Much to Tatsuo’s irritation and surprise, Goro failed to continue the argument, but instead tugged his bamboo rod while peering into the seaweed-filled waters.
“Are you even listening to me?” Tatsuo threw his rod on the deck in annoyance.
“Not now, Tatsuo,” Goro answered while never dropping the odd expression marring his plain features. “There is something wrong here. Something is caught on my line, but it… does not feel like a tuna. Hold on, I am going to try reeling it in.”
The young procurer of aquatic food began tugging with all his might, and it soon became clear that whatever he was pulling in happened to be alive. “I can feel something tugging back, so my line isn’t just caught on a rock. Something living has taken the bait. Help me a bit, will you?”
Tatsuo grumbled but quickly put his own rod down to answer his friend’s request for aid. Neither of the two men were athletically endowed for their respective age groups, but their combined strength proved sufficient to overcome the resistance of what was on the other line and successfully reel it in. After seeing what Goro had caught, however, both men immediately wished they had not.
Hanging from the hook of Goro’s line was an organism that outwardly resembled a caterpillar of freakishly large size with a reddish-hued warty hide and no visible eyes. The worm-like creature also possessed a wide maw bearing four large projected fangs that it was using to grasp onto the line’s metal hook. The hideous creature was slightly over fifteen inches long, and the end of its tail bobbed back and forth of its own accord while its anterior mouth remained latched onto the barb of Goro’s hook. The movement of the tail served as a continuous reminder that this anomalous grotesquerie was a living creature evidently spawned on the same planet the men called home.
“What in the name of my revered ancestors is that?” Tatsuo queried.
Goro, for his part, was so taken aback by the sight that he dropped his rod on the deck’s wooden surface. “I cannot answer that as I’ve never seen anything like it before. I have never seen any type of worm or caterpillar move like it does, either, with that weird sort of spasm. What a horrible-looking thing!”
As the younger fisherman stepped back due to an involuntary urge to put distance between himself and the hideous annelid, Tatsuo startled his friend even further by walking up to the writhing thing and picking it up by the end of its tail. He subsequently held the bizarre organism from his fingertips to inspect it. Goro found himself both sickened and alarmed by this bold action.
“Tatsuo! You shouldn’t touch that thing! We have no idea what it is, and I think we should just kill it.”
Tatsuo was careful to hold the elongated wriggling creature a few feet from his face as he looked at it with a combination of revulsion and fascination.
“You worry too much, little man. It is simply a worm of some sort. I have handled critters like this all my life, and this one is simply exceptionally large and ugly—”
Much to Goro’s horror, his friend’s reassuring statement was ironically and abruptly cut off as the spindly creature swiftly bent itself back and locked its squarish maw onto Tatsuo’s wrist. Its four needle-like teeth sunk deep into the man’s skin, and blood spurted from the perforated epidermis like a mini-geyser.
The besieged fisherman screamed in agony as he grasped the nightmarish annelid’s tail and desperately attempted to yank it out of his flesh. However, the curved shape of its tail enabled the worm to firmly maintain its grip, and all Tatsuo succeeded in doing was causing the torrent of blood spewing from the wound to become larger. Goro immediately went into a full state of panic.
“Tatsuo! Stop pulling on it, you’re ripping more blood vessels open! Tatsuo, listen to me, damn it!”
But Tatsuo’s own state of panic was so severe that he refused to take heed. He thus continued pulling fruitlessly on the worm as waves of agony and nausea assailed him. A combination of extreme pain, blood loss, and panic caused him to fall on the surface of the deck. He then continued to scream and yank at the horrid annelid while lying on his back.
“Get it off of me! Please get it off! It hurts!”
“Tatsuo, please hold on!” Goro pulled the metal hook off his rod and rushed towards his beleaguered friend. “I do not have a knife on hand, but I am going to puncture its neck with my fishing hook! Do not worry, I will get that thing off of you!”
Goro grabbed the anterior portion of the worm situated directly under its jaws to hold it in place, despite how much this forced him to resist the urge to dry heave. He then attempted to rip open the mystery worm’s mottled red flesh with the sharp end of the metal fishing hook.
“Damn it, Tatsuo, stop your squirming and hold still! I cannot cut into it when you are thrashing like that!”
Tatsuo was now beyond panic-stricken, however. “Get it off me! Please get it off!”
Goro was determined not to give up on the man who was practically his only friend. He thus continued his attempt to cut into the worm despite fighting a compulsion to faint. The joint horror of seeing Tatsuo’s blood pouring out of his skewered wrist, and his being forced to make physical contact with the most horrible-looking animal he had ever seen, was almost more than the young man could bear.
After much effort, Goro finally managed to sink the hook deep into the annelid’s hide on the spot he estimated to be the equivalent of its throat; he then did his best to tear it open. The creature’s skin was tough, but the fisherman pulled the embedded metal point hard enough to successfully rip a deep fissure in the rubbery layer of tissue which passed for its skin. A reddish ichor poured out of the gash, but the wretched thing continued to hold firm on Tatsuo’s severely bleeding arm as if its own life depended on it.
Tatsuo began screaming while repeatedly kicking one of the deck’s thick wooden support posts in a futile attempt to relieve the pain. Goro quickly became even more desperate to wrench that vile creature out of his good friend’s flesh.
“Tatsuo, please hold on! I will get it off, I promise!”
Soon his friend ceased his frenzied movements and piercing screams and lay almost still. Tatsuo’s pupils had rolled up into his head and his mouth was gaping wide open. The tortured, very audible raspy breathes he was taking were very disturbing to the ear.
“Hold on, Tatsuo! Please hold on!”
The fisherman was determined to keep that vow and get his comrade through this terrifying tribulation. Now that Tatsuo had stopped struggling, Goro let his friend’s bleeding arm drop to the ground, after which he began repeatedly stomping on the worm’s warty body as hard as his leg and the sole of his foot could muster in tandem. The young man’s anger enabled him to smash the heel of his sandal down even harder.
At first, little discernible damage seemed to be occurring to the tough creature. That only incited Goro to stomp down even harder and faster, screaming a stream of invective in rage and frustration as he did so.
“Get off of him, you disgusting little bastard! Get off of him!”
After what seemed like an eternity of incessant pounding, Goro noticed an expanding puddle of blood-like fluid flowing from underneath the worm and onto the wooden floor surrounding it. He responded to that by pushing himself past his normal level of endurance to continue the stomping, his accompanying verbal attacks aiding his need to vent throughout the ordeal.
After several minutes of this, the creature’s sausage-shaped form was reduced to a flattened state with bloody fluid and what resembled pulped internal organs pouring out of its gullet. Next, Goro himself for what, in his estimation, needed to be done next.
The fish-catcher forced himself to grab the flattened mass of the annelid’s neck with his bare right hand and attempt to pull it away from Tatsuo’s maimed wrist. The young man pooled the remainder of his stamina into the task, and to his utmost relief the horrid creature proved sufficiently injured that its jaw no longer held tight when yanked. The “head” of the worm was ripped away successfully, albeit at the cost of taking a small chunk of Tatsuo’s flesh w
ith it, which remained in the thing’s surprisingly powerful jaws. Another torrent of blood gushed out of Tatsuo’s wound once the worm was pulled free.
Goro gave forth a final shout and kicked the gory remains of the worm off the deck and into the water. He next bent over and vomited uncontrollably for almost a minute as the adrenalin rush wore off and the full enormity of what he had just witnessed and done sunk in. This was followed by his falling to the hard wooden surface of the deck in a state of near-exhaustion.
After taking several deep breathes, the young fisherman exerted every remaining iota of his will to crawl over to Tatsuo’s idle form and see to the man’s condition rather than passing out. Goro did this despite having to crawl through his own spattered vomit to reach his friend.
“Tatsuo, please speak to me!” Goro shouted as he grabbed his insensate comrade and shook him.
The only response to that stimuli was what sounded like a brief agonized moan and an involuntary twitching of the right side of the Tatsuo’s still-gaping mouth. It was only then that Goro calmed down enough to realize that he had to tie something around his friend’s arm to staunch the blood loss, or he would likely bleed out.
Goro was also aware he had to get the man proper medical attention without delay. However, few people in the village owned a vehicle and the closest hospital was in Yokohama. This would entail running to the nearest neighbor’s home (at least fifteen minutes by foot) and getting them to call an ambulance, which would take at least twenty-five minutes at top speed to get from there to Kenta, and the same amount of time to get back. Further, this would all hinge on Goro summoning up enough energy to do all of this when he felt extremely queasy and lightheaded.
I need to lie down, just for a few minutes. But I dare not right now, because I must first tie something around Tatsuo’s arm, or he is going to bleed to death. I am unable to do this, but Tatsuo’s life depends on me to do otherwise. Please, ancestors, let me find the strength. And please do not let me throw up again…
Megadrak: Beast Of The Apocalypse is available from Amazon here!
Atomic Rex_The Conquest of Chimera Page 22
