by Alan Spencer
"I'll set a few charges in this room," Dr. Singer said to his group. "Everybody keep going. I'll be right behind you."
The team continued past the sea garden.
Dr. Singer had a small pack over his shoulder. He removed a scalpel and sliced off three globes. He placed them inside a steel specimen container. He placed the gel globes inside, and then Dr. Singer cut flesh from the walls, took samples of the odd plankton, and carved even more meat from the walls with advanced circulatory processes. He cut out a bundle of clamshells that were like pulling teeth; the shells had long stringy roots holding them down into the ground. At the end of those roots were clusters of sea horse creatures.
Hybrid sea creatures, so strange, so magnificent, so bizarre, Dr. Singer was giddy viewing what he'd take back to Washington. He wished he could give Gargantuan a proper dissection. She probably owned a wild myriad of creatures and beautiful biology. He only needed living specimens. The rest of Gargantuan would be blown to pieces. He figured those pieces would float to the surface of the ocean, scorched. She would be dead by then, but her information was still useful. The living samples, though, would be worth much more to science. It would add zeroes to his bank account as well. Better, he wanted the honor of discovering new species. Dr. Singer would be credited for entering Gargantuan. He would be dubbed the bravest scientist in the world. Dr. Singer would be so famous. His impact on the scientific world would be incredible!
Dr. Singer placed his two charges in the room and backtracked. When he circled back through the sinus bone pathways, he noticed slime from the ceiling was coming down in thick globules. They hardened instantly, blocking re-entry or escape from behind him.
He chose the right time to make his retreat.
Dr. Singer carefully treaded the room where the floor was covered in fish guts. He wasn't sure if this was Gargantuan's dumping ground for her dead, or maybe the guts were re-used for food, or turned into new life altogether?
The scientist couldn't help himself.
He scooped up a handful of fish guts and saved the specimen.
God, he didn't want to leave so much unexplored.
I'm out of time. You want to live on to carry on new research, you need to get a move on and cut your losses.
There were so many losses to cut.
Dr. Singer hemmed and hawed; aggravated that he couldn't change the situation. He left the discarded gut heap chamber and hurried down several purple fleshed halls. Dr. Singer eventually worked his way back to The Annihilator.
His part of the mission was complete.
Dr. Singer had one more thing to do to ensure his safety out of the ocean.
Not even Anchor would find a way to survive this situation.
Shred 'Em
The creatures earned the name Heart Rippers. Right when Anchor led the charge, one of the officers was grabbed by the fast-moving crab-thing and lifted up off his feet. That barracuda maw opened, chewing through the officer's suit, easily peeling back flesh, and bending and breaking sternum bone like twigs. A probing tongue worked out the heart, forcing the morsel into its mouth and eating the juicy hunk of meat it had worked so hard to obtain in two squishy bites. Once the officer was dead, the thing tossed him aside. The heart was all the damnable thing wanted. The corpse melted when it hit the floor.
"Jesus, they only eat the heart," Anchor growled. "If you're going to kill a man, at least eat the rest of him, you wasteful bastards! Waste not, want not—WASTE YOU!"
Anchor delivered a static pulse bullet at the creature's midsection. The branch of blue electricity split through his plated shell and boiled what was beneath. The electricity burnt the crab/lobster/fucked up monster until meat exploded everywhere.
Bright decapitated one of them with a burst of staccato bullet-fire. Other officers were hurtling hot bullets, pumping and drilling rounds until their TAC-10's went dry. Heart Rippers were shot to pieces, literally lifted up off the ground and landing on the ground in fluid consistencies. He thought they were making progress when Anchor's angle of the scene was tilted. He was knocked off his feet and tackled. Pincher arms had him pinned to the ground. The dozen beady crab eyes studied Anchor through his bubble. The mouth, that barracuda maw, was drooling rubber glue.
"You're not taking my heart, you fish fucker!"
The head went for his chest cavity. Anchor freed one of his arms and grabbed his TAC-10. He shoved the barrel into its mouth and blasted enough volts of electricity to send its head thirty feet into the air. Anchor kicked aside the rest of the body and stood up again.
Anchor switched to acid and sprayed the eight monsters trying to overtake him into boiling bisque. Anchor had to move out of the way to avoid the tide of sizzling acid-eaten stew.
Bright had knocked one to the ground and was pulling back its head with both hands. Once decapitated, she spiked it to the ground.
Man, that's one tough bitch.
My kind of lady.
Bright picked up her TAC-10. Anchor joined her in doing a clean sweep of the area. Only five of the team remained alive. The rest of the team had their chests ripped out and their bodies destroyed by the atmosphere. The sight of blood leaking out of the suits in heavy amounts was disconcerting.
"I'm not dying like that," Bright said. "I die on my own terms."
"You'll die on my terms," a voice in the headset berated them. "Your lives were always in my hands. Don't think for one second I lost control of this mission. This is all falling into plan. You might be tough, but I'm smarter than you are. I'm smart enough to live, and you're dumb enough to die."
Anchor's blood pressure spiked.
Dr. Singer.
What was the bastard doing now?
Anchor reported back to Dr. Singer. "Where are you? Where's your team, Doc?"
Dr. Singer didn't respond.
Bright and the rest of his team voiced their confusion about Dr. Singer.
"We'll deal with him later," Anchor said. "For now, let's keep going. We can backtrack once all of our charges are set. Now, take the charges off the ones who didn't make it, set them here."
"Fagan," Anchor called out, changing the frequency of his headset, "are you out there? Report. Leeks? Report. Anybody out there? Singer's team? Report. REPORT, damn it!"
Bright grabbed his arm. "If they're alive, we can't help them. There's no way to know where they're at. We set our charges and get back to The Annihilator as planned. I'm getting awful thirsty for that bourbon."
"Okay," Anchor said, "but I'm going to see that son-of-a-bitch burn. Somehow."
The team searched for the next corridor to set their charges.
Dr. Singer's Team
The walls were like a yellow esophagus. Fatty secretions burbled and boiled from the ceiling and dripped down the walls. Dr. Singer's team was wading ankle deep in sickening pudding-fat. Filters, holes in the floor, were processing the fat. Mixed in with the fat were human body parts, chunks of vehicles, a parking meter, a post office box, a dead goat, and thousands of things a mega-vacuum cleaner could've sucked up from the city of California. This was a processing center for the beast, Officer Harry Wade imagined.
Wade was panicked. He kept leading the team deeper into the esophagus recess. Dr. Singer was missing. The scientist wasn't answering on his side of the line. After the strange garden of sea things, Dr. Singer had vanished. Had the man been eaten by something? Sucked down through a throat and processed? It was very possible.
The six other team members were starting to notice the scientist's absence. The bigger problem, Wade didn't know the way back. They had walked through dozens of chambers, placing the charges throughout Gargantuan. There wasn't a clear-cut way back to the submarine.
Gargantuan was conspiring against them. Wade had seen entrances seal themselves up, like flesh curtains falling, or flesh boiling and soldering themselves shut.
"We're out of charges, Wade," Gregson said. "Can we go back to the submarine? This place is starting to get under my skin."
Wade di
dn't have the heart to tell them they were in serious trouble.
Dr. Singer did that job for him.
"Maybe you're finally noticing that I'm not among you. Don't worry, team. I'm completely safe. Know your deaths will benefit science, and know that I'll take full credit for everything! They say scientists are all numbers, theories, and boring nonsense, but I'm creative too. I can tell the world how I fought so bravely. They'll make a movie about it, and I'll be the hero. I can say how you were scared, and I inspired you to complete the mission against the odds."
Wade's stomach dropped.
He was too terrified to be outraged.
"You left us? But why? How could you at a time like this?"
"I need living samples to bring back for military study. I can't bring back living samples if I'm dead. Once we blow Gargantuan to pieces, her remains will be damaged. Useful, but not as useful as living organisms. The Annihilator is out for the count. Alas, there's one safety pod on the submarine. Enough room for me, my samples, and the stories I'll share with the world. It was great knowing you fools. Someday, I'll see you in hell, but not before becoming a world renowned scientist first!"
Wade was begging Dr. Singer to help them. Dr. Singer laughed at his words and then changed frequencies.
"We have to keep going," Wade said. "What choice do we have but to navigate our own way back to the submarine?"
The consensus was to keep moving.
Wade led the team. The fatty throat chamber was changing colors, from yellow, to neon red, neon green, to a dark black color. The throat opened to a wide area. Everything was leathery and black and covered in a layer of clear slime.
The way behind them bubbled up and sealed itself.
Gregson shoved his hand in the boiling mess, trying to force his way back through the other side. The mess dissolved his arm. His suit was compromised, and the bubble over Gregson's head was spattered in red. Wade even heard the uncouth pounding of both Gregson's eyeballs bouncing off the plastic.
Goddamn.
No time to let the impact of another death set in, Wade and the rest of the team were mesmerized by the formation in the middle of the room. He imagined a demon frog's head jutting out from the floor. The head was the size of a compact car. The eyes glowed a deep emerald green. The mouth opened. A deep bass moan sounded, echoing off the wet skin walls.
A large clear bubble formed at the frog's mouth. Once it reached enormous size, the bubble was released. The bubble floated in the air aimlessly. Then the bubble dropped, landing on top of Officer Grubaugh. Grubaugh was inside of the bubble and floating upwards. He pounded the walls of the bubble. What seemed harmless was now a prison. Grubaugh couldn't pound his way free.
"The walls, look at the walls!" Officer Calendar pointed. "This room, it's like we're standing in hell. We're all going to die. I didn't want to die being fish food!"
Up and down the walls, faces appeared through the black curtains of flesh. A guppy's mouth with golden eyes. A carp's callous face. The face on the underbelly of a starfish; two dots for eyes and a slit for a grin. A shark's gaping maw, filled with rows of daggers with insane chomping abilities. Other faces were folds of gills, bunched up tissue, and beady eyes circling masticating sea lips.
Each mouth could open three stories tall. The mouths opened and closed as if saying they wanted to be fed next. Grubaugh was helpless as the bubble floated to one corner of the room to the next. Gravity made the choice. A ravenous sea horse face received the floating bubble. Grubaugh's shouts for help were silenced when the mouth closed, and he was consumed instantly. Once the face had its fill, it gave a light orgasmic mmmmmmmmmm.
The frog's mouth was spitting out bubbles at a rapid pace. Moans repeated, drowning out everybody's cries. Wade knew he was going to die, as did the rest of his team. Wade shot at the bubbles. Bullets pinged right off them. Electricity was absorbed. Acid evaporated. Their weapons were useless.
Two bubbles attached themselves to Wade. The rest of his team had already been forced into bubbles and consumed. Wade's legs were in one bubble, and his upper half, in the another. The bubbles were trying to separate. When they did, Wade didn't feel a thing. He was too busy in shock to realize he'd been cut in half. Wade could only look into the mouth of the angel fish crossed with a lamprey, and soon realized what it felt like to be eaten alive.
Boiling Hot
Anchor didn't waste a second leaving the chamber filled with fucked up displays of broken skeleton torsos. The team cleared the area and was trying to figure out the next direction to set more charges when Dr. Singer spoke to Anchor.
"You're still alive, Anchor? I guess that's no surprise, knowing your fighting skills. You won't last. Once those charges are engaged, you'll be nothing more than bacteria lining the ocean floor. You'll be recycled into shit. I bet you thought you were tough the way you handled me earlier on The Annihilator?
"My team is dead, and Fagan and Leeks aren't answering on their line. You're all alone. You can beat me up, but I'm the one who's going to ultimately kill you, Anchor. I'm stronger than you are, I'm better than you are, and I'm going to make sure the world thinks you killed all those people on the submarine. I'll make up stories about how you tried to sabotage the mission, and how I, the scientist, overpowered your muscles and brawn to save the day. I'm going to escape in the only safety pod with my samples. I'm going to enjoy fame and riches. Hell, I'll even meet your wife, Anchor. I'll tell her lies about you. I'll console her in her moment of need. You might be stronger than me, you ape, you big dumb ox, you Neanderthal lookin', paramecium fuck, but I win! I'm going to brush my teeth with your dick, you loser!"
Anchor's mercury almost burst from the top of his thermometer when Singer mentioned his wife. Then he busted up laughing. "You're going to, what?"
Bright couldn't help herself. "If he brushes his teeth with dicks, I'd hate to know how he flosses."
The rest of the team was rolling.
"I mean, forget it! Fuck you! I'm escaping, and you're going up like the rest of Gargantuan. I'm the one who made it happen, Anchor. I win. I don't care if you're laughing at me. Goddamn it."
Anchor heard Singer click off the line.
"He'll get his," Anchor said, "no worries."
Everybody's morale spiked from high, right back down to low. They ducked into another fleshy pathway. This one had a bone floor. The walls were like the body of a jellyfish, bluish-purple and mesmerizing.
Dr. Singer had reported earlier entering a sort of garden full of sea creations. This was another such area. The creations here were much different. He imagined sea creatures creating a place where they could relax and enjoy a calming moment to themselves. This was a monster's serenity. A break from the stress. For humans, it was a morbid room from hell.
Giant clamshells opened to display fifty human heads. They twitched alive, calling out and screaming for help. They were alive! Anchor opened fire, breaking open the heads like soft pumpkins.
The room circled around them, closing in, as the sights of the room really sank in for the team. Intestines were stretched about the room. Bright blue light filtered through the walls of the viscera, showing tiny minnows and other tiny sea life swimming inside. Instead of seaweed growing on the rocks, human hair of various colors had grown out, giving the floor a strange texture. Hands grew out of a pile of plankton, the hands locked in a rigid position as if trying to break free from the throws of agony.
Anchor directed his team out of the room as quickly as possible. "We can't waste ammunition. Set some charges, and let's get the hell out of here."
The team went about their jobs.
Anchor put one of the charges near one of the hands. The hand clutched onto it, as if wishing for death. It startled Anchor. Everything had life in this room, even if they were disembodied.
Thank God, we're blowing this place a new asshole.
Nobody deserves to live on like this.
These creatures are like fish Nazis.
Going down deeper into
Gargantuan, the way back sealed itself up, boiling up and hardening in seconds. Anchor didn't care. He didn't plan on backtracking. There was no going back. Only forward.
Bright stopped. So did the rest of the team. "Do you hear that?"
Anchor trained his ears.
"It sounds like boiling," Bright said. "It's coming from below us."
Another officer said, "Does it feel hotter all of the sudden to you guys?"
The purple fleshy walls disintegrated all around them. It was like watching vinegar hit baking soda, how everything fizzed and turned to liquid. The ground vanished beneath them. The only thing remaining was a single bare bone, creating a bridge from one end of the corridor to the other. Anchor and Bright were able to keep themselves standing on that bone, while the rest of the team fell six stories down into a boiling pit of orange. Before those who fell touched down, their bodies were melted by the heat. Instantly vaporized.
Anchor noticed holes in the wall above them. Random items fell down into the pit, like other members of Fagan and Leek's team. The suited corpses were dead weight as they took the deadly plunge.
"It's like we're above the thing's stomach," Bright said. "That orange shit is its digestive juices."
Anchor set a charge on the bone.
"You out of charges?" Anchor asked Bright. "Because I'm out."
"I'm out too," Bright said. "So it looks like the only thing we can do is survive."
Anchor didn't agree.
"You're forgetting something, Bright. I've been locked up in a prison for a long time. I've been falsely accused of murder. My wife and family think I'm a killer. Let's just say I have some pent up stress to release."