Fast (55 page)

            Focused on its prey, the creature was less secure on the tray-back. It went flying off the hood. It still had the gunman wrapped up tightly. The tangled pair rolled along the floor in front of the vehicle. Vanessa saw with horror that the creature was still feeding. Even while rolling, it consumed the man. It seemed completely unaffected by being thrown from the tray-back. Once it had its prey, it cared about nothing else.

            She hit the accelerator and swerved around the rolling tangle of limbs.

            Able to look out her windshield again, she took a moment to rationalize the view. The A-frame platform was racing along the floor by itself. The platform had been released at speed to collide into the north wall. There were only two possible endings to this scenario.

            It’s going to flip or ram into the wall. Or both.

            Then she saw Alex clambering over the platform’s flattened steel.

            He’s on the platform!

            Vanessa dropped the truck back a gear and planted the accelerator, veering the tray-back towards the back of the platform. She was going to pick up Alex or die trying.

#

Coleman dove from the back of the platform.

            He saw Vanessa coming, but couldn’t wait a second longer.

            As he spring boarded off a length of bent steel, the platform began to flip. An instant later, he was airborne, flying higher and faster than he expected. The flipping platform had given him an extra push, and he was sailing right over his target.

            The tray-back was passing underneath him.

            He scrabbled his hands over the tray-back roof. His fingers found a hole in the cab. It was enough to catch his momentum. He twisted midair and smacked down hard onto the orange webbing.

            Over the tray edge he saw the platform flip and roll lengthways along the floor. It made two full rotations before smashing into the north wall with enough force to wake up China.

            Vanessa’s high-speed pickup was Coleman’s miracle.

            She suddenly hit the brakes as the mini-crane from the scorpion truck slid across their path. Coleman was thrown forward. Squealing tires smoked up the floor. As the tray-back jerked to stop, the crane tumbled past just meters from the hood.

            Coleman took his chance to leap off the tray. The vehicle looked in a bad state. Every panel on the front end appeared dented and twisted out of shape. The driver side door wouldn’t open, so he grabbed the top of the warped window-frame and jumped legs-first into the cab. Vanessa slid across the seat, making room at the steering wheel.

            The inside of the cab looked even worse than the outside. A chunk of cement sat lodged in the windshield. Soil and leaves covered the seat and dashboard. The dashboard itself had been shredded. There was a jagged hole in roof and blood all over the seat.

            Coleman scanned Vanessa for injuries. She bled from a shallow cut above her ear. Not enough blood to account for the messy state of the cab.

            Then he noticed a severed arm lying on the floor near his feet.

            All this, and she still managed to save me with a high-speed pickup.

            There was absolutely nothing in the world to say that did the situation credit. ‘I’m glad you’re OK,’ said Coleman. ‘You’re bloody incredible, do you know that? Absolutely incredible.’

            Vanessa made to answer, then suddenly pointed ahead through the windshield.

            Coleman remembered the mini-crane. It hadn’t been attached to the scorpion truck. He searched the pedestrian loop and spotted King and Forest in trouble.

            The scorpion truck was up on one side. Bora had rammed it with the disconnected A-frame. The A-frame was pushing the overturned scorpion truck lengthwise along the floor, straight towards the north wall.

            Coleman noticed this at the very last moment.

            With another floor-shaking impact, Bora slammed the scorpion truck into the wall. His truck pulled free from the wreckage. The scorpion truck’s undercarriage looked completely caved in. He had crippled the scorpion with one big hit.

            Coleman scanned the wreckage. With relief he saw the reinforced cab had withstood the collision. The danger to Forest and King would have come from the crumpling cab, but with the cab intact, there stood a very good chance both men were just shaken.

            But they wouldn’t stay that way for long. Two gunmen ran towards the wreckage, weapons up and ready to fire. With the threat of the scorpion truck neutralized, the terrorists were organizing themselves. Coleman saw Cairns rise to his feet in the middle of the pedestrian loop.

            Sitting at the wheel of the tray-back, Coleman faced a difficult choice. He needed to get a message out, but Forest and King needed urgent assistance. An idea crystallized in his mind.

            Cairns locked his eyes on the tray-back. He gestured his men towards Coleman’s position.

            Coleman’s first impulse was to try to run Cairns down, but he focused beyond Cairns towards the facility recessed into the eastern wall.

            He spoke to Vanessa but kept his eyes locked forwards on Cairns. ‘Back in the rec reserve we talked about shutting down the power, remember? So the Evacuation Center could get their message out?’

            ‘Sure,’ she answered anxiously. ‘I remember.’

            ‘So where’s the transformer that serves the habitation level?’

            She orientated herself quickly and then pointed through the windshield to the wall beyond Cairns. ‘Right there. You saw it before. The power runs through a riser in the east wall and serves those switchboards.’

            ‘Behind where those two terrorists are standing?’

            ‘Yeah - it’s right there.’

            ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Coleman. ‘Cairns has had those two guarding the switchboard this entire time. They haven’t moved once. If we can take out that switchboard, will that interrupt the jamming assets?’

            Vanessa’s eyes unfocused for a second while she thought. ‘Absolutely. But not for long. Battery power will divert to the C-Guards in just over point four of a second.’

            ‘That’s enough for Harrison’s data packet to escape. How will we know if it worked?’

            Vanessa shrugged. ‘The lights over the pedestrian loop are on the same switchboard. All the lights will go down for about five seconds if it works.’

            Coleman gunned the truck.

            Pressed back in her seat, Vanessa asked urgently, ‘But how are you planning to…no, wait! You can’t just ram into the substation! We’ll be crushed and then electrocuted.’

            ‘We need to get that message out. Just sit tight and hold on.’ Coleman snatched up the CB radio. ‘King. Forest. Get ready to move. Lights out in five seconds.’

            Vanessa pointed at the radio. ‘It’s not working. Look, the creature trashed it!’

            Coleman accelerated across the level. He rocketed past the wrecked fountain and straight towards the substation. Twenty-five meters from the substation, he jerked on the handbrake.

            As soon as the truck started skidding, he spun the steering wheel hard left.

            With tires wet from driving through the fountain wreckage, the tray-back jack-knifed around itself, making a sliding 180 degree turn in less than ten meters. Coleman spun the wheel back, catching the momentum of the truck.

            The round river stones in the tray didn’t stop.

            When Coleman had jumped from the platform, he’d noticed the stretched orange tray webbing. In places it was torn. It certainly looked far beyond its capacity to hold the stones on the tray much longer.

            Dozens of large round river stones launched from the truck at seventy miles an hour. The mini-avalanche headed straight towards the switchboard station.

            The two gunmen just gaped in shock at the incoming missiles.

            One gunman caught a bouncing boulder straight in the chest. He flew back through the air and smashed into the switchboard station. The second man tried to run, but caught a boulder right in the side of his leg. His knee snapped like a dried twig. He collapsed under the pounding deluge of high speed bouncing stones.

            More than half the stones struck the target. The first few smashed down the narrow protective fence. The rest pounded into the switchboards. A bright flare of electricity preceded the entire level dropping into darkness.

#

When the lights went out, Gould was sitting in the admin hub. He sat flanked by two gunmen. He wasn’t sure if they protected or guarded him.

            Both, probably. Guarding and protecting. While I still have value to Cairns, he’ll keep me alive.

            Only the banks of computer monitors illuminated the room. Of the five men in the comms room, only Gould appreciated the implications of the sudden power lose.

            The radio jammers are down!

            He spun in his seat to another terminal. The screen displayed all the electronic systems affected by the power loss. Yep, the radio jamming equipment appeared on the list. He checked how the system had compensated for the sudden power loss. The comms room computers operated on an uninterrupted power supply, but the C-Guards drew far too much power to function seamlessly through a major interruption to the internal electrical grid. Gould brought up their log records, tracking his eyes over the code.
There
. The C-Guards had stopped functioning for less than a second. Point four of a second, to be exact. Long enough to get a message out? Unlikely.

            Better check.

            He opened the log of local radio traffic. In the last twenty seconds, a lot of signals had originated from the habitation level. Chiefly the gunmen’s radio headsets as they set about trying to stop whatever caused that tremendous racket outside the hub. Nothing else in the Complex had broadcast a radio signal during the vulnerable window.

            Gould stopped, about to close the log. As an afterthought, he scrolled down and checked the Evacuation Center’s radio log.

            Damn.

            A signal appeared on the log. Transmitting continuously, it would have broadcast during the window.

            He lowered his head and tried to think through the pain in his face. This was very bad news.

            Gould stopped as something new started flashing on his screen:

TEMPORARY SYSTEMS FAILURE IN EVACUATION CENTRE.

PLEASE DEFINE NEW STATUS.

EVACUATION OR QUARANTINE?

            A trigger question?

            A trigger question marked the very beginning of a computer program needing a human response before it could proceed. They were normally used in emergencies when administrators needed a prepared set of actions to take affect very quickly. This trigger question had been activated because of the interrupted power supply. The admin hub’s computer sensed something significant had happened, and wanted to know if its current parameters were still accurate. In an emergency, its principal concern was the Evacuation Center. Gould reread the question.
EVACUATION OR QUARANTINE?
His mind snagged on the question. There was something he was missing. Something significant….