Fast (47 page)

            The trucks were the answer to Coleman’s prayers, but the keys in the ignition were nothing short of a miracle.

            Coleman gunned the engine.

            ‘Let’s go,’ yelled Vanessa, peering into the mirror and winding up her window. ‘They’re right behind us!’

            Coleman jammed the tray-back into first gear and floored it. Even with the load of river stones, Vanessa was thrown back in her seat as the oversized wheels kicked up gravel.

            ‘The gate!’ she warned, pointing ahead. ‘The gate’s still locked.’

            Coleman checked that Forest and King were following. ‘Screw the gate. We’re driving the key.’

            Coleman kept the gas pedal pressed hard to the floor. The truck screamed for a gear-change. He aimed straight for the gate.

            The chain-wire gates didn’t stand a chance. They burst open like rotten saloon doors. One side tore right off its hinges and tumbled into the ferns.

            Coleman glanced into the mirror. Forest and King drove right behind them, a giant steel scorpion chasing the tray-back down the gravel road. In seconds, both trucks overshot the intersection leading back to the service entrance.

            ‘Where are we going?’ cried Vanessa, looking back at the intersection. ‘The only way out is the service entrance.’

            ‘Cairns will be all over the service entrance like a rash,’ said Coleman. ‘We need to find another way.’

            ‘There
is
no other way,’ she exclaimed. She hooked her thumb over her shoulder. ‘I helped design this reserve, and that’s the only way out.’

            ‘There’s
always
another way.’ Coleman swung the wheel hard right. The tray-back veered off the road and ploughed into the undergrowth.

            It wasn’t the smooth move that he’d hoped.

            ‘Holy shit!’ yelped Vanessa.

            The tray-back careened down a pine-covered slope. Tree trunks raced by left and right. Coleman and Vanessa bounced like they were sitting on trampoline seats. At this speed, if it wasn’t for the big wheels and high suspension, Coleman would have already buried the vehicle’s front-end or skidded off-course into a tree.

            ‘Watch out!’ Vanessa jerked in her seat. A tree trunk screeched up her side of the truck.

            ‘Slow down!’ she yelled, gripping the ceiling bar and pointing ahead. ‘The glass wall’s just ahead.’

            Coleman floored it.

            Vanessa gaped sideways at him. ‘What are you doing! We’ll never turn at this speed.’

            ‘We’re not turning,’ hissed Coleman, struggling with the rocketing truck’s steering.

            Vanessa slapped the back of the cab. ‘We’ve got a tone of rocks in the back of this thing.’

            ‘We’re not turning. It’s too late.’

            Vanessa fumbled for her seat belt, eyes locked ahead. ‘You’re mad! You’re going to kill us!’

            The expanse of glass wall loomed before them.

            Coleman lifted the P190 from between the seats. He hung the weapon out the window and fired. Dinner-plate sized holes exploded across the wall.

            ‘Hold on,’ he yelled, dropping the empty weapon out the window.

            Ten meters, five meters, two meters….

            Vanessa grabbed the dashboard with both hands. Coleman braced the steering wheel and turned his face into his shoulder.

            At seventy miles an hour, with the two passengers bracing in the small cab, the tray-back truck collided
full-speed
into the plate glass wall.

#

Cairns watched the tray-back rocketing towards the glass wall.

            The truck bounced over the pockets of pine needles, shaving paint on both sides against trees.

            They have to turn
….

            From the reserve’s service entrance, he’d watched the vehicles overshoot the intersection. Then the two trucks – first the tray-back, then something that looked like a giant steel scorpion – suddenly veered off the road and ploughed into the forest, cutting back towards the habitation level where Cairns and his force waited.

            The tray-back was still out in front, careening towards the plate glass wall at a ludicrous speed.

            They can’t be serious. They have to turn
….

            But in the back of Cairns’s mind, he wasn’t so sure. His men were spread in single file formation against the plate glass wall. Unless the tray-back turned, it would hit the wall at a point fifteen meters behind his men.

            With growing alarm, Cairns took in the height and width of the glass wall, the thickness of each plate, the joins where each glass panel rigidly interconnected with its neighboring panel….

             ‘Everyone get down!’ he warned.

            Half of Cairns’s force already had their weapons trained through the glass on the approaching tray-back. Hearing his warning, they desperately searched for the new threat, not yet recognizing the massive deathtrap they stood against.

            It was too late.

            The tray-back burst through the wall in a cataclysm of exploding glass. For a second, the truck was totally haloed in a cloud of shining glass fragments….

            Then the glass plates on either side of the truck simultaneously exploded.

            The effect was like a hand-grenade in a row of fish tanks.

            Blossoming outwards from the point of collision, the shockwave tore through the glass plates in both directions. One after the other, a split-second apart, the plates were domino-exploded into millions of high-velocity razor-sharp fragments.

            The shocking spectacle came roaring towards Cairns.

            It was an airborne
tidal-wave
of glass.

            Furthest back along the wall, the last two gunmen were engulfed in the blue-white razor storm. One moment they were gaping statues, and the next moment they simply disappeared as the glass-cloud poured around their bodies and washed away their flesh.

            Only three more gunmen stood between Cairns and the wave-front. All three men were only moments from certain death. In the time it took Cairns to blink, the glass shredded the next man where he stood.

            This close, Cairns saw the effect on the human body was like standing in a ring of detonating fragmentation mines.

            As the second-last panel exploded, with less than a second to act, Cairns grabbed the last living gunman by the body armor and wrenched them both backwards towards the service entrance.

#

‘Fuck-ing-hell!’ yelled Vanessa as the airborne truck, weightless under them, flew out through the exploding glass wall.

            The truck hung in the air for a second above the habitation level floor -

            - then everything
crashed
forward as the truck touched down.

            Both were hurled forward in their seats.

            Coleman struggled to control the steering wheel. The tray-back’s suspension bottomed-out, punching them both hard in the tail-bone, then the over-sized suspension bounced the truck back up into the air. Vanessa’s head hit the roof. A second later, the river stones smashed back down onto the tray.

            The truck bounced twice more before Coleman regained control.

            Vanessa spun to see Forest and King copy the maneuver, minus the glass and the speed. Now both trucks were on the habitation level, accelerating across the floor.

            ‘They made it,’ she reported. ‘They’re behind us. Oh, no. You
must
be joking.’

            ‘What is it?’ asked Coleman.

            A thunderous boom sounded behind them. Coleman felt the tray-back actually shake through the steering wheel.

            ‘What the hell was that?’ he demanded.

            Vanessa spun forwards again. ‘It’s Bora.’

            Coleman glanced into his mirror. ‘Ho-ly shit!’

#

Cairns lay in a tent of broken glass.

            Above him, a dead gunman formed the backbone of the tent. Cairns had collapsed into the service entrance the moment the last glass plate exploded. The unfortunate gunman’s body had made a conveniently fleshy shield.

            Convenient for me, anyway.

            He eased aside the lacerated corpse. Jagged pieces of glass stuck from the body at a hundred angles. Glass slid away as Cairns found his feet.

            That was too close.

            Four red humps in the carpet of glass marked the rest of his force.

            Two trucks accelerated across the habitation level.

            Where is Bora?

            Cairns’s ears still rang from the roar of shattering glass, so the first he sensed of Bora was when the floor shuddered up through his boots.

            What the…?

            He looked up and spotted Bora pursuing the Marines. Bora was driving a gargantuan truck with a steering cab at either end. Between the cabs, a large A-frame structure was fixed to the flatbed. How Bora had ever managed to maneuver the giant vehicle down the forested slope, Cairns had no idea.

            But it certainly had something to do with speed.

            The truck launched through the spot where the smaller tray-back had breached the wall. The vibrations shuddered through the floor again as the A-frame’s wheels crunched down. Cairns spotted a gunman sitting in the second steering cab, controlling the A-frame’s rear end. The arrangement made the oversized truck very maneuverable.

            Right after the truck came a dozen four-wheeled quad bikes. The quads hit the habitation level floor and accelerated after Bora’s A-frame.

            Cairns found his dangling radio earpiece. He fitted the earpiece, ready to issue orders, but Gould’s voice was already coming over the line.

            ‘Gould,’ snapped Cairns. ‘Get off the line.’

            ‘There’s too many vibrations,’ warned Gould. ‘I can’t distract the creatures. They’re heading right towards you.’

            Cairns spat out a piece of glass he found in the side of his mouth.

            ‘Distract as many as you can,’ he ordered.

            Glass crunched under Cairns’s boots as he sprinted across the habitation level.