Apocrypha Sequence: Inferno Read online

  Out of habit more than determination, the mortar crews below Bill loaded up and shot off another volley. More scorch marks pocked the Kraken's hide as the grenades struck true. The observers no longer called new coordinates—the creature was unmissable, yet despondency stole their voices. No further resistance came from the town below, the drone of the jet engines had mesmerised the remnant of the ground forces.

  All hope rested with the two jet fighters.

  Bill and Dana flinched as the Hornets roared overhead again, so close they could almost touch them.

  The monster pulled itself from the water, an island incarnate. Massive crab-like plated leg joints erupted from the sea either side of its carapace and tentacles. Eight chitinous legs, encrusted with barnacles, propped up the mass of its body. As the creature continued to rise, an armoured lobster-like abdomen and tail emerged from behind its head cone. Two towering pincers, barbed and jagged, also surfaced. These claws were stubbier, deadlier, than the squirming bunch of tentacles they straddled. The Kraken flexed and unflexed its pincers in near-human anticipation.

  As the jet fighters streaked in low above the bay, the creature arched its face forward, allowing its tentacles to billow like hungry serpents.

  A missile spiralled from the lead Hornet, followed by one from the wingman. The warheads streaked forward, trailing smoke and fire in their wake.

  The monster lurched toward them. A geyser of black tar erupted from near the creature's beak. The gush was monumental, a rain of untold tonnes of sticky tar.

  The missiles disappeared under the black fountain, and exploded in muted coronas. An instant later, the Hornets ploughed through the geyser. The lead Hornet spiralled into the Kraken's upraised claw. The resulting explosion scattered fire and metal across the bay. The second fighter veered away, but ladened with the black tar, it couldn't pull up. It spiralled out of control and crashed as a black glob into a flattened caravan park on the coast. The fiery debris of its demise was blasted across hundreds of metres.

  The Kraken loomed over the town like a demented god. Black tar covered everything for kilometres. Every building within five hundred metres of the shore was flattened. The port, already smashed by the first assault, lay in a heap. Dozens of long, straight craters furrowed the town. Few buildings remained standing and nothing had survived intact. Nothing at all.

  Like the town, the bay was covered with black scum that bobbed on the surface like an oil-slick, choking the waves. The hill and lookout were similarly coated, the mortars silenced by the tar.

  Smoke billowed from a dozen places in the town not covered in tar, clogging the sky with a ruddy-charcoal haze. The sun remained a tiny red ember trapped behind the haze as morning blurred into afternoon.

  Esperance, along with her defenders' spirit, was broken.

  #

  "Bill, are you okay?" Dana whispered.

  "Yeah, just sticky and a little bruised is all."

  The force of the Kraken's geyser had knocked everyone from the lookout tower. Men wriggled like black larvae and groaned, nursing wounds hidden beneath the sludge, but all were still alive. Like them, Dana and Bill were blanketed in the black morass.

  "Come on, we've got to talk to the Captain."

  "Why? We've lost, Dana. Didn't you see what happened? That thing is damn near impossible to kill."

  "You'll see."

  Bill hobbled to his feet and joined Dana in her search for Captain Ross. Identification proved difficult; everyone appeared the same covered in a layer of tar. It took a while to locate the Captain, who sat at the base of the metal stairs, lost in thought.

  "Captain, do you still have a radio?" Dana could barely suppress her excitement.

  "In the truck. Why?"

  "I think I know a way to get rid of this thing."

  #

  "Damn. The phone's dead!" Dana threw Bill's mobile to the truck floor.

  "Hey! Careful with that! It's on a two-year plan." Bill bent to retrieve his phone from beneath the bench seat. The jostling of the truck made the task difficult.

  "How will we contact the Aquarium without a phone?"

  Bill returned to his seat and waved his phone nonchalantly. "I don't think mobiles work if mine's anything to go by. The creature must have taken out the towers."

  "And it's a seven- or eight-hour drive to Perth from here, maybe longer in this truck," Dana added. "We need to get instructions to those subs before they get here."

  Bill banged on the cabin wall. The soldiers seated with them in the back of the truck, covered in black tar, kept their gaze on their boots. Within moments, the cabin window slid open to reveal the tar-streaked face of Captain Ross.

  "What?" he asked.

  "Our mobiles don't work. The network must've been smashed by the Kraken. Do any of your men have satellite phones?" Bill said.

  "Sure. There were two at the command centre. You know what happened to that."

  Bill nodded, his mouth a tight line.

  "There might be one or two out in the field. We can radio any survivors and check, but don't hold your breath."

  "We have to try something, Captain." Dana pushed her face to the window next to Bill's. "Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people could die if we don't get word to those subs in time."

  "You're right," Ross sighed. "I'll try to raise someone. We'll be on the far side of Pink Lake in a few minutes. You can stretch your legs and I'll update you then."

  The cabin window slid closed, muting the engine and road noise outside.

  "So what's your take on all this, Dana?" Bill leaned his head on the wall and closed his eyes.

  "On what, exactly?"

  "The Kraken. The icebergs. All of it."

  "There's a lot science doesn't know yet. There are whole sections of the ocean we haven't explored. My guess is this thing came from Antarctica. Maybe it was trapped in the ice and finally escaped. I've no idea how something so big could exist, let alone flourish like it has. The amount of food it'd require just staggers me."

  "Maybe science is to blame," Bill pondered. "I mean, the thing looks like a genetic freak—a chimaera. Maybe twenty years ago, this thing escaped from a gene-splicing lab that was combining marine DNA. A squid-crab-osaurus."

  "It's all just speculation. I don't think we'll ever really know. I'd love to study it, but I doubt I'll ever get that chance. Anything that threatens to knock humanity from the top of the food chain won't be allowed to exist for long."

  "Yeah. This could be the first battle in a war of extermination. I just hope there aren't any more of these things."

  The truck's halt interrupted their discussion, bringing the soldiers back to life. They all piled out to find a roadside picnic area with a tap, where they took the opportunity to clean themselves. After a few minutes, a much cleaner Captain Ross approached the pair.

  "Good news. We've made radio contact with a unit carrying a working sat-phone."

  "Great!" said Dana. "Can you relay what they need to tell the Aquarium?"

  "Well, that's the problem. The radio reception is fine but they say they can't get a signal on the phone. They're trapped down near the beach without transport, so they need to get to higher ground."

  Bill's face darkened. "That means we have to run the gauntlet past the Kraken to get the phone, somehow reach higher ground, and then hope it gets a signal through to Perth."

  "Sounds about right."

  "I'm in." Dana stepped forward. "Pass me the keys."

  "If you're going, I'm going," Bill said.

  "Alright, let's saddle up. This truck is too slow to run a gauntlet as you say, Mr Markham. I'll drop you at the edge of town and we'll requisition a vehicle."

  "You mean steal a car?" Dana smirked.

  Captain Ross grinned.

  #

  Navigating the road into town was difficult. Rubble and debris clogged the streets, even kilometres inland. The truck pulled up in the outer suburbs when they spied an older model Land Rover abandoned on the street.

&
nbsp; Captain Ross opened the car's door, leaned inside, and did something to the steering column. Seconds later, the engine revved to life.

  "They teach you that at Duntroon?" Bill raised an eyebrow.

  Captain Ross smirked. "Get in. I'll rendezvous with the men back at Pink Lake. If you find any survivors, tell them to meet me there. You remember where to find the sat-phone?"

  "It's under control, Captain," Dana said.

  "Good luck." Captain Ross farewelled them with a wave before jumping in the truck and taking it back the way they came. The rumble of its engine lingered, then dwindled, long after the truck left their view.

  "This is it." Bill caught Dana's eye from the driver's seat and offered his hand. She squeezed it for a moment. Then he put the vehicle into gear. They picked up speed and bounced over the rubble littering the streets. As they crested the rise near the centre of town, the Kraken loomed into view.

  Bill stopped the car between the ruins of a supermarket and a seafood shop on the main street. The engine hummed as they paused to observe the monster.

  "Calamari ring, Dana?"

  "Not appropriate right now."

  "I know, I know. It's just ..."

  "What?"

  "This thing probably killed my brother. If I don't try to find the funny side to all this ... Even if we do survive this crazy plan, I don't know if I'll ever be the same old Bill again."

  "Come on." Dana placed her hand on his as he gripped the steering wheel. "Let's take care of this and work the rest out later."

  Bill shifted into second gear, rubbed his hands together, and then guided the four-wheel drive through the obstacle course streets.

  The Kraken probed the port's wreckage, oblivious to their drive through town. Its tendrils plunged through warehouses and withdrew containers and barrels, drawing them in close until they disappeared below the waterline.

  "It must be feeding. Chewing right through the steel and eating what's inside," Dana whispered.

  Bill took the last few hundred metres of road with extra caution. Exposure might attract the Kraken's attention. The Land Rover clambered over planks, tree branches, and chunks of brick. The tar coating added complexity to the drive. Most road obstacles were amorphous black lumps.

  "I hope none of those lumps are people," Bill muttered.

  "I don't want to think about it."

  As they crossed a thick pine branch, a wheel spun for a second, spitting mud and tar into the air.

  "Bill! It's looking this way!"

  The monster shifted its bulk and whipped tentacles in their direction. Its movement triggered a wave, flooding more sea water onto the foreshore.

  Bill slammed the accelerator, threw the Land Rover into overdrive, and tackled the sodden, rubble-strewn foreshore streets in a rush.

  A titanic tentacle crashed to the ground right behind their car, throwing them into the air. The Land Rover bucked before settling into the rhythm of driving once more.

  A shadow crossed the windshield, a harbinger of their oblivion. Tearing the wheel to the right and slamming the brakes, Bill banked the Land Rover hard amid the squeal of tyres. The tentacle thudded into the earth, another earthquake, and missed the car by centimetres.

  Bill veered back onto his original course as the tentacle withdrew and cascaded down the trench left by the Kraken's handiwork. The Land Rover shot up the incline on the far side and launched the vehicle into the air. The Rover crunched onto the street.

  "You're gonna kill us before that thing ever does!" Dana hissed.

  Bill bashed debris out of the way, pushing the vehicle to the limit. The scrape and denting of metal was a constant companion.

  The Kraken withdrew a little. Its single good eye bobbed around, trying to focus on the car.

  Flame pockets and jagged metal filled the road ahead. Amid the crashed fighter's wreckage, they bore down on a solitary man running towards them. He was covered in the Kraken's tar. The four-wheel drive screeched to a halt alongside the man. Dana flung the rear door open.

  "Get in!" Bill and Dana screamed in unison.

  The man clumsily dived in, spilling a bundle across the back seat.

  "Hang on!" Bill wrestled with the steering wheel.

  The car wheels spun on the spot for a second, throwing out plumes of grime and smoke.

  A tentacle whipped across the land, a vengeful thunderclap shattering the spot occupied by the Land Rover only an instant before. It left another trench-like crater in its aftermath.

  Bill pushed the car to its limits, barrelling along the ruined esplanade toward the lookout at the top of the headland.

  Dana turned to the tar-soaked passenger.

  "That's the sat-phone," the man said.

  "Thanks."

  "The name's Fielder. Sergeant Max Fielder."

  "Dr Dana Sorenstrom, pleased to meet you." She clasped his sticky hand. "This madman is Bill."

  Sergeant Fielder nodded, grabbed the pitch-spattered bundle, and handed it to Dana. "It works like a normal phone." He removed the phone from the backpack and pointed to one of the buttons. "Press that button to dial."

  "Hold on!" Bill turned hard to the left.

  A tentacle battered the street ahead, barely missing them.

  Dana grabbed the phone, fumbled it because of the tar, and then stabbed her finger at the buttons. "It's ringing!"

  The Land Rover sped past the port entrance, crossed the railway tracks and began the uphill climb. Bill maintained momentum by flooring the accelerator.

  "Hello, it's Dana," she called into the phone. "Dana. Dana Sorenstrom!" she shouted. "Damn! The signal keeps fading out. We need to get higher, Bill!"

  "Watch out!" Sergeant Fielder yelled.

  Bill banked into a sharp corner and slid against the gutter, narrowly avoiding another swipe. The tentacle sheared away the remains of a two-story cottage.

  "Yes! Dr Sorenstrom." Dana shouted down the phone. "I need you to transmit those Sperm Whale recordings to this number." She recited a number Captain Ross had given her. "Yes, now! It's life or death!"

  She listened to the handset for a moment, her brow creased in concentration, before repeating her instructions.

  All three of them were jostled as Bill reached the headland's summit.

  "Good," Dana said into the phone, "now transmit them straight away. You're sending those recordings to the Navy."

  A tentacle groped along the streets, flattening anything in its path, but the Land Rover was in its blind spot. The headland sheltered them from view.

  "Get us out of here, Bill." Dana terminated the call and dumped the phone to the floor.

  They plunged down the steep streets and scurried further inland, veering away from the Kraken's reach.

  #

  Lurking off the Esperance coast, the submarines HMAS Sheean and HMAS Rankin coordinated the execution of their instructions.

  "Have the modifications been completed?" asked Captain White.

  "Aye, sir," replied a young technician.

  "Prepare to release sonar bursts on my mark," said the Captain. "Rankin, are you ready?" he called into the comm.

  "Affirmative Sheean. On your mark." The response filtered through the speakers.

  "Standby ... Three. Two. One. Mark."

  At approximately four thousand metres apart, holding a parallel course, the Sheean and Rankin released a series of intensified sonar bursts, in imitation of the recording sent through by Naval Command in Perth. The short bursts, sounding like underwater clicks, resonated sonic surges through the water towards Esperance.

  #

  "Look!" called Dana. "It's reacting."

  Nestled in a collapsed garage on the outer fringes of town. Bill, Dana, and Sergeant Fielder kept a distant watch on the Kraken, willing Dana's tenuous plan to work.

  The creature thrashed its tentacles at the water as it turned from the town to face the expanse of the Southern Ocean.

  "It must be detecting the submarines' sonar signals. If I'm right, it should be fool
ed into hearing the hunting call of the world's largest Sperm Whale!" Dana's excitement was almost palpable.

  "Look at that," Bill murmured.

  The Kraken heaved its body out of the water and propped itself up on its eight massive crustacean legs. It lumbered across the islets that spanned the outer bay and hauled itself into the open waters beyond. A huge wave rippled out in all directions. Its cluster of tentacles writhed as it flexed its gargantuan claws.

  "Was your plan to piss it off, Dr Sorenstrom?" asked Fielder.

  "Hmmm. It does look a little aggressive," Dana pondered.

  "It won't attack the subs, will it? I mean, it's supposed to run away in fear, isn't it?" Bill said.

  "That was the plan." Dana exhaled a deep breath and pressed her lips tight.

  "Wait. What's it doing now?" Sergent Fielder leaned forward.

  As the Kraken floated further out to sea, it abruptly stopped and veered to the east. It sank beneath the waves, disappearing amid white caps and turbulence.

  "It must have realised it was overmatched. Maybe its bravado has faded," said Dana.

  Ripples trailed the creature's wake.

  "It worked, Dana! Your bluff worked! We scared it off!" Unable to contain himself, Bill leaned across the gear stick and embraced her. The embrace turned into a lingering kiss.

  The shrill ring of the satellite phone pulled the pair apart. Dana disentengled from Bill to retrieve it. "Hello. Dr Sorenstrom speaking."

  "Dr Sorenstrom. This is Captain White of the HMAS Sheean. I was ordered to call you on this line if anything went wrong with the operation.

  "Yes?"

  "We transmitted the sonar signal as we were instructed. We picked up the creature on the scope coming towards us. Then, out of the blue, we picked up another signal."

  "What do you mean, another signal?"

  "Well, it didn't come from us or the creature. It was an exact replica of the noise we were transmitting. Except it was stronger. Much stronger."

  "Look!" Bill pointed to the ocean.