Crustaceans

by Meikle, William

  Stark waved her away. He talked into his own mouthpiece for several seconds.

  The woman was insistent.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “Full scale terrorist alert. There’s a ferry heading towards Manhattan, and they’ve lost contact with it. It’s sailing blind, and on a collision course with Pier 8.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “That’s the easy part,” he said. “I take a team aboard and check it out.”

  “And if it’s them? The crabs?”

  “Then we’ll take them out.”

  Stark felt the old excitement rise.

  Maybe I can finally get some payback.

  He went up to the front of the chopper. The woman joined him. The view over Manhattan Island was stunning, but he had no time to take it in.

  The pilot spoke.

  “I have visual confirmation of the target. ETA five minutes.”

  And there, in the bottom left of a screen on the cockpit, there was a shot of the large red and white ferry.

  At first there seemed nothing untoward… the ferry traveled on a straight course, heading for Manhattan. But as the chopper closed in, it became obvious… there were no people on deck. And the line it was on was straight.

  Too straight.

  “Take us in,” Stark said. “Can you land?”

  “Yes sir,” the pilot replied. “It has two helipads - fore and aft.”

  In the bottom left of the screen Stark now had a clear view of the docks. Straight ahead was a pier and three ships at dock.

  The ferry was heading straight for it.

  Stark ordered the second chopper aft as the pilot brought the machine down on the fore helipad. Stark sent his team out under the rotors onto the deck.

  “Wilkes… take two men and have a quick reconnoiter. Sergeant Brookes, are you there?”

  “Here sir,” a voice said from the second chopper.

  “Check out the car bay. There may be people locked in their vehicles.”

  “What about me?” Shona Menzies said behind him.

  “Stay aboard with the pilot. He’ll look after you.”

  “I don’t need…”

  He stopped her.

  “No time. Just stay here and keep your head down.”

  She didn’t look happy.

  But that’s her problem at the moment. Not mine.

  He took the remaining two men and headed for the ferry’s bridge. He was thinking about the beach… in his mind’s eye he could see the terrible sight of the children’s father, snipped in half. It wasn’t a huge leap of imagination from there to imagining a dark horde of the crabs flowing from the ferry.

  “Wilkes? Anything?” he said.

  “Give me a chance sir,” the Lieutenant’s voice said in his ear. “We just got here. All clear so far.”

  Stark led his men up the narrow stairs towards the ferry’s bridge. It held no sign of life, nor any sign of a struggle. The power had stayed on… that much was obvious… but surely if anyone was still alive they would have been in contact?

  The boat suddenly lurched to one side and came to an abrupt halt.

  Amid the clamor of grinding metal and breaking glass Stark fell back to smash heavily against a door. His world went dim.

  From nowhere he developed a thumper of a headache. Darkness had seeped in at the corners of his vision and the room hung from the sky at a strange angle. Only slowly did he become aware that someone shouted his name, and even that came from far away, like an out-of-tune radio.

  “Stark. For Christ’s sake Stark, come in. We’ve got a problem.”

  Wilkes?

  “Come in Wilkes,” he croaked into his mike. “I’m here.”

  “About time. Where have you been? And what happened?”

  “I think we hit something.”

  He looked around. His team was getting groggily to their feet.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “Deck 2, near the Casino. Pardon my French, but things are royally fucked up. I’ve got a man down, and crabs coming out of the woodwork.”

  The loud retort of gunfire started up, both in Stark’s ear-piece and through the deck.

  “Do you have an exit?”

  “Negative. They’ve got us cornered.”

  “Hold on then. We’re coming to you.”

  Stark’s head rang, but at least he could function. So could his team. Apart from a few bruises, everyone gave the thumbs up. He led them out of the bridge.

  “Sergeant Brookes. Please tell me you’re okay,” he said into his mike.

  He heard the smile in the other officer’s reply.

  “All present and correct sir. But our chopper took a bashing. It’s a dead duck. We're on our way to deck 2. ETA one minute.”

  The sound of small arms fire got suddenly louder and more insistent.

  “Hold on Wilkes, we’re coming in.”

  His ear-piece whistled as a new message came through.

  Seems my head isn’t the only thing that got damaged.

  His chopper pilot’s laconic drawl spoke in his ear.

  “I don’t want to spoil the party, but the General has ordered F12 deployment. There’s a pair of Harriers on their way. You’ve got five minutes.”

  “Can you stall them?” Stark asked, but he already knew the answer… the CO and himself thought the same way.

  “They’re under strict radio silence sir… but I’ve been busy. There’s a pair of pleasure boats heading your way. They’ll stand off, but they’re available if you need them for evac.”

  “Wilkes. Did you hear that?” Stark asked, but only got a burst of gunfire in reply. He started running, just as the screaming began.

  16

  Shona had only just recovered from being thrown around the chopper by the sudden jolt when she heard the pilot’s conversation with Stark. She listened with mounting horror.

  “You’ve got to stop them,” she said. “You’ve still got men down there.”

  The pilot spoke softly in her ear.

  “That’s the job Miss,” he said. “We know when we sign up that we are expendable.”

  Shona felt tears spring to her eyes. She went to the door of the chopper.

  Hurry Stark. Please hurry.

  Then she heard the screaming.

  “Do something,” she shouted to the pilot.

  “I’m doing what I was told to do,” the pilot said calmly. “Waiting.”

  “Well I’m under no such order,” Shona said, and jumped down onto the deck.

  17

  Stark burst into the casino to be met with a wall of rampaging crustaceans.

  They were packed in three-deep, a clacking, snapping frenzy. They clambered over and around each other as they tried to get to the three soldiers they had trapped behind a long bar.

  A disco-ball light spun lazily overhead, giving the scene the semblance of a party in progress.

  Wilkes and his men held their own, but had no way out through the press of crabs.

  Crab shells cracked and split as the high-velocity bullets tore through them from close range, but still they came on, driven by their lust for meat.

  “Wilkes. Have you got a flame thrower?” Stark said into his mike. He didn’t hear the first reply as he moved quickly to avoid the lunging snap from a pincer. He took the claw off at the joint with a burst from his machine pistol.

  “Say again Wilkes.”

  “We have a flame unit. Didn’t want to use it unless as a last resort. In here it’ll be as much danger to us as to them.”

  “Trust me,” Stark said. “It’s last resort time. Brookes. Are you there?”

  The voice crackled in his ear.

  “On the other side of the room from you sir. Flame units armed and ready.”

  “Then light them up. It’s barbecue time.”

  The flame-thrower flared orange. The disco-ball sent fiery light flickering across their faces. In two seconds the place was burning, a thrashing hell full of screaming crabs s
earing flame and rolling smoke.

  18

  Immediately after she put her feet on the deck Shona realized just how stupid she was being.

  The screaming and the gunfire continued loudly in her ear-piece.

  I have no weapon. I’ll be no use to them.

  Just as she turned to jump back into the chopper she heard a loud tearing, a screech of bending metal. The deck thrummed slightly underfoot. If she’d still been on the chopper she’d never have noticed.

  Shona noticed that the ferry was drifting off the line it had been on.

  She moved to the guardrail and looked over the side. A huge pincer snipped away at the hull of the boat from the inside. There was already a ten-foot tear in the metal that widened by the second.

  That claw must be eight feet long!

  The hull tore like paper and more of the crab emerged into daylight.

  Shona started to shake, uncontrollably. The beast was huge. It looked ten feet and more across the shell, with claws nearly as long. The purple on the shell shone iridescent in the sunlight, shimmering alternately turquoise and black. The right pincer clicked, five times in quick succession as the crab pulled itself out into the water of the Bay. It started to move off, towards shore.

  Shona watched, wide-eyed and trembling, as more crabs poured out of the hold; tens, no, hundreds of them, in sizes ranging from one to eight feet across the shell. They followed the large one in a line that led straight to the nearest pier. There they disappeared out of sight into the deep shadows under the pilings.

  19

  Wilkes appeared out of the melee in the casino dragging an injured soldier under the arms. The third man covered them. He stood between them and the crabs, wielding a flame-thrower to devastating effect, creating a wall as crabs struggled to escape the flame.

  Stark’s team moved instinctively to provide cover. Stark helped Wilkes with the injured man and together they got Wilkes’ team under protection. They laid down a wall of flame and bullets. The crab attack paused, but they didn’t retreat. They stood up high showing their bellies, pincers scraping the ceiling. One found the disco ball and crushed it to a mangled mass of metal and wiring, tossing it back towards the soldiers.

  The air was suddenly filled with the noise of pincers clicking, like manic castanets. The front crabs threw themselves forward.

  Stark shouted into his mouthpiece.

  “Brookes. Get out of there now. Immediate retreat. We’ll meet you up top. Double time.”

  “On our way,” the reply crackled.

  “Pilot? You there?” he asked.

  “Here sir.”

  “Prepare for immediate evac. We have a man down.”

  The trooper with the flame-thrower set up an impenetrable barrier of fire behind them as the squad retreated at speed down the corridors.

  The flames ate at the carpet, the walls and the ceiling, filling the enclosed space as fast as the soldiers could travel. They were soon running through a tunnel of choking, searing smoke and flame. Stark and his team shot out of the corridor like a bullet from a gun, smoke and flame following them onto the deck.

  Brookes and his team were already there. Stark passed over the injured man.

  “Get to the chopper. Wilkes, you’re with me. Backup duty.”

  Behind Brookes’ team he saw Shona Menzies leaning over the guardrail, her face ashen and drawn,

  “And get her on board,” he shouted. “We don’t have time for babysitting.”

  Brookes saluted and left at a run after his men. Stark saw him bundle Menzies into the chopper.

  Stark and Wilkes covered the corridor.

  “Maybe we should have kept one of the flame-throwers,” Wilkes said.

  “I’d been thinking the same myself,” Stark replied. They had to move back away from the building heat. “Be ready to run,” he said.

  But no crabs came out of the inferno.

  Burn you bastards. Burn in hell.

  Above the noise of the fire came the whop-whop of the chopper taking off.

  “We’re in the air,” the pilot said seconds later. “Hold tight. I’ll be right back.”

  “Negative,” Stark said, staring at a growing speck in the northern sky. “No time for that. Get clear. We'll find our own way.”

  As he said it a large crab scuttled out of the corridor. Heat radiated from it, steam rising from the joints where the legs emerged from the shell. A pincer snapped and Stark had to roll quickly away. At the same instant Wilkes’ weapon rattled into action. Stark rose just in time to see the crab implode and fall into a pile of hissing pieces of carapace.

  He grabbed Wilkes and together they ran for the nearest railing.

  They jumped simultaneously.

  The air filled with the screeching whine of the approaching fighter.

  Stark hit the water hard but managed to get to the surface with little difficulty. He turned on his back and looked up just as twin rocket trails flew from under the Harrier’s wings.

  They hit mid-ships and the whole middle section of the ferry went up with a whoosh.

  Stark and Wilkes swam away. A small boat came up beside them and they heaved themselves aboard gratefully. They were just in time to see the chopper land on the pier.

  “Well Colonel,” Wilkes said. “Looks like a job well done.”

  The rest of the ferry blew without warning, sending debris hundreds of feet skywards. The explosion sent the blazing ruin drifting against the nearest boat in the dockyard. A secondary explosion blew the side out of the ferry. It collapsed with a screech of tearing metal.

  In seconds a raging inferno was all that remained. A plume of black smoke rose high in the air as the first of many sirens sounded in the distance.

  20

  Newman had reluctantly shut down the Zoo for the day. Over the period of an hour the place went quiet.

  Newman came back one last time to check on them.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing Mr. Porter.”

  Porter smiled.

  “You can always stay and watch if you’d prefer?”

  He took some small joy at seeing the fear that danced in Newman’s eyes as he backed away.

  “Just fetch it back alive,” Newman said. By this time he was walking so fast out of the aquarium as to be almost running. “No live beast, no payment.”

  I ain’t about to forget that in a hurry.

  Soon there was only Porter and the young security guard left in the large echoing hall. Porter was amused to see that the youngster had armed himself with a pump-action shotgun. He held it gingerly, as if afraid it might go off at any second.

  “I hope you ain’t planning to use that,” Porter said. “Your boss wants the creature alive. He plans to charge fifty bucks a time to see the fucker.”

  The guard, Garston according to the tag on his shirt, kept his gaze fixed on the darkness on the far side of the octopus tank.

  “That pecker-wood don’t know shit from shinola.”

  Porter laughed loudly, the noise echoing around them.

  “We can agree on that at least son. You got any smokes on you Garston?”

  The security guard looked around.

  “I’m on duty,” he said.

  “Well hell lad,” Porter replied. “I ain’t gonna tell no one.”

  Garston passed over a Marlboro, old-style full strength. Porter accepted a light and sucked smoke greedily, letting the familiar tang seep inside and ease him.

  He’d hardly had time to think since arriving at the Zoo, but now that he was crabbing he started to feel a lot calmer.

  “How long will we have to wait?” Garston said. His arms trembled with the weight of the gun and the barrel wavered alarmingly. Porter took the weapon from him and placed it on top of the steel cage.

  “It takes as long as it takes lad,” Porter said. “Sometimes they’ll nab it straight away. Other days you get a whole pile of nothing.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We wait.”

 
Silence fell as they smoked down the cigarettes.

  There was a whump in the distance, and the muffled sound of sirens.

  “What was that?” Garston said.

  Porter shrugged.

  “This is New York son. It could be fuckin’ anything.”

  From far off, somewhere way down behind the ruins of the octopus tank, came the noise that Porter was coming to recognize… the clickity-click of huge pincers.

  21

  Shona watched Stark and Wilkes climb out of the small boat and up the ladder onto the pier. She realized that she cared very much that they had survived.

  Especially Stark.

  She resisted the urge to hug them as they approached the chopper. Seconds later she was glad she had resisted; they stank. Even after their swim the smell of smoke hung strongly around them.

  “Next time I tell you to stay in the chopper, please do as you’re told,” Stark said, smiling.