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.
* * * *
VIII
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 manoeuvre, 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 guerrilla 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-spiralling
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 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 bee-line 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…’
* * * *
IX
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
ramp-way, losing a couple of apes that way.