Hell Island - Matthew Reilly [21]
His team hustled inside.
The apes arrived at the second ammunition chamber a minute later.
The first few must have been recon troops—for the first time that day they were cautious, checking things out, as if suspecting a trap.
They saw Schofield and Mother clambering up the mountain of wooden crates, heading for a cat-walk near the ceiling—presumably to join the others up there, although they couldn’t be seen. The recon gorillas ducked back outside, to report back to the others.
Thirty seconds later, the onslaught came.
It was spectacular in its ferocity.
The ape army thundered into the ammo chamber in full assault mode.
Screaming and shrieking, moving fast and spreading out, they stormed the subterranean hall—not firing. The scouts had informed the others of the flammable contents of the hall. They’d have to do this without guns.
The ape army leapt onto the mountain of crates, coming after Schofield and Mother with a vengeance, coming to finish them off.
Schofield and Mother stayed at the peak of the crate mountain, each holding two MP-7 sub-machine guns and firing them with precision, aiming carefully to avoid hitting the ordnance all around them, taking down apes left, right and centre.
Gunfire clattering.
Apes screaming and falling.
Muzzle flashes.
Two against an army.
And the apes just kept coming, live ones just clambering over the dead ones, scaling the artificial mountain. For every rank of gorillas that Schofield and Mother mowed down, another two ranks stepped forward.
Soon the mountain of crates was crawling with hairy black shapes, all scrambling in a fury for the two defiant Marines at the summit.
‘Scarecrow . . . !’ Mother called.
‘Not yet! We have to wait till they’re all inside . . . !’
Then the last apes entered the great under-ground room, and Schofield called, ‘Now!’
As he yelled, the first gorillas reached the summit and clutched at his boots—only to be completely surprised when Schofield and Mother suddenly discarded their guns and leapt upward, grabbing a pair of chains hanging from the ceiling-mounted rail network and using them to swing across the length of the chamber, high above the army of apes swarming over the crate-mountain.
Schofield and Mother hit the western wall of the hall and unclipped clasps on their chains— causing the chains to unreel from the ceiling, lowering the two of them to the floor of the room right in front of the doorway leading back to the elevator shaft.
‘Marines! Now!’
It was then that the other three members of Schofield’s unit revealed themselves—from behind some crates near the entrance to the ammunition chamber. They all stepped back out through the heavy entry door, and raised their guns to fire back in through the gap.
And suddenly the trap became clear.
The entire gorilla army was now inside the one enclosed space, swarming all over the most combustible mountain in history.
And with Schofield and Mother now down and safe, Bigfoot, Astro and Sanchez aimed their guns at the base of the mountain of crates.
‘Fire!’ Schofield commanded.
They squeezed their triggers.
But then, from completely out of nowhere, a voice called: ‘Captain Schofield! Don’t!’
Schofield snapped up. ‘Marines! Hold that order! Do not fire!’
The voice—it was a man’s voice—was desperate and pleading. It echoed out from ancient loudspeakers positioned around the great concrete room and inside the elevator shaft.
By this time the apes had started descending the mountain of crates, coming back down after Schofield and Mother, but then the voice addressed them:
‘Troops! Desist and stand down!’
Immediately, the apes stopped where they stood, sitting down on their haunches in total and absolute obedience.
What had moments before been a frenzied blood-hungry army of apes was now a perfectly-behaved crowd of three hundred silent mountain gorillas.
And then suddenly people appeared behind Schofield’s team, moving slowly and calmly, stepping down from the ladder in the elevator shaft: seven men in lab-coats, one officer in uniform, and covering