Kronos Rising: Kraken (vol.1): The battle for Earth's oceans has just begun.

by Max Hawthorne

  Stacy scooped her tablet up off the floor. The screen was cracked and it was spattered with blood but it still functioned. She touched a key. “In dreamland. I hit her with enough dope to OD a herd of elephants. She should be out for hours.”

  “Good. Let’s get her into the holding tank until we can get all this cleaned up.” Dirk studied the bloodied crowd of employees, muttering to one another as they loitered a safe distance away. “Then we’ll do her physical and prep work. We’ll hold off on the procedure until tomorrow.”

  Stacy nodded. “Do you want to leave the hoist on her?”

  “Only until the auxiliary unit is brought up.” He glanced at the immobile Kronosaurus imperator and shook his head as he addressed it directly. “You caused a lot of problems,” he said. “I hope you turn out to be worth it.”

  Dr. Grayson moved next to him, shamelessly admiring the sleeping predator. “Oh, she will, my boy. Trust me, she will.”

  As Dirk stepped sideways, a sudden squishiness underfoot caused him to look down. To his disgust and horror, he realized he was standing on several feet of Sanders’ small intestine. He paled. “Oh, God . . .”

  Grayson turned to Dwyer with an annoyed look. “Where the hell are the cleaners with those body bags?”

  Dwyer’s face darkened. “Sorry. They’re already on the way, sir.”

  “Well, hurry it up!” Grayson snapped. As Dwyer jumped back on the radio, the old man turned to Dirk and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Relax, son. We’ll get this mess cleaned up in a jiffy. Everything will be fine. I promise you.”

  As he looked around the steaming charnel house that was the receiving dock, Dirk wasn’t so sure about that.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Try as she might, she couldn’t handle the screams.

  Dr. Kimberly Bane winced as she extracted her incisors from her hand. Her first knuckle and index finger were bruised to the point of bleeding from biting down so hard, but it was the only way she could keep from crying out.

  Watching a man die was not an easy thing.

  Especially when it was someone you knew and cared about.

  She hit pause and grabbed a Kleenex. As she dabbed her eyes and blew her nose she looked around, breathing in the cold sterility of her new laboratory. She shook her head and chuckled sadly. The irony of the bleached-whiteness of her surroundings, juxtaposed to the horrific reds, browns, and puce greens on the video she’d pulled up, was far from lost on her.

  After a few furtive breaths, Dr. Bane hit the resume icon on the eight-year-old file marked “Subject M-223.” The “Oh God” that slipped from her dry lips echoed Amara Braddock’s as she rushed to her dying husband’s side.

  Jake Braddock was in the final stages of what the papers called “Cretaceous Cancer.” Technically, it wasn’t a malignant neoplasm as the public believed, but rather, a particularly virulent strain of pathogenic bacteria that simultaneously attacked the circulatory and nervous systems, causing excruciating inflammation, followed by cerebral hemorrhaging, madness, and finally, death.

  Twenty-two years prior, there had been a dozen such cases, all in the wake of the Paradise Cove incident. Every one of the infected had managed to survive close contact with the creature that razed Harcourt Marina. Following its elimination, the CDC swept in and isolated them all. They couldn’t save them, however; every one of the infected died an agonizing death. But the outbreak everyone dreaded was contained and no additional cases popped up.

  Until fifteen years later, that is. With bacteria-laden pliosaurs running rampant, inevitably, the disease reemerged. Most of the locales were remote and linked to the ocean: ports, marinas and fishing villages. Coastal communities in Third World countries which subsisted on the sea’s bounty were hit the hardest. The meat from any fish that survived a wound from a Kronosaurus imperator was invariably tainted. But the worst outbreaks, by far, took place when one of the pliosaurs, themselves, was killed and cut up for consumption.

  The problem went beyond the individuals who inadvertently consumed the diseased flesh. The bacteria propagated throughout the host’s body, especially in the salivary glands. A single infectee could bite scores, even hundreds of people before succumbing to the disease, and those hundreds could infect thousands more.

  Bane blew out a breath. Until she’d settled in and gained access to Tartarus’s classified data, she had no idea how bad things had gotten. The networks were either in the dark or they weren’t discussing the disease, but it was running rampant. There were besieged coastal communities in Okinawa, Taiwan, and the Philippines, where entire towns had been overrun. Their governments had no choice but to send in troops to wipe out every living thing in an effort at containment.

  It was Jake Braddock who turned the tide. He helped develop a vaccine that stopped the contagion’s spread. Not by direct action, nor even by aiding in research, but by being a Guinea pig. His blood was the key. During his encounter with the “Monster of Paradise Cove,” he’d ingested the beast’s saliva. Yet unlike everyone else who’d been exposed, he developed no symptoms.

  After being poked, prodded, scanned, X-rayed, and bled repeatedly, the answer finally came to light. Jake’s body had developed its own defense against the lethal bacterium that called a Kronosaurus imperator home. The next question was “how?” The answer turned out to be barotrauma. Before the bacteria in Jake’s body had the chance to multiply to lethal levels, he’d been subjected to submersible dives as low as 5,000 feet. The resultant pressure (and subsequent failure to decompress properly) had somehow neutralized the pathogen. What started as an infection ended up as a vaccine. Jake’s body started manufacturing its own antibodies and had been doing so ever since.

  Grayson Pharmaceuticals began immediate development and marketing of their own, patented curative, and Jake Braddock and his family were handsomely rewarded for his contributions. Unfortunately, the reward was short-lived. A few years later, the saurian bacteria mutated in his system, and Jake’s immune system could no longer contain it.

  Bane swallowed as she continued viewing the end result. In addition to the “normal” side effects exhibited by victims of Cretaceous cancer: oozing skin pustules, blood dripping from the ears, nose, and eyes, uncontrollable drooling, and maniacal tendencies, Jake’s body itself had mutated. There was no other explanation for it. As the camera moved tight on the 50-year-old former athlete, she almost vomited.

  His skin was the color of a week-old bruise. His eyes had turned red, like a snapper’s, and pinkish pus seeped from their corners. As his mouth gaped wide, she saw his tongue. It was swollen and coated with some sort of awful whitish thrush. His lips were crusted over, his hair was falling out in patches, and his forearms and shins were covered with scabrous folds of skin that looked like scales. It was like something from a horror movie.

  Despite her husband’s nightmarish state, his wife remained steadfastly by his side, talking calmly, trying to soothe him, while someone in the foreground – it sounded like Derek – kept screaming for a doctor. It was useless. Even with the love of his life holding his hand, Jake was beyond reason. The infection had warped his mind and left the ex-athlete dangerous. For his safety, as well as the safety of others, they had no choice but to tie him down.

  The medical restraints were ill-received. Jake heaved at them like a madman, and when they failed to break, he kicked and twisted, trying to tear the bed apart. An inhuman growl rose in his chest and he lunged at Amara like a rabid dog. She had to pull away to avoid being bitten, and when she pressed her hands against his chest in an attempt to hold him down, what remained of his shirt sloughed away, along with most of the skin underneath. The cold hospice air hitting exposed nerves sent what was left of Jake’s mind over the edge.

  Unable to take anymore, Amara spun toward the camera. Her attractive, angular face was a puffy wreck and she held her blood-and-pus-drenched hands up, gaping at them. She was too horrified to move and it was obvious she was going into shock.

  All of
a sudden, Derek was there, pulling his mother back as his father’s violent struggles converted into full-fledged convulsions. A whitish fluid began to spew from his nose and mouth and his body thrashed as if he was being electrocuted.

  Thirty seconds later, with Derek restraining his mother despite a litany of curses, Jake Braddock flatlined. As if on cue, a resuscitation team in full hazmat gear burst in. They tried everything, including an array of injections and repeated jolts from the defibrillator, all to no avail. Five minutes later, they called it.

  As orderlies pulled the covers up over the body and solemnly wheeled it out, Bane saw the world through a veil of tears. She watched Amara bolt hysterically from the room with a distraught nineteen-year-old Derek following her. As the obviously detached cameraman spun around to film their exit, standing in the back of the room, his face an ill-fitting mask of grief and shock, was a young Garm Braddock.

  “He took it hard.”

  The unexpected man’s voice made Bane jump. She’d been so engrossed in the on-screen nightmare she hadn’t heard the door whoosh open. Now furious, she froze the video and wheeled around. Job or no, after what she’d just seen, she was in no mood for any of Grayson’s lackeys.

  “Look, I already said I’d get the damn implant, so leave me the--”

  Bane’s voice shrank to a throaty whisper as she spotted Derek Braddock standing there. His eyes were fixed on the screen behind her, studying his brother’s face.

  “Oh my God . . .” she managed as her eyes followed his back to the monitor. “I-I’m so sorry. I--”

  “Harder than any of us,” Derek finished. He sounded surprisingly calm and composed, although from the look in his eyes, Bane could tell he was a ceramic doll, teetering on a shelf’s edge. One nudge and he’d fall and shatter.

  “Dr. Braddock . . . Derek--”

  “My friends call me Dirk,” he said, looking at her now.

  Actually, she noted, he wasn’t looking at her as much as through her. There was a lot of his mother in him. He was highly intuitive.

  “I didn’t know it was your father on the video,” Bane said, sounding lame and hating herself for it. “It wasn’t marked and until I saw your mom . . . I’m very sorry.”

  Dirk lowered himself onto a nearby stool. “It’s okay. You had to watch it at some point. Actually, I’ve never seen it. Well, until now.”

  “But you--”

  “Living it was enough.”

  “You’ve suffered many losses,” Bane said quietly.

  Dirk sat up straight. “My mom used to say loss comes with life. But you shouldn’t let it stop you from living.”

  Bane nodded. “She was a good friend. Now that I’m here, I miss her even more.”

  “Me too, doc,” Dirk said.

  Bane smiled sadly as she dabbed at her eyes with one fingertip. “Your brother calls me that, even though I got all haughty about it,” she sniffled.

  “It’s a Braddock family tradition,” Dirk said, trying to smile back. “Maybe my mom told you about it?”

  Bane laughed as a fresh flood of tears streamed down her cheeks. “Yes . . . yes she did.”

  Dirk gestured at Garm’s pixilated face, his shattered expression still locked in stasis on the monitor. “Would you mind?”

  “Oh, of course not,” she replied as she hastily hit stop. She stared at the blackened screen. “You said he took his father’s death hard?”

  Dirk exhaled. “He tried not showing it, but everyone could tell Garm wasn’t, well . . . Garm after that. He and our father were inseparable. I mean, dad loved us both. But those two, they had a special connection.”

  “They were both warriors,” Bane hazarded. “At least, that’s what your mom told me.”

  “Something like that,” Dirk nodded. He folded his lean arms across his chest as he sat back on his stool. “Garm was always a fighter. In school, if someone tried to bully me he’d fold them in half and slam-dunk them in a trash can.”

  “Wow.” Dr. Bane smiled. “I guess not too many kids messed with you.”

  Dirk chuckled. “He really took to boxing. My dad taught us both, but Garm thrilled to it – the crowds, the spectacle. It was like he’d been a gladiator in a past life. When he was seventeen, he won the Golden Gloves. He took silver in the Olympics a year later, and became a pro heavyweight the year after that.”

  “I remember. Your mom was so proud; she sent me clips from his Olympic bouts.” She shook her head. “He should have gotten the Gold.”

  Dirk nodded. “He would have, if the Turkish guy hadn’t been--”

  “Playing patty-cake while running for his life?”

  Dirk’s eyebrows did the Mr. Spock thing. “Wow. You two did talk.”

  Bane grinned as she made a show of batting her eyelashes. “Well, you know how we girls are.”

  “That’s not how he does it,” Dirk said with a smirk.

  “Who?”

  “My brother.”

  “Oh, you mean--”

  Dirk checked the doorway, then leaned closer. “When Garm wants to show off those fishing lures of his, he looms over a woman, like this, and fixes her with a steely gaze. Then he blinks twice.” He chuckled. “It’s like watching a snake hypnotize a bird. By the second blink, they’re completely in his power.”

  Bane laughed aloud. “Oh my God, did you know he tried it on me?”

  They both burst out laughing. “I can imagine.”

  For some reason, Bane felt like she was missing a drink in her hand. “You know,” she intimated. “He is very impressive. I mean, I don’t want to sound like a horny cougar or anything, but c’mon. Look at the guy.”

  “Been suffering it my whole life, doc.”

  “Yes, but in truth, you are far more interesting,” she said. “Has no woman ever told you that?”

  Dirk grinned. “Listen, if you’re trying to get out of your locator implant by buttering me up--”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks,” Bane said. “I already said I’d do it. I just don’t see what the big deal is.”

  Dirk hesitated. “In a place like this, sometimes people go missing.”

  Bane wore a confused look. “You mean, like, they go ashore for the weekend and never come back because they’ve gotten into something?”

  “Yes. Or sometimes they don’t leave. They’re still here, but they’ve ended up in something . . .” He stared at her meaningfully.

  “Ah. And the locators let you know--”

  “Which something they ended up in.”

  Bane smacked her lips loudly. “Yep, just another fun day here in Tartarus!”

  Dirk grinned. “By the way, Dr. Grayson said he spoke with you about the whole ‘misunderstanding’ thing?”

  She scoffed. “That’s a funny thing to call it. Especially after what I went through. But yes, we sat down and he told me something that made me decide I was okay with things.”

  “Really?” Dirk’s head angled to one side. “And what was that?

  “I’m doubling your salary, Dr. Bane,” she said, impersonating Grayson’s gravelly voice.

  Dirk nodded. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “It’s hard to argue with a man who has everything,” Dr. Bane stated.

  “Don’t I know it.”

  She stood up, rubbing her palms on her lab coat. “It’s been nice chatting. Before I get back to whatever it is I’m being overpaid to do around here, is there anything you need from me?”

  Dirk sighed. “Now that you mention it: yes. I was at the dock earlier and got a faceful of Kronosaurus. Dr. Grayson thinks I might need a booster.”

  Bane sucked in a breath and nodded. “Thankfully, I was touring my lab when it happened.” She shook her head ruefully. “I heard about that poor man . . . Okay, I already treated everyone else, so let’s get you taken care of.”

  As she extracted a vial from a nearby fridge, followed by a needle that seemed better suited for horses, Dirk balked. “Wouldn’t it make sense to run a workup first, just to see if there’s anythin
g to worry about?”

  “Nah,” Bane said as she turned the vial upside down and inserted the syringe. “Better to act preemptively, rather than chancing an infection taking hold.”

  Dirk eyed the dripping needle tip and swallowed. “Are you sure that’s not reserved for one of our--”

  “Lizards?” Bane chuckled as she held the needle up and tapped it. “The injection’s intramuscular. You know that.”

  Dirk’s brow creased up and she realized he was replaying his past inoculations in his head.

  “Let’s go, kiddo. Pants down and assume the position,” she said. “I promised your mom I’d take care of you, no matter how much it hurts.”

  Bane’s jaw muscles ached from maintaining a straight face, but she managed to keep from guffawing. She felt a momentary twinge of embarrassment as Dirk bent unenthusiastically over the counter, but it vanished as she took in his athletic, 29-year-old buttocks.

  “I really wish we could discuss this,” Dirk muttered as she swabbed one cheek with a prep pad.

  Bane smirked. “Oh, just relax. What is it you guys are so fond of telling us girls? Oh, yeah. ‘C’mon, baby. It’s not that big!’”

  * * *

  “Grayson, your boy, here, is a world-class pain-in-my-ass,” Admiral Callahan said, giving Dirk a decidedly unfriendly look. “I’ve lost two units in a month, and now you expect me to pay full price for replacements?”

  I’m ‘a pain in his ass?’ Dirk thought. A malicious idea came to him and he smirked. I should send him to Dr. Bane.

  Callahan’s heavy footfalls echoed across the concrete docks as Dirk and Dr. Grayson paraded him past the pliosaur tanks with a stern-faced security officer and the admiral’s surviving aide in tow.

  “Actually, the losses you’re referring to had nothing to do with the reliability of the units in question,” Dirk asserted. “Nor the efficacy of our technology.” Grayson had remained tight-lipped since the tour began, which wasn’t surprising. His mentor was usually content to let him handle these discussions.