I turn and see Alessi just feet from the croc’s mouth. Collins has gotten to her feet and is leaning back, playing tug-o-war with the monster.
A monkey and seagull thrash around atop my handgun on the floor, locked in mortal combat, where I’m happy to leave them. I jump over the pair, run to Collins’s side and draw her .50 caliber sidearm.
“I can’t...hold her...much longer,” Collins grunts. Alessi says nothing. Her eyes convey her message clearly enough: please.
The croc’s eyes track me as I run to the side, aiming the weapon at its head. I’m about to fire when one of the tentacles releases Alessi and snaps to the side, slapping against the small of my back and sticking.
Mother bitches, that hurts!
The tentacles aren’t simply suction cups, they’re covered in barbs!
Knowing I’m about to be yanked back and into the croc’s mouth, I dive forward, pulling the monster’s head into view. My dive is arrested for just a moment, as the tendrils pull taut. I squint, aim and pull the trigger.
The tentacle yanks me back, and I never see if my aim was true, but I find out a second later when I’m slapped down on the floor. I lean up and see the croc, a hole where its eye used to be, lying dead on the floor. Collins quickly peels the tentacle off Alessi, which elicits a shout of pain. I stand with a grunt, the weight of the tendril still pulling on my back. When Collins steps up next to me, I say, “Do it quick.”
“It’s like a wax,” she says. “Women do it all the time.”
She yanks, and I feel hundreds of tiny pops as the barbs tear out of my skin. I grind my teeth, thinking for a moment that I’ll manage to stifle my scream, but I fail when the air hits my back, bringing on a sharp stinging unlike anything I’ve ever felt. I’m going to bathe in antibiotics if we make it out of here.
Speaking of which, our path to the door is now clear. I hobble toward the door as quickly as I can, and I all but fall into the hallway. A lone African American scientist in some kind of clean-suit stands at the far end. His suit is covered in blood. Brice must have opened all the containment units in every lab. I limp down the hallway toward the man, keeping my gun low, trying not to spook him. He’s hammering the elevator’s call button like a manic woodpecker.
The elevator, still fifty feet away, dings. The doors slide open.
“Hold up,” I say to the man, like it’s just another casual day at the office.
The man steps inside, and when it’s clear he’s not going to hold the doors, I fire a few shots into it, just to vent my frustration. One of the rounds strikes the call button, which bursts with sparks.
The doors remain open. Well, that’s a stroke of good luck in an otherwise craptastic day.
“What did you do?” the man shouts from inside the elevator.
Or not...
I peek inside. The panicked man is jamming the ‘close door’ button, but the elevator isn’t responding. He looks up at me, incredulous. “You broke it!”
“Listen, buddy,” I say, aiming Collins’s big gun at his head, but I never get to finish. At the far end of the hallway, a door bursts open with enough force to send the door across the hall and through the window on the other side. The scientist all but squeals in fright.
And then I see why.
The wall around the doorframe cracks and then shatters, leaving a gaping hole. The biggest damn gorilla I’ve ever seen struts into the hallway, its skull cleaved cleanly off, brain exposed, snapped wires dangling freely from it. Blood drips from its arms, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the ape’s.
“Oh, god,” the scientist cries, going back to work on the button with no result. “Oh, god!
“Here!” Alessi says from the far side of the hallway. She’s standing in an open doorway, a stairwell behind her. Collins and I quickly join her.
“Up or down?” Collins asks, but a roar from below answers for her.
Up it is.
I tap my throat mic for the first time. “Woodstock, where are you?”
“En route,” he says, his voice clear through the perfectly disguised earbud in my ear. “Run into trouble?”
“You could say that. ETA?”
“Five minutes.”
“Doooctooor!” The shout shakes the air with reverberating bass so loud I’m sure it wasn’t human.
“Go!” I urge Alessi and Collins higher. I turn back to the hallway. The scientist across the corridor peeks out of the elevator, looking down the length of the hallway.
“The hell was that?” Woodstock asks.
I ignore him and look around the corner, to the gorilla. It points at the scientist again and hollers, “Doctor will die now!”
Holy planet of the fucking Kongs, I think, and I wave the doctor across the hall, shouting, “Let’s go!”
The man wastes no time debating it. His choices are: stay and die horribly, or run with the man who might shoot him, and maybe live a few minutes longer. We take the stairs side by side, rounding the single flight toward the open roof doorway, where Collins waits.