Takaashigani

by Justin Hunter

  “How many left?”

  “Seven,” the old man said, his whole body was shaking. Duke didn’t know how much longer the man could even stand.

  “Get as many as you can to trucks in the lot. The bigger the better. Get behind the crab and push. I’m going to pull it with the tow.”

  “Where are we going to pull it?” the vagrant leader asked. Duke gestured to the roaring inferno behind them.

  “Right into there.”

  “Shit,” the vagrant leader said and spit on the ground. He turned and limped off shouting orders. The survivors, what little of them that were left, sped off to the parking lot to find vehicles that could still be driven where the owners were kind enough to leave their keys. Duke ran around the flailing crab, careful not to be crushed by its gyrating body or thrashing limbs and found who he was looking for. The girl was alive. She was hacking into the crab with a piece of its own armor. He called to her.

  “I need your help.”

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Do you think you can handle a rocket launcher?” Duke asked. She smiled.

  Chapter - 38

  Duke hooked his tow truck winch into a lip of the crabs shell and got into his truck. The crab was moving slower now, but it was still deadly and was doing huge amounts of damage from just swiping the air with its claws. Duke wondered if the girl had found the rocket launcher when he heard the huge gun go off with the sound of hellfire and damnation. He gunned the engine and charged forward with the truck. When the winch went taught, the truck almost snapped in half. It rose up on its back wheels, smoking the ground with burning rubber. Duke looked out his back window to see truck and cars driving around the back of the crab, some barely able to move. Duke swore and wished the survivors had found better cars, when he saw the vagrant leader crashing through the parking lot wreckage in a bulldozer.

  “Son of a bitch,” Duke said and gunned the tow truck engine again. The crab was beginning to move. The rocket launcher went off again and another leg fell. Duke wondered how well the girl was holding up. The recoil on that thing was probably knocking the little woman on her ass every time. He thought about her pulling the rifle on him and decided she could probably hold her own. He was a father of a girl after all, and people were always underestimating their strength and tenacity. He revved the tow truck engine for another pull and put the gas pedal to the floor. He cried out in fury as the crab barely moved, but then it lurched forward and Duke gave a small grin, knowing that the old vagrant had probably gotten the bulldozer in place. The rocket launcher kept firing, and Duke knew that the girl must be out of ammo soon. He kept the pedal down and the crab was beginning to move.

  Slowly, the bulldozer, trucks, cars and the tow moved the beast toward the fire. The heat blazed inside the cab of the tow truck. The giant crab shook the ground with its frenzied movements. The blast of the rocket launcher ripped through the sky. This shot caromed off the crab’s shell and blew up a lady driving a Chevy truck. Duke turned his gaze straight ahead and put the pedal down. He knew they were moving too damn slow. They would never make it into the woods at this rate and the crab would raise all sorts of hell the moment he was licked by the hungry fire.

  A hard slap on his passenger side window. Duke turned to see the girl. She opened the door and sat down beside him.

  “Any other ideas?” she asked. Duke shook his head. Ahead of them the forest fire roared. They pulled the monster from hell behind. Scraping forward by inches and then nothing. The front tires of the tow truck spun on the hot concrete leaving smoke and rubber behind.

  “What’s going on?” The girl asked.

  “I’ll check it out,” Duke said. He parked the tow and opened his driver side door. The bulldozer had stopped pushing. Duke knew that without the dozer there was no way they could fry the beast. He grabbed his shotgun out of the cab and made sure it was loaded. He ran behind the tow truck and moved right up to the clacking mandibles of the beast. He fired five rounds in succession into the gaping maw, splintering the orifice into a pile of mush. He turned the gun around and started smashing the crab in the mouth. He lost himself in his rage. The butt of his shotgun made wet thumping sounds as it mashed meat into pulp.

  “I’ll be a flim-flamming-fuck! What the hell are you doing?” Duke looked up to see the vagrant leader, growling chainsaw in hand, standing atop the belly of the crab, which ebbed and flowed. The old man must have had his sea legs, because he kept his footing with ease.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Duke yelled back. “Where’s the dozer?”

  “Right where I fucking left it,” the vagrant leader said. “Get back in that tow and get ready to pull.” The vagrant leader pressed the trigger on the chainsaw and the machine roared. He brought the edge down upon the leg of the crab. Duke saw that there were already ropes around the appendage. As soon as he sawed half way through the leg, he raised his arm and waved.

  “Pull!”

  The ropes were secured to the remaining four cars and pull they did. The crab’s leg ripped out of its socket with sickly tearing and popping sounds. The leg crashed onto two of the cars, the drivers pinned, screaming and burning within the wreckage. The vagrant leader was already cutting away another leg. Blue blood spurted upward in an arching spray that covered him from head to foot making him look like a demented Papa Smurf. The leg cut away and the vagrant fell forward smashing his face upon the concrete. He raised his head, teeth falling out of the ruin of his mouth and he croaked.

  “Pull.”

  The remaining cars strapped ropes around the legs and pulled. The leg came out, but not cleanly, taking a huge mass of guts with it. Duke hit the gas pedal and the crab moved slowly. The vagrant pushed himself up from the ground, weeping a trail of blood as wide as a paint roller swipe and crawled into the dozer. He moved the machine forward. The crab moved and was picking up steam. The remaining cars untied themselves from the severed appendage and got around the back of the crab and pushed. They moved the beast at fifteen miles an hour straight into the forest fire. Duke didn’t know when the girl bailed on him, but when he looked over, she was gone.

  “Smart kid,” Duke said and put the tow into a lower gear and gave her all the power he could muster out of his beloved truck. Fire licked around his vehicle, blowing his tires and filling the cab with smoke. The crab let out a hiss, still very much alive and pissed off, but near defenseless from the violence of the people. Duke saw fire explode up into the sky and realized that the remaining cars had exploded from the inferno. He thought that his ears might be playing tricks on him, but he thought he could hear the vagrant leader laughing.

  The crab was smoking and burning all over its body. It thrashed and rolled, even with the loss of legs, back onto its stomach. The roll nearly overturned the tow truck, but the winch snapped at the very last possible moment. The truck smashed back onto all four wheels. Duke hit his head on the roof of the cab. The crab was scrabbling with its remaining legs, but it could only drag itself along the ground by inches. It was burning. Duke looked over his shoulder and saw that the dozer was lying on its side.

  “Sorry about that old man,” Duke said. He depressed the gas pedal while putting the tow truck in reverse. The rubberless tire rims squealed and sparked on the ground, but the truck moved. All of a sudden the passenger side door opened and the vagrant leader pulled himself inside.

  “Make some room kid,” the vagrant leader mumbled through his broken mouth. “Don’t be ‘shellfish’.”

  “Holy shit,” Duke yelled, reaching back behind him and pulling out a small fire extinguisher he sprayed the vagrant, which would have been a pretty shitty thing to do, except that the man was on fire. When he had emptied the fire extinguisher, Duke looked like he had just spray painted a flayed corpse. The old vagrant coughed and sat back in his chair, closing his eyes.

  Duke drove the tow truck out of the flames and back into the parking lot, coughing from the discharge of the fire extinguisher. The cab of the truck was so hot
that he felt like he was baking in an oven. He broke out of the walls of flame and jounced the truck back onto the broken and debris strewn parking lot of the docks. He opened the door and fell out of the cab, landing awkwardly on his side. The world spun before his eyes. Duke didn’t know whether he was losing consciousness due to smoke inhalation, blood loss or pain from his burned and sliced skin – but pass out he did.

  The last thing he saw was the vagrant leader, ghostly white from the fire extinguisher blast, limping away from the tow truck. He was headed toward the burning woods. Duke thought he would be okay.

  Chapter - 39

  The dented, scarred, burned and blackened tow truck made quite an impression as it chugged down the Nevada highway at forty miles per hour. The headlights were both broken out, as were the side and front windows. A piece of the front bumper hung down and sent sparks cascading off onto the soft shoulder of the highway. The truck was indeed towing a vehicle. A teal boat, at least the front half of it, was drifting along behind the truck. A broken winch cable had been tied haphazardly to a dock tie on the boat’s prow. Under the boat was what looked like the rear axle and wheels that used to belong to a sedan-sized car. These were held to the boat by several tarp straps. Every few miles and with every bump in the road a piece of the boat or tow truck would fall off and go bouncing along the highway. The whole damn thing looked like it could fall apart at any moment, but the man doing the driving must have known what he was doing when he rigged it together. He had done several hundred miles and was closing in on his destination.

  Duke was behind the wheel. He was smoking a jet-black cheroot cigar, barely able to get any smoke out of it he had been chewing on the end so long that it was as wet as cow cud. He bit off the end and spit it out the window, ignoring the myriad of shredded flecks of tobacco in his teeth. He inhaled deeply, fuck the surgeon general’s warning. He had a long couple of days and he damn well deserved a smoke. He took a cursory glance out the back window of the tow and decided he would make it to the government relay office just fine. He took the turnoff and rounded the off ramp just as the rear axle broke on the left side. He dragged the boat, a screaming hunk of wood and metal, the last three miles to the relay office and turned off his truck right in the middle of the lot.

  Duke got out of his truck, ignoring the stares and gasps of the onlookers as they began to crowd around the vehicle.

  “Nothing to see here,” Duke said as he grabbed the burned, bloodstained and rumpled paperwork from out of the glove box. He crumpled the paperwork further in his fist and walked briskly to the government office building. He turned abruptly left, paying no attention to the security guard and desk attendant. He went right up to the cashier, ahead of the waiting crowd and thumped the paperwork on the lady’s desk.

  “You got the boat,” Duke said. “Where’s my six hundred bucks?” She reached into the drawer and paid him in twenties without glancing at the paperwork in front of her. Duke pocketed the money and stomped back out to his tow truck. He slammed the winch lever and the boat dropped like a stone to the ground. The broken and burned watercraft split in two when it hit the ground and Duke couldn’t give one fuck about it. He saw someone smoking in the gathering crowd of gawkers and grabbed the cheroot cigar right out of his mouth.

  “Got any more?” he asked. The man reached into his coat pocket and took out a soft pack of machine-rolled, wine-infused, crappy tasting smokes. He took a twenty out of his pocket and put it in the shirt pocket of the man and slapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it,” the man said and stepped back from the haggard, half-crazy looking repo man in front of him. Duke inhaled deeply on the cigar and coughed. He got into his tow truck and cranked the engine, sending a plume of grey smoke into the air. The gears screeched terribly as he drove the truck out of the lot and back onto the highway for the long ride home. Duke smoked the rest of the cigar in silence as he watched the miles pass under his wheels.

  Duke lit another cigar from the pack, crumpled up the empty packaging and tossed it into a sewer. He was mighty pleased with himself, thank you very much. Now all that was left was to head home, which wasn’t too far, and begin dealing with the insurance company. He smiled as he thought of the pencil pushing appraisal insurance man trying to fill out a report on what happened to his truck. Duke had a few miles to think up a good story. The dents and fire damage were one thing. The nearly overpowering fishy smell and bullet holes where another. Duke was happy as a pig in shit that he was going home to his wife and kid. He would take whatever insurance money the company would offer him and float the family on it until he found another line of work. He was done with the repo business. He wanted to spend more time at home with his family, instead of being on the road all the time. He was done with the danger of the business, although he was pretty certain that he would never have to deal with something as wicked as he just did. A man could only press his luck so far. He thought of his daughter, growing up and nearly a full grown woman. He missed her. He had missed so much of her young life and wanted to start being a dad for her again. For a moment, he thought about the girl with the Airsoft rifle and wondered if she were still alive.

  He downshifted the sparking hulking mass of his tow truck and headed for home, a full two hundred more miles down the road. God only knew if the two truck would make it that far. Duke wondered when the next gas station was coming up. He would fill up the damn tank one last time, grab some smokes and finish out this ride.

  He inhaled deeply on the cigar and burned his lips on the glowing ember. He tossed the smoke out the side window and exhaled a plume of grey smoke straight ahead, letting it blow back into his face from the missing windshield. He laughed and slapped the steering wheel, thankful to be alive. He thought of an old joke he had heard a long time ago in some nameless truck stop along an old lonely highway like this one.

  “This one crab was talking to another one,” Duke said to no one in particular. “He noticed that his friend was shivering and he asked why he was so cold. The other crab said that he got a ride here in a man’s moustache. The man drove a motorcycle and he was freezing. The other crab told him that he should get a ride up the man’s wife’s skirt, then he wouldn’t be so cold. When the crabs met again, the first one was shivering just as badly as the first time. The other crab asked why he didn’t take his advice and ride up a woman’s skirt. The first crab told him that he did, in fact, go up a lady’s skirt, but when he woke up in the morning he was on the guys’ moustache again.” He slammed on the brakes and took the tow truck off to the side of the road, narrowly avoiding slipping on the dirt soft shoulder. He grabbed his Bowie knife out of his boot and turned, stabbing through the middle of the seat. A sharp scraping of claws erupted from the back seat. Long legs sprang out from every direction. Duke reached back behind the seat and ripped the crab forward, jamming it in the recesses by the pedals. Duke stabbed the crab again, right through the center of its soft belly and out the armored back. The crab moved still, but there was no real life in the creature. Duke leaned back in his seat and relit his cigar.

  “Didn’t think I knew that you were back there this whole time?” Duke asked the spasming crab. “I’ve watched a whole lot of horror flicks in my time and there’s always one creature left that kills the poor bastard that thought he made it through his ordeal alive. I’m not going out like a fucking chump. I’m going to take you home and barbeque you. You’re big enough to feed my whole family. What do you think about th—?” Duke’s eyes opened wide. Blood seeped slowly out of the left corner of his mouth. His body jerked in the seat. His mouth opened and a “guh, guh, guh,” sound came out of it. There was a wet, ripping sound, like mud being dropped into a five gallon tub of paint. Duke pushed his arms down and shoved himself up to lean against his dashboard. As he did so, his large intestine fell out of the rip in the back of his jeans. His entrails went down into a tear in the seat cushion. Duke’s body jerked as more lines of snaking intestinal coil were withdra
wn from his body. He reached back with one hand and pulled. His gut stopped coming out and he twisted around and grabbed his insides with both hands and began pulling them up from out of the recesses of the seat, finally finding the claw that was attached at the end. Duke leaned forward and clamped his jaws down onto the claw, breaking his teeth off as he crushed the armor beneath the fury of his bite. The spider crab, now missing a claw, crawled out from under the seat and seemed to watch Duke as he tried unsuccessfully to push his intestines back up into his torn anus.

  “Sneaky,” Duke said, blood now pouring out of his mouth. “Sneaky little fucker.” He fell forward on the dashboard, dead. The crab grabbed the intestines with its good claw and brought them to his mouth. It began to feed.

  Read on for a free sample of Snakehead

  Prologue

  Her supply is running low. Bodies rot beneath her, buried in the sandy home that she has created. What was once fresh and delicious is now fetid. What was once terrified for its life is now silent. She’s felt this silence many times before, usually in smaller batches. Never has she given herself so wholly to a mass extermination of this sort. A long time has passed since her madness got the best of her, but still it throbs inside.

  The season is new. The hunger is strong.

  The boy returns. He is thinking of revenge, but he is not capable.

  There is no more sustenance coming because of what she did in the previous season.

  She lost control.

  No sustenance… not any time soon, at least. The two legged ones, who float through her dominion, guzzling from shiny cylinders, are too scared of her overzealous nature from the previous harvest. They are wise not to return, but that doesn't solve the hunger that builds inside her gut. It’s not even hunger pangs, but something that has grown inside her essence. That quaking feeling is about ready to pop and bleed all over the sandy dunes of the serene river.