ONE
When the crab darted toward her, Doctor Jennifer Wasco threw back her head and laughed. Her shoulders and breasts shook slightly. Her long auburn hair, usually tied up in a knot during the workday, draped down her back and dangled in the sand. The crab paused, as if surprised by her amused reaction. It raised its claws and waved them in the air. The last rays of the setting sun glinted off them for a moment.
“You’re not scary,” Jennifer said. “Your big brothers, maybe, but not you.”
The crab, no bigger than a teacup, slowly lowered its appendages and skittered away, giving Jennifer a wide berth before slinking off behind her.
Doctor Bunn is right, she thought. I must be doing better. Six months ago, the sight of that little guy would have been enough to send me screaming. But not anymore. I’m fine. No more post traumatic stress disorder for me. After all, who ever heard of a marine biologist and expert aquatic researcher who’s afraid of sea life?
A slight breeze drifted off the ocean and whispered across the beach. Jennifer closed her eyes and sighed. The air tasted of salt. It reminded her of summer vacations spent at Ocean City, Maryland, when she was a child— playing in the sand, swimming in the ocean, exploring the boardwalk, feeding quarters into the skee ball machines and video games at the arcade, riding the roller coaster and screaming all the way through the haunted house ride. Smiling, she kept her eyes closed and breathed deep. For a moment, she could also smell those times—suntan oil and seaweed, cotton candy and saltwater taffy, Bricker’s French fries and Italian sausage subs.
She missed those times. Life had been a lot simpler back then.
Gulls circled and shrieked overhead, fighting with one another. Annoyed, Jennifer opened her eyes and glared at them. A few stars were already visible in the murky blue-black sky, but the sun hovered on the edge of the horizon, slowly sinking into the sea in a haze of red and orange and yellow. The waves rolled steadily onto the beach, their lulling roar comforting and serene.
This was her favorite time of day—this quiet moment of reflective solitude. No work. No arguing on the phone with the backers in the States. No mediating the petty squabbles among the junior researchers. No politics. No scientific method.
And no thoughts of before…
The sand was still hot from the day, and the ocean breeze was warm, but despite them both, Jennifer shivered.
Damn it, I’m not going to think about it. This is my happy place. This is my personal time. I don’t think about it during the day because I keep myself busy. But I’m not going to let it intrude on my relaxation time. Not here. Not now.
As if Mother Nature were mocking her conviction, another crab scuttled along the sand toward her. Jennifer scooped up a handful of sand and tossed it at the tiny creature.
“Get out of here. Scat!”
The crab fled. The sun sank lower. The birds continued the frenzied circling. Jennifer began to tremble. She bit her lip and vowed not to cry, but then the tears came anyway— hot tears full of anger and fear and guilt and shame. And then, despite her best efforts, the memories returned to haunt her happy place.
The Homarus Tyrannous (often mistaken for the Megarachne Servinei, and more popularly known as Clickers, which was the name the media had given them) invasion of the entire Eastern seaboard of the United States. How the bizarre, crab-scorpion monstrosities had decimated cities and small coastal communities from Maine all the way to Florida. How it turned out that the creatures had been driven ashore as foot soldiers by a second group of aquatic life forms—Draco Acerbus, a race of intelligent, amphibious, lizard-like beings collectively known as the Dark Ones. How she and her boss, Richard Linnenberg, Director of Baltimore’s National Aquarium, had almost been killed when the Clickers invaded the aquarium. How they’d barely managed to escape. Their rescue at the hands of US Army colonel Augustus Livingston. Fleeing inland as both the Clickers and a Category Five hurricane snapped at their heels. Ultimately taking shelter in a nuclear power plant on the borders of Maryland and Pennsylvania, along with other refugees from the disaster—best-selling horror novelist Rick Sycheck and the handsome but mysterious Tony Genova. How the group had made their last stand, while the Clickers and their masters ravaged the United States. How in the aftermath, Colonel Livingston pulled a coup against President Jeffrey Tyler, who had gone completely insane during the invasion, and refused to step down. And then, the aftermath.
In some ways, the aftermath was even worse than the invasion had been. It shouldn’t have been. Jennifer knew that. America prevailed. She lived. So did her friends and family. The Dark Ones and their crustacean servants were either decimated or driven back into the ocean.