Clickers III Read online

  CLICK-CLICK…CLICK-CLICK…

  “No.” Jennifer clenched her fists so hard that her fingernails dug into her palms. “Oh no, no, no…”

  Rising from the water was a pickup truck-sized Clicker. Seawater streamed off its carapace. A lean-muscled Dark One sat astride the monster, riding it like a beast of burden. The Clicker raised its pincers and clacked them together loud enough to be heard over the roaring waves, distressed marine life, and sudden shrieks of terror from the group assembled on the beach. The Dark One on its back hissed. The lizard-man’s tongue flicked the air.

  Wade stumbled backward. “Is that…?”

  “Yes,” Jennifer whispered. “It is.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Four more Clickers rose up behind the leader. Each of them also bore a Dark One on its back. The lizard-like figures wore armor made of coral and shells, and carried long tridents and other weapons. During the last invasion, Jennifer had seen them wield similar deadly implements. Compared to then, however, these new arrivals seemed almost empty-handed.

  This isn’t an invasion force, she realized. They aren’t here for us—or at least, they weren’t originally.

  The sea boiled as yet more of the creatures surfaced. There were Clickers with and without riders. The smallest was the size of a cow. The biggest was nearly two-stories tall. One of the latter clutched the carcass of a whale calf in its pincers. More Dark Ones rose up with them, striding ashore with confidence, staring at the humans. Their demeanor seemed surprised, but it quickly turned to contempt.

  I was right, Jennifer thought. Judging by their reactions, they weren’t expecting to see us here.

  Jennifer could smell the briny stench wafting off the Clickers’ shells and hear their claws tapping together as more emerged from the ocean. Venom dripped from the stingers on the end of their long, segmented tails. The Dark Ones hissed and shouted in their own guttural language. One of them pointed at the humans with a long talon-tipped finger, opened its mouth, and shook with rage.

  “Run,” Jennifer urged her friends. “Run like hell!”

  Susan, Ed and Wade didn’t move. They stared at the monsters, perhaps too afraid to run. Or maybe too mesmerized.

  Phillips scampered backward, but tripped over Stine. Both of them fell over. The waves crashed over them. A Clicker surged forward, towering over them and waving its claws. Then, with one quick movement, it seized Stine with its pincers and began to squeeze. Bones cracked audibly and blood began to well.

  “Paul,” the hapless assistant shrieked, his voice rising several octaves, “help me! Oh Christ, it’s got me!”

  Ignoring him, Phillips scampered out of the way of the monster’s other claw, narrowly avoiding it. Stine turned red, then purple, and then red again as his captor sliced him in half at the abdomen. His lower torso splashed into the water. The sea foam turned crimson. Stine’s upper half was flung aside. Amazingly, the hapless scientist was still alive and conscious. He wailed as he soared through the air, and was silenced only when he splashed back into the water. Seconds later, his upper torso emerged from the waves again, this time in the grip of yet another Clicker. Stine’s head lolled and his mouth worked silently as the beast cleaved the rest of him in two.

  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.

  The research center was getting closer
—

  From the beach, a voice—Jennifer couldn’t tell if it was male or female—shrieked, “Oh my God, that huuuuurrrrts! Ah shit, that fucking huuuuurrrts!

  The door to the research center burst open as Ed dived through it.

  Jennifer risked one final glance over her shoulder as Susan and Wade followed Steinhardt. A huge, dark shadow stormed onto the beach. When Jennifer saw what it was, she gasped.

  It looked like a Clicker in size and shape, but its coloration was distinctly different. The creature was completely black—the shell so dark as to be almost obsidian. It paused in front of a line of trees. Several staff members had taken shelter among the highest branches. They clung to the tree trunks, screaming and shouting and waving their

  arms as the black Clicker grasped at them with its pincers. Unable to reach them, the beast skittered backward. Then, as Jennifer watched in horror, it began to spray venom from its tail. The liquid splattered across the trees. The foliage began to smoke and hiss. The wood splintered and groaned. Then, one by one, the trees toppled over, spilling their terrified occupants at the monster’s feet. The black Clicker reared over them, paused, and then hosed the staff members down. They shrieked and squirmed as the acid went to work, dissolving them as it had the plant life.

  “Get in here,” Wade shouted. “Doctor Wasco? Come on!”

  Turning away, Jennifer pounded up the wooden steps. Susan and Wade frantically slammed the door behind her.

  The research station’s lobby also served as a make-shift living room. Directly beyond it was a communications center that held a phone and shortwave radio system. The communications center was lit by an overhead light. Ed was already behind the console trying to get a signal out of the shortwave radio. Wade dived for the phone and tried to get an open line. Jennifer took a brief peek out the window. The Clickers and Dark Ones were focusing their efforts on the beach, killing and eating those colleagues who’d been too slow to flee. She quickly lowered the window blinds as Ed shouted into the shortwave.

  “This is Dr. Edward Steinhardt calling from the island of Naranu. Our research team is under attack! I repeat, we are under attack! Can anyone hear me? If you are receiving this distress call, please respond. We need the military, it’s the Clickers and Dark Ones, they’re invading en masse, they’re destroying everything—”

  The overhead light in the communications room went out. “—we have a dozen dead and—” Ed pressed the toggle switch on the shortwave. “Shit, we lost power.”

  “Nothing like stating the obvious.” Wade turned to Jennifer, who stood in the middle of the lobby with Susan clinging to her. “That black Clicker. What was it?”

  Jennifer looked at him with wide eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know. Something new. It sprayed down the vegetation. The poison acted like some kind of defoliant. I’ve never seen anything like that before. ”

  “Maybe the carapace coloration was a genetic anomaly.”

  “Maybe,” Jennifer agreed. “But that doesn’t explain the defoliant effect.”

  “It was like Agent Orange,” Wade said. “You know, that stuff they used in Vietnam to clear the jungle? How are we supposed to fight something that can do that?”

  They stood in silence, except for Susan’s soft weeping. The loss of light inside, and the rapidly falling night outside cast the research station in total darkness.

  Outside, below them, on the beach, the sounds grew louder.

  CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK!

  Trembling, Jennifer bit her lip so that she wouldn’t scream

  The room smelled of cigarette smoke and sex. Tony Genova lit a Winston, snapped his lighter shut and sat it on the nightstand, and then lay back in bed. He exhaled a stream of smoke and stared at the ceiling. The bed creaked as the girl climbed out of it. He watched her naked ass sway back and forth as she walked to the bathroom and wished that he could remember her name. She went inside and shut the door. A moment later, he heard the exhaust fan come on—loud, but not enough to mask the sound of her pissing. He reached down, scratched his balls idly, and then took another drag off the cigarette.

  New life, day…well fuck it, he didn’t know anymore. He’d lost track of the days after six hundred and some of them had passed.

  He finished the cigarette, snuffed it out in the ashtray, and settled back into bed. He’d almost fallen asleep again when the bathroom door opened and the girl came out.

  “Larry?”

  At first, Tony didn’t realize that she was talking to him. After all this time, Tony still had trouble remembering sometimes that he was no longer Tony Genova from Paramus, New Jersey. To everyone who knew him, including the Federal agents who checked in on him from time to time, he was Larry DiMazzio, from Baltimore. He’d even worked on hiding his New Jersey-Central Pennsylvanian accent and adopting a Maryland dialect. Repeated viewings of The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Streets had helped. Tony had been surprised at how accurate the two shows had been, when it came to depicting what life was really like in that world. And if anybody would know, it was him.

  For his entire adult life, Tony had worked for the Marano crime family. Based out of York, Pennsylvania, the family had controlled distribution between New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Trenton, Camden, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, Richmond, Atlantic City, and other Mid-Atlantic cities. At the height of their power, they’d been unstoppable and untouchable. But as Mr. Marano began to age and fall apart, so did the organization. They’d fought off takeover attempts from the Greek, Russian, and Korean syndicates, as well as multiple attempts by the black street gangs. Although they’d come through each battle victorious, the skirmishes chipped away at the organization, little by little. Tony had thought sometimes about getting out— starting a new life. But he knew that was impossible.

  Until the Clickers came.

  The arrival of the Clickers had been apocalyptic for the rest of the nation. Cities destroyed. Coastal towns decimated. Millions of people dead. The complete—albeit temporary—collapse of the entire American political system. But for Tony, it had actually worked out pretty well. In the aftermath of the invasion, the Feds had figured out who he was. Before he could escape, Tony had been whisked away. They leaned on him. Threatened him with all the crimes they could supposedly connect him to. Tony kept his cool, because in truth, he was more scared of Mr. Marano than he was of anyone from the FB-fucking-I. Tony knew all too well what his options were. He could go to prison or he could drop dime. If he went with the first option, Old Man Marano would have him killed inside prison within twenty-four hours. He would never live long enough to see trial or serve his term. Yes, Tony was loyal, but he also knew too much. The Feds would offer him the world in order to get their hands on what he knew. Marano would never allow that. And if Tony managed to stay alive, and took the deal, Marano would track him down before he ended up in witness protection. Either way, he was a dead man.

  Until they offered him a third option.

  With Livingston’s help, Tony had convinced the Feds to fake his death. Not a huge, public spectacle splashed all over the newspapers. Just enough of a story to get back to Marano and the rest of the organization. As far as his previous employer was concerned, Tony had died with his partner Vince when their car plunged into the Susque-hanna River. In exchange, Tony gave the government everything he knew about Marano’s organization. In truth, the crime family was on its last legs at that point, anyway. Years of warring with the Greeks, Russians and others had left them weak and disordered. Now the Mexican cartels had moved into the States, using Atlanta as their East Coast hub and spreading their network all the way to Maine—a route that also included York and all of the Marano family’s other territories. As far as Tony was concerned, illegal immigration was the biggest

  problem facing organized crime. Within another decade, anybody involved in the business would be speaking Spanish.

  The ruse had worked. Marano thought he was dead. Tony Genova ceased to exist. Larry DiMazzio was born. The government had se
t him up with a condo in Arizona. Tony liked the area, especially the fact that it was as far away from the fucking ocean as a person could get. He made a living day trading. His FBI handlers—they preferred the term liaison—checked in on him once a month, but otherwise, life was good.

  The only thing he missed was Vince. They had been partners for many years, and they’d seen a lot of weird shit together. Vince had also been the closest thing Tony had to a real friend—or at least what sufficed for a friend in their line of work. Vince was dumb as a rock and fatter than an elephant at an all-you-can-eat buffet, but he’d also been loyal and kind—two qualities that Tony had admired. Vince had been like a pet dog, or maybe a little brother. Sometimes he’d aggravated Tony to the point of violence, and then, the next minute, he’d make Tony laugh. Tony had loved him, in his own fashion. And now he was gone.

  And today would have been his birthday.

  “Larry,” the girl asked again, “are you listening to me?”

  “Sorry, babe.” Momentarily forgetting, Tony slipped into his natural accent—a bizarre compendium of Brooklyn, the New Jersey shore, and Pennsylvania Dutch. “I was off in fucking La-La Land. What’s up?”

  If the girl noticed the change, she gave no indication.

  “I axed if you were gonna take me out tonight?”

  Tony shook his head. “Not tonight. I’ve got shit to do.”

  Pouting, the girl—he wished he could remember her name—pulled on her panties and bra.

  “You got someone else coming over?”

  “No, sugar. It ain’t like that. I’ve got to work. You know how it is.”

  “Work? All you do is use your laptop. You can do that from anywhere.”

  Tony sat up and reached for his silk boxer shorts. “Look. How about I give you a few bucks. You can take yourself out on the town and have a nice time. Go to a movie or the clubs or something. How would that be? How much cash do you need?”