"The Beast of Trash Island" is a horror/suspense novella by Steve Metcalf. This story went through several name changes. It began life titled the same as the boat, "Aqua Tom," but the author admits that this never fit right. This was changed to "The Beast of Plastic Island" to account for the swirling mass of microplastics in the Pacific Ocean - but Plastic Island sounded like a fake Lego diorama from the '80s. Eventually, it morphed into "The Beast of Trash Island" where it stayed.
Chapter Five, Attack
THERE WAS A GREAT SCREAM that seemed to originate 30 feet below the surface, and then it gurgled upward and enveloped the Aqua Tom in an angry sound bubble. All at once, the yacht lifted completely out of the water, hovered for a moment, and then crashed back into the Pacific Ocean. It was as if the yacht was on a hydraulic lift gone mad.
The 18 people onboard cried out in terror as one voice. Two people—a crew member and a psychology student—were thrown overboard, their yells silenced by the frigid water. Once the boat had settled, there was a moment of silence before the shouting and crying started.
“There,” Katya cried out.
She and Micah were still on the flying bridge and had stood up to investigate some muffled cries mere seconds earlier. From the top of the yacht, they had an unobstructed view of their surroundings. Katya stood up, clutching the polished railing on the port side of the boat. She watched as a huge ripple moved away from the Aqua Tom into the center of the trash vortex.
Micah stood beside her and whipped his gaze back and forth to take in what was going on. The water was completely disrupted, like dropping a brick into a small pool. Concentric circles expanded out from the yacht as the surface tension tried to account for the impossible action that just happened.
“Right there,” she said, pointing emphatically.
Micah turned to look where she was pointing. He peered into the inky darkness of the midnight Pacific. He could see the water rippling through the mass of micro plastics that they had come to explore. He turned away to look at the sphere that he and Ai had retrieved. It was still there, unmoved and unmoving.
With his mind making the instantaneous connection between Ai, the sphere and data, he leapt forward, grabbing Katya’s arm.
“Come on,” he said.
* *
Bedlam.
There were 16 people on the yacht slowly coming back to their senses and starting to search each other out to learn as much as possible about what had happened. Had the boat really launched itself 15 feet clear out of the water and then crashed back into the Pacific?
Edmund’s room was a picture of quiet chaos. Blood spatter covered nearly every surface. At the center of the gore were the two halves of the previously vibrant Sarah von Keller. Blood pooled and continued to cool on the floor around her.
Edmund Shaw, the de facto owner of the Aqua Tom, lay naked, sprawled across the bed. The tentacle that had torn Sarah in half had wrapped around Edmund’s head and squeezed it like a rotten apple.
Slowly, silently, the blood began to drip off the walls and it slid across the floor to collect in the center of the room. Soon, both bodies were drained of blood and all 20 pints were beginning to congeal near Sarah’s right foot.
* *
James wasn’t unconscious, but he was certainly concussed. Groggy and disoriented, he was sitting on the floor, elbows resting on his bent knees. His eyes were closed and he was gently moaning.
Ai tapped away at the keyboard. She was sliding back and forth between two stations. On one monitor, she was reviewing the data from three minutes ago. She was looking at thermal imaging, sonar and the full-spectrum camera bolted to the hull of the yacht. On the other monitor, she looked at all of those readouts in real-time...trying to figure out where the creature had come from and where it went after punching the Aqua Tom straight up out of the water like it was a toy boat.
James pulled his right hand off the back of his head. A pretty serious knot was growing there and his ears were ringing. His palm was covered in blood.
He groaned.
Without looking at him, Ai spoke in a calm, even tone.
“Head wounds bleed profusely,” she said. “Even if they are not life-threatening. I need you to stay with me, okay? Don’t lose consciousness.”
Once more, she slid from one monitor to the other on the desk chair that James had been using earlier. Without warning, the door burst open and both Ai and James screamed.
“What the fuck?”
It was Micah, with Katya right behind him.
* *
Katya sat on the floor with James. She was behind him dabbing away the blood from the head wound. Micah and Ai were pouring over the data, trying to figure out what had happened.
Micah ran back the recording of the sonar.
“It’s huge,” he said.
“System calculates it to be roughly seven times the size of the yacht,” she said as he scrolled the player back and forth, watching the image grow to a huge size. The end of the playback was an error as the camera was jostled beyond its limits. The system had since rebooted and was now accurately recording the surroundings in live time. The live sonar occupied a small picture-in-picture in the bottom, right of the monitor. The larger portion of the monitor was taken up by the digital playback of the violent event.
In fact, Ai had recorded the file as Event-1.
“Jesus,” James said. “That big? Where is it now?”
Ai shrugged.
“I can’t tell. When the system scrambled, it must have dropped back down into the depths. We don’t have an accurate recording of where it went, and it doesn’t appear on any of the screens now. Thermal. Sonar. Night vision. Full-spectrum. It’s just...gone.”
James winced in pain as Katya held a wad of gauze against the three-inch cut that lined the back of his head horizontally, right between his ears. He had been thrown from his chair during the event and had sliced the back of his head open by falling against a metal filing cabinet.
“Speed,” James said.
Ai and Micah turned to look at him. Echoes of shouting and crying filtered in through the door.
“What?” Micah said, switching the monitor from playback to live.
“The speed at which that object moved,” James said, standing, not without some difficulty. “An object that big shouldn’t have been able to rise out of the depths that fast. It was unreal.”
Micah nodded, a smile creeping across his face.
“We’ll have to run back all of the cameras to get the full picture of what happened,” he said. “Giant octopus? Whale? Who knows what hit us?” He paused for a moment and reflected. “Where’s Edmund?”
* *
Two minutes after Event-1, and the people aboard the Aqua Tom were already starting to question what had happened. Two people, crewmembers, were going deck by deck, room by room, attempting to assess the level of damage to the yacht. Captain Scott and Mr. Andrews had separated in their mission. The captain started at the bow of the ship and worked his way back, taking notes along the way. Mr. Andrews started at the sphere and worked his way forward.
They met in the middle of the below deck—between the engine room and the King Stateroom. Edmund Shaw’s cabin. There were already four people there—James, Ai, Micah and Katya. They crowded around the open door, peering, slack-jawed, into the stateroom.
It was only partly a gory mess. All of the blood that had, moments before, adorned the walls, was now pooled in the center of the room. Edmund and the two halves of Sarah were, somehow, neatly arranged around the puddle of blood.
“We should go,” James said.
Katya looked horrified and had dry-heaved twice. There was a shocking absence of smell in the room and both bodies looked drained of all fluids.
Ai was softly crying, the palm of her right hand, sideways, covering the bottom half of her face.
After thinking for a moment, the captain turned to Mr. Andrews and spoke calmly and coolly.
“Standard WHO regs and procedures apply. We need to empty a refer compartment,” he said and the first mate nodded. “Place the bodies in there. Seal the room. Notify an agent at our next port of call.”
“Yes, Sir,” Mr. Andrews said. “We can combine the contents of compartments seven and eight. I’ll get a couple men to help me move the bodies.”
The captain nodded.
“I’ll find Mr. Meeks and lay in a course. Take care of this,” he said, indicating the room, “and we’ll be on our way.”
Captain Scott and Mr. Andrews turned and left in separate directions. Micah closed the door and turned to the other three Stanford students standing around him.
“Fucking madness,” Katya said. And threw up.
* *
Whoomp.
Comments