by Alan Spencer
He knew it was the pain pill she'd taken and the situation. When faced with death, social filters were removed. Any guy looked enticing. And Conrad was that guy.
"I heard about your ex," Scoop said. "She sounds like a real bitch. You're handsome, and you seem like a nice kind of guy. You're trusting. Anybody who's been cheated on like that is trusting. It means you're not afraid to open up your heart to someone. Machismo guys don't know how to do that, but you, Conrad, I bet you'd make a great lover.
"Fuck it, Conrad. There's a good chance we're going to die here. I haven't been laid by a good man in a long time. A l-ooong time. I can do things to your dick you wouldn't believe. I can hold my breath for a very long time."
"Huh? Why would you need to hold your breath? What kind of a pill did you take exactly?"
Scoop wasn't hearing him. She was stroking the back of his head and purring under her breath. "I'll tell you about things you never thought about trying. You ever stick your balls in a woman's pussy? You can stick them in mine. It'll make us both feel so good."
"But wouldn't that hurt? I mean, wouldn't it hurt my nuts? Why would I do that? I'm so confused."
From behind the door, Conrad heard a madman rage. Conrad was sent from one extreme moment to the next without time to process anything.
"So you found my private laboratory? I had to come here and make sure you didn't ruin any of my research. I don't have cameras in this wing, but I know you're in there. I can smell your flesh. ATTACK! KILL THEM ALL!"
The door was kicked, shredded, and decimated by lampreys of every size. The walls, up from the floor, the ceiling, everywhere was bursting into pieces. Hundreds of sucker maws were preparing to suck them into their hungry mouths. Suctions of air batted at them from all directions. The air streams threw Conrad and Scoop about the room, tossing them like street litter. Conrad clutched onto Scoop, fearing her drugged state would allow her to fly right into one of their deadly mouths. The wild suctions of air caused the ground to come undone beneath them. Conrad and Scoop plummeted down.
The drop wasn't far.
They hit a series of emergency stairs.
Conrad helped Scoop to her feet. She couldn't balance on one foot due to her ankle, so Conrad picked her up in his arms. He unleashed a battle cry. He read somewhere in a health magazine that if you yelled, your body sent energy to your muscles. Conrad kept releasing yawps and growls as he carried Scoop to somewhere else.
The lampreys were slithering down from the holes in the ceiling. The deadly lamprey rain kept Conrad moving. He had little time to think when a new hole formed in the ceiling. Steel was peeled back, and a giant lamprey mouth hissed and drooled pelting sheets of rubber glue saliva down onto them. Scoop was terrified. Conrad didn't waste a minute to defend themselves.
Conrad spotted the axe in the emergency case. He smashed it open with his elbow. He clutched the axe, reached down to help up Scoop to her feet, when the beast in the ceiling sucked them up into its maw. They were drawn through the ceiling to the roof of the building. Scoop landed on the roof, falling from the mouth. Conrad remained in the beast's mouth. He had his legs braced so the beast couldn't swallow him down. The mouth was contracting and trying to suck him down. Conrad's feet were slipping. He wouldn't be able to hold on much longer before the monster swallowed him.
Conrad used the axe to hack into the soft fleshy material that covered the roof of its mouth. After hacking for minutes and holding on for his life, he threw the axe down the lamprey's throat and crawled up through the slit he created and slipped down its slimy body and onto the roof. Scoop gawked at him in amazement. She couldn't believe he'd survived.
"Come on, we've got to move! No time to sit and stare!"
Conrad picked her up in his arms again. They were on the move. It was still dark outside. The ocean was vast. Nobody knew what was happening here. They were on their own.
The giant lamprey was after them, snaking across the roof. He could hear the crick-crack-crick-crack-crick-crack-crick-crack of spinning teeth. Large tracks of the roof were peeled and ripped. Their roof was coming undone. Conrad had to watch his steps as flying debris sailed past them. He imagined a tornado staying low to the ground.
Scoop was getting heavy in his arms. Every step he took threatened to drop him to the ground. If he stopped weaving and dodging the suction force of the lamprey charging behind him for one second, it'd be guaranteed death.
He got lucky earlier with that axe trick.
That luck wouldn't happen again.
Thinking about his luck, it suddenly ran out. Before he could stop, there was nowhere else to escape. The roof was in shreds, and he couldn't stop himself before they dropped down into the gaping wide hole ahead of them. They fell back into the installation. They landed hard shortly after the fall. Conrad knew where they'd fallen immediately.
He'd been here before.
The huge aquarium.
The steel platform.
Conrad knew they had to get moving, and fast. Lampreys were slithering down from the hole they'd created. He helped Scoop up. She was dazed and slow. Conrad kept encouraging her to get up and fight. Conrad used himself as her crutch again, and they hurried down the stairs together.
"Son! You're alive!"
Henry was below with Duke. Conrad hurried towards them. When they met up, Bavardi was standing near them. He was strange looking to begin with, but now he had no arms. From the ceiling, the two arms crawled back down and re-connected themselves to Bavardi's shoulder sockets with the help of working lampreys.
"That's insane," was all Conrad could say.
"He won't hurt you," Henry said. "Bavardi's on our side. Without him, we'd all be dead. He fried that monster in the cage. She turned into one crispy bitch. They won't hurt us now. Without their leader, they're nothing."
"You don't understand," Conrad argued. "They're coming down after us. Hordes of them. Look!"
"But I killed Mama," Bavardi insisted. "Without her, they're useless."
Dr. Sutherland stormed into the room. He threw his head back and cackled. "You didn't kill Mama. She's very much alive! She's going to bloom. Nobody can stop her! NOW YOU SHALL BE DEVOURED!"
Chapter Thirty-Six
Suction force threw Conrad and the rest of them off of their feet and to the other side of the room. Conrad held onto Scoop. They had no chance of fighting what arrived. Hundreds of lampreys poured from the ceiling, escaped from the grates in the wall, and slithered in long lines through the double doors of the laboratory. The lampreys would team up and feast upon them.
Dr. Sutherland was standing across from them witnessing the mass entry of eel-bodied, sucker-faced monsters. He was cheering. "Feed her. She needs her strength. Our souls will live on. Your flesh and blood will be one. Through her, you will be consumed and then reborn. Forever, you shall feast on flesh and consume to your infernal insatiable desires!"
Conrad heard the water sloshing in the giant water tank. A body pressed against the glass, bashing itself until long spider-web cracks formed. Then all at once, the glass tank shattered. Water spilled forth, spewing out a tidal wave. Dr. Sutherland was swept off of his feet and submerged in the water.
Henry shouted, "Grab hold of something before the water sucks you in!"
Conrad had hold of Scoop with one arm and the other clutched onto a steel table leg nailed into the floor. When the great wave of water hit him, the force made him release Scoop.
"No! Scoop!"
The water swallowed her up out of sight. Henry, Duke, and Bavardi were also gone. No time to think. Conrad clutched onto the steel table leg and tried to keep his head above water. As fast as the wave swept everybody away, the waters thinned out.
Conrad stayed where he was when he saw the beast rise from the broken aquarium.
Mama had to weigh many tons. Her gaping sucker face was three stories high. He imagined a fat caterpillar spray-painted black. Each individual tooth could impale three people. When the teeth spun, the collective suction force
drew in every lamprey beast into her sucker face. The spinning of blades sounded like a mega helicopter about to take flight. When the bodies hit her teeth, it was a booming garbage disposal of clicks, snaps, breaking, and liquefaction.
The zombie-fied scientists were sucked up into the mouth along with the subjects for the experiments gone wrong. The leftover piles of body parts the undead drones hadn't collected flew into the room. Conrad's eyes widened as he watched flying arms, hands, and gusts spinning and colliding into Mama's teeth. He understood why the lamprey would eat the humans, but why her own kind?
The smaller lampreys were like bicycle streamers catching air as they were drawn into Mama's hideous maw. The larger lampreys took longer to be driven through her teeth; seconds instead of instantly. Mama's sucker face was a flood of dribbling blood. Out her back side, broken bones was shit out as such speeds and force they tore through steel and ended up in another room or landed in the ocean.
The roar of spinning teeth ended. Mama slumped down into herself and breathed hard. Every intake was a rumble and quake.
Conrad couldn't understand what she was doing. Why did she stop eating? Was she sleeping? Henry, Duke, and Scoop were spread out on the floor unconscious. Conrad made sure they were still breathing. They were breathing and very much alive.
He wasn't sure what happened to Bavardi. Conrad imaged the poor son-of-a-bitch was sucked into that maw and eaten like the rest of the human experiments gone wrong.
"Wake up," Conrad said, shaking his father. "I need you. Please. I can't do this alone."
Conrad tried to rouse everyone, and nobody woke.
He remembered back at his apartment when his father and brother asked him to take a volunteer trip to Africa. When Conrad asked them why they kept the secret from him, Duke said, “Because, brother, you're kind of a wimp.”
Conrad had survived this long. Why couldn't he survive the situation altogether? He would save them from death, and from now on, nobody could say shit about Conrad and his love of books and the English language, because at one point in time, he had saved them from being eaten by one huge ugly lamprey bitch.
Conrad couldn't wait to tell his mom the story.
She would be so proud of him.
Think. How do I get them out of this room? If they stay in here, that thing will wake up and start eating again.
The giant monster was breathing hard.
Mama wasn't moving.
It appeared she was in fact sleeping.
Conrad searched the room. He didn't have a plan to save anybody until his eyes found the pushcart nearby. The aquarium's water must've washed it up from its hiding place. Conrad imagined Dr. Sutherland using the cart to wheel in heaps of body parts and gore to feed that ugly thing.
Get moving.
You can't stay in this room another minute.
Conrad rushed to the task. He hefted Scoop across the room and placed her on the cart. Duke was heavier. He had to drag his brother by the legs and lift him up onto the cart top half first, bottom half last. Conrad lifted up his father, kicking out one great burst of energy to move him quickly.
Before he could push the cart out of the room, Dr. Sutherland stood in the way of the door.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dr. Sutherland beheld Mama from a distance.
"She's metabolizing what she's consumed. Give her a few more minutes, and she'll wake. I can hear her organs churning the meat and turning it into fuel.
"My colleagues thought I was crazy when the lampreys entered my body. They tried to put me in a cage and lock me up. They couldn't contain me, just like they couldn't contain the others. I don't understand why they thought I was crazy, or that I wouldn't be rewarded for my service. They were so wrong. Everything is paying off."
Dr. Sutherland's eyes rolled into his skull. Teeth sprouted around the gummy tissue of his sockets. "I stand tall among the lampreys! I will see the end of the human race. I will be a king."
Conrad was terrified of the doctor. "What happens when they eat everything? When you've wiped out the human race, what will be left to consume? You ever think about that?"
Dr. Sutherland didn't like the question. The lampreys buried in his brains surfaced, rising up like spitting vipers. He lifted up his midsection, displaying that grotesque mouth. Teeth spun in the man's midsection.
"I'm going to eat you for speaking such insolence!"
Dr. Sutherland charged after him. Conrad thought about turning the other way and running, but he couldn't leave his fallen comrades behind.
Then he remembered something.
His vest!
He forgot he'd been wearing the damn thing this whole time. Amati had given it to him back at Conrad's apartment.
Dr. Sutherland was almost on him. Conrad unbuttoned the first pocket, dug his fingers in, and grabbed the first thing he could retrieve. He held it up to Dr. Sutherland's hideous mouth-eyes and dosed the lunatic with a jet of pepper spray.
Foam sizzled and dribbled down the wailing doctor's face. It slowed him down, but it didn't stop him. He had to do something else.
"I'm going to eat you! The pain in my eyes, you will feel thirty fold in your entire body. I will devour you slowly, piece by piece, ounce by ounce, I will—"
Conrad maced the doctor's exposed brain and watched the surface fizz with red foamy blood. The individual lampreys on the doctor's head hid back into Dr. Sutherland's brain in retreat. The doctor stumbled to the ground wailing in agony.
He didn't know how long Dr. Sutherland would be incapacitated, so now was the time to act. Conrad raced back to the pushcart. Now was his chance to escape the room with his life and his friends. Using every ounce of strength left in his body, Conrad shoved the cart forward. When he crossed the threshold, Mama was finished metabolizing the mass of meat she'd consumed.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Conrad saw Mama wake. She opened that enormous maw and unleashed a thunderous growl of hunger. "She rises!" Dr. Sutherland declared as bloody tears trailed from his eyes and thick syrupy blood oozed from his brains. "Long live Mama—!"
Dr. Sutherland's body blew up from the powerful suction force of Mama's mouth. He was liquid before he touched those razor teeth. The sight of his air mutilation sent Conrad pushing the cart out of the room with renewed energy.
Mama erupted at his escape. He imagined a motorized fan the size of a city kicking up insane wind speeds. Those speeds seemed to chew up the walls of an entire section of the building. Roaring harder, the suction power peeled back the roof. He imagined the top of a sardine can being pulled back by a giant. A long sliver of dawn's light poured into the building.
Move faster. She's going to tear you a new one. She's going to tear everybody a fucking new one!
Up ahead, an access door opened by itself.
What the hell?
Bavardi's voice spoke into the intercom. "Move your ass, soldier. This mission isn't completed yet. The bitch stills breathes!"
Conrad couldn't believe the man who almost beat him to death back at that seedy hotel room would be his savior.
He pushed the cart through the open steel door. When he crossed the access, the steel door closed.
Conrad was pushing the cart across a narrow hallway. Glass formed a half dome shape overhead. Another steel door opened up ahead of him. Bavardi had snuck off to one of the security rooms. The guy was quick thinking and resourceful, even when he was infested by lampreys. Conrad could only imagine what the guy had accomplished in the field of combat. No wonder his father wanted him as a Post-Service Operative.
Once he crossed the door, and he'd pushed the cart through, the door wanted to close, but the mechanism was stuck.
"Sorry, Conrad," Bavardi said over the intercom. "It still buys you time. The outside door is open. You can reach the outside landing. I don't know what you can do from there. I'll try to help you. But you're on your own until I can reach you."
Conrad stood there watching Henry, Duke, and Scoop lay there unconscious
on the cart. He was in a room without much of anything inside of it. He noticed the two large steel boxes. One was empty, while the other one had—
The door across the long hallway was wrenched off the hinges and sucked back into the building. Conrad gasped seeing the giant mouth stick through the door and beginning to suction air. Conrad felt the tug on his skin. It could rip his flesh and dismantle him in moments.
He had to do something.
Conrad had one last idea to save his ass.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Mama's mouth was all that could be seen through the access door. Saliva flooded forth in rubber glue torrents towards Conrad's feet. Mama was ready to feed. Conrad stood across the hallway facing the beast. He clutched the only remaining Gatling gun in the steel box with both hands. The weapon was heavy, and he wasn't sure if he was using it right, but what did he have to lose?
Conrad aimed the Gatling gun so he could send a torrent of bullets at the mouth. He imagined Mama to be the cat looking in at the mouse. When Conrad pulled back the trigger, he slipped in the goopy saliva covering the floor. He slammed into the ground with bullets spattering the ceiling. Broken glass windows shattered in every direction. Those reflective daggers were drawn into Mama's mouth. Once those shards hit home, blood spewed from Mama's sucker face.
"Yeah, suck on that shit! That make you bleed? Then let's make you bleed."
Conrad blasted every glass pane. Glass was sucked up into the maw at vortex speeds. The effort was rewarded by more blasts and spraying geysers of blood.
"Fuck you! Eat glass, lamprey whore!"
Mama's cries sounded like a pontoon boat motor being sent through a meat grinder. Piercing and shrill screams hit Conrad so hard, he dropped the gun and cupped his ears. By then it was too late to brace for what was coming.
