Suddenly, his fingers froze and his eyes tightened. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw what looked like a tumorous lump appear and then vanish along the pliosaur’s flank. He turned toward his brother.
“Garm, you better get down here.”
CHAPTER
13
As soundless as a pair of lethal blimps, the male and female Octopus giganteus rose from the depths to close on their quarry. They had discovered its plow-shaped anchor embedded in a deepwater reef over a thousand feet below, then followed the anchor chain links like a trail of rusty breadcrumbs, all the way to the surface.
The vessel they’d chosen was sizable, easily as long as the gigantic female from mantle to tentacle tips, and far heavier. Despite the fact it lay at rest under darkened skies, an ongoing barrage of deafening rhythmic pulses resonated through the ship’s steel hull. The vocalizations of prey items rang out as well, and the gnarled skin of both cephalopods flushed pink at the prospect of a pending meal. They had developed a taste for the small, air-breathing warm-bloods, and grew increasingly aroused as they prepared to attack.
They were still three hundred feet from their target when a sudden roaring sound caused them both to freeze. Their luminous orbs exchanged a pensive stare, fearing they’d been spotted and their quarry was about to flee. Relief shot through their mammoth bodies a moment later, however, followed by anticipation, as they realized the loud noise had been caused by a smaller vessel, pulling up alongside to mate with the bigger one.
More prey was arriving.
The male octopus extended one of his tentacles, entwining it around the females nearest arm, as they communicated. Tactile creatures that they were, a quick gaze or a rippling touch of suckers was all it took to cement their plan. Their huge bodies inflated slowly in agreement and the pair broke apart. Sucking enough water into their respective mantles to inundate a two-car garage, they jetted silently upward. They stopped a few feet beneath the surface, one on either side of the target as they held position, fifty yards out.
Despite the pitch black conditions, the male could see his mate clearly. His keen underwater vision was aided by a series of tiny suns, ringing their objective. Directed at the water, the lights were agonizingly bright and lit up the surrounding sea in brilliant shades of green.
Wary of being spotted, the male remained out of range of the spotlights. He steeled himself before peeking above the waves. The great mound of his mantle rose like a six-foot high reef and he studied the hunted through narrowed eyes.
The vessel they’d chosen was white, like a giant beluga whale. It had multiple layers and was topped, here and there, with what looked like white jellyfish mantles, suspended atop stalks. In and around the levels were dozens of the tasty morsels they craved, standing and communicating with one another. Some had darker exteriors and faced outward. They carried black, metallic objects that the male associated with the fire-stick they faced during their previous feeding.
It was of no matter. Although painful, the sticks were ineffective against their dense, rubbery tissues. They were a minor irritant, if that.
Sinking below the waves, the male performed a slow spiral to signal his mate. Then, with a quick jet of water, the pair glided downward in long, tight arcs, passing one another like a pair of tongs at the six-hundred foot mark, before jetting back up. Accelerating to full speed, they closed rapidly on their target.
Seconds later, their combined weight smashed full force into the anchored luxury yacht.
* * *
Dirk’s eyes were darkened slits as he hawked the surgical sonogram, high above Tartarus’s healing pool. His brother Garm was by his side, arms folded, while an operating tech hovered close by. On the screen, the virtual image of the sedated Gen-1 had been sliced lengthwise, with the current visual showing a cross section two-thirds of the way through and displaying the behemoth’s heart, ribcage, and lower digestive tract.
Inside its abdominal cavity, something moved.
“Do you see it?” Dirk asked. The sound of the bloodsucker’s throbbing pulse, synced to the pliosaur’s heartbeat, gave him the creeps. He hated parasites.
“Yeah,” Garm remarked. His lips curled up. “It’s a big fucker, too. Fifty feet, easy.”
“What’s a ‘big fucker’?” Callahan asked. He was up off his bench seat but being kept away by his aide and another surgical tech. “What did you find?”
Dirk ignored him and radioed Stacy inside Colossus. “Dr. Daniels, are you seeing this?”
“Roger that,” Stacy replied. “I’ve got it on my screen. You’re going to have to remove it. At that size, and based on its location, it will eventually kill the host.”
“Remove what?” Callahan demanded. He pushed past Gibbons and the tech, only to freeze as the thing on the sonogram came to life. Like an anaconda undulating, it began crawling around inside the pliosaur’s digestive tract. “Jesus, what the fuck is that?”
“That, my dear admiral, is a Vermitus gigas.” Dirk waited for the inevitable befuddled expression and added, “The Cretaceous version of a tapeworm.”
“A tapeworm?” Callahan echoed. He pointed up at Stacy. “She said it was killing it. Are you selling me a dying animal?”
Dirk sighed. “Wild pliosaurs often carry parasites, admiral, including ones in their digestive tract. But their immune systems and stomach acidity usually keep them in check. This particular cow, unfortunately, has a worm that has grown outside of its stomach and is embedded in its abdominal wall.”
“Is that common?”
Stacy’s voice blared loudly from her speakers. “Only when some hotshot flyboy misses his mark and punches holes in the poor animal,” she remarked, “Allowing the parasite to grow unchecked.”
Callahan’s expression soured and he waved his hands at the slumbering Kronosaurus imperator. “So this stupid thing’s gonna die?”
Dirk clucked his tongue. “Not if we can help it.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“We’re going to remove the Vermitus, of course.” Dirk answered. He turned to Garm. “You better suit up.”
His brother nodded. “You got it.”
Dirk brushed aside Callahan’s next question. Under protest, the naval officer retook his seat. Meanwhile, Garm moved to a nearby set of shelves and, with assistance from two team members, started climbing into an economy-sized hazmat suit.
“Dr. Daniels,” Dirk said into his mike, watching as his twin was zipped up and shouldered an oxygen pack. “We’re going to need an ass-lift from you, if you don’t mind.”
“Always happy to back it up for you,” came her chipper reply.
Dirk failed to hide his smirk as Colossus resumed moving under his ex’s masterful touch. With a loud hum from its actuators, the lift system’s enormous arms rose up off the concrete deck behind them and reached for the drugged pliosaur. Undoing its hip belt with practiced ease, Stacy grabbed the behemoth’s lower pelvic region and tail base in one huge hand and hoisted it smoothly up, exposing the creature’s pale underside and vent.
“Better go with the electro-vac,” Dirk recommended as Stacy directed Colossus’s free hand over him, heading for the heavy-gauge steel shelving units that housed their oversized surgical tools and medical devices. “That thing’s not going to come willingly.”
“Roger that.”
With a pneumatic hiss, the ten-foot robotic hand closed around an ornate, eight-foot long, stainless steel and ceramic wand, roughly the thickness of a fire hydrant. On the wand’s distal end was a lined, metallic bulb. It was shaped like a watermelon, only twice as large. Gripping the wand, Colossus’s hand swung down and to the side, hovering three feet above the pool deck. A pair of operational techs in full surgical garb and wearing arm-length latex gloves stepped forward to meet it. Eyeing the machine that could squash them into paste, one attached a six-inch thick hose/cable combination to the wand’s receiver end, while the other lathered thick gobs of petroleum jelly on its bulb.
�
�What’s with all the goop?” Callahan asked, watching the prep work.
“Lube, admiral,” Garm announced as he strode past. He grinned from behind his suit’s clear faceplate. “There’s always time for lube.”
Callahan’s jaw dropped as he met Garm’s gaze. Not from the bulky protective suit he was wearing, which made the big sub commander look even more massive than he was. But because of the enormous Scottish claymore he had casually slung over one shoulder. Combined with his hazmat suit, he looked like some enormous, post-apocalyptic highlander, ready to do battle.
“Shit, Gate,” Callahan sputtered. “What’s with the antique meat cleaver?”
“It’s actually from my dad’s collection,” Garm mused. Holding the weighty, five-foot sword in one hand, he hefted it at arm’s length and twirled it around like it was made of Styrofoam. “One of the few pieces we keep on site. Five hundred years old and still sharp enough to cut the head off an ox.” He glanced toward the Gen-1’s elevated rear end, then back at Callahan and winked. “Or other things . . .”
Dirk cut in before the admiral could respond. “Let’s get this done, people.” He turned to face the nearby techs, “Everybody except Garm and I are to keep back.” He radioed Colossus’s cab. “Dr. Daniels, we’re ready when you are.”
He saw Stacy nod, then stepped back as Garm moved beside the prostrate pliosaur, their dead father’s sword at the ready. With a loud whirring, the car-sized, stainless steel hand holding the electro-vac began to move forward. Still holding the sedated Kronosaurus by the rear end with its other hand, Colossus moved the log-sized surgical probe toward the creature’s yard-long vent. With practiced strokes, Stacy wiped the lubed tip on its cloaca, prepping it.
“You’re going to remove the tapeworm rectally?” Callahan asked from a safe distance away.
Dirk nodded. “Shock it and suck it right out.”
“And the meat cleaver?” he asked, indicating Garm’s claymore.
“Some creatures respond hostilely when forcibly removed from their place of residence,” Dirk replied.
“Man that is something.” Callahan turned to Garm. “Gate, I do not envy you this job!”
“You should have seen it in the old days,” Dirk remarked. “Before the probe, we had to send a man in a suit up inside to deal with the worm.”
“Up its ass?” Callahan blinked in disbelief. “You’re shitting me!”
Dirk’s almond-shaped eyes crinkled with amusement. “Didn’t we cover that already?”
With a loud splurch, Stacy had Colossus shove the first four feet of the electro-vac deep inside the pliosaur’s rectum. To everyone’s relief, despite the considerable violation, the giant predator remained inert. A loud chugging noise started and the probe began to vibrate, its bulb-like end extending like a plumber’s snake as it traveled up inside the creature’s body, searching for its target.
On the overhead sonogram and through the feed from the electro-vac’s integrated camera, Dirk tracked its progress. He could see the colossal tapeworm on the screen. It was laying dormant, probably taking advantage of the cow’s lack of movement and feeding, he mused.
Through the probe’s lens, thick layers of pale-colored tissue were pushed aside as the mechanical device crept stealthily forward. Eerily silent, it wound left, then right, its infrared camera lighting up the darkness of the pliosaur’s bowels. Within seconds, it was past the huge reptile’s colon and worming its way through the partially digested food occupying its upper intestines.
Seconds later, it made contact with what Dirk calculated was the tail end of the tapeworm. On the sonogram, he saw the bulb-like end of the electro-vac spring open, its sharp-edged petals a lethal flower. A microsecond later, it sprang forward, latching onto the tail section of the Vermitus gigas and simultaneously unleashing a powerful jolt of electricity.
The results were impressive. On the sonogram, the parasite’s bulbous body lashed violently back and forth as it fought back against the unexpected assault. The probe’s camera provided an additional worm’s eye view of the battle, and Dirk could see a wall of talon-like projections raking the lens. Even without the dual electronic images, the effects of the struggle were physically evident, as the unconscious Kronosaurus’s flanks bulged repeatedly from the violent impacts of the tapeworm’s thrashing coils.
“I can’t see enough of the monitor!” Stacy radioed. “Should I reverse it?”
“Negative,” Dirk replied, eyeing multiple screens. “It’s not coming free; I think it’s anchored into the abdominal wall. You’ll have to increase the voltage.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure; hit it again!”
As the amperes unleashed by the surgical probe increased dramatically, the pliosaur’s four huge paddles became as rigid as blades and its 137-ton body started to twitch. Although sedated, its muscles bunched beneath its thick restraining belts, as enough electricity to power a trolley car lit up its insides. Dirk swallowed as he eyed the saurian’s flickering life readings. Even for a creature its size, the jolts it was receiving were approaching defibrillator levels, and he was worried its couch-sized heart might stop.
A muffled wrenching sound from inside the Kronosaurus imperator’s rib cage drew Dirk’s head back down. His eyes met Garm’s, then ricocheted back to the sonogram. The Vermitus had torn loose.
“We’ve broken its grip!” he yelled to his brother, then clicked his radio mike. “Stacy, reverse now!”
“Roger that.”
Dirk checked the life readings, breathing an audible sigh of relief as the pliosaur’s heart rate stabilized. He could hear a low pulsing noise coming from inside it as the electro-vac reversed course. With its metallic jaws tightly clamped onto the tapeworm’s thick coils, it was dragging the immobilized creature backwards through the marine reptile’s digestive tract, heading for its cloaca and the light beyond.
A nostril-singing whiff of pliosaur excrement hit Dirk between the eyes as Colossus’s steely grip tightened around the probe’s handle and pulled backwards. A second later, the looped end of the Vermitus gigas emerged from the saurian’s gaping anus.
Dirk’s eyes popped behind his goggles and he heard a collective gasp of astonishment from everyone watching. The tail section of the worm was massive – as thick a full-grown reticulated python. It was a disgusting olive-green color, with a thick layer of mucus covering it. Finger-sized, greenish-brown tendrils ran in lines up and down its length, and undulated in gelatinous waves as Stacy kept up the pressure. Bit by bit, yard by yard, the parasite’s body was wrenched from its host.
It was gigantic.
Dirk looked up in amazement as Colossus’s fifty-foot arm fully extended. The worm’s bloated body was draped across the end of the gurney and extended far beyond, all the way to the surgical center’s polished concrete floor. It was the demonic version of a Titanoboa, Dirk imagined. Its coils were nearly three feet thick at the widest point and the entire creature must have weighed five tons. He could see rows of backward-curving, blackish teeth lining the worm’s flanks like segmented hooks. The epidermal fangs had evolved to embed themselves in the tissue of its victims and prevented the parasite from being forcibly removed.
The worm began to thrash, despite the repeated jolts it was receiving. Its foul-smelling mucus sprayed in every direction and a fresh wave of fecal odor mixed with ammonia filled the air. Despite breathing through his mouth, Dirk gagged into his mask, and it was all he could do to keep from vomiting. He spotted his brother, sword in hand and standing on the other side of the Vermitus’s coils, and envied him his hazmat suit’s integrated oxygen supply.
Suddenly, three bad things happened simultaneously: Garm was struck by a spiky coil and went flying, the worm’s huge head popped free from the pliosaur’s vent, and the electro-vac lost its grip.
With a thud reminiscent of a soggy sandbag, the Vermitus’s boneless maw hit the gurney. It lay there for a moment, coated with a vile layer of slime and feces, before it began to move. Sightles
s, yet somehow aware of its surroundings, it raised its tree-trunk-sized neck eight feet off the deck and swelled up like some nightmarish cobra.
Dirk gasped involuntarily and instantly regretted it. The worm wheeled in his direction, its tentacles writhing. Looking straight into his eyes, its mouth began to split open, its tooth-lined layers peeling back like some hellish lamprey’s. Ring after ring of teeth and suckers were exposed, all backward-curving and designed to rip loose and swallow not only blood and body fluids, but flesh and bone as well.
As it slithered toward him, horror flooded Dirk’s face. He tried not to breathe and focused on listening to the sounds of his heart pounding for what would undoubtedly be the last few times. He was beyond terrified as he stared up at the giant nematode’s horrid head. It was enraged at being wrenched from its host and ravenous, its meat grinder maw gnashing in spiky ripples as it sought about for something to latch onto.
In the recesses of his mind, Dirk could hear the cries of terrified techs as they ran for their lives, as well as the alarmed shouts of security personnel as they came charging, weapons in hand. There was a metallic creaking, followed by a crash, as one of the tower lights was toppled by the worm’s thrashing coils and hit the ground, unleashing a hissing shower of sparks.
The Vermitus was not distracted by the ruckus. Dirk knew it was locked onto him and he found himself wondering whether the colossal creature possessed some form of thermal vision.
The worm was only three feet away now, its putrid odor washing over him, and as his heels touched the end of the gurney, Dirk realized he had nowhere left to go. His legs would barely respond and, even if he could force himself to run, it would be on him before he turned around. He heard the sounds of several shotguns being pumped, but knew the guards would be hesitant to fire for fear of hitting him.
“Hey, ugly . . .”
Out of nowhere, Garm’s deep voice cut through Dirk’s paralyzing fear. The Vermitus, distracted by the sound, twisted its loathsome head around. Its dripping, yard-wide mouth swept eagerly toward its target, but it was too late. Jake Braddock’s 500-year-old claymore was already in mid-swing. Like a machete striking a celery stalk, the five-foot, razor-edged hunk of Scottish steel, backed by his firstborn son’s powerful arm muscles, sliced clean through the worm’s boneless neck.
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