Terror Krakens

by Eric S. Brown

  Mathews’ grin was feral as he saw the damage his grenade had done to the advancing monsters and wished that he had another one to throw their way. He didn’t though. His M4 bucked in his hands as he emptied its magazine into one of the creatures that had leaped onto the ceiling and came skittering across it in his direction. Three of its tentacles were cut from its body from the rounds Mathews poured into it, causing the thing to lose its grip on the ceiling. It crashed onto the floor with a loud thud, badly wounded but still very much alive. The thing had made it close enough to Mathews to take a swipe at him with one of its longer, primary tentacles. The tentacle lashed out at Mathews, making contact with his left leg. The blow snapped the bone of his leg in two just below his knee. His grin was gone from his face as Mathews cried out in pain, falling forward to land on his stomach. He lost his grip on his M4 as he went down and the weapon bounced away from him. Yanking his sidearm from its holster, Mathews took aim at the creature that had broken his leg but its tentacle lashed out again, this time coiling about his wrist. The barbs of its underside dug into his flesh as the pressure of its hold on him snapped his wrist, jerking the barrel of his pistol to the right as he fired. The round he fired caught Higgins in the back. The old man gave a loud grunt and dropped to his knees. The group of creatures he had been firing into raced forward to swarm over him. Mathews watched helplessly as they tore Higgins apart limb from limb.

  Ben was closest to Higgins when the old man was shot and the creatures swarmed him but had still been unable to help him. A creature had managed to ensnare his M4 with one of its tentacles and Ben was struggling to rip it free from the thing. Realizing it was a fight he couldn’t win, Ben let go of the rifle. The tentacle jerked away, taking the weapon with it as Ben drew his sidearm. His pistol left its holster as Ben brought it up in a two-handed grip and fired a trio of rounds into the creature’s body. The monster hissed and screeched at him in anger, recoiling from the bullets tearing into its flesh. Ben put a final shot right between the thing’s eyes and it finally flopped over.

  Maggie had run out of shells for her shotgun and was using it like a club. She smashed the butt of the shotgun into the side of a tentacle that shot her way. Backpedaling, Maggie raised the shotgun for another swing and brought it crashing down into what passed for the creature’s face.

  Mathews screamed as the creature he was engaged with stabbed the pointed tip of one of its tentacles into his back, pinning him to the floor. The tentacle sunk completely through his body, its tip emerging just above his belly button to clang against the floor beneath him where he lay. Mathews tried to roll over but the strength of the tentacle impaling him held him where he was. Both his M4 and his sidearm were gone. He had no weapons left to fight with other than his bare hands. They shot up to grab another tentacle that stabbed like a spear directly at his face. He managed to stop the tentacle with its pointed tip less than an inch from his forehead. Rather than try to push through his hold on it, the creature it belonged to jerked it out of his grasp, pulling it back. Then the creature moved closer to him, several of its lesser tentacles slapping wildly at him all at once. Each ripped long strips of flesh from his body like bladed whips. Mathews howled from the pain as he thrashed, the floor beneath him slicked with his own blood. Red smeared his hands and face as he gritted his teeth and jerked his body sideways trying to roll over again. Again, he failed as the tentacle impaling him made doing so impossible. The creature sprang forward before he could recover, its beak-like mouth extending from its main body to remove a chunk of his right cheek. The white of his teeth could be seen through the hole left in its wake. Mathews was weakening with every second and knew he couldn’t last much longer against the thing. He opened his mouth to scream for help as one of the thing’s primary tentacles thrust forward to enter it. Teeth flew as the tip of the tentacles knocked them aside, driving onward at an upward angle to exit the backside of his head in a spray of blood and brain matter.

  “We can’t hold them, Ben!” Maggie shouted over the screeching of the creatures and the sound of their gunfire. “We’ve got to fall back!”

  Higgins had been in charge of their group but the old man was dead now. Mathews was too. Ben knew that Maggie was right. If they stayed and continued to hold back the monsters, they wouldn’t last much longer either. Ben emptied the remainder of his pistol’s magazine into a creature that was lunging toward him, sending the thing sprawling onto the floor, and turned to run. He had only made it a few steps when he felt a tentacle stab into his back. It entered through one of his kidneys and slashed its way upward through him from there. Ben screamed and knew that he was dead.

  Maggie looked over her shoulder as Ben cried out. The big man was down and one of the creatures was moving to tower over him on its two primary tentacles while its lesser ones slashed downward to rake across his flesh. Blood flew each time one of them made contact with the big man’s body. Maggie had drawn her pistol but hadn’t fired it yet. Her shotgun had been smashed to bits, bashing one of the creatures to death. She didn’t fire the pistol now either. Maggie knew that if she stopped to try to help Ben that nothing good would come from her effort. Guilt clawed at her heart but Maggie kept right on running.

  ****

  Commander Lewis paced the C.I.C. as Robert and Gray worked their stations. Robert was still trying to make contact with someone, anyone, who might be able to come to their aid while Gray was monitoring the integrity of the platform. All of a sudden, she spun in her chair toward him.

  “Commander! The creatures have gained access to the platform’s interior at several points!” Gray reported.

  “Where?” Commander Lewis snapped.

  “The docking area, a ventilation shaft on the western side, and…the main entrance,” Gray frowned.

  “Robert! Get me Higgins right now!” Commander Lewis ordered.

  “I can’t, sir. He’s not responding!” Robert said.

  “Gray, pull up the internal camera footage from the main entrance and put it on the forward screen.” Commander Lewis already knew what he was likely to see but gave the order anyway.

  The main screen of the C.I.C. came to life with an image of the corridor just inside the platform’s main doors. There were creatures everywhere. They packed the area so tightly it was impossible to see anything else but them. As Commander Lewis gawked at the screen displaying the camera’s feed, one of the things moved directly at the camera as it rotated to get a better shot of the area. The last image that filled the screen before it went black was the barbed underside of a tentacle slashing toward it.

  “Frag it!” Commander Lewis raged. “Tell Howard and Leonard that they need to get over there now and cut those things off!”

  “Yes, sir!” Robert’s head bobbed up and down as he turned back to his console.

  “Sir, if those things continue straight along that corridor…” Gray told him.

  “I know,” he said before she could finish. “It will bring them right to us here.”

  The door leading into the C.I.C. was closed and locked but Commander Lewis knew it would be nothing to creatures that were able to tear through the base’s main topside entrance. Dr. Dane had said in her report on the creatures that their two primary tentacles were likely strong enough to bend steel. Clearly, the doctor had been correct about that, though it had to have been the combined strength of dozens of tentacles that broke through the main door.

  Commander Lewis though for a moment then said, “If either of you would like to make a run for it, now would be the time. I won’t hold it against you.”

  “And where would we run to?” Robert asked. “Those things are already aboard the base and in it.”

  “Taking off in one of the two small craft we have would be suicide,” Gray added. “If we’re going to die, right here is as good as anywhere.”

  “Yeah,” Robert agreed. “Here we’ve only got the one doorway to defend too.”

  Commander Lewis felt proud of them both. “Okay then.”

&nb
sp; “Jango and Kennedy are moving to intercept the creatures, sir,” Robert told him. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll come up with a means of stopping them.”

  The mention of the two engineers made Commander Lewis remember that Dr. Dane was alone in medical.

  “Where are Howard and Leonard?” he asked Robert.

  “Last I heard from them, sir, they were on their way to the docking area to engage the creatures there,” Robert answered.

  “And Hall?” Commander Lewis asked.

  “I haven’t heard from him in a bit,” Robert said. “I think he was attempting to deal with the creatures entering the western side of the platform. Their numbers were more limited there and he said something about having a plan.”

  “Frag it!” Commander Lewis shook his head. “Don’t we have anyone available that can reach Dr. Dane in medical to escort her here?” He had known the answer before the words came out of his mouth but his level of frustration made him voice them anyway.

  “I’ll go,” Robert offered reluctantly.

  “No, Robert, I’ve asked too much of you already,” Commander Lewis said. “I’ll go. You two stay here and lock the door again after I am gone.”

  “Yes, sir,” Robert and Gray chorused together.

  Commander Lewis drew his sidearm and readied it. Robert opened the door for him and he stepped out into the corridor beyond it.

  “Good luck, sir,” Robert said and then slammed the door to the C.I.C. Commander Lewis heard its lock click back into place as he started along the corridor toward medical.

  ****

  Hall raced through the corridors of the Meridian Platform. His plan to flush the vent shafts had failed and now he was on the run from a mass of octopus-like creatures intent on tearing him limb from limb and stripping the flesh from his bones. Breath coming in ragged gasps, his legs pumped beneath him. He was armed with an M4 but knew the weapon wouldn’t be enough to save his life. There were too many of the monsters chasing after him. The things moved so fast that Hall knew he would never make it back to the platform’s C.I.C. before they overtook him. All he could do was hunt for somewhere, anywhere, to get out of their path. He could hear them skittering along the corridor behind him, barbed tentacles scraping against the metal of the floor.

  Spotting a doorway just up ahead of his position, Hall poured on the speed toward it, pushing his body even harder. He reached it and found the door unlocked. Throwing it open, Hall darted inside. The room was nothing more than a maintenance closet filled with cleaning supplies, mops, and brooms. Not the ideal place to hole up but it was better than being out in the corridor with those monsters. The bad part was he knew that the things had to have seen him enter it. Within less than a few rapid heartbeats of him closing the door and locking it, the monsters began to tear their way in after him. Their tentacles whipped against and pounded on the door of the small closest. The door shook in its frame, threatening to give way. Hall readied his M4 retreating to the room’s far side until his back was pressed up against the wall there. Aiming the barrel of his M4 at the doorway, Hall braced himself for the fight that was surely about to come. There was no way the door was going to hold the things out. Instead of escaping the monsters, he had trapped himself.

  Cursing, Hall watched the door rattle in its frame and finally break away from it. The door thudded inward as the creatures came swarming at him. Thankfully, the doorway was too small and slowed them down. The creatures pressed and fought against one another trying to get at him. Hall opened up with his M4 on full-auto. The weapon bucked in his hands as he emptied its magazine into the creatures. Grayish blood splashed and splattered everywhere as bullets tore into the creatures, punching through them. They were so pressed together that a single round could travel through one creature to the next behind it. Several flopped to the floor, dead, tentacles twitching, before Hall’s M4 clicked empty. He frantically jerked the spent magazine from his M4 and tried to reload but there simply was no time to get the job done. Two of the creatures had made it fully inside the small closest with him already. One of them was wounded, leaking grayish blood and moving slowly. The other sprang at him, a tentacle lashing out to take his M4 from his hands. Hall drew his sidearm, bringing its barrel up at the attacking octopus thing. He fired a shot directly into its extending beak-like mouth, pulping it. The creature’s screeching cry of anger ended instantly and it recoiled away from him. The wounded creature took a swipe at him. Hall ducked the tentacle that lashed out toward his face. It struck the wall behind where he stood, raking across it. Sparks flew as the barbs of the tentacle met the metal of the wall. He finished the wounded creature with a trio of shots to the underside of its main body. The thing rocked upward as each bullet pierced it and then collapsed into a heap near him.

  The entire closet was filled with the monsters now. They swarmed over him even as he emptied his pistol at them. Tentacles wrapped about his arms and legs, ripping them away from his torso. What was left of Hall crashed onto the floor as several beak-like mouths removed chunks of meat from his face, chest, and groin. Hall screamed just before the beak-like mouth of one of the creatures shot out to clasp his lower jaw and tore it away from his face in an explosion of blood.

  ****

  Commander Lewis raced toward the medical section of the Meridian Platform. He had been lucky in only encountering one of the creatures so far and had sent the thing to Hell with a well-placed trio of shots to what passed for its head. Since leaving the C.I.C., Commander Lewis’s speed moving through the corridors had only increased. Not even the creature that he had killed had slowed him down. Reaching Dr. Dane was the only thing he could think about. Her safety was his responsibility and he had left her without protection.

  Skidding to a halt as he reached the broken and mangled door of the medical station, Commander Lewis could see that one or more of the creatures had beaten him there despite his desperate effort to reach medical ahead of them. Holding his pistol in a two-handed grip, he carefully approached the doorway to peer inside. Medical was a mess. There were turned-over tables, scattered instruments, and strewn-about supplies everywhere.

  “Dr. Dane!” Commander Lewis shouted. “Are you in here?”

  His voice echoed off the walls but that was the only response he got. Ever so cautiously, Commander Lewis advanced into the medical section. The lights throughout the entire station had kicked into emergency mode. All he could figure was that some of the creatures had made it the platform’s power generator room and wrecked havoc there. The dim, red emergency lights cast long shadows across ahead of him. There was no sign of Dr. Dane anywhere so he headed for her office. Its door was open too. His hope of finding her alive sunk with each passing moment. He wanted to believe that she had gotten out before the creatures reached this section of the platform but that was unlikely. Dr. Dane was the sort of woman more likely to stay and put a fight no matter the odds.

  Commander Lewis approached the doorway of Dr. Dane’s office, his pistol at the ready. As he peeked inside, he saw Dr. Dane, or rather what was left of her. Her corpse lay atop the desk of her office. It looked like one of the creatures had held her down there while it ate out her guts. The stomach area of her body was open with purple, red-slicked cords of intestines hanging out of it. Dr. Dane’s expression was locked in what looked to be part scream and part grimace of pain. Her right arm dangled over the side of the desk, blood dripping from it to pool on the floor. The smell in the office was horrible. Commander Lewis shifted his grip on his pistol so that he could use one hand to cover his mouth and nose. Bile rose up in his throat, nearly gagging him, as he fought not to be sick.

  The whishing sound of something large moving fast behind him made Commander Lewis whirl about. He found himself facing one of the creatures. The thing snaked out a tentacle that wrapped about his left arm. Commander Lewis yelped in pain as the barbs of the tentacle’s underside tore at the flesh and muscle of his arm as he fought to yank it free from the thing. Leveling the barrel of his pistol at the cre
ature, he squeezed the weapon’s trigger. The pistol cracked in rapid succession as Commander Lewis put five rounds into the monster holding him. The creature shrieked and let go of his left arm, hurling itself upward. Its tentacles dug into the ceiling and it clung there, hanging upside down above him. Commander Lewis looked up at the monster, his eyes wide, as he felt his bladder release itself. Trickles of wet warmth ran down the inside of his pants’ legs. He was too stunned to scream as the creature let go of the ceiling and fell directly on top of him. The force of its weight knocked him to the floor beneath it. Its beak-like mouth shot outward, extending to tear a chunk of meat from the side of his throat. Blood spurted from the wound with each beat of his heart and Commander Lewis knew that he was dead. He shoved the pistol right up against the underside of the creature’s main body and squeezed its trigger over and over until the weapon clicked empty. With each bullet that ripped its way up through the creature’s body, it gave a pained screech. The shots he fired were enough to end it. The creature slumped onto him, going limp, as Commander Lewis lay beneath its corpse, bleeding out.

  Already too weak to even raise a hand over the wound in the side of his neck, Commander Lewis closed his eyes, saying a prayer for those that were still alive on the platform, before death claimed him.

  ****

  Howard shuddered as he wiped the grayish, slime-like blood of the creature he had just killed from his face. A point-blank blast from his shotgun had splattered with him with wet bits of the thing. Leonard stood watching him with a shocked look on his face. They were on the run from swarms upon swarms of the octopus-like monsters that had gotten into the interior of the Meridian Platform.