The sergeant realized as he looked from the smaller man to his other rescuers that he was dealing with the highly deadly group of men known as DELTA. He understood immediately, turned, and waved everyone but his security team back into the darkness of the desert.
“Thank you, Anderson, Reggie. Now, can you tell me where Jack is?”
“I have no idea. The last I heard … well … the last I heard was that he was off base. Captain Everett has been stuck below since this mess began.”
The major looked down again at the beast at his booted feet. He reached over and removed a flashlight from his collar and snapped it on. His eyes roamed over the transformed man and he looked up at the sergeant once again as he snapped off the flashlight.
“One of yours?” he asked.
“Not exactly. This is one of the intruders. From what I understand, he didn’t come into the complex that way.”
“Must be the water down there, huh?”
The sergeant remained silent even as the major slapped him on the shoulder.
“Sorry, it was a long freefall, and I don’t handle it as well as when I was a sprout.”
One of Garcia’s men came over and handed him a small bag of gear.
“What’s you plan?” the sergeant asked.
“Well, the president said he wants those people down there brought out in one piece, so I guess we’re going in.”
“Can my men and I come along?”
Garcia looked up as he handed the heavy-caliber Barrett over to the man who had given him his rapelling gear.
“Thanks, but we work better alone. Grateful for the offer though.” Garcia turned away and then stopped and faced the Event Group security man once more. “By the way Sergeant, from two hundred feet up, we saw that you put up one hell of a defense. Pass that on to your men. I can see Jack Collins’s training there. You did real well. You and your men can fight with us anytime—just not tonight.”
The sergeant watched the small officer and his thirty-six-man team move off toward the hangar and the black hole that awaited them.
“Good luck.”
LEVEL SEVEN
Niles had never been as frightened in his life as he walked the long and curving corridor. The white plastic helped in reflecting the weak lighting from the emergency floods but did nothing to dispel the shadows that threatened to give him a stroke every time he saw his own as reflected in the plastic wall and ceiling. In the million times he had walked this very corridor heading to either his office or the conference room he had never given one thought to the darkness that would prevail in the underground complex if power had ever been lost. If they survived this night of horrors he swore to himself that he would line every hallway, office space, and stairwell with so much backup emergency lighting that the heat would fry an egg if needed. With billions of dollars in high-tech equipment and millions more for a military arm, right at that moment Niles would trade half of it for more emergency lighting.
It was amazing how his ears and mind were playing tricks on him. In the almost empty complex, echoes and sounds from many levels away could be heard wafting up through stairwells and elevator shafts. Screams of his people and gunfire from what remained of the security staff kept Niles praying and moving. As he approached the double doors leading to his office, he slowed when he heard a faint echo. To him it sounded like a deep breath had been taken in and then exhaled. He froze as he came to the last curving bend. He knew the curve of the last corner didn’t offer the protection a straight-lined wall would have, but he tried not to expose much of his body. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps three or four levels down, the thump of gunfire wafted through the soles of his shoes and popped in his ears.
As he looked around the bend he finally saw the offices where he, Pete, Charlie, and Jack had been but an hour before. The doors were still propped open and he could see the desks of his assistants inside. His private elevator was to the left of the door and from his vantage point he couldn’t see the damaged shaft. He shook his head, moved as fast as he could to the door, and then stopped.
This time it was something else. Not breathing like he thought he had heard before, but something else he couldn’t put his finger on. Cursing himself for his deep-seated fear of the dark, Compton stepped into the outer offices used by his four assistants. He quickly looked around. It seemed everything was still as it was. The damaged elevator doors and the empty tubular shaft inside looked as if they held no hidden monster waiting to jump out at Niles. He cursed himself again as he remembered the nine-millimeter Beretta Jack had slipped into his hands. He again wanted to stomp his feet in anger as his frightened state was fast becoming something that was as deadly as the unnatural soldiers prowling his complex. He angrily reached back and pulled the heavy handgun from his waistband. He felt the pressure plate designed into the new Beretta disengage the safety on the weapon as he gripped it tightly. He felt better for at least the moment as he scurried across the reception room thinking that at least now he could shoot something, even if it was himself. Niles paused at his large oak doors, just waiting and listening. His eyes caught the large portrait of Abraham Lincoln at the centermost point of the main wall. Niles rolled his eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that—all you had to deal with was the Civil War,” he whispered to himself, realizing that the humor of his small joke had made him feel better.
Collins and Everett had always told him that humor came out in the most pressure-filled situations for the simple fact that in a terrifying moment, a soldier’s brain will fall back on something that was familiar. In the American military, humor was the most common thread they had. Niles remembered what they always taught—keep it light even in times of stress; it will free your mind to think. He shook his head and for no reason he could think of, nodded up at old Abe. Then without further thought he opened the left side of the office doors.
As soon as he was in he was grateful that all fifty monitors situated around his curving walls were still on. They were all bright with the snow of no signal, but it still gave him more light than he was used to in the dark of the complex. The main thirty-foot monitor was on and the blue picture showed that Europa was still fighting to bring her systems back online. He noticed a clock in the far corner winding down from two minutes and thirty seconds. Above the clock it read “Time to power loss.”
“What in the hell does that mean?” he asked himself. He shook his head and walked quickly toward his desk and the credenza on the back wall. He knelt and as he did he suddenly looked behind him when he thought he heard something move in the outer offices. He froze for what seemed like ten full minutes but was actually only three seconds. He again shook his head to clear it of the fear and started to open the credenza drawers, hoping his radios were still there and that they had held their charge. His eyes widened behind his wire-rimmed glasses as his hands hit the first of five radios and their headsets. He pulled two of them out and turned the first one to the on position. He wanted to scream “Yes!” when the green light came on indicating a full battery charge. He stood and placed the Beretta inside of his belt and the headset onto his balding head. He looked down at the frequency and prayed that it was still set to complex security.
“Compton to Colonel Collins, come in,” he whispered, remembering the things that were stalking not only him but possibly anyone with a radio. “Compton to Colonel Collins, come in please,” he hissed.
Suddenly Niles heard a sound that stopped him cold, and it had definitely come from somewhere in the outer office.
“I hear you,” said the deep, raspy, and absolutely terrifying voice that had the quality of a bass speaker. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Niles closed his eyes and went down hard on the carpeted floor.
“Damn it,” he murmured to himself, “these things are really getting to me.” Niles slowly raised his head to look over the top of his desk and into the reception area of his office. His blood froze when he saw the large shadow as it moved from desk
to desk in the office outside.
“This position is untenable,” he said quietly, trying to allow his own voice to give him the bravado he needed to take action.
As he thought, he lambasted himself for all of his inactivity over the years. If he had been in shape he would risk it by running as fast as he could out of his office and through the reception area in a break for freedom before the beast inside could react. But he knew he was fooling himself to the extreme. He could be Jessie Owens and still be caught by this thing from his deepest nightmare. He had seen how fast the creatures reacted.
“I can smell you little man,” said the voice as it tipped over the desk of one of his assistants.
Niles closed his eyes as he tried to think of something humorous as before, but nothing came. He realized that it must take practice for humor to come to your mental rescue in a stressful situation—something he would have to speak with Jack or Carl about.
When the thing had seen that there was no one hiding behind or under the first desk it went into a rage. It roared like an out-of-control animal and started smashing the other desks to pulp as it circled the office. Then it suddenly stopped and looked toward the double doors leading into Niles’s office. Its eyes next went to the adjacent double doors. The conference room was closed. Niles prayed that the beast went there first.
“Stop, think, plan, initiate,” said the deep voice as Niles heard calmness overwhelm the anger of the creature. The beast laughed again, an insane-sounding giggle-like noise that reeked of schizophrenia.
The laugh and trailing giggle were unnerving as they rumbled into his hiding place. As the beast came to his office doors Niles could swear he heard the giant sniff the air. What kind of a nightmare were they truly dealing with? Could this thing be the future of men, or their eventual doom? If this was evolution at its height, he could see no way that mankind could ever survive. Intelligence and violence advancing through evolution together? If this is what the human brain is capable of, Niles now feared for the very soul of the human race. A world of supermen and soldiers that were hard to kill, acted and hunted as animals, and could think as fast on their feet as Einstein? No, he wanted no part of that future, and he knew that this thing wasn’t going to outthink him. Not today.
The beast sniffed again, but for the first time one of its animal-like senses failed it. It went left instead of continuing into Niles’s office.
As Compton listened he screamed when he heard the beast suddenly fall into a rage again as it battered down the double oak doors and burst inside where it began to tear into the giant conference table and chairs that lined it, looking for its easy prey. Niles took that opportunity to start creeping around his desk and crawl from the office to the reception area and then to the hallway outside. Once there he knew through his frightened state that there wasn’t an animal wild or domestic that would ever catch him. At that moment he knew he was capable of flying.
As he finally reached the center of the reception area on his hands and knees, he chanced a look up and realized he would make it because the beast was even more frenzied as it tore through the inside of the conference room. Compton closed his eyes and had hope for the first time in what seemed like hours. Then disaster struck.
“This is Collins. Come in Compton. Over.”
The call could not have come at a worse moment. Niles had never adjusted the radio volume and it seemed anyone could have heard it through the entire complex.
“Oh, shit,” he said, not waiting for the beast to come at him. He leapt to his feet, his heart practically flying out of his chest. His feet spun on the slick floor of the main office. It was like a nightmare where he was stuck in sand or, even worse, syrup. His shoes finally caught traction just as the beast roared and burst out of the conference room. The enraged beast was just in time to see the backside of Compton streak into the hallway.
The chase was on between a heavyset, balding, beyond-middle-age director and a genetically altered superman.
* * *
Mendenhall led the way down the stairwell. He was down to three shots in his Beretta as they finally made it to level forty-two. He paused so the others could catch their breath before they ventured into the corridor outside the stairwell door. He looked back and nodded at Gloria, giving her a reassuring smile. Virginia was speaking softly with Sarah and Farbeaux, reassuring the Frenchman that they had made it to the level where the armory was. The Frenchman nodded his head and with the help of Denise Gilliam squeezed past Sarah and Virginia.
“What’s the plan?” Henri asked Mendenhall, interrupting his vision of Gloria Bannister.
“That’s what we need to discuss,” Will said as he moved over to the side of the landing to allow Farbeaux to stand next to him. “The armory will be locked, but unlike everything else in the complex, it’s not sealed magnetically, so power or not, we can open it with this,” he said as he pulled out a large key.
“Finally, a security design I can understand,” Henri said as he looked back at Sarah, now looking better than she had in the past hour. Her eyes managed to look up at him and she gave the Frenchman a ghost of a smile.
“You think maybe Sarah’s a little vulnerable right now, Colonel?” Mendenhall asked as his own eyes blazed at Henri when he saw the looks exchanged between Farbeaux and McIntire.
Farbeaux smiled and looked at Sarah and back again to Mendenhall. He could see Will was angry about Colonel Collins not being here, and possibly being dead. Still Henri could not resist. He looked back at Gloria who was anxiously awaiting Will to tell her to come the rest of the way up the stairs. Farbeaux’s smile broadened as he glanced back at the young black man.
“It’s highly possible she is vulnerable, Lieutenant Mendenhall, perhaps as much as Dr. Bannister is at the moment.”
Will got angry for the briefest of seconds, and his eyes went to Gloria as she looked up at him and smiled once more. The air was let loose from his lungs like a punctured tire. His shoulders slumped as he realized the Frenchman was right in his assessment. He was no better than the colonel and he knew it. He just nodded his head.
Farbeaux returned the nod and lightly slapped Will on the left shoulder.
“It is hell being human sometimes, isn’t it Lieutenant?” Henri again smiled. “But then again if we weren’t, we would end up something like those creatures out there. And I thought I was inhuman at times.”
“You are inhuman,” Will said and again nodded to the Frenchman. “Well, what do you say we go and get something to fight back with, Colonel?” Will said as he turned to the stairwell door.
“After you,” Henri said looking back at Sarah and winking in the weak lighting.
“Let’s just hope we don’t run into trouble,” Mendenhall said with a confident move to open the door.
He swung the heavy steel door open and his eyes widened as one of the giants was standing right in front of him. Mendenhall quickly closed the door and threw his body against it just as it was struck with the weight of the beast in the corridor. Farbeaux saw the lieutenant’s predicament and quickly threw his weight behind the effort to keep the abomination at bay.
“Okay, we’re in trouble!” Mendenhall yelled over the roaring outside.
* * *
Jack and Charlie stared into the black abyss where the stairwell had once been. At least three levels of steel landings and steps had been torn free from their mountings by the intelligent creatures they were struggling to survive against. Collins shook his head in utter frustration as he knew they would have to brave the hallway outside and the long curving corridor to get to one of the other three stairwells that were situated in a semicircle along this particular level.
“Doc, now you wait here while I see if there’s company waiting for us on the other side of this door. Do you understand?”
Frightened to death after he had peered into the darkness far below and seeing the stairs ripped out, Charlie could only manage to nod his head up and down several times.
“Damn it, Doc.
I asked if you understood,” Jack barked angrily and then immediately regretted it.
“Yes … Colonel,” Ellenshaw finally managed.
“Alright, do as I say and maybe I’ll let you have a hand grenade,” Jack said with a wicked twist of his lips, knowing he would never give Crazy Charlie one of the small explosive devices, one that he could pull the pin on and hold until it went off in his hand. But the mere offer worked on the old hippie turned soldier wannabe.
Collins turned to the door, took a deep breath, and then opened it slowly. The hallway as far as he could see left and right seemed to be clear. The emergency lighting was still functioning, meaning that the creatures more than likely had not visited this level. He looked back at the wide-eyed, crazed-haired Charlie who waited without breathing for Jack to say something.
“Okay, come on, Doc.”
Charlie followed Jack into the curving corridor. He raised the M-14 carbine, careful to aim it away from the colonel’s back as he had numerous times since their journey had begun and been stingingly admonished for it. There were several flashes from the emergency floods likely due to weakened wiring that made the two men pause as they moved down the seemingly clear hallway. They passed the brand-new nuclear science labs and made sure to duck beneath the broad windows in case there were surprises waiting in Virginia’s laboratories. Collins raised his hand up in the air and Charlie stopped, but not before running into the colonel’s backside. Jack looked back and shook his head.
“Wipe your glasses off, Doc; they’re all fogged up.”
Ellenshaw did as he was told, surprised when he placed the thick glasses back on at how he had seen anything before he was told to clean them.
Just as Jack started to move forward again the radio at his side sent a message through to his earpiece. Collins was instantly ashamed that he had actually jumped at the suddenness of the noise, which in turn made Ellenshaw yelp. Collins hissed for the hundredth time in the last thirty minutes. He quickly placed a finger to his lips, making sure Charlie remained quiet, but still ashamed for acting just as frightened and actually showing it. The answer Jack knew was to blame Charlie … it made him feel better.
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