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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781416524106 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pocket Books |
| Publication date: | 10/28/2005 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Sales rank: | 765,882 |
| File size: | 341 KB |
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Chapter One
A dark corridor, deep underground. A single shriek, quickly cut off. The sound of running feet, coming closer...
Pounding down the corridor, Dr. Todd Carmack couldn't see his pursuers, couldn't hear them, couldn't smell them, not here -- but he knew they were behind him, gaining ground on him and the other five scientists.
Oh yeah: the things were solid enough, loud and reeking enough, and murderous enough -- one of them had stood over him, as he lay on his back in the lab, dripping drool on him, gnashing its teeth in anticipation, a lab technician's raggedly severed arm still clutched in its talons. Carmack had pulled the limp, semiconscious Dr. Norris onto him, putting Norris between him and that thing -- it had to go through Norris's body first, and that had given Dr. Carmack a moment to scramble away and start the headlong flight down this corridor. But Norris's sobbing screams still echoed around Carmack's skull -- they seemed to echo down the corridor and up through level on level of the labs; despairing screams shivering over the archaeological digs, reverberating across the poisoned surface of the planet Olduvai.
Legs and arms pumping, sweat streaming down his face, Carmack figured he was going to die of a heart attack before he got to that heavy door. He was sixty fucking years old, for God's sake. His thudding heart was trying to climb out of his chest; and every breath slashed his lungs like the scalpels he'd used on the subjects in the lab.
He seemed to see the terrified eyes of the lab animals, now, coming out of the darkness ahead...
Ten more strides ahead, a fluctuating pool of light waited, threatening to cut out with the flickering of the fluorescent bulb illuminating the door: the door to safety. If there was any safety on this goddamned planet.
He risked a look over his shoulder, saw the other scientists running in and out of the intermittent shadow; a middle-aged woman in a white lab coat, Dr. Tallman, was several strides behind Carmack.
His assistant, Dexter, a spindly awkward man, face contorted with terror -- was taking up the rear, slowing down now, hobbling, clutching his left leg. A cramp. And then something swept blurrily from the shadows to one side, a dark, strangely rippling arm encircled Dexter's waist and jerked him screaming into the darkness. A blink, and he was simply gone...
Carmack stumbled, facing front and just managing not to fall headlong, knowing he'd be weeping with fear if he had the wind to do it with. He flung himself against the door, just as the light overhead started sparking, hissing...about to go out.
"Get it open!" Tallman screamed, running down the hall toward him. Looking absurd sprinting in her white lab coat, as they all did. "For God's sake, Carmack, get it open!"
Gasping for breath, chest heaving, pulse hammering in his ears, Carmack punched at the small keyboard on the door's control panel, but his sight was blurry with sweat, and he had to hit clear and the number combination again...the door, dented and marked by claw marks, clattered within itself, struggling to respond...
Glancing down the corridor, Carmack glimpsed a hulking black silhouette closing its claws around the throat of the last scientist in the terrified, sprinting procession, Willits -- and though Willits was the biggest of them, almost three hundred pounds, he was snatched into the shadows as if he'd been a rabbit caught up by a French chef.
There was a wet crunch, audible fifty feet away -- but the door was at last shuddering open, just as Dr. Tallman huffed up to Carmack.
The door stuck, only partway open.
Carmack turned sideways and forced himself through the opening, into the lab, immediately punching at the interior control panel. He jabbed the emergency close and lock button.
"Dr. Carmack!" Tallman yelled -- and shoved her arm through to stop the door closing -- it slammed shut on her upper limb with a sickening crunch. Tallman gave out a piteous squeal, her trapped arm twitching.
One of the others shrilled, " -- for God's sake, Carmack!"
It was a matter of triage, Carmack thought, floundering inwardly for justification. There was no way they could all make it.
Tallman shrieked, her twitching arm going blue -- then it was dragged upward as something smashed her body about, flew ceilingward in the space left by the partly open door, smacked hard into the top of the frame with shattering force, only to immediately whip downward again, slapping the floor like the dead meat it had become. Something was wrenching Dr. Tallman's body; something else was at the others. Carmack could hear them sobbing, could hear enormous jaws gnashing, flesh wetly rending.
Tallman's arm again flapped up and down in the slot of the door, splashing blood, as if the door itself was eating it...and finally it severed, the crudely amputated limb falling onto the floor of the lab, the door closing most of the way.
It wasn't over. Tallman was still alive, out there, her screams alternating with begging...and bubbling sounds...
But Carmack felt a little relief, seeing the steel door finish closing -- maybe he was safe now! -- until something began pounding on it with jackhammer force. The door shuddered, creaking, and dust drifted from the ceiling.
Carmack recoiled, stumbled to the video-comm panel, forced himself to concentrate on tapping the keyboard, setting up a transmission to home -- light-years away.
The light went green, signifying open channel, and he began, "This is Dr. Carmack -- " He had to raise his voice to be heard over the screaming from the corridor. " -- at Classified Research, Olduvai! ID 6627! We've had a level-five breach, implement quarantine procedures immediately -- "
A final sobbing cry from beyond the door...the sound of tearing. Crunching bone. A sound -- what was it? Was it the sound of flesh being gobbled down?
" -- I repeat! Implement level-five quarantine procedures now!"
He hit the send button. The screen read out,
TIME UNTIL RECEPTION:
2:56:18...17....16...
Christ, he thought, almost three hours before they'd even get the message...The pounding at the door redoubled. Almost methodical now. Thud. Thud. Thud.
He turned to see that the metal door was denting inward. This room was supposed to be supremely reinforced, ultrahigh security. And he wasn't safe even here.
He turned desperately back to the comm screen.
And a feeling washed over Carmack as he watched the hopeless countdown. A feeling that was also a realization of his fate.
So this is it, he thought.
This is what doom feels like.
Doom, the movie novel © 2005 by Universal Studios