“If you wish to tie me up, I won’t fight you. The sakasa ebi shibari is a particularly demanding position, keeping me suspended and completely immobile while also allowing you access to my—”
“Throttle down, babe,” I interrupted. “I’ve got another use for this. How stocked is your refrigerator?”
• • •
One of the strongest memories I had of my grandfather, who died when I was ten years old, was him taking me fishing. He and Grandma owned a cabin on a lake, and we spent many a day spincasting for bass and pike. Few things in my adult life matched the joy, and the peace, I felt while in the boat with him, pulling in lunkers. Grandpa was a classic Old Man and the Sea type. Tough, grizzled, world-weary, but full wisdom and possessing the kindest eyes. He taught me how to catch dozens of varieties of fish, and there was nothing about angling he didn’t know.
But I doubted Grandpa ever went fishing for salmonsters using bondage rope and a twenty ounce sirloin steak.
The grappling hook wasn’t sharp, but I hoped it didn’t have to be. The meat was secured to it using a twisted coat hanger. I also opened a package of bratwurst, to use as chum.
Now I just needed the balls to get into the water.
I adjusted the scuba tank on my back, and Vicki came up behind me, placing her hand on my stomach.
“As soon as you see the line go taut, hit the winch,” I told her.
Naturally, they had an electric winch under the bed. I was beginning to think that my sex life, which I’d previously thought to be pretty damn good, was rather vanilla.
“Be careful,” she said.
When she said it, her face creased, and she looked so much like Vicki that I impulsively pulled her into my arms.
“Your life is going to get better,” I said. “I promise you.”
Her chin tilted up to kiss me, and I allowed a small one. After all, she was, in a weirdsort-of-parallel- earth way, my wife, sort of. Then I broke away and headed for the water, sticking the regulator into my mouth and tapping my AVCL to go to night vision. Clutching the grappling hook and bratwurst, I nodded a final goodbye to Alter-Vicki.
Ready or not, here I come.
The water was cold, and murky, tinted bright green. I managed to make my way through upside-down hallways and corridors by memory, disturbing the si#m nfinite versions of Glt. A crayfish the size of my fist scurried backward away from me, and a few minnows swam lazily past, ignoring my presence. All too soon I was at the hatch, facing the open water.
I didn’t see any salmonsters. I waited a minute, wondering if the scent would draw any.
A yellow perch came up to me, took a quick nibble at the steak, then darted away.
I waited another minute.
Maybe my fears were unfounded. Maybe the stories of Lake Michigan being overrun with salmonsters were just stories. Maybe—
The creature came at me sideways like a passing train, a tentacle lashing out and wrapping around the meat. Several things happened at once.
First, my testicles shrunk up into my body, and my asshole clenched in a reaction I call “the pucker effect.”
Second, the grappling hook was violently yanked from my hand.
Third, I might have screamed a little bit, which made me spit out the regulator.
Fourth, another tentacle wound itself around my wrist, and jerked me out of the hatch.
Fifth, I dropped the bratwurst.
The fish was massive, at least three meters long, thick as a horse. My shoulder felt like it had been yanked from its socket, and the monster continued to pick up speed, dragging me beside it as if I weighed nothing, its great tail slapping into my side with a rapid thump thump thump.
I reached behind me for my scuba tank, my free hand frantically searching for the regulator hose. But the pain, the disorientation, and the joint bubbles from the mouthpiece and my own lungs made it impossible to catch. My vision began to go red, blackness creeping in peripherally, and my lungs felt like punching bags.
If I was lucky, I’d drown. If I was unlucky, I’d be swallowed whole and slowly digested while being driven insane from the pain.
I opted for drowning, getting ready to suck in some lake water.
I’m so sorry, Vicki…
Then the creature jerked to a stop, causing me to float away from its side.
The rope. The rope was taut.
I quickly located the regulator, cleared the mouthpiece, and sucked in some blessed oxygen. It was sweeter than synthetic honey, and I almost laughed at the joy of being able to breathe again.
The salmonster turned, a red eye locking onto me, two more tentacles lashing out like whips and encircling my arms. One more tentacle plucked out my air hose, as easily as taking a binky from a baby.
Then its mouth stretched open, the saber teeth parting. For the second time in the last ten seconds I prepared to drown myself.
And for the second time in ten seconds, Alter-Vicki saved my ass.
The fis surroundingEOf course sh jerked to the side, its head pulled by the grappling hook as Alter-Vicki reeled it in. I found the regulator again, and bit down on it hard as I could; it wouldn’t come out without my teeth coming out with it.
As I’d anticipated, the salmonster’s lust for food meant barbed hooks weren’t needed. Once a tentacle latched onto food, it refused to let go. A prisoner of its own hunger, the creature allowed itself to be drawn back toward the SS Wisconsin.
The fish had to weigh over three hundred kilos, and it wasn’t giving up without a fight. But Alter-Vicki was a damn good SLP, which meant she was rich. The rope and electric winch were the best money could buy, and though the fish thrashed and tugged, it was no match for modern sex toy engineering. Soon we were back at the hatch, being tugged into the dark bowels of the ship.
The salmonster continued to strain against the rope, as I continued to strain against the tentacles gripping me. Neither of us made any headway.
A few moments later, we were flopping onto the tile floor of the secret hideaway. Alter-Vicki loomed over us, raising a knife.
No, not a knife. It was a spork, the handle broken off and pointy.
I spit out the regulator and yelled, “The tentacles! Cut the tentacles then I can help you kill the—”
She dropped to her knees and plunged the handle directly into the salmonster’s eye. The creature died instantly.
“Are you okay, sir?” Her hands were all over me, pulling off tentacles, caressing my cheeks, ruffling my hair. One of them even managed to find its way into my boxer shorts.
“I’m fine,” I said, gently disengaging from her. “Nice work.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Can we quit with the sir business? This is twice you’ve saved my life. I should be calling you sir.”
She wrapped her arms around me again, her hands slimy with tentacle mucus, smelling strongly of fish and blood.
I hugged her back, thinking, perhaps selfishly, that maybe having two wives wasn’
t that bad of an idea.
“Now for the gross part,” I said. “Hand me the spork.”
She passed it to me.
The salmonster’s scales were hard, the flesh thick. But I remembered my Grandpa’s lessons well, and it was no different than gutting a trout or a northern pike, just on a larger scale with a duller tool.
The smell, however, was a lot worse. To wit: the offal was awful.
Once the fish was down to skin and fillets, I hollowed out the throat.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Alter-Vicki said, pinching her nose closed.
I shoved away some malodorous innards, fought the dry heaves, then spat over my to make sureatnfinite versions of G shoulder. “It’ll be okay once we’re underwater and can’t smell it.”
I was covered with blood and scales and fish guts, and the once tidy hideout looked like a slaughterhouse. When I stood up, my right leg failed to support me and I fell, sprawling face-first onto the slippery floor.
“The poison?”
I nodded, feeling dizzy. She grabbed a plastic bag filled with clean clothing, and then helped me slide the carcass into the water.
“Only half a tank of O2 left,” she said, checking the scuba gauge.
“How long will that last?”
“With two of us, maybe twenty minutes, if we conserve.”
It didn’t seem likely we’d make it. But we didn’t have much of a choice.
“You’ve got a DT, right?”
Alter-Vicki nodded, padding over to the bedside drawer and removing her digital tablet.
“Is it waterproof?” I asked.
The duh expression she gave me was a perfect mirror of the one my wife used whenever I said something stupid or obvious.
“Okay, use the GPS, set the route to shore.”
I used the sheets to wipe the blood off my face, strapped the spork handle to my leg, stuck the regulator in my mouth, and hung her DT around my neck on its retractable cord.
Then Alter-Vicki and I followed the salmonster corpse into the murky depths of Lake Michigan.
Chapter 2
Though the dim, green, cold underwater environment was far removed from the great plains of the 1800s, I felt a lot like a Cheyenne brave. But I wasn’t wrapped in a buffalo skin, hunting bison. I was wrapped in a salmonster carcass, peering out through the creature’s mouth, hoping its brethren were fooled by the ruse the same way those buffalo were fooled.
Alter-Vicki clung to my waist, our legs hanging out through the slit in the salmonster’s belly, kicking feebly as I tried to figure out how to steer the damn thing.
While alive, the salmonster was streamlined and efficient. Inside a dead one, it was like driving a bike with no tires. I kept my arms up, braced against the inside of the fish’s ribcage, struggling to keep it from flopping sideways. My field of vision through its open mouth was limited to straight ahead, and I had to keep looking at the DT to make sure we were on course.
After swimming a hundred and fifty meters my muscles were aching from effort, and I was breathing like an asthmatic at a ragweed festival. According to the GPS, we still had more than a kilometer to go. There was no way we’d have enough oxygen to make it, unless we began to conserve energy.
I began to hold my breath for thirty second the antidote for the nanopoisonbu glance the otherI puintervals, using those anaerobic reserves. Alter-Vicki caught on to my trick, doing the same. We would kick and kick and kick until my head began to pound and darkness encroached upon my peripheral vision, and then we’d take a big lungful of O2 from our regulators and do it again.
And again.
And again.
Incredibly, we made some progress. Swimming while wrapped in a dead fish was dark, unwieldy, inefficient, and disgusting, but after ten minutes we’d gone more than six hundred meters, with only five hundred left to go. And, miraculously, we didn’t see a single salmonster. Maybe the reports of their numbers had been exaggerated by the press.
Then Alter-Vicki squeezed my shoulder so hard it felt like a bite. I jerked my head around, wondering when she was doing. Her eyes were wide as dinner plates, and she had her free hand pointed out through the fish’s gills. I followed her gaze, and almost shit myself.
Salmonsters.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds of them.
Coming right at us.
I looked down at our exposed legs, dangling like worms on a hook. As we kicked, tiny eddies of blood from the dead creature swirled around us. It was known that salmonsters could track blood like sharks, but I’d been banking on the fact they wouldn’t eat one of their own, even if it was wounded.
Maybe I should have looked it up first.
Extending the DT on its cord, I used one thumb to type in ARE SALMONSTERS CANNIBALS?
UFSE responded two tenths of a nanosecond after I hit enter.
YES.
My clever plan where we disguised ourselves as one of the group had become a terrible plan where we disguised ourselves as lunch.
Saving oxygen was no longer the priority. We needed to get out of there, pronto, or we were fuct.
We got maybe fifteen meters before the first salmonster hit us. It wasn’t a full-on attack, but rather a bump and retreat. The creature was testing us, seeing if we fought back.
I pulled up a leg, wincing at the lactic acid cramps, unstrapping the spork handle on my calf. Unbalanced, the carcass shifted onto its side, exposing the dead fish’s underbelly.
And us.
We got bumped again, and then twice more in rapid succession. The water around us was swarming with salmonsters, a school of them so thick they seemed like a wall.
I kicked frantically, trying to get the carcass upright, and then felt a sting and a tug as one of the creatures whipped out a tentacle and caught my leg. I began to hack at the appendage with my makeshift knife, plumes of pumping blood clouding the water—
—which ignited a feeding frenzy. applause.
&en chest compressions.
ut the p
The wall of salmonsters became a maelstrom of biting, whipping death. Every fish attacked its nearest neighbor, thrashing, darting, feeding, dying. The blood became so prevalent it actually changed the viscosity of the water, making it thick as synthetic tomato soup. In the red murk I grabbed for Alter-Vicki’s hand, abandoned the dead fish and the scuba tank, and we both kicked like crazy for the surface.
We got hit from all sides, a slimy, hyper-mosh pit of fishy terror. A tail slap to my chest knocked out my precious last bit of oxygen, and things went from red to black. I held out for five seconds… six… seven… and then I opened my mouth to suck in some water and drown.
Then, suddenly, blessed air.
Our heads bobbed up, breaking the surface, and I greedily sucked in some O2. Around us the water churned and boiled like a blood Jacuzzi, fins and tentacles surrounding us, large, smelly chunks of fish bobbing up everywhere.
I pulled up the DT, wiped oily blood from the screen, and found shore.
Three hundred and eight meters.
We swam for our lives.
After fifty meters, the water was a normal brownish color once again.
Stroke. Kick. Stroke. Kick.
After a hundred meters, we didn’t see any more salmonsters.
We went from a sprint to finding our natural rhythm. Alter-Vicki, like my wife, was in excellent shape, and managed to keep up even though I had longer arms and legs.
After two hundred meters I actually saw shore.
My legs and left arm were getting that pins-and-needles sensation, the nano-poison doing its job, but I kept them going even as I lost feeling.
After two hundred and fifty meters, I really began to believe we were going to make it.
“Almost… there… sir.”
“Talon,” I said, huffing. “Call me Talon.”
“Talon,” she said, stopping.
I stopped too, wondering what the problem was, and realized my feet could touch bottom.
We stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, staring at each other. Then Alter-Vicki began to laugh.
“I can’t believe we made it, sir… Talon. I can’t believe it.”
I joined in, wondering if the laughter was hysteria or just pure joy at still being alive.
Alter-Vicki reached out and held my hand. “You remind me of my Talon. Before the accident. Maybe, when this is all over, we could—”
Then Alter-Vicki went under.
I held on tight, and we both were dragged down in applause.
&en chest compressions.
ut the pto the murk.
It felt like I was being towed by my arm behind a motorboat. I squinted, saw the salmonster had engulfed Alter-Vicki’s entire lower body, only her head and arms still protruding. The creature was at least five meters long, and it was picking up speed, pulling us back into the depths of Lake Michigan.
I was underneath the fish, its tentacles wound around my waist and trying to pull me off. But I refused to let go of Alter-Vicki’s h
and.
I still had the spork handle, and I plunged it into the fish’s underbelly, over and over, but that didn’t even slow the massive beast down.
Bubbles burst from Alter-Vicki’s mouth. Her eyes, wide with hysteria, met mine, and even as the water grew dimmer the deeper we got, I could see her mouth some words.
“KILL ME.”
I kept hacking at the fish, but the spork might as well have been a toy.
“KILL ME!” she screamed.
I had no choice.
I couldn’t let her be swallowed whole and digested alive.
I raised the handle, clenched my teeth—
—and plunged it into
Alter-Vicki’s throat.
Her eyes went dead.
Her grip went slack.
A cloud of blood billowed around her face.
The salmonster released me, swallowing the rest of its prize and disappearing into the dark water.
When I made it back to shore, sitting on a stretch of sandy beach teaming with cold-weather palm trees, I was shaking, tears in my eyes.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
It wasn’t Vicki. I’d known that woman for only a few hours. She was a stranger to me.
And yet the loss I felt was real.
Using the pain, I brought the spork to my wrist.
Then I began to stab.
The obfuscation disk over my chip had fallen off during the swim, so this was my only alternative. My tears turned into clench-jawed screams as I dug my ID chip out of my arm. I’d done this once before, and it hadn’t gotten any less painful. When I was finished, I tossed it into the water. Then I tore off my sleeve and used that as a makeshift bandage.
I needed to get out of there. The authorities tracking my chip would soon converge on this area, and I didn’t want to be here when that happened.
Getting to my feet was problematic.
Walking, even more so.
Not only were my extremities going numb, I felt applause.
&en chest compressions.
ut the p the same tingling in my heart.
If I didn’t get the antidote for the nanopoison, I was dead.
Alter-Talon had an antidote, but I didn’t know where he was. Since he was basically a version of me, I tried to think what I’d do.
Timecaster: Supersymmetry Page 7
