by Jonah Buck
The footsteps started booming again, and Denise tried to pour even more speed out of her legs. She was almost to the cave and safety. Almost there. Then she realized that the footfalls were getting softer and quieter, moving further away.
She almost breathed a sigh of relief as she dodged around the netting and stepped insides the rocky confines of their basecamp. “What the hell was chasing me?” Denise asked.
“It might have been one of those cute little tree monkeys at one point,” Harrison said.
“Back when it was about twenty feet shorter,” Gail added.
“Did you hit it?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t a kill shot. I took a big chunk out of its flank, but it started sewing itself back together almost as soon as the bullet was through.”
“Maybe those things are like werewolves, and we’re supposed to have silver bullets and garlic or something to kill them.”
“Wolfsbane,” Harrison said.
“What?”
“Wolfsbane is for werewolves. Garlic is for vampires. And Clark said all those pulp magazines would never do me any good.”
“Unless you happen to have some wolfsbane or silver bullets stored away somewhere, they still aren’t doing you any good.”
Harrison opened his mouth to come up with some sort of witty comeback when the ahool attacked. The monster swept down from the sky and aimed right for the mouth of the cave.
Before it could get there though, the humongous bat slammed directly into the netting the hunters had strung up. Just as they’d hoped, the knots tethering the rope to its anchors gave way under the impact. The ahool collapsed onto the ground, half-tangled in the net. The rest of the rope fell down on top of it, fully encasing it. Roaring and spitting, the ahool chewed at the fibers, trying to break free.
Gail raised her rifle again as the ahool sprayed saliva and flailed at the rope. It tried to flap its wings, but they were tangled up in the nets.
“No.” Denise stepped in front of the rifle. “I have another idea.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Denise? It’s going to get out and kill us.”
Instead of answering, Denise grabbed up her tranquilizer rifle. She’d left it behind for the meeting at the abandoned cabin. She picked up a dart, inserted it into the chamber, and slammed the bolt back in place.
She looked up and saw the ahool had already managed to rip through part of the net, sticking its snout through and trying to shred the rest of the fibers as it thrashed and screeched. Sand flew everywhere as it wrestled with the ropes.
Denise raised the tranquilizer rifle to her shoulder and fired. The dart shot out with a poofth and hit the ahool near its shoulder. Instead of sinking into its flesh, the metal injector snapped off against the monster’s hide.
The ahool looked directly at her and shrieked. Its eyes locked onto her, and it redoubled its efforts to escape the nets.
“Uh, Denise?” Harrison backed away from the cave entrance. The bat was scooching forward, its head filling the entrance. Teeth and eyes and flaring nostrils filled the space in front of them.
“Damn, damn, damn, damn,” Denise chanted under her breath as she grabbed another dart and inserted it into the rifle. In another few seconds, the bat would be able to get its entire head out of the net and stick it through the cave entrance, effectively trapping them all inside.
Slamming the bolt back into place, Denise raised the rifle again. However, she didn’t pull the trigger. Not yet.
The bat stared at her, working another knot in the rope with its teeth. Gail and Harrison were both backed up against the far wall, their rifles raised.
“Denise, what are you waiting for?” Gail hissed.
The bat snarled at them again, displaying a row of teeth that looked like they could chew through a car.
She fired. The dart sprang out and embedded itself in the space underneath the bat’s long, curling tongue. The ahool’s eyes went wide and fiery, and it tried to turn around and flap away. Instead, it only managed to roll onto its side, still trapped by the heavy duty net.
Struggling to spit the dart out, the gargantuan bat hacked and coughed and gagged. Denise wondered if she’d gotten the dose correct. She hadn’t used very much sedative. The ahool was enormous, but it didn’t have very much body mass for its overall size. Most of it was just thin membranous wings. Maybe she’d used too little. Or maybe the bat was all but immune to the effects of the sedative with the moon fueling its bloody transformation.
A moment later, a change took hold in the ahool’s eyes. They lost their focus, their unwavering urge to kill. They started to gloss over. Great strands of drool started to dribble from its maw. It made a coughing noise and tried to squirm out from under the net again, but all the will had gone out of it. More saliva spooled out of its mouth as it wobbled.
The ahool’s head hit the sand with a heavy thud. It continued to jerk and fidget for a minute, fighting the tranquilizer with all its might, but the drugs were taking their toll. With a final half-hearted attempt to bite at the ropes, the bat fell onto its side and lay still. Aside from the steady up and down motion of its chest, it might have been dead.
“Now we have an ahool, captured alive. Let’s see what that gets us. Use the radio and call the Shield of Mithridates. If Hobhouse is listening, this ought to grab his attention. Maybe this is our ticket out of here.”
Harrison picked up the radio and tuned it to the appropriate channel. “Hello? This is the hunting team on Malheur Island. Things have gotten a little complicated here, but we’ve managed to capture an ahool. Do you read us?”
There was a pause.
“Hello. This is the Shield of Mithridates. We read you. We’ll be able to pick you up in about four hours.”
SEVENTEEN
TOO MANY LEGS
Denise paced back and forth near the cavern entrance, watching the ahool breathe. It had been a few hours since they managed to reach the Shield of Mithridates. Hobhouse himself had promised to help them. He said that an electrical fault aboard the ship had prevented them from communicating earlier, but it had since been fixed.
Really, it was all rather convenient that the fault was only repaired once Denise had an ahool sedated. She didn’t trust Hobhouse anymore. He’d dazzled her with his speech about preserving the island, but too many things didn’t add up.
She didn’t bother to mention that she knew there had been a previous expedition to the island. In fact, she still had the Yersinia watch in her pocket. Nor did she bring up the lunar meteorites scattered across Malheur Island and what they were doing to the wildlife.
If Hobhouse could get her off this rock, she’d bring those issues up once she was safely back in Cape Town. Until then, all she really wanted was rescue, and asking a bunch of impertinent questions right now might jeopardize that goal. It was easy. All she had to do was play dumb, use the ahool as their ticket out of here, and then make it back to the mainland. She’d hold their feet to the fire after they saved her. Saved her from the mess they’d gotten her into.
They were still a few hours out, though, and Denise had seen a number of creatures wandering the beach through the cave entrance. None of them looked in the least bit friendly. So far, they’d managed to stay safe with their prize, but they’d have to make some sort of break for it when Hobhouse got here. For that matter, she had no idea how they intended to load the sedated ahool into the Shield of Mithridates.
She stared at the bat slumbering in front of their cave entrance. Hobhouse was right about one thing. This was probably the greatest zoological discovery of the past hundred years, and not just because it was an unusually large bat. Bigger wasn’t necessarily what made it better, though that was impressive in and of itself.
The amazing part was the transformation. Earlier today, this thing had been a normal-sized bat. It had been feasting on insects no larger than Denise’s thumbnail. Now the bugs were the size of marines, and the bats had grown to match. Something about the full moon had turned Mal
heur Island into a menagerie of nightmares. Yersinia would make a fortune if it could figure out how that worked and secure patents on it. There would be scientific prizes for everyone involved.
She supposed that was why Yersinia was willing to pay the hunters so much. They knew from their previous expedition that there was something extraordinary about the island, even if they hadn’t passed the bulk of that information along. No doubt, she was never supposed to learn there was a previous expedition.
And she was less sure than ever what to make of the fact that Razan had been murdered and someone took a shot at her. Was there really a survivor of the previous expedition who had simply snapped? Did the islanders want them to leave? Was one of the other hunters just angling for more money by eliminating the competition? All she had was pure speculation.
“Do you see that?” Harrison asked, pointing outside.
“What?” Denise looked out over the horizon, hoping to see the lights of the Shield of Mithridates approaching. The horizon was dark, though.
“By the surf.” Focusing her attention closer, Denise squinted into the darkness. The infernal full moon reflected off the churning waves, turning the foam an eerie alabaster. The rest of the sea was black satin, constantly writhing and moving.
Then she spotted it. There was a, for lack of a better term, a lump by the water’s edge. Shaped roughly like a sloped pyramid, the lump was about three feet tall and as wide around as a manhole cover. Was it a large rock? No, it hadn’t been there a few minutes ago, she was sure of that.
The rock moved, and Denise got a better look at it. Scuttling armored legs carried the lump further up the beach. Black, alien eyes took in the beach from inside hardened turrets. Scrap shearer claws clicked and clacked.
It was a crab, albeit an unnaturally large one. This was yet another creature transformed by the light of the full moon. Even the sea life right around Malheur Island was affected. Denise supposed that made sense. There were probably a few lunar meteorites below the waves, too.
At least this creature didn’t look too terrible compared to some of its comrades. Given that it was only the height of a small child, it was practically tiny. Denise still wouldn’t want to go up against those claws at close range, but hopefully it would stay well away from the cave entrance. If it did decide to attack them, the elephant guns would turn it into crab pate easily enough.
“I think we can deal with a lone crab,” Denise said, patting Harrison on the shoulder.
Another lump emerged from the water and heaved itself up onto dry land. Denise watched. Okay, no big deal. A couple of crabs wouldn’t provide any more trouble than a single one. This was still completely manageable.
Another glistening carapace emerged from the water, and then another. Seaweed and sand clung to their shells as the crabs moved inland. Denise stared as even more crabs emerged from the sea.
Six.
A dozen.
A gross.
Thousands.
It was like watching one of those experiments with bacteria where they spread across a petri dish in the span of a few hours. Only this wasn’t the span of a few hours. This was the span of a few minutes. The number of crabs grew exponentially, soon filling the surf line.
“That isn’t good,” Denise said. She’d heard of this sort of thing before. Some islands experienced crab migrations, meaning millions of crabs would sometimes take over the shore in a vast-moving carpet of chitinous armor. Roads near the beaches could become inundated with marching crabs so that anyone driving a vehicle would inadvertently crush thousands of them beneath their wheels.
When the crabs were only a couple of inches in size, it was little more than an inconvenience. When they were as tall as fire hydrants, it was another matter.
The wave of crabs started to move inland, pushed ashore by the untold legions who were still beneath the waves.
“Oh hell,” Gail said as she came up to the cave entrance. The scene outside looked like some sort of alien invasion story. Only instead of arriving in gigantic Martian tripods, the invaders chose squat little tanks.
One of the crabs wandered to within twenty yards.
“I think we might have to get out of here,” Denise said.
“And go where?” Harrison whispered. His eyes were wide as he stared at the tsunami of segmented bodies working their way forward. The amphibious invasion showed no signs of relenting any time soon.
Denise didn’t even know if crabs had ears to hear with, but she answered in a whisper, too. “I can take us to the cave entrance I escaped from. It’s only about a quarter of a mile from here through the jungle.”
“I don’t like the idea of going through the jungle again.”
“I don’t either, but I don’t think we can stay here much longer,” Gail said.
Denise looked around. “Grab as much ammo for the elephant guns as you can without weighing yourself down. Leave everything else. It’ll only encumber us, and we only need to hold out until the Shield of Mithridates gets here.”
“Do you think Hobhouse and Yersinia are prepared to deal with the things on this island?”
“Probably not. But if they can just land a dinghy, we can fight our way to it and then motor away.”
The crab at the head of the army, some bold Leonidas or George Washington of crustaceans, discovered the sedated bat in front of their cave entrance. Denise opened a box of Nitro Express rounds and dumped them into her pockets. Gail and Harrison did the same as they watched the crabs move closer and closer. They were heading back to the caves, so she threw a coil of rope onto her belt, too.
Clacking its claws together, the lead crab poked and prodded at the ahool. The gigantic bat didn’t stir, but apparently the crab decided that the ahool was too big to attack. Instead, it marched on, leading its battalions behind it.
Its eyes, black little orbs that revealed no emotion or thoughts or even a familiarity with either concept, locked onto their cave entrance. Snapping its claws together, the crab started straight toward them. Soon, the whole army of crabs would be at their doorstep, and Denise wasn’t sure there was enough ammunition in the world to stop them.
She raised her gun and blew the crab apart. Pieces of shell and legs flew across the beach. Other crabs immediately fell on the pulped remains and stuffed them into their nictitating mouth-holes. They swarmed over their dead leader, snatching up every chunk and quivering blob and devouring them.
Denise slid out of the cave, hoping the crabs would be too distracted to notice her. Gail and Harrison followed a step behind.
The crabs surged forward as soon as they saw human prey, though. They were finished eating their friend almost before all his parts landed. There were simply too many crabs, and apparently, they were all hungry.
Bullets jangled and flopped in Denise’s pockets as she ran. She didn’t stop to fire at any of the crabs following them, though. Any space she cleared in the horde of clacking monstrosities was as likely as not to be filled with twice the number of crabs a few seconds later. She’d be overrun before she could even make it to the edge of the jungle.
Instead, she did the only thing she could. She ran for her life. Behind her, she could hear tens of thousands of legs pumping after her. The crabs moved like a magma flow, rolling over each other and fighting as they went. They jousted with their claws even as they tore after their prey.
As she reached the edge of the jungle, she heard a shriek as an ahool swept down and tried to snatch up one of the crabs. She turned around and saw the ahool lift up, one of the crabs crushed in its talons. Dark ooze leaked from the crab’s pierced shell, but it still reached up and tried to snip at the huge bat.
A few more crabs latched onto the bat’s legs with their pincers as it lifted off. The ahool flapped its wings and took to the air again, several crustaceans clinging to its legs and the base of its wings. The bat shrieked in distress and pain at the pinching claws, gaining altitude as quickly as it could.
One by one, the unwanted passenger
s fell off their host as the bat flapped away into the sky. The crabs tumbled off from hundreds of feet up, smashing into the beach at incredible speeds. One of them landed directly on top of another crab, obliterating both creatures in an explosion of ichor. More crabs swarmed around the fallen bodies and tore them to shreds, eating them as quickly as they could in a festival of mass cannibalism.
The crabs didn’t stop at the edge of the jungle. They surged after Denise and her friends, trampling the foliage in front of them in a great rolling wave.
“We have to keep moving,” Denise shouted, watching the crabs flow into the jungle behind them.
Before, they’d been able to easily outpace the scuttling sea creatures. Now, they had to deal with the oppressive density of the jungle all around them. Branches scratched at Denise’s face. Vines threatened to strangle her. Massive trees turned the very ground into an uneven patchwork of ankle-snapping holes with their labyrinthine roots. Moving uphill toward the cave entrance was harder than running across the flat surface near the beach, too. The crabs were steadily gaining ground on them with their compact bodies that shrugged off impacts with obstacles.
She glanced behind her again, and when she looked forward again, she smacked straight into something sticky. Denise would have pitched forward onto her face, but the sticky substance halted her forward momentum. Swinging in place for a second, she tried to figure out what had just happened. Her arms and legs didn’t want to work.
Then she realized what had happened. She was caught in a web, a truly gigantic spider web. She thrashed at the sticky silk holding her, but it clung to her like tape. All she succeeded in doing was creating panicked waves in the web.
The motions must have alerted the web’s occupant. A set of legs unfolded themselves from further up in the tree.
Whereas the spider they’d seen earlier was stout and hairy, this one was all legs and glistening exoskeleton. The smooth, flawless finish on the arachnid’s surface looked like something that had rolled off a Detroit luxury assembly line.