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The uniformed officers rightly retreated behind the doors of their squad cars, both vehicles carefully positioned so that the open doors could be used as barricades. They stretched their sidearms out in front of them, but both Tommy and a boat stood between them and their target. Though Miriam harbored no hope that the bullets from a standard issue pistol would do any significant damage to the kraken, she appreciated the show of support.
The paramedics strapped Bark into one ambulance and forced Tanner and Stacy to share another. They needed to go before things got ugly.
“Go with them!” Miriam yelled to Macy, motioning to the ambulance that contained Tanner.
Macy took a step towards the ambulance, then stopped, shaking her head and clearly screwing up her courage. “No. You might need me. He’ll be fine.”
Miriam studied Macy’s mascara-streaked face, her hair long past the point of presentable. In front of Miriam stood a battle-hardened Macy, running solely on willpower and defiance. That didn’t change the fact that Macy didn’t know the first thing about survival or fighting. Or how to fire a gun properly. But Miriam longed for the emotional support that Tanner would usually provide, so she nodded.
“Ok,” Miriam said. “But stay back unless I need you.”
One of the paramedics hollered from the back of Tanner’s ambulance. “You comin’ or not?”
Miriam answered, “No. Go on. Get them out of here!”
The paramedic seemed more than happy to comply, slamming the door on the ambulance just as it started to bounce through the torn-up parking lot of the Shady Shark Motel. The second ambulance followed.
Tommy stood on the dock, still next to the Mama Jean, but in increasingly more danger as the kraken appeared and slammed her tentacles over the scuffed-up boat. The only weapon he had left was his own pistol. But he hadn’t drawn it. He just stared at those huge black eyes, seemingly mesmerized. The fear that he had carried all night for the kraken seemed to evaporate before Miriam’s eyes.
When she’d freed Tommy’s wrist from that tentacle, she’d hoped that he would be able to stay with her until it was all over, but now she knew that she’d lost him. It was bad enough that Miriam needed to take down a kraken, but now she’d lost her staunchest ally. And might have to fight him first.
She sighed, wishing for a better way to carry her arsenal which she awkwardly held against her body, using her elbows and two hands. She’d need to be more agile if she had any hope of survival.
She dropped the spare bolts, used the strap on the harpoon gun to loop it around her shoulder, and carried the machete in her non-dominant left hand. If ever she would be the superhero that Macy claimed her to be, now was the time.
Miriam surveyed the scene carefully, turning doubt into surety, fear into strength, and worry into resolve. It all happened naturally, her mind moving so quickly that time inched forward in slow motion. The grueling training of her childhood. The pointless expeditions into the wilds. The relentless whip of her father. Now it all paid off. Now it would save a town.
Four uniformed officers. One compromised detective in love with a kraken. A well-meaning, but terrified best friend. And a kraken. An honest-to-God, living legend of the deep. If her survival wasn’t at stake, Miriam might have taken the moment to revel in the grandiosity of it all. To appreciate that this was exactly the sort of thing her father had always wanted to find.
She marched forward, crossing the distance between her and Tommy in a matter of moments. She worried that the uniforms would take her as a threat, but she could tell by their wide eyes and shaking guns that they were too enthralled by the sight of an enormous octopus to pay her any mind.
With Tommy focused on the kraken in front of him, Miriam slowed her walk as she approached, trying to be as quiet as possible. When she got close enough without alerting him, she reached under his arm and pulled the gun from the holster. He spun on her, reaching for the gun himself only to find it missing. He looked hurt. Betrayed.
She used her free right hand to tuck the gun into the back of her shorts. She didn’t want to shoot him. She just wanted to make sure he couldn’t shoot her.
Several tears trickled down Tommy’s cheeks. She could see him fighting the confusion, but the kraken interrupted any hope of a conversation. It lurched, using its huge tentacles draped over the Mama Jean to propel itself forward, up and up until the mass of its body crept over the cockpit. The hull creaked under the weight, all eight tentacles flailing wildly.
Miriam felt electricity in her veins as she waited for Tommy to make a move. She couldn’t afford to turn her back to him.
A tentacle slapped into a light post along the dock, splintering the wood of the post. It rocked back and forth, causing Miriam to run her gaze down the shaft until she saw where the wood barely held together. Just as she found the weak point, it toppled down towards them. Tommy turned and Miriam jumped, pushing him out of the way as it came crashing down to the dock.
Back on her feet in an instant, Miriam watched Tommy crawl away towards the squad cars. Could he turn the four officers against her? She didn’t have time to worry about it.
Another tentacle landed hard beside her, punching a hole straight through the dock and into the water, splitting the light pole in half. Miriam sprinted away from the middle of the Mama Jean, scanning the dock for cover. The echo of gunfire pierced into the air, but if any of the bullets struck the kraken, she couldn’t tell. Its meaty gelatinous form seemed to absorb them.
As she ran, a tentacle shot out in front of her, causing her to turn the other direction, where another tentacle took the flanking position. She tossed the machete from her left to her right hand, reared back and slammed the blade towards the dock, focusing on her follow-through, expecting to hit the hard wood below. She didn’t feel the thunk of the wood, but when the tentacle retreated, its bloody tip hung limply from the end.
For the first time, the kraken bellowed. An ungodly deep sound, like a tuba from hell. The tentacle behind Miriam wrapped around her ankles and pulled, her chest banging into the dock and knocking the wind out of her. The harpoon gun threatened to slip from her shoulder, but she used her left hand and caught it by the strap just as the kraken lifted her in the air.
The warm, slimy suction cups of the tentacle seared into the skin of her bare ankles. How long did she have now before the parasite would stop her from fighting?
Though she expected to be pulled towards the terrifying teeth of the creature, instead she found herself high in the air, dangling from her ankles, trying desperately to hold on to the weapons that seemed useless. Using her core strength, she did a sit-up in mid-air and hacked at the tentacle with the machete, but without any leverage it bounced off her target, barely slicing into the skin at all.
Then she came hurtling down, still grappled by her ankles and incapable of escaping a date with the hard pavement below. Worried that the machete would impale her, she tossed it blindly away. She couldn’t give up the harpoon gun, though, so she held it above her head, the bolt pointing away from her.
It hurt. Bad. Every bone in her body jostled and shook, clanging together in unnatural ways. The brunt of the trauma pounded into her chest, as she felt something inside give way. A rib, maybe? She coughed blood onto the ground as the tentacles dragged her back along the pavement, over the splintered wood of the dock, then back up into the air.
From her vantage point, she saw one of the officers with a rifle now, firing across the water and hitting at the base of one of the kraken’s tentacles. Another bellow issued forth.
This thing meant to clobber her against the pavement until there was nothing left of her body. She had few options. As her arc reached its peak, she fumbled with the harpoon gun, pulling it up and desperately trying to aim it upside down. The weight. The speed. She calculated it all in a matter of seconds, pulled the trigger, and bounced back as the harpoon flew from the shaft towards its target.
Bullseye! The harpoon plunged into one of the kraken’s huge black eyes, which burst open in a spray of thick, translucent goop. Miriam hit the pavement with less force this time. The tentacle didn’t let go, though, and as she flew back up into the air, she dropped the harpoon gun. It was of no use without another harpoon to load it with.
The useless pistol, miraculously still cradling the small of her back, was all that remained of her arsenal.
Below, another of the tentacles crashed down into the door being used as a barricade by the rifle-bearing officer, scattering the two men hiding there. The kraken snatched the door and threw it towards the retreating men, striking one of them. Miriam searched the ground for Tommy, unable to find him, worrying that he waited to thwart her attack.
Miriam’s eyes found Macy next, kneeling on the pavement. Macy haphazardly held the harpoon gun up, trying to cram one of the bolts that Miriam left behind into the muzzle. Macy moved frantically, fumbling through the process, but Miriam saw the bolt snap into place just as the upward arc of the tentacle ended.
This time, it twisted, and instead of slamming Miriam back down on the pavement, she found herself face to face with the dark water. Moving downward, with only seconds to spare, Miriam pulled the pistol from her waistband, spun and fired as many rounds as she could into the back of the kraken’s head. She didn’t know how many rounds were left in the cartridge, but she hit the water before she could empty it.
Plunging into the salty brine, Miriam used the resistance of the water to try to free herself from the kraken’s grip, but she only felt the pain in her ankles as she wriggled. Perhaps the kraken meant to drown her. As the water rushed past her on her way back up, she did her best to aim the gun towards the tentacle, as close to her own feet as she dared.
She fired, the gun kicking back lazily, the boom of the muzzle muffled and distant. The tentacle loosened its grip, and Miriam took the opportunity to kick away, wincing at each painful stroke of her leg. Her head broke above the water’s surface, hidden from the kraken’s watchful gaze. Miriam knew that it could sense the vibrations in the water, though, even with the bulk of its mass resting on the sinking hull of the Mama Jean.
She quickly sorted through facts in her head. About Octopi. About Krakens. Legends. Stories. With her weapons largely inadequate, Miriam needed some way to conquer this thing. Her mind provided her with one option. An unreasonable option. Likely even impossible.
She swam towards the Mama Jean, slower than she would have liked. The script played in her head: the brave pirate allowing himself to be eaten so that he could damage the creature from the inside, heroically saving his ship and his crew. This kraken was too small for that, but Miriam reasoned that a nugget of truth hid in those stories.
Once she made it to the boat, she scrambled up the side onto the sinking deck. It hurt to stand, and her ankles threatened to turn and collapse but she wouldn’t allow it. Every labored step got her closer to the cockpit and the giant fleshy creature on top of it. She had only the pistol, unsure of how many bullets were left in the cartridge, and doubtful that it mattered at all.
She couldn’t see what went on in in the parking lot, but the tentacles whipped and slashed through the air above her, slamming down and creating pops, cracks, and crashes with every hit. She imagined crushed cars and dead police officers, and Macy standing resolutely among the carnage, trying to help.
The bellowing roars increased, electrifying the air. Miriam now stood behind the creature, where she could see the tiny bullet holes in the back of its bulbous head, and the larger hole where the harpoon had exited after traveling through the eye. Individually, perhaps they meant very little, but the sum of the bullets surely amounted to something.
She released the cartridge from the pistol to check her bullet count. Two shots left. It would have to be enough.
K’thunk!
A harpoon flew past Miriam on the right, hitting nothing but the water behind her.
Next— a shrill scream.
Miriam looked up to see a huge tentacle clutching Macy by the waist, wrapped tight around her bare midriff. The tentacle picked her up, yet Macy managed to hold onto the harpoon gun with her right hand, and, in her left, an unloaded bolt.
Miriam checked her stomach. Her head. Her heart. So far, she felt no weird attraction to or admiration for the kraken in front of her. Only the overwhelming need to make sure it died a painful, horrible death.
“Macy!” she yelled.
Macy looked down and saw her, tears streaming from her big green eyes as she kicked her legs at air. “I tried, Mir. I tried.”
Miriam scrambled up the side of the cockpit just as a tentacle found her. She fought through the pain, stomped a foot down to push the tentacle away, and moved up further. On the other side of the kraken’s head loomed its mouth and remaining eye. Her target. Her only hope.
Another tentacle came for her. Against all odds, she dodged it, but it quickly came back. For support, she reached her arms around the kraken’s massive head, pressing her body as flat as she could, inhaling the rotten fishy smell of its skin. It seemed to work, the tentacles trying and failing to find purchase. Mostly out of the water, its ability to move its head was limited, and Miriam used that to her advantage.
She scooted around, trying to ignore that her ankles wanted no part of supporting her weight. The head turned toward her, slowly, and then they were face to face. The serrated teeth gnawed and chomped towards her, rows and rows of them leading down a dark, ominous gullet. Though huge, it couldn’t eat her in one bite, but she feared she wouldn’t be able to keep it at bay forever.
Miriam looked up at Macy dangling in the tentacle above, still clutching the weapon Miriam wanted most. Their last chance hinged on an impossible throw — something that would only work in an 80s action movie. But desperate times...
“Throw it!” Miriam yelled up to Macy.
Macy didn’t question it. If she doubted her abilities, she didn’t show it. She tossed the bolt first, sending it through the air end over end. Miriam predicted its path, confident that she could catch it until a tentacle rammed into the back of her knee, causing her to lose her already precarious balance.
The harpoon got closer.
Miriam stretched and twisted, then felt cold metal strike the palm of her hand. Down on one knee, in front of a horrifying gaping maw, Miriam had a proper weapon. But she wanted the gun, needed its force to lodge the harpoon deep in the primary brain of this monstrosity.
Macy then threw the harpoon launcher. Her aim was off this time. Miriam wouldn’t be able to catch it from her perch in front of the kraken, so she slipped off the cockpit and dove forward, her possibly-broken ribs crashing into the water and careening against the deck.
The harpoon gun landed in the water in front of her, so she scrambled along to get it, barely noticing that the deck underneath her began to shudder and sink. The Mama Jean groaned as it finally started to give up its valiant attempt to support the weight of something so remarkably huge. Before she got to the harpoon gun, she watched it sinking into the murky waters of the gulf and found herself with nothing to stand on as the deck melted away from her.
Miriam dove. Aiming for where she could only guess the harpoon gun would be, she struggled to move forward with one hand wrapped around the bolt. She blindly waved her hand in the water, praying for a bit of luck.
Her free hand hit something. The harpoon gun. She was sure of it. She wrapped her fingers around the muzzle of the gun just as she felt a wrenching pain in her thigh, pulling her back in an instant. Her fingers slipped from the gun, then got tangled up in the wet leather strap. She flew through the water at blinding speeds, into the air, where another tentacle wrapped around her waist.
She felt her broken ribs impaling her organs. Probably bleeding internally but she couldn’t care about that, not now. She had a harpoon gun. And a harpoon. And the tentacles were pulling her closer to the exact place she wanted to go.
In the water now, the kraken’s head seemed more alive, able to move and bend in ways that it couldn’t before. Salt water ran down the beak, dripping off the teeth like blood.
It pulled Miriam closer.
The tentacle tightened, crushing her. Briefly wondering whether it was trying to turn her into an easier-to-swallow mash, she hastily loaded the bolt into the harpoon gun and stared into the kraken’s one black eye. It bellowed, just as she got within feet of it. She could feel the hot exhalation run past her skin, could smell the rank breath diffusing in the salty air.
Miriam Brooks had spent a lifetime hoping to find something as mystical as this creature. Hoping to prove that the legends of man held an ancient truth. She’d seen a lot of messed up shit, but this thing was truly magnificent.
And ugly.
And she hated it with every fiber of her being.
“Miriam!” Macy screamed.
As the tentacles tried to cram Miriam head first into its waiting teeth, she pointed the harpoon gun up to the roof of the kraken’s mouth, angling it toward what she thought might be the brain.
This thing could go straight to hell.
She fired.
A thunderous, aching groan.
The tentacles loosened.
As she fell, her arm grazed the thing’s teeth, shredding skin. The mouth didn’t chomp shut as she feared, and Miriam toppled into the warm salty water below.
