Lampreys

by Alan Spencer

  Scoop stayed back from the vent. She coughed against the smoke filling up the room. She wasn't sure if her timing was right or if the creature had steered clear of the grenade.

  Her question was soon answered. A lamprey the size of a smart car crashed into the room. Its sucker face was a sizzling stump of bleeding meat. The smell reminded her of bacon crossed with salmon.

  Scoop was choking against the smoke and the cooked lamprey stench.

  There was only one door out of the room.

  Scoop didn't have to think.

  She exited the room with haste.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Henry had no idea if the blood crossing his lips was theirs or his own. The room was jam-packed with enemies. Everything was in constant motion, including him. Henry vaulted forward, slashing both his Bowie knives in wide-spanning arcs. One blade scraped against teeth. The other blade slashed one of the anaconda-sized lampreys across the belly up to its sucker mouth. Everything inside of it spilled forth in a wave of cold disgusting mess. Henry was thrown up against a wall. Two dozen, thirty, maybe fifty of the lampreys occupied the room, and each of them was trying to suction him into their hungry maws. Henry was reduced to a ragdoll caught in the airstream of too many enemies.

  The assault was dizzying and Henry had no control over his body. He did his best to keep slashing his combat knives to ward them back. The sleeve of his shirt was torn. A large X of skin was sucked from his back.

  Henry roared with pain.

  Those sensations drove him to extremes. He pivoted his body just right to avoid their suction for two seconds. Henry dropped to the floor and rolled to the nearest lamprey.

  "You think you can kill me? I'd like to see you fucking try!"

  Henry crept up behind the lamprey that was as tall as his body and almost as thick. He jammed both Bowie knives below its sucker face. Henry had control of it. Using it like a puppet, he pivoted its maw towards the other lampreys.

  The lamprey's teeth were spinning and suctioning air even faster in a panic. The creature didn't know how to ward off the attack, so it kept sucking, and sucking, and sucking with insane power. Sonic booms and loud percussions filled the room. Henry pointed the sucker face at every creature.

  The lampreys attacking him were knocked backwards, shoved into each other, thrown into the ceiling, and collided into each other. Air streams worked against the lampreys, tearing squares of meat from their bodies. Blood and black amphibious flesh flew across the room, suctioning to random mouths who all sucked in confusion.

  Henry's trick had worked so well, the lampreys began to retreat. When every last one of them were gone, Henry dragged the Bowie knives down the lamprey's body until he'd sliced it up enough it stopped thrashing and fighting.

  When the dead lamprey struck the floor, Henry couldn't believe he had survived. The rest of his team's whereabouts was unknown. How was he going to bring them together again?

  Where to go next was another burning question.

  "QUITE AN IMPRESSIVE SHOW. YOUR TEAM WON'T FARE AS WELL AS YOU DID. YOU CAN KILL AS MANY AS YOU LIKE, BUT YOU WON'T STOP MAMA. ONCE SHE'S HAD HER FINAL MEAL, WE'LL BE LEAVING THIS INSTALLATION. BY THEN, YOU'LL BE NOTHING MORE THAN FUEL FOR HER TRAVELS. YOUR SUCCULENT MEAT WILL SERVE HER WELL ON HER JOURNEY TO AMERICAN SOIL.

  "NOBODY CAN STOP HER. SHE'LL GIVE BIRTH TO MORE CREATURES ON LAND, AND THEY'LL FEED ON THE MASSES. SO GO AHEAD AND LOOK FOR THE REST OF YOUR FRIENDS. YOU'RE NOTHING AGAINST US."

  The steel doors out of the room opened.

  "I GIVE YOU FREE REIN. THE EASIER YOU FIND US, THE EASIER IT'LL BE FOR US TO FIND YOU AND EAT YOU."

  Henry was dripping blood from head to toe. This time, he knew whose blood was pasted to his body. He stalked out of the room, clutching both knives, and searched in every direction to make sure none of the lampreys would ambush him.

  He had many tasks to complete. The first, locate the rest of his team, and then he'd search for Conrad, and figure out a way to get off of this installation alive.

  Henry also had another mission.

  He had to find the man talking to them over the intercom system.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Through the towel draped over his face, Bavardi could sense the evil people in the room who poured buckets of water over his head. Water was choking him through his nostrils and going down his throat. They were water boarding him. Hours and hours of torture, Bavardi was on the verge of drowning and then saved just in the nick of time, only to be put through the same hell again and again. How many long nights had he spent in the dark without food and water? He hadn't slept in days, maybe weeks. How could he sleep? When he was strapped into the chair, water was dripped on his head. Each drop hit him every thirty seconds. The drops of water made it impossible to sleep.

  The terrorist bastards in the cave were merciless. They forced Bavardi to watch as they eviscerated and cut American soldiers into pieces. Bavardi was forced to sit in this very room with their putrid, expiring bodies, and still, they hadn't broke him. The terrorists didn't want secrets from him. They wanted to break an American solider. They wished for Bavardi to condemn his own country. The bastards' goal was for him to shove a gun into his mouth and blow out his brains. He wouldn't. The longer they couldn't break him, the more they wanted to break Bavardi. It was a sick, never-ending twisted game.

  Weeks into his ordeal, nobody was coming to save him. That's when one night he broke free of his binds. The only weapon he had were his fists and his brains. He strangled men. Bavardi had nearly ripped off another man's mandible in a rage. When he was armed with an AK-47, he mowed down dozens of the bastards.

  The terrorists wouldn't break him.

  They failed.

  But the lampreys...

  I am their vessel.

  I serve to feed Mama.

  Bavardi was seized by another wave of pain as the lampreys bored into his brain. He was fighting the other people invaded by the lampreys. They had smashed through the door to get to Conrad. Now he was alone in the hallway. He was in limbo between giving in to the lampreys and fighting back.

  He sensed others like him throughout the installation invading rooms, picking up whatever human pieces had been missed from previous slaughters, and stacking them up in hallways for the lampreys to devour.

  I am a vessel.

  I serve to feed Mama.

  After being captured by the terrorists, Bavardi had changed. His family didn't recognize him. His wife divorced him. He never saw his daughter, Melinda, ever again. He withdrew from his family and friends. He knew the evils of the world, and he was consumed by them.

  However, Henry saved him. Henry knew his pain, because he too had been tortured in Vietnam. He carried the scars and the memories and somehow turned his life into a mission of positivity and peace. Without Henry, Bavardi would've died a long time ago.

  He had to do something to save Henry and his team, but oh my God, the agony! The squishing of his brains, the lampreys denied him cognitive thought and bodily control.

  Mama is hungry.

  She must feed.

  I am her vessel.

  Bavardi was a drone once again. He kicked in doors, and searched rooms and labs for bits and pieces of the human body that could be salvaged and consumed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Duke had crawled in the opposite direction as Scoop and Dirty Poncho. Fighting his way in the duct system, it wasn't long before a lamprey was stalking him. He clutched his Gatling gun and pounded the creature's face full of hot lead. Teeth, blood, and black amphibious tissue was chewed up until the face was only a nasty stump. More of them would be on their way, so Duke doubled his efforts to escape. His speed was significantly slowed from carrying the machine gun.

  Did his father make it out of that laboratory? Duke knew his father could take care of himself in a sticky situation. Conrad, on the other hand, was a book reading wimp who wanted to sit on the sidelines and analyze everything through discussions instead of real action
s. He loved making fun of his brother, because he loved his brother. Duke hadn't told him that, except for when his parents made him do it as a kid. Brothers didn't really say that to each other, but after going through this, Duke needed to tell Conrad he cared.

  If Conrad was alive to hear it.

  Duke kept banging his head and his elbows against the walls. He heard wild peals of pain from the other end of the duct system. Dirty Poncho was being attacked. Probably dead, by the agonizing octaves the man unleashed.

  He kept moving.

  Two ideas kept flashing in his mind.

  Find Conrad.

  Kill the lampreys.

  Suddenly the duct system couldn't handle his weight. His angle was titled straight down, and the flat surface turned into a downward slide. Duke spun forward. He clutched onto his gun, refusing to let go of his only weapon besides a Bowie knife.

  Falling through empty air, he was being dropped from high up. Duke braced himself for a rough landing. He was right to do so. After slamming into a deck made of solid wood, Duke thought he broke some ribs, and maybe his left arm. Attacked by wild conflagrations of pain, Duke absorbed it and did his best to live it down so he could survey his surroundings and ensure his safety.

  Duke heard the running of a waterfall. He smelled wet wood, dead bodies, and stranger yet, a chemical mix that was a cross between bleach and citronella. The whiff crossed his nose as wrong and unnatural.

  The pain leveled out. He wasn't as injured as he first thought. Duke hadn't broken his arm, but his ribs were very sore. He clutched onto his Gatling gun and searched high and low for anything. He stood on a wooden deck that overlooked a giant pool of water. Judging by how high the deck was, the pool was at least eight to twelve feet deep and twice as big as an Olympic pool. The water was neon green and glowing. Large machines filtered out the water connected to black barrels marked with biohazard symbols. The pool had a steel covering that was retracted over the top. Somebody had left the pool open.

  "Thank God, you're here," somebody said nearby. "It might be too late for me, but you can still save the rest of the world. They won’t know what hit them if a single one of the lampreys gets off of this rig. Humanity wouldn't stand a chance."

  Duke found the speaker. He demanded the woman in her mid-fifties identify herself.

  "I'm Dr. Locke."

  "What's your hand in this project?"

  "I oversaw the injection of chemicals into our specimens. I made sure our lampreys received enough doses of Terazin-L to grow new stomachs, teeth, and a voracious hunger to consume pollution. I've been hiding and hoping somebody arrived here to save us. Everybody before you didn't make it five minutes before being slaughtered."

  "How did everybody get killed in the first place?" Duke asked.

  "We had the lampreys under lock and key," Dr. Locke insisted. She pointed in the other direction. Other glass tanks of various sizes had their tops unlocked and were left wide open. "But they could always get out. Dr. Sutherland just made it so they escaped all at once...so we could all die at once. Some of us survived in hiding. I knew my time would come to be devoured. I wish I had known you were here sooner. I wouldn't have made a poor decision."

  The woman was very pale. Her eyes were leaking green tears. She was hugging herself and constantly trembling as if in a fever.

  "What did you do? Tell me. Maybe I can help you."

  Dr. Locke bent over the edge of the wooden deck and pointed down into the neon water. "This chemical, Terazin-L, advances digestive systems. Right now, I feel new intestines growing in my belly." She pulled up her top to reveal a bulging stomach. "It hurts so bad. Everything's been stretched and compacted. Oh, my God, look at my hands!"

  A slit cut itself down the middle of her palm. Between the vaginal slits, they slowly turned into circular maws armed with pointy teeth.

  "Run! I can't stop it. I shouldn't have drunk the chemical! I thought it would help me fight them. I was so stupid; I was so scared!"

  Dr. Locke's voice metamorphosed into a monstrous growling, "I'm so hun-gry!" Her eyes were forced out of her head and dangled from meaty strings. Her nose sank into her face and vanished. The woman's jaw and mandible crunched and cracked as it transformed. Skin twisted and tore, allowing the woman's mouth to turn sideways. Down the middle of her features was a giant drooling sucker mouth. That mouth ate the woman's own hanging eyeballs and champed at the empty air hankering for something more substantial.

  Duke took action. He scissor kicked the woman into the green water. The woman sank into the green and disappeared. That's when her demented moans of hunger upgraded into screams. The chemical pool kept changing her body. Every inch of her split and tore to form new sucker maws. Those maws bit and sucked, tearing and shredding the woman into so many pieces until what was left of her sank to the bottom of the pool.

  He wasn't sticking around to see anything else. Duke rushed down the stairwell. The landing below was littered with hundreds of glass tanks. The ones that weren't opened from the top had been shattered completely. Green stains marked the floor. Terazin-L, he imagined. Between the tanks were rubber hoses that Duke assumed fed the toxic water into each glass tank.

  Duke kept picturing the woman's body covered in a dozen mouths, and each of them viciously trying to cannibalize the other.

  This is what happens when crazy people have money.

  Deeper in the room was a passage with thick Plexiglas walls. It faced the pool of green water. He imagined scientists watching the lampreys morph and mutate into eating machines. Computers and equipment that belonged in a mad scientist's laboratory took up much of the room.

  Nothing useful here, he thought.

  Duke located a side door that was open. It led back into the same narrow hallways they'd encountered earlier throughout the installation.

  Right after he crossed the threshold, the door behind him slammed closed.

  The intercom rattled Duke. "MAMA'S STILL HUNGRY. SHE WANTS EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU INSIDE HER!"

  Duke braced himself, clutching the Gatling gun. He heard the dragging of feet. A collection of people was coming after him. Duke was up against a wall. The only direction to go was forward, and the group in the hallway took up any other way of escape. There were more scientists, each severely mutilated. Duke wasn't sure how they could function or surpass death to live.

  The collection of lampreys burrowing and holding them together answered that disturbing question.

  Jesus, the lampreys can do almost anything.

  Bigger lampreys were shifting and traveling in the walls and ceiling. Duke could hear them over the din of the incoming horde.

  Duke pulled back the trigger and realized he was out of bullets.

  "Fuck. Fuck!"

  He threw down the gun and clutched his Bowie knife. Duke knew he wasn't going to fare well in a hand-to-hand combat situation. The best way to fight them was to stay the hell away from them.

  With not much time to think, Duke tried to find a route to race past them. It was impossible. Fifteen of them spread out, forming a sort of a wall. Duke would have no choice but to fight them.

  He was seconds from slashing his knife across the closest throat when a familiar person came out of the collection and said, "I'll hold them back for as long as I can. I know where your father is!"

  Chapter Thirty

  Conrad shivered in the room that turned out to be a giant freezer. He couldn't open the door from this side. He was trapped. The zombie/lamprey monsters stopped banging against the outside of the door. They, for whatever reason, moved on to something else. Conrad didn't have a chance to enjoy the safe moment, because the freezer was full of dead bodies. They were dressed up in lab coats, each of them clustered together hugging onto one another as if their collective body heat could save them from the cold. He didn't have to think long on the fourteen corpses and why they were in here. Conrad imagined the lampreys attacking, and the scientists choosing the closest safe place, and this cold box was it.

&nbs
p; A dark thought crept into his mind.

  You're going to die in here too.

  Conrad couldn't get over the way the skin of the dead shined with frost. It saddened him to see such desperation in their moment of death.

  The rest of the room was full of tall steel shelves mostly stocked with food supplies. There was little room to avoid the dead bodies. That's all Conrad could look at was death.

  But they had to know this was dangerous. They created these things. Why weren't they more careful?

  Dr. Hatcher said the lampreys were designed to eat pollution. It was hard to believe creatures like lampreys could be trusted not to do more than just eat pollution.

  He remembered Dr. Sutherland and Bavardi. They were both occupied by the lampreys, each controlled and possessed. These scientists had no choice in the matter, because the lampreys were smarter than anyone ever anticipated.

  Conrad shivered in the cold. He could dissect why this had happened, and how people could let research like this spiral out of control, but none of it mattered. He would die in this frigid tomb. End of story.

  Another voice popped into his head.

  Duke's.

  You're being a big pussy.

  "I am not a big pussy! Just because I'm not like you and Dad doesn't mean what I do with my life is shit. It's cold, I'm alone, I'm single, I'm unemployed, and my fiancé fucked the whole world without me knowing it!"

  Conrad pushed down a food shelf in a fit of rage. If he could do life again, he thought, as every person thought faced with death, he would live life differently. He was only thirty-two years old. He had more life to live. He'd find a better woman to marry. He could write that novel he was trying to pen for five years now—and this place had given him plenty of emotions to draw from—and teach the meanest literature class any college had ever experienced. He would blow the students off of their desks!

  If only he could escape.