Ben kept slamming his fists against the door, his knuckles and the sides of his hands already bloody and ragged. His face was purple as he begged and cursed. “I didn’t do anything to you! You…you have to let us in…”
Gentry turned his body, donkey kicked the door with every ounce of strength he could find. The door rattled in its frame, but held strong.
Something hit the wall, just to Gentry’s left. He saw just a quick flash of silver before whatever it was fell down to the deck below.
“Fuck!”
More fish leapt from the sea, slammed their bodies into the boat. A dolphin dove up out of the ocean so high, Gentry thought the thing would sail clear over the boat. It flipped in midair, its back cracking against the side of the wheelhouse. As it fell, its tail slapped Ben on the top of the head before rolling down the stairs and flopping drunkenly on the deck.
Ben fell, cupped his head. Gentry reached out and grabbed hold of Ben’s arm before he fell down the stairs behind the dolphin. Blood ran down Ben’s face, a gash on his scalp pumping blood and soaking his hair.
“You all right?” Gentry parted his friend’s hair, combed through it with his fingers, but didn’t see any barnacles or shell, none of the tiny crustaceans.
Ben seemed dazed, lost. His eyes looked like they wanted to shut on him, and Gentry slapped his friend lightly in the face. “Ben! Talk to me!”
Something else hit the wheelhouse, followed by the sound of glass shattering and a scream.
“Emma!” Gentry launched a fresh, adrenaline fueled attack on the door.
—12—
Emma had been staring at Clyde crawl his way over the edge of the boat, his mouth wide open, those fucking black worms writhing out from where his throat had been cut. She could only look at him for a few seconds before collapsing to the floor and whimpering into her arm.
The door rattled as Gentry and Ben banged on it, slammed against it. She pulled on her wrists until the skin ripped and blood flowed against the ropes, but couldn’t get them loose. She growled and screamed at the same time, trying to conjure as much adrenaline as she could.
The tuna exploded through the glass maybe a minute later, and landed just beside her. The fish was nearly the size of her leg, a long, wide tube of muscle. Barnacles covered its belly and face, and the moment it hit the floor, the tentacles flowed out, wriggled and swirled.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Emma quickly rose to her feet, spinning the wheel and wincing from the twisting pain. She tried to kick the fish away from her, but the moment her foot got near it, a tentacle lunged at her sneaker, its tip scoop-shaped and sharp. It slid across the bottom of her shoe, fileting off a strip of rubbed.
The smug look that Pete had been wearing since sliding his knife across Clyde’s throat melted off his face, and he glared at the tuna as it flopped and jumped, the wheelhouse too small for him to make an escape. Gentry and Ben continued their assault on the door, and as Emma watched it rattle in its frame, she noticed the sliding lock shaking, the metal rusted, the screws loose. Pete saw it too, and he glared at the broken window as if contemplating jumping through it.
“Gentry!” Emma screamed. “The door’s busted. Keep hitting—”
Pete lunged at her, swung his fist and hit her in the mouth. Her head bounced back, knees went weak. As she fell forward, her momentum swung the wheel, which only launched her toward the floor harder and faster. Her forehead and nose smashed into the floor, and the only thing she was aware of in that moment was the taste of blood in her mouth and the flashing purple dots in her vision. It was as if the pain needed a second to catch up, and when it did, Emma grunted, whimpered, spat a wad of thick blood on the floor, centimeters away from the tuna.
One of the tentacles darted forward, scraped its tip across the blood, ripping away a splintered chunk of wood with it. The appendage retracted back into its shell, the barnacle clicking shut. More of the threads stretched, reached for Emma’s bleeding wrists.
“Goddamnit,” Pete said, and then hopped over the tuna toward a rusted, metal tool box sitting beside the steering wheel. Sweat poured down his face as he fumbled with it.
The tuna flopped closer, its mouth opening and closing, its massive black eye darting between Pete and Emma.
Pete growled, yanked a pistol from the toolbox. He glared at the rattling door, then down at the tuna. Aimed the pistol, squeezing one eye shut and lowering himself slightly.
There was a sound like air escaping, and a cloud of white liquid erupted from the barnacles on the tuna’s face, sprayed Pete in the hand, some of it splattering across his neck and chest.
He dropped the gun instantly, shook his hand like he just touched a hot iron, wiped at his neck with his other hand. Panic started to take over as the liquid sizzled over his skin, bubbling like egg whites in a frying pan.
Emma tried to distance herself as much as she could from the fish, clenching her teeth, bracing herself for another spray of the acidic fluid. Blood dripped from her face and puddled on the floor, and the tentacles darted for it instantly, scraping it away and pulling back into their shells.
The rope was already stained with her blood, but she swirled her tongue through her mouth, collected as much blood and saliva as she could, then slowly let it stretch from her lips, like a kid trying to gross out his friends, sucking the saliva string back into his mouth just as it was about to touch the ground. Only Emma didn’t suck it back up, let it soak into the rope.
She spun the wheel so that her hands and the rope were as close to the tuna’s stretching tentacles as possible.
Three tentacles lunged at the rope, burying their scooped tips into it. Emma screamed, expecting to feel her skin being shredded underneath, the tentacles digging into her flesh. But they retracted back into their shells quickly, taking chunks of bloody rope with them.
Emma pulled with her hands, the rope now tattered and torn, though still tight enough to keep her there. She bared her teeth, pulled her knee to her chest so she could brace her foot up against the wheel. A scream tore from her throat as she pulled, the rope sanding down her skin as it scraped across.
With a final agonizing tug and a throat-shredding shriek, her bleeding hands slipped free. She quickly kicked away from the tuna just as more tentacles speared outward, plunging into the remaining rope.
Pete still roared as he thrashed, and it was then that Emma realized that the barnacles had been feeding on him. Pete’s leg, from the knee down, had been stripped of at least half of its meat, blood raining and pouring down from the open limb. The black, slimy appendages scooped out more meat, bit by bit, pulling it back into the shell where it would disappear with a loud click!
“Emma! Emma, are you all right!”
Gentry’s voice, then more pounding on the door.
Emma was about to respond, but her eyes landed on the discarded pistol on the floor between the fish and Pete. White smoke swirled off the gun’s handle and barrel, the white liquid as thick as children’s glue glazing the metal.
“Fuck!”
“Emma!”
Emma searched the tiny room for gloves, anything she could use to cover her hands, but found nothing. Without hesitating, she ripped her shirt over her head, tore it in half, and wrapped her hands in the fabric as quickly as she could.
“No!” Pete growled, his face smoking and blistering. “You little bitch!”
Emma grabbed the gun, pulled it off the floor and quickly jumped away. The tentacles on the tuna swung at her, missed by a hair. Her back collided with the wall behind her, and she pointed the gun at Pete who was already pouncing toward her. Tentacles were buried in his flesh, and when he jumped for her, he dragged the tuna across the floor with him.
Emma couldn’t find the trigger through the thickness of the fabric on her hands, and she screamed both in fear and frustration as Pete reached for her.
The door swung open then, the lock breaking off the wall it was screwed into. The door slammed into Pete, threw him backward, stumbling. Blood
pumped from his mutilated leg, and the old man growled and grunted as he lost his footing.
His body flipped backward, broken glass scraping across his head and back as he fell through the window. The tuna slid across the floor, the black threads flailing like mad, and then it too went out. A second later there was a sickening, crunching thud.
“Oh shit,” Gentry said, gawking at the broken window, the blood-stained, jagged glass.
A whimper escaped Emma’s lips, and she instantly threw herself into Gentry, wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Oh fuck me!” Ben fell into the room, landing hard on his ass, but jumped quickly back to his feet, pointing at the open door.
The writhing tentacles came into view first like the thrashing ectoplasm of an evil spirit. Clyde trudged forward, the barnacles on his throat thick, winking and clicking.
“Oh God…” Emma shoved away from Gentry, raised the gun, pointed it at Clyde’s grimacing face. Her hands shook, fingers paralyzed.
“Give me that shit!” Ben yanked the gun from her hands.
“Ben wait!” she screamed, but he already had his hands wrapped around the handle, already fired three shots into his brother’s chest.
Clyde stumbled backward, then flipped over the railing and was gone.
“Ahhh!” Ben wailed and threw the gun to the floor, pulled his sizzling hands to his chest. “What the fuck!”
***
Pete thought he was dead. When he flipped through that window, he had shut his eyes just before impact. He hoped for death. Just wanted it to be over.
But there he was, consciousness slowly flowing back in like the tide. He had landed on his legs, snapping both of them. The tuna that had been feeding on him had detached during the fall, and it now flopped around on the deck along with other fish, all covered in those goddamn barnacles. The leg it had been eating off of was shattered. The bone was splintered, and stuck out like sharp teeth under what meat remained.
The pain in his face and hand still throbbed, but he didn’t have the strength or will to cry about it. He just lay there, motionless, eyes barely open, bathing in his own suffering.
As his vision and mind cleared themselves of the pollution clouding them, he sat up, grimaced at the explosion of hot, electric pain that crackled across every inch of his flesh.
He wasn’t alone.
Not just the countless fish that littered the deck. Not just the whales and sharks and dolphins jumping out of the water, blowing water into the air all around the boat.
The sons of bitches were infested with barnacles, countless clusters of clattering shells. Black flagellum inched out like lizards’ tongues.
He recognized Buford first. A man Pete had looked up to almost as much as his own daddy when he was a boy. The old bastard shambled toward him from his left, his feet knocking against the deck like boulders they were so thick with shell build up. He groaned, made a sound like he was gurgling yogurt.
From his right came Johnny, that loud-mouthed little fucker that Pete was glad to see dead. Or semi-dead. He looked like he had been chewed on by something big. Large chunks of flesh were missing from his torso and limbs, the waterlogged pink meat bloated and hanging in ribbons. Tentacles thrashed from within the wounds as Johnny shuffled forward.
From behind him came Ben’s buddy, the ignorant wetback who had emptied the contents of his belly into the ocean. The boy’s mouth opened and dark juice spilled out. His face was damn near scraped clean of meat, his skull grinning out from the open flesh. The wounds looked fresh, bleeding red along with the frothy black ink and verdant seawater spilling out. Pete recognized him because of the shirt he was wearing.
Pete couldn’t help but cackle as the things closed the distance between him and them. “Come on and get it, you sons of bitches! Come get you a taste!”
Something tickled his scalp, reminded him of when his mother used to run her fingernails through his hair as a child whenever he had trouble sleeping. Thinking about his mother quickly brought on the image of Grace’s face in his mind, eyes bulging, cheeks bleeding and full of hooks. He had tossed her in the back of his truck, took her body out on the boat, fed her to Poseidon and his growling sea belly.
He had kept Aaron’s legs, buried them in his backyard. He would sit out there nightly, talking to his boy, explaining to him how he wouldn’t let his family get away with this.
More tickling on the top of his head, but harder, like needles pressing into his scalp.
Pete wanted to swat at the sensation, but couldn’t muster the strength to lift his arm.
The pain in his face and hand began to dissolve, slowly fade into something else. Something hot and pulsating at his core. Hate. Pure, black hate. He could still feel the little fuckers burrowing into his flesh, scooping out meat to make a nest for themselves.
The hatred flashed in his brain, dark and poisonous, and then was gone again. Making way for the pain and agony to come back, grab hold of his sanity and squeeze like a barbed fist.
The monsters were close enough now that their tentacles could reach Pete, sliding across his skin, scooping out balls of meat.
Something just ahead of him oozed over the side of the boat, slid onto the deck. It hit the wood hard, looked like a living chunk of rock. It stood. Turned. The thing had no jaw, and from the back of its throat, tentacles flailed and squirmed. The cheeks had been ripped wide, and where the gums and teeth should have been were more barnacles, more tentacles.
Pete’s breath caught in his throat. His heart sped up to the point of bursting in his chest. He sat up straighter, winced at the searing pain engulfing his body.
“Grace?”
No. It couldn’t be. It was impossible. He had dumped her into the ocean damn near a year ago. She would be shark food by now, dissolved to nothing by the salt.
But as he watched the thing slide closer and closer to him, the footsteps hard knocks against the wood as the barnacle-encrusted feet slammed down again and again, he knew it was her. Knew it was his wife. Through the barnacles, and even though half of her face was gone, replaced by a colony of hard shell, he couldn’t help but to imagine her expression. That hanging, ugly expression she used to make that used to drive Pete up the wall.
A stream of sloppy seawater spilled from her mouth, splashed over the deck as she came for him. The others were already on him, tearing him apart, consuming him little by little.
The rage came back to the forefront of his mind then. And more than anything, he wanted to hurt something. Kill it. Rip the meat off. He didn’t realize that the tentacles were sprouting from his face until he watched them dig into Grace’s neck, scoop out chunks of jellied, bloated flesh and fat.
Poseidon, you sorry motherfucker! You want me?
The tickling at the top of his head was now an open flame of torture, and just as he became aware of this, he was yanked to his feet, the bones in his legs making a crunching sound as they grinded against each other. Blood poured over his face, blinding him, turning everything red.
Something screeched, and Pete could turn his head just enough to get a look. Another of Ben’s friends. Inside of the cabin. His barnacle-coated face shoved through the small window which looked to have liquefied into molten glass. The tentacles wiggling from his face had a hold of Pete’s scalp, had already peeled it halfway off his skull.
Something snapped, whipped Pete in the back. The door flew open and the boy stumbled out. Pete would have fallen over, his legs too mangled to hold up his weight, but the others had a hold of him, held him in the air as their barnacles fed.
A massive head, black and white, sprung up out of the water. The Killer Whale’s eye landed on Pete, and for a moment, they stared at each other. Then the head dipped back out of sight.
There was a loud bang and the boat rocked to its side. Pete and all the others slid across the wet deck, toward the edge where the whale had just taken a peek at them. A wave of water splashed into the boat from behind them, sweeping them off their feet.
&n
bsp; Pete rolled, hit something, and the next thing he knew, he was submerged.
Fish darted past him in all directions, some hitting him directly, ripping away chunks and pieces. Grace was still attached to him, her stony arms wrapped around him from behind, the tendrils from her barnacles tearing into him.
Take me, you cocksucker!
A titanic shadow passed under him.
And then the ocean swallowed him whole.
—13—
“We have to get the fuck out of here,” Gentry said as he picked himself up off the floor, and then pulled Emma to her feet. He had watched the horde of men, or what used to be, tossed overboard along with Uncle Pete. The water swirled and bubbled where they went under, and then a flurry of fins and tails thrashed over the spot.
And they were gone.
But even with Pete gone, they still had the ocean to worry about, not to mention the dead didn’t seem to stay dead out there. Every ticking second was precious.
“How?” Emma said. “Can you drive a boat? Do you even know where we are or how to get back?” She paced back and forth in the tiny room, eyes darting between Gentry’s face and the ocean.
“We can f-float.” Ben sat on the floor, just in front of the doorway, his hand squeezed into a fist and held up against his chest.
“What?” Gentry said.
“I’ve been thinking about…what Cobb said.” Ben suddenly bared his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut.
“You all right?” Gentry said, and dashed toward his friend, but Ben shook his head, held out his good hand as if signaling Gentry to stay away from him.
“Those fucking things. They’re in me, man. I can f-feel them under my skin. D-digging. Ahhhh!”
Gentry took a step toward Ben again, wanting desperately to help, do something to fix things. Emma grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back toward her, interlocked her fingers with his.
Parasite Deep Page 14