by Jake Bible
“Nice,” he said to himself as he saw Maggie lying on top of her bed, half naked in only her underwear and her butt up in the air. “I’ve had worse jobs to do.”
Maggie snored loudly and there was a large pool of drool under her face. She mumbled something in her sleep then let out a small fart and giggled. Joey grimaced and took a step back.
“Gross,” he said. “Chicks shouldn’t fart.”
“That so?” Jessica asked from behind him.
He swung around quickly enough to knock the pistol from Jessica’s hand, but not fast enough to block Jessica’s elbow as it hit him square in the jaw, sending him spinning further into the cabin and slamming against a dresser hard enough to put a dent in the very expensive wood. He kept hold of his rifle, but couldn’t get it up in time to ward off the oncoming woman.
Jessica knocked the rifle to the side with her left hand then kept her momentum going, clocking Joey in the temple with her right elbow. Joey had a good foot in height and at least a hundred pounds on Jessica, but there was not much the man could do against a well-placed elbow shot. He rolled along the edge of dresser then fell to a knee, his rifle slipping from his stunned grasp and sliding away across the smooth carpet.
A heavy boot came at his face, but he dodged to the side, his shoulder catching the heel instead of his cheek. He collapsed with his back against the dresser and barely managed to cross his arms in front of him and stop the next kick aimed right for his throat. Joey twisted his hands around from their crossed position and grabbed Jessica by the leg. He threw himself to the side, using all his weight to take Jessica with him.
Her leg firmly in Joey’s grasp, Jessica had no choice but to tuck her shoulder and go into the roll as the large man spun her about. As her shoulder hit the ground, Joey got his legs up underneath him and launched himself upright. He still had Jessica’s leg and he yanked on it hard as he walked backwards towards the cabin door.
Maggie grumbled and farted again and Joey gave her a harsh look.
“I’ll teach you how to be a lady when I’m done with this bitch,” Joey said as he reached the doorway.
That was as far as he got before he was forced to his knees after Jessica’s other boot landed right in his crotch. Joey’s face went green as he grunted and involuntarily grabbed for his badly bruised nuts. Two more elbows to the face and he was on his back out in the passageway.
Joey gasped for breath and struggled to keep from throwing up. The woman wasn’t big, by any stretch of the imagination, but she was pissed off and knew exactly how to land a kick to the balls. Joey reluctantly flipped himself over onto his stomach and crawled as far and fast as he could manage. Which was about four feet before Jessica came out into the passageway with Joey’s rifle to her shoulder.
“Shit!” Joey cried as he rolled to the side, bullets tearing up the floor where he’d just been.
“Did you say you were going to teach that woman how to be a lady?” Jessica shouted as she fired again.
Joey was able to roll out of the line of fire once more and landed with his back against the wall. He reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out his .45, but he didn’t get a shot off as pain exploded in his legs. He screamed as slug after slug tore into his thighs. He screamed a second time as a burning hot muzzle was shoved against his scalp, the metal singing his hair and scorching his skin.
“Did Giraldi send you down here to rape innocent women?” Jessica asked. “Or was that you taking your own initiative?”
Joey grimaced and gritted his teeth as he watched his blood flow from his wounds and pool under his legs.
“I asked you a question!” Jessica shouted.
“Shit, okay, okay!” Joey yelled. “I thought that was a rhetorical question!”
“Do I seem like I’m in a rhetorical mood, asshole?” Jessica snarled, pressing the rifle harder into Joey’s scalp. “Does the sound of me squeezing this trigger sound at all rhetorical to you?”
Joey pissed himself when he heard the dry click of the rifle’s trigger. Then the fact he wasn’t dead sunk in and he lifted his .45 at Jessica.
“Shit,” she said as she threw herself backwards.
Joey fired six shots at her, but missed every one as they went too high and ended up just ripping hunks of wood from the ceiling. He adjusted his aim as Jessica scrambled on hands and feet towards the open cabin.
“You want to play word games, bitch?” Joey snarled as he fired and Jessica screamed. “I’ll play word games.”
The woman was lost from his sight as she crawled into Maggie’s cabin. Joey had counted eight shots and knew he only had three left in the pistol, one in the chamber and two in the magazine. He ejected the magazine and grabbed a fresh one from his belt, but fumbled and dropped it as pain rolled through the gunshot wounds in his legs.
Joey took a couple of deep breaths and reached for the magazine which was lying in the massive pool of blood that had formed underneath him. He almost had the magazine when it was snatched away from him.
“What the hell?” he whispered as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. “That was a… What was that?”
He craned his neck and his eyes went wide as he watched a long, thick tentacle pull the magazine into the cracked open air vent above him in the ceiling. The tentacle was lost from sight and all Joey could do was stare at the spot where it had been, his mind refusing to admit he saw what he saw.
“That ain’t right,” he said as he grabbed at the last magazine on his belt.
He had a hard time getting it free and looked down quickly. When he got it and slapped it into the waiting pistol, he turned his attention back to the vent and nearly screamed as he saw a huge eyeball watching him. Everything around the eyeball was pitch black, but a kind of black that didn’t quite fit the shadows of the vent.
Slowly, hoping not to draw attention to what he was doing, Joey brought his pistol up and aimed it at the eyeball. He never got a shot off as two tentacles came shooting down at him. One grabbed his wrist and snapped it, while the other snagged the pistol and threw it down the passageway so that it clattered against the wall at the far end, well out of reach.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Joey said.
The tentacles hovered around him then darted down and rolled their tips in his blood. They withdrew instantly and Joey heard a soft slurping noise. If he hadn’t already pissed himself, he would have then as three tentacles came for him.
He screamed and screamed and screamed as he was lifted into the air. Four other tentacles whipped past him and coated themselves in the pool of blood on the floor. They withdrew when not an inch of their rubbery skin was visible. Joey hung there in the passageway, suspended in air by three tentacles, screaming his head off as the slurping sound above increased and intensified.
Then his left leg was gone. Gone. Torn right from his hip with a wet popping noise that made him throw up more than the pain of getting kicked in the balls ever could. Not that the pain of losing his leg wasn’t enough to turn his stomach, but he’d heard a lot of things in his career and the popping of a leg out of a pelvis was a new one. Especially since it was his own leg.
His hands went to the gushing wound where his left leg had been and he pressed his palms against the opening, some part of his brain telling him that if he just stopped the bleeding he’d be alright. That part of his brain shorted out when his right leg met the same fate as his left.
He flailed at the tentacles that were tearing into him. He slapped at their strange skin, clawed at the suckers that opened and closed while they tasted his blood. He tried to dig his fingernails into one, but he couldn’t find any purchase as the tentacle just warped and collapsed under his grip without any damage done.
When his left arm was yanked free from his shoulder, Joey’s conscious mind decided that a vacation was in order. All rational thought left him and for some reason the image of the huge elm tree that was in the front yard of his childhood home burst into his mind. He could see that tree
as plain as if it was right there in the passageway with him. Its green leaves fluttering in the summer breeze. He could smell freshly mowed grass and the hint of honeysuckle.
Then his right arm was torn off and he was brought painfully back to reality. His head slumped as the strength began to leave his body. Joey’s chin met his chest and he could feel his heart slowing, slowing, stuttering. A small movement caught the last of his attention and he shifted his gaze to his right.
Jessica was peeking from around the doorway of Maggie’s cabin, her eyes wide with horrified disbelief, her pistol limp in her hand.
Then everything went dark as his limbless body was pulled up through the vent in the ceiling. Of course, his body was too big for the opening, so a good part of him was crushed and mangled as the incredible strength of the creature in the ceiling continued to pull and pull until he was finally up inside duct work, his torso reunited with his severed limbs.
36.
Every single inch of the passageway’s floor outside the vault was covered by body parts. Not in a haphazard way, but in a deliberate, jigsaw puzzle complexity where each part was nestled perfectly against the next.
Nick, Niya, Mikey, and Chip stood at the end of the passageway, none of them brave enough to set foot off the stairs onto the floor, and stared with open mouths at the scene. The vault was only a few yards away, but may have been miles distant for all the observers cared.
“The package is in there?” Nick asked. “In that vault? The vault that’s standing open in the middle of Jeffrey Dahmer’s personal game of Tetris? Well, I wish you all good luck. I’m getting the fuck out of here now.”
“You’re staying right here, Sheeran,” Mikey said and pressed the barrel of his rifle into the small of Nick’s back. “In fact, you get to go first.”
“Ms. Romanski called point,” Nick said. “And I have always been a ladies first kind of gentlemen. It’s not exactly fashionable in the Pacific Northwest; in fact, you can get your ass handed to you for it, but I guess I’m old fashioned when it comes to manners.”
“That pussy smell is now you, Mr. Sheeran,” Niya said as she knelt on the stairs and plucked a small flashlight from the grip of a severed hand.
Flashlight on, she placed one foot down on a split open torso and tested its stability. The torso held her weight and she took another step, her other foot coming down on a thigh. Cautiously, placing every step with careful planning, Niya made it halfway to the vault before she turned around and gave the three men a reproachful look.
“You will be joining me,” Niya said. “Or I explain to Mr. Giraldi that the men he has hired are spineless and weak.”
“I’ll totally own up to those names,” Nick said. “Even if I don’t work for Giraldi. Spineless and weak I can live with.” He flapped his hands at the horror puzzle before him. “This shit? Nope. Big, fat nope. Not living with this.”
“Then you can die,” Mikey said as the barrel of the rifle moved from the small of Nick’s back to the depression at the base of his skull.
“Not if you want to get off this ship,” Nick said and slowly raised his hand. “Only one that can pilot the speedboat, remember?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Mikey said.
“Yeah, we’ll figure it out,” Chip echoed.
“Get your goddamn asses off those stairs and over here,” Niya snarled as she pointed her flashlight and a .45 at the men. “All three of you or I drop you right here and you can become part of this morbid art installation.”
Nick grumbled and mumbled obscenities as he stepped onto the bodies, trying to follow the path Niya had already taken. His left foot slipped in a rib cage and he pulled it out quickly, but ended up losing his balance and tumbling over into an elaborate arrangement of forearms and middle fingers.
Coated in blood and gore, Nick started crawling his way across the bodies until he was resting against the open door of the vault.
“I win,” he gasped as he tried to wipe congealed blood from his face, but only ended up smearing it around and making it worse. “Oh, Jesus Christ, this is nasty. So nasty.”
Mikey and Chip were a little more capable in their journey, but both still ended up taking a fall or two and were nearly as gore splattered as Nick when they reached the vault. Niya shook her head and gracefully walked past them all into the vault, her .45 up, with flashlight held underneath, both pointed ahead of her.
“Watch above,” she said as the stepped into the cavernous space. “There’s a hatch over that tank.”
“Tank?” Nick asked as he followed her inside. “All of this is over a tank? Shit, I could of found you guys a tank. I know a guy in Israel that has like three on hand right now.” He stopped talking as he saw the huge tank of bloody saltwater that occupied a good amount of the vault’s space. “Oh, that kind of tank.”
“I am not surprised to see this here,” Niya said. “Not after finding the ink.”
“The tank is open!” Mikey exclaimed and he spun around in a slow circle, his rifle jerking this way and that. “The package is loose! The package is loose!”
He fumbled his radio from his belt, but ended up dropping it into a thick pool of blood at his feet.
“Are you serious?” Niya asked as she walked back to him and retrieved the radio from the blood. She wiped it on her tights then clicked the transmitter button three times.
“What do you have for me, Mikey?” Tony’s voice asked.
“It’s Niya,” Niya replied. “And we have an empty saltwater tank. Your package is not here.”
“I wouldn’t call that tank empty,” Nick said. “There’s certainly something floating in there.” He walked towards the tank while Niya continued on with the radio conversation.
“I assume the package was some type of octopus?” Niya asked. “And not your usual sushi menu variety?”
“To be honest, I wasn’t sure,” Tony responded. “Yeah, I was told it was some genetic engineering project that was hijacked, making it that much easier for me to boost, but I never was told what kind of animal they were playing with. All I was told was to wait for the signal.”
“You didn’t think that was important?” Niya mocked. “That perhaps knowing that you were acquiring a creature with incredible intelligence, physical strength and dexterity, and camouflage ability might be good info to have?”
“I know it’s worth nine figures,” Tony said.
Niya had been following behind Nick, but the mention of nine figures stopped her in her tracks.
“High or low?” Niya asked.
“Very high,” Tony said. “Almost ten figures.”
“That’s high,” Nick said over his shoulder as he approached the tank. He stopped a few feet from it and shone his flashlight against the glass, but the beam only reflected back at him. “Crap. Gonna have to climb that ladder.”
“You’ve been shitting bricks for the past hour, but now you’re going to climb right up in that tank?” Mikey asked. “There is something wrong with you.”
“I have been told that on more than a dozen occasions,” Nick said as he took a deep breath and walked to the ladder on the side of the tank.
“Be careful,” Niya called after him.
“The tank is empty, right?” Nick replied. “I mean, something big enough to take out a ship filled with heavily armed men would be easy to spot hanging out in its aquarium, yeah?”
“Did you not hear me say that an octopus is a master at camouflage?” Niya responded.
Nick paused halfway up the ladder.
“So it could still be in there?” Nick asked. “Just waiting for me to grab onto whatever this big thing floating in here is?”
“Yes,” Niya replied.
“Okay then,” Nick said and started to climb back down.
“Tell him I have Blogger Boy with me. He keeps climbing or I shoot his friend,” Tony announced from the radio. “What was he doing?”
“He was about to fish out a corpse from the tank,” Niya said.
Nick to
ok a second look at the thing floating in the saltwater and shivered. “That’s a corpse? Shit. I didn’t think it was a corpse.”
“What did you think it was?” Niya asked.
“I don’t know,” Nick said. “Not a corpse.”
“Grab it,” Mikey ordered. “You heard what the boss said, grab it or the blogger gets a bullet.”
“He’s not that good of a blogger to keep calling him that,” Nick said. “He’s great at cards, but is a barely passable writer.”
There was a garbled response on the radio.
“What was that?” Niya asked.
“The blogger heard that and says for Nicholas to go suck his own dick,” Tony laughed. The laugh stopped quickly. “But, yes, get the corpse out of the water. Now.”
“Shit,” Nick said as he reached the top of the ladder and leaned over the tank. “This is gonna suck.”
The body floating in the water was draped in a white lab coat, but that was about all the detail Nick could make out. It was no wonder he didn’t recognize it as a corpse considering how warped and twisted it was. It almost looked like something had tied the limbs together. But that wouldn’t be possible without pulverizing the bones inside each.
Nick felt like he was quite the hero for not throwing up again as he snagged the lab coat and pulled the body to the edge of the tank. He was also fairly proud of himself for not falling into the bloody water either.
“Gonna need some help,” Nick said as he yanked and yanked at the corpse, but couldn’t get the leverage to get it out of the saltwater.
“Leave…it…”
“Oh my shit!” Nick yelled as he nearly fell from the ladder. He grabbed onto the top rung and spun around. “Did you guys hear that?”
“Yes,” Niya said as she moved quickly over to a pile of bodies stacked against the wall. She stared at the bodies until one of the heads blinked back at her. “Here!”
Mikey and Chip hurried over and helped pull the man from the pile. None of them looked surprised to see him missing his legs from below the knees. They did look surprised when they spotted the makeshift tourniquets on the man’s thighs.
