by J. E. Gurley
The remaining members of the team concentrated on the second creature. 5.56 mm rounds from redheaded Sergeant Rhoades’ Mk46 SAW and the combined firepower of HK MP5s firing Smith and Wesson .40 caliber rounds produced the same effect on the second Wasp. Within two minutes, both creatures were lifeless hulks, their bullet-riddled bodies staining the decks with alien blood.
A shadow fell over Walker. He glanced up to see a Wasp crouching on the Sports Deck above him watching the display of firepower. It hissed loudly and bounced up and down on its front legs. Walker didn’t know if the creature was angry at the death of its kin or eager to eat him. He raised his SCAR L-CQC and poured a clip of 7.62 mm rounds into the creature’s head. Injured but still functioning, the Wasp unfurled its wings and leaped into the air. Costas brought it down short with three quick .50 caliber rounds from his SASR. He grinned at Walker.
“It’s like shooting skeets,” he said.
Walker knew Costas would soon have plenty of opportunity to shoot skeets. The noise of the weapons fire had alerted the Wasps to their presence. A dozen of the creatures peeled off from the stream of inbound Wasps and aimed directly at them. They didn’t have time to do a casual search along the deck. They needed to get to the passengers quickly and keep the Wasps at bay until help arrived. Splitting up was no longer an option. He pointed to the stairs on either side of the bar.
“Everyone down the stairs,” he shouted, “and conserve your ammo. We wasted too much just then in a useless killing frenzy. If we run out, we’re dead.”
McGregor snorted a dissent at Walker’s rebuke, but signaled his team to follow him down the stairs, while Costas and Walker covered their descent. The windows and walls of the Lido Deck offered some protection against the Wasps outside the ship, but those inside came at them from all sides drawn by the sound of gunfire and alien pheromones released by the dying Wasps. One of the creatures, intrigued by the smell of hot dogs and burgers, was busy dismantling the kitchen of the Trident Grill, using its powerful forelimbs to yank griddles, deep fryers, and storage cabinets from the wall. It turned at their approach. Costas threw the creature a surly sneer and opened up with his M107.
“Eat this, bitch,” he yelled as he concentrated his fire at the Wasp’s head. He was working on putting out its fourth eye, when it collapsed over the counter, smashing the glass of the warming box. He stopped long enough to grab mustard from the condiment bar and squirt it over the dead Wasp’s head. “Order up!” he yelled. He looked at Perez. “Sorry about the bitch thing.”
Perez grinned, aimed her weapon at the dead Wasp, and fired a short burst into its head. “No need to apologize. She gives bitches a bad name.”
Watts and Stimson took down one Wasp that stood over a partially consumed body in the wading pool, adding its yellow blood to the red swirls of human blood in the water. Creature by creature, they removed the obstacles in their path until they reached the main stairs and elevator lobby. Walker yanked his weapon aside just in time to avoid shooting a steward running up the stairs.
“They’re in the theater,” he yelled, waving his arms wildly. His white jacket was in tatters, and a large bloodstain marred its front and right side.
“Who is?” Walker asked.
“The passengers, the creatures … they’re all dying.”
Walker pointed to the bloodstains. “Are you injured?”
The frightened steward stared at him uncomprehending for a moment, and then bolted for the door before Walker could stop him. Costas started to follow, but Walker called him back.
“We can’t save them all,” he said.
It was a grim statement, but all too true. If they attempted to round up every stray passenger along the way, they would never reach the theater seven decks below them where most of the passengers had taken refuge. It was a numbers game. As they continued down the stairs, they encountered signs of slaughter everywhere – patches of bloodstained carpet, smears of blood on the walls, and grisly bits and pieces of human flesh on the stairs. Confirmation of the Wasps’ strength was evident in elevator doors peeled apart like aluminum foil, metal stair railings wrenched from their supports and curled like confetti, and doorways pushed inward until the bulkheads around them split apart. Walker had seen Wasps in action before and knew firsthand of their capabilities. However, McGregor and his men had only faced solitary Wasps and the smaller alien creatures comprising the Kaiju internal bio-system. The captain stared in awe at the bent metal doors.
Walker ignored the sounds of Wasps in the surrounding corridors and concentrated on reaching the theater as quickly as possible. Passengers would be safer in their cabins than huddled in a group. They could round up stragglers later. Rescuing the besieged passengers in the theater was his first priority. Twice, they encountered Wasps using the stairs to prowl the bowels of the ship in search of prey. Corporal Hightower’s minigun made short work of them, singing its own high-pitched song as its rotating barrels spewed deadly lead into their bodies. Walker had hoped to reach the survivors without incident but that was proving impossible. To the Wasps, gunfire meant human activity, and they would soon home in on the sound. He pushed the pace.
When he heard noises on the landing below, Walker raised his hand and clenched his fist to halt the men behind him. More Wasps or just another passenger? he wondered. He edged around the corner and came face to face with a man wielding a fire axe. The man held the axe over his head ready to deliver a blow, his face a mask of fear and rage. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw Walker. He gasped and fell back against the wall to catch his breath, resting the head of his axe on the floor. Walker noted the fresh Wasp bloodstains on the warrant officer’s white uniform, surprised that he had fought off at least one of the creatures armed only with an axe. The five passengers with him, three women of various ages, a young boy in his mid-teens, and a man in his seventies, surged forward.
“Are you here to rescue us?” the axe-wielding man asked between gasps of air.
“Please help us,” one of the women pleaded.
Walker surveyed the passengers for wounds but saw none. “How many are in the theater?” he asked.
The warrant officer shook his head. “I don’t know … forty, fifty maybe.” He suddenly lurched forward and grabbed the front of Walker’s fatigues. “There were hundreds of us. The creatures … they got in. They’re everywhere.” He glanced back down the stairs as if expecting a Wasp to attack at any moment.
Too late, Walker thought, bitter at the delay above deck that might have cost so many lives. Ten minutes might have made the difference. Now, hundreds of passengers were dead and his team was at greater risk.
“Where were you going?” he asked.
The warrant officer pointed up the stairs. “To the lifeboats. The ship is sinking.”
“The Wasps are on the decks above. It’s dangerous out there.”
“It can’t be any worse than down there. It’s a slaughterhouse. I’d rather die on deck than go down with the ship.”
Walker knew he couldn’t allow them to throw their lives away. He was too late to save the passengers in the theater. He would have to do it the hard way, a few passengers at a time. He sighed in frustration.
“The lifeboats are on the Promenade Deck,” he pointed out. “That’s two levels below us.”
The warrant officer looked back down the stairs and stared at him in shock. “I … I got turned around. The blood …” His voice trailed off.
“McGregor, take these people to the lifeboats. Take three men with you. I’ll send any stragglers your way. Keep them there until we make our break.”
He looked into McGregor’s eyes and saw the captain was thinking exactly what he was thinking – they would be sitting ducks in the lifeboats – but they had no choice. They could not afford to wait for a rescue vessel, and the Osprey could not land on the ship to pick up survivors.
“Costas, Rhoades, Perez, Watts – come with me.”
He pushed past the startled passengers and hurried down
the stairs. Just as they reached Deck 8, the ship shuddered with half a dozen hard impacts from below. The low groan of sheering metal vibrated through the hull. It might have been the ship settling deeper in the water, but he doubted it. The creatures that had sunk the two submarines and holed the cruise ship had returned to finish the job. Instead of hours, they might have only minutes before the ship went down.
As they continued deeper into the ship, they encountered a trickle of passengers fleeing the theater and directed them to McGregor’s group. Walker was dismayed that they met so few survivors and so many Wasps. They didn’t have time for a proper sweep. They killed the Wasps blocking their path and those attacking passengers, but ignored the rest. He also tried to ignore the screams echoing down the corridors and rising from deeper below decks, but with little success. They filled his head like the tolling of the bell for the dead, one ring for each dead passenger. It would take a long time to ring out three thousand times.
On Deck 7, the passengers had erected barricades from anything they could find to seal the entrances to the theater. The flimsy obstacles proved no match for the determination and strength of the Wasps. The creatures had pushed the barricades aside like a toddler wading through a pile of building blocks.
When he turned a corner and saw a Wasp with a struggling human grasped in its forelimbs, Walker’s battle concentration lapsed for a moment, and his anger burst forth. He raced at the creature firing his weapon at the creature’s head. The Wasp refused to drop its prey, instead trying to back away down the corridor. He backed it into the lounge. When his SCAR clicked on empty, he pulled his 9 mm Beretta and continued firing from point blank range. The Wasp bit the passenger’s head from the body, discarded the headless corpse, and lunged at Walker. A burst from Rhoades’ Mk46 cut short the creature’s attack. Walker stared at the creature’s corpse, cursing himself for his stupidity. He tried to refocus and regain his battle calm. Unbridled anger served no purpose in the heat of battle. Any lapse of concentration could prove deadly, had almost been his downfall. Mistakes could kill. He took a deep breath, nodded his thanks to Rhoades, and continued.
The theater was a gore-ridden feeding zone. The stench of alien spore and human blood and guts assaulted his senses. The emergency lights were out, creating deep shadows that could easily conceal Wasps. He flicked on the flashlight attached to the barrel of his weapon. The beam revealed corpses and parts of bodies everywhere – lying across seats, on the stairs, in the aisles, even strewn across the stage. Pools of blood, amputated limbs, and piles of human entrails from eviscerated corpses dotted the floor and seats. Wasps fed on some of the dead, while taking others back to feed the Kaiju. Two or three small groups of survivors huddled in corners fending off attacking Wasps any way they could, with empty shotguns, axes, and pieces of broken railings.
He motioned for Rhoades and Watts to take the starboard side, while he, Costas, and Perez took the port side as they fanned out across the upper level. Perez, seven inches shorter than Costas, looked every bit as deadly with her MP5 as she knelt behind a trashcan.
“What does the M. stand for?” Costas asked her, nodding at her nametag.
“Mad Dog,” she answered, and then bared her teeth for effect.
“No, really,” Costas insisted.
“Maddy. Magdalena Rosa Perez, but Maddy will do.”
“Flirt on your own time, Sergeant,” Walker told him.
They each picked targets, and at a signal from Walker, began firing. Walker took aim at one Wasp circling the theater just below the ceiling, loosed three quick bursts from his SCAR, and watched its bullet-riddled corpse drop from the sky onto the floor. It thrashed about for a few seconds and went still.
Strangely, the Wasps inside the theater offered only token resistance. Most chose escape over attack, a decided change in their normal behavior. His team proceeded down the staircases and quickly dispatched the few remaining creatures. As soon as they had cleared the theater, the survivors rushed toward them. Many still wore life vests. All were frightened and exhausted from battling the Wasps, but their eyes shone with renewed hope. Walker hoped it wasn’t misplaced.
“Rhoades! Perez! Escort this group to join Captain McGregor.” He tapped the PTT, the push-to-talk button Velcro strapped to his wrist to activate his radio. “McGregor, I’m sending Rhoades and Perez back with more survivors. If we’re not there in ten minutes, don’t wait for us. Launch the lifeboats. Save as many as you can.”
The ship rolled to port and bobbed as it sought balance. Rhoades glanced at Perez and the pair hustled the survivors toward the exit.
“Costas, Watts. We’ll take the corridor. If I were hiding from Wasps, I would go backstage.”
Descending the steps and exiting through the side door, they moved toward the backstage area. Sounds of scraping drew his attention to the door they had just exited. Suddenly, the door crashed open and a Wasp burst through. Costas turned his M107 on it, concentrating on the unprotected flesh just beneath its throat exposed when the creature raised its head. It reared toward upwards as the .50 caliber rounds struck home, bringing down a section of ceiling on top of it. Costas continued firing until the creature stopped moving, and then placed a round in its head for good measure.
Walker hesitated before the backstage door when he heard more noises behind it. Fearing another Wasp, he cast an uncertain glance at Costas, who shrugged his shoulders and shoved a fresh ammo clip into his weapon. Walker turned the doorknob and threw the door open wide, his weapon leveled at whatever he might find inside. Instead of Wasps, his flashlight illuminated a tall man with long black hair tucked beneath a Stetson. He turned his head aside to avoid the blinding light. The man’s cowboy hat and cowboy boots were oddly out of place among the sandals and deck shoes of the several other survivors with him. The Gurkha kukri he carried in his left hand and the Ruger .357 caliber pistol he held in the other separated him from the other passengers. The man’s expression was one of amusement rather than fear.
“Don’t just stand there,” Walker said. “If you want to live, you’d better get your ass in gear and come with me.”
He didn’t wait to see if they followed. They had little choice in the matter. The alternative was drowning. He could feel the ship sinking with each step he took, as if the floor was in a slightly different place each time he set his foot down. Costas eyed the young man, giving him the once over. Noting the .357 he carried, he asked, “You know how to use that thing, Cowboy?”
Talent nodded; then opened the cylinder to show Costas his last three rounds. “I could use some ammo. Got any?”
Costas pulled his 9 mm Beretta from his holster. “Here. Use this.” He flicked on the flashlight attached to the Picatinny rail under the barrel and smiled. “Let’s you see what you’re shooting.”
“Name’s Talent,” he said, as he took the pistol, cocked it, and flicked off the safety. “A M9A1 Beretta 9 mm. Nice.” Costas handed him two extra clips. He shoved them in his front pocket and passed the .357 to the man behind him.
Costas smiled at him. “I see you know your weapons. Make me proud, Cowboy.”
Talent grinned at the nickname. “I’m Tohono O’odham. I would be the one on the other side during an attack by savage redskins.”
“Go Redskins,” Costas said.
Walker cautioned them to silence as they came to the stairs. A deep trilling wafted up the stairwell from somewhere below. It reminded Walker of the ululations of Iraqi women mourning their dead. An answering trill came from somewhere above them.
“Squid,” Talent said.
Walker looked at him questioningly.
“It’s what I call the things that attacked the ship. They look like giant squid, but more badass with razor-tipped tentacles that slice through metal like a box cutter through cardboard. You don’t want to fuck with them.”
Walker nodded. “We’ll go around.” He pointed to the casino. “Through there.”
The casino was in shambles. With no power, the machines�
� continuous electronic tunes were silent, and the bright blinking screens were dead. Walker had never seen a silent casino. Casinos used noise to generate invisible partitions between gamblers, creating the illusion of privacy where they could lose without public shame or dance triumphantly amid the cacophony of musical heraldry and the admiration of fellow gamblers when they won. Silent, the room reminded him of a machine graveyard. Like disgruntled losers, Wasps had wrenched many of the slot machines and electronic poker machines from their pedestals and tossed them across the room in an orgy of destruction. One had landed halfway through the glass cashier’s window. A scattering of paper currency littered the counter and the floor. Costas picked up a fifty-dollar bill and shoved it in his shirt pocket.
At Walker’s look of reproach, he said, “What? It’s to pay for the valet parking.”
Crystal chandeliers and lighted glass mosaic panels were now piles of broken glass. Three corpses formed a neat pile against one wall, as if the Wasps had stacked them there for later retrieval.
“Looks like the Temperance League has been here,” Costas quipped, as he kicked aside piles of poker chips. He grinned when he spotted a box of cigars sitting on the counter at the cigar lounge. “Makaleha Hawaiian cigars,” he noted appreciatively as he unwrapped one, stuck it under his nose, and sniffed. “Ah! Smells like Kona coffee.” He stuffed a handful of cigars into one of his pants pockets, laid the fifty-dollar bill on the counter, and continued moving forward.
The rear door of the casino burst inward behind them, slamming into an upended electronic poker machine and shattering the glass screen. A Squid stuck its head inside the casino. When it caught sight of the humans, it opened its mouth, revealing rows of jagged teeth reminding Walker of a lamprey eel from hell. It puffed out its neck, exposing rows of slits on each side. The frilled gill slits began vibrating, and an undulating trill that sent shivers up Walker’s spine spilled from its open mouth. Using four of its tentacles, it pulled its body inside the room, and then rose on the four larger appendages to tower above them.