One of the other contractors gets on his knees, helping Molly. Together, they get Olly’s one arm and head out and as soon as they do, Olly starts violently convulsing again, but this time it is not briefly. His body jerks and spasms violently, as if it has 20,000 volts of electricity coursing through it. Molly and the contractor try and hold him down, but it doesn’t stop; it is so violent that his arm that was trapped under the assembly is ripped free, skin, bone, suit and all. Suddenly, Olly’s eyes snap open, the convulsing stops, his head twists—and opening his mouth impossibly wide, it wraps around the contractor’s arm nearest to him and he bites down with so much force, his teeth rip clean through the suit as if it was orange peel, and through the arm’s flesh, taking a whole chunk out.
The man screams inside his suit and falls backwards. Molly, stunned, also falls backwards, scrambling away. She sees Olly seem to spring to his feet, his legs sliding out of his suit in the same motion; he is then instantly attacking the second contractor before he knows what is happening. Olly grabs him with the hand that is still attached, his bloody stump helping the hold as he swings his head towards the neck of the contractor. But as his teeth go to bite, the contractor’s head turns, and the teeth bounce off the hoods Perspex front. Olly goes to bite again but again hits Perspex.
Mark arrives back on the scene and struggles to comprehend what is happening; he sees Olly fighting with one of the three contractors in their orange suit, the other two down on the floor, one of whom seems to have injured his arm. It then dawns on him; Olly is out of his suit and up. How the hell did that happen and why are they fighting?
Mark drops the knife and goes to break up the fight. Olly has his back to Mark and is frantically trying to attack the other person. Mark grabs Olly’s shoulders and drags him off. The other person loses his balance and falls to the floor facing the knife, and to Mark’s shock, Olly starts to attack him. What’s wrong with him? He doesn’t look well. Mark struggles to process. A searing pain hits Marks shoulder where Olly’s teeth bite into him.
Brian reaches what he is pretty sure is Molly and starts to help her up; as they get to their feet, they see the contractor who was just attacked by Olly also get up and he has the knife in his hand. At first, they both think he is going to attack Olly who is now on top of Mark, but he doesn’t, he just runs for the loading bay and the sealed curtains.
Both Molly and Brian break forward, Brian slightly in front, chasing after him. If he gets through that seal, who knows what the catastrophic consequences could be, but he is nearly at the first sealed curtain!
“STOP,” Molly shouts in desperation, hopelessly. “STOP, DON’T GO OUTSIDE! IT ISN’T SAFE.”
Molly sees him break through the first curtains’ sealed enclosure all too easily, Brian almost upon him—and then Brian has him. Brian jumps onto his back but as he does, the arm holding the knife goes up and they both hit the second seal as they fall. As they go down, the knife slices a long, curved slit into the protective plastic, the top of which flaps open in the summer breeze.
“No!” Molly either says or shouts, too shocked to know as she sees the soldiers outside in the bright sunlight raise their rifles and open fire, filling both Brian and the other man with bullets.
Molly can’t believe what she is seeing as both men’s bodies jerk with the numerous bullets entering them. She sees one of the soldiers giving the cease-fire signal, but not all of the soldiers see it because one of them is aiming at Molly and begins to fire!
Molly dives to the side just in time for the bullets to miss her, but the bullets continue their high-velocity trajectory and hit one of the long thin black oxygen bottles chained to the far wall of the storage room. The bottle explodes in a bright flash and with a tremendous BOOM, and fire immediately breaks out.
Molly only has one option, to get to the decontamination room and lock the door behind her. She gets to her feet, hoping against hope that the soldiers won’t fire on her again as she rises. If they do shoot, she doesn’t hear the shots and they don’t hit her as she runs as fast as she can towards the room.
Molly just raises her hand to the door handle when she is knocked off her feet sideways and onto her back, hitting the floor hard. Someone is on top of her. She panics and tries to scramble to get up, but the person is too heavy; eventually, she gains focus and stares into the black eyes of Olly, smoke billowing above his head from the fire. He is pushing her shoulders down
