Matt Reilly Stories Read Free

and
convulsing.
    Now
only five Marines remained on the spiral staircase.
    Armstrong
and two of them made it to the top of the stairs just as two of the
super-adults wrenched on the staircase itself, ripping the entire structure from its ceiling mounts, causing the whole high-and-narrow staircase to
topple…and fall… with the last two Marines on it!
    Like
a slow-falling tree, the staircase fell, crashing down onto the silver
spaceship and the web formation on the floor, crushing through the suspended
catwalk on the way.
    No
man would be going down there ever again.
     
     
    THE
RACE OUT
     
    Armstrong
found his two rear-guards—Twohy and de Souza—lying dead at the top of the (now
destroyed) spiral staircase, their corpses being eaten by three of the
smaller dragons!
    Disturbed
by Armstrong’s sudden arrival, the three mini-dragons looked up from their
gobbling—their snouts smeared with fresh blood. Then, with astonishing speed,
they made for Armstrong and his two surviving men—Doc and Rockmeyer.
    The
three Marines ducked as one and the dragons overshot them. Then the Marines
turned and firing their MP-5s after the beasts, ripping them to shreds,
causing them to peel downwards like three damaged fighter planes.
    Running
again.
    Hard
and fast.
    Desperate
now.
    Into
the giant receiving dock…and Armstrong saw the exit doors and thought of the
safety of the outside cold beyond them.
    At
which point, the super-adults emerged from the depths of the complex. One
landed on the concrete floor of the loading dock with a great boom, upturned
its massive head and roared fiercely.
    The
deep-bass sound of its roar shook the walls.
    And
suddenly, as he turned to look back, Armstrong tripped on a corpse and fell
awkwardly forward, flat onto his face.
    The
fall saved his life—but not so Doc and Rockmeyer.
    For
as Armstrong had fallen, a super-adult creature had come swooping down and had
sliced the other two Marines in half, clean across the waist.
    They
fell, in pieces.
    Armstrong—alone
now—ran, staggered, stumbled, the last few metres, clawing his way out through
iron doors of Complex 13, under the words abandon all hope, ye who enter
here.
    He
dived into the doorway, into the long tunnel his men had bored, and immediately
felt the colder air, spun to look back—
    —just
in time to see the wide-open jaws of a super-adult come rushing at his face!
All he saw was teeth and tongue and the monster’s deep dark yawning throat and
then—
     
    * * * *
     
    CHOMP!
     
    The
jaws clamped shut, one single inch away from Armstrong’s nose.
    And
John T. Armstrong lay there…on his butt, on the icy ground… right in front
of four of the gigantic winged super-adults, these great alien dragons, all
of them towering over him, looming over him, glaring at him with their foul
evil faces and their bloody man-eating grins.
    But
they didn’t step forward through the great iron doorway.
    Couldn’t step forward.
    It
was too cold.
    Armstrong
had made it. Just.
    And
so he left the tunnel, left Complex 13, with a backpack full of information.
    Once
outside, he was collected by a long-range pick-up chopper, from which he
radioed his prized information back to the States…
    …back
to Groom Lake, Nevada…
    …the
home of Area 51, the notorious secret base, where a group of American military
scientists were currently under attack from a rapidly-multiplying colony of
dragon-like aliens that they had disturbed from their slumber in the lone alien
ship that was kept in the underground hangar there.
     
    ________________
     

TIME TOURS
    _____________
     
     
    Time
Tours
    OFFICES
OF TIME TOURS INTERNATIONAL
    AUSTIN,
TEXAS
    12
noon
    1
JANUARY, 2006
     
    The
giant letters blared ‘WELCOME TO TIME TOURS!’, and in front of the great
billboard stood Mitch Raleigh, along with five other celebrities.
    An
army of media photographers and reporters took photos of them and yelled
questions.
    ‘God,
I hate these things,’ Raleigh muttered.
    ‘Oh,
come