Dagon Rising(6)

Screaming, Phillips clambered to his feet and started to run, but another Clicker speared him through the chest with its scorpion-like tail. Phillips glanced down at the tip jutting from his chest. His expression was one of disbelief. Blood welled from his mouth as he gasped.

Jennifer knew what would happen next. She turned away, tugging at Susan and Wade as Phillips began to squeal, but Susan and Wade refused to move. They stood motionless, transfixed by what was occurring. Reluctantly, Jennifer turned around and watched as the Clicker’s tail pumped more poison into its victim. Phillips’ skin bubbled and steamed. Huge blisters appeared all over his body. Then they began to burst and the researcher’s skin sloughed away in a wet, glistening mess. His screams turned to roars as the venom poured through him.

“My God,” Ed gasped. “It’s…it’s like acid. I’d read the reports, but to see it like this…”

“He’s still alive,” Susan wept. “How can he still be alive?”

“Run,” Jennifer yelled, shoving them forward.

This time, they listened to her. The four of them fled across the beach. With each step, the sand pulled at their feet like cement. Jennifer directed them towards the research station, urging them not to look back. Others ran with them, determined to escape. Behind them, the massacre began in earnest. Despite her admonishments at her friends to not look back, Jennifer couldn’t help herself. As they ran, she kept glancing over her shoulder, catching glimpses of the carnage.

The commotion had brought two dozen staff members and other scientists out to see what was happening and now they were running for their lives as well. Jennifer caught fleeting glimpses of what happened to many of them; searing images that would stay in her mind forever.

A young bespectacled research assistant tripping over his own feet, a long stinger impaling him to the sandy beach. The Clicker cut the man’s right arm off with one savage swipe of a claw that was the size of a La-Z-Boy chair and began feeding even before its toxic venom began to set in.

Another research assistant, a woman who Jennifer only knew by the name of Melinda, stood near a school of flopping fish. Melinda had been a thorn in Jennifer’s side since arriving on Naranu due to her annoyingly constant inability to make solid decisions about anything. Now this flaw was proving to be her downfall as she stood on the beach and screamed. A Dark One jumped off the back of a large Clicker and ran over to her. It launched itself at her, knocking her flat on her ass, which was as wide as a sofa. She continued screaming as the Dark One tore its sharp taloned fingers into her soft belly and yanked her guts out like party streamers.

A Clicker erupted from the water and seized a dolphin’s head with one blood-red pincer nearly five feet long. The dolphin thrashed as the claw squeezed, slicing the helpless mammal in half. The dolphin’s internal organs plopped into the sea. Meanwhile, farther down the beach, the two-story high Clickers waded ashore, trampling everything in their path and leaving red wreckage in their monstrous wake.

More of both the Clickers and the Dark Ones reared from the crashing waves. The crab-things feasted as they scuttled ashore on their insect-like legs. Their claws rasped together, the noise audible over the shrieks of the wounded and dying. Jennifer shuddered and turned away. The research center seemed a million miles away. Susan, Ed, and Wade were still with her, running like hell toward the structure. Jennifer risked one more glance at the carnage behind them.

Dr. Phillips lay congealing in a puddle of his rapidly liquefying flesh as a massive Clicker began sucking him up. His left arm, which still held its shape, jittered. Jennifer hoped it was just nerves and not a sign of conscious life.

A young man who Jennifer only knew as Alex, a college intern, was stepped on by a house-sized Clicker. The cracking of bones and cartilage echoed back to them. Jennifer turned away just as his ruptured innards spurted out of his broken body.

Dr. Becky Rodriguez, a tenured professor of anthropology from the University of Michigan, struggled valiantly with a small Dark One. The old lady put up a fight, but she was no match for the stronger Dark One who dug its claws into the side of her face and began ripping flesh off. It punched its other hand into her stomach and burrowed deep.

Time seemed to suddenly slow down as Jennifer turned away from the carnage and focused all her energy in running toward the research center.

Please, oh, please let us get there, let us get there—

Something flew over her head and landed with a wet plop in her path. It was a severed arm.

Ahead, she heard Dr. Steinhardt shout in panic. “Get somebody on the radio!”

Behind her, screams of agony and death from the research crews mingled with the shouts of war from the Dark Ones.