Clickers III Read online

  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.

  Richard retired as Director of the National Aquarium, but not before selecting Jennifer as his replacement. He and his wife adopted a child and moved to the mid-west, far away from either ocean.

  Law and order were restored in the wake of President Tyler’s death, and the country moved on and slowly rebuilt itself. It was a national time of healing. Sure, there were various conspiracy theories—the most prominent being that Tyler had been assassinated by one of his own Secret Service agents, but the people saying that were the same people who spent their days posting on online message boards about how 9/11 was an inside job and that the Dark Ones were really just doing the bidding of the New World Order.

  Colonel Livingston was convinced to run for President after a national straw poll showed him with a ninety-percent approval rating from the American public. He was elected in a historic landslide, and he and his cabinet immediately went to work on not only restoring the country’s infrastructure, economy, and psyche, but also ordering the military to hunt down the remaining colonies of Clickers and Dark Ones.

  Jennifer wasn’t sure what happened to Tony Genova. He’d just sort of disappeared shortly after the crisis was over. This bothered her, but she wasn’t sure why. She barely knew him, after all. Their only time together had been during their last stand inside the Peachbottom nuclear power plant, and the debriefing that had followed. She didn’t know what became of him after that. Unlike herself, Richard, Rick, and Colonel Livingston, Tony made no public appearances. He didn’t show up on Larry King or Glenn Beck or The View. His picture wasn’t on the cover of Time or Newsweek or People magazine. In the aftermath, he remained what he’d been when they met him—an enigma. Even still, Jennifer had liked him. Tony had flirted with her, and she’d enjoyed the attention. At the time, she’d chalked her reaction up to adrenalin and what had seemed to be their impending doom. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

  Another crab hurried up from the surf and scrabbled past her. Jennifer watched it go. Then she lay her head back on the sand, stretched out, and shut her eyes. What was she doing, mooning over a man she barely knew? Was she really so desperate? Was her love life that dead? Well, yes, she decided after a moment of introspection. It was. Even before the Clicker invasion, her social life had been less than exciting. Her last serious boyfriend, Stan, had broken up with her nine months before the Clickers came—after she’d balked at his suggestion to introduce other people to their lovemaking. After that, she’d thrown herself into her work. Then the Dark Ones and the Clickers attacked. And in the aftermath, she’d been appointed Director, which left no social life whatsoever. She’d barely had enough time to devote to her cat, Tucker, let alone a serious relationship with a man. That was one of the reasons she’d taken the sabbatical, and joined this research expedition to the South Pacific, taking on the role of project manager and lead researcher. To escape. To find herself. To do something fun again. Something she loved. The Director’s job had offered none of those things. Maybe she’d find them here, on Naranu. She’d certainly already relaxed, even though they’d only been on the island a week. Naranu was small compared to the surrounding Polynesian islands— covering just under nine miles—but it was peaceful. So far, Jennifer hadn’t been given the opportunity to utilize her specialty—studying how ecosystems were affected when non-native species were introduced to them. But at least she felt at peace. At least she wasn’t fielding interview requests from the media or strange emails from crazies. The only crazies here were the locals. She hated thinking of Naranu’s indigenous population that way, but it was hard not to. The entire tribe insisted they existed only as guardians of the island’s god, who supposedly slumbered deep beneath the phosphate rock that made up the landscape. While not openly friendly to the researchers, they weren’t hostile, either. They seemed to believe that their god would awaken soon, and would then wipe the intruders from his domain.

  Her thoughts turned to Rick Sycheck. More than any of them, the former horror novelist had embraced the bright glare of the media spotlight, granting interviews to everyone from Rolling Stone to Rue Morgue magazine. More recently, he’d dropped out of circulation. His publicist reported that he was working on a new book, a follow-up to his bestselling personal account of his two encounters with the Clickers.

  Good for us, Jennifer thought, her eyes still closed. We all went on with our lives when it was over. Richard and his wife adopted a child. Livingston got elected President. Tony went back to doing whatever

  it is Tony does. Rick got even more famous. And I’m here, on this beautiful island, doing what I love. We all lived happily ever after.

  Except that they hadn’t lived happily ever after. She knew this, deep down inside. None of them had escaped unscathed.

  Richard had been happy for a couple months. Then, one night, his wife and their adopted daughter were killed by a drunken driver. The accident had happened only a mile away from the new home they’d just moved into. The other driver rear-ended them at sixty miles per hour, slamming their car into a bridge abutment. The airbags didn’t deploy. Richard’s wife was ejected from the car and died instantly. Their daughter passed away while en route to the hospital. Two weeks after the funeral, Richard had checked himself into a hospital. He hadn’t come out since.

  Jennifer had no idea what h
ad happened to Tony. He’d vanished. That, in and of itself, didn’t bode well. She could imagine several different scenarios accounting for his disappearance, each one more sinister than the last.

  Rick’s press junket continued—but probably not in a way that he would have preferred. Within a year, he’d begun a very public and very grim slide. His fall from grace—the angry outburst during his Rolling Stone interview, his arrest for drunken driving, his subsequent arrest for cocaine possession, the fist fight with some paparazzi, a second fist fight with some people at a horror convention where Rick was Guest of Honor, and the public accusations from his publisher regarding missed deadlines and breach of contract had all been plastered across the tabloids and gossip websites.

  And then there was Livingston. He’d become President of the United States of America. How bad could that be? Well, as it had turned out, very bad indeed. The Republican National Committee had swayed public opinion enough that Congress officially investigated allegations that the Livingston Administration had engaged in a conspiracy to cover up the real reason behind President Tyler’s death. That storm passed, with no wrongdoing found and no credibility to the accusations and internet rumors. But then it was discovered that Livingston had signed an executive order to detain the remaining key members of Tyler’s administration, on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, fraud, and embezzlement. Former Advisor to President Tyler, Donald Barker, was taken into custody and imprisoned at an undisclosed location. The ensuing uproar had dominated the headlines for most of the last year. The stress showed on Livingston’s face. He hadn’t been a spring chicken when he accepted the nomination. Now, he looked positively ancient. Jennifer doubted he’d last the rest of his term, let alone long enough to run for reelection.

  As for herself, well, she was just fine, wasn’t she? She’d come through the whole ordeal unscathed, unless you counted post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic depression, an increased reliance on alcohol and prescription medication, no social life, general malaise, and an extreme aversion to marine life—the latter of which made her occupation quite interesting.

  The birds shrieked louder, disrupting her ruminations. Jennifer opened one eye, and was surprised to see that it was now dark. She sat up, frowned at the fourth and fifth crabs scuttling past, and then brushed sand from her hair and arms and the back of her neck. She’d have to get back soon. The others would be worried about her.

  Jennifer had come to the island not only to escape the past and reinvent herself, but because it was the first scientific find in a long time that actually excited her. When the word first broke that remnants of an ancient primitive people had been discovered on the South Pacific island of Naranu, Jennifer hadn’t paid attention to the story. Paleontologists found the artifacts at the bottom of a cliff located deep within the island’s jungle—faces similar to the famous figures on Easter Island—carved out of stone, with eyes, nose, mouth and teeth all detailed. But mixed in with them were other carvings. Some bore a striking resemblance to the Dark Ones. Another depicted a hideous, hulking creature with the body of a man and the face of a squid. Carbon dating placed the artifacts at forty to eighty thousand years old. Further study of the island had unveiled over three dozen marine and tropical species that had previously been thought extinct—everything from frogs to worms to fish. As a journalist for National Geographic had referred to it, Naranu was like “the Garden of Eden.”

  The scientific community had converged on the island. In addition to Jennifer’s team from the National Aquarium, scholars, scientists and researchers from universities and research centers across the globe had joined the rush. Jennifer had made friends with several of them—Dr. Edward Steinhardt, director of Paleovertebrates at UCLA, and doctors Susan Ehart and Wade Collins, leading researchers in human prehistory from the University of Michigan.

  Finished brushing the sand from her body, Jennifer stood up. As she did so, she heard a strange noise. It sounded like the chattering bark of a dolphin, but it was louder than the surf. Indeed, it was louder than the screeching gulls still circling overhead. She turned slowly, glanced down at the beach, and gasped.

  The beach was alive with a variety of sea life. Dolphins, fish, crabs, and other aquatic life forms flopped and scrabbled in the sand, struggling farther inland. She glanced out at the ocean and saw more creatures beaching themselves in a desperate effort to flee the water. Despite all of her years in the field, Jennifer had never witnessed a beaching as it occurred. She’d always arrived on the scene in the aftermath. And she had certainly never seen an event like this on such a massive scale. Before now, the largest stranding Jennifer had ever witnessed was on Manila Bay in the Philippines when a pod of thirty-seven dolphins had beached themselves. The scene had been horrific and heart-breaking, but even that paled in comparison to what she was now witnessing. Each time the surf crashed into the shore, the waves delivered more marine life. She heard a great braying honk and a large black hump rose out of the water—a whale. The creature heaved its great bulk forward and then lay still as the waves receded around it.

  “My God…”

  Jennifer supposed that the dolphins and the whale could be reacting to some underwater disturbance—a severe change in temperature or an earthquake, perhaps. Since both were mammals, she knew that their ears were sensitive to large changes in underwater pressure. If something happened to damage their eardrums, it could disorient them, causing them to float up to the surface and beach themselves. But that didn’t explain the hundreds of other sea creatures that were doing the same thing.

  Jennifer glanced to her left and right, and saw that the scene was being played out all along the shore. As far as she could see in each direction, the ocean’s population was suddenly heading for land en masse. The wind shifted and she could smell them. Worse was the noise—the cries of the dolphins and whales, the screech of the birds, the patter of crabs running past her (the crustaceans’ numbers now ran in the hundreds), and the strange sounds the fish made as they flopped on the wet sand and struggled to breathe the suffocating oxygen.

  Gaping, Jennifer put her hands in her hair and pulled. She barely felt the pain. She stared at the distressed marine life, unable to turn away. Then she did the only thing she could think of—she began screaming at the top of her lungs for help. If her co-workers shouted in response, Jennifer couldn’t hear them. The cacophony from the beach was too loud. But soon enough, she saw figures rushing towards her from the direction of the research station. She shouted again, frantically waving for their attention.

  The first two people to arrive on the scene were Paul Phillips, an expert on polytheistic gods of the South Pacific, and his research assistant Lawrence Stine. Both hailed from Oxford University. Phillips was pompous, belligerent, and quite often said things to deliberately provoke in an attempt to garner more attention for himself. His assistant blindly echoed whatever nonsense the doctor proffered, seemingly having no genuine thoughts or theories of his own. Jennifer loathed both men, but at that moment, she was happy to see them.

  “Help,” she shouted a third time, pointing at the beach.

  Phillips and Stine stared at her almost contemptuously. Then their gaze turned to the shore. They paused. Their eyes widened. Their jaws went slack.

  “Dear God,” Phillips gasped. “What in the world…?”

  “They’re beaching themselves,” Jennifer said, annoyed that she had to state the obvious.

  “I can see that. But why?”

  “Could be a tsunami,” Stine suggested, staring at the mass of flopping, struggling bodies on the sand.

  Jennifer shook her head. “No. Look at the ocean. The tide isn’t rushing back out the way it would before a tsunami. And there have been no indications of earthquakes on the monitors. If there had been, we’d have heard. This is something else.”

  More staff and researchers arrived, attracted by her cries. Each of them expressed dismay as they spotted the beaching. Then, almost moving as one, they hurried across the san
d, and moved among the creatures. Some of the researchers cursed. Many were overcome with stunned silence. A few wept, especially when encountering the dolphins, that chattered at them in an almost pleading tone.

  “Jen!”

  She turned at the voice, and saw Dr. Edward Steinhardt trudging toward her. He wore wading shoes on his feet, and his wet pant legs were rolled up to his knees. His long, graying hair was pulled back in a ponytail. His face was slate grey, and his expression was one of shocked disbelief. Jennifer ran to him.

  “Are you okay?” Edward asked. “Susan, Wade and I were sitting on the veranda, playing cards and drinking margaritas, when we heard you cry out.”

  She nodded. “I’m fine. I just…what can we do?”

  “I don’t know. This is entirely out of my realm of experience.”

  The surf rushed in, lapping at their feet and ankles. As it slowly receded out again, it deposited a layer of white foam and a school of tiny, flopping fish. Wincing, Jennifer stepped backward, trying to

  avoid the unfortunate creatures.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Jennifer repeated. “Why are they doing this, Ed?”

  “I don’t know. As I said, it’s not my area of expertise. I’ve never heard of a beaching on this large of a scale. I suppose an earthquake could be the culprit. Or perhaps a predator?”

  Jennifer’s stomach fluttered. Before she could respond, Susan Ehart and Wade Collins walked over to them. Both seemed excited.

  “There’s a shark over there!” Wade pointed. “It’s just lying there in the surf, snapping at anyone who gets too close. What the hell is this? What’s going on?”

  “We don’t know,” Ed told him. “Right now, all we can do is—”

  A scream cut him off. All four of them turned towards the ocean. Dr. Phillips and Stine were waist-deep in the surf. Both men were frantically pointing farther out to sea. The group on the beach followed their directions. Jennifer’s stomach fluttered again.