“Keep pulling, Koji! I think its grip is beginning to give way!” Akira thundered aloud as he continued to strike the worm over and over, both impressed and horrified at how tough its hide was compared to the relatively thin skin of a normal bloodworm.
Within a few more moments, Koji gave one additional mighty heave. It seemed the worm was by then either injured or stunned sufficiently that its enormous fanged proboscis could no longer hold its prey, as Greene was pulled free at last. His fellow islander dragged the man’s still struggling body across the sand, determined to get him as far from the water as possible. Akira relented with the continual blows of the oar upon seeing this and ran to tend to Greene.
“Turn him over!” the zoologist barked. “We need to see how badly he is…”
Akira ceased trying to complete the sentence when Koji did as instructed.
Though Greene’s arms and legs were still moving spasmodically, his face had been torn completely off, exposing the interior of his nasal cavity and making it clear that his palate bone was broken in two. His eyes were intact but pure white due to his irises having rolled back in his head.
It was now clear that Greene’s frenetic movements were not continued struggles to escape but simply the involuntary reactions of a short-circuiting nervous system as the horribly maimed man went into fatal shock. Only a low croaking sound accompanied the red-tinted yellow sputum leaking from his mouth.
Koji immediately turned and vomited onto the sand. Akira quietly stood up and put a hand over his eyes in a gesture of sheer sorrow while uttering a prayer to the divine sun goddess Amaterasu.
The scientist finished his silent supplication before he bent and respectfully pushed Greene’s eyelids shut. He then removed his straw porkpie hat and placed it over the now expired man’s mutilated face. Koji continued to empty out the remainder of his morning repast, along with a surfeit of bile, into a selected patch of sand. He coughed out the last small chunks of clumped bile from his throat before wiping his mouth with his pocket hanky.
Akira ran to his side. “Are you all right, Koji?” the scientist asked him.
The young man finished wiping his mouth and wearily turned around as his red, tear-streaming eyes were joined in physical discomfort by a throat throbbing from what he had just put his esophagus through.
“Yes,” he said in a raspy voice. “I… I think so. But…”
Koji took the hand of the now unmoving Greene, which felt icy cold even under the hot subtropical sun. “Greene… no. He is… he is dead.”
“I am very sorry,” Akira said in a genuinely sympathetic tone.
No sooner had the biologist given his condolences that the two remaining men were startled by the combined sound of violently splashing water and an unnervingly loud, piercing squeak. It was a sound that made Akira think of the agonized squeals of a dozen rats being simultaneously crushed under a compressor.
The duo instinctively jumped to their feet and turned to discover the twelve-foot-long mutant bloodworm had recovered and sprung up from the sand it had burrowed under to confront whatever had attacked and stolen its prey.
The monster annelid slithered out of the water and up upon the rocky shoal with a jerky twisting motion that was disturbingly swift. It easily rose the front portion of its body up, which made it appear to “stand” nearly a foot taller than each of the men. From there it extended its several-foot-long, dull pink proboscis from its wide-open maw. The maximum extension took barely over a second, and the worm’s four bio-metallic fangs emerged from the depths of its jaws like a quartet of switch blades.
The antennae-like projections surrounding its head danced about like obscene micro-versions of its body, seemingly collecting important sensory data about the opposition it now faced. Both men looked at the imposingly grotesque sausage-shaped beast, and they shuddered in tandem at the sight.
After uttering another soul-searing screech, the worm set upon the two men of science, moving with startling rapidity in a manner reminiscent of a snake with amplified speed. Thankfully Akira’s reflexes had not diminished with age, as he lifted the hardwood ship paddle just in time to slam it into the worm’s anterior region. Its head was knocked a few inches to the side and it spit a trail of surprisingly human-looking blood from its gaping jaws, but otherwise seemed only slightly fazed.
“Get back, Koji! I will hold it off while you get help!”
The worm lunged its ropey form at the scientist again, and this time managed to lock its mighty pincer-like jaws onto the oar before Akira could successfully strike it again. The man struggled for a few seconds to regain control of the makeshift weapon, but this proved insufficient as the bamboo paddle was yanked from his hands. The worm then tossed the oar to the side before returning to face its now unarmed prey.
“No, I will not lose you too, Professor!” he heard Koji yell as the younger man brandished a small firearm his father, who had fought in World War II, had passed onto him.
The young man always had the gun on his person, as he learned long ago that it increased his chances of getting out of unexpected situations. Akira was showered with reddish blood that spewed from the worm’s mouth after Koji shot it in the gullet. The beast began swinging its head around and expectorating more streams of blood as the horrible, four-fanged bulge that passed for its head flailed about in spasms.
Akira jumped for cover as Koji promptly pumped two more shots into the giant annelid, one of which again struck it in the head region, the other penetrating directly into what may have passed for its “neck.”
Though blood spurted from all three of the over-worm’s bullet wounds, the vile creature continued to snap at Koji, at one point startling the young man sufficiently to spoil his aim. It slammed its tubular front end into the young man’s side, knocking him off his feet and sending him sprawling into the sand. The gun landed about a meter distant, though it may as well have been hundreds of feet considering his chances of reaching it before the monster coelomate was upon him again.
However, the creature’s strike preparation was disrupted by another blow to the head from the flattened front end of the oar, again courtesy of Akira. The scientist went on to strike the worm two more times, and though the blows further stunned the creature, they still failed to take it out of the fight. The worm “stood” with its front portion raised while it screeched and snapped in every direction, its antennae-like polypodia seeking to detect the vibratory air disturbances that signaled motion.
“Professor, get back! I have only one shot left!”
This time Akira did as requested, while Koji—who had recovered his firearm thanks to the distraction he dutifully provided for him—took careful aim as best he could under the circumstances and fired his final bullet. It went through the paddle of Akira’s oar and embedded into the lower jaw of the worm, blowing its two bottom teeth clear out of its exterior intestinal tract. Both men were sprayed with a shower of the annelid’s blood as its bulbous front portion collapsed on the sand. Nevertheless, the creature continued clinging to its unnatural life, writhing about as if having the equivalent of a seizure.
Akira lifted the still mostly intact oar above his head and slammed the huge wriggling horror several times directly on the portions of its flesh that the bullets had torn through. After a seemingly endless number of seconds had passed, the monster worm lay unmoving next to Greene’s corpse, its own warty carcass beginning to dry out and stiffen under the baking sun.
The scientist dropped the improvised bludgeon, walked over to a still fallen but thankfully alive Koji, and offered his hand. Having dispensed with any sense of pride due to all that had just ensued, the young man paused to vomit the last of the excess bile in his system before accepting the scientist’s gesture and allowing himself to be helped back to his feet.
“Greene is dead,” the tan-skinned naturalist reiterated after he finished emptying his gut. Koji displayed his grief by covering his face with his palms, unable to stop himself from openly weeping.
&nb
sp; For his part, Akira did his best to console the youth he barely knew, as facing and conquering death alongside someone tends to build a quick bond even if none existed before that.
That was all the older man could think of doing for his newfound friend. Little did he know that their nightmare was just beginning.
CHAPTER 4: Squirm
Akira and Koji strode back to the village in a state of mind clearly reflecting their just completed traumatic experience. Koji did his best to hold back the tears, but his older companion could see the strain showing in his face.
“It is all right, my friend,” the scientist said gently. “You can let it out. I will think no less of you for doing so. It was… a horrible thing to witness, especially if that young fellow meant a lot to you.”
“He did!” Koji snapped, just before the tears finally came. “And… thank you. He did mean a lot to me. More than you realize, but… well, you wouldn’t understand. Can we please change the subject?”
Akira looked at his new friend quietly for a moment before responding. “Of course. The most important thing, before seeing to the… burial arrangements… is to make sure we warn the village constabulary about the worms. Then I need to contact the Diet and tell the administration to send authorities and fellow scientists here to protect the villagers and study the worms. We must find out what caused them to mutate into such a radical form…”
“Enough with that, Akira-sama!” Koji’s deluge of tears and newly released rage had become palpable. “We know exactly what the catalyst was! It was those damned atomic bomb tests conducted by the Americans! All for this Cold War they insist on fighting with the Soviets, after they had been allies! Do you think we islanders are so out of touch with the world that we are unaware of what happened at the Bikini Atoll?”
“I cannot say I disagree with you, Koji. But we need to keep our minds rationally focused on the task at hand. I know that will be difficult right now, but we are scientists, and…”
“How dare they! These are our lands, our waters! We live here, and we depend on what lives here alongside us to survive! And now Greene is dead! Those maniacs will destroy this entire world if they are not stopped!”
“Koji, please calm down and keep a level head. We are in the process of continued negotiations with the American government, and they have helped rebuild us following Tōjō’s folly.”
“After subjecting countless innocents in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to atomic fire! And now these weapons tests and this posturing with the Soviet Union…”
Akira sought to cut off what he considered to be another unproductive tirade from his new friend. “It would seem these Glyceracon…”
“These what?”
“They require a taxonomical designation, and since the root cognate of this new mutant species is the Glycera genus, it would seem ‘Glyceracon’ sounds like apt nomenclature. Even if more from an aesthetic than scientifically proper standpoint.”
“Um… all right.”
“But it would seem these Glyceracon are predatory, much like normal bloodworms. In the case of these giant mutant worms, they feed upon human blood, a very strange and truly chilling adaptation that I cannot come close to explaining. Also, despite their far greater size, they appear to move considerably faster and with more observable agility than their normal, small brethren. But that is not my main concern regarding them.”
“What might that main concern be?”
“If this mutant species truly owes their genesis to radiation, then I hypothesize they must continue feeding on radioactive particles, and it is unlikely they could simply absorb such particles from a contaminated environment. Since they feed on other organisms, they would require an actual living source, and… if that source is something living, then, there may be something far bigger out there that we haven’t seen yet.”
“You mean, an even bigger type of radiation-catalyzed life form, like some type of crustacean?”
“That, or possibly some other type of particularly large organism we have yet to…”
Akira found his explanation cut off by a loud, clearly human scream as the two men approached the perimeter of the village. Upon being startled out of their conversation, the two men looked up to behold a scene that made both wince in horror.
A female villager ran outside of her backyard garden with one of the larva but still quite vicious Glyceracon attached to her left arm. This one was paler in color than the bigger specimen they encountered back at the shoreline, and only about twenty inches in length. Nevertheless, the levels of physical pain and terror it was inflicting on this woman, and the amount of blood it was extracting from her veins, were hardly miniscule.
Making matters even more horrendous was the small little girl, obviously the besieged woman’s daughter, running after her mother while calling her name in a hysterical state.
Koji forced himself out of his mental fugue to speak. “Akira, is that…?”
“Hai! One of the larva! We must get it off her! Koji-san, grab the child, I will tend to the woman.”
Koji did as requested, immediately realizing that removing the child from the situation and seeing to her safety was of paramount importance. Akira ran to the besieged woman, grabbed her free arm, and told her to lie down on the dirt-covered pavement. But the lady was past the point of hysterics due to the incessant terror and pain she was experiencing. She simply could not be reasoned with.
“Help me get it offa me!”
“Ma’am, I am afraid I must insist that you get to the ground!”
Akira then utilized all his might to force the woman down, and stomped on her stomach with moderate force to insure she stay there for at least a few minutes. He then reached for a large, football-sized rock he noticed near her home and quickly retrieved it. With that makeshift bludgeon in hand, the scientist continually smashed it against the robust, sausage-like body of the worm, intent upon crushing it to death. The pool of human-looking blood that gradually accumulated around the mutant organism suggested the scientist’s crude removal method was gradually prevailing. Still, he feared a substantial portion of the blood he saw may have been that of the woman siphoned through the creature.
A few yards away, Koji ran with the screaming child in his arms in a desperate effort to find a safe haven for her. He shouted the names of villagers he knew to be living in the nearest homes, but no one responded. The young man ran up to the wooden door of one of the hamlet’s modest small homes, which he knew belonged to an older married couple of his acquaintance named Eko and Sera. This time, he didn’t bother to knock but simply kicked the door open.
“Eko, I need you…!”
But his voice stopped abruptly when he saw Eko lying on the floor while entwined in the body of one of the bigger adult worms, its fangs sunk into his throat as it casually sucked out his life fluids. More horribly, the owner of the home was still alive. The old man reached his right arm out to Koji, the former’s eyes and mouth wide open in pain and horror.
“Help… me…” was all the man could utter in a barely audible rasp.
“Dear gods! Sera, where are you?”
Koji continued to cradle the bawling child in his arms—as he didn’t dare risk putting her down—and he ran to the door leading into the second of the two rooms in the couple’s home, which was their bedroom. He kicked the half-closed door fully open, hoping to find Sera… which he did.
Unfortunately, the silver-haired older woman lay on the floor in a state of shock due to three of the smaller larval worms having attached themselves to her body. The mutated annelids were fast making a banquet out of Sera’s precious blood supply; one of them was latched onto her left leg, another to her left cheek, and the third to her right breast.
The senior woman was not as incapacitated as her husband, and upon hearing the door being pushed open, she partially sat up. The pallor and sunken appearance of her usually darker and full-faced features made it clear how much blood these ravenous juvenile annelids had already taken from her.
“Help me, please,” she choked out. “Help meeeee…”
Koji began to cry again, as he was confronted with a nightmare-inducing situation beyond normal human experience, and he hadn’t the slightest inkling how to handle it. After seconds of hastily tortured thinking, the young man committed what he considered to be a horrible cardinal sin. He did it anyway, however, as he believed it was an entirely necessary evil.
“Sera, please forgive me!” Koji shouted. He turned and rushed out of the shack with the screeching child still in his arms. Please forgive me, there was nothing I could do for them, I have the child to worry about, please forgive me for this…
Koji left the house only to hear the screech of an automobile’s brakes as one of the only two vehicles on the island nearly rammed into him. Despite jumping and nearly dropping the child he found himself relieved to see it was the Subaru “Flying Feather” car provided by the Japanese government for the three constables of the village. The three uniformed men—Itaru, Yuki, and Gillam—disembarked from the stopped vehicle with all due haste, their revolvers brandished and ready to fire.
“What is going on here?” Itaru, the head of the island constabulary, demanded from Koji. “And what are you doing with little Ita?”
“The worms!” Koji exclaimed in response. “The village is under attack by the worms!”
Gillam took on a bemused expression, until finally asking in his distinct British accent, “Worms? What are you talking about?”
“Go in there!” the young man shouted, while pointing to the shack of the ill-fated Eko and Sera.
Meanwhile, a few meters distant, Akira finally dispatched the worm attached to its victim’s arm with a conclusive heavy blow of the rock he wielded. Its body exploded into a crushed mass of epithelial tissue and flowing red-tinted, blood-like coelomic fluids. The scientist winced at the understanding that the fluid was doubtlessly mixed with an unknown quantity of its victim’s hemoglobin.
Megadrak: Beast Of The Apocalypse Page 3