Eric Brown - The Kraken Rises

“We’re taking on heavy water through the damage on the starboard side, sir!” Ennis called to him.

Thankfully, the bulk of the crew had been evacuated before the battle started, and everyone who had opted to stay aboard had done so of their own freewill. Causalities were no longer something he needed to worry about or feel guilt over. Everyone who had stayed had accepted their fate and knew that death lay ahead of them.

“Helm control is gone, sir,” Watkins told him.

“Doesn’t matter.” Captain Weaver continued to smile. “That thing isn’t letting us go now that it’s got us.”

Captain Weaver leaned back into his command chair. “Mr. Ennis, would you do the honor?”

One of the Kraken’s impossibly large, yellow eyes moved in front of the bridge’s window. Captain Weaver stared into it. Its gaze chilled him to the bone. There was an intelligence behind it that was both cold and alien. He imagined the monster saw him much as he would an insect and merely something to be crushed beneath. Staring into that giant eye and seeing the evil, as man would define it, there, Captain Weaver was ready to give his life to end the thing.

“Any time you’re ready, Mr. Ennis,” Captain Weaver urged.

“Activating charges now, sir,” Ennis told him. “In three… two…”

Captain Weaver looked around the bridge at his crew, pride swelling within him at the sight of them. They were all so brave and they were about to save the entire the world.

“One,” Mr. Ennis said and hit the button that detonated the charges Mr. Smith had placed through the length of the Braxton . All of the charges went off simultaneously in a single massive blast that blew the massive battleship apart. Captain Weaver died in a flash of light and heat that burned the skin from his bones.

The Kraken never knew what it hit. One second it was clinging to its prey, the Braxton crippled and helpless in its tentacles. The next, its prey became a mass of fire and metal that burned and ripped at its body. The great beast died like a soldier who had thrown himself on top of a grenade. Pieces of the Braxton blew their way through its flesh, leaving jagged, bleeding holes in their wake. The Kraken’s corpse slid off the Braxton , sinking into the waves, turning the water black with its blood.

The explosion that destroyed the Braxton was so powerful and loud that Hawks and those who shared the small boat under his command with him heard it despite the distance and the roar of the boat’s pushed to its limit motor. The flash of the explosion lit up the distant horizon beneath the clear night sky.

“The Braxton is gone, sir,” Robbie told him.

“And the Kraken?” Hawks asked.

Robbie had his tablet tapped into the ship’s systems and had been able to monitor the last bits of information that they had picked up before being destroyed along with the ship.

“As best I can tell, sir, Captain Weaver’s plan worked.” Robbie smiled. “The monster is dead.”

Hyatt let out a victory whoop, nearly leaping up from where he sat at the portside edge of the small lifeboat. The newbie, Jeff, was smiling too.

“The nightmare is finally over,” Hawks muttered under his breath.

“That’s yet to be seen,” Cheryl reminded him sharply.

“Hyatt, Jeff,” Hawks said. “Are we clear?”

“No sign of the squids, sir,” Hyatt answered.

“Then we’ll just have to hope they’re gone too,” Hawks growled. He kept the small lifeboat’s motor at its max and steered it onward towards the coordinates of the shipping lane Robbie had set their course for.

Hawks said a silent prayer for the souls of those who had given their lives aboard the Braxton , turning his gaze upwards to the stars. His rifle rested on the floor of the boat next to him. He hoped that he wouldn’t need to use it. Cheryl was right though; only time would tell if the nightmare was truly over. But for now, they were safe and headed home.

Eric S Brownis the author of numerous book series including the Bigfoot War series, the Kaiju Apocalypse series (with Jason Cordova), the Crypto-Squad series (with Jason Brannon), the Homeworld series (with Tony Faville and Jason Cordova), the Jack Bunny Bam series, and the A Pack of Wolves series. Some of his stand alone books include Dropship Marines , Kraken , Operation Hive Strike , The Last Fleet , War of the Worlds plus Blood Guts and Zombies , World War of the Dead , Last Stand in a Dead Land , Sasquatch Lake , Kaiju Armageddon , Megalodon , Megalodons , and Megalodon Apocalypse to name only a few. His short fiction has been published hundreds of times in the small press in beyond including markets like the Onward Drake and Black Tide Rising anthologies from Baen Books, the Grantville Gazette , the SNAFU Military horror anthology series, and Walmart World magazine. He has done the novelizations for such films as Boggy Creek: The Legend is True (Studio 3 Entertainment) and The Bloody Rage of Bigfoot (Great Lake films). The first book of his Bigfoot War series was adapted into a feature film by Origin Releasing in 2014. Werewolf Massacre at Hell’s Gate was the second his books to be adapted into film in 2015. In addition to his fiction, Eric also writes an award winning comic book news column entitled “Comics in a Flash” and ongoing series of stories about a group of live action roleplaying teens for the Grantville Gazette set in Eric Flint’s world of 1632 .

Eric lives in North Carolina with his wife and two children where he continues to write tales of the hungry dead, blazing guns, and the things that lurk in the woods.

Dr. William Craven’s customarily pristine lab coat was shredded, long strands of loose fabric billowing wildly about him as he ran for his life. Ragged, claw-shaped gouges were etched across the chest of his coat and down the back of it; underneath, his red-and-white plaid-patterned shirt was tattered as well. In several places, the white fabric of his coat was stained with deep red splotches of drying blood. The doctor wasn’t sure who the coppery liquid belonged to. It very well could have been his own blood, or it might have belonged to one of his slaughtered colleagues left behind in the laboratory. Then again, it could have been a mixture of both.

A thick layer of salty sweat covered Craven’s leathery, crinkled, vulture-like bald head. The thin pair of spectacles that usually sat at the end of his beaky nose, in front of his steely grey eyes, was gone; lost at some point during the man’s mad rush as he fought to escape the blazing lab. Without his glasses, Craven was almost as good as blind; the world around him appearing blurred and distorted. Still, in a way, part of him was glad he had lost his spectacles. It meant he didn’t have to see his horrific creations hounding after him in all their putrefying, macabre glory.

Exhausted and terrified, the spindly limbed man stumbled down the hallway. With arms outstretched and his bony fingers feeling along the cold walls, the doctor tried desperately to steady himself, his arthritic legs periodically giving out on him. Worse still, every so often he felt the floor move beneath him, the ship tilting nauseatingly to one side or the other, its massive bulk rocking on the hectic, roiling waves. Slanting this way and that, Craven’s thin frame was painfully battered off the walls of the ship.