Hell Island - Matthew Reilly [11]
The creature now stood before him and for the briefest of moments Schofield got a look at it.
It was indeed an ape, perhaps five-and-a-half feet tall, with straggly black hair. But this was no ordinary jungle gorilla. It wore a lightweight helmet, from the front of which hung an orange visor that covered the animal’s eyes. On the helmet’s rear were some stubby antennas. Kevlar body armour covered its chest and shoulders. Wrist guards protected its arms. And in a holster on its back was a modified M-4.
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 AUGUST, 2005
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, head-butting 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