Hell Island Read Online Free PDF Page B

theopening exchange, but they just weathered the losses without a backward step. The chips in their heads don’t allow for ineffective emotions like fear. So the apes just kept coming, climbing over the piles of their dead, until the Marines were toast.”
    Mother pushed her face—and pistol—into Pennebaker’s. “You call a Marine
toast
again, fuck-nut, and I’ll waste you right now.”
    Schofield said softly, “And fear is not an ineffective emotion, Mr. Pennebaker.”
    Pennebaker shrugged. “Whatever. You see, it was then the apes started doing . . . unexpected . . . things. Independent strategic thinking; killing their own wounded. And then there were the more
unseemly
things, like cutting the hands off their vanquished enemies and piling them up.”
    “Yeah, heard about that,” Mother said. “Charming.”
    “And then they turned on you,” Schofield said.
    “And then they turned on us. The most unexpected thing of all. While we were looking the other way, observing the exercise, they sent a sub-team to take this tower. Took us by surprise. They’re smart,
tactical.
They out-thought us and now they own this ship and the island. Marines, welcome to the end of your lives.”
    “We’re not dead yet,” Schofield said.
    “Oh, yes you are. You’re completely screwed,” Pennebaker said. “You have to understand:
you can’t beat these things.
They are stronger than you are. They arefaster. Christ, they’ve been
bred
to fight for longer, to stay awake for ninety-six hours at a time—four days—so if they don’t kill you straight away, they’ll just wait you out and get you later, like they did with the last few regular Marines. Add to that, their technological advantages—Signet-5 radio-locaters, surgically-implanted digital headsets—and your headstones are practically engraved. These things are the
evolution
of the modern soldier, Captain, and they’re so damned good, even their makers couldn’t control them.”
    Mother shook her head. “How do you geniuses manage to keep doing things like this—?”
    Without warning, a voice exploded in Schofield’s earpiece: Astro’s voice.
    “Oh God no, we missed them! Shit! Captain! Duck!”
    Standing with his back to the main hangar, Schofield didn’t turn to verify Astro’s warning.
    He just obeyed, trusting his man, and dived to the floor—a bare instant before a black man-sized
creature
came swooping in over his head and slammed to the floor right where he’d been standing.
    Had Schofield remained standing for even a nanosecond longer, the K-Bar knife in the creature’s hand would have slashed his throat.
    The creature now stood before him and for the briefest of moments Schofield got a look at it.
    It was indeed an ape, perhaps five-and-a-half feet tall, with straggly black hair. But this was no ordinary jungle gorilla. It wore a lightweight helmet, from thefront of which hung an orange visor that covered the animal’s eyes. On the helmet’s rear were some stubby antennas. Kevlar body armor covered its chest and shoulders. Wrist guards protected its arms. And in a holster on its back was a modified M-4.
    Goddamn.
    But that was all Schofield got to see, for right then the ape bared its jaws and launched itself at him—just as it was shot to bits, about a million bits, as Mother and Hulk nailed it with their MP-7s.
    Then Astro yelled:
“Marines! Look sharp! They’re not coming in via the catwalk! They’re coming at you from across the ceiling!”
    Only now did Schofield stand and spin to check the ceiling of the hangar near his tower.
    Coming across it, using the complex array of pipes, lights, pulleys and rails that lined the hangar’s ceiling, was a phalanx of about forty black gorillas, all dressed like the dead one and moving across the super-high ceiling with ease.
    And then Schofield’s horror became complete as the nearest ape—hanging upside-down from three of its four limbs, raised its free hand, leveled an M-4 at the tower and