Colony by Benjamin Cross (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

flash of light poured in from outside accompanied by a tremendous wave of heat. Both creatures released their hold on the soldier and wrenched their heads back through the gap, braying in agony.

The soldier collapsed back into the room, and Koikov paced by him, unleashing a second tongue of bright orange flame out through the rifle slit. With a roar of his own, he strode up and down the length of the bunker, blasting a stream of liquid fire out into the mist, incinerating whatever was unlucky enough to be within a twenty-foot arc.

At last, he released the trigger and bellowed out an order. Then he dragged the injured soldier through into Chamber 2. The soldiers grabbed whatever they could carry and retreated after him, heaving the door behind them.

“Look!” Lungkaju shouted, pointing back through the remaining sliver of doorway. One creature after another had begun clawing its way in through the undefended rifle slits into the abandoned chamber, some with scorched feathers, others unharmed. With an indignant grunt, Koikov joined in with the others, and together they slammed the door shut and bolted it.

* * *

Corporal Voronkov was having a field day. So far he’d chalked up twenty-seven of the little bastards. One for every year of his life. He’d even allowed Zyryonov to make a couple of kills, which had shut him up for a few precious minutes.

His radio crackled. “Voronkov!”

“Yes, Starshyna?”

“How’s it looking down here?”

The truth was Voronkov hadn’t checked the state of the bunker for some time. He’d been far too busy picking off the creatures that had picked up his scent and massed at the base of the moraine. They were sly, he’d give them that much. They hadn’t just herded towards him. Instead they’d dispersed, each individual creature flitting its way from cover to cover towards him. But he was now confident that he had the remaining handful pinned down behind various outcrops, leaving him free to take pot shots.

“Voronkov, answer me!”

Voronkov threw a glance over at the bunker. His stomach turned. “Shit! They’re all over your position!”

“Tell me something I don’t know, you useless prick! We’ve abandoned Chambers 1 and 3 already. We’re holed up in 2 for now, but we’re about to break out and move to your position. What I need to know is whether they’re on the roof?”

Voronkov surveyed the scene. Ground level at either end of the bunker was squirming with red forms. Through the LVV they looked like some kind of bacterial infection laying waste to a shred of tissue. Dozens more were flocking in from the east, rivulets of red carving up the basin.

“They’re concentrated at either end, Starshyna. No more than a couple currently visible on the roof. Take them out?”

“When I give you the word,” Koikov replied. “Then I want you to take out those on the roof only. And Voronkov, you wait for my order, you hear me? These things are smart. I don’t want to risk alerting them until the last minute. Are we clear?”

“Just give me the word.”

6

The last of the soldiers made their way from Chamber 1 to Chamber 2 and secured the door behind them. Chamber 3 was already teeming with creatures. The sound of them screeching and clawing at the other side of the door was impossible to ignore. And now Chamber 1 was filling up as well. So far the doors were holding, but for how long?

Kneeling beside Darya, Callum looked around at the other survivors. Aside from Ava and Lungkaju, he counted only nine remaining soldiers, soon to be seven by the looks of the two men laid out beside him on the blood-stained floor. His mind flicked back to the Albanov and the hundred or so people he must have seen on the first day alone. It was hard to believe that this was all that was left. It was even harder to believe that he was left.

As Koikov’s voice rang out, all other conversation died away; his only accompaniment now was the screeching and scratching of the creatures to either side, and the moans of the two dying soldiers.

“We will go through the roof hatch,” Lungkaju translated. “There is a hovercraft behind the bunker to take us to the extraction point. Corporal Voronkov and Private Zyryonov are on the high ground. They will clear the roof for us and give us cover.”

Koikov cast his gaze around.

“The starshyna wants to know if there are any questions,” Lungkaju said.

Nobody spoke as the scraping of talons on concrete continued its disembodied assault to either side. Screeches and clicks wafted in through the ventilation ports, which Callum now noticed in the upper corners of the chamber. His eyes narrowed at the sight of a couple of lengths of wire poking in through the grills and dribbling down onto the floor.

Lungkaju: “Starshyna Koikov says that if we stay here, the creatures will very soon break through these doors. They are old and no longer strong enough.”

Callum dragged a finger along the top of one of the hinges. A film of beige dust coated his fingertip.

“We must go quickly now,” Lungkaju said. “The helicopter will be here soon. Ten minutes.”

There was a sudden groan and all eyes moved to the centre of the room. The younger man, whom the medic had been treating when Callum first arrived in the bunker, was still somehow clinging to life. But the soldier whose arms had been savaged in Chamber 3 was now staring blankly upwards, his lips parted, his face still and grey. A lake of blood had seeped through his bandages and pooled around him on the floor. The medic reached out and pushed his eyelids closed.

For a moment the survivors were still and silent, the same horror bold on each of their faces. There could have been no more graphic an example of what was at stake for all of them the second that hatch opened.

Sergeant Marchenko knelt down beside the man, settled a hand onto his chest and bent his head