Eric Brown: The Kraken Rises

“Sir!” Dixon heard Brandon shout at him as the door continued to close. “I can’t stop it!”

Dixon saw the distance left between himself and the closing doorway and knew he would never make it through in time. Accepting his fate, he threw his empty shotgun aside, stopping in his tracks and drew the pistol holstered on his hip. If he was going to die, he was at least going to go down fighting.

The 9mm jerked in his hands as he held it in a two-handed grip and emptied the pistol’s mag into a squid that came bounding across the deck towards him. Each round he fired tore through the squid’s body. The squid shrieked in pain but kept coming. It hit him like a runaway truck, knocking the air from his lungs and taking him down under it. Other squids rushed to join it as it began to stab at him with its primary tentacles. Dixon howled as their spear-like tips pierced him. He kicked at the squid that had brought him down, trying to force it away from him. His heavy boot slammed into the creature’s central body, but he barely jarred the thing. The squids were impossibly strong. Another of the squids that had gathered around him slipped a tentacle around his throat. It twisted tighter and tighter around Dixon there choking him and tearing away his skin. Blood flowed from beneath where the tentacle clutched him. Dixon dropped his empty pistol, raising both hands in an attempt to pry the tentacle loose from his neck. As he did so, another squid joined the struggle. One of its primary tentacles shot outwards to plunge into his chest. Dixon stared at the horrible appendage that had just rammed its way through his body as he went into shock. Then, suddenly, the world was spinning. The squids seemed to be getting farther and farther away from him. It took Dixon a moment to realize his head was no longer attached to the rest of him and was rolling across the deck. His vision narrowed as his brain began to die and the world in front of his eyes grew dark.

The doorway thudded closed in front of Brandon. No one else in the group that Dixon had led outside had survived. Brandon retreated several steps from the door as the squid creatures on its other side began to attack it. He heard the pounding of their tentacles as the monsters bashed them against the door in a frenzied madness trying to get inside and at him.

Brandon sprinted along the corridor, leaving the door behind him, as he ran for his life.

“The door is closed, ma’am,” Peterson said.

“I can see that!” Cheryl snapped from where she stood at the control room’s window. She had no delusion though that the door being sealed was going to keep the monsters out of the platform’s interior. She had seen what the squids had done to the X-29’s hull. Given time, the monsters would tear through the door, but they didn’t need to. There were other means of getting inside the platform and she was standing beside one of them. She turned her gaze back outward across the platform’s deck as her fears became reality. The glass of the window shattered in front of her. Shards of it flew into the control room as several tentacles broke through the bottom of the window. Cheryl screamed.

Riggs grabbed Cheryl from behind and dragged her away from the window. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

Bailey stood, mouth open in terror, staring at the squids that were pulling themselves up into the control. Riggs shoved her aside as he pushed Cheryl out of the control room. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Peterson was still at his station. Peterson was yelling out a distress message over the platform’s long-range comm.

“This is research station Platform Alpha One! Mayday! I repeat, Mayday! We are under attack and require assistance!” Peterson cried.

“Come on, man!” Riggs shouted at Peterson as Bailey shook off her shock and ran out of the control room to join Cheryl in the corridor beyond it.

Peterson looked over at Riggs as if he was going to shout something back. His mouth opened but all that came out of it was a scream as one of the squids sprang through the window, a tentacle whipping outward in an arc. Its spear-like tip silenced Peterson’s cry, reducing his throat to little more than a mess of shredded, jagged meat. Blood spurted from what remained of Peterson’s throat as he raised his hands to press against the wound, vainly trying to stop the geysers of blood erupting from it.

Riggs threw himself out of the room without looking back. He knew Peterson was dead. There was no surviving a wound like that. “Shut the door!” he yelled at Cheryl and Bailey. Cheryl moved to the keypad beside it, typing in the code to lock the control room down. The door slide closed as a trio of tentacles lashed out at her. They were caught by it. The door crushed the tentacles, severing them. They flopped to the corridor floor, writhing there as Cheryl covered her mouth with her hand trying not to be sick.

“Incredible,” Bailey muttered.

“There’s nothing incredible about what’s happening here,” Riggs spat at her.

“We need to find somewhere safe,” Cheryl said. “The windows aren’t the only way in.”

Riggs realized what she meant. There was an open pool in the depths of the platform that was used to launch the group’s other submersible, a standard mini-sub designed for deep sea exploration and recon. “Frag,” he shook his head, “she’s right.”

Thinking things over for a second, Riggs said, “The only place onboard with doors thick enough that they might hold against those things is engineering. If we can make it there, we might just be able to hold out until help comes.”

“Good plan,” Cheryl said, nodding. “Let’s get moving.”

“We need to hit the armory first,” Riggs protested. “If those things do get into engineering …”

“We’ll need supplies too,” Bailey pointed out. “Water shouldn’t be an issue as long as the platform’s power stays on, but who knows how long it will take for someone to respond to the message Peterson sent out.”

If anyone even heard it, Riggs thought. His mind was having a hard time accepting that the three of them were the only members of the platform’s staff and crew that were still alive. Then he realized why. “Hey!” Riggs looked over at Cheryl. “Where’s Louis?”

Neither Cheryl nor Bailey answered him at first.

“I didn’t see him with the others that went outside,” Riggs said.

Cheryl shrugged. “Last I heard from him he was refueling the copter after the rescue team came in with the remains of the X-29.”

“Does it matter?” Bailey protested. “We’re in no position to help him. We’ll be lucky if we can even make it to engineering and get it sealed up.”

Riggs knew Bailey was right. Hating himself for giving up on Louis so easily, he gave a sharp nod. “Right then,” he said. “Come on.”

Riggs lead the way as the three of them sprinted down the corridor towards the platform’s armory.

Louis had been inside the platform’s helicopter when the attack began. The squids had come out of nowhere and their numbers seemed endless. The things were everywhere now. He had watched Hank die and then Dixon and the others after him, sitting paralyzed by fear in the copter’s pilot seat. So far, the creatures hadn’t noticed him. He knew they would, given time, but for the moment, he appeared to be safe. He thought about powering up the copter and taking off. It had a full tank. He could stay airborne for over eight hours with the copter’s modified tanks, but eight hours seemed such a short time. From the looks of things outside the copter, the platform was done for. The squids had slaughtered Dixon and those who had come outside with him. The squids had torn through the door leading into the platform’s interior within a matter of minutes of it being closed, and Louis knew very well that other ways inside too. If there was anywhere aboard the platform that would be safe, it would be either the armory or the engineering. Both had much heavier and denser doors than the rest throughout the platform. It was a good bet that anyone left alive would head for engineering though. It offered the larger space and running water. Louis also knew he could never make it there himself. As soon as he stepped out of the copter and the squids noticed him, they would swarm him and tear him to shreds.