Kraken

by Eric S. Brown

  It seemed that lunatic, Iver, they had rescued from the adrift civilian cruise ship, the Pleasure Bound, was telling the truth after all. Spraker found himself wishing the man had just been as stark, raving mad as his claims about what happened on that ship made him sound. That wasn’t the case though. The reports on his desk confirmed that DESRON 22, or rather what remained of it, was indeed facing a shoal of rampaging, mutated, carnivorous squids.

  Spraker looked up from the reports as a knock rang out on the door to his ready room.

  “Come,” he called.

  The door opened to reveal a rather worried-looking Arron.

  “You’ve read the reports then?” he asked, noticing Spraker’s paleness and grim expression.

  “I have,” Spraker said. “I don’t want to believe them but I do. Part of me wants to think this is all some elaborate prank Cordova cooked up with Captain Marcus to pay me back for not being the commander Marcus thinks I should be. I know the two of them would be lucky to be in the same room for any amount of time without Cordova ending up in the brig.”

  “I know what you mean,” Arron said as he took a seat in the empty chair in front of Spraker’s desk. “It all reminds of me of a really great horror film I saw when I was young. I can’t remember the exact title but it was called Deep… something or other. Man, I loved that movie.”

  “I’m not really up for being a part of a real life horror film, Arron. Sorry, but I’d like to see my wife again.”

  Arron nodded. “We’re in pretty deep crap, aren’t we?”

  “And on our own too from the look of things.” Spraker’s frown grew. “With the main body of the DESRON gone, that leaves me of all people in command of what’s left.”

  “Well, at least we don’t have to put up with Captain Marcus anymore.”

  Spraker felt anger surge through him. He wanted to punch in Arron’s teeth but managed to contain himself, if only just. “Too many good men and woman have died today to make a joke like that, Arron.”

  “Sorry,” Arron offered, turning his eyes to the office’s floor.

  “It’s hard to believe freaking squids took out a DESRON, I know. Trust me. I am sort of in denial over that too, Arron. Everything we have points to that fact, though. It sounds like the Arrington was taken out fast too. Once those things got on her, it was over.”

  “We don’t have a real clear picture of what happened to the other destroyers, though,” Arron said.

  “True,” Spraker admitted. “Still, I think it’s safe to assume they were taken out in the same manner. The squids came in hard and fast, boarded them, and worked their way through the destroyers like they did on the Pleasure Bound.”

  Spraker sat the folder of reports that was in his hand onto the top of his desk. “I want to make sure that doesn’t happen to us. I want everyone, and I mean everyone, but Mr. Iver, armed as of yesterday. See if the chief can rig up anything to help protect the more critical portions of the Peart too. Welding the bulk of the exterior entrances closed wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”

  “I’ve already got us at battle stations,” Arron nodded, “but those ideas sound like really good ones too. I’ll get right on them.”

  “Did you send word to Cordova and Mills?”

  Arron nodded again. “Just like you ordered. They’re both on their way here to meet up with us. I have to ask, though; do you think concentrating us all in one spot like that is the best way to go?”

  “Safety in numbers,” Spraker stood up, walking around his desk.

  “That didn’t help the destroyers,” Arron reminded him.

  “True, but they were caught entirely with their pants down facing an enemy that has no right to even exist,” Spraker countered. “We know what we’re dealing with now and have at least some vague notions of how to deal with it.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, but Mr. Iver may be useful to us,” Arron looked at Spraker who was now standing beside where he sat.

  “Whether I like the man or not doesn’t matter. Am I willing to admit he’s not crazy? Sure. That doesn’t make him an expert on these squids, though. He’s a horror writer for goodness sake.”

  “Exactly,” Arron shifted about nervously. “He’s used to thinking outside the box and he just spent the last few days out thinking those things on the Pleasure Bound. No one else on that ship lived through it all except for him.”

  Spraker rubbed at his cheeks. “You always have to have a point, don’t you?”

  “Pardon me saying so, sir, but now you’re beginning to sound like my wife.” Arron smiled as he seemed to realize that Spraker knew he was onto something.

  “Okay,” Spraker said. “You get the things I told you going. I want them completed ASAP. In the meantime, I’ll pay Mr. Iver another visit.”

  ****

  Lex found himself back onboard the Pleasure Bound. His mind told him he had to be dreaming but that didn’t make it any less frightening. The red glow of the cruise liner’s emergency lights lit the corridor he stood in. The corridor around him was empty. Its walls were smeared with blood and stagnate pools of water stretched across the floor. They weren’t deep, barely touching the tops of his shoes. The air was cold and Lex shivered, crossing his arms over his chest to rub himself.

  Everything was so quiet. It was like the ship itself had died and he was taking a stroll through its decaying body. The ship certainly smelt like it was rotting. Lex knew the smell really belonged to the corpses and pieces of the men and women the squids had torn apart in their frenzy, but thinking the smell came from the ship made it easier to deal with somehow. So many had died here, families on vacation, lovers on romantic getaways, men and women fleeing their old lives in search of a new start, all of them murdered…eaten by things that shouldn’t exist.

  Lex splashed through the puddle along the corridor as he tried to find somewhere to hide. There was no sign of the squids but he knew they were here. It was almost as if he could feel them, hiding in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to swoop in and take him. Staying out in the open wasn’t an option if he wanted to continue living.

  He recognized the deck he was on as the command deck of the ship. That meant he was close to the bridge and the room where Trish had taken her own life before his eyes. There had been no reason for her to do so he kept telling himself. The boarding parties from the US Naval frigate, the Peart, were already onboard and fanned out on the Pleasure Bound’s main exterior deck. All they had to do was make it to them and they could escape, leaving this floating tomb behind them forever. The medical staff aboard the Peart could have surely helped Trish. Unlike him, they were trained professionals. He was just a horror writer who had picked up a lot of various things from his research over the years of his career. Trish hadn’t seen it that way, though. He didn’t know if it was the pain from her wounds or her fear that made her splatter her brains all over the wall of the captain of the Pleasure Bound’s office. He suspected the later. He should have never handed her the pistol but it was hers and at the time, he hadn’t even considered her doing something so stupid. A part of him hated Trish for it. Taking one’s own life was a cowardly and selfish thing to do.

  Her wounds had come from one of the squids mangling her right wrist and the tiny claw-like hooks that lined its arms, or legs, or whatever you called them, shredding the flesh of her lower thighs. The wounds were bad but not lethal. It was the sickness that was born of them that scared Trish so much. She had a fever from them in less than an hour. It was a bad one too that only seemed to grow hotter with each passing minute.

  He thought about her suicide as he approached the room where it had happened. The captain’s office was the only open room he could see up ahead of him and only the bridge lay behind. There was one of the squids lurking in the flooded bridge section of the ship. The same one that had hurt Trish so badly and nearly claimed him as its prey. Only the grace of God had allowed the two of them to escape it. He was beginning to remember more and more about Trish�
��s last moments as he neared the room. The details of what she looked like as she pressed the barrel of her pistol to her temple and pulled its trigger were rushing back into his mind. Maybe his mind had blocked them out before but he remembered so much more now in this nightmare world.

  As he reached the doorway to the captain’s office, Lex paused. He didn’t want to go into it, but he could hear the squid on the bridge at the other end of the corridor moving through the water there. If it was getting ready to come after him, he didn’t have a choice. It was either go on inside or be standing alone and unarmed in the middle of the corridor when the squid entered it. There was nowhere else to hide.

  Taking a deep breath and steeling himself, he stepped into the room. Trish’s body lay exactly where he had left it…only it wasn’t really Trish anymore. The body in front of him didn’t even look fully human. The hand that still clutched the gun that had taken Trish’s life was now a curved and twisted tentacle. Its hook hung against the pistol’s trigger. Her left arm had grown thicker and was covered in a thick slime-like substance. It appeared to be undergoing some kind of change too. Trish’s skin was purple, not the purple of death but a middle shade of color between that of human flesh and the red covering of a squid’s body. Six more limbs punctured the sides of her clothes, dangling from her slouched form to the room’s floor. Her lips were gone, replaced a tipped bone like formation that grew outwards from her face like a bird’s beak.

  Lex felt his bladder release itself. Warm liquid ran down the length of his legs, adding the wetness of his already water-logged pants and shoes. He stood there staring at the thing that had once been Trish as it lifted its head towards him. Bright yellow eyes glowed in the dimness of the ship’s emergency lighting. They were full of hunger and hatred.

  The beak on Trish’s face opened to emit a screeching half hiss, half squeal as she rose to her feet. The new limbs lining the sides of her body thrashed about wildly in the air around her.

  Lex turned to run but slammed into the side of the office’s doorway. His head clanged against the metal there and his world went black.

  ****

  A scream echoed in his quarters aboard the Peart as Lex jerked awake, sitting bolt upright in his bed. His skin and the covers of his bed were soaked in sweat. His breath came in ragged gasps as he realized he was safe and started trying to breathe again. The nightmare still had its claws in him as he rolled out of bed and headed for the shower. He checked and doubled checked that was nothing waiting inside it for him before he entered it. The hot water streaming over his skin helped him to shake off most of the darkness that lingered in his mind. He stayed in the shower until his skin was wrinkled and red. Finally, he stepped out and dried himself.

  He had no clothes of his own. He hoped the ship’s medical staff had burned the ones he had come aboard the Peart in. They were little more than rags by that time anyway. The XO of the Peart, a good-natured fellow by the name of Arron, had given him a sailor’s uniform to wear and Lex was thankful for it. It wasn’t much to look at by Lex’s standards, but it beat running around the ship naked. Lex wished it had come with a gun included along with the shirt, pants, and shoes but it hadn’t.

  Even here, on a state of the art naval frigate, Lex had to admit to himself that he didn’t really feel safe. He had seen what the squids could do and while he trusted the crew of the Peart to do all they could to keep both him and themselves safe, the ocean was the squids’ home. It belonged to them. The creatures had the home field advantage and Lex wasn’t sure anything would be enough to stop them if they came calling on the Peart in force.

  Lex sat down the bed to tie his shoes as a knock sounded on the door to his quarters. He hurriedly finished with his shoes and went to answer it. Arron stood in the corridor outside his quarters. Lex’s eyes bugged as he saw what Arron held in his hands. It was a well-read copy of Demons of Night.

  Arron blushed slightly as he saw Lex recognize the book. “Yeah, Mr. Iver, I’m a fan. I started reading your books right before that terrible movie adaptation of Terror in the Woods was released.”

  Lex’s lips curled into an expression of disgust at the mention of the movie.

  “I don’t blame you for that movie, sir,” Arron said quickly. “That’s just Hollywood. They like to take great books and turn them into utter crap.”

  Lex laughed and it felt good. He couldn’t remember the last time he had.

  Arron shoved the copy of Demons of Night at him.

  “I was hoping you might sign this for me,” Arron beamed.

  “You and the crew of this ship saved my life,” Lex said. “It would be my sincere pleasure to do so.”

  Arron handed Lex a pen too. As Lex scrawled his name across the book’s title page, Arron spoke again.

  “I didn’t just stop by to get this signed, though. I wanted to let you know that Commander Spraker is coming to pay you another visit. There are some things he’d like to talk to you about in more detail.”

  Lex heard the worry in Arron’s voice. “Is everything okay?”

  “Not my place to say, sir,” Arron told him as Lex handed the book back to him. “Thanks for this, though. I hope when all this is over, you’ll keep writing. You’re too good to just quit.”

  “Who told you I was quitting?”

  “Nobody,” Arron said. “I just figured that movie must have hurt you a lot, sir. I know it would have me in your place. And I don’t mean just emotionally either.”

  Lex shrugged. “It is what is and at least I got paid.”

  “That’s always a good thing, sir.” Arron grinned and then headed on down the corridor holding tight to his newly signed book.

  Lex watched him go and thought about Mary. Could he keep writing without her? How was he going to even live much less write without her at his side?

  Closing the door to his quarters, Lex took a seat on the edge of its bed to wait on Commander Spraker to arrive. He was glad Lex had told him the commander was coming, but this second visit stunk of trouble. There was no reason for it as far as he could see unless something had happened to prompt it.

  Lex didn’t have to wait long until a second knock rapped on his door. He opened it to see a haggard-looking Commander Spraker staring back at him.

  “Commander,” Lex nodded. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Spraker snorted. “Arron told you I was coming, didn’t he?”

  Lex ignored the question and moved from the doorway, ushering Commander Spraker inside.

  “I hear you have some more questions for me. That’s good because I have some of my own for you as well.”

  Commander Spraker cocked an eyebrow at that. “Oh really?”

  “Yes, Commander,” Lex said, sitting on the edge of the room’s bed again. “I want to know what’s happening out there. Have you found the squids?”

  “I haven’t exactly been hunting for them,” Spraker remained standing as there was nowhere else to sit.

  “That’s not an answer,” Lex frowned.

  “You really want to know?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t, Commander.”

  “They found us,” Spraker admitted. “As I mentioned, DESRON 22 was in the middle of a shakedown maneuver when we stumbled onto the cruise liner you were aboard. The Peart was on patrol along with the DESRON’s other frigates. Since we picked you up, we’ve lost contact with the main body of the squadron.”

  “The destroyer and carrier?” Lex asked.

  “DESRON 22 doesn’t have a carrier assigned to it. It’s composed of four destroyers and six frigates.”

  “You’re telling me a rather disturbing amount of information for me being a civilian, Commander. I must say it concerns me as to why you feel the need to do so.”

  Spraker remained silent for a moment, too long a moment for Lex’s liking.

  “You’ve haven’t just lost contact with the squadron’s main body have you? It’s more than that or you wouldn’t be here.”

  Spraker cracked the knuc
kles of his right hand. “No. You’re right. It’s more than that. Does that make you feel smart? That you can figure so much without me telling you?”

  Lex shrugged. “I’m not an idiot, Commander. I used to write about situations like the one we find ourselves in out here all the time. If I had to guess, the main body of the DESRON was attacked by the squids and destroyed.”

  “You’d be right too,” Spraker growled.

  “So you’ve come to me of all people for advice on what to do next?”

  Spraker shook his head. “No, I’ve come to you to see what you can tell me about the squids. You were trapped on that ship with those things for days. Surely you had to learn something about them during that time.”

  “Not as much as you’re hoping for, I am sure,” Lex sighed.

  “What else can you tell me about them, Mr. Iver?”

  “They’re fast. They can move about on land, though they’re slower there. They’re hungry. And most of all that you never want to see one of them up close.”

  “You pretty much told me all that during our first talk, Mr. Iver.”

  “Yes, I did, Commander, but you weren’t listening then. Not really. You thought I had gone insane from the trauma of what I had been through on the Pleasure Bound.”

  “Can you blame for me that, Mr. Iver?”

  “No, I can’t. I’d likely have thought the same in your place.”

  Lex stood up and started pacing. “I can tell you that their bodies are soft. They’re not hard to kill if you have a good enough weapon. A shotgun would blow one of them apart. An individual squid remains very deadly due to its speed and the strength of its limbs, but their real power comes in their numbers. When they boarded the Pleasure Bound, there were hundreds of the things, maybe thousands. Even if the entire population of the cruise liner had been armed, I am not sure we could have beaten them back.”