"The Beast of Trash Island" is a horror/suspense novella by Steve Metcalf. In this chapter, the remainder of the ship's crew and passengers breathe a sigh of relief as the tentacles slowly descend back under the swirling plastic vortex. That relief is short-lived, however, as an army of football-sized insect monsters swarm overboard ...
Chapter Seven, Darkness
IT WAS THREE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING when the tentacles finally stopped flailing about the yacht Aqua Tom. Nearly every surface was coated in ocean water, seaweed, blood and gore. Of the 20 people who set sail from San Francisco—both passengers and crewmembers—only 12 remained. Of those 12, only a portion were not seriously injured. Outside of the expected bumps and bruises were broken legs, broken ribs and one missing arm.
It was quiet, save for the frothing water where the two enormous tentacles had disappeared back into the briny deep. The smaller tentacles that had wreaked havoc on the ship while the large ones stood sentry had simply lowered back into the Pacific.
The sphere was at peace.
There was a small circle of blood around its base, but the scene gave no outward appearance of the gore that had ensued.
When the madness had started, the three who’d watched Ai die ducked into a nearby cabin and pressed themselves up against the far wall. They attempted to be as still and quiet as three Stanford students could be.
Now that the boat no longer seemed like it was under attack, they ventured out of the room. Micah opened the door and peered up and down the deck path. “It’s clear,” he said in a low whisper.
He stepped out of the cabin, followed by James and Katya. They stood where they had last seen Ai’s body, crushed by the flat, muscled “hand” at the end of a black tentacle. She was gone. The only signs of her were the crushed glasses that fell off her face near the door, and one of the brown flip-flops she had been wearing when the attack happened.
The three were silent for a moment, trying to decipher exactly what was going on. Katya had seen something from the flying bridge while she and Micah were getting acquainted, but nothing had prepared them for the chaos that ensued.
“Nothing,” James said. “No blood. No body.”
“There wasn’t any blood in Edmund’s room, either,” Micah said.
James looked at him, and they both turned and jogged down the deck way.
* *
Nothing.
There were clothes strewn about the room. Had there not recently been two dead bodies—one violently ripped in half—lying on the floor moments ago, one would simply think that this was the bedroom of some messy kids. There was no evidence of the tragedy that occurred more than an hour ago.
Slowly, without a word, Micah closed the door on the troubling scene and the three turned to walk away.
* *
Ten minutes later, they had collected nearly everyone on the yacht. There were eight people on the flying bridge. It was a combination of students and crew members. Three of the remaining crew members—including the captain—were on the below deck attempting to fix the engines.
One of the female students that had been on the rear deck during the attack had her face in her hands and slowly looked up. Now, she was sobbing, hand to her mouth, looking over her right shoulder.
“Gone,” she said. “Just gone.”
She was looking at the black sphere, still unmoving, as it rested on the deck. She had been crying the entire time the group was assembled. James and a med student named Erin were going from person to person trying to set broken bones and administer what little first aid they could. The yacht had a well-stocked infirmary. The ninth member of the passenger/crew party was there now, strapped down and unconscious. He was the young man who had lost an arm in the attack.
Nobody knew how it had happened.
Nobody knew his name.
Nobody believed that he would survive until morning.
“What are you talking about?” Katya asked. “The sphere is still there. We tried to throw it off the ship, but we couldn’t move it.”
The girl, Heather, slowly shook her head.
“I was down there,” she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I saw Edmund. What was left of him. Go inside the sphere. Get pulled inside the sphere.”
All eight people turned to look at the dark orb. Still, it looked like a black beach ball resting peacefully on the aft party deck of the Aqua Tom. There was the clear impression that it was mounted on the deck as it was not moving with the undulation of the boat. It might have been something like a decoration.
“What does that mean?” James looked up from wrapping a splint around a young man’s broken leg. “That he went inside the sphere?”
Heather, again, was wracked by sobs. “All that was left of him was his head, and it was just sucked into the sphere. Like you’d drink a milkshake through a straw? His head was pulled into the sphere.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Katya said. “Before it comes back.”
* *
The damage was more extensive than they had at first thought. As the yacht had been struck and pushed sideways, the forces that crushed the twin pods inward had also broken the seal—and the redundant protective seal and the redundant redundant protective seal—that kept the boat water-tight. The set of centrifugal bilge pumps had already kicked on and water was being removed from the boat as quickly as it was coming on—quicker, in fact.
While, technically, the Aqua Tom was sinking, it wasn’t really in any danger.
Until.
Thump.
Ben Andrews was working to manually rewire the engines to override the system’s safety shut-down. Captain Scott worked with the third man to weld some plates in place to stem the flow of water. Unfortunately, once hull integrity was compromised, it became difficult to regain a water-tight seal—at least out on the open water. A few days in a dry-dock would get the Aqua Tom ready to sail again.
Accompanying the thump, the boat jarred sideways. It wasn’t enough to throw the men from their feet, but it was a noticeable movement.
“Not again,” Hendricks, the third man, said. They had grabbed him shortly after raiding the weapons locker on the bridge and starting to head to the lower levels. Now, he braced himself against the wall.
The three men stood silently, waiting to see what was going to happen next. They didn’t have to wait long, however, as the yacht started moving backward, deeper into the trash vortex.
“Oh,” Andrews said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “This can’t be good.”
* *
The response on the flying bridge was immediate and varied. Many of the survivors yelped in shock. A few of the others simply gasped, while the rest unleashed choice expletives.
“What the fuck now?” Micah said.
At three in the morning, the yacht’s lights provided little comfort. The moon and stars illuminated their surroundings. The Aqua Tom was being pulled backward deeper into the trash vortex. It was hard to gauge the speed with which they were traveling, but water kept splashing up over the transom at the stern of the yacht.
More troublesome, however, was that the sudden influx of water overwhelmed the pumps working below. Soon, the two working engines were flooded and the generator was shorted out.
Suddenly, half of the lights on the yacht shut off. The remaining half dimmed as they were now running on battery back-up and emergency power. There was a faint green glow all around the boat from the various Emergency Exit signs.
“Oh,” James said. “You have got to be kidding me.”
After mere moments, the yacht was pulled deeper into the plastic vortex. Soon, they were a mile from the edge of the swirling mass of garbage. As suddenly as it had started, it ended. The boat slowly came to a stop and rocked gently from side to side with the undulation of the ocean.
Below decks, the men got to work manually restarting the bilge pumps. Once the power was cut, they switched over to their protected diesel generators. However, the generators had to be started and the pumps had to be re-primed. Their work was lit by the ghostly-green glow of the emergency, battery-powered lights.
On the flying bridge, everyone was silent. All eight people seemed to be holding their breath. Collectively, they were looking around, trying to get a grip on their ever-changing situation.
Micah turned to James.
“We should take a look at the data,” he said just above a whisper. “Maybe we can get an idea what we’re up against.”
“I’m guessing that it’s an aggressive, unstudied species of octopus,” James said. “Enteroctopus dofleini. Or some mutant giant squid. I think a squid has those flat tentacles.”
“Like the one that got…” Micah said and then trailed off. “Did you hear that?”
The other seven people on the flying bridge collectively held their breath.
“Yeah,” James said. “It sounds like those wind up teeth. The plastic ones. The ones that chatter.” He paused for a moment, straining to hear above the constant Pacific breeze. “What the hell is that?”
* *
Captain Scott grabbed a high-power Maglite flashlight and started assessing the damage to the electronics. Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Andrews had restarted the four bilge pumps and they were—even now—shooting water out of the Aqua Tom.
He was looking at the power plant when the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He cocked his head, turning this way and that, trying to hone in on the sound.
“Stop,” he hissed at the men. They slowly stopped moving about the room. The only sound in there was the sound of four inches of water sloshing about.
And the clicking.
“What is that?” the captain asked.
Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Andrews grabbed their side arms. The three men ran out of the room toward the stairs to get to the main deck.
* *
The clicking sound was coming from everywhere at the same time. It never got louder or more insistent—it just seemed to grow in scope. Then, suddenly, as if some silent signal was given, dozens of them swarmed over the gunwales of the Aqua Tom.
A girl on the flying bridge, Shelly, screamed when she saw one skitter past the black sphere. It looked like a water strider—trim body and incredibly long legs. While the fresh-water versions of these insects were tiny, the army that attacked the yacht were huge, easily the size of a football each. The one that Shelly saw on the aft deck was only one of about a hundred that were now coming aboard.
“What the shit?” Micah asked.
Perhaps stereotypically, the three girls started screaming. One of the bugs had expanded its exploration to include the flying bridge. It slowly crawled up the port wall and came up over the lip. James saw it and immediately kicked it in the head. There was a sickening crunch as the insect’s head caved into its body. James was shocked at how light the bug was, and the carcass flew completely off the ship.
Unfortunately, other water striders realized that there was some activity in that area of the yacht, and immediately converged on the flying bridge. Micah began looking around for any sort of weapon. The other seven people, frightened, started pushing and shoving each other to get away from the insects. One male student fell off the bridge and lay, dazed, on the deck next to the dark orb.
He was immediately swarmed by a dozen water striders. The young man began flailing about in an effort to remove the giant insects from his body. If he managed to throw one off, it was replaced by two. Soon, one insect skittered past all of the others and sat astride the man’s face. As he screamed, the bug engaged in chemical warfare—it began bleeding into the student’s mouth and throat. By reflex bleeding, the insect dumped nearly a half-gallon of toxic blood and other secretions down the man’s throat. As he lay drowning, the chemicals slowly killed him.
He died twice.
Half of the others on the flying bridge saw this and screamed even more loudly. The other half were busy punching, kicking and hitting the water striders that quickly made their way up the walls.
“Kick them,” James yelled. “Don’t let them knock you down.”
Micah was lifting the seats off the benches. He rummaged through the contents until he found what he was looking for.
“A-hah,” he shouted and stood. He kicked the two water striders that were running toward him. With an evil smile, he pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher.
* *
The three crewmembers heard the cacophony of screams and shouts as they ran up the stairs from the lower decks to reach the main deck. When they arrived, it was chaos. Dozens of the giant insects were running around the deck. Their only objective seemed to be rooted in “attack.”
The three men all raised their weapons and tried to get their bearings. Hendricks pointed at a mass of the insects that were pulling their recent kill across the deck, up the gunwale and overboard. The 20 bugs that left the ship were replaced with 20 new ones from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
No. Not quite.
“They’re coming from under the plastic,” Andrews yelled. He had just happened to be looking at a section of Trash Island when three water striders emerged from under water, walked across the various plastic pieces that made up the trash vortex, and leaped to the side of the Aqua Tom.
A man with a broken leg was pulled from the flying bridge by a mass of water striders. One of the bugs attempted to incapacitate him by unleashing his toxic blood. Hendricks, though, quickly kicked the insect off the man’s face.
It was too late, however, as the man had inhaled and ingested enough of the poison to have a disastrous effect. Screaming, he attempted to wipe the chemical mixture off of his face. His hands came away filled with the goop that had previously been his eyes. His screaming intensified as his body began convulsing. One seizure was so severe that his spine snapped.
Dead.
The entire event happened over the span of ten seconds.
“Don’t let ‘em piss on you,” Andrews shouted.
And then he opened fire.
* *
Mads Mahoney was of mixed heritage and was one of only three international students from Sweden in Stanford’s entire chemical engineering program.
While Mads famously got along with everyone—the most likely reason that he was invited to join the Pacific Vortex Party Cruise was this—he was gorgeous. With a swimmer’s body and a basketball player’s height, his physique only complimented his chiseled good looks. All the good genes in the world, unfortunately, couldn’t protect him from getting his arm caught in a ladder as a shiny, black tentacle had tried to pull him overboard.
The unyielding grip of the tentacle and the sharp metal edge of the ship’s ladder had combined to result in the non-surgical amputation of Mahoney’s left arm, six inches below the shoulder.
Now, tied down in the yacht’s tiny infirmary, a tourniquet on his severed arm and the stump heavily bandaged, Mads Mahoney was slipping in and out of consciousness. He thought he saw the partially open door swing fully open. He thought he saw a dozen huge spider-like bugs come into the room. He thought he could feel them climb up the legs of the bed one by one until he was wearing them like a blanket. He thought he could smell the lead one excreting an acrid liquid.
He thought....
* *
The dead had either been pulled overboard or absorbed by the sphere. While there were 20 names on the original manifest of the Aqua Tom, only nine people remained onboard to fight the giant water striders.
The three remaining crew members were all on the main deck, near the sphere, firing wildly at the huge insects. The six living passengers were crowded onto the flying bridge being dowsed in CO2 from Micah’s fire extinguisher.
The trick worked, however, as the water striders either scurried away from the ice-cold chemical or they were stunned and stomped on by the scared-turned-angry Stanford students.
Shelly, who had originally seen the infestation, excitedly jumped on one of the bugs—only to slip in the chemicals and fall off the bridge. She landed awkwardly on the gunwale and fell overboard.
“Urk,” she screamed, and was immediately pulled under water.
The captain saw this and called out to the survivors.
“Stay sharp, everyone,” Captain Scott said. “This is no time to lose your cool.”
He shot two more of the striders and backed away from them to reload. Four striders, whether it was an intelligent reaction or just a fighting instinct, immediately rushed toward the captain.
“Look out, sir,” Hendricks yelled.
He pulled the flare gun out of the waistband of his pants and fired from halfway across the yacht’s deck. The four water striders were incinerated, leaving a smoking smear across the starboard gunwale. Heather saw that there was another fire extinguisher attached to the side of a bench at the bow of the boat.
“I’ll get it,” she shouted and hurried down the ladder. Not only could she put out the small fire that had started, but she could follow Micah’s lead and use the extinguisher as an offensive weapon.
Seeing this happen in slow motion, the captain called out to her.
“No, don’t,” he started. But it was too late.
What Heather didn’t see, unfortunately, were the ten striders cowering around the corner after seeing their four compatriots suddenly vanish in a ball of fire. If insects were capable of feeling anger and wanting revenge, these ten did. As soon as Heather’s feet came off the ladder and hit the deck, she was immediately swarmed by the bugs. As she tried to fight them off, she lost her balance and fell to the deck. In an uncharacteristic show of rage, all ten bugs began reflex bleeding at the same time. Heather was immediately consumed by a toxic mixture of blood and body secretions.
She survived for 13 seconds before breathing her last.
In the meantime, Micah emptied his fire extinguisher and was using it like a club. The last few bugs on the flying bridge were killed, and the four remaining Stanford students slowly made their way back to the main deck.
* *
They sensed the tide of the battle shifting—the seven survivors. The crew members had gotten into a pattern of controlled firing and reloading so that there was always at least one person shooting at the giant insects. They were positioned around the ship so as to not get in each other’s way. The captain was on the flying bridge. Hendricks manned the bow and Andrews was at the stern.
The four Stanford students had also assumed roles.
Katya was on the flying bridge, wielding a length of pipe, and acting as spotter for the captain.
Micah was at the stern with Andrews, near the sphere. There was a third man, known only as Jackson, swinging the shattered remains of a deck chair at the bugs at that end of the yacht.
Hendricks was joined by James, who had found a baseball bat in one of the rooms when he moved quickly from the flying bridge to the bow of the boat.
After a moment of relative silence, there was a massive attack at the stern. The three men had surrounded the sphere, their backs to the dark orb while they all faced out toward the water. Suddenly, 20 striders were on each side of the boat. A strong gust of Pacific wind masked their signature clicking sound and the stern was overwhelmed by the giant insects.
“There,” Katya screamed as she pointed at the sudden action. Captain Scott wheeled and started shooting from his elevated position. As he pulled his weapon out, Andrews was knocked to the deck. Three of the little beasts had slammed directly into the back of his knees and he toppled after losing his balance.
“No,” the captain shouted as he quickly reloaded and started firing again. Jackson was swinging the chair wildly, trying to clear as many of the insects off of Andrews as possible. It was a losing proposition, though, as the first mate was covered in the bugs. His flailing limbs went still and everyone knew he was lost. Twenty bugs pulled his lifeless corpse overboard.
Hendricks, running from the bow, yelling and firing his pistol, made quick work of five of the striders. He started firing dry and holstered his weapon. With his free hand, he once again pulled the flare gun, intending to fire at the largest group of the enormous insects.
Showing a certain intelligence and memory, the bugs seemed to recognize the weapon from earlier and moved on Hendricks with stunning speed. Jackson, swinging his broken deck chair at the advancing insects, caught Hendricks in the arm as he attempted to pull the gun free of his belt. He was knocked back by the force of the blow and his thumb grazed the trigger of the gun, firing it.
The flare shot down Hendricks’ pants leg, lighting it ablaze and melting the skin and muscle from hip to foot. The bugs, avoiding the fire, swarmed over his torso and head. Hendricks screamed from the sudden pain, and then was immediately silenced.
The flare, however, hit the deck at an odd angle and bounced like a skipping stone. It hit Jackson, who had taken several steps away from Hendricks when he was lit on fire, in the stomach and exploded. His torso, there one second, was simply gone the next. His legs stood for a moment longer and fell into a pile of water striders, that, for their part, immediately carried the body parts overboard.
Then, silence.
The clicking sound seemed to fade into the distance as the four survivors looked around the yacht. The water striders had gone. Aside from a few blood streaks, bullet holes and charred wood, there was no evidence of the battle.
Captain Scott bent to retrieve the weapon that Andrews had dropped. He loaded it and tucked it into his belt. Likewise, he loaded his own weapon and holstered it.
“Well, fuck,” he said, and turned to grab any remaining ammo from the bridge, and to see if the radio equipment was working under emergency power.
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