“Good morning, sunshine,” Pitts said. “Glad you could join us.”
Grinning, DeMars sat up and looked around.
“Aren’t they something?” Cortez watched the dolphins swim away. “Beautiful.”
“Stupid fucking things is what they are,” Macker said. “Just another dumb fish.”
“They’re not fish, you idiot. They’re mammals.”
Macker shrugged. “I don’t care what they are. Bet they taste good just the same.”
Leigh pointed at the sky. “Check that shit out.”
They all glanced upward, shielding their eyes against the glare. The sky was filled with birds, seagulls mostly, and all of them were heading for shore. There were so many of them that they cast a shadow over the water.
“Well, that’s weird,” Rabbit said. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“Must be the storm.” Ensign Pitts shrugged. “They’re clearing out.”
Rabbit frowned. “But it’s not supposed to get this far, is it?”
DeMars suddenly stiffened, sat up, and hunched over the radio behind the cabin. “Sir, the Blumenthal says we can come back now. Operations are over.”
“It’s about time,” the officer grumbled. “Any word on how we did?”
“No, sir.”
“Full ahead,” Pitts ordered.
Cortez happily complied. The engines roared as he leaned on the throttle. He turned them around in a short arc. The sea was rough and choppy, and the boat’s front end bounced up and down on the waves.
Leigh and Rabbit looked queasy.
“Sorry,” Cortez apologized. “Can’t help it. That Hurricane may still be hundreds of miles away, but shit’s getting rough.”
Suddenly, the heavy, flat-bottomed boat lurched to one side.
Macker gripped the side to keep from falling into the water. “What the fuck, Cortez? That wasn’t no fucking storm swell.”
He struggled with the throttle. “It wasn’t me. Something hit us!”
Positioned at the rear of the craft, Leigh peered into the sea.
“I don’t see any—”
A blood-red pincer nearly six feet long, erupted from the water and seized Leigh’s head. The marine had time to utter a short, surprised squawk, and then the claw squeezed, slicing his head in half like a grapefruit. He never even had time to scream. His grayish-pink brains, textured like cottage cheese, slipped from the open cavity and plopped into the sea.
The others screamed for him.
The creature thrust itself from the water and into the boat. It looked like a cross between a crab and a scorpion, but it was the size of a horse. The M-6’s front end rose from the water with the added weight. The sailors were unarmed. Only the marines carried weapons during these excursions. Rabbit scrambled for his rifle, but it slid down to the crab-thing. The monster grasped it, snapping the weapon in half. Its claws made a terrible clicking noise, like two steel plates being banged together. Rabbit scrambled backwards, but the boat tilted more and he slid towards the scissoring pincers. He shrieked as the creature seized him and began to feed.
Another beast heaved up over the side of the craft and pulled Ensign Pitts into the ocean. It snipped his arm off like he was a paper doll. The foaming spray turned crimson. His screams were horrible.
“DeMars,” Cortez yelled, “get on the horn. We need help, goddamn it.”
Frantic, DeMars shouted into the radio, but his words were lost beneath the increased clicking sounds as more of the creatures rose from the sea. The cacophony even drowned out the engines.
Click-click. Click-click.
Cortez’s lips went numb with shock. “What the hell are they?”
“Fuck,” Macker screamed. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Cortez cast a quick glance at the ocean’s surface, and then he joined his friend. The water was filled with bobbing red monsters, their claws raised above the whitecaps, almost as if they were waving at the sailors.
Laughing, with tears streaming down his face, Cortez waved back at them.
The clicking sounds filled the air. Seawater rushed into the boat, soaking the sailors’ pants and boots. Someone’s finger floated past. It was Ensign Pitts’. His wedding ring was still affixed to the severed digit.
“This fucking sucks,” Macker sobbed, collapsing to his knees. “Jesus Christ, I wish I’d gone to college instead of this fucking shit.”
Cortez closed his eyes and began to say the rosary.
The creatures swarmed them, and the M-6 boat sank beneath the water.
Click-click. Click-click.
* * *
Ocean City, Maryland
4:01 PM
Yawning, Milo checked his sports watch. Less than an hour to go before his shift ended. Then he’d put up the LIFEGUARD NOT ON DUTY sign, clock out, head back to his apartment, grab a shower, and pick up Sheila. He’d met her at the Bricker’s French Fries stand where she was working for the summer. In August she’d head back to college in Pennsylvania, but Milo didn’t care. He still had another month to get inside her pants. If she didn’t put out by the weekend, he’d cut his losses and grab another one. The beach was ripe with summer help—all of them co-eds.
He glanced to his right. In the distance, the pier jutted out over the ocean, the Ferris wheel turned and the cries from the tourists on the roller coaster echoed out over the water. Seagulls circled like mosquitoes, hoping for a morsel from the fishermen clustered around the end of the pier. To Milo’s left, the beach and the boardwalk stretched as far as he could see, bordered by hotels, restaurants, and gift shops selling the same T-shirts, trinkets, hermit crabs, kites, and boogie boards—all of it crap, and all of it the lifeblood of permanent, year-round residents like himself.
Two young girls strolled by his lifeguard stand, their bikinis concealing only their nipples and ass cracks, and leaving nothing else to the imagination. They smiled at him. He smiled back. Giggling, they walked away. Milo eyed them with appreciation.
He loved his job.
It was a perfect summer day. The sky was blue, the air crisp, and the sun warm. The beach smelled of suntan lotion and coconut butter and cotton candy. Nearby, six different radios battled for supremacy, blasting everything from hip-hop to country music. Children shouted happily, splashing in the surf. The waves were large, crashing on the shore with relentless force, thanks to a hurricane that was still somewhere south of them. The size of the waves attracted surfers and boogie borders by the dozens and they were all out there now, bobbing in the roiling surf, catching waves.
So far, the forecasters didn’t expect the storm to make landfall this far north. Florida up to North Carolina could see some damage, and Virginia might experience flooding, but here in the upper Mid-Atlantic region, they should just get a little rain—and some massive waves. Not enough to go into emergency mode over, but perfect for attracting even more tourists over the coming holiday weekend. Earlier that morning, he’d watched footage of the evacuations down south. Better there than here.
Milo unwrapped a stick of gum and slid it into his mouth. Of course, if the National Weather Service was wrong, and Hurricane Gary did head this far north, evacuation would be a bitch. The hotels and campgrounds were packed with tourists, and the roads and bridges would be jammed in a mass exodus, all of them moving at a snail’s pace, if moving at all.
He glanced back up at the sky. It was cloudless.
“No storm coming,” he muttered. “Fucking weathermen don’t know shit anyway.”
A trio of beauties strolled by, the perfect set—one blonde, one redhead, and one brunette. Milo watched them go, and thought again of Sheila. Maybe he’d bump his deadline up. If she didn’t put out tonight, he’d move on.
He turned his attention back to the ocean, watched an airplane fly overhead, trailing an advertising banner behind it. The plane suddenly swerved in mid-air and headed towards town. A moment later, Milo saw why. The sky was thick with birds, all of them fleeing from the ocean. Their shadow hovered o
ver the beach, and their droppings fell like rain. Over by the pier, the gulls that had been badgering the fishermen for random morsels suddenly wheeled and joined in the abrupt migration. Their cries filled the air.
That was when Milo heard the first scream.
Instantly alert; thoughts of Sheila and bikinis vanishing from his mind, he sat up straight and scanned the water. Bobbing heads, kids on boogie boards, people splashing and surfing—but no signs of a troubled swimmer. At the water’s edge, two children were building a sandcastle. The scream rang out again, and now others heard it. Sunbathers looked out at the ocean, checking on their loved ones. Those in the water glanced around in confusion.
Milo noticed a red stain on the surface of the water, about fifty yards out. Blood. It spread in a pool, tossed by the waves. A swimmer lay face down, unmoving. Large, dark shapes moved beneath the surface. He watched them glide, unable to tell what they were—just that they were very big.
Sharks?
Someone else screamed. More voices joined the chorus. A swimmer disappeared, yanked beneath the surface. Then another. One of the dark shapes swam beneath a teenager on a boogie board. A cresting wave blocked Milo’s vision for a second. When he looked again, the board’s two halves floated on the foam.
His heart accelerated. Blowing into his whistle, Milo leaped from the lifeguard stand and ran towards the water, bare feet pounding through the blistering sand.
“Everybody out! Get out of the water! Shark!”
Except that it wasn’t a shark. And there was more than one. He didn’t know what they were. Something that just couldn’t be. One of the creatures surfaced for a brief second before vanishing again beneath the waves. It reminded him of a giant lobster, but that couldn’t be right. A wave rolled towards shore, and behind it, he caught a glimpse of something that looked like a stinger.
People rushed towards him, fleeing the water. Milo had to fight his way through the surging crowd. An overweight woman called out for someone named Billy. A man with a broken nose shoved past, dripping blood onto Milo’s arm. Two men dragged a woman from the water. Her legs were missing beneath the knees.
Elbowing his way forward through the panicked throng, Milo froze.
The children who’d been building the sandcastle near the water’s edge—one of them lay on the sand, unmoving. The other was screaming. She was caught in the clawed grip of something from a nightmare. The creature waved her back and forth in the air like a trophy, before cutting her in half. Her innards spilled out across the sand and her blood splattered against the thing’s shell. The monster paused in its frenzy to slurp up her intestines and organs. The girl’s lifeless body still dangled from its claw.
Milo bent over and retched.
An overweight, middle-aged sunbather who, remarkably, had remained asleep while chaos erupted around him, now woke up as one of the creatures loomed over him. He yelled, more in disbelief than fear. The monster’s stinger darted forth, stabbing him in the chest. His eyes rolled back into his head. His body began to shake on the sand. The creature’s tail pulsed, pumping venom through the appendage.
Milo turned and fled.
More of the crab-things reared from the waves, feasting and maiming as they scuttled ashore on their insect-like legs. Their claws rasped together, and the noise almost drowned out the shrieks of the wounded and dying.
Click-click. Click-click.
The clickers crawled onto the beach, and the sand turned red.
Chapter Four
National Aquarium
Inner Harbor
Baltimore, Maryland
4:45 PM
Jennifer Wasco was at the Baltimore Aquarium, working in her office, when everything started going to hell.
It had started out as a normal day. Most of the administrative staffers were already gone for the holiday, but the tour guides, operational staff, and a few researchers like herself remained. The aquarium would be busy this weekend, packed with tourists who would point and tap on the glass and fill the place with noise. She was grateful she didn’t have to work with the public on a day-to-day basis.
Her morning was spent in the lab researching and making notes on her latest research project. Her specialty was how ecosystems were affected when non-native species were introduced to them. After lunch she accompanied her co-worker, Matt Brewer, to the shark tank and assisted in feeding them as a crowd of tourists ohh-ed and ahh-ed. Matt’s usual helper was already gone for the weekend. Jennifer was back in her office, a small cubby tucked away from the tourists and the lab, when the commotion started.
Her boss, Dr. Richard Linnenberg, the aquarium’s director, burst in to tell her there was something happening down in Atlantic City. Richard was so stunned he was stammering. His hair was plastered to his head, and his face shone with sweat. He babbled something about giant crustaceans eating people. Incredulous, Jennifer turned on the small television near her desk and caught the live feed and watched, totally astounded. The implications were mind-boggling. The creatures on the television looked like something out of a science-fiction movie. They showed crustacean traits—lobster and crab, most noticeably. But they also displayed those of an arachnid, especially with the scorpion-like tail. They shouldn’t exist. It went against everything she’d been taught, flew in the face of evolutionary theory.
It also intrigued her. The aquarium had never approved of her “side-project” (as Dr. Linnenberg called it) and no grant money was funded towards it, but over the last two years, Jennifer had devoted some of her spare time to tracking down reports of an invasive species purportedly sighted in New England several years ago. What she saw on television matched supposed eyewitness descriptions of that species.
She watched with rapt—and morbid—attention as the things descended on a news van. The camera mercilessly captured it all, even as the cameraman’s blood splattered against the lens. The network quickly cut away. The anchorman looked pale. He struggled to speak. Behind it all, the live feed carried the sounds of the creature’s claws, clicking like maracas.
Jennifer heard a commotion outside the door.
“These things are hitting Ocean City now!” somebody—it sounded like Mark Kriskee—yelled. She switched channels and sure enough, the same creatures that were attacking people in Atlantic City were now being spotted in Ocean City, right here in their own state, just two hours away by car. She watched in horror. The footage was shaky, as if the cameraman were running while filming it. The monsters had swarmed ashore on Ocean City’s nearby Asateague Island as well, and were slaughtering the herd of wild horses that still ran there. Her eyes filled with tears as one of the things stabbed a pony with its stinger. The pony’s flesh bubbled and sizzled, sloughing off. She was watching exactly what she spent her time studying—an invasive species and its effect on the local ecosystem—but that didn’t lessen the emotional impact.
Jennifer stepped out into the hall and peeked through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Strangely enough, business was normal in the aquarium. No one had been evacuated. People moved calmly, staring at the attractions. She wondered what it was like outside along the shops and restaurants that lined Inner Harbor. Had the news spread? Was there mass panic yet?
Dr. Linnenberg hustled back to her office. He looked worried. “I just got off the phone with the Public Safety Director at City Hall,” he said. “They’re recommending we evacuate the aquarium.”
“What?”
He nodded. “Homeland Security agrees. The Mid-Atlantic seaboard is being put on alert.”
Jennifer frowned. “Because of the hurricane?”
“No, because of these attacks. We’re right on the water.”
“They’ve been sighted in the Chesapeake Bay?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I’m just repeating what they told me. President Tyler is supposed to address the nation shortly.”
“What are they, Richard? Those things?”
“Nobody knows for sure, or if they do, they haven’t made the m
edia’s pundit coverage yet, but they sound an awful lot like the species that British scientist, what was his name…” He snapped his fingers. “Ian Sinclair. That’s it. He wrote about a species like this about four years ago; the ones that appeared to resemble something that was thought to be extinct.”
Jennifer’s mind whirled. Everything was happening so fast. She brushed a strand of auburn hair back from her forehead. “I remember that,” she said. “Megarachne Servinei, right? I read about it in Science Today. Wasn’t he pretty much discredited, though? He was later found dead before they could publish his report. House fire or something.”
“Yeah, that’s what they say.” Richard mopped his forehead with a tissue. He was a skinny man in dark slacks, a white shirt, and a white lab coat. Even though he had a PhD in Marine Biology, he dressed as if he were an MD. His thick glasses made his eyes appear large and frightened. “And I know what you’re thinking, Jen. You can’t fool me. News clippings and reports on Sinclair’s claims are in that big folder in your bottom desk drawer.”
Shocked, Jennifer couldn’t reply.
“I haven’t been snooping. Was just interested in your side-project. I hate to admit it, but you might have been right all along.”
“Thank you, Richard. I appreciate that.”
“Listen, I hate to ask this of you, but—”
“I’ll stay,” Jennifer said, anticipating his request.
His features relaxed slightly in his strained features. She’d just taken the pressure off him. “You’re wonderful. You stocked up the other day, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” A few days ago she’d stocked the living quarters and her office with enough food and provisions to last a few days when she heard about Hurricane Gary, even though meteorologists were predicting the chances of it hitting the mid-Atlantic region were still slim. Still, Jennifer took no chances. There were times when they were involved in marathon research sessions that kept them at the aquarium for days, and during a hurricane two summers ago she and a few other biologists and technicians had weathered the storm at the aquarium. The place was solidly built and could withstand up to a Category 4 storm. Additional engineering and security measures were undertaken after September 11th, and the facility was stronger as a result. “I’m all set. In truth, I’d rather not leave now anyway, especially when we don’t know everything that’s going on.”
Clickers II: The Next Wave Page 5