Free Range Protocol- Tales of the Tschaaa Infestation

by Marshall Miller

  Heidi felt a lump in her throat. “Aw, damnit, you shouldn’t have!” She took it, found it fit perfectly.

  “Unless my partners here have an objection, this is your one and only payment. Joseph, James. Okay?”

  “Fine with us,” James answered from the boat. “You’ll have to find something to carry your fish in. We have a limited amount of carriers.”

  Stan pulled a large garbage bag from under his loose fitting shirt. James and Joseph helped them select enough of the catch so as not to overburden the bag.

  “If you see us go out, when we come in, you can have the extra,” Heidi told them. “Where are you staying?”

  “We were trapped in the office building a few blocks up. It’s where we worked together. We have been living off what we could find in the offices, watching for those god awful harvesters. There are some also not so nice humans floating around… we have been laying low.”

  Heidi looked at Joseph and James, They must have realized what she was thinking as they both nodded slightly.

  “Grab you stuff and come on over to our apartment building. There are plenty of rooms, and we have a couple of small generators for electricity when we need it. We have access to decent water also.”

  That was the beginning of about a year of relatively benign existence. Stan soon proved to be an excellent scrounger and tinkerer, finding needed items in the area around the apartments, as well as being able to get almost any machine to work. Joan had been taking night classes to be an EMT, to get out of the office work, so she had some decent medical knowledge. And she was one hell of a cook. Bring her the most basic items, she could make a scrumptious meal out of them. She was soon the official cook and food preparer, an expert in salting and preserving fish.

  They also brought some religion with them, being transplanted Mormons. They had come to Miami for job opportunities, hoping to return to their family in Utah someday. Heidi had told them not to try and convert Pablo, a good Catholic, as it would not be fair to such a young boy. Heidi was a lapsed Methodist, Joseph and James Unitarians. After a discussion, every Sunday morning became a time of rest, with a formal group meal early in the afternoon. They had found a larger dining table with extra leaves and managed to squeeze it into Joseph and James’ place. They would all help to prepare the meal. Then one of them would say grace. The human concept of religion gave them a bit of comfort, hope, that things would be different. Stan told them stories of the trial and tribulations of the creation of the Mormon Church, the trek to Utah. Heidi told stories of growing up in a martial arts dojo, learning numerous ways to hurt and maim people. She also began teaching Joan and Stan some of her Jiu-Jitsu techniques, as well as Eskrima knife and stick techniques. Then John and James told stories of being gay.

  When Stan and Joan had first realized the men’s homosexuality, they had a private conference. Then, Stan had talked to Heidi, Josh and James, while Joan kept Pablo busy. They liked each other, Joan becoming an aunt to Pablo, though he still came to Heidi for major advice and guidance.

  Stan took a deep breath, then began. “I was always taught to be honest. So, here it goes. My religion views homosexuality as a sin. But, the Prophets also did not exactly foresee the Squids. I see, Joseph and James, that you two seem to …love each other. You are also two of the nicest, most morally honest people we, Joan and I, have met in a long time. Pablo seems to love you like older brothers, or uncles.”

  Stan paused, waiting for a reaction, then continued. “So, it is a case of not liking the sin, but loving the sinner. You are humans who fought the Squids. I think it is safe to say that they are the Ultimate Sin, an abomination. But God allowed them to exist, so they must have a purpose also, though I have no idea what that is. Bottom line, I will not try to judge or convert you. I would appreciate it if you did not try to…convert me. Or Pablo.”

  Joseph began to laugh, then James. Stan looked at them quizzically until James spoke. “We were gay by birth. Do you think we chose to be different than the majority of people? So no, we do not convert people. We are not goddamn child molesters!”

  Stan turned a bit red. “I did not mean…”

  “Oh, we know that! It just always comes up. But, since a bunch of straight people seem to like little girls, I guess it is logical to assume we might like little boys.”

  John broke in. “Look, like you said. We’re all humans. Whatever differences we have, I think we can forget them for the foreseeable future. I think to avoid getting eaten by some alien piece of shit is more important than worrying about how we have sex—or with whom. Right?”

  “Agreed,” Stan answered. He put his hand out. John shook his hand, then hugged him.

  “You are a nice man, Stan Johnson. Hopefully, someday you and Joan will have your own family. Right now, I think it’s all of us here.”

  “Damn, you are all making me teary eyed,” Heidi broke in. “Can we stop with this love fest and get ready to eat? I’m starving!”

  James looked at her. “The reason they don’t send a donkey to school is because they don’t like smartasses, Petty Officer Faust. Ow! Quit jabbing me in the ribs!”

  Heidi grinned. “Rank doesn’t mean anything now, does it? Now, come here James, I need some lovin’…” She grabbed him in a hug and tried to kiss him.

  “Damn it! You know I don’t swing that way. Damn lady wrestler!”

  Joseph was laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes. Stan was laughing also.

  “Hey, what’s going on in there?” Joan’s voice came from the other room.

  “Just telling dirty jokes, Joan,” Heidi replied.

  “Well, when you are all through corrupting my husband, come on in and help me set the table. It’s getting time to eat.”

  After over a year of living together, celebrating birthdays, holidays, Christmas, they were a tight family. Joan broke the news that she was pregnant and everyone celebrated. The weather had been very cold, but they had survived together. A few other survivors appeared, bartering for fish, swapping stories about what was going on. Occasionally, someone would start broadcasting on a local radio transmitter they had managed to set up and passed on what they knew about the world under the Tschaaa.

  Humankind was surviving, after a fashion.

  Heidi and the others would come back from a fishing trip, take the catch to the apartment to be divided. About another dozen people had moved into the complex, trying to keep a low profile. So far so good. No harvester robs had shown up since almost a year ago. The only Squids seen were around the reefs outside Miami Bay. No lizards or greys were seen either.

  Heidi had seen a robocop one day as they were unloading the Open Fisherman. She froze, as did John, James and Pablo. He was on shore, about a hundred yards away, staring at them.

  “Oh fuck!” Heidi exclaimed. She knew the light weapons they had would mean nothing against this armored giant. All she could do was to give a silent prayer. Suddenly, the robocop waved at them. So Heidi waved back. It watched them for a few moments, then turned and strode off. Heidi realized she had been holding her breath. She finally let it out.

  One day, about two weeks after waving at the robocop, a Haitian couple suddenly showed up, much the worse for wear. Elsie and Alain Bertrand had been visiting relatives on a tourist visa when the rocks hit. They soon found a basement to hide in when the harvesters showed up. The couple barely had water to survive with, not to mention food. The Haitians had eventually came out at night, scrounging what they could find. They found the remains of a bodega that provided a day’s shelter and some food, until feral dogs showed up. Grabbing what they could, they ran to the next block. Barricading themselves in a coffee shop just a mile from the apartment building where Pablo lived, they had stayed put. At least they had a source of water. There were a few snacks left, and they went out to nearby cars to scavenge. Somehow, they survived, dodging a harvester rob or two. Then, they saw the first Church of Kraken.

  The ones they saw were literally slaughtering a human being on the
street, as if it were the most normal thing to do. They had been in hiding ever since.

  Finally, food gone, they had left their hiding place and just happened to see Heidi and company coming back in the boat. After watching them, they had approached them, as they were taking their catch back to the apartment building.

  Heidi, Jame, and Joseph, seeing their gaunt condition, took them back to the apartments, found a place for them, and some fish to eat. Two weeks passed.

  Pablo had kind of taken them under his wing, feeling a desire to help two people worse off than he was. He was downstairs on the first floor with them as they went through empty apartments to find any additional clothes, bedding and other incidentals for them.

  Heidi kept the apartment stairway doors open so that she could hear if they needed any help. She was still very protective of Pablo, even when he was with other adults.

  Heidi was sitting on the fire escape stairs at the end of the apartment building, looking at the streets and buildings in the area. Nothing seemed to have changed in the last few weeks.

  Then she heard a scream emanating from downstairs, followed by another.

  She was up and running before she realized it, her pistol in hand. She took the stairs two, three at a time, risking breaking an ankle. She reached the bottom, the first floor, looking for Pablo. Nothing.

  Gun at close-in ready position, she made her way down the hallway. Then she found the blood. There was a large pool and spattering on the walls from an apparent arterial spurt. There were signs of a body being dragged around the corner at the end of the hallway, into the main entrance of the apartment buildings. Heidi did a quick cut the pie around the corner, saw the front double doors swinging shut. She ran as fast as she could, still scanning for threats, and made it to the front doors, moving low through it.

  She glanced to the left, in a southern direction. That’s when she saw them.

  Three Krakens. One had a loose Pablo slung over his shoulder. Another had Elsie thrown over his shoulder, blood dripping from her throat, The last Kraken was dragging Alain on his back by his leg, a large swath of blood being left by the now dead Haitian.

  Heidi was screaming and shooting before she even realized it. The head of the Kraken carrying Pablo on his shoulder exploded into a red mist and the now dead man collapsed into a heap. The Kraken dragging Alain spun around, an unnoticed pistol in his hand. Heidi and the man both fired at the same instance, the pistol in Heidi’s hand being knock from her grasp by a bullet impact. Her shot struck the Kraken in an unprotected chest, causing the man to stumble, then collapse.

  The third Kraken male had dropped Elsie and pulled a razor sharp butcher knife from his belt. His face was one large tattoo of a devilfish octopus, an affection becoming popular with hardcore Church of Kraken members. Seeing a now apparently unarmed foe, a smaller female at that, he sneered. “You just signed your death warrant, bitch!” He rushed to Heidi. He didn’t stand a chance.

  A balisong butterfly knife appeared in Heidi’s left hand as if from nowhere. She sidestepped the Kraken’s thrust, then severed the fingers of his knife hand with her balisong. As the man screamed and dropped his butcher knife, Heidi thrust her razor sharp balisong into his lower abdomen. She cut sideways, then jumped back as the Kraken’s intestines began to spill out. The man screamed and fell to his knees, as he tried to hold in his guts.

  Heidi went to where Pablo had fallen. He was still, unmoving. As Heidi reached down to him, she saw a deep puncture wound at the base of his skull. The blood from the wound had been running down inside of his shirt and his hair, concealing the seriousness of the wound.

  “Pablo! Pablo!” Heidi cried out, gently shaking him. But she knew he was gone.

  By now, the other apartment dwellers were coming into the area, all of them armed in some way. But it was all over. From the time of the screams to the time of Heidi reaching Pablo, only some two minutes had passed.

  The Kraken who was still alive was crying, still trying to hold his intestines in. Heidi stepped away from Pablo and towards the Kraken. She reached down and grabbed an exposed piece of intestine and began to pull. The man screamed so loud Heidi thought he would deafen some of those around him.

  “Any more of you motherfuckers around?” Heidi asked in a low voice.

  “No!” the Kraken cried out.

  Heidi let his guts loose. “Why did you come here?”

  “We heard there were some dark meat around to be gotten,” the dying man gasped out.

  “Just couldn’t leave the harvesting to the Squids, you piece of shit!” Heidi kicked him in his exposed intestines and the man fainted. She turned, walked over and gently picked up Pablo. She began to carry him back into the apartments entrance way.

  Someone asked, “What do we do with him?”

  “Fuck, I don’t care. I need to bury my dead.”

  The family buried its dead. Stan and Joan dressed Pablo in his favorite shirt and pants. They found a couple of his favorite toys and the teddy bear that he had given his mother. Stan crafted a beautiful coffin for him. Then the group went a bit Viking, finding an outboard motor boat they could use. They put Pablo in it, piled some wood around his coffin and soaked it in gasoline. Heidi pulled it out into the Bay with the Open Fisherman, set it adrift. She backed off and set it ablaze with a flare gun. Pablo loved fishing with them. Now he could fish forever.

  The family group tried to get back to fishing. But it was not good. Heidi would go along, memories of Pablo would pop up, and she’d start crying. There were too many memories.

  So Heidi decided to stay behind, on shore, watching for Krakens. However, the last trip she took with Joseph and James to make sure the Tschaaa were still comfortable with humans fishing, something very strange happened.

  They were about a quarter mile out from the Government cut, slowly trawl fishing, when a bunch of small figures popped up, surrounding the Open Fisherman. Heidi immediately cut the engines.

  “Shit. Little ones. Young Tschaaa.”

  She and the two airedales knew how protective the Tschaaa were to their young. They had seen a couple of strangers in a boat a few months prior that had stumbled into a small group of young, having gotten too close to a reef breeding area. They had panicked, started splashing about. Within seconds an armed Squid appeared and skewered both with their version of a harpoon before the two humans knew what had happened. After the bodies had bled out into the water, a group of young Squid appeared, crawled aboard the small craft and started to feed as best they could at their young age. All this was under the watchful eye of the adult.

  Now, they were in danger of the having the same fate.

  Joseph slowly raised his assault weapon.

  “Hold on, guys. Let’s see if my boobs will give us luck again.”

  Heidi bent over the gunwale.

  “Hey, youngsters,” she tried to say in a soft and calm voice. “Sorry to bother you. We’re just passing…”

  Two large eyes of an adult appeared just under the surface, then the head and torso broke into the open air. Heidi weighed grabbing for her military fighting knife, then hesitated. The adult had no observed weapon. And, its two tentacles, the ones with the hand structures, were empty. Heidi looked closer. The tentacles were shorter than usual, the fingers on the hands seemed longer and slender. Then it dawned on her.

  The humans had been able to garner some information over the last year or so. One bit was that there were male and female Tschaaa, the female Breeders having shorter social tentacles. This was the first time Heidi had ever seen one.

  Heidi’s eyes were a bit red as she had been crying, as memories had come up again. The Squid seemed to be looking specifically at her face with the extra-large and sensitive eyes, taking in every pore in her face. Heidi swallowed.

  “Hello, young lady. How are you?” She tried to motion to James and Joseph to stay still. Then the strange happened.

  Very slow and sure, the Tschaaa female reached up with its right tentacle hand, and touc
hed Heidi’s cheek. The fingers felt like soft wisps, feather-like as it explored her face, went up to below her tear stained eyes.

  “Yeah. I’ve been crying. I lost a young one, like family. It hurts.” Heidi had no idea why she said that, but then some tears came.

  The soft and sensitive fingers touched the tears, rubbed the moisture between opposable thumb and fingers. Heidi then heard a soft and rhythmic tone emanate from the female.

  For some reason, Heidi reached out and gently grasped the hand of the female and supposed Breeder. The fingers of the two species touched, held on for several moments. Then, the Tschaaa slowly removed its hand. A slightly lower and louder tone was heard, and the young disappeared below the surface. The female looked at Heidi, its sensitive eyes seemed to take in every part of the human face and body. Then it slid beneath the water and was gone.

  The three humans sat silent in the boat for several minutes, as if afraid to disturb what had just happened. Finally, Joseph spoke.

  “It now knows you, Heidi. Fantastic as it may seem, but that…first contact beyond them trying to eat us…” He shivered, went quiet.

  “It was a female thing,” Heidi said. “Two women meeting, having young being a common bond. It knew. She knew. I had lost Pablo. Only a female Breeder would notice that. I know that now.” She took a breath, let it out.

  “Let’s not push our luck. We’ll trawl on the way back in, maybe pick a few small fish.”

  On the slow way back in, Heidi thought she saw some young Squids near their trawl lines. When they reached the dock, pulled in the lines—stuck on the hooks were some rather large fish.

  “Those are not hooked like normally caught fish,” James said.

  “That was a present from that female, the Breeder. And as they say, never look a gift horse in the mouth. Come on. Back home. Joan and the others can dress this fish. And we can have a good meal. In memory of Pablo.”

  After that, Heidi kept watch for Krakens and other threats from the top of the apartments. They had located a scoped .300 Winchester magnum rifle in the trunk of a car one day. Heidi now claimed it and used a few rounds to make sure it was sighted in. The next time a Kraken or some other threat came by, she’d take them out as far away as she could. After the contact with the female Tschaaa, Heidi knew they were not in any threat of being harvested by the Tschaaa. Slaughtered by asshole humans, Krakens, yes. So, she kept watch.