Snarled.
What happened next could only happen to those who knew they would surely die, here and now, if they did not reach deep within, to that place where even professional soldiers rarely went, for that last measure of courage.
Bobbi Jo fired and the impact was high in its torso, slamming it back against the wall. Mentally she calculated how many rounds remained in the magazine: two. She fired the next as it leaped, and she hit it again, center chest contact. It staggered a step before it fell onto its face, folding slowly to its knees, a hand rising with a growl. Bobbi Jo dropped the near-empty clip and did a tactical reload, slamming in a new magazine of five rounds.
The rest of the platoon, well aware of its surprise attack by now and having adjusted to swing aim, opened up together. And at the irritating impacts, bruised and burned and somehow bloodied, the creature rose and ran toward Bobbi Jo.
Standing solid, Bobbi Jo frowned: there was nothing else to do,
She fired, teeth emerging in a snarl, the six-foot flame almost joining them past the long barrel. It roared, grunted, staggered, and she raised aim, hitting it again as the Barrett lit the rooftop with its devastating muzzle blast. She hit its chest, heart, placed another round to the heart, saw her last bullet tear off a chunk of its neck.
It stood, staggered off balance, as if in shock. Apparently deeply wounded, broken, it twisted slightly away from her, placing a monsters hand against its savaged throat.
Frowning — with nowhere to retreat to, anyway — Bobbi Jo dropped the clip and inserted another in less than a second, racking the six-inch bolt almost for the sheer pleasure of letting it know what was coming. But her action didn't get its attention. It staggered away, clutching its throat, groaning.
"Hey!" she shouted. "We ain't finished!"
The thing staggered toward the platoon.
"Bobbi Jo!" they screamed together. "Get out of the way!"
It closed on them.
They were in each other's line of fire. The platoon couldn't shoot the creature without also shooting her, and she couldn't open up with the Barrett with them so close in front of it.
Ten more steps and it would be on them.
She didn't have time to run to the sides.
She read the panic on their faces: God help me, they have to be able to shoot…
Twisting her head, she glared over the edge of the roof, saw a twenty-foot drop to a rusty brown gazebo above the kitchen door. Trash cans littered the tiny area. Only for a tenth of a second did she consider the possibility of a safe descent. Then, Barrett in hand, she placed the other hand on the waist-high wall and vaulted into the night.
"Kill it!" she screamed as she was claimed by the fall.
Behind her the sky was instantly lit by strobe and roars and wounded rage. It continued as white flashed past her and she struck something hard that shattered, surrendering, and closed.
She struck again, harder.
She lay there, hair across her face.
Then darkness.
Clenching his teeth with heated emotion and adrenaline surging in his system, Hunter narrowly suppressed the impulse to rush, knowing it would be a mistake. Then, moving carefully but wasting no time, he rose and continued forward.
As quickly as the gunfire had halted it began again, Brick viciously returning as good as he got, and then Hunter had come up behind them, more worried about Brick's unceasing wall of lead than the two soldiers yet unaware of his presence.
Just as Hunter edged carefully around a concrete pillar he glimpsed Brick's flattop-gray image — an old, big guy with teeth clenched in rage firing a fully automatic rifle with beefy arms — erupt from behind an overturned desk. Ducking back instantly Hunter evaded the cascading round that ripped steel and plastic and buried his section of the room in rifle fire. He waited until the barrage broke, then dropped the barrel of the M-16 around the edge and fired.
One guard went down as the other turned, raising aim. Hunter ducked back again as cement was reduced to chalk, and then Brick's enraged voice cut through the booming chaos.
"Vis a vous, darlin'!"
Hunter didn't look but knew who had fired first. Then he peeked out to see Brick standing coldly over the last guard. Massacred by a long stream of 7.62's fired from what Hunter now recognized as a cut down AK-47, the guard was unmoving. Brick dropped a banana clip and withdrew another from his vest, racking the slide. When he looked at Hunter, his face held no remorse, no emotion.
"I think we got 'em all," the big man said.
Even so, Hunter knew what he had said more by vision than sound because he was temporarily deafened. He shook his head a moment and dropped the clip from the M-16, pausing to remove a bandoleer from one of the dead guards that had another six full clips. He inserted a full thirty-round mag and racked the bolt, rising as Brick approached carrying the Weatherby. The big man snapped the breech shut as another explosion rocked the laboratory.
"They started without us." Brick looked up, his voice low and controlled. "We'd better kick in and join the party."
"Yeah," Hunter mumbled, moving away quickly. He opened the door of the vault — a refrigerated, lead-reinforced chamber about twenty by twenty — and walked inside. In reality, it was simply a large freezer, and nitrogen-cooled mist rushed into the brightly lit room as he searched through the cold white atmosphere.
"I don't think I'd go in there without one of them blue suits, kid." Brick stood at a respectful distance, watching. "I heard everything, know the score. And we can take 'em down without the serum. There's enough proof, or there will be, once this is over. Come on," he added anxiously, "we're missing the fireworks."
Ignoring Brick's plea, Hunter located the serum module and spun the smoothly designed cylinder until he saw it: HD-66. It was surprisingly slim, a plastic bag filled to the top with an amber liquid. In appearance it was not unlike a saline bag used to rehydrate hospital patients, and Hunter slipped it in a small black canvas bag as he crossed the lab, moving for the elevator. They had used the ventilation shaft to descend, but they'd make it public when they re-emerged.
"You got anything else to do?" Brick shouted.
Frowning menacingly, Hunter walked toward the cylinder.
"Just one thing," he said.
He stopped directly in front of it and fired the M-16 from the base of the magnificent cylindrical sarcophagus to the crest and down again. Glowing green phosphorescence exploded into the electromagnetic field and the copper coils erupted violently with electrical discharge.
The proto-human body hung for a moment before its great weight completely disintegrated the glass coffin. Hunter held aim, continued firing until the entire atmosphere was heated by the holocaust and the body pitched forward in an ages-overdue death.
It was shredded by the unceasing assault before it crashed into the copper and exploded instantly into flames, ignited by the spiraling electrical surge loosed by the short-circuited wiring.
Merciless, Hunter watched the body consumed by flames.
Turned away.
"Let's go," he said coldly.
Shocked at the carnage, Brick turned with him.
"Jesus, Hunter," he whispered.
Knowing it was likely their emergence would go unnoticed as the fight raged aboveground, Hunter speed-reviewed everything he had just learned about the creature. That it had once been a man was of no use; what it had been and what it had become were as night and day. He was already familiar with its enhanced healing ability. Only the revelation that it had a life span over ten times that of man had been new, and that had no bearing on the battle.
The elevator doors opened to a night already torn with flame and smoke and colliding sounds of rifle fire. Soldiers sprinted chaotically through the blackness and, somewhere in the distance, the louder roar of something huge surrendered to an inferno. Hunter felt a brief moment of panic.