Lampreys

by Alan Spencer

  A red torrent of blood was coming right his way. A literal flood of blood, the crimson tidal wave was fast approaching.

  Conrad was lapped up, lifted up off of his feet, and spun upside down and right side up until he was too disoriented to compute what was occurring. Red became everything. He couldn't breathe. He was forced under the insane red tide.

  Conrad reached out for purchase. Somehow, he'd been delivered straight out of the installation, across the helipad, and onto the edge of the rig. He was clutching onto the very edge of the platform to save his life. Conrad was weak, dizzy, and still processing the moment.

  His hold was slipping.

  He was seconds from falling into the ocean.

  Chapter Forty

  Conrad couldn't hold on anymore. Blood was pouring over the edge of the platform and pelting him in the face. His eyes were stinging. The grip on the steel was too slick to stay strong. Conrad fought on for as long as he could when his fingers made the decision for him.

  He let go.

  Conrad closed his eyes. He wondered how long the fall would take. Would he drop straight down, or would he bob on the surface of the ocean and struggle for air until his body was so weak, he let himself go under and die?

  "I got you!"

  Duke had him by the arm.

  His brother lifted him back up to the platform.

  "Close call, bro," Duke said, patting him on the back hard. "You're not half the pussy I thought you to be. I don't know what you did to that beast to make it bleed like that. That's amazing. Now all we have to do is figure out a way off of this rig."

  Conrad joined Duke in walking across the platform and helping Henry and Scoop up to their feet. They were disoriented and confused, but also conscious. Henry kept clutching his head, as did Scoop. She still couldn't stand without help.

  "The naval radio should still work," Henry said. "We'll see if we can reach out to anybody who can pick us up. If not, we've got two helicopters right here. We can fly one of them back to land. I prefer to take the one without two festering corpses in the front seat."

  "What about ENTECH?" Duke asked.

  "They can't be trusted anymore," Henry said. "I got hold of ENTECH over the radio earlier. They've been bought out by somebody else. We might have to turn to the United States government. If that doesn't work, maybe we can be granted asylum in another country until this blows over."

  Conrad couldn't believe what he was hearing. He imagined hiding in a foreign country, or having to always be on the run from some evil empire who didn't want them to leak the secrets of lamprey research.

  "Whatever happens, all I want is a hot shower," Scoop said. "And some chili fries."

  The group laughed.

  Then they cried out in horror.

  The roof over the installation nearest them was ripped off. Mama's body surged from the opening. She was gigantic and standing tall like a cobra snake. Her sucker face and body was covered in dangling ribbons of broken flesh. Her motor teeth still functioned, spinning and creating suction force. Conrad had only slowed the monster; he hadn't destroyed it.

  "Hold on," Henry said. "The bitch ain't dead yet."

  "We can't let her escape," Duke said. "If she drops into the water, she'll head straight for land."

  Conrad felt his feet leave the ground. Scoop collapsed and was about to be dragged in the hideous bleeding lamprey beast's mouth.

  Henry and Duke were struggling to keep their feet planted on the ground. Mama battered her bulky body into the sides of the building until the structure was gone. Her black eel body gleamed in the sun. Beneath the serrated and torn flaps of skin, Conrad could see clear gelatinous eggs. There were thousands and thousands of eggs.

  Conrad couldn't let Mama take the plunge off the platform and into the ocean.

  He crawled, spun, and shot up to his feet. He ran right for the helicopter with the machine gun turrets. Conrad shoved aside one of the corpses in the seat. He searched the panel for an on switch. He couldn't decide what would turn the engine on. It didn't take long to realize he didn't know a goddamn thing about helicopters.

  "Fuck! How do I start this thing?"

  One of the corpses shifted in the passenger seat. Conrad gasped, wondering if another corpse had been inhabited by lampreys. It turned out to be Bavardi. He stepped into the helicopter.

  "Time for me to take over," Bavardi said, edging Conrad out of the driver's seat. "I'm as good as dead. You save your friends over there. This is one-way death ride. Now move out!"

  Conrad jumped from the chopper right when it started up. Bavardi released a wall of gunfire from the turrets. Mama stopped suctioning once those bullets hit home.

  Bavardi spoke from the helicopter's bullhorn. "Forgive me, Henry, for betraying you. Let me make it up to you. I'm sending this bitch packing to hell!"

  Conrad hit the deck.

  Bavardi crashed the helicopter right into Mama's mouth. A great incendiary explosion rocked the platform. A mean ball of flames ate at Mama's face. Melting flesh, broken up spinning teeth, chunks of meat flying, and lamprey guts rained down in hundred pound heaps. After the debris settled, a line of helicopters was fast approaching the installation. Conrad stood next to his father, brother, and Scoop, and waited to find out who was coming.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Five helicopters touched down. Men in white hazmat suits armed with flamethrowers torched the remains of Mama's body. The rest of the crew stormed into the facility, blanketing everything from top to bottom in fire. Henry, Duke, and Scoop were taken into custody and forced into a helicopter. Conrad was handcuffed from behind and forced into a different helicopter.

  "Stay calm, son," Henry shouted at Conrad. "You let me figure this out. You sit tight. We survived this bullshit; we'll survive a little bit more."

  Conrad waited in the chopper while the unknown team secured the installation. After an hour, the helicopter took flight. He was being taken to a place yet to be determined. Hours later, the helicopter dropped them off on a landing pad in front of a military building. Conrad was delivered to a holding cell and stayed there alone.

  He was allowed a shower, given a change of clothes, and a meal that tasted like a frozen dinner zapped in a microwave. Conrad waited for hours, and when the cell's door opened, he was surprised. Henry and Duke greeted him. They too had had a change of clothing, some food, and a new disposition.

  "Everything's going to okay," Henry reassured his son. "The team that picked us up isn't from ENTECH, and they're not TECHMODE either. Both of them are bad guys now. I guess creating terrorist weapons is far more lucrative than saving the environment. Things change and they sure change fast."

  Conrad was confused. "Then who picked us up? How do we know they're good?"

  Duke smiled. "We know they're good because they torched a multi-million dollar project without batting an eye."

  Henry agreed. "This new group is called AGRO-CORE. They're a very different kind of fighting force. They deal in situations involving...how shall I put it? Monsters. AGRO-CORE has hired us to lead a new team into various foreign countries to clean up or prevent research of this kind from spiraling out of control. We can't talk much about it to you, son, I'm afraid. They're letting you go. You have to sign a few waivers, saying you want say a word of this to anybody."

  "Like anyone would believe me if I did," Conrad said. "So just like that, you're playing on a new team."

  "Other Post-Service Operatives have done the same," Henry explained. "Like I said, things change. That's life. How you deal with the changes makes you who you are."

  Duke hugged Conrad. "I'm sorry I gave you such a hard time all of these years. You saved our lives. You were very brave under harsh circumstances. Are you sure you don't want to join in the effort?"

  Conrad didn't have to think about it. "I don't think so. While I was running from sucker-faced monsters, I realized I made a mistake. I mean about quitting my job. I love being an English professor. I might have to wait until next semester,
but I'm getting that job back. Arielle can go to hell. I'm over the tramp. She can have her cake and fuck it too."

  "That's my boy," Henry said. "Wait until your mom hears about this. She'll be so proud."

  They talked a little more about the future, and the plans for their next family get-together.

  Before they said their goodbyes and Conrad would be shipped back home, Duke smiled at his brother.

  "You have a special visitor. We'll leave you two alone."

  Scoop entered the room on crutches. She put the crutches up against the wall and sat next to Conrad on the cot. Scoop put her arm around Conrad and kissed his neck. "We don't have much time before I have to get moving. Take off your pants, handsome. You remember what I promised to do to your balls back when we were alone together?"

  Conrad forgot about everything that had happened to him in the last forty-eight hours in the span of ten minutes.

  Epilogue

  Conrad faced a new semester of students at Texas University. He was surprised how his old colleagues vouched for him and helped him get his job back. Arielle was fired for having an inappropriate relationship with a student during the semester Conrad was unemployed. That didn't surprise Conrad. Everything had fallen back into place ever since the horrors he faced defeating the lampreys. His family was fighting God knew what, God knew where, and Conrad was here on campus conducting a literature class.

  The book the class was to discuss today was Moby Dick.

  It was the early morning class, and most of his students had either dragged themselves out of bed, were hung over, or waiting for their coffee fix to kick in. Conrad was doing most of the talking, when one student let out a comment.

  "How could you capture and kill a whale back in the day? Seriously? It would be impossible. It's hard enough now with the current technology. One man can't beat a whale. It's impossible. It's the strongest sea creature of them all."

  Conrad couldn't help but correct the lame-brain student. "A whale's not the strongest sea creature of them all."

  "Then what's stronger than a whale, Professor?"

  Conrad woke up the whole class with his booming voice.

  "Try going up against some motherfucking lampreys!"

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Deep Devotion

  Rising from the depths, a mind-bending monster unleashes a wave of terror across the American heartland. Kate Browning, a Kansas City EMT confronts her paralyzing fear of water when she traces the source of a deadly parasitic affliction to the Gulf of Mexico. Cooperating with a marine biologist, she travels to Florida in an effort to save the life of one very special patient, but the source of the epidemic happens to be the nest of a terrifying monster, one that last rose from the depths to annihilate the lost continent of Atlantis.

  Leviathan, destroyer, devoted lifemate and parent, the abomination is not going to take the extermination of its brood well.

  Chapter One

  Whatever became of their ocean moon would remain a mystery, because none but two survived. They knew things, these frozen travelers, who slept for eons, dreaming together of the crystalline depths that they would never know, where elaborate courtship dances were performed that could last more than a thousand years. They were an exceedingly long-lived species. Blessed with a vast awareness that extended beyond their eggshells, beyond the rock walls of their hurtling prison, they reached out to the seas of the new place they would soon call home. It was a world of light and shadow that spun beneath an infernal sun. It was a world of tyrants and terrible extremes, where flesh-eating abominations roared in the shadow of the cataclysm, as the pair of new immigrants descended. Like seeds of life enveloped in a husk of fire, the tiny destroyers plummeted toward the new world, ushering in the promise for a new and gentler creature endowed with the capacity for love for its family, and devotion to its gods.

  ###

  Sara lowered her chopsticks into the ramekin. With a gentle swirling motion, she muddled a dollop of wasabi in the soy sauce. A perfect balance was key. To this end, she went partly by viscosity, and partly by color, which was kind of hard to describe, but she knew the right hue when it appeared. It was the color of forest moss. Once the solution was blended to her satisfaction, she pinched hold of an albacore cutlet, dipped it twice into the greenish pool, and then raised it to her lips. Just as she was about to enjoy her first bite, her eyes happened to flick up to meet with a revolted stare, from across the table.

  “What?” Sara said.

  Collin just grunted and shook his head.

  “Yours came from the same cutting board, you know. Same ocean.”

  Collin looked down at his lobster tail. “Yeah, but mine is cooked, see?”

  “That’s more than I can say for your steak.” Sara popped the albacore into her mouth, and then pointed her chopsticks at the pool of watery blood beneath Collin’s sirloin. Such hypocrisy, forever extended from so many eaters of raw beef, toward lovers of sushi. Fish was always going to be the cleaner, healthier, and the more sustainable choice.

  “You can’t go wrong with a medium-rare steak,” Collin replied, picking up his knife and fork, and slicing a pinkish sliver from his sirloin, “but sushi? Blech. That’s just wrong to begin with.”

  “Mmm.” Sara closed her eyes and smiled while she chewed. “How can anything possibly be wrong, when it tastes so right?”

  Ryuu Grill and Galley was a pleasant stimulation of all the senses. Clouds of savory steam billowed up from a dozen teppanyaki tables, where chefs clattered their steel instruments and flipped acrobatic shrimp through the air, right into the open mouths of diners—sometimes. Strange and lurid fish swam an endless promenade through a huge saltwater aquarium that was mounted just beyond the sushi bar, where glistening cutlets rode a conveyer over mounds of shaved and sparkling ice.

  Trademarked by a massive dragon pendant cut from brushed steel, Ryuu was the latest addition to downtown Kansas City’s relatively new and booming Power and Light District. For four decades, a person could safely and easily roll a bowling ball down the middle of Main Street at the stroke of midnight, all the way from Liberty Memorial to the banks of the Missouri River, without a chance of striking any living thing, beyond a stray cat. It had remained a woefully dead part of town, but the culture of downtown KC had recently undergone some major revitalization. Thanks to the addition of the downtown arena, a dome of mirrored glass situated at the confluence of two major highways, the nightlife of downtown Kansas City was resurrected from the darkness and desolation of an oversized cow town to a dazzling labyrinth of bars, trendy restaurants and thumping nightclubs. For the first time since the roaring twenties, Kansas City had become cool.

  “I guess when you boil me down, strip away the car, and the loft, I’m still just a simple Kansas boy, at heart,” Collin said, “scared of anything that ain’t beef.”

  Sara smiled and winked at her boyfriend of six months. “Lobsters ain’t beef, baby.”

  “Oversized crawdads, that’s all.” Collin shrugged. “Crawdads and cows? Shoot, they never hurt anybody. But all of that crazy stuff on your plate … well, let’s just say I don’t eat anything that I can’t pronounce.”

  “Repeat after me.” Sara leaned over the table, narrowing her eyes seductively. “Shiro.”

  “Shiro,” Collin said, leaning in to meet Sara, nose to nose, over their food.

  “Maguro,” Sara said, airily.

  “Maguro.”

  “Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “You just said albacore in Japanese.” With her chopsticks, Sara selected a small but choice cut of the pale meat. She dipped it once in the wasabi-soy sauce, and lifted it near Collin’s mouth. “Will you?”

  A mischievous smile spread across Collin’s face. “Only if you will.”

  “If I will what, exactly?” Sara wrinkled her nose and cocked her head.

  Collin rose from his chair. He reached for the inside pocket of his jacket. His hand reappeared with a black jewel
ry box, as he dropped to one knee, beside their dinner table. He flipped it open in one smooth motion, to display a sparkling ring. “Sara?”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  ###

  Mitch Poole transferred the wriggling minnow from his dip net into a Mason jar filled with water. Then, he threaded on the lid. He turned from the aquarium of feeder minnows to the group of teens, who would be his last tour group for the day. In the manner of a street magician about to perform some amazing trick, he raised the Mason jar to eye level, passing it steadily back and forth before the row of bemused faces. Inside, the minnow darted to and fro. It bumped its snout against the convex walls of its glass prison, gulping, and fanning its little gills.

  “Human beings, we like to think of aquatic life as being brainless,” Mitch said, while turning on a heel, “unless of course, it can be trained to jump through a hoop. Then, all of a sudden, it seems more intelligent to us. But, what exactly is intelligence? Can it be measured? Is there more than one kind? These are the questions we have to ask ourselves when we’re suddenly confronted by a creature so unlike us, so alien to our world, and to our limited human experience, that a true comparison of our brand of intelligence against theirs seems difficult, if not impossible.”

  Mitch hitched an eyebrow, smiled, and then turned. Minnow jar in hand; he began walking slowly along the ranks of aquariums that lined the back wall of the Henderson Beach State Park visitor’s center. The teens eyed each other uneasily, before shuffling after him. The last kid in line, peering out from the portal in his green hoodie, blew a bubble and snapped it with his tongue.

  The rear of the visitor’s center was a living laboratory, with rows of percolating lift tubes and humming fluorescent lights. Weird and wimpling creatures fawned up at Mitch, as the marine biologist strode through their neighborhood of glass houses. Some glowered cantankerously from holes in the coral, while others wriggled excitedly back and forth against the glass like gilled puppies, eager to play. Mitch stopped before a large and foreboding aquarium that emanated the ethereal glow of black lights, mounted beneath a latched hood of solid steel. It appeared to be empty, except for a jungle of dark rocks that were heaped at its center. Champagne bubbles rushed through lift tubes that jutted up through the layer of black gravel. Bits of wavering and translucent waste lay scattered about the aquarium floor.