Takaashigani

by Justin Hunter

  “I am with you,” he said. “They were going to kill me. I’m just trying to get out of here.” The vagrant woman pushed her hair away from her face. Cries of pain and struggle cascaded from all directions. Duke wondered for a moment if this is what Hell would be like. “You attacked me. I’m just defending myself.” The woman lunged at him. Her mouth opened so wide that Duke thought it would split at the edges of her lips. Duke turned into the blow, heedless of the long knife that was plunging directly at his chest. His fist caught the woman on the jaw. Duke felt the bone splinter under his blow. Her teeth scattered in all direction. The knife hit Duke in the breast. He felt the tip of the blade scrape his ribs. The knife entered no further. Duke didn’t know whether it wasn’t sharp enough or that the woman didn’t have the strength to slam it home, but it didn’t matter. He was alive.

  He kneeled back down by the other woman and pried back and forth with his knife. He almost had to sever her head at the neck before it finally came free. Duke ran to get to the tunnel but was stymied by a tackle from his left. He rolled on the ground with his assailant. The man bit Duke on the wrist, making him let go of his knife. Duke rolled the man over and raised his fist to drop a punch that would ruin the man’s face, but paused. It was Shiro. The man’s yellow jumpsuit was torn so badly that it hung from his body only by a few strips of cloth to the neck ring. Duke’s pause was enough for Shiro to slam his empty gun into Duke’s neck. Duke made a wet gasping sound and staggered up and away from Shiro. Shiro got up himself and charged tackling Duke again to the ground. Duke gasped for breath and covered his face with his arms as Shiro rained down blows with his pistol. The sounds of battle, still rang around them. Loud but abated from the first scream into battle. The fighters had paired off into twos and threes, grunting and struggling men and women who had to kill or be killed. Fighting mostly tooth and nail, the battles were slow and vicious. All battle ceased when the sound like a thousand year old cypress cracking in half came from the monster crab tank.

  Those left alive saw the tank splinter right down the middle. The mother of all crabs was swinging its body back and forth using the cables attached to its torso. It smashed into the cracking glass walls of the tank and shattered them. Water and glass washed over the cavern floor. Duke felt the salt water sting his wounds, but he lost all sense of pain when the legless body of the mother crab swung into the steel braces, bending them in half. The cables tore out of her body and she washed out of the tank and onto the cave floor. The crab shook, but couldn’t move forward without her legs. The walls of the cave shook with her fury, sending debris raining down from above. Shiro stood and gaped at the monstrosity before him.

  “That’s impossible,” he said. Duke rose to his feet and spit out a large gout of blood onto the floor. He ran at Shiro and paid him back for the tackles with a rib splintering one of his own. He took Shiro off his feet and brought him all the way to the giant crab, slamming him right between the crustacean’s eyestalks. Shiro screamed as the crab bit into his back with its mandibles. Duke pulled backwards. Shiro came with him. At least part of him did anyway. Shiro’s spine was ripped out through his back. The crab munched it, sucking the bones and flesh down its gullet. Duke kicked Shiro’s limp body away from him and moved at a dead run toward the cave tunnel entrance.

  “Kill it,” the vagrant leader screamed. The workers and vagrants turned as one and moved toward the crab. Guns blasted. The dull thuds and chink of hand weapons were heard as people attacked the defenseless crab from all sides. The clack of the crab’s mandibles rang louder than any blast of a gun. Duke took one look back to see a group of gore-covered vagrants pry open a section of the crab’s armor with a long-armed crowbar. He turned and ran as quickly as he could into the cave tunnel and out of the cavern. Thankfully, there were still some lights along the way to show him how to exit the caves. The tunnels snaked off in every direction. If it wasn’t for the lights, Duke knew he would have been hard put to find his way out. The sounds droned off in the distance with the further he ran. Running would have been nice, however, he was hunched over at the waist, ruining his usual gait. Several times he scraped his head or back on the cave ceiling. Duke’s curses, deadened by the rock walls, didn’t make him feel better. The light at the end of the low hanging cave ceiling did. Seeing that ray of light, which he never thought he would ever see again, made him feel better than he ever had before.

  Chapter - 26

  Duke alighted from the tunnel. He found no one waiting for him and he was again thankful. The vagrants must have gone into the caves as one body. They didn’t feel the need to leave sentry. Duke found an old truck with the keys still in it. The engine of the tired beast turned over with a squeal of metal and sagging belts. Duke gently pushed the gas pedal and drove off down the dirt road. He wasn’t sure of where he was exactly, but he wanted to get back to his tow truck as soon as possible, drive out of this godforsaken town and shove the tow order up the first federal paper pusher he saw.

  The left rear wheel of the truck eviscerated, sending the truck in a hard right turn. Duke depressed the brake pedal but ended up slamming the truck into the tree line just off the shoulder of the road. Duke’s head hit the steering wheel, not hard enough to knock him out, but enough to leave him with an aching head. Black stars exploded in his vision. He opened the truck door and stumbled out.

  “No fucking spare,” he said, as he looked under the truck chassis. “No fucking spare!” he screamed. Duke turned around and rested his aching back against the side of the truck. He sunk down to a sitting position and held his head in his hands.

  “Wait,” a man called from down the road. He was buckling his pants as he was running toward him. Duke tried to stand, but his body relented to fatigue. The man didn’t seem to be holding any weapons. He was also running toward him in the open. Duke let the man come. He was heavier set and older. Much older than Duke. The man hitched up his pants and finally buckled them. He sat down next to Duke. Sweat ran down the old vagrant man’s face.

  “I was taking a shit,” the man said. “Didn’t even get a dang chance to wipe myself. Why the hell are you stealing my truck?”

  “I was escaping,” Duke said. “I was being attacked.” The old vagrant looked at Duke’s bloodied face and rent clothing.

  “It’s easy to see that you’ve been in some trouble,” The man said.

  “I’m not one of the cavern workers,” Duke said. “They were going to feed me to that huge crab.” The old vagrant waved him off.

  “I know you’re not one of them. I know each and every person in town. Now, you can understand that in the heat of the moment my fellows are going to just kill anyone who isn’t one of them. Kind of shoot first and apologize later.”

  “I guess so,” Duke said. “You’re not going to try and kill me?”

  “No. I just didn’t want you stealing my truck is all.” The old vagrant looked at his wrecked vehicle. “You sure did a fucking number on her. You insured?”

  “Yes,” Duke said.

  “Good for you,” the old vagrant said. “I don’t need the particulars. Believe it or not, this truck has been through worse. I’ve been bringing her back from the dead for twenty years. I’m like the mechanic Jesus.” Duke laughed. The joke wasn’t that funny, but it was a relief to be sitting there and speaking regularly. Guns, combat, and giant crabs weren’t the norm for him. For a while, he thought the whole world had gone insane.

  “You hungry?” the old vagrant asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, get your ass up then and let’s take a walk. We’ll have to go back to the cave first and pick up any that made it out of that hell-hole alive. By the looks of you, I don’t think that will be too many.”

  “You have no idea,” Duke said.

  “Bloody business, huh?” the old vagrant said, spitting into the grass. “We’re done being pushed around. We’ve decided to finish this off for good and take back what’s ours.”

  “Wholesale murder?”

 
“War,” the old vagrant said. “Come with me and let’s get the others. We can go back to our camp and get you something to eat and maybe talk a bit. You might see fit to see this through with us.”

  “I want to hook a teal fishing boat to my tow truck and get the fuck out of here.”

  “I want a supermodel, two cans of lube, a car battery and a king-sized bed,” the old vagrant winked at him. “Not going to happen today. Let’s get a move on. They’re bound to think that I ran off on them. I hope more of them survived than you say. I’m sure quite a few of them will come crawling out of that accursed hole. We’re survivors. It’s been that way for a long time.”

  The two left the truck and walked back to the cave entrance to await those that lived. Sure enough the old vagrant was right. Eight of them, limping and damaged, made their way out of the mouth of the cave. Each of them looked like they had been through hell. The smiles on their faces looked as if they had just seen heaven.

  “You all look like you’ve had yourselves a good time down there,” the old vagrant said.

  “They’re all dead,” a woman, well-bloodied and clothes torn, spoke as she wiped a bit of skull fragment off of her shoulder. “At least, everyone that matters is dead. There are still all those folks that live in town, but I don’t think we need to go after them. At least not yet anyway.”

  “Hell. All they need to know is that the situation is under new management,” the old vagrant said, laughing. “They won’t give a shit who’s in charge as long as they keep getting paid.”

  “What about him?” the woman said, pointing to Duke. “I saw him kill some of us in the cave.”

  “I was defending myself,” Duke said. “I was trying to escape.” The old vagrant walked forward and put his hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  “Now don’t get all bent out of shape,” the old vagrant said. “You didn’t know that he wasn’t one of them down there and he was just trying to get away alive. If he was really on their side, he would have killed me on sight. We’ve been talking. He’s okay.” The woman gave Duke a long glance and then shrugged her shoulders.

  “Let’s get out of here and get on back to camp. We all deserve a good meal. Is anyone opposed to Duke joining us?” Nobody said anything. The old vagrant nodded. “Let’s get going then.” They all walked away from the cave entrance and into the woods. Duke followed this bloody motley crew.

  Chapter - 27

  The vagrant camp was set in the middle of the forest in section of cleared trees. Two dirt roads led to the property at opposite ends of the circle. Calling them roads was generous. The vagrants didn’t used them except when moving vehicles in and out of the camp. They did this on purpose so that the roads weren’t trampled too much so that they were too obvious. Closing the camp in further was the circle of dead and decaying cars, scrap metal and a myriad of other miscellaneous refuse that made them seem like hoarders, if not very tidy ones.

  Homes were built on the property toward the center of the circle. These were small one room affairs that were clapped together out of plywood with metal sheeting for the roofs. It might have been squarely living, but it was organized.

  “If we have to leave in a hurry, we can,” the old vagrant leader said. “It’s not like we have a lot of precious possessions we’d be leaving behind. We’ve always been ready for another attack. Those plans have changed now. Now that we killed most of them off and taken over the crabbing, well just move into their fancy houses. They won’t be needing them anymore now that they’re dead.”

  “Fair enough,” Duke said. He was eating a can of cold canned ravioli with voracious appetite. “You don’t think the other people will rebel against you?”

  “I don’t think so. Not if they hear what we did to the others in the cave. As long as the money is good, they won’t try anything. I’m sure that asshole, Shiro, was treating them as poorly as he was treating us. All we have to do is cut them a better deal than he was giving them. We just need a new mother crab.”

  “I take it you know where to find one?” Duke asked.

  “We wouldn’t have attacked them if we didn’t,” the vagrant leader said. “The one they had was all used up anyway. Her pheromones weren’t bringing the others in as fast as they used to. It only stood to reason that if there was one mother crab, there had to be another one out there somewhere.”

  “Where’s the other one?”

  “We’ve found her not too far into the water in some caves. We’ve been feeding her but sometimes she finds food for herself.”

  “You’ve watched her eat townspeople?”

  “They know what’s in the water,” the old vagrant said. “It’s their own damn fault for going out there. Besides, we thought she was going to take care of Shiro herself. That would have saved us a whole lot of bloodshed. You had to come along and be a part of saving him.”

  “I didn’t know,” Duke said.

  “Now you do.”

  “How are you going to get her out of there?”

  “We’re going to set a charge over the top of that cave and blast a hole big enough to pull her out of. We’ve rigged up quite a ship for it. Being a man in the towing business, you will really appreciate it.

  “Let’s go take a look,” Duke said.

  “Soon enough,” the old vagrant said. “We’ll heal up here tonight and head out there in the morning. You’re welcome to stay.”

  “No thanks,” Duke said. “I just want to get that fishing boat and get out of here. I don’t want to stay another day if I can help it.”

  “Alright. We’ll see if we can’t fix you up with something to help you.” Duke thought he would be given some form of transportation, but he was wrong. After filling his stomach with food, he was given a gun and directions. He thanked them and headed out through the forest on foot. Dark descended quicker than he would have thought. He was also lost. As he bedded down in a bed of dead leaves and pine needles, shivering, he wished he took the vagrants up on their offer.

  Chapter - 28

  The vagrant camp was alive with activity. Even the wounded put their backs into the work of preparing to snag the mother crab. This was the work that many of them had been waiting for. Many of the vagrants lived their entire lives away from the general population, and moving into the town and sleeping in a nice, comfortable, safe house was something they all yearned for. The ship they were going to use was old, but solid. It was metal-based with wood work interlaid. Various man-made netting and weapons lay all over the decking. The port side of the ship was loaded with large, crude harpoon guns, each holding a menacing spear-sized arrow. The ship was the size of a medium fishing boat and could hold almost twenty people if it had to. The vagrants thought they might try to pile on even more than that. Every one of them wanted to be in on this action. They all wanted to be a part of the capture of a new mother crab. This monster would bring forth the new dawn of their rule over the town and the fishing operation, not to mention the vast horde of money that would roll into their dirt-stained palms.

  Chapter - 29

  Duke stole a small rowboat. He felt like an asshole for doing it, but he was going to get that damn teal fishing boat and tow it back to shore if it killed him. Normally, getting killed during a job wasn’t much of an issue. He made a mental note to punch the bureaucrat in the face who gave him this job when he got back home. He was sure that would make him feel a lot better.

  He found the rowboat by heading straight toward some of the larger properties along the coastline. Its engine was big enough to take him to where he wanted to go. It was tied up to a dock, but that was all the owners took in keeping their property safe. Duke tried to rationalize his behavior by telling himself that they were so wealthy that they probably didn’t care much if someone took their boat. If they did, they would have at least locked it up better. The fucking keys were still in the damn thing.

  Duke drove away from the small dock without worry. The lights of the home were all out. Whomever lived there wasn’t there currently. H
e also had a long unwieldy knife that the vagrants had been kind enough to equip him with. He was sure that any white-collar home inhabitants that happened to take umbrage with his taking of their boat would gladly allow him to go if he flashed that steel at them. The engine cranked on with the first turn of the key.

  The boat took some time to break past the waves coming into shore. Duke kept his hand firmly on the rudder, trying to keep the boat heading straight as he could toward the waves. It wouldn’t do him any good to capsize. He would probably have to let the boat drift off while he swam back to shore. This would especially suck if the people he stole the boat from actually were home. Then he would swim back, bedraggled and sodden, to face the pissed off family and probably some sort of sheriff to boot.

  The waves hit the prow of the bass boat, sending him rocking back and then forward. He didn’t mind the swell of the waves. His stomach didn’t churn one bit. After heading out into the ocean a hundred feet or so, the waves died down and he steered the ship toward the underwater caves and the prize; the teal fishing boat that was hopefully still where he left it, bobbing against some salty fauna that grew out of a small rocky island near the caves.

  The trip took him a full half hour. The fishing boat, looking much the worse for wear than he had remembered it, was still there. Duke tied off a line of parachute cord he found in the bass boat to a chair post and pulled himself up onto the deck of the teal fishing boat, taking the other end of the rope with him. He tied that off on the prow of the boat. He took one last look around the fishing boat, seeking anything he might be able to salvage from the ship before he left. Stripping a tow wasn’t something he normally did, but he didn’t feel too bad about it in this instance. This had been one hell of a tow contract, he thought he might as well get everything out of it that he could.