Son of a bitch. He just killed his own man!
Carrack opened fire with his FN SCAR at the calves of the men he could see. Panic erupted as another of the men fell to the low angle of fire. From the cloud of smoke, the Gen Y men returned MP5 fire at Carrack’s position. Carrack retreated behind his pallet and ran in a squat for another pallet across the hangar floor. Between the smoke and the confusion, there was no way the Gen Y men could see him yet. He peered out from his new hide and watched as gunfire impacted against the pallet where he had hidden. As one man foolishly stepped out of the cloud of smoke, Carrack moved the firing selector on his FN SCAR to single shot, took and released a breath and then fired off a round. The bullet found the middle of the Gen Y man’s forehead and the exit wound spread brain and bone backward into the still dissipating cloud of smoke. Carrack was behind another pallet before the man’s body hit the floor.
“The train. Now! Move yer bastard arses!” the Irishman screamed, and Carrack watched as the dark shapes he could see through the low light and smoke turned tail and fled down the corridor. He took that as his cue to abandon cover. He stood and raced toward the first pallet behind which he had hid and moved his firing selector to A for automatic. He leaned around the stack of plastic wrapped boxes and let a full auto burst follow the retreating men down the corridor.
No one returned fire, but he could still hear the men shouting as they ran away. He stepped away from the pallet and out into the open, firing the last bullets in his magazine down the corridor, then swiftly ejecting the spent cartridge and loading another. He moved forward in a squat and saw that his grenade had in fact taken down four of the Gen Y men, although the fifth man had a handgun wound in the top of his head. Carrack had taken the sixth down with the single shot to the head as well. That left four including the leader. Carrack was disappointed to see that while there was a trail of blood leading down the corridor from where he must have wounded one or more or the men in the legs, none of his targets from that attack had fallen. Still, one against four—with a fifth and possibly more in another section of the base—was far better odds than it had been a few minutes ago.
He was debating whether to give chase to the escaped Gen Y men or try to contact Deep Blue again, now that he was in the facility and whatever interference or jamming had prevented communication from outside the hangar door might no longer be as effective. Motion in his peripheral vision caused him to dive back under cover. Across the hangar from where Matt Carrack had stood, another corridor led to the train platform that would take you to the Labs section of the base. Two of the hideously large salamanders had just crawled out of the corridor on the walls and were now wiggling in bursts up the walls of the hangar.
Naturally.
Now he rejected the idea of contacting Deep Blue and tried to make his choice between pursuing Gen Y or pest control. Before he had long to ponder the thought, another two of the sleek black, yellow polka-dotted monsters came racing out of the corridor. Then another two came lunging out of the hall on the floor. Then a whole stream of them came pouring out of the corridor, filling every part of the corridor’s walls, ceiling and floor. They spread out over the walls and floor of the hangar like inky liquid, reminding Carrack of a swarm of angry black insects, as they filled every space at the mouth of the corridor. Many of the creatures were darting for the corridor to the other train platform that led to the Dock, where the Gen Y men had fled. Carrack turned and headed into the hangar space, toward the front, and the only pallet that held the one item that might save his life.
17.
En Route to Section Central, Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH
“Seal off the tunnel?” Beck wanted to know.