by Jake Bible
“I have eyes on the asset!” Balls called.
“Me too!” Skanks added.
The four men held their position of a rough circle around the helicopter, all eyes locked onto the furious form of Niya Romanski.
“Romanski!” Tumbler shouted. “There is no way out of this! Put your hands over your head and exit the chopper slowly! If you cooperate, you get to live! Twitch a tit and we end you now!”
“Do you know what happens if you kill me?” Niya shouted at him. “You will declare war! Whoever is paying you will be found out and my people will hunt every last one of them down and butcher not just them, but their families and their friends! Yours too!”
“No,” Tumbler responded.
“Excuse me?” Niya laughed. “You should have more faith in what I say!”
“I have faith in who I work for,” Tumbler said. “Your people will not survive a war with us. The second I report your death, your entire operation, and the operations of anyone associated with you, will be wiped from the earth! This isn’t our first go round!”
Niya started to move and Tumbler tensed, ready to pull the trigger.
“Hold on! Hold on!” Nick shouted, waving his arms. “Do not shoot! She can get us out of here! Do any of you know how to pilot this thing?”
Balls, Skanks, and Dipstick raised a hand.
“Oh,” Nick said. He smiled at Niya. “Well, I tried. You are on your own.”
Niya glared at him then looked back to Tumbler.
“I give you the files and you let me live?” she shouted.
“You give me the files, I verify they are the files, you don’t try anything stupid, and I let you live,” Tumbler said. “But only while you are in my custody. I have no authority over what happens when we return to land.”
“That is not much of a deal,” Niya said.
“I’m not in much of a deal-making mood,” Tumbler responded. “Live or die, your choice.”
“Live,” Niya said and held up her hands.
She struggled to get out of the pilot’s seat and fell out onto the deck as her wounded leg gave out on her. She looked up as Tumbler and Dipstick rushed her, the latter planting a heavy boot in the middle of her back. Tumbler yanked her arms behind her and zip-tied her wrists together.
Dipstick yanked Niya to her feet and shoved her towards the body of Tweety.
“If you think they’ll let you live after that then you are kidding yourself,” he snarled in her ear.
“Dip!” Tumbler shouted. “Put her in the bird! We’ve got to go!”
Dipstick lifted Niya by her arms, bending them high up behind her back, and the woman screamed as she was shoved back to the helicopter.
Balls climbed into the pilot’s seat and checked the instruments.
“We are good to go!” he yelled. “But we’ve lost a lot of time! Tweety was right, we may not be getting out of this storm!”
“Just get us to the yacht!” Tumbler ordered, climbing into the co-pilot’s seat as he shoved Nick out of the way.
Nick climbed in back and plopped down next to Niya while Dipstick and Skanks flanked them.
“You guys twins?” Nick joked as he pointed at their matching clothes and body armor. He laughed weakly then let it fade out. “Yeah. Right. Just a little kidding to lighten the mood.”
Tumbler spun about in his seat as Balls lifted the helicopter off the ship.
“The asset will shut the holy fuck up or the asset will learn to fly. Are we understood?” he snapped at Nick. Nick nodded. “No, I want to hear it from the asset.”
“Yes, we are understood,” Nick replied. “Loud and clear.”
“Coward,” Niya muttered.
“Says the bitch playing white trash bondage games,” Nick said. “You can act superior when you’re out of those zip ties.”
“Strap in and hold on!” Balls said as he took the helicopter out away from the ship and over open water. “I can’t get too high because of the wind or too low because of the waves. I’m threading a weather needle, gentlemen!”
Everyone strapped in and held on.
47.
Maggie pulled out a small tablet from a pouch on her leg. She felt lucky it wasn’t the leg she ended up shooting or her cobbled-together plan was over before it began.
She checked the plans of the yacht, swiping away unneeded information and leaving only a basic framework of the rooms and the schematics of the ventilation system. It was designed the way she had hoped it would be. She knew that if she timed things just right, she could trap the creature and keep it contained until backup arrived.
But, as the yacht canted to port and she nearly dropped the tablet trying to keep her balance, she had a sinking feeling backup wasn’t coming anytime soon.
She also had a sinking feeling that her help wasn’t going to be much help as she rushed through the main dining room and saw the pool of blood spreading out from under the galley’s double doors.
“Shit,” she muttered, her pistol up and pointed at the round windows in the doors.
Slowly, and painfully, she stepped to the doors and nudged them open. Just inside was half the body of Chef Bermeto, the top half, the man’s eyes wide with fear and blank with death. The bottom half was hanging from the pot rack over the make table, blood spilling out of the severed pelvis into a large stock pot.
Maggie’s shoulders sagged as she saw that the ranges’ burners were all dark, not one was lit and boiling the pots of water that Chef Bermeto had put there on Maggie’s orders. The disappointment Maggie felt wasn’t so much that her plan to flush the creature from the ventilation system and into the walk-in cooler had failed before it had started, but from the realization the chef hadn’t been the one to turn off the burners.
The creature had.
It was obvious from the smears of blood, both red and blue, and the black ink that trailed from the forced-open galley door to the ranges. Maggie stared at the floor mixer that easily weighed several hundred pounds as it lay on its side, broken and useless. The other pieces of heavy equipment were a few feet from the galley door, deep gouges in the metal floor from being shoved out of the way as well.
A crunch and thump made Maggie spin about and she ducked just in time. The tentacle sailed over her head as she dove into a forward roll, biting her cheek from the pain in her thigh, and came to rest with her back against the make table. Three tentacles shot in at her from the dining room and she fired over and over, nailing one of them before the other two wrapped about her ankles and started pulling her from the galley.
She let go of her pistol, pulled her knife free and slashed at the tentacle grabbing onto her left ankle. It let go as blue blood spurted high into the air. Maggie started to slash the other one, but the wounded tentacle smacked her knife from her hand and wrapped about her arm instead while the second tentacle, still firmly attached to her right ankle, continued to pull her to the dining room.
Maggie struggled to pry the tentacle from her arm, but it was like grabbing onto a rubber hose with the strength of a hundred men. Her foot hit the torso of Chef Bermeto and she looked down as she was pulled by. There, on his hip, was his chef’s knife tucked safely into its sheath. She had a friend that had worked KP when she was in basic training and said a kitchen was a daily battle zone and a chef always stayed armed.
Maggie yanked the chef’s knife free and stabbed the tentacle that had her ankle, pinning it to the floor. She was amazed at how sharp the knife was, able to slice into the metal floor like it was a thick cut of meat. Subconsciously, she found a new respect for chefs. Consciously, she found something new to fear as the tentacle let go of her ankle and pulled away, slicing itself in half at the tip as it withdrew around the blade.
Her whole world spun into a new direction as the tentacle that had her arm took over and pulled her sideways out of the galley doors and into the dining room.
She gasped at the sight of the massive creature that filled the entire dining room, its mantle resting on the thick wooden
table, its tentacles flailing about in a way that could only be interpreted as rage. Up close, and fully visible, the thing was nothing like the docile octopi she’d studied before planning the mission.
The front of its mantle was thick and grey, no longer a rosy pink. The skin almost looked plated, like it had folded in upon itself again and again to create a heavy armor. Its tentacles pulsed with blue blood, the skin of the creature going from translucent to opaque and back again, changing colors instantly as they came in contact with a new surface.
Maggie could barely breathe as she looked up at the creature. She almost completely stopped when the thing lifted its mantle off the table to show her its huge sharp beak.
Sharp beak…
Maggie’s training kicked back in and she assessed her predicament. No blades, no pistols, no weapons of any kind. Just her fingernails and teeth.
Beak. Teeth.
Maggie lunged for the tentacle that had her arm, sinking her teeth into the rubbery flesh. She shook her head back and forth, her mouth filling with the strangest tasting blood she’d ever experienced. Not coppery like human blood, which she had tasted too many times for her liking, but organic, loamy; salty yet vegetable like.
Her teeth sawed through the tentacle and the monster raged from the dining table, its beak clacking and tentacles slapping the wood paneled walls. Instead of just letting go, the giant octopus threw her back into the galley, tossing her as far away as possible. It was a genetically modified killing machine, but at its core it was still a cautious being that thousands and thousands of years of evolution had programmed to flee when a dangerous predator was near.
But then there was the ever-present elephant in the room of nurture versus nature. The creature shook its wounded tentacle about, splattering everything with blue blood, and slowly slid down from the table. Its fear was gone, Maggie could see that easily as she tried to crawl further back into the galley, and the thing’s body language said playtime was all over.
Maggie grabbed up a sauté pan that lay on the rubber safety mat in front of the make table. She held it up, swinging it back and forth, trying to use it to divert the monster’s attention. For a second, she thought it had worked as the octopus paused in mid-crawl. She kept swinging then realized it had paused not because of her feeble sauté pan diversion, but because there was a very distinct sound fighting through the noise of the storm outside.
The helicopter.
With a speed that made Maggie tighten her bladder to keep it from loosing, the octopus was gone and out of the dining room, leaving only a swinging door and a long trail of blue blood behind it.
“Shit,” Maggie said and pressed her throat “Tumbler! Do you copy? You have incoming hostile now! The package is moving fast and coming right for you!”
“Roger,” Tumbler replied. “We have weapons hot and eyes wide open! Balls is trying to land this bird without us punching through the deck and into the bridge, but the winds are not cooperating!”
“Set that bird down fast and get the hell away from it!” Maggie shouted.
“That’s the plan!” Tumbler responded.
Maggie sighed and leaned back against the make table. Her body felt broken and crushed, but as far as she could tell, she was only wounded in her thigh. Which had opened back up.
“Shit,” she whispered as she took a deep breath and pulled herself back to her feet. “Gotta be a first aid kit in this place. Kitchens are battle zones.”
48.
“Get us down, Balls!” Tumbler yelled as the helicopter was buffeted by the wind. “We have a hostile incoming!”
“I’m trying!” Balls yelled back. “But I have to keep the rotor power up to fight the wind which is making it hard to set down without crashing! Do you want down in one piece or down in many pieces? Make the call, T!”
“I want us down now!” Tumbler said as he looked out the windshield at the yacht below.
The door to the bridge burst open and Captain Staggs came fleeing out, his head tucked low against the wind and rain, his legs pumping as fast as possible. Tumbler tracked the man’s progress as Balls swung the helicopter around, angling it towards the helipad on the upper deck.
“What the hell is he doing?” Tumbler shouted.
Then everyone saw as the bridge door, as well as most of the structure around it, exploded outward and the giant octopus came bursting out on deck, its tentacles flapping and flailing around it. Two shot out at the captain, snagging him about the waist, bending him in half as it pulled the screaming man back. It may have pulled too hard as Captain Staggs’s soft middle seemed to disintegrate from the attack and blood began to fly about the deck from the wind and rotor wash.
The octopus threw the broken man aside and pushed up to its full height on its legs, bringing its mantle almost level with the open doors of the helicopter.
“Holy fucking kraken!” Nick yelled as he tried to scramble away from the door. “Fly away! Fly away!”
Balls had started to do just that, but the helicopter’s engines began to whine and protest as he pushed the throttle hard. They weren’t going anywhere. The helicopter was stuck in place and as all eyes turned to the monster they knew why.
Tumbler made a split-second decision and raised his MK14. He opened fire just as the rest of the team came to the exact same decision and began firing as well. Nick slapped his hands over his ears and screamed, unable to join in the battle. Niya only stared at the thing that held them in place midair.
A tentacle burst up through the floor of the helicopter and wrapped around Dipstick’s left leg. It yanked down and the man screamed as part of him was pulled through the jagged hole, metal tearing into his calf, his thigh, then up into his pelvis, while the rest of him was stuck inside the helicopter. He had an HK416 like Balls, but that fell from his grip as he reached out, desperate for any handhold he could get.
He found Niya’s leg and she smiled down at him. Then she pulled free and smashed her boot down on his hand, crushing the bones with a loud enough snap to overcome the roar of the helicopter, shouting of the men, and the firing of the rifles and carbines. Dipstick looked up at her with terrified eyes then he was gone as his body folded in on itself and was pulled through the hole, sending a spray of blood and flutter of black material shooting up into the air.
As the blood of his former teammate splattered against his face, Skanks turned his attention on Niya. But he wasn’t fast enough as she kicked out and her boot caught him across the chin. He lost his balance and tumbled from his seat and onto the floor, sliding towards the wide open door.
The monster didn’t waste a breath and plucked him from the helicopter in the blink of an eye.
“God dammit!” Tumbler yelled as he turned in his seat and put two shots in Niya’s chest.
The woman slumped over against Nick. Nick, in turn, screamed louder and fumbled at the buckle of his safety harness.
“We’re going in!” Balls said. “I can’t keep this thing up!”
Both Tumbler and Nick looked at the free buckle of the safety harness that flopped useless against Nick’s chest.
“Son of a bitch,” Nick said just as the helicopter started to flip to the side and the rotors began to slice into the helipad below.
The octopus let go of the machine and easily scrambled out of the way, leaping down to the next deck and tearing open the first hatch it found, lost from sight inside the ship once again as the men inside the helicopter screamed and screamed until everything came to a dead stop in a pile of flames and shearing metal.
49.
The entire ship rocked and shook from the impact. Maggie didn’t need confirmation of what had happened, but she pressed her throat anyway.
“Tumbler?” she called out. No response except the ominous hiss of empty static. “Balls?” Still nothing. “Skanks? Dipstick?”
Maggie’s hand fell away from her throat and she forced herself to keep moving. She leaned heavily against the wood paneling of the passageway, her eyes locked onto the
stairs ahead of her that would take her back up to the bridge. She was halfway there when the ship suddenly began to list heavily and she found herself thrown against the opposite wall.
“Staggs,” she muttered, realizing something must have happened to the captain with the way the ship felt out of control.
The yacht continued to list then suddenly it angled hard and Maggie fell to the floor. She began to slide down the passageway, going the wrong direction from the stairs she needed to get to. However, that was quickly rectified as the ship leveled out then started angling the complete opposite direction than before.
She rolled onto her stomach and reached out as she slid towards the stairs. As soon as she reached them, she clamped her hands on the bottom of the spiral banister, locking her fingers in place as the ship leveled out and returned to the previous angle.
Waves. They were climbing and falling over waves. The storm was in full force and they were right in the middle of it. There was no way a second helicopter was going to get to her, to them, in time before the yacht went down, especially with whatever damage happened when the helicopter above crashed.
But Maggie shoved those thoughts from her mind. The mission was over. The package was not going to be retrieved, that was plainly, and belatedly, apparent. Even under ideal conditions, she doubted her team would have been able to take down and capture the creature. It was enormous. Much larger and considerably more intelligent than the reports she had been given. It was a doomed mission from the start and she and her team found that out the hard way.
When the yacht leveled out once more, Maggie pulled herself up and started climbing the stairs. As the angle changed again, she let herself half fall “down” the stairs until she reached the landing that should have been above, but was suddenly below. Again the yacht leveled and Maggie hurried down the short passageway to the open bridge door where water poured in from outside.
She threw herself inside the bridge, her hands grabbing onto the brass railing by the dash, as the yacht started climbing the next wave. That time she could see what the ship was battling and her mouth hung open at the sight of the massive wave in front of her. The view became nothing but pitch black water then pitch black sky as the yacht climbed and climbed until it crested the wave.
