Kraken Read online

  “You’re not living up to your nickname, Eagle Eyes,” he chided her.

  “Whatever they were, they weren’t human. I can tell you that much,” Diana said. “They took off like torpedoes when they hit the water, sir. I don’t see any of them around now.”

  “Maybe they saw us coming and left,” Clark said, grinning.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Page slapped Clark on the shoulder then turned to Greg. “Bring us in close. We need to get up on deck as fast as we can.”

  Greg steered the small boat to come up next to the Pleasure Bound’s portside hull. Diana used their boarding gear to secure the boat there as Clark fired a grapple up to snag the side of the cruise liner’s deck above them. He tested the rope and gave the others a thumbs up sign.

  “After you, sir,” Clark said, handing the rope to Page. Page glared at Clark but didn’t pull rank on him. He just started climbing.

  Page, Greg, and Diana were on the deck of the Pleasure Bound in record time leaving Clark to stay with their boat below. Page saw Fox and Snapper with the four marines of their squads were also onboard and already fanning out to form a secure perimeter around the area where they all boarded.

  “Hey Page!” Snapper called. “What’s the drill on this one? Better be weapons hot, man.”

  Page was in overall command of the three squads. He didn’t answer Snapper though. His eyes were glued to the carnage around them. “Geez…”

  Some of the squad members were on their hands and knees vomiting onto the cruise ship’s deck. The whole area was drenched in sea water, blood, and there were corpses and scattered, torn apart bodies everywhere.

  Even Diana, as tough as she was, looked pale as she asked him, “What happened here, sir?”

  “Sort of looks like a big bomb went off while everyone was sunbathing,” Greg commented. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “How could you?” Diana popped him on the backside of his skull. “This is, what, your second OP?”

  “He’s right though, Diana, and you know it,” Page said. “This crap here is seriously some messed up—”

  “Lieutenant!” Fox called, interrupting him. “We got movement, sir!”

  “Where?” Page demanded to know, racing to where Fox stood with his M4’s safety off and the weapon held ready.

  “Everywhere I think, sir,” Fox stammered, gesturing towards the growing shadows that stretched over the Pleasure Bound’s deck and all the doorways that led into the ship’s interior.

  Page looked for himself, scanning over his entire line of sight, to see nothing. “Are you sure?”

  Fox nodded. “Trust me, sir, I am one hundred percent sure. Whatever I saw, they were fast, sir. I mean really fast.”

  Page sensed Fox wasn’t telling him everything. “And?” he prompted.

  “Well, sir, I swear I saw one of whatever those things are go straight up that wall over there and disappear onto the level above us.”

  Page stared at Fox, but as far he could tell, the NCO was telling the truth. Fox was totally shaken up by whatever had seen and Page knew him well enough to know that didn’t happen easily.

  “Hold position here,” Page ordered. “Keep your eyes on each other and a sharp lookout for whatever Fox thinks he saw in case they come back.”

  Page wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, grunting. “And somebody get me a body count on these poor bastards all over the deck. The commander is going to want to know about them ASAP.”

  ****

  Commander Spraker couldn’t believe what he was hearing as the boarding parties’ report came in. Over four hundred civilians found dead on just the Pleasure Bound’s main deck and his men hadn’t even moved into the ship proper yet. Worse, Lieutenant Page had informed him that count was likely on the low side as so many of the bodies they had found were really just pieces of bodies. The count could be a lot higher than what the lieutenant was guessing and he wanted to make sure that Spraker knew that.

  According to Page, there was no sign of an armed attack on the cruise liner’s civilian population despite the carnage. None of the bodies had gunshots wounds or anything else resembling man-made ones. There were no signs or traces of explosives being detonated. All the bodies appeared to have been torn and/or slashed apart. Some of them partially eaten from how Page told things and other smaller pieces looked almost digested down to goo that was smeared on the Pleasure Bound’s deck and walls.

  Page also reported a rather disturbing amount of ocean water aboard the vessel. There were pools of it everywhere almost as if some kind of giant wave had struck the ship, but there was nothing in the area to have caused such a wave as far as Spraker knew. The weather was clear and there were no indications that the Pleasure Bound had been damaged in such a fashion as to cause her to take on water.

  The whole mess was driving Spraker mad. There were no answers, only more questions that led to even more questions. He sipped at the cup of coffee he had a crewman bring him earlier and leaned back in his command chair. Protocol demanded he fill in Captain Marcus on what he had found, but a snowball had a better chance of surviving in Hell than there was of him doing so before he had at least some answers.

  Spraker glanced at his watch. The boarding parties had been onboard the Pleasure Bound for almost an hour now and they hadn’t dared to make any attempt to truly enter the ship without his approval. With a frustrated sigh, Spraker knew it was time to give them the go ahead.

  ****

  Lex and Trish saw the Peart sitting on the distant horizon through the portside window of the Pleasure Bound’s captain’s office they were holed up in. She was a beautiful sight, all gleaming metal and deck-mounted weapon arrays. The voice they had heard over the radio really did belong to a navy officer and that ship out there represented their ticket off the floating nightmare they were trapped on.

  Trish moaned where she lay against the cabin’s wall. Lex hadn’t been able to move her to the bed. He was too tired and every time he tried, the pain of her wounds was too intense for Trish to stand. Lex couldn’t risk the sound of her screams drawing the creature that might still be in the nearby bridge area to them. He was frightened for her. Lex wasn’t a doctor, but it didn’t take one to know that she had a fever and it was growing with each passing hour. Only God knew what the thing that attacked her might have passed on to her through the wounds it ripped in her flesh.

  Lex left the window and knelt beside Trish, placing his palm on her forehead to check her fever again. He took his hand away quickly as she stirred at his touch. Her tired eyes flickered open and she looked at him with great sadness in them.

  “It was a navy ship, Trish,” Lex whispered to her. “We’re going home.”

  It looked like she tried to shake her head but failed. Her head lolled to the left as she continued to stare at him. “No,” she croaked. “If what you’re telling me is true, Lex, you have to go. Leave me here.”

  “Forget it, Trish,” he told her firmly. “I’m not leaving you. We’re a team, remember?”

  Trish laughed and then her body seized up with pain from the movement. She coughed up a mouthful for blood and half spat it out. Globs of it clung to her lower mouth and chin as she spoke. “You barely know me, Lex. You have a chance to live and your wife would have wanted you to take it.”

  Lex squeezed one of his hands into a fist so tightly that his nails broke the skin of his palm. “Stop it, Trish. Just stop it. We’re leaving here together or not at all.”

  “You have my pistol don’t you?” she asked as another coughing fit shook her.

  Lex nodded. “I got it.”

  “Give it to me,” she ordered him.

  Lex reluctantly handed it over. Trish took it with her good hand, continuing to cradle the other with the mangled wrist to her chest. She flipped the chamber open and took a look inside it.

  “You’ve got three rounds left, Lex. Make them count. For me, okay?”

  “What? There are four rounds in the gun. I
haven’t fired any,” Lex protested, failing to understand what she meant until it was too late. Trish raised the gun to her temple, pushing the tip of the barrel underneath her hair to touch her skin, and pulled the trigger. The noise of the shot was muffled by Trish’s skull as the bullet entered it. An explosion of blood, bone fragments, and brain matter splattered onto the wall before Trish. Her body slumped forward, the pistol sliding out of her grasp. It clattered to the floor beside her corpse.

  Lex was too stunned to react instantly. It took his brain a second to process that horror that had just unfolded in front of him. When what he had just witnessed fully hit him, he let out an almost inhuman whine of hurt and anger. Emotionally, he wanted to grab up the gun and join Trish wherever her soul had gone. The rational part of him, though, took control. He grabbed up the gun, not to kill himself, but to defend himself with. There was no chance the thing on the bridge hadn’t heard the shot echoing in the captain’s office. Trish had forced him to leave her and move now or be stuck here with that monster out there tearing at the door until it finally got inside.

  Unlocking the door, Lex jerked it open, half expecting to see the thing already outside it, waiting on him. It wasn’t though. He did, however, hear it splashing about in the water on the bridge. From the sound of things, it was on its way towards him. Lex started running, his legs pumping under him, down the corridor in the direction that led away from the bridge and the monster on it.

  The red lights in the corridor were beginning to flicker and grow dimmer as he ran. He figured the Pleasure Bound’s emergency power must finally be failing. He wasn’t an engineer, so he didn’t know if it was just the batteries giving out or if the monsters were behind it somehow. The things gave the impression of being too dang smart for the animals that they were. That ship out there, the Peart, if he remembered its name correctly, surely had sent over people to help whoever they could find on the Pleasure Bound. Those folks would be armed too, Lex knew. Cutting the power could be a means of the creatures attempting to even the playing field in the cruise liner’s corridors.

  Lex heard something splashing behind him. He whirled around long enough to fire a single shot in the direction of the noise, without bothering to find a target and aim, then kept right on running. He heard the shot ping against one of the corridor’s metal walls and knew he hadn’t hit the monster. Still, he hoped the shot would slow it down. As tough and fast as the creatures were, they were flesh and blood just like he was and could be hurt.

  Knowing he had to reach the exterior decks because that’s where any party that had come aboard would likely be, Lex spotted a stairwell leading up at the end of the corridor and picked up his speed towards it. His breath came in ragged gasps and his vision blurred as sweat poured from his exhausted body but he pushed himself on.

  ****

  Commander Spraker had given the word. Despite the risks involved, the chance of saving anyone left alive on the massive cruise liner outweighed the safety of his men. Lieutenant Page understood the logic behind the choice. Besides, who wanted to live forever? No one who signed up to be a marine that was for sure.

  “Okay, Fox, you and your squad hold here. I want the way clear for us if we have to bug out fast, got it?”

  “Yes, sir.” Fox smiled.

  “Snapper, take your men and head aft. I’ll take my squad inside here. It’s as good an entry point as any I reckon.”

  Page had just started forward when the door he had picked burst open in front of him. Diana and Greg opened fire on it out of instinct, born of long hours of training. The man who had come bounding out of it threw himself to the deck just in time to keep from being cut in half by their fire.

  “Hold fire! Hold fire!” Page yelled. Diana and Greg jerked the barrels of their rifle skyward.

  The man on the deck was yelling too. “I’m human! I’m human!” he shouted over and over again.

  “Freeze where you are,” Page shouted at him, seeing the .38 pistol the man clutched in his right hand. “And toss that weapon away. Now!”

  The man did as he was instructed, sliding the pistol over the deck towards Page and his men. Page picked it up as Snapper’s squad kept their weapons trained on the man. Diana and Greg moved in to secure him. They took his arms, holding him firmly, as they helped the man to his feet.

  The man stunk as bad as everything else on the ship Page had encountered. Page wagered the man had to be surviving in the bowels of the ship without proper food or water for days. The man was lean and teetered on the edge of collapse even with Diana and Greg supporting him. There was blood, not his own, smeared on the clothes he wore and his hair was matted to his scalp by layers of filth and slime.

  “What happened here?” Page demanded.

  The man met his eyes as he spoke. “Sir, we have to get off this ship now while we still can. Please!”

  “We’re not going anywhere just yet,” Page told the man. “Not until I get some answers. How many more passengers alive are alive in there?” Page gestured at the doorway the man had burst out of.

  “Nobody,” the man struggled vainly against Diana and Greg’s hold on him with a fresh wave of strength. It wasn’t enough for him to break free though, so he stopped. “I’m the only one alive on this ship, sir. Everyone else is dead.”

  “Son,” Page said, even though he and the man appeared close to the same age, “this ship is supposed to have somewhere close to five thousand people on it. Do you really expect me to believe they’re all dead?”

  “Look around you, sir,” the man argued. “This mess up here is nothing compared to what’s waiting for you inside the ship. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is dead. I’m all that’s left and if we don’t get out of here soon, we’ll all be dead too.”

  “I believe him, sir,” Diana spoke up. “Look at him. What reason does he have to lie?”

  Lieutenant Page shot Diana a glare that told her to shut her mouth. He was the CO of this OP, not her.

  “The sun is setting, sir,” Greg added. “And it looks like the ship’s backup power just failed. If we go in there, we’ll be doing it in the dark.”

  “Alright,” Page conceded, knowing wisdom when he heard it. “We’ve got ourselves a witness. Let’s get him back to the Peart and let the commander pick his brain. Spraker can make the call on what to do from there.”

  “Thank you,” the man said to Page as Diana and Greg led him passed the lieutenant towards the edge of the deck where the squads’ three boats awaited below.

  ****

  Lex couldn’t believe he was alive and safe as he sat in the Peart’s briefing room waiting on Commander Spraker to arrive. The Peart’s doctor had checked him over. He was malnourished but otherwise okay as far as the doctor could tell. After watching what happened to Trish when one of the things aboard the Pleasure Bound had injured her, Lex had been afraid he might be infected with something the creatures had passed on too but all his bloodwork had come back clean. He felt amazing. The long shower he had been allowed made him feel like a new man. Lex felt clean for the first time in days. His hair was still wet when the MPs had escorted him here. He didn’t mind waiting on Commander Spraker. Two bottles of water, one already half empty, and a tray of food sat on the table in front of him. Lex was trying to force himself to take things slow but the eggs on the plate were just so freaking good. He shoveled mouthful after mouthful of them into his stomach.

  The door opened and Commander Spraker entered. Spraker looked to be his age. Lex had to admit, he had been expecting someone older. He didn’t know much about the navy except what he saw on TV and in the movies, but Spraker still struck him as young to be in command of his own ship.

  Spraker pulled out the chair across from Lex sat and took a seat.

  “I trust you’re feeling better, Mr. Iver?” Spraker asked.

  Lex beamed at him. “Better than I ever thought I would again.”

  “Good. I am glad to hear it. However, we need to talk about what happened aboard the Pleasure Bound. I
realize you’ve been through a lot these last few days, but it’s imperative that we know if whoever murdered your fellow passengers remains a threat to us.”

  Lex was chewing on another fork full of eggs as he tried to answer. His reply came out muffled and distorted. He paused and swallowed the eggs. “Sorry. I don’t think I have ever had eggs as good as these are before.”

  “Perfectly understandable, Mr. Iver,” Spraker said, acknowledging Lex’s apology.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Commander,” Lex met Spraker’s eyes.

  “How so?” Spraker leaned forward in his chair.

  “It’s not a matter of who, sir. It’s a matter of what,” Lex told him. “The Pleasure Bound wasn’t attacked by terrorists or anything like that. She was attacked by monsters, like something you’d see in your nightmares.”

  “I don’t have nightmares with monsters, Mr. Iver. At least not the sort I assume you’re referring to,” Spraker said flatly. “I’ve seen enough horror in this world to know what real monsters are and they’re people just like us in that they’re flesh and blood. Evil, sadistic, cruel men who prey on the weak. That’s what monsters are to me.”

  “Surely your men must have encountered some of those…things as they were boarding the Pleasure Bound,” Lex protested.

  “You are the only thing we found alive on that ship, Mr. Iver. Just you,” Spraker said.

  Lex grunted in disbelief. “Well, trust me they were there. There were hundreds of them.”

  “And what are they, Mr. Iver?”

  “How in the devil am I supposed to know that?” Lex asked. “If I hadn’t seen them myself, I wouldn’t believe such things could exist either.”

  “Tell me about them,” Spraker demanded.

  “Have you ever seen a squid, Commander?”

  Spraker gave Lex an odd look. “I have.”

  “They were squids, Commander. The things that slaughtered the passengers and crew of the Pleasure Bound were squids.”

  “That’s insane,” Spraker laughed.

  “Yes, Commander, it is. It’s true, though. They came out of the water, scaling the sides of the Pleasure Bound like messed-up spiders. They swept over her decks, leaving a trail of death in their wake.”