by J. E. Gurley
This was Walker’s first look at a Squid, and he was duly impressed. With its twenty-foot-long whip-like barbed tentacles, the aptly named Squid was a formidable foe. Unlike Kaiju Ishom, which had landed in the ocean just off the coast of San Francisco by mistake, Kaiju Kiribati was equipped for a water environment. The aliens had learned from their first effort and were hitting humans where bringing sufficient weapons to bear was more difficult – the ocean.
“I’ll handle this,” Watts said. He fired a burst from his MP5/40 at the Squid, hitting it in the head. The bullets drew blood, but the Squid ignored the wounds. It stretched its body to present a smaller profile and scuttled around the room on its tentacles. Watts, infuriated that his shots had no effect, cursed and moved closer to the Squid.
“Watts, hold your position!” Walker yelled, but it was too late. The Squid shot forward with a surprisingly graceful fluid motion and loomed over Watts. Almost too quickly for the human eye to follow, one of the tentacles whipped out and wrapped around the surprised S.E.A.L.’S arms and chest. He screamed in agony as the sharp barbs dug into his flesh. The humerus bones of both arms and his ribcage cracked as the powerful tentacle squeezed. The creature lifted him from the floor and flung him across the room. He crashed into the wall with a sickening crunch and laid still, blood spilling from his open mouth. His MP5/40 skidded across the floor and came to rest beneath a pile of wreckage.
Owens pulled a Glock from the shoulder holster under his left arm and began firing at the Squid as he crossed the room to check on Watts. When the pistol clicked on empty, he reached down and removed Watt’s Mossberg 500 12-gauge shotgun from his dead body. The shotgun had no safety and a shell was already in the chamber. He immediately began firing slugs into the creature. Just as Walker was about to join him, Talent took two steps toward the Squid fired the 9 mm at one of the creature’s eyes.
Walker turned to Costas and said, “Keep them moving,” and then joined the two men. Together, the three of them poured lead into the creature’s head, rupturing two eyes and forcing it back into the corridor where it ripped at the walls with its writhing tentacles. Finally, one of their bullets, or a combination of them, struck a vital organ. It staggered and collapsed. They had bought a couple of minutes of extra time for the others, but the dead Squid had already summoned its companions. He didn’t have time to examine the creature.
He grabbed Owens and pushed him toward the stairs. “Let’s go, old man.”
Owens scowled. “Name’s Owens, Sonny Boy.”
“Let’s go, Owens.” He turned to Talent. “You too, Cowboy.”
Talent grinned and raced up the stairs behind Owens. Walker stopped and looked at Watts. He knew immediately the young S.E.A.L. was dead. Watts’ chest was concave, crushed inward by the brute force of the tentacles. The shattered bones of his arms punched through the skin. He had been dead before he struck the wall.
Walker panicked when he didn’t see McGregor or the survivors on the deck. Then the bone conductor speaker on his headset mic boomed with McGregor’s voice. “We’re on the starboard side of the ship. The port lifeboats are useless because of the ship’s list.”
They reversed course and passed through the ship to the starboard side, where McGregor waited with about thirty passengers.
“Is this it?” Walker asked, eying the small number of survivors.
“There are probably more below decks, but searching for them will take time. It’s your call, Major.” McGregor stared at Walker as he waited for Walker’s order.
Walker’s training argued for him to search for survivors until the last possible minute, but the deeper they went below decks, the more time it would take get back out, and the ship was sinking fast. They could not leave the passengers with them unprotected, and splitting up his team again was a bad idea. Fire Team Bravo had a more compelling mission – the Kaiju – and he had already lost one man. There was no backup. He made his call.
“We have to go. We’ll take two lifeboats and prep a couple more in case someone makes it out behind us.”
McGregor nodded. Walker didn’t know if that would have been McGregor’s call, but he didn’t argue. “Get the boats ready,” McGregor called out to his team. He glanced at Owens holding Watts’ shotgun. “Where’s Watts?”
“Watts didn’t make it,” Walker answered. “A Squid got him.”
McGregor’s face became hard. He fixed Walker with his gaze as if he were staring down the barrel of a rifle. His voice was cold, as he said, “You lost one of my men?”
“He’s one of my men,” Walker snapped. “Watts stepped up when he was needed and went down fighting. He was a good soldier.”
McGregor was not interested in platitudes. He glared at Walker. “You lost your entire team inside Nusku. Are you trying to kill mine now?”
Costas overheard and took a menacing step toward McGregor. Corporal Hightower, muscles bulging from carrying the heavy M134 minigun, stepped between them. Costas, always ready for a fight, grinned at him.
“Bring it on, Navy,” he growled.
“Back off, Costas,” Walker ordered. “Captain McGregor, we’re all expendable. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you find another line of work. We’ve got a job to do, and I won’t make any promises.” To the others, he said, “Lower the lifeboats.”
Upon hearing that they were leaving, one of the passengers cried out, “My wife is still below decks somewhere. We became separated in the confusion.”
Walker looked at the man, so distraught he was shaking. “What deck was she on?”
“The Plaza Deck, Deck 5.” The man’s eyes pleaded for help. He was clearly too frightened to go after her alone, but didn’t want to leave his wife behind.
Walker sympathized with him, but his plight did not sway him. He could not risk the other survivors and his team for one passenger. “I’m sorry. I have to get these people to safety. If you want to try it alone, I’ll lend you my weapon, but we can’t wait for you.”
The man deflated. He glanced away ashamed and humiliated by his crippling fear. He shook his head slowly, and joined the others. Walker’s decision tasted bitter on his tongue, but he couldn’t save everyone. The way things were going, he would be lucky if he could save the rest of his team.
11
Saturday, Dec. 16, 11:30 a.m. Radiant Princess, adrift north of Enderbury Island –
Talent thanked his luck for once more saving his ass. The arrival of the Special Forces fire team had been providential. Faced with only three bullets left in his pistol and Owens’ Glock down to its last clip, things had looked bleak. Beyond all logical reason, trapped below decks with Wasps and Squid on a sinking ship, he was still alive. Unfortunately, he still had plenty of time to die.
Deck 5 was now awash from the stern to amidships. Furniture floated out of broken windows partially submerged by the rising flood. Adding insult to injury, water from the swimming pools on the decks above them cascaded down over their heads as they prepared the lifeboats for launching. The ship was listing to starboard almost fifteen degrees, making it difficult to lower the boats. Talent feared the ship would roll onto its side before they managed to get the lifeboats into the water.
The lifeboats operated on a gravity-fed davit. Once one of the survivors, a deckhand, demonstrated the procedure, it was virtually a hands-free operation. Walker divided the survivors into two groups. Captain McGregor and four members of his team took charge of one group, while Walker and three others took the remainder of the passengers in his boat. He wondered at Walker’s reasoning behind the division. He had watched the confrontation between the captain and Major Walker with great interest, ready to offer his input concerning the soldier’s death if asked, but no one did. It was a classic test of wills between two equally determine men, but Talent considered it bad timing and a poor choice of venue for a pissing contest. He was surprised that Walker didn’t pull rank on his subordinate. The overly neat captain needed slapping down a notch. He didn’t trust a man who spent too
much time on his appearance. It spoke of narcissism.
Talent pulled Owens aside. “I think we should go with the major.”
Owens was puzzled. He removed his cap and ran his fingers through his thinning hair, wincing as they brushed the tender flesh around the knot on the back of his head. “Doesn’t matter to me, but why?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about the captain. He seems a little insecure for a Navy S.E.A.L.”
Owens studied McGregor for a moment as McGregor helped load passengers into one of the lifeboats, and then shrugged. “Seems sane to me, given the circumstances, but I’ll go with your instincts.” He threw Talent a big grin. “We’ve still got each other’s backs, right?”
“Right.”
While three S.E.A.L.S kept watch for Squid and Wasps, the rest lowered four boats from their overhead positions until they were even with the deck. The ship’s list left a yawning chasm between the deck and the lifeboats’ doorways. Two of the S.E.A.L.S used wooden life-jacket lockers to bridge the gap. Walker left a hastily scribbled note explaining the lowering procedure for any survivors that might follow. He also ordered his men to rush up and down the deck lowering more boats all the way to the waterline. At first, Talent was mystified, but then realized the major was providing decoys for the Wasps to attack, improving their chances of escaping undetected. As the boats lowered down the side of the ship, Talent noticed the deep gouges in the hull from the Squids’ keen-edged claws. The larger holes they had ripped in the hull were below the waterline flooding the interior.
As they passed a line of portholes, Talent found himself staring into the distraught face of a middle-aged female passenger trapped in her cabin. She pounded on the glass with her fists, shouting something unintelligible through the glass until the lifeboat passed below the window. The sight made Talent sick to his stomach, but he could do nothing. The window was too narrow for egress even if he broke it out. He turned away and tried not to dwell on the hundreds of other passengers in similar situations scattered throughout the ship, too frightened to flee the safety of their cabins until the water reached their doors. By then it would be too late.
Once in the water, the cables detached automatically from the lifeboats. Rather than immediately starting the engines, Walker allowed the boats to drift slowly away from the ship. As they passed through the wreckage of demolished lifeboats from earlier attempts to flee the sinking ship, Talent saw the wisdom in Walker’s actions. He had hoped some of the lifeboats had gotten away, but by the degree of destruction and amount of debris floating in the water, it looked unlikely. He hoped his group had better luck.
In all, thirty-seven passengers and crew manned the two lifeboats in their group, a small showing for the ship’s four-thousand passengers and crew. He wondered why the Kaiju had bothered with a single cruise ship. Why float around in the ocean, inviting retaliation, simply to eliminate a ship that posed no threat and harvest the human cargo it could have obtained more readily from another island? After wiping out an entire island chain, expending its efforts on such a small target seemed an enormous waste of energy. Then, it struck him – energy was what the creature was all about.
He had read that the Kaiju’s ebony armor was not only impervious to any explosives mankind had thus far thrown at it – even the nuclear bomb exploded inside Kaiju Nusku had not destroyed the shell, only the organic matter inside – the shell was also photovoltaic, a massive, highly efficient solar panel providing energy to the creature. It absorbed all forms of energy, conveying it to the giant power storage organ deep inside the creature. Humans were simply another source of energy to keep the creature moving forward in its mission of destruction. The last two days had been cloudy. No matter how efficient the creature was at converting sunlight to energy, no sun meant less energy.
The thought that his fellow passengers had died simply because the creature needed a light snack soured his stomach. The creature and its alien masters infuriated him. He knew it was insane, but he hated the Kaiju. He had never hated anything more than he now hated the creature and the aliens. He was beginning to understand Owens’ thirst for revenge. A Kaiju had destroyed Chicago, his home. Everything he esteemed, everyone he knew, was gone. The attack had been a personal affront and had become even more personal when it attacked the ship.
Talent could not claim that kind of personal vendetta. The Kaiju attack in America had not endangered him in any way, merely inconvenienced him. Even the Kaiju attack on the cruise ship had not elicited more than fleeting sympathy in him for the plight of the passengers. His interest in saving them had not been personal. Even his initial interest in Owens had been because of Owens’ second pistol. If he could have rescued himself by ignoring them, he would have. Only later had he found himself inexplicably entangled in Owens’ crusade to protect the passengers. What had he gotten himself into?
After twenty minutes of drifting, they had placed less than three hundred yards between them and the ship, which continued its death slide to the ocean’s bottom. The bow was riding high out of the water, and waves lapped against the cabin walls of the Promenade Deck. Only three other lifeboats had left the ship after theirs, and the occupants had ignored Walker’s written warning about using the engines. Some of the passengers in Walker’s boat watched the other lifeboats speed past them with envy.
One of the passengers decided to make his views known. He stood up and cried out, “Start the engines, damn it! Those things will come for us.”
“Sit down and shut up before you attract their attention,” Walker told him. “If you make any more noise, I’ll toss you overboard.”
At first, the man looked defiant, returning Walker’s glare as if he weren’t used to someone speaking to him in such a manner. For a moment, it looked as if he were going to continue to protest, but Costas pulled his knife from its sheath and laid it across his lap. “In case you splash when you hit the water,” he said to the man and drew his finger across his throat.
The man eyed the long blade, licked his lips nervously, and sat back down, sullen but silent. Talent liked the pair’s no-nonsense attitude. They were determined to save as many as they could in spite of people’s worst instincts during an emergency. He didn’t have the patience to play savior. He had already invested more effort in being a caring human being in the last few hours than he had in the past ten years. It had been his experience that most people who promoted altruism over self-preservation were invariably the recipients of said altruism. People who never made plans for emergencies often held those who did in self-righteous contempt and overt disdain, even as they cried for their help when a disaster occurred, a troubling human failing for which Talent had no sympathy.
Two of the last three lifeboats to leave made it less than fifty yards beyond them before the Wasps descended on them en masse. Walker did not need to explain his reasoning again after the passengers witnessed the slaughter of their fellow passengers. The third lifeboat, seeing the wisdom in silence, cut its engines and drifted. For now, the Wasps ignored them as they concentrated on ferrying the corpses back to the Kaiju. Talent did not expect the lull to last long.
“How far away is the rescue ship?” he asked.
Walker stared at him for a moment before answering, “The freighter is about fifty miles from here. It’s making about 20 knots. The lifeboats can do maybe 6 knots. Once we start the engines, we should reach it in just over an hour, but I’m hoping for a little unexpected help.”
Behind them, the Radiant Princess, all 110,000 tons of her, hissed and groaned its death song before disappearing beneath the roiling water. The few remaining Wasps now focused their attention on the drifting lifeboats. The third of the last boats to leave, drifting slightly ahead of them, came under attack by two Wasps. The passengers were unarmed, and the Wasps made quick work of them, ripping away the roof and killing the screaming passengers like a ratter after a nest of rodents. Talent wished he hadn’t witnessed the grisly sight. It would haunt him for the rest of his life. Which may
be a short one, he noted, when the two Wasps left the mangled corpses in the lifeboat for other Wasps to leisurely carry off to the waiting Kaiju and moved toward the remaining boats.
Walker spoke quietly into his headset to the other boat. “Stay low, but keep your weapons handy.” He looked at the passengers, frightened and cowering in their seats. “Anyone without a weapon, try to find something to hide behind or crawl under. You others, be ready.”
None of the armed passengers looked ready to fend off Wasps. In fact, they looked like Christians waiting for the lions in a Roman arena, but with less piety. Their desperate eyes searched for somewhere to run, but they had nowhere to go. Talent hoped fear would give them the courage to fight back. He glanced over at Owens. Except for a few cuts and bruises, the former detective seemed eager to fight. For an ex-cop whose job had been protecting citizens, Walker figured Owens’ inability to protect and serve was gnawing at his guts. To Walker, who had never been one for joining in on the reindeer games, fighting to save strangers was a new experience for him. Surprisingly, it suited him better than he had imagined.
No, it’s just my Indian blood stirred up, he consoled himself. I still despise people.
He watched the Wasps methodically demolish one of the empty decoy lifeboats, taking it apart a piece at a time in search of prey. The next boat suffered a similar fate. Now, the only two boats were Walker’s and McGregor’s. Talent tightened his grip on the 9 mm and watched Walker, waiting for a sign to open up on the creatures as they approached. He had to give the major his props. He was as cool as a frosty pitcher of margaritas as he watched the Wasps drawing nearer. Then he spoke softly into his headset.
“Start your engines and pick your targets.”
As soon as the diesel engine of their lifeboat cranked, the Wasps homed in on the noise. Talent broke out the window beside him and laid the barrel of his Beretta on the sill. Owens took a window on the opposite side of the craft with his Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun. Costas chose the forward windows of the upper level. He stood with his .50 caliber SASR cradled in his arms and pointed at the windows. Walker covered one door with his 7.62 mm SCAR L-CQC, and Private Stimson covered the other door with his MP5/40 caliber.