SNAFU: Unnatural Selection

by Christopher Golden

  “What are you gonna do with them?” He forgot protocol and stepped closer to the screen. “I mean they’re so small.”

  The flickering light reflected in both their eyes as they watched the feeding demo on screen.

  “We condition their nourishment habits with the Jap carcasses curtesy of Uncle Sam’s island hopping campaign across the Pacific,” said Stanley. “And they’ve acquired quite a taste for it. This shipment of Shintos is bound for Okinawa where they’ll be packed into a custom airborne delivery system and dropped off the coast of Tokyo from a B29.”

  “Seems like a lot of effort to kill a few beachgoers, sir.”

  “Watch the film, Corporal.”

  The progressive images were the stuff of nightmares. Worse under Stanley’s matter-of-fact voice.

  “Ohhh, shit,” muttered Bronson when he recognized their potential.

  “Worst case of crabs this man’s army will ever see,” said Stanley, his grin cold. “You see, the low forty-degree temperature of the tank keeps them in the pigmy stage. Forty degrees and they’ll fit in your hand. That man-size one you see on the screen was transferred to a tank just ten degrees warmer.”

  The film showed one standing on its back four legs, claws raised as it circled a Jap corps, still in uniform, propped up on a metal frame. When the black-armored creature struck, both flesh and steel yielded like butter.

  “H-how…” stammered Bronson. “How big do they grow?”

  Stanley walked to the projector and turned it off, and Bronson felt an immediate sense of relief.

  “Well, that’s the question. We just don’t know,” said Stanley. He gestured toward the screen. “That specimen from the fifty-degree tank grew that size in a matter of minutes. The waters off Japan right now are seventy-four degrees. We believe they will grow quite large. Kick those Nips where it hurts.”

  “Kick them?” said Bronson. “It’ll wipe them off the map.”

  Stanley smiled. “Better still.”

  The deck shifted beneath them in a violent lunge. A metal roar pierced Bronson’s eardrums as he met the steel wall and the lights flickered out.

  * * *

  The wash of sounds was a dull cacophony through the ringing in Bronson’s ears as the red lights of the general quarters flared on and the battle stations siren sounded. Bronson found his rifle and stood, sensing a slight list to the portside. Major Stanley was in the corner and Bronson knew by the angle of his neck the man was dead.

  The port-deck hatch took some effort to open against the warped bulkhead, and as he stumbled outside he was met by a blanket of gray smoke and a rush of clambering sailors. One of the seamen nudged him as he passed. Bronson staggered through the smoke to the railing. A submarine surfaced a half mile out, close enough to see the red rising sun insignia on the conning tower.

  “Shit,” spat Bronson. He clutched the railing, knuckles white, as the Portland listed another inch or two toward the surface.

  The sub’s crew had scaled topside now, manning its deck gun, traversing its barrel slowly toward the Portland. Bronson was lost, his CO dead, his one fucking job seeming irrelevant under the circumstances. He aimed his carbine at the sub, realizing how futile an act it was when the Portland’s 6-inch bow gun boomed and a pillar of seawater rose five yards short of the submarine. It boomed again, short again, and Bronson realized the heavy list denied the main guns enough elevation for the short distance.

  Bronson lowered his rifle, and with it, all hope. This is gonna be a turkey shoot for the Nips.

  The sub’s deck gun flashed, and a heartbeat later the Portland’s bridge exploded, showering the area in metal and glass. A hot chard gashed his cheek and he could smell burning flesh. The radar tower leaned heavily toward Bronson, metal screaming as it tore from its base. He leapt at the open hatch as the twisted tower smashed amidst the cries of the ship’s crew. The deck vibrated violently beneath him. He rolled onto his back, patted his cheek and stared at the blood on his fingers. It appeared black in the red light, and made him think of the blood-stained Jap carcasses in the meat locker; made him think of those Shinto wrigglers looking for their next feed. If the ship was doomed, then so too were those things in cargo bay 3.

  Bronson shifted with the heat of the fires behind the bulkhead at his back and suddenly imagined the tank’s thermometer rising as it incubated those wrigglers. How big do these things get? He stood and braced himself as the Portland rolled another few inches. That’s the kicker… we don’t know.

  Bronson shook off the ringing in his ears. The Iowa cornfields never seemed so far away, and if those things escaped to the warmer waters, neither him, the Portland’s crew nor those Japs would ever see home again. “You’ve got one fucking job, Corporal,” he whispered. Those things needed to be locked below – needed to go down with the ship – before he could take his chances out in the Pacific.

  The ship’s 6-inchers had stopped firing, but the .50 caliber machine guns were working overtime, shuddering the walls around him. The tide of men scurrying from below was thinning. Bronson was easing down a stairwell when another Jap shell hit amidship, rocking him to the floor. He counted the decks as he descended, recognizing his old post below the waterline. The ship was listing badly now, and he imagined all that ocean pressing at the hull.

  … one fucking job…

  He reached for the latch. Let it be locked. No sooner had he grasped the latch, than Doctor Klein’s voice pleaded from the intercom.

  “Let us out!”

  Bronson frowned, tried the latch.

  “Is anyone there?” Klein cried through the static, his accent suddenly heavy. “For the love of God, you must let us out!”

  Bronson pressed the intercom’s Speak button, paused ready to say… what? Klein pounded on the hatch. It could only be opened from his side or with the security key, so something was wrong. Bronson lifted his finger and stepped away. The hatch was probably jammed – not a bad thing under the circumstances. Klein’s voice cried louder, his broken English slipping into a guttural German as he became more agitated then… the banging and the screaming stopped. Bronson stepped closer to listen. There came a metallic drumming, then a loud axe-like clang sounded on the other side and Bronson jumped back, raising his rifle. Did the hatch move? He watched the hairline gap press a fraction wider, then close again.

  The hatch held.

  “Good enough,” said Bronson and ran to the nearest exit, realizing he was running uphill now.

  When he broke into the daylight, the most assaulting force to his senses was the silence. No guns, no sirens, no engine, just a groaning ship, her bow plunging into the foaming sea. Two tenders and a scattering of rigid life rafts were rowing away from the ship, a handful of stragglers jumping from the railing and swimming toward the rafts. Bronson watched the deck slipping into the water. He stepped away, climbed, looking for a discarded life jacket. He used the railing to help with the ascent. An open sponson marked Vests was empty. If he had to jump without one, so be it. He could dump the carbine, boots and webbing, take his chances, but chance remained in the gunsights of the Japs right now.

  The gun’s thunder echoed across the surface. Its shell hit at the waterline, exploded in a fireball, and threw him off his feet. The concussion pressed at his eardrums, deck splinters tore at his uniform as he slid toward the oil-fired surface. His carbine’s sling slipped down his arm as he lunged out, grabbed the railing, his shoulders straining with the force. He cried out in pain, could feel the heat, chocking on black smoke, when the tearing roar of protesting steel vibrated through the ship.

  The Portland was ripping in half under its own weight.

  Bronson closed his eyes and held his breath as he rode the stern section down. It collapsed into the sea, drawing water into its exposed belly. He was showered with seawater, the fires hissing into submission as the ragged hulk settled with a sway on her keel. His eyes flickered open, saltwater stinging, the sinking bow a blur as it disappeared into the sucking sea before him. Bron
son exhaled and allowed his taught muscles to relax. Then the sound. Familiar enough to tie his stomach in a knot. A metallic drumming, like a cluster of steel legs striking metal.

  No…

  It was the same sound he heard down in the cargo bay.

  He used his rifle to stumble to his feet and ran to the hull’s jagged edge. Below, surging through the wreckage was a legion of Shintos, some eight feet tall, their pincer claws cutting their way forward as they spilled into the warm Sea of Japan. Bronson steadied himself, cocked his carbine, and took aim. The rifle cracked – he winced – the recoil marring his already damaged shoulder. The bullet ricocheted off one of the Shinto’s armored back plates. The creature stopped, braced itself with its claw against a steaming pipe, and stared up at him. The eyes were like glistening black pearls peering so deeply into Bronson’s own that he felt certain it recognized the fear there.

  He backed away, could hear the hammering of its spidery legs climbing the tangled metal, saw its claw arch over the verge like an axe to pierce the timber deck and lift itself over the edge. Bronson blinked nervously, tripped and fell onto his back. The Shinto had grown even larger under the sun’s heat, standing ten feet tall on its hind four legs. Bronson raised his rifle, fired another round into its exposed belly plate, heard the ricochet ping a moment before the same bullet splintered the timber next to his head. The creature raised its claws, paused ready to impale him to the deck. Layers of shell parted at its snout to reveal a wet pit of serrated plates, an ear piercing shriek raining down on him.

  Bronson screamed back.

  As futile as it seemed, he frantically worked the bolt action rifle and emptied the clip, hoping to find a soft spot between the armor. He stopped, exhausted, the last depression of the trigger delivering an empty click. It was the sound of death. Bronson rolled his head toward the sea, spent – it was over. He would imagine the endless horizon was that of an Iowa cornfield and pray the end would be quick…

  … but there were no Jap submarines in Iowa cornfields.

  Bronson saw the deck gun flash with a boom as the Shinto’s claw arched down toward him. Just inches to spare, and the creature exploded, showering him in crabmeat and brine.

  He lurched away with a burst of adrenalin, stood, legs shaking so bad they barely held him. Something shifted inside the ship with a metallic groan and the stern rolled a yard or so portside before settling again. He dropped his riffle and it slid over the edge into the sea. Bronson clutched the railing, watched as the sub’s crew scrambled to reload, aiming at the crippled Portland. They had meant to sink her, and Bronson with it. “Fuck it,” he whispered as he wiped crab residue from his face. He raised his face to the warm sun, closed his eyes, and waited.

  He could hear the ocean seething, and waited…

  … could feel the ship moving under him, and waited…

  … could sense the shadow cast cold over him and… opened his eyes.

  Rising like an island behind the sub was one of the creatures. It towered over the scene, seawater falling in rivers from its armored body. Standing on the sea floor, half its torso exposed, its black eyes surveyed the submarine before it. If those whitecoats ever wondered how big their babies could grow, the answer stood there before him. It was a colossus.

  Bronson could hear the Jap crew shouting orders, turning the deck gun toward the eclipsing monster. But too late. The Shinto’s claw lifted the craft like a toy, its other cutting its pointed bow section in two. The boat exploded in a flash of high explosives and fuel, no doubt having struck the torpedo racks, the searing heat reaching across the surface to Bronson’s exposed face. Metal and burnt bodies rained into the Pacific as a churning black cloud obscured the scene. Bronson hoped the force was enough to kill the beast, but as the breeze dispersed the smoke, the Shinto stood unscathed.

  It raised its claws in triumph. Its nightmare mouth parted, its shriek shattering the air itself. Bronson had to press his hands to his ears.

  Then, there was a great and terrible silence.

  The Portland’s adrift survivors had grown quiet; the ocean itself gone quiet as Bronson lifted his hands from his ears. Then he heard it. A reply from the depths. A similar, dampened cry vibrating through tons of water. He peered over the edge, could make out the throng of large shapes swimming beneath the Portland’s keel. They were heading east, toward Japan.

  Bronson stared up at the leviathan before him, peering into its soulless eyes – an eerie darkness that peered back at him. The creature surged forward, and the Portland rose on the swelling wall of water pressed ahead of it. Bronson closed his eyes. Death was better met in darkness. One thought played on his mind in that final moment. The Japanese are gonna wish it was just a super bomb we were delivering.

  Vermin

  Richard Lee Byers

  A wail made Adalric spin around. Stefan and Pierre were dragging a Muslim woman from her house. A little boy started after them, and she shrilled at him to go back inside. The jabber prompted Pierre to slap her, and Adalric scowled. The blow seemed unnecessarily brutish even if she was an enemy of Christ.

  His hauberk clinking, the young knight strode toward the two foragers and their captive. “What are you doing?” he demanded of Stefan. It was easier than asking Pierre. Adalric’s recently acquired French was better than his recently acquired Turkish, but not a great deal better.

  Setting forth from Bavaria, he’d somehow ended up in nominal charge of a small band of pilgrims who, though often wayward and undisciplined, at least all spoke the same German as himself. But the Turks had annihilated the majority of Little Peter’s followers almost as soon as they arrived in Anatolia, and the surviving ‘Tafurs’ – penniless men – had clumped together as circumstance allowed. They had little choice. None of the great lords leading the Crusade cared to welcome men generally regarded as rabble into their own companies. Though they were happy to dispatch them on dangerous errands through unfamiliar territory.

  His square face peeling with sunburn, Stefan had the grace to look momentarily sheepish. Scrawny with a rotten-smelling mouth missing several teeth, Pierre glowered at the interruption but left it at that. It was questionable whether the Frenchman truly respected Adalric’s authority, but he had sense enough to be wary of proper weapons and armor and a man trained to use them.

  “She has money hidden away,” Stefan said. “Look at her.”

  The woman’s dress did have more embroidery than seemed common in this dusty desert village. But it didn’t matter. “We’re here for food,” Adalric said; provisions for the Christian army starving beneath the walls of Antioch. “We need to collect it and get away.”

  “This won’t take long,” Stefan said.

  “She won’t even understand what you’re asking her.”

  Stefan leered. “Oh, I’ll make her—“

  A horn blatted through the morning air. No one had taught the bugler to blow proper signals, but the repeated blasts conveyed urgency. The Tafurs looked wildly about as if they imagined the villagers they’d been robbing were rising up against them, but that wasn’t the problem. The sentry atop the tower was watching the approaches to the town, not what was happening inside it.

  “Back to the fortress!’ Adalric shouted. Some men ran. Others flung themselves onto the half-loaded wagons as the drivers shouted and snapped the reins to set the mules in motion.

  Forgotten in the confusion, one cart remained. Adalric scrambled onto the bench. Emboldened by the Christians’ hasty departure, a villager in a brown robe threw a stone, and it clinked against his mail.

  As, bumping up and down, his conveyance rumbled and clattered through the streets, Adalric tried to count the Tafurs riding in the other wagons or pounding along on foot. Some were missing. Though he’d attempted to keep them close, the better to control them, a few had plainly sneaked off to loot unsupervised. It was only what he’d expected, but damn them anyway!

  The bugle kept blaring, though with longer pauses between notes. The sentry was getting wind
ed. Finally the man himself came into view atop a keep that was unimpressive to anyone who’d seen the castles of the Rhine, Constantinople, or Antioch for that matter, but was nonetheless the tallest structure in the village, poking above the sandstone wall surrounding it.

  Adalric raced through the gate and, left to his own inexperienced devices, might have driven his mules broadside into someone else’s cart. Fortunately, the animals had sense enough to balk on their own and brought their wagon to a jolting halt while their teamster was still fumbling with the reins. A crate bounced out the back and smashed open.

  Rising from the bench, Adalric looked up at the sentry. “What’s wrong?” he shouted.

  The trumpeter tried to answer but was so out of breath as to be inaudible to anyone at the foot of his perch. Realizing as much, he pointed with one jabbing hand and flailed the bugle back and forth with the other. The brass horn flashed in the sun.

  “Close the gate!” Adalric bellowed.

  The cheeks above his long straw-colored beard scarred by the pox, Faramund turned in his commander’s direction. A man-at-arms by trade, he was one of the Tafurs Adalric actually trusted. “By my count,” he called, “we still have people outside.”

  “By mine, too,” Adalric answered. “But I think we’re running out of time.”

  They dashed to the gate and began the process of securing it. Just as they slid the massive bar squeaking through the brackets, hooves pounded outside.