  How on earth can I disperse the pheromone to all the creatures in time?

  Nature dispersed pheromones via air currents, but the Complex had lost all its ventilation fans. There were no air currents. It could take a full day before the pheromone showed up everywhere in the Complex by passive dispersal.

  She needed the pheromone to disperse through the entire Complex and the Quarantine Center in the next sixty seconds.

  Just then, something small and beautiful floated down from the top of the room and landed softly on her computer. Its beauty reminded her she was a novice in a discipline that took millennia to master.

  It also provided her answer.

  #

  Gas.

  Coleman stood right in the middle of it.

  I should have heard it. If I pull this trigger I could ignite the gas. The explosion will rip this place apart.

  Now that he wasn’t solely focused on Cairns, Coleman heard the quiet hiss of escaping gas from the canisters spread around the lab.

  He recognized the bottles. These were the canisters from the engineering level. They had been on the forklift moved from the engineering level’s destructive testing facilities. The same place the surfactant came from. Coleman had assumed the forklift was entirely part of the ruse to trap Third Unit on the engineering level, but now it seemed that Cairns had been putting this part of his plan into motion even then.

  But this didn’t smell like the surfactant that killed Marlin in the ventilation shafts. This had a much sharper smell.

  ‘Titriole gas,’ confirmed Cairns.

  Coleman saw Cairns’s plan. He was filling the labs with gas and then leaving a timer to detonate the explosives and ignite the gas.

  Destroying these labs was part of Cairns’s operation. He wasn’t just here to steal the templates. He was also ensuring this research facility wouldn’t be an obstacle in the future. As if murdering all the staff wasn’t going to be enough….

  It was the perfect Cameron Cairns solution.

  Cairns left the templates beside the explosives and walked slowly and deliberately towards Coleman. The eerie light reflecting off the lab pool made Cairns appear ghastly. He looked like some kind of approaching supernatural apparition.

  He’s just another man, thought Coleman. If I pulled this trigger, he’ll die. But he knows I can’t do that.

  Coleman gripped the colt in both hands and yelled, ‘Stop where you are or I will shut…you…down! I don’t care if I kill us both. I’ll do it in a heartbeat.’

  Coleman hoped he sounded genuine. Apparently he didn’t sound genuine enough.

  ‘You won’t shoot me,’ predicted Cairns, still approaching. ‘You want to. You desperately want to. But you can’t. From where I’m standing, you’re in no condition to do anything. You can hardly keep that pistol sight from shaking.’

  It wasn’t true. Coleman’s pistol held dead steady, but Cairns could obviously see he was near exhausted. He had been running the hard-yards all day, and his body showed the effects. He wasn’t a superhero. He was made of flesh and blood like everyone else.

  Coleman slipped the colt back down into his leg holster. ‘You’ve failed, Cairns. You’re never going to get out of here. Whatever pick-up you arranged must be well and truly cleared out by now. My government will destroy this place before they let you take those templates.’

  Cairns cocked an eyebrow. ‘Are you trying to negotiate with me?’

  ‘The U.S. Military doesn’t negotiate with terrorists or assholes. And you fit both categories. I just wanted you to know that your operation has failed. You don’t even have Gould anymore.’

  Cairns’s tone became suddenly conversational. ‘Killing him was the most satisfying thing I’ve done all day. I opened up his heart like a bottle of wine. I felt his sternum cleave, and then his ribs spreading as I twisted the blade. You should have seen the look on his face.’

  Cairns stopped three paces short of Coleman. The last time Cairns had stood face-to-face with Coleman, a piece of plexiglass separated them. Now there was just thin air.

  Air rapidly filling with titriole gas.

  Cairns stood squarely in front of Coleman. He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. ‘So, you really need to take these templates off me, right? Okay. But you’re going to have to use your hands, like a man.’

  Cairns held his palms upwards, inviting Coleman to attack. ‘In your own time, Marine. But keep in mind that the timer on those explosives is counting dow -’

  Coleman exploded into action.

  His right fist connected solidly with Cairns’s cheek. The force of the impact travelled right up Coleman’s arm. As Cairns recoiled backwards, Coleman charged forward, choosing his targets and pounding his fists over and over into Cairns.

  From six punches, two more solid hits and a then glancing blow ploughed through Cairns’s guard. The glancing blow slid across Cairns’s face. Coleman felt his watch face gauging out skin.

  The glancing blow gave Cairns a chance to react. When he struck back, it was so perfectly executed that Coleman wondered who was beating the crap out of whom.

  Cairns elbow circled up and under Coleman’s defenses. Cairns twisted his entire body into the attack, straightening with his legs, rotating with his shoulders; the incoming elbow was the focus of all Cairns’s strength.

  Coleman copped the elbow right under the chin.

  The stunningly unexpected blow sliced right through Coleman’s guard. He felt his teeth smack together like someone had set off a mousetrap in his brain. Fragments of his front teeth fractured into his mouth. His back teeth bit deeply into the left side of his cheek. The electric jolt of pain preceded the impact shock.

  Cairns didn’t stop. Coleman had just enough time to notice his watch-face had torn away Cairns’s left eyelid. The eyelid was hanging from Cairns’s face by a wisp of skin. It didn’t slow Cairns even slightly.

  He followed through with a vicious combination of blows that Coleman could hardly see, let alone intercept. It felt like more than one person was hitting him. Both Coleman’s lips were split open and then his nose cartilage crunched under Cairns’s fist. Punches seemed to be raining down from everywhere. As soon as Coleman recovered from one hit, another powerful blow would punish another part of his anatomy. It felt like Cairns had kicked him once or twice, but Coleman wasn’t sure in the frenzied confusion of blows what was happening.

  He twisted and curled his body with the attacks, absorbing as many as he could with his shoulders or his body as his senses came back into focus. The elbow to the face had been shocking, and Coleman knew that if he didn’t unbalance the fight soon, Cairns would land another devastating blow.

  Another big hit like that and Coleman’s brain would shut up shop and call it a day.

  Here comes another kick!

  Coleman ducked under the kick, seeing the heavy combat boot cut through the air where his chest had been just a split second ago. If the kick had landed, Coleman wouldn’t have gotten up.

  Cairns had thought he was delivering the end-move.

  But now Cairns became a slave to the momentum of a kick that was swinging through thin air. He had devoted his entire body-weight to the attack, and that momentum kept his body spinning.

  Coleman stood up halfway through the rotation of Cairns’s body and slung his right arm around Cairns’s neck. Both men finished Cairns’s move, except Coleman now had Cairns in a choke hold.

  Cairns realized in an instant and started smashing his elbow backwards into Coleman’s sides.

  But Coleman wasn’t letting go. In seconds Cairns’s brain would be starved of the oxygen that was pou
ring into his muscles.

  I just have to hold on and ride this bastard to his grave.

  Cairns tried everything, bucking like a wild grunting animal, gouging Coleman’s eyes, working his chin under Coleman’s forearm.

  Coleman wasn’t having any of it, and after twenty seconds Cairns started winding down like his batteries were expiring. How does it feel to be choking to death? Coleman remembered the suffocating panic that he felt on the end of the claw tether when Cairns had strung him up.

  Suddenly Cairns stopped fighting. His body tensed rigidly. He still had energy to fight, but he channeled that energy elsewhere.

  He was pointing at something with his right hand.

  Coleman followed the line of Cairns’s arm.

  The explosives.

  Cairns pointed at the explosives. When he knew he had Coleman’s attention, he pointed at his own wristwatch.

  You must be joking. He’s not bluffing. That timer is about to run down.

  Coleman must have unconsciously loosened his grip on Cairns, because Cairns croaked out, ‘Eight seconds left.’

  Coleman dropped Cairns and sprinted at the explosives. He couldn’t possibly get the explosives out of the gas cloud in eight seconds.

  He scooped up the charge, planted one foot and hurled it across the lab.

  He had a big target.

  The explosives landed right in the middle of the round underlab pool. The pool exploded with a dull floor-shaking thump. Water fountained into the air like Coleman had dropped a depth charge. The body of a long-dead terrorist washed out of the pool ahead of a circular wave that swept through the lab in every direction. The wave reached less than knee high when it hit Coleman, but it swept the templates right across the lab towards where Cairns lay recovering.

  Or where Cairns should have been recovering.

  Cairns was up and pulling something from the wrecked bench the creature had ploughed into when Third Unit first entered the labs. It was a steel bar. The bar looked about the length of a golf club and twice as heavy.

  At the same time, the alarm on Coleman’s watch started beeping.

  The alarm meant the containment door to the Quarantine Center was opening.

  I hope Vanessa knows what she’s doing, thought Coleman as Cairns approached with the steel bar. Because I think things in here are about to get very nasty.

  #

  Here they come.

  In the antechamber, Harrison heard the alarm sounding. He wished he could hit the ‘snooze’ button and get ten more minutes respite.

  The containment door started opening.

  A two inch wide horizontal bar of light appeared under the door.

  Harrison’s hopes for a miracle disintegrated. It’s really happening. They’re really coming in here.

  The growing bar of light shining under the containment door looked unbroken, and for a moment Harrison prayed the creatures had been distracted elsewhere.

  Then came movement. The bar of light broke into a thousand pieces, a broiling silhouette of random shapes trying to scramble under the door. But they weren’t random. They had a purpose, and Harrison stared with horrible fascination.

  The door kept rising, sending a steady mechanical whine down the corridor, and there was no mistaking what waited on the other side.

  The creatures came writhing under the door.

  This is like some kind of insane nightmare. They’re wall-to-wall. I can’t believe they’re coming in here.

  Harrison had prayed for one of two miracles. Either the door wouldn’t open, by some timely mechanical fault, or the number of creatures waiting outside would be few enough for himself and Sullivan to handle.

  The creatures reached halfway down the tunnel, just twenty-five meters away. The tide pouring under the door filled the corridor from one side to the other. There was no telling where one creature stopped and the next began.

  Harrison lifted his radio. ‘Sullivan. We got multiple incoming hostiles. What’s your status?’

  Sullivan slid into the antechamber, reporting on the run. ‘The children are all sealed up in the…oh, my God.’

  Sullivan’s eyes locked on the hypnotic spectacle careening down the corridor. The creatures were just ten meters away from the antechamber.

  In the space of two heartbeats the creatures slammed into the antechamber plexiglass.

  Sullivan jerked back, expecting the entire wall to crash down.

  The entire antechamber shook under the Marines’ boots. Looking through the plexiglass was a nightmare made real. The two Marines backed from the plexiglass, their eyes locked on the horror before them.

  Sullivan swallowed hard. ‘We can’t…I mean…we can’t….’ Sullivan just pointed wordlessly at the spectacle.

  ‘There might be reinforcements coming right behind them,’ prayed Harrison. ‘We need to hold these things back for as long as we can.’

  Sullivan raised his assault rifle. His eyes flicked to Harrison briefly. ‘What’s the plan?’

  CRACK!

  Harrison looked up and saw the plexiglass cracking. It began coming away from the ceiling. Fissures started radiating down the transparent wall like lightning strikes.

  CRACK! CRACK!

  Harrison’s last hope had been that the plexiglass barrier would keep the creatures out.

  ‘The plexiglass is cracking. Get back, get back,’ he yelled.

  #

  Vanessa’s hands moved with feverish intent down the wall. She flipped open lids as rapidly as she could pinch open the clasps.

  Pinch-yank, pinch-yank, pinch-yank.

  Butterflies poured from the open boxes in her wake.

  Before she was even halfway finished, the room was a brown storm of fluttering wings.

  Should I spend the extra time to open all the boxes? Is this enough already? Open them all!

  She had already spent valuable seconds dashing across the lab to seal the door.

  Now the pheromone lab was airtight. She had just six boxes left. She turned from the last plastic box, covering her face with one arm. Thousands of butterflies fluttered crazily in the confined chamber. They pelted into her face and hair and hands and everywhere.

  She groped half-blinded over to the pheromone synthesizer.

  Where is it?

  She hadn’t predicted it would be so hard to navigate in the lab with all the butterflies released, but there was no way she could have introduced the pheromone into the butterfly boxes individually.

  Instead, she transformed the lab into one big butterfly box.

  And now for the pheromone….

  She unscrewed the pressurized pheromone canister from the synthesizer. The canister started hissing out its contents immediately. The pheromone was colorless, odorless, and suspended in minute quantities in its gassy medium.

  But like grandma’s perfume, a little bit went a long way.

  Holding the canister, she cycled her arm through the butterfly cloud.

  That’s right, my little darlings. This is the good stuff.

  She counted down in her head from ten, not really knowing how long it would take for every butterfly in the lab to come into contact with the airborne pheromone molecules.

  The last four seconds felt like torture. Every second could be making the difference for David. Four, three, two….

  Suddenly, from the four corners of the lab came the pheromone warning alarms. Sasha had set up four sensors in the labs to alert her of any leaks in her synthesizing equipment. The devices were sensitive pieces of equipment that Sasha kept precisely calibrated. The alarms meant the pheromone cloud had filled the room.

  All the butterflies were well and truly exposed.

  Vanessa ran for the door, still carrying the canister for good measure. Halfway across the lab, she heard her tablet on the workstation start beeping.

  It meant that the Quarantine Center’s containment door was lifting. Right now, the creatures were surging into the Quarantine Center.

  She groped at the wall besi
de the lab door and yanked up the locking mechanism.

  ‘This is for you, David.’

  The door hissed open to one side.

  She halted as the butterflies surged through the doorway around her. The unthinkable had just occurred to her.

  What if I made a mistake? What if I’ve made some fundamental error in my rush? What if this doesn’t even work?

  The butterflies were already away. More than half of them had pelted over her shoulders, under her arms, through her legs. It was too late to do anything now.

  ‘Fly fast, you magnificent little bastards,’ she yelled after the butterfly cloud. ‘Fly fast!’

  #

  Cairns charged at Coleman with the steel bar.

  Coleman realized this was no longer a civilized slugging match. With a steel bar involved, someone was going to get very hurt, very quickly.

  Unfortunately, he was on the wrong side of the steel bar equation. He had a slim window of opportunity to disable Cairns. Once Cairns placed a few solid hits with that bar, it was all-over red-rover.

  Coleman needed to get that steel bar out of play in the next few seconds.

  To think that I had him finished off in a choke hold and I had to let him go.

  Coleman feinted one way and then dodged in the opposite direction. The steel bar whooshed past. When the bar’s trajectory was safely passing his left shoulder, he dropped a quick right hand jab into Cairns’s jaw, catching Cairns on the way past. Cycling his fist, he slammed another hit into Cairns’s kidneys.

  Cairns reeled instinctively way from the painful blow. He hefted the steel bar around in a big sideways baseball swing.

  At the same time, Coleman followed through with a lightning-fast side kick.

  It was a dangerous ploy to stay within the bar’s range, but he needed to disable Cairns before the bar started breaking bones.

  And I need to hit Cairns hard to bleed the momentum off the bar. If that thing connects, I’m going to fold like a cardboard cut-out.

  Coleman prayed his kick landed before Cairns could get the steel bar into dangerous play again.

  The bar was only halfway through its swing when Coleman’s kick slammed squarely into Cairns’s taunt stomach. Cairns’s breath whooshed away.