Free Fast by Shane M Brown Page B

disappeared from the archway.
                King pivoted and squinted at Coleman through the water splashing all around his prone form. Looking into King’s intelligent face, Coleman realized King knew all along how close the creature was getting.
                King smirked back. ‘Pretty wild? Wilder than this?’
                Coleman nodded and started inching along the wall to his right. His goal was a small panel set about three meters further along into the wall.
                ‘Get ready to run, King.’
                ‘Run where? When?’
                ‘Trust me,’ urged Coleman. ‘You’ll know when.’
                The creature thrashed closer to the pool edge. Once its tentacles found traction it would be right on top of King.
                Coleman had about four seconds to act. He lunged to his right, in plain sight of the gunmen, and hoped his hunch about the wall panel proved correct. He yanked down on the single lever inside the panel and dove back for cover.
                The result was immediate.
                The machine beside King started unrolling the heavy plastic pool cover. The front of the pool cover, an aluminum rail, started pushing the creature away from the edge, away from King. The creature’s tentacles smashed into the pool cover, tearing away the aluminum rail in seconds, but it was already getting thrust back towards the gunmen’s end of the pool. Behind the aluminum rail, solid strips of interlocking plastic kept pushing the creature further and further away.
                The cover pushed the creature halfway down the pool before the gunmen understood Coleman’s action. As one they opened fire. The room filled with the thunder of multiple submachine guns, but most of the creature’s bulk remained concealed underwater from their firing line.
                Coleman jerked his head around the locker while the gunmen were distracted. King’s reprieve would last only a few seconds.
                It’s time to play the wild card.
                Coleman swung his CMAR-17 towards the ceiling and opened fire.
                He wasn’t shooting at the second creature. He aimed at the plexiglass around the Pave Hawk. The plexiglass the helicopter had almost smashed through when it crashed into the plug.
                The damaged plexiglass splintered and cracked. Huge chunks dropped away and smacked onto the rigid pool cover. His rifle ran dry. Coleman slapped home a fresh clip of ammunition.
                As he started firing again, three things happened. The weapons inspector’s corpse cartwheeled down and whumped onto the extending pool cover. Two gunmen surged from the doorway and charged up either side of the pool.
                And the helicopter started shifting.
                In an explosion of sparks and a horrendous screech of tearing metal, the US Marine Corps Pave Hawk helicopter fell out of ceiling.
     
    #
     
    Dr Vanessa Sharp stood frozen to the spot.
                Three monsters were trashing her laboratory.
                There was no other way to describe the spectacle.
                ‘ My god ,’ she breathed.
                She should be concerned about the entire population within the Complex, but only one thought gripped her mind.
    David .
    Was her son safe or in as much danger as herself? Where these things on every level?
                Please god, let him be safe. Let him be sealed up in the Evacuation Center.
                She needed to find him, and to do that, she needed to survive the next sixty seconds.
    Vanessa had been checking all her staff were evacuated when the creatures swarmed into her main lab. Now they were attacking her centrifugal separator. The separator half collapsed and bucked under the assault like