Kraken

by Eric S. Brown

  The two of them returned, carrying a large cylinder between them. They didn’t even have to reach the railing and look down onto the forward deck for Diana to know that the others of their unit were dead.

  “Come on!” Fox yelled at her, urging into action. The two of them flung the cylinder over the railing onto the deck below. There were squids everywhere below their position. Some of the creatures were even already making their way towards the wall to climb up it.

  “You sure this is going to work?” Diana shouted over the hissing cries of the frenzied squids.

  “It worked in my favorite zombie movie!” Fox assured her. “Just trust me on this, okay? Pop that sucker with your rifle and let’s get this over with!”

  Diana shouldered her M-16 and took aim at the cylinder on the lower deck. Ninety percent or more of the squids were still in that area. Vancel, Page, and the others had held them just long enough if Fox’s insane plan actually worked. Diana released the air from her lungs slowly and centered her entire being on hitting her target. It wasn’t going to be an easy shot as the cylinder was inside the mass of the squids that were swarming the Peart’s forward deck, but she figured she could make it if she just took her time and blocked out the chaos around her.

  Her finger slid the trigger of her M-16 back. The rifle jerked in her hands as a three-round burst sprayed from its barrel. The rounds struck true. They slammed into the cylinder of propane and then the world below her went white.

  The explosion from the rupturing propane tank blossomed into an ever-growing ball of flame that swept across the entire forward deck. It stretched upwards towards the clouds as well, sending a wave of fire running up the wall directly at Diana’s position. She threw herself back out of the fire’s reach.

  Diana felt Fox’s hands on her shoulders, shaking her awake. He was smiling like an adrenaline junkie who had just gotten the fix of his life.

  “Did it work?” Diana asked, rubbing at the growing bump on her forehead from where it had smacked the deck she had been standing on.

  “Oh yeah, it worked,” Fox laughed. “Those fraggers got fired big time!”

  Fox helped Diana to her feet. She looked over the scorched railing towards the forward deck. It was clear of live squids. Only smoking corpses littered it now…and a bloody lot of them too.

  “How long have I been out?” Diana asked, jerking Fox closer to her by the front of his uniform.

  “Not even a minute,” he told her. “The best is that I think that blast got the message across to the rest of their shoal too. I haven’t seen any more them trying to get onboard since the blast.”

  Diana allowed herself a smile as she stood there with Fox helping support her weight. It quickly turned to an expression stark terror as her eyes fell on the distant horizon. Fox must have seen it too because she heard him mumble, “What now?”

  There in the distance, the mother squid rose from the depths to cruise along the surface of the ocean like an inbound torpedo, cutting a path of churning water straight towards the Peart.

  ****

  Commander Spraker, his XO Arron, and Lex Iver had watched the battle taking place on the main deck of the Peart. Doing so had not been an easy thing for any of them. All of them breathed a sigh of relief when the battle had been won. It had been a costly thing. Reports were coming in that both of the marines’ COs had perished in the battle. The ranking officer was now a lieutenant by the name of Diana. There were still a few scattered squids here and there aboard the Peart, but they were nothing that the remaining Security Alert teams couldn’t handle. It was pretty much a mop-up operation at this point.

  While Spraker was thankful to God that the marines had pulled off a miracle in driving the lesser squids away from the Peart, the ship was far from out of trouble. The mother squid, or Kraken as Spraker had begun calling it, was still out. The destruction of the Rogue had hurt her badly, but Spraker couldn’t allow himself to believe it was enough to drive her away as well. No, she would be back. He could feel it.

  “Helm, resume course. Maximum speed,” Spraker ordered then turned to Megan. “Any luck breaking through the mysterious interference?”

  “None, sir,” Megan reported. “I’m sorry. I’m doing all I can, but whatever is blocking the long range comm. system is beyond me.”

  “Understood,” Spraker nodded. “Keep at it anyway.”

  “Yes, sir.” Megan returned to her work with a renewed determination.

  “That…” Arron pointed at the deck outside the bridge window that was littered with the smoking corpses of squids, “that was a freaking miracle.”

  “Yeah,” Lex agreed. “Let’s just hope we didn’t use up all our luck with it. We’re going to need a lot more to escape the mother squid if she shows herself again.”

  “She will,” Spraker told them both, leaving no room for argument.

  ****

  The cleanup for the last squids aboard the Peart was completed in less than an hour with Diana and Fox leading the Security Alert teams to make sure it was done properly and there wouldn’t be any nasty surprises waiting on them down the road. Spraker mourned the deaths of Vancel and Page. Both were veteran marines and the Peart would greatly feel their loss. For now, Lieutenant Diana had assumed command of both the ship’s few remaining marines and its Security Alert teams. It had been the quick thinking of a marine named Fox that saved them all for the lesser squids’ attack, yes, but he couldn’t have pulled off his insane plan without Diana. The two of them both deserved commendations for their actions and Spraker vowed to see that they got them if the ship made it home.

  Several hours had passed now since the squids attack and there was still no sign of the Kraken. Spraker knew the great beast was out there somewhere, biding its time and preparing for its own move against the Peart. Spraker kept the engineering staff of the Peart doing all they could to keep the ship’s engines from burning out. The Peart had been pushing thirty knots ever since the attack on her had ended. He didn’t dare risk reducing the ship’s speed either. He knew, even with her head start, the Kraken could overtake her if the creature really wanted to. No, all he could do was get ready for the Kraken when it did choose to show itself.

  The Peart was equipped with a MK-13 missile launcher that could send several volleys of harpoon anti-ship missiles into the water at long range, assuming they saw the Kraken’s approach before it closed on the ship. The ship also had Mark 32 Anti-sub warfare tubes that could fire torpedoes in three-round barrages. The Peart’s last round of refits before she had left for this operation had doubled the number of those tubes she carried. She had two on her forward hull and two more aft. Spraker would have felt confident he could handle the Kraken, given the softer nature of such a creature’s body, had it not been for the beast’s size. It was going to take a heck of a lot of damage to take that thing out.

  His XO, Arron, and Lex Iver were the bridge with him. Iver really had no place there in normal circumstances. The man wasn’t military. He wasn’t even a scientific expert on creatures like the Kraken. He was just a horror writer they had rescued from a cruise liner hit by the squids. That said, Iver’s hunches and ability to think outside the box had kept them all alive more than once already. Spraker didn’t like the man, but he knew a good resource when he saw it and Lex was that.

  Lex had spent the hours since the attack helping Megan at the communications station. They still hadn’t managed to come up with a means to cut through the interference that was keeping the long range comm. unusable but with Iver’s help, Megan had determined its cause. The interference was a direct result of the large amount of bio-electrical energy the Kraken’s insanely massive body generated. Knowing was half the battle, so Megan’s efforts to crack through the interference at least had a direction now. The downside, though, was the strength of the interference confirmed that the Kraken was indeed somewhere close by, trailing the Peart as she tried to flee in the hope of reaching safer waters.

  Luke yelled from the sonar station
, his voice echoing across the enclosed space of the bridge. “Contact! It’s the Kraken, sir!”

  The crew was already at battle stations per Spraker’s standing orders but nonetheless, alarm klaxons began to blare.

  Arron had relieved the ship’s weapons officer and taken command of that station himself. It was an unusual breach of SOPs, but Spraker had permitted it. He knew that Arron had worked his way up to XO from such positions and had seen Arron’s talent with such systems keenly displayed over their years together.

  “Bearing and speed?” Spraker snarled.

  “She’s coming in from the north, sir!” Luke answered. “Pushing thirty-five knots and still accelerating.”

  “She means to finish us,” Lex told him. “And quickly. I’d wager she’s done messing about after what happened to her with Cordova’s ship.”

  “Understood,” Spraker nodded at Lex then turned to address Arron. His XO was well ahead of him, though.

  “Taking her with guns now, sir,” Arron said. “Missiles away!”

  The ship’s MK-13 swiveled to acquire its target before Arron filled the sky with harpoons. The anti-ship missiles flew upwards before diving back down toward the water. The rained down on the approaching Kraken like arrows shot from Hell itself. The water’s surface became a churning mass of black as waves splashed upwards toward the heavens.

  “Direct hit!” Luke reported from the sonar station. “The Kraken is veering away, sir!”

  “How bad is she hurt?” Spraker asked.

  “Hard to say, sir,” Luke frowned. “Her speed has dropped to roughly thirty knots, though, sir!”

  “Hit her again,” Spraker ordered Arron.

  “I can’t, sir,” Arron informed him. “She’s gone under. I can’t get a good lock on her despite her size.”

  “She’s off my screen,” Luke cried out in panic. “I don’t know if it’s her depth or that blasted interference she’s putting out but…she’s gone.”

  Spraker clenched the arms of his command chair in rage and frustration.

  “Could be she’s running, sir,” Arron offered, trying to stay positive.

  “You and I both know that’s the not the case, Arron,” Spraker told his XO.

  “Lex?” Spraker asked the horror writer. “Any ideas?”

  Iver shook his head. “Not this time. Sorry.”

  “I’ve got her back on screen!” Luke screamed. “She’s CBDR sir, coming up from beneath us!”

  “Brace for impact!” Arron yelled before Spraker had the chance to himself.

  The Kraken crashed into the underside of the Peart, its mass and velocity causing the frigate to rise up out of the water even as her hull crunched beneath the Kraken’s fury. Metal ripped apart as it folded inwards.

  The bridge crew was tossed about like ragdolls being slung around by an angry child. Lex went flying to slam into the comm. station where Megan was strapped in. His neck snapped loudly from the impact. His head hung sideways at an unnatural angle where his corpse rested on the deck. Megan was screaming in outright terror, yet she made no move to unstrap herself from her station and try to help Iver. Spraker felt proud of her for that. She couldn’t have done anything for the man anyway. He was already dead.

  The ship was rocked about even harder as it splashed back onto the waves. Spraker was nearly flung from his command chair by the impact. Stations blew up into showers of sparks and fire all around the bridge. Whole sections of the ceiling gave away and tumbled down onto the bridge and its crew. One sailor was struck by a piece of the ceiling that swung downwards in an arc. It caught the man directly in the face, shattering his nose in a shower of blood. The man was flung backwards, off his feet, to go sliding across the bridge.

  “We’ve got to…” Spraker heard Arron begin to yell but then the weapons station blew, taking him with it. Jagged bits of exploding metal and display screens tore through Arron’s flesh like bullets, riddling the XO’s body with gaping holes.

  “No!” Spraker howled as he watched his longtime friend die.

  All around the Peart, tentacles thicker than the trailers of eighteen wheelers rose from the waves to embrace her. They slapped into her with such force that her very hull fractured where metal met slimy flesh. Spraker felt the ship lurch and knew what was coming next. The Kraken was taking her down.

  “Abandon ship!” he screamed at Megan, hoping she still had the means to pass on the order to the rest of the Peart’s crew. “All hands, abandon ship!”

  Those words were Spraker’s last as the forward window of the bridge shattered and sprayed the bridge and its crew with shards of glass that exploded inward like deadly missiles. Spraker took such a shard in the center of his throat. He felt the pain of the glass slicing completely through his neck for its tip to emerge from the backside of his neck and scrap against his command chair. Blood ran down the front of his uniform in rivers of red. He couldn’t breathe or speak, but his mouth still worked, trying vainly to give orders.

  Spraker’s eyes bugged in his final moments as he watched the ocean come pouring in through the shattered forward window as the Kraken dragged the Peart downward into the depths with it.

  Epilogue

  Diana and Fox found themselves to be the only survivors of DESRON 22. The small life raft they shared bobbed about on the waves underneath the beautiful blue skies above. Fox had been badly injured during their flight for the raft and Diana had been forced to do the work of getting it functional and him onto it by herself. Fox lay unconscious, stretched out in the raft, his head resting in her lap. She could hear his soft moans of pain. Both of his legs were broken at the knees, badly. The white of bone protruded through both the red-soaked cloth of his pants and his flesh. Even if help arrived in time to save them, he’d never walk again. The damage done to his legs from his fall was just too much.

  M-16 held ready, Diana watched the water around the raft. So far, there had been no sign of the lesser squids. There was no sign of the monstrously giant one either. She figured they were too small a target, for something like that thing to even notice. The lesser squids though…

  Still, there was nothing she could but try to stay alert and wait. One way or another, they would be leaving these waters soon enough. It was just a question of who or what showed up hunting for them first. Someone would surely be coming to check on DESRON 22. An entire naval squadron didn’t just disappear without someone back home asking why and sending help. Diana could only pray that help would arrive in time.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Megatooth

  Eric S Brown is the author of numerous book series including the Bigfoot War series, the Kaiju Apocalypse series (with Jason Cordova), the Crypto-Squad series (with Jason Brannon), the Homeworld series (With Tony Faville and Jason Cordova), the Jack Bunny Bam series, and the A Pack of Wolves series. Some of his stand alone books include War of the Worlds plus Blood Guts and Zombies, World War of the Dead, Last Stand in a Dead Land, Sasquatch Lake, Kaiju Armageddon, Megalodon, Megalodons, and Megalodon Apocalypse to name only a few. His short fiction has been published hundreds of times in the small press and beyond including markets like the Onward Drake and Black Tide Rising anthologies from Baen Books, the Grantville Gazette, the SNAFU Military horror anthology series, and Walmart World magazine. He has done the novelizations for such films as Boggy Creek: The Legend is True (Studio 3 Entertainment) and The Bloody Rage of Bigfoot (Great Lake films). The first book of his Bigfoot War series was adapted into a feature by Origin Releasing in 2014. Werewolf Massacre at Hell’s Gate was the second his books to be adapted into film in 2015. In addition to his fiction, Eric also writes an award winning comic book news column entitled “Comics in a Flash.” Eric lives in North Carolina with his wife and two children where he continues to write tales of the hungry dead, blazing guns, and the things that lurk in the woods.

  1

  Emily assumed that most twenty-three year-old single women came to Hawaii as a last exploration of single life. Maybe th
ey came to stay on a resort with friends and meet an exotic single man. Or maybe they sat poolside with cocktails from ten in the morning until the sun went down. Perhaps they came to have those once-in-a-lifetimes adventures that were thick with self-discovery—adventures that were looked back on fondly in the years to come. And even for those not seeking romance, the beaches had their own allure, too; surely it was relaxing and nearly sensual to scrunch up your toes in sun-warmed sand right along the edge of where the ocean meets the land.

  Emily had no idea about any of that. She was not in Hawaii to meet a man, live blissfully in a half-drunk state for a week, or to enjoy the beaches. Instead, she had come here from Minnesota, knowing that she’d only be on the land in Hawaii for about three hours. Her plane had landed in Lāna‘i and she had promptly rented a car, driving across the small island to the hole-in-the-wall boat rental business that she currently looked at through her windshield.

  She parked her car in the cracked lot and got out, getting her one lone suitcase out of the trunk. As she started across the lot of the wooden building that sat at the start of a pier that jutted out into the ocean, she saw three other cars in the lot. She recognized the face of the older man reaching into the trunk of his car at once. She had seen his face on various websites and in magazines. He was no celebrity…that was for sure. But Emily had been following his work since high school and admired the man considerably.

  She veered away from her straight path towards the boat rental building and walked directly towards the man. He was still fumbling around with something in his trunk and seemed to be oblivious of the rather attractive twenty-three year old heading directly for him.

  “Mr. Zinsser?” she asked as she neared his car.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” he said, closing the trunk and looking at her. Seeing him this close, she saw that Cliff Zinsser actually looked a bit older than his thirty-six years. Apparently, his many years out on the ocean had taken its toll, the sun beating down on him and giving his skin an almost leathery appearance. Emily supposed the growth of hair on his face was supposed to look like a beard, but it looked sloppy and almost sporadic. His hair was disheveled and his clothes were dingy.