Fast by Shane M Brown

any second. If she didn’t get through that door, she would run straight into a dead end.
                She stopped checking behind herself and just ran. The creature sounded like a rolling car-wreck chasing her down the corridor. She passed the emergency wall-panel display. The panel showed a snapshot schematic view of activated emergency systems. The whole panel blazed with red lights. Systems looked compromised over the entire Complex. Even on the habitation level.
                David!
                Vanessa felt her personal dilemma suddenly expand to cover the entire facility, including her son.
                The creatures are everywhere.
                Just after the wall panel came the smaller ECS panel that she was looking for. The panel was labeled: Emergency Corridor Sterilization .
                Without slowing, she bashed her fist into the glass panel.
                White sterilizing agent exploded from the walls like a hundred ruptured gas pipes. All down the corridor, plumes of white gas hissed into her path. She didn’t know if the sterilizing gas would affect the creature, but anything was worth a try. She glanced back and saw flashes of the creature coming through the gas.
                No good. It’s still coming.
                Looking forward through the gas she saw the containment door start rolling down from the ceiling. It was twenty meters away and halfway down when she spotted another major obstacle in her plan to survive the next sixty seconds.
                The door to the fire stairs was shut.
    In the time it took her to yank open the door, the creature would be on her.
                Vanessa ignored the logical part of her brain that insisted she was as good as dead. Don’t give up. Never give up. Maybe I’m faster than I think. Let’s find out….
                At that exact moment, the elevator doors opened in the antechamber ahead. Four soldiers occupied the elevator. Their eyes widened when they spotted her.
                ‘Down!’ bellowed the middle soldier. His voice sounded very familiar. ‘Get down now, Vanessa!’
                Vanessa dove down, seeing what they planned to do, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to stop moving! She crawled commando-style towards the soldiers as they opened fire down the corridor - shooting right over the top of her .
                She kept crawling as the soldiers kept firing. The entire corridor filled with the roar and light of gunfire. When the firing stopped, Vanessa had reached the elevator.
                She was looking at a pair of brown boots in the elevator’s entrance. She followed the boots up and saw the face. Now she recognized the voice and the face.
    Exhausted, she managed to ask between great sucking breaths, ‘What…the hell…are you doing here?’
     
    #
     
    Coleman helped his ex-wife to her feet, but kept his boot jammed against the bottom of the elevator door. He didn’t want any more mystery-destination elevator rides. The rest of Third Unit trained their assault rifles on the elevator ceiling.
                Thank god she’s alive. Now I just need to find David.
                The entire carriage shuddered under Coleman’s boots. The creatures were peeling away the ceiling like a sardine can lid.
                ‘Everyone out,’ he ordered. The fluorescent carriage lights started flashing. ‘Let’s go – move, move!’
                Vanessa backed from the elevator as the Marines rushed out.
                Third Unit surged into the security antechamber. Forest, King, and then Marlin rushed past, ducking away from the carriage ceiling. They spread out around the room and prepared to blast the elevator when Coleman got clear.
            ‘Hold the doors open,’ shouted Vanessa. She’d recovered her