Space Sharks

by Alan Spencer

  Who the fuck are those people?

  Barry threw a flaming bourbon at the crazies. He got one bitch right on the head and watched her body dance with fire. She stood their taking the flames and chanting religious gibberish. "Oh God. Oh holy, holy one! I am yours. Judge me. Take me. I am yours to have!"

  Barry hurled twenty plus bottles into the crowd of enemies, sharks and religious murderers alike. He was scattering both threats away from his position. Barry was feeling good about his stand until the cold edge of the blade was dragged across his throat.

  Mercy Lazar breathed sweet nothings in the name of God into his ear until he stopped gasping and finally died.

  * * *

  Crissy Taylor had been on a strict diet for two years. She had lost one hundred pounds and was considered back to her ideal body weight. But when everything went to shit recently, she decided today was going to be a treat. She would stuff herself silly.

  Crissy was standing at the buffet of seafood, high end steaks, and desserts tasty enough to make her cream her pants (as her late sister, Brandy, would've phrased anything that tasted good to her) when everything went into chaos. Buffet tables erupted into pieces, flinging food, glass, and hunks of wood in every direction.

  The fine dining area was being attacked by water that was rushing, spilling, and blasting into the room. The tidal wave tried to mix everybody together like a washing machine's spin cycle.

  Heads crashed together, killing many instantly. Others were smashed against tables and knocked unconscious. Many bled from the shards of glass mixed in with the water. Blood stained the flowing waters.

  Years of strict dieting, and right before she could sink her teeth into a juicy steak, a creamy cake, or dip a piece of crab into hot butter, this bullshit had to happen! Crissy didn't care if she died. She only cared if she died with an empty stomach. She detested that feeling of empty. Fuck society. Fuck being pretty. Fuck moderation. Fuck this situation! Fuck everybody and everything!

  Crissy was in such a rage, when the first shark reared its head up from the water, she didn't cower in fear. She charged forth in anger. Crissy's mouth was agape. Her jaw opened. Her mouth was as wide as it could go. Crissy leaped on top of a blue shark, clutched its fin, and bit down on its skin. She tore a piece off of its back. When the blue shark shook her off, and turned around to return the favor, Crissy would quickly regret her decision.

  She wouldn't just die on an empty stomach.

  She would die in a stomach.

  Cleaning lady Glenda Alvarez was sprawled on top of her cleaning cart. She hopped on top when the giant wave shot her down the hallway of guest rooms. She watched the horrors that kept unfolding around her. P. F. Gould, the asshole who went out of his way to offer her a crisp fifty dollar bill for a blowjob, was being dragged by the intestines by a bull shark. Gould's body kept bashing into the walls as his dead corpse was being carried to God knew where.

  Room doors kept crashing open by the powerful force of building water. Glenda screamed at the sight of a floating dead shark whose belly was being cut open from the inside and four people clawed their way out of guts and messy entrails only to be swept up in a new wave of water and carried down to another part of the ship.

  The wave carrying her slowed. She was able to climb down off of the cart. Glenda ran straight for the emergency stairs. When she opened the door, she fell right into the gaping shark's maw waiting on the other side to swallow her up.

  Getting off wasn't strong enough of a word. Paige Parker, known to her friends as Pretty Paige, relished in riches. She grew up a billionaire, and stayed one into adulthood. Daddy's money.

  Old money.

  Paige's money.

  Spending it wasn't what she enjoyed.

  Paige loved to steal. Five finger discounts all the way, baby.

  People were running and screaming for their lives, and Paige was sneaking about the halls of the mini strip mall pilfering jewelry by the handfuls. She snagged a dress off the racks from a boutique and turned the fine attire into a sack for her lifted goods. Paige was enjoying the thrill until she saw along the display counter showcasing the many articles of gold. Among the articles was the biggest crab she'd ever seen. The ones she ate were a fraction of the size. This was as big as a Rottweiler, and those claws, they were simply HUGE.

  Paige gasped in horror when she noticed the human arms, legs, and heads that had been broken off by the crab pincers. Blood and pink meat were crusted on those bizarre weapons. Paige was about to lug her take and book it out of there when four people held her down.

  "Get your hands off of me! What do you think you're doing? Do you know who I am? Do you know who my dad is?"

  Just in time, a small stream of water carried her father's corpse to their position. He had two carps bored into his eyes as they chewed into his brains.

  "Oh God! Lemme go! Please. I'll give you anything you want!"

  "Sinner!" The four accused Paige. "It's your turn to be judged!"

  The tang of their bodies hit Paige, and nearly made her puke. They stank like they hadn't taken a shower in weeks and bathed in each other's bodily juices. The smell was so ripe. Paige noticed the crosses drawn in blood on their foreheads. She knew right then she'd fallen into dangerous hands.

  The crab leapt off the counter and crawled towards Paige's body. They pinned her down, and Paige could only writhe and squirm as the little beast crept closer. Paige's screams joined those on board, and she too fell victim to the crab's hungry claws.

  Nobody was safe.

  The Redeemer truly was a death ship.

  Part Five: Fight for Your Life

  The Fun's Over

  Ram and Buffy made fast, needy, desperate love. This sex was in the name of getting off, and enjoying the temporary escape only flesh could provide. Quick nibbles and bites. Fast orgasms and deep satisfaction. That escape was short-lived, but so necessary. They were both winded and spent on top of the covers. They spooned each other and enjoyed the comedown.

  Sex opened up people, Ram knew, and Buffy had a question to ask him. He would answer it, because he considered this woman to be the only true friend he had left in the world.

  "Earlier, you said something bad happened to you. I felt better after telling you about my husband. Maybe you'll feel the same way."

  "I can tell you, but it's not a pleasant story. My wife's name was Shirley. I had two kids named Brandy and Sadie. They were the best thing ever. Everything was wonderful in my life. I was being paid awesome money to throw a football. Picture it being the year the Rams went to the Super Bowl. Everything went south after I tossed that pigskin into that terrorist, Jake Lazar's, face and killed him.

  "I was on every TV program being asked about my "heroic" act. I got crazy endorsement deals. The funniest one was for those strips you put on your nose so you don't snore at night. I was even in the works to sign a movie deal. I was going to become an action star. It's all ridiculous.

  "So I went to parties at Hollywood A-listers' mansions. I drank, smoked, snorted, and had sex with people I didn't know. It was like a whirlwind that I got swept up into it. The drugs, the hype, it was too much for one man to handle. Everything seemed to suck me right in. It's a poor excuse for my actions. I know that, and I paid a heavy price.

  "After the parties in my honor start dying down, and the news lost interest in me, and the movie deal fell through, I end up back home. When I return, I find my wife and kids dead."

  Buffy gasped.

  Ram's voice trembled. He wanted to break down and cry, but he had to finish the story while the words were still coming.

  "My wife was hanging from the second story guardrail by her insides. She was strangled by her own..."

  Ram couldn't say it. Buffy hugged him close. "You don't have to tell me."

  It burst out of him. He couldn't stop.

  "My kids, they were only four and five. Those Red Salvation bastards had drowned them in the bathtub. Red crosses, drawn from my wife's blood, were all over the
walls in the house. It was all sickening.

  "Jake Lazar's brother, Mercy Lazar, was taking revenge against me. Mercy, and a bunch of others from his cult, came after me. I narrowly escaped death by jumping out of a window. I called the police, but those awful people were already gone.

  "After that, I went into hiding. I kept a low profile. I quit playing football. They offered me mega bucks, but I didn't want a penny. It was all blood money.

  "I should've been home being faithful to my wife and keeping my nose clean. I would've kept them safe, or better yet, I might've died alongside them. That's how it should've gone down.

  "I've lived with a lot of guilt. My mistakes cost me. That's the thing about mistakes. They burn you. They also change you. You're either the kind of person who backs down from your regrets, or you accept them. A lot of counseling has helped me along. But one thing I know for certain. If I see one of those fuckers from Red Salvation ever again, I'll kill them. Especially that rotten asshole Mercy Lazar. He's the one who leads them. He orchestrated my family's death."

  Buffy couldn't say anything. The story left her lost for words. Together, they heard parts of the ship bend, creak, and shatter.

  The sound of flowing and spraying water was equally disconcerting.

  Screams of terror echoed throughout many of the hallways.

  A message was played on the ship's intercom. They couldn't hear it over the sound of the ship breaking, except for the words EMERGENCY and SAFETY VEHICLES.

  "What's going on out there?" Buffy asked. "It sounds like a war."

  They got dressed. Ram was about to open the door when he heard the evil voice speak through the door.

  "Bathe in the blood of the lord. Swim to heaven in a stream of red. Die for our sins. Be reborn in heaven. The afterlife awaits you!"

  Ram's stomach turned.

  He knew that voice.

  Sweat burned his skin. He was breathing harder without realizing it. That voice, that horrible, murdering son-of-a-bitch!

  Ram threw open the door.

  Buffy rushed in behind him. "What are you doing, Ram? You're scaring me."

  "Stay back, Buffy."

  He wasn't ready for what he was about to see at the door. There was that tall, lanky, bald, emaciated looking monster named Mercy Lazar. Religious terrorist. Murderer.

  He was dragging a machete across an old woman's neck in the hallway. Mercy's eyes lit up as she gargled on her own blood.

  "God is waiting for you. Greet him with open arms. It is your destiny."

  Mercy was knocked out of his moment of enlightenment when he saw Ram stand directly across from him in the hallway. The mass murderer dropped the dead woman onto the floor. She splashed down as dead weight. The floor itself was covered in three inches of flowing water and carried the corpse away.

  "You."

  Mercy couldn't say anything else.

  "I'm glad you painted a cross on your forehead," Ram said. "You want to know why, you Bible banger?"

  Mercy turned his head to the side, curiously. "Why would that be?"

  "It gives me a target to punch!"

  Ram turned his fist into a lethal spring-ejected battering ram. He connected with enough power and energy to knock Mercy through the door behind him. The flying man's impact caused the wood to burst from its hinges.

  He was about to storm into the room and continue the beat down when from down the hall, each room's door broke open. Floods of high-pressure water sprayed into the hallway. Up from the floor, down from the ceiling, wood was bending and giving as the area was being flooded. People hiding in their rooms were forced into the hallway.

  Ram's eyes went big for a new reason.

  A great white shark was swimming on top of a frothing stream of fast moving water. It was coming from the very end of the hallway and right towards him. Whatever it used to be, it had transformed into a mega killing machine. The beast owned thicker skin, a mouth with hideous hamburger meat gum tissue, and enough teeth to chew through an entire city.

  The gaping-mouth monster swam into the victims who were battering against the oppressive tides of water and gathered them up. The shark had eleven people thrashing in its mouth at once. Most were impaled on teeth, half-chewed, gored, or missing limbs.

  All were bloody.

  All were soon to be dead.

  The shark had twenty people in its mouth cavity, then thirty people, and then fifty people before it closed its mouth and chewed the thick wad up with a sickening crunching of bone and the sound of guts bursting through skin.

  The beast swallowed them whole.

  One GULP, and all gone.

  Ram knew that could be him next.

  Swallowed.

  Devoured.

  Chewed alive.

  The great white showed no signs of slowing down. Its hunger would never be satisfied. The flowing water propelled the killer onward in a flash of speed. The shark seemed to be looking into Ram's eyes and enjoying his fear. The shark bared its three-hundred odd teeth and used that new push of water to reach Buffy and him that much faster.

  Fifteen yards out, Ram didn't have anywhere to go. Everywhere, enormous waves of water were incoming while other tides were bashing against him. The room where Mercy landed was overflowing with water too. Nowhere to escape, he thought, except right into the jaws of death.

  Buffy wrapped her arms around him.

  She too knew they were as good as dead.

  Ram did his best to enjoy Buffy's embrace as the great white killer loomed nearer for the slaughter.

  Left Hanging on the Line

  Ernie Pine did his best to ignore the sounds coming from outside the elevator. He knew the place was being flooded on every floor. Soon, they would all drown.

  Not me. I know the way out of this mess. Fuck everybody else. I'll start the new world. My seed will carry us on. The original plan is done. There's only me now.

  Ernie's body was shaking uncontrollably. He saw the president of Globo Corps gunned down by so many bullets. Bryce was dead. That made him in charge of upholding Globo Corps' vested interest. Eyes set to the future, he thought. Ernie could make decisions about Second Earth, and how the future would play out for humanity. He owned so much power.

  He scratched that from his mind, knowing power was useless if you were killed. Ernie grabbed the phone next to the elevator's buttons. He dialed the security office. There was no answer.

  Was the ship's security team taken out? It was very much possible. There were terrorists on their ship, as well as those terrifying shark creatures.

  Ernie wasn't ready to give up.

  He dialed the pilot's quarters.

  Again, no answer.

  The phone rang and rang.

  "Damn it. Okay, think, Ernie. Who else can help you?"

  Ernie dialed for the ship's maintenance crew. Ernie dialed the kitchen staff. Ernie dialed the cleaning crew's office. Nobody answered.

  Everybody was eaten, or slaughtered by a religious crackpot.

  That left one option remaining, and it was up to Ernie to activate that option.

  The Pathfinder 3000 was the final and last resort.

  Yes! The Pathfinder would get results.

  Ernie dialed a series of numbers into the phone. Once he did, an automated messaged asked for voice verification.

  "Ernie Pine," he said shakily. He couldn't smooth out his words. "Activate Pathfinder 3000."

  The automated voice said, "Pathfinder will be fully charged in thirty minutes. Activation will then proceed."

  "Fucking idiots didn't charge the Pathfinder? Seriously? If the security staff is alive, I'm firing them."

  Ernie knew he had to reach the topmost section of the ship. That's where he'd reach the security office, and ultimately, meet-up with Pathfinder 3000 once the special weapon was fully charged.

  Ernie pushed the button for the topmost floor. He inserted a special access key into the wall and unlocked the elevator's ability to access the security quarters.

  Th
e elevator moved upwards. He was relieved to be on his way to safety. Ernie steadied his breath. Pathfinder would escort him to the safety space crafts, and he would land on Second Earth in one happy piece. There was a lot to the plan that had been ruined by this horrible turn of events. Ernie would have to make the best of things. And take advantage.

  Each floor that ticked upwards, Ernie's sense of growing calm was instantly taken away from him. Small pools of water were bleeding up from the floor. He heard water splash on top of the elevator in a hard pelting rain. He imagined the elevator was under a roaring waterfall.

  Ernie wedged himself into a corner when the elevator started to tremble. A small chunk of the wall broke. A mouth surrounded by hideous blue flesh bit down on his palm. A jagged one-inch bite was removed from his hand.

  "Ahgod!"

  Another hole was bashed into the floor. A bigger mouth tried to eat both of his feet, but Ernie jumped to another corner in time.

  He checked the elevator panel.

  Ernie was almost to the security floor.

  The ceiling was being pounded by dozens of different things. He caught the steely glint of fishy eyes. Teeth crunching on metal. Wood being chewed to pulp. Ernie was soaked head to foot in shivery cold water. Something very large was pounding its head over and over against the floor.

  DOOM!

  DOOM!

  DOOM!

  The elevator dinged.

  The doors sprang open.

  The moment Ernie leaped forward, the floor exploded, and the head of a great white shark surged with its hungry mouth agape.

  Have Mercy

  O' heavenly father, we now present to you our weekly tithing. Mercy, you know what to do. Reach into the bag and pick something out. Really look around in there. The bag's deep. Get your hands bloody. Choose well. Sin is sticky. So sticky, it clings to you.