Terror Krakens

by Eric S. Brown

  His fun was interrupted though by the sound of shattering glass as something came through the window of his cabin. Ryan’s mind had difficulty processing what was happening because he knew it couldn’t be real. A creature that looked like an octopus landed wetly on the floor across the cabin from his bed. Its beak-like mouth was clicking rapidly as the thing raised itself up on two thick tentacles to stand on them like legs. The rest of its tentacles, though shorter, looked just as deadly as the two it stood on. They flailed and whipped about around the thing’s main body. Ryan threw himself sideways away from the bed as the monster lunged at him. His shoulder took the brunt of his landing on the floor and Ryan grunted in pain, wondering if he had dislocated it. He had gotten out of the thing’s path though and that was what mattered right now. Ryan braced himself for the monster to come at him again, eyes scanning his cabin for something, anything, he could use as a weapon. The monster’s lunge had carried to where the black-haired young woman was stretched out on his bed. Its interest shifted to her. The thing’s lesser tentacles wrapped about her arms and legs, tightening where they clutched her. The pain was so intense as the barbs on their undersides cut into her that it overcame the effect of Ryan’s drug. She woke up screaming just in time for the thing’s beak-like mouth to reach her neck. The young woman’s scream became a sickening gargling noise as the beak stabbed into her throat and began to rip away entire chunks of her flesh. Her body flopped about in its death throes as the monster ate away at her.

  Ryan’s heart was thundering in his chest as he hurled himself to his feet. He had to get away from the thing before it came at him again, but how? The monster was between him and the door. He had flung himself in the wrong direction when getting out of the thing’s way. Desperate, Ryan snatched up his laptop as it was the only viable thing within his reach and readied it to swing at the monster if he had to. The monster though was still contently eating away at the young woman he had brought back to his cabin as he started moving for the door. Ryan took slow, careful steps, keeping as much distance between himself and the octopus thing as he could; a tough feat in the small cabin. One of the thing’s lesser tentacles which still was whipping about as the monster fed almost hit him by chance. Ryan threw his head back atop his neck, narrowly avoiding it. In the process of doing so he stumbled, bumping into the wall behind him. The noise drew the attention of the monster. It yanked itself back up onto its two largest tentacles and spun about, the gaze of its yellow, almost glowing eyes burning into him. Fight or flight kicked in as Ryan opted for the former first, swinging his closed laptop directly into what passed for the monster’s head on its main body. The laptop shattered as it struck the monster, breaking apart in his hands. The blow was enough to cause the monster to lose its balance and Ryan took advantage of the moment, hurling himself for the door. He slammed into it in his panic, not remembering that he locked it so he could have his fun.

  The monster recovered almost instantly, moving across the cabin’s floor toward him. Ryan’s fingers were still fumbling with the door’s lock when a tentacle grabbed hold of his wrist and tore his hand away from it. The pull of the tentacle brought him around to face the monster. He stared into the thing’s large, bulbous eyes as another of its tentacles entered him. It plunged into his stomach, driving inward and upward through his guts. His mouth fell open, blood pouring out of it, as the tentacle inside of him continued to twist about and dig around inside his innards. The monster jerked its tentacle free of his stomach. Purple, red-slicked strands of his intestines followed the withdrawing tentacle out of his body. They dangled loosely to touch the floor at his feet. The monster’s beak-like mouth was still chattering, snapping open and closed, as it thrust out another tentacle that entered his forehead and smashed its way out the backside of his skull.

  ****

  Security chief Johnson longed for more firepower. He wished for an M4 but then he wished for a lot of things, including living through the next few minutes. Chuck, Dixon, and himself had been on their way to the bridge after hitting the ship’s armory when the alarm klaxons begin to blare and howl. None of them had believed what they were told was happening over their radios until they saw the first monster themselves. It had come barreling down the corridor toward them right into their line of fire. They had filled the thing full of lead and watched its twitching body leaking grayish blood onto the floor in disbelief. They had gotten serious after that. Captain Stevenson had ordered them to report to the bridge and defend it but they never made it there. Johnson was a firm believer that the lives of the passengers came first. They gathered what passengers they could during their flight through the corridors of the Princess Dream’s mid-level decks. Johnson came up with the plan of holing up in the ship’s dining area and made it happen. By the time they reached it, there were close to four dozen passengers tagging along with them. He and his two men quickly secured the large room as best they could, having the passengers help pile chairs and tables against all but the room’s main door after locking them. Johnson didn’t want to seal them in completely and he always wanted to allow for any other survivors of the attack to be able to get in if by chance they came to that entrance. He, Chuck, and Dixon erected a barricade of turned-over tables not far from the main door and took cover behind, the barrels of their weapons aimed at the closed but unlocked doorway. They had been in the room for over half an hour now. The screams echoing along the corridors outside had died long ago and communications with the bridge had been lost. Not just radio comm. either but even calling the individual cellphones of the command crew he knew failed to reach to anyone. Being ex-military, Johnson knew just exactly what kind of trouble they were in from how things looked and sounded.

  Johnson took a look around at the huddled and cowering passengers at the rear of the dining room and shook his head. There were kids among them, far too young to being put through crap like this. Life wasn’t fair. Seeing them made him all the more determined to hold the door when the monsters out there came their way. And they would too. That was a certainty. It was just a matter of time. Johnson was honestly surprised that the things hadn’t made a real attempt on the room already. So far, only a few of the monsters had tried and not in groups but alone. Each of them died horribly. That was a good thing about the monsters. While their bodies stood up pretty well to pistol fire, a shotgun blast pulped the hell of them. One well-placed shot was usually enough to leave a monster as not much more than a splattered stain on the floor. He had ordered Chuck and Dixon to grab extra ammo when they had hit the ship’s armory and was glad he had. They were going to need every round and shell they had and then some.

  As easy as the monsters were to take out with a shotgun blast, the things not only had the numbers but the speed to overwhelm them if they came at the doorway in any kind of real force. Johnson was still trying to come up with a plan on how to deal with that when it happened. The doorway flung open again, only this time it wasn’t a singular monster that they could just blast and close the door back afterward when it was dead. The monsters poured through the doorway one after another in what seemed to be unending numbers as he and his men hammered them with everything they had. Chuck’s shotgun thundered blowing a monster’s main body apart in a splatter of grayish gore. Dixon took out another of the things as Johnson opened fire. For every one of the monsters they dropped, there seemed to be two more. The floor just inside the doorway was slick with gray blood and littered with pieces of the monsters’ bodies but that didn’t do a damned thing to deter the rest of them from coming in as fast as they could. Monsters skittered up the walls onto the ceiling, bypassing Johnson and his men to drop among the passengers as others continued right on into the kill zone of their weapons’ fire. Johnson couldn’t stand the sound of the screaming coming from the rear of the large room but he knew if he moved to help the passengers that Chuck and Dixon would never be able to hold back the onslaught of octopus creatures. Hell, with all three of them right now, they weren’t really managing it. If he lef
t the line, the monsters would be everywhere in the room within seconds.

  Johnson fired another shot that blew a monster’s main body into chunks of gray-smeared flying meat and then pumped another round into his shotgun’s chamber. Dixon had run out of shells for his shotgun and switched to his pistol. It cracked in rapid succession, a series of small thunder claps, as Dixon tried to bring down one of the creatures with the lesser devastating weapon. Several of his shots struck the thing’s tentacles rather than its main body. They blew away chunks of flesh, severing one, but didn’t do much more than hurt the monster. Still mobile and very much alive, the creature sprang at Dixon. He screamed as it landed on him. Its tentacles wrapped about his body, tearing at him, as one of them raked a long trail of red along his back. Johnson turned to try and help him, hammering the butt of his shotgun into the monster that was entangled with Dixon. The shotgun’s butt smashed into the soft tissue of the creature’s main body but the thing continued to cling to its prey.

  Chuck wasn’t having much better luck. He took a shot at a creature skittering toward him on more than just its primary two tentacles. His shot missed as the monster ducked under it then. One of its tentacles whipped out to ensnare Chuck’s left leg. Chuck grunted from the pain as the monster’s tentacle squeezed with enough force to snap the bone inside of his leg and then yanked him from his feet. Landing on his back, Chuck’s breath was knocked from his lungs as he thudded onto the floor. Not giving up the fight, Chuck pumped another round into the chamber of his shotgun and fired point blank into the monster as it tried to climb on top of him. The blast splattered the monster, covering him with its entrails and gray blood.

  Johnson knew they were losing the battle. The passengers behind the position of their firing line were still screaming. There were dozens of the monsters that had gotten by them now, rampaging through the passengers, engaged in a massive killing spree. Dixon gave one last whimpering cry next to him as the monster he fought with ripped into one of his eyes with its beak. Its tentacles had done so much damage to his body that Dixon was bleeding out all over the floor and barely able to fight back anymore. Johnson couldn’t save him. Heck, he doubted he would even be able to save himself. Abandoning his position on the firing line as there was no point to it anymore as too many of the things had already gotten into the room, Johnson ran for his life. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears and his breaths came in ragged gasps as got his first look at what was happening behind their firing line. Bodies of the passengers they had been trying to protect were strewn about everywhere. Most of them were in pieces and those that weren’t had been badly savaged by the beaks of the octopus creatures. Very few of the men, women, and children were still alive. They fought back against the creatures with kitchen knives, forks, broken chairs, or whatever else they had managed to get their hands on from the rear of the large dining room. Johnson saw a woman desperately trying to protect her son. The little boy huddled against the wall of the room, his mother between the monster trying to get at him and where he was. The woman slashed at the monster she was engaged with, slicing sections of its main body open with a long kitchen knife. She was too close to the monster for Johnson to have a shot at it without risking hitting her too. There were similar scenes playing out all across the rear of the large dining room. As much as he wanted to help the passengers, at this point, there was nothing he could do if he wanted to make it out alive himself. He and his men had done their best and it hadn’t been enough.

  The barricade at one of the large room’s rear doors had been torn down and the door opened. It looked as if someone or maybe even a small group of the passengers had managed to escape through the doorway. There was no sign of the monsters in the corridor it led into. Johnson decided on the doorway as his destination as he sprinted through the chaos of the surviving passengers’ last stand. He glanced over his shoulder to confirm that Chuck and Dixon were both dead. They were. The monsters had shown his two men no more mercy than had anyone else in the room and their weapons hadn’t saved them. Johnson leaped over the smashed remnants of a chair that had been part of the barricade blocking the now open doorway and landed in the corridor beyond it. He didn’t look back again, running on as fast as he could.

  The sounds of the battle in the dining room were dying down and growing more distant as he rounded a bend in the corridor and his feet slipped out of from under him. The floor was slicked with human blood. His feet flew upward as Johnson smashed down onto his back. Instinctively, he rolled onto his side, bringing the barrel of his shotgun to bear on the monster that came rushing toward him. Johnson squeezed the shotgun’s trigger. The weapon bucked in his hands as its barreled flashed, spitting a blast into the approaching octopus creature. His shot didn’t hit the thing’s main body dead on. Instead, it ripped away two of the monster’s lesser tentacles. Screeching in pain, the thing withdrew the way it had come, disappearing around another bend in the corridor ahead of him. Johnson got to his feet, leaving his now empty shotgun where it lay. He drew his pistol and readied it as another of the monsters, coming up behind him from the direction of the large, dining room plowed into him with the force of a runaway eighteen-wheeler. Grunting, Johnson was hurled into the corridor’s right wall as he felt several of his ribs snap and cave inward inside his chest. The chief security officer’s training gave him the speed to bring the pistol around to target the monster as it rose up from their impact had knocked it over and opened fire. His pistol boomed as Johnson put a trio of rounds into the octopus thing’s main body. Each bullet tore into it, a splash of gray blood spurting out of the monster where they struck its body. The monster endured the pain so that it could close with him. One of its tentacles shot out to close about the barrel of his pistol and jerk it from his hand. The gun went flying through the air to clatter onto the floor of the corridor several yards away as another of the monster’s tentacles stabbed into him like a spear.

  The tip of the monster’s tentacle sunk into Johnson just below his sternum, pinning him to the wall behind him with its strength. He gripped the tentacle with both of his hands, trying to force it back out of his body. The tentacle was slimy and slick with blood. He couldn’t get a good grasp on it as the monster drew closer to strike at him again. Another tentacle whipped across his face, opening up his left cheek in an explosion of red that knocked his head sideways. The world spun around Johnson as his vision went blurry. His head snapped back around to face the monster just in time to be skewered by another tentacle. It entered his forehead right above his eyes and pierced his brain. Johnson’s body instantly went limp and flopped over, held upright only be the tentacle that still impaled him and pinned him to the wall.

  ****

  Captain Stevenson watched the main window of the ship’s control room splinter and explode inward as several of the monsters came crashing through it. Shards of glass flew like shrapnel. One hit his XO, Weaver, in the throat. Weaver made a sound like a strangling gargle as blood sprayed outward from around where the shard of glass had entered his neck and collapsed onto the floor. He lay there twitching as a pool of his own blood spread outward around him.

  Clark, the one security officer who was trying to defend the bridge, was busy trying to hold back the monsters that were entering from the doorway that led into the corridors of the ship outside the control room. He was failing in his efforts. For each monster his shotgun ended another took its place, trying to force its way inside.

  Stevenson’s bridge officers, at least those that weren’t dead already, were in an utter panic. Trapped on the bridge with the monsters that had come in through the shattered window, they fought for their lives. One of them, Petty Officer Reed, had grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and hosed a monster with it. The octopus creature recoiled from the blast of icy liquid she sprayed it with. Another of the monsters got Reed from behind though. She cried out as the tip of one the thing’s tentacles burst through the front of her chest between her breasts in a splatter of blood. The monster yanke
d her to it and began to eat her before she was even dead.

  No one aboard the Princess Dream had been prepared for anything like what was happening. The ship was just a cruise liner with limited weaponry and security. None of them were trained to fight monsters that shouldn’t even exist. The biggest problems they normally might face were things like a drunken, late-night brawl, someone having a health issue that needed emergency care, or some idiot falling overboard. Stevenson hadn’t believed any of what was happening when the attack on the ship started but now he was trapped in a bad horror movie come to life. His knuckles were white around the grip of the pistol Stevenson had ordered Clark to hand over to him before the monsters began their assault on the bridge. He had some firearm training but he certainly wasn’t an experienced soldier. Nonetheless, Captain Stevenson didn’t intend on going down without a fight. This was his ship and the fragging octopus monsters had turned it into a nightmare tomb of death and carnage.

  Captain Stevenson took aim at one of the monsters. The thing had one of his crew pinned to the floor of the control room, standing above him on several tentacles, tearing his body apart. The thing had already torn away one of his arms, leaving a bloody stump attached to the man’s shoulder, and opened up his guts. It shoveled strands of the poor man’s intestines to its beak-like mouth, biting at them while he watched. Captain Stevenson knew he couldn’t save the crewman but the creature seemed as good a target as any to vent his rage on. His pistol barked as he put a trio of rounds into the thing’s backside. The octopus creature shook as they entered its flesh. It whined in pain at the bullets. One of them had hit something vital inside of it. Gray blood poured from the monster’s underside and it toppled onto the floor with a loud thud. Grinning, Captain Stevenson whipped his pistol about to take aim at another of the monsters. One of them was skittering along the ceiling above him. He opened fire at the thing. Two of his bullets sparked away from the metal of the ceiling, missing his target. The third and fourth though hit the monster. The bulbous eye on the right side of the thing’s head erupted in a shower of gore. Screeching, the monster lost its hold on the ceiling and fell in front of him. Captain Stevenson wasn’t about to give the thing a chance to get up. He emptied the remainder of his pistol’s magazine into the monster. It thrashed about on the floor, tentacles slashing about wildly, as it died. One of them raked across his right knee. It tore into his knee all the way to the bone. Captain Stevenson saw white jutting out from the suddenly red drenched white of his pants leg. Crying out, he stumbled to lean against a nearby console, barely managing to stay on his feet. The console supported the weight of his body as Captain Stevenson popped his pistol’s spent magazine before realizing he didn’t have another to load the pistol with another one. There were screams all around him as the monsters continued to exterminate the last survivors of his bridge crew. Clark had fallen where he had been trying to defend the entrance to the bridge, overrun by the monsters. Captain Stevenson couldn’t even see him anymore. There were so many of the things on top of him, Clark buried beneath them. He could hear Clark’s screams though and they chilled him to the depths of his very soul. No one should have to die that. No one. Three of the octopus creatures appeared to be fighting among themselves over who got the best of his corpse to eat as others were already shoving bits of Clark into their beak-like mouths.