Hell Island

7

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 favor: 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 in front of him—loosing three shots as he did so, dropping three gorillas that had just landed inside the tower. But the three apes didn’t die; they clawed after him despite their wounds and it took six more shots to neutralize them all.

A gurgled scream as the Marine beside Schofield was shot in the throat. He fell, and even though he was already mortally wounded, two gorillas descended on him with a fury, firing their guns into his body, tearing at his face with their hands.

Jesus… Schofield’s eyes went wide.

Of the six Marines who had stepped onto the tower, only he and Mother remained.

They retreated, with Pennebaker between them, back across the gangway-bridge to the long north-south catwalk, chased by the twenty gorillas.

Once on the catwalk, Schofield checked his options. The gorillas, still using the pipe-riddled ceiling as their means of travel, were angling toward the south end of the catwalk, leaving Schofield with only one choice.

“North,” he ordered. “To the bow! Go!”

The six remaining Marines—Schofield, Mother, Astro, Sanchez, Bigfoot and Hulk—charged along the catwalk, heading forward, their boots clanging on the walkway.

Seconds later, the gorillas arrived at the catwalk and started their pursuit, exchanging fire with the last man in the Marine squad, Sanchez.

The catwalk ended at an immense steel wall that bisected the hangar deck. The enormous hangar stretched for nearly the full length of the ship, but it was cut in the middle by this watertight wall, so if the carrier ever flooded, only one hangar bay would be lost.

Moving in the lead of her desperate fleeing team, Mother threw open a bulkhead door in the great wall, to reveal that the catwalk continued beyond it in a straight line, only now suspended over a second hangar bay, the forward one.

Mother froze in the doorway.

“God have mercy…” she breathed.

Schofield came up alongside her, looked beyond the doorway into the forward hangar bay.

“Oh… my… God…”

This hangar bay had no indoor battlefield, just regular planes, trucks and jeeps on its wide bare floor.

What it did have, however, were about 350 gorillas standing on the floor of the gigantic hangar bay, milling around the remains of Condor’s 82nd Airborne unit.

Schofield looked down in time to see the lead ape yank Condor’s rifle from the Airborne leader’s dead hands, raise it into the air and roar in triumph.

Then—Schofield didn’t know how; it was almost as if it had a sixth sense—the lead ape turned and looked up and stared directly in Shane Schofield’s eyes.

It was like stumbling into a lion’s den while the lion was eating a meal.

The lead ape let out a loud roar and the crowd of gorillas around him moved at once in response: they started scaling every available ladder—some even scaled the giant dividing wall itself—heading for the catwalk on which Schofield’s team now stood.

8

RUNNING IN the rear, Sanchez arrived at the doorway in the dividing wall just as Schofield came charging back out through it.

“What—?”

“Back this way,” Schofield said, not even stopping.

“But they’re still back there—”

“We’ve got a better chance against this group than that one.” Schofield and the others shoved past Sanchez, heading back south, heading aft.

Ever doubtful, Sanchez had to look for himself—and he saw the multitude of apes surging up at him from the forward hangar bay. “Goddamn…”

“Sanchez!” Schofield called back. “When you decide to join us, lock that door behind you!”

Sanchez locked the door, then blew the lock for good measure, then turned and followed the others.

Schofield ran back down the high catwalk—having squeezed past his team until he was once again in the lead—now heading aft and once more confronted by the original smaller squad of gorillas.

“Mother! Astro! Bigfoot! Rolling leapfrog formation!” he called as he went by. “Full auto. Do it.”

He was running full tilt now, MP-7 raised.

Running and firing down the catwalk, Schofield took down three of the twenty apes charging at him along the same walkway.

Once his gun went dry, he hit the deck, dropping to his belly, allowing Mother to hurdle him and do the same—run and fire with a fury.

She nailed six more, then dropped to her belly… at which point Astro hurdled her, guns blazing.

Then Astro ducked and Bigfoot hurdled him, and thus the four of them took down the small gorilla force in a textbook turnaround maneuver, and suddenly they were alone in the vast space.

Not for long.

The larger gorilla force had started banging on the door in the dividing wall. Then, with a loud mechanical groaning, a large vehicle-access door down on the floor began to roll upwards, opening…

“Scarecrow! What do we do!” Mother yelled. “I’ve never been in this kind of situation before!”

“We stay alive, any way we can! There!”

He pointed at the aft-most elevator on the starboard side of the hangar. It was a giant thing, a huge hydraulic open-air platform that hung off the side of the carrier, designed to lift entire planes from the hangar deck up to the flight deck.

Today, a gangway branched off the outer edge of the massive elevator, stretching down to the dock of Hell Island.

“The gangway!” Schofield called. “Go!”

The six-man Marine team reached a long ladder that connected the high catwalk to the floor of the hangar, slid down it one after the other, Schofield leading the way.

The main gorilla force was now flooding into the aft hangar bay like bats out of hell. Their numbers were incredible, they literally poured through the access door from the forward hangar, then clambered over the muddy fake battlefield, climbing up and over the trenches and barbed wire, guns firing, teeth bared.

It was, quite simply, the most fearsome assault force Schofield had ever seen.

Armed, enraged, and completely lacking the fear of death—any human force that saw these things bearing down on it would in all likelihood just go to water.

Schofield was almost at the exterior elevator, only fifty yards away, when something completely unexpected happened.

The elevator began to rise.

“Oh no… no…”

The great platform lifted fast, taking the gangway with it. As the elevator rose up and out of sight, heading for the flight deck, the gangway leading to dry land dropped down into the water with an ungainly splash.

“They—” Bigfoot gasped. “Son of a bitch…”

“Next plan?” Sanchez said.

“Stay moving.” Schofield scanned the area for another escape. “Always stay moving. While you’re moving, you’re still in the game. If you stop, you’re dead. Never stop.”

As he spoke, he saw two large transport trucks parked over by the wall. “Those trucks! Get in and make for the flight deck!”

The squad split up, racing for the two trucks. They were five-ton troop transports, with high canvas awnings covering their rear trays.

Schofield and Bigfoot dived into the cab of one truck; Mother, Astro, Hulk and Sanchez jumped into the other one.

As Schofield slid into the driver’s seat, he spun to check on the scientist, Pennebaker, to see if he was keeping up—

—only to see Zak Pennebaker skulking into a side door of the hangar thirty yards away, on his own, preferring, it seemed, to handle this disaster by himself. He disappeared through the door.

“What the—?” Schofield frowned. But he didn’t have time to ponder the issue. The apes had cleared the battlefield and were now advancing across the open deck like the army of darkness.

Schofield gunned the engine.

The two trucks roared to life, shot off the mark, heading for the upward-spiraling vehicle ramp that led to the flight deck—a journey that involved briefly driving back toward the ape army and racing the oncoming army to the ramp’s wide doorway roughly halfway between the two forces.

It was a dead-heat. Mother’s truck reached the ramp’s doorway just as the ape force did.

The first gorillas launched themselves at her truck, clutching onto any handhold they could find, just as it sped inside the rampway. Eight of them got a grip on it.

It was worse for Schofield.

Driving behind Mother, he got to the ramp entrance two seconds too late. The ape army swarmed across the doorway, blocking it, and suddenly he had a decision to make: plough through the mass of hairy black beasts, or turn away.

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 ape-filled 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 caliber 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…”

9

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 spiraling ramp-way, 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 him on together, and in the scuffle one managed to shoot him in the stomach.

Hulk roared in pain—just as the two apes did something totally unexpected: they yanked him off the back of the speeding truck, jumping with him, without any thought, it seemed, to the injuries they themselves would suffer.

Astro saw it all in a kind of surreal slow motion.

He saw Hulk’s eyes go wide as the big man fell to the ramp behind the upwardly-racing truck, gripped by the two gorillas.

Then he saw the onrushing army of apes overwhelm Hulk, choosing to use their M-4s as clubs rather than guns. Astro winced as he lost sight of Hulk amid the mass of black hair.

But even then, not every ape stopped to join in the mauling of Hulk—the rest just kept running, clambering around the gorillas battering Hulk’s body, still chasing the fleeing truck.

“Jesus…” Astro breathed.

And then wham! Mother’s truck burst into gray daylight, into the pouring rain assaulting the flight deck. Uncountable raindrops hammered its windshield.

The four remaining gorillas on the truck made their move.

They converged on the cab in a coordinated manner—swinging down together from the roof, one arriving at each door, the other two landing on the bonnet of the truck, right in front of Mother, guns up.

“Yikes…” Mother breathed.

There was no escape. No chance.

Except…

“Hang on, boys!” she called into her UHF radio.

And with that, she yanked on the steering wheel, bringing the truck into a sharp right-hand turn, a turn that was far too fast for a vehicle of its type.

Gravity played its part.

The truck turned sharply… its inner wheels lifting off the tarmac… and it rolled.

The big truck tumbled across the rain-slicked flight deck, sending the apes on its cab and bonnet flying in every direction. Then it landed on its side and slid for a full sixty feet before coming to rest against the lone Super Stallion helicopter on the deck.

Mother clambered out of the overturned truck, raced to its rear.

“You okay?” she called, crouching to her knees.

Sanchez and Astro lay crumpled against the side wall of the tray, bruised and bloody but alive.

“Come on,” Mother peered back at the ramp. “We gotta keep—”

She cut herself off.

The apes were already at the top of the ramp.

A great crowd of them—easily one hundred strong—now stood on the deck, in the rain, at the entrance to the ramp, grunting and snorting and glaring right at her.

10

STILL ON her knees, totally exposed, Mother just sighed.

“Game over. We lose.”

The apes charged, raising their guns, pulling the triggers.

Mother shut her eyes.

The sound of gunfire rang out—loud, hard and brutal—and Mother imagined this was the last sound she’d ever hear.

Braaaaaaaaaaaap!

But there was something wrong with this sound.

It was too loud for an M-4, too deep. It was the sound of a much larger gun.

Crouched at the rear of her overturned truck, Mother had never noticed the port-side elevator rise up to deck-level behind her.

Never saw what stood on the open-air elevator: an F-14 Tomcat, pointed right at her.

And in the cockpit of the Tomcat…

…were Shane Schofield and Bigfoot!

Schofield sat in the pilot’s seat, gripping the control stick and jamming down on its trigger.

Sizzling tracer rounds whizzed by Mother on either side, popping past her ears, before razing into the crowd of gorillas beyond her, mowing them down.

The first three rows of gorillas fell at once. The others split up, fanned out, sought cover.

“Mother!” Schofield’s voice said in her ear. “Get out of here! I’ll hold them off!”

“Where can we go?” Mother dragged Astro out of the truck and started running, with Sanchez by her side.

“Get to Casper’s door!” Schofield said cryptically. “Go over the stern! I’ll meet you there!”

Mother did as she was told, hustling to the rear edge of the deck, where she lowered Astro over the side, down to a safety net just below the edge. She and Sanchez then jumped down after him and disappeared inside a hatch.

That left Schofield and Bigfoot in the Tomcat on the port-side elevator, facing the now 80-strong force of apes.

“Bigfoot! Let’s move! Time to get out of here—”

All of a sudden, their fighter started rocking wildly.

Schofield spun in his seat. “Shit! They must have climbed up the side of the ship!”

The rest of the ape army—nearly 300 gorillas—was now climbing up and over the outer edges of the elevator platform!

They swarmed around the plane, clambered up onto it, shook it, hit it, fired at it.

Schofield closed the Tomcat’s canopy a split second before it was hit by gunfire. Made of reinforced Lexan glass, the canopy was capable of deflecting high-velocity air-to-air tracers, so it could handle this small-arms fire, even from up close.

But then one clever gorilla climbed into the towing vehicle that was attached to the Tomcat and started it up.

“Aw, no way, that just ain’t fair…” Bigfoot breathed.

Covered in rampaging apes and now pulled by the towing vehicle, the Tomcat slowly started moving…

…toward the edge of the elevator!

“They’re going to tip us over the side!” Bigfoot exclaimed.

Indeed they were.

The Tomcat rolled toward the edge of the elevator, six stories above the waterline.

As it did so, the apes on its back started bailing off it, jumping clear. They knew what was about to happen.

“Ah, Captain…” Bigfoot said. “Any ideas?”

“Yeah. Buckle up.” Schofield was already strapping on his seatbelt.

“Buckle up? How’s that going to—oh!” Bigfoot clutched at his belts, started clasping them.

The towing vehicle came to the edge of the platform and the ape driving it bailed out just as the towing vehicle tipped over the edge, now hanging from the Tomcat’s front landing gear.

The ape army did the rest. They pushed the F-14 until its front wheels lurched off the edge and the entire plane—with Schofield and Bigfoot in it—fell, off the carrier, plunging ninety feet straight down to the water far below.

11

THE INSTANT the Tomcat fell off the edge, the canopy of the fighter blew open and the F-14’s two ejection seats shot up out of the plane.

The ejection seats—with Schofield and Bigfoot on them—rocketed up into the sky above the aircraft carrier while the Tomcat went in the opposite direction, the plane falling in a clumsy tumbling heap down the side of the boat and into the water, where it landed with a great splash and immediately began to sink.

Schofield and Bigfoot flew high into the air before they disengaged their flight seats and initiated the parachutes that were attached to their seatbelts.

As the two of them floated back down to the earth, they scanned the huge force of apes on the deck of the carrier. They looked like an army of ants swarming over the aft runway.

Then suddenly Hail Mary gunshots started to zing past Schofield’s head, tearing through his chute.

“Where to now?” Bigfoot asked over the UHF.

Schofield pursed his lips, thinking fast. His eyes fell on the chunky CH-53 Super Stallion in the center of the flight deck.

“It’s time to even the score a little. Follow me.”

He angled his gliding flight back toward the carrier, toward its mid-section.

Schofield touched down on the middle of the flight deck. Bigfoot landed a second after him, not far from the catapult launch controls.

The apes charged forward, roaring, firing, rampaging.

“Stay here,” Schofield ordered before racing across the open deck to the massive Super Stallion.

Hunched in the pouring rain, he did something near the front of the chopper out of Bigfoot’s sight before he came back around and charged into the chopper via its forward right-side door, slamming the door shut an instant before the gorillas arrived, banging on the side of the chopper, massing around it.

Inside the Super Stallion, Schofield hustled into the cockpit, shutting its door behind him, locking it.

Watching from the outside, taking cover behind the on-deck launch controls, Bigfoot was confused.

What was Schofield doing?

But then something even more confusing occurred.

The rear loading ramp of the Super Stallion folded open.

Naturally, the apes stormed it, fifty of them rushing inside, hungry for Schofield’s blood.

Bigfoot frowned. What on earth is he…?

“Bigfoot!” Schofield’s voice said over the UHF. “After you do what I ask, get down to Casper’s door and find the others. I’ll meet you there.”

“Casper’s d—? Oh yeah, sure,” Bigfoot said. “But what do you want me to do now?”

“Simple. Initiate Catapult No. 1.”

“What—!”

At that moment, Schofield brought the rear loading ramp back up, closing it, trapping the fifty-odd apes that had gone inside.

It was then that Bigfoot saw what Schofield had done at the front of the chopper: via a tie-down chain, Schofield had attached the helicopter to the carrier’s No. 1 launch catapult.

“You have got to be kidding…” Bigfoot said.

“Uh, now please, Bigfoot. They’re about to break down the cockpit door.”

“Right.”

Bigfoot hit a switch on the launch console, igniting Catapult No. 1.

The Super Stallion hurtled down the length of the runway at a speed no helicopter had gone before.

The steam-driven catapult slingshot it down the tarmac at an astonishing 160 km/h!

The great chopper’s landing wheels snapped off after about ninety feet and the CH-53 slid the rest of the way, on its belly, sparks flying everywhere, the ear-piercing shriek of metal scraping against the flight deck filling the air.

And then… shoom… the Super Stallion shot off the bow of the Nimitz, soaring out horizontally from the flight deck for a full 150 feet, hanging in the air for a moment before it arced downward, falling toward the sea.

A second before it hit the ocean, a human figure could be seen leaping from one of its cockpit windows, jumping clear of the falling helicopter, hitting the water at the same time it did, but safely alongside it.

The helicopter came down with a massive splash and as the splash subsided, it could be seen bobbing slowly in the water.

And then it began to sink.

Shrieks could be heard from within it—the cries of the trapped gorillas.

Ten seconds later, the Super Stallion went under, with its cargo of murderous apes, never to rise again.

Shane Schofield trod water for a few moments, staring at what he’d just done. Then he started swimming back toward the ship, heading for the bow.

Once there, he pulled a Pony bottle from his combat webbing—a compact bottle-sized SCUBA tank fitted with a mouthpiece. He jammed it into his mouth and went underwater.

Within a minute, he arrived at a little-known entrance to the carrier, one located fifty feet below the waterline: a submarine docking door.

Designed to recover long-range reconnaissance troops—read spies—returning to the Nimitz via small submarines, for a long time Marines had referred to it as the spooks’ door. Over time, “spook” had become “ghost” and then ghost had become “Casper,” as in the friendly one.

This was Casper’s door.

Schofield knocked loudly on it—in Morse code, punching out: “Mother. You there?”

At first there was no reply and Schofield’s heart began to beat a little faster, before suddenly there came a muffled answering knock from the other side:

“As always.”