Hell Island - Matthew Reilly [14]
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 apefilled 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 beeline 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 . . .’
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.
It 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 rampway, 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