Crustaceans Read online

  Stark turned to Shona.

  “Last chance. You don’t have to come along.”

  Shona didn’t reply. She started down the steps and Porter followed close behind.

  The first body was only two steps down; a suited businessman reaching, arm outstretched, for freedom. His lower torso was five steps below the rest of him, his intestines forming a gory bridge between.

  That was only the first of many gruesome sights. Shona tried to keep her eyes fixed on the back of the soldier in front of her, but the dead seemed to call out for recognition, for some indications that their pain had some meaning. She found she could not avert her eyes, even when the victims were babes tumbled from parent’s arms, or the old and infirm, trampled to death by the fleeing mob. She had tears in her eyes now, tears which hid some of the carnage.

  But not enough. Tears will never be enough.

  Shona hadn’t realised it, but they had walked the whole length of the station platform.

  Porter pointed at a new-made hole in the wall nearby.

  “I came through there.”

  Shona wasn’t paying attention. She stared, wide eyed, at a baby, no more than six months old, sliced neatly in two pieces. She wondered whether she’d ever again see anything quite so sad. She was so lost in her grief that she didn’t notice that the soldiers in front of her had stopped. She almost walked into the back of the nearest one.

  Stark moved past her.

  “What’s the problem soldier?” he asked.

  “We’ve got movement ahead sir… in the main tunnel.”

  Even as the soldier spoke the noise she’d been dreading came.

  Clickety-clack.

  A shadow loomed on the wall of the tunnel. The crab that came though was nearly nine feet across. Its pincers grazed the roof of the tunnel.

  “Burn it,” Stark shouted.

  The front three soldiers all fired up their flame-throwers at the same time. Fire rolled over the shell and stuck.

  “Cease fire!” Stark shouted. “Save it for later.”

  The soldiers took their fingers off the triggers. The flame kept burning, a bright yellow that left its impression behind Shona’s eyes. The crab thrashed, pincers knocking tiles off the subway wall. The team stepped back as it threatened to climb off the track, but the flames had it in a tight hold. It slumped to one side. One of the pincers slapped, one last time, on the edge of the platform, then it was still.

  The flames burned for a long time while the team looked on.

  The crab stayed down.

  Stark looked over at Shona.

  “Effective enough for you?”

  40

  Porter led the team through the hole into the tunnels. The closer he got to the nest, the less he wanted to be there. But every time he thought of running, he saw the girl in his mind, and Sarah looking accusingly back from her young face. That, and the fact that having a well armed team around him, ensured that he kept going, no matter how much his legs told him it was a bad idea.

  The tunnels were quiet as they descended. There wasn’t even the distant hum of tube trains to disturb the silence.

  They’ll have the whole system shut down by now. The city will be at a standstill.

  The enormity of the situation hit him. The fate of the city hung on him leading this team to the right place.

  I’m finally important.

  And I don’t like the feeling.

  Scant weeks ago he’d been out in his cabin on the Bay, wishing for a way out. Now he’d give anything to be back there, just drifting offshore with a hip flask and a pack of smokes, and Sarah waiting when he got back. That now seemed a long way away. And getting further away by the minute as they kept descending.

  When they were getting close, Porter stopped and approached Stark.

  “It’s just round the next corner,” he said.

  Stark nodded, and led the team forward.

  Porter stood alone for several seconds, looking back up the tunnel, then turned and went to join the others.

  41

  Shona couldn’t quite believe what she was looking at.

  She looked over the high vaulted area that bounded the abandoned subway station. Dim light came from way up above. Out in the middle, surrounded by glistening slime, sat four grey mounds, each more than twenty-five feet across. None of them moved but there was no mistaking that they were crabs.

  That’s impossible.

  Piles of scat lay everywhere and the stink stung in her nostrils and at the back of her throat. Away to her left she could just see the darker hole where the old subway tunnel disappeared into blackness. A score of smaller crabs scuttled and crawled around the larger beasts, each of them the size of a horse.

  “Now what?” she whispered to Stark.

  But the Colonel already had a plan, and he wasted no time in getting it into action.

  “We wait,” he said. “Lieutenant, do we have a signal?”

  Wilkes studied the GPS.

  “Yes sir. It seems this station is still on the grid. The plan will work. Sending co-ordinates now.”

  “Plan?” Shona asked.

  Stark gave her a thin smile.

  “Some of the tracks around here are still live. We’ve got a train getting packed with napalm up top and it’ll be sent down any minute now.” He paused and looked over the nest. “We’re going to send this lot to hell.”

  Shona noticed a glistening at her feet. She stooped to investigate a patch of the eggs.

  “We may not have much time.”

  The young crabs were already starting to cut their way out of their slimy prisons.

  Soon there’ll be thousands of them. And they’ll all be looking for food.

  “They’re hatching,” she said.

  Out across the station the slimy coating started to seethe and boil as countless crabs were born.

  “How long?” Stark said to Wilkes.

  “ETA five minutes.”

  Young crabs, ranked already like an advancing army, started to march across the floor of the station, heading for the tunnels.

  “We’ve got to stop them,” Shona shouted. “Any one of them could grow into a monster.”

  “The train will be here…”

  “We can’t afford to wait.”

  “And what if one of those giants wakes up?”

  “We need to take the risk. We can’t let any escape into the city.”

  “You heard what the lady said,” Wilkes shouted. “Light them up.”

  Stark held up three fingers, then two, then one.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  The first burst of napalm washed over the advancing crabs and set a large patch of them aflame. The air filled with the crack and sizzle of burning shell and soft meat. The horse-sized crabs at the far end of the station turned as one, and mounted a charge. At the same time the new-borns surged sideways, like a wave breaking on a shore, heading en-masse for the open tunnels to the side of the team.

  “Fan out,” Stark called. “Don’t let any escape.”

  The team spread to cover the tunnels. A flood of napalm washed over the station floor. The larger crabs reached the edge of it and barely slowed. They threw themselves into the flames. Most perished as the inferno took them. Two made it through, shell on fire, pincers smoking, coming at the defenders as if rising straight from hell. More napalm sprayed the first and it tumbled in a jumble of legs and claws.

  The second kept coming, barrelling into two men sending them falling to the ground.

  Shona felt Stark pull her backwards, hard, into the tunnel.

  “Get down,” Stark shouted. But he was too late. The backpack of one of the fallen went up with a whump. Hot air blew like a hurricane through the tunnels and flame rolled across the roof overhead. She felt skin tighten at her cheeks. The air choked her, too hot to breathe. She held her breath as the heat threatened to bake them alive. For long seconds her ears filled with a roaring bellow as the flame ate the air.

  Then, as quickly
as it had come, it was gone. She let out her breath and sucked dry, hot air until her heart rate slowed to something approaching normal.

  Stark pulled her to her feet.

  There were six of them left alive. Wilkes and Porter were on the other side of the tunnel and two soldiers were just getting to their feet. Of the others there was no sign.

  A lake of fire lay just in front of the cave. Things lay there… so far burned that Shona could not tell whether they had once been crab… or human.

  Beyond the fire the four huge domes started to move. A white pincer the size of a truck waved in the air.

  The giants had woken up.

  42

  Once more Porter’s every nerve wanted to run. But the army men stood firm, and so did the Menzies woman. Pride, if nothing else, kept him in place.

  The huge crabs in the background were coming awake slowly, sluggishly.

  A movement in the far-left tunnel caught his eye. A subway train with its lights full on rumbled into the station. It ground to a halt in a cloud of dust. Metal screeched and the sound echoed loudly around them.

  Stark was immediately on the move, sidling round the edge of the napalm lake.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Porter asked, but the soldiers, and the woman, had already moved out.

  Porter followed, cautiously at first, then faster as the soldiers picked up the speed.

  The small group of six managed to skirt the fires. But they had only travelled a third of the way towards the train when the first of the giants stood full up on its legs. When it raised up further and showed them its belly the claws towered nearly twenty yards above them.

  We’re not going to make it.

  Wilkes moved to the back of the line, putting himself between the crab and the others.

  “Lead them out Colonel. I’ll hold here as long as I can.”

  He sent out a long wet flame that hung in the air before falling to burn at the base of the crab.

  Stark had to forcibly drag the Menzies woman away. They hurried on. Porter looked back, just once. Wilkes was still retreating towards them, keeping the crab at bay with a wall of flame. Napalm ran up the whole right hand side of the beast. It flailed in a frenzied dance, as if trying to catch the fire. The Lieutenant kept himself just out of its reach, buying the fleeing group enough time to reach the train.

  A second crab had other ideas. It scuttled across the station, covering ground fast. Stark and the other soldiers created a solid wall of plasma that poured down over it. A milky white eye, near two feet across, popped, the viscous fluid hissing as it fell to the ground. Napalm fell in a sheet across the whole length of the beast’s back. The shell cracked, like a sudden rifle shot. Stark followed up the napalm with a close up blast from his automatic weapon while the other two men kept pouring flame.

  Wilkes joined them. His face was black, his eyebrows singed completely off. Porter risked a look in the direction from which the man had come. Another fire blazed there, a slowly collapsing dome being all that remained of the beast.

  “One down sir,” Wilkes said.

  He joined the others in washing the attacking crab in fire.

  After what seemed like minutes the beast finally fell.

  By then the third, and fourth crabs had risen up and were nearly on them.

  “Run,” Stark shouted. “Head for the train.”

  Porter started to move. His feet sucked at the ground. He looked down to see that they were wading through a thick carpet of more eggs, all near hatching.

  They had no time to stop and investigate. Stark and Wilkes took point with Porter and Menzies sandwiched between them and the two other soldiers.

  Porter was so intent on watching ahead of them that the first sign they were in trouble was a scream from behind them. He turned to see a soldier held tight in the claw of an eight-foot crab that was still pulling itself out of a pile of rubble.

  Snick.

  He saw Sarah again as the man fell in two pieces.

  The fallen soldier’s partner hosed the crab, screaming in rage. He was so far gone in his revenge that he didn’t see the third of the giant beasts loom over him.

  “Stark!” Porter cried. “We’ve got incoming.”

  Stark turned, just as the raging soldier got scooped high in the air. He poured napalm all over the attacking crab, even as the massive pincer squeezed and the man got squished to a lump of raw meat in less than a second. Fresh napalm squirted from the punctured tank, catching fire and spraying in a high arc over the station.

  “Run. Get to the train,” Stark shouted. “It’s our only hope.”

  Napalm burned all over the crab. It slumped and fell forward into the flame, but behind it Porter saw the fourth loom, pincers raised high.

  He turned and ran as flame fell around them.

  43

  Shona was first to reach the train. A startled driver stared out, wide eyed, unable to take his eyes from the attacking crabs. She ran up towards him… and realised that, without the platform, the open door was nearly four feet high. She tried to pull herself up. The pain in her ribs flared, like a renewed blast of hot flame. She had to stand back, breathing hard, a cold sweat on her brow. She had just mustered enough will to try again when she got boosted at the waist and almost thrown into the train. Porter let go of her and climbed in beside her.

  “Sorry,” he smiled. “You were in my way.”

  Outside Stark and Wilkes laid down a covering wall of flame from a position next to the door.

  The driver, all blood drained from his face, came out of his cab to join them.

  He took one look at the huge crab that loomed beyond the flames and took off, heading away through the train.

  There’s a way out.

  “Stark!” she shouted. “We can get out through the back of the train.”

  Stark turned and gave her a quick okay.

  He kept flaming the area in front of the crab while Wilkes climbed up beside Shona. Her ribs flared again as she helped him up. She tasted blood in her mouth.

  Something’s definitely bust in there.

  She hoped she had time to worry about it later.

  Now it was Wilkes’ turn to lay down cover. Seconds later all four of them were in the doorway.

  “Check the goods,” Stark said. Wilkes moved quickly to inspect the barrels that lined the carriage.

  “Enough napalm to blow this whole site,” he replied.

  Stark sent a long sheet of flame towards the crab.

  “Okay. Move. We’ll light it up from the far end”

  All four of them set off down the carriage. Shona saw immediately that it wasn’t going to work. The huge crab outside scuttled sideways, and used the lull in firing to close in on the train. Stark went back to the door and sent another flame in its direction. The napalm came up short, but at least the crab had stopped its approach.

  Stark looked grim again.

  “Get moving then Lieutenant. Get Ms. Menzies and Porter out of here. I’ll stay here and make sure it blows.”

  “No!” Shona shouted. “That’s suicide.”

  Stark looked calm as he stared back at her.

  “It’s my job Shona. It’s what I do.”

  She went to his side and put a hand on his arm.

  “There must be another way,” she said.

  “There is,” he said. “I can order Wilkes to stay. And he would.”

  “Wanna bet on that sir?” Wilkes said with a smile.

  Stark turned back to Shona.

  “But we both know I can’t do that. Someone has to stay and make sure the job gets done. Today that someone is me.”

  He looked over at Wilkes and nodded.

  Wilkes grabbed Shona by the arm and started to pull her away down the train.

  44

  Porter was itching to get going. The huge crab outside inched ever closer. He could barely take his eyes off it.

  Stark stood at the train door, sending gouts of flame towards the beast.

 
; Porter was smart enough to realise that the backpacks weren’t inexhaustible. At some point they were going to run out.

  And that’s when the real fun will start.

  Wilkes started to pull the woman down the train.

  Finally. Let’s get the fuck out of here.

  But she changed everything. Just two short words.

  “Help me,” she said, her eyes pleading, looking straight at him.

  Porter looked at her, and once more saw Sarah. The big crab held her… the big crab that had turned up looking for the smaller one. He looked out at the huge crab, then down at the ground outside the train where new-borns were cutting their way out of the slime.

  He walked back up the train, past a startled Wilkes, and addressed Stark.

  “You can be a glory boy another day. I’ve got an idea.”

  Before Stark could stop him he jumped out of he train and started shovelling a slippery mess of slime, eggs and newly hatched crabs up into the train.

  Stark fired another warming blast then shouted at him.