Chapter 30 - Here For Blood

  Alex's plan involved sitting tight and waiting, so that we could get more information about our latest set of enemies. I was fine with that, provided we stepped in before anything truly awful happened to those captives. I didn't like the delay, but I had to admit he had a point. There was too much we didn't know about these new creatures. Gathering more intelligence was worth a short delay. Alex was a smart guy, and I was glad to have him by my side. He had been bright even before he got a big boost from socketing intellect crystals. Now, he was even smarter. Under the circumstances, we needed every asset we could get.

  As we watched, another squad of the lobster-like creatures wound their way toward their camp from deeper in the city. Like the first group, this one brought a batch of new prisoners along. They’d captured ten more people, roped them all together, and were dragging them along. Once they had the prisoners in their camp, the lobster men stashed them inside the same large mud hut as the others.

  That was a mark in our favor. At least all the prisoners were in the same spot. We wouldn't have to go looking for them when it came time to rescue them. We stayed put, continuing to watch the enemy patrol routes and keeping an eye out for any weaknesses that might present themselves. As outnumbered as we were, we’d take any advantage we could get.

  After about half an hour, I spotted some new movement inside the camp. A group of the lobster monsters went over to the hut where they had stowed their captives. As I watched, they started dragging people from the hut, hauling them out into open daylight again.

  "What do you think they're up to?" I whispered.

  "I'm not sure yet," Alex replied. “Clearly they’re moving them. But where, I don't know."

  They had never untied the prisoners before they stashed them in the hut, so they were all still bound to one another in a long chain of rope as the creatures extracted their captives again. It took a few minutes to get the first group of 12 out. The captives either didn't want to move or were too frightened. Either way, the lobster creatures had to jab a few of them with the butts of their spears before they would comply.

  It was where they dragged their prisoners next that spurred me into decisive action.

  At first, I thought they were moving them to a different hut. That they were planning to store their captives somewhere else. But it immediately became apparent that wasn't the case. The lobsters closed in quickly, each grabbing hold of a rope and one of the prisoner's arms. Once they had hold, they started dragging them, not toward another hut, but toward the water.

  "Alex, they're going to drown!" I hissed.

  “I’m seeing the same thing you are. I want to stop them, too. Are you sure you can do this?" Alex replied. “Because most of the fighting is going to fall on your shoulders.”

  The truth was, I wasn't sure. But I also wasn't going to stand by and watch a dozen people be drowned by these creatures. By that time, the prisoners had figured out what was happening, too. Each of them fought back in their own way. Some of them dug in their heels, only to be punched by their captors. Others collapsed to the ground, becoming dead weight. Those, the creatures just dragged along anyway. It was immediately obvious to me that this was going to end very badly if I didn't step in. Whether I was sure of my ability to make a difference or not, I had to try.

  "I've got this," I said, praying I was right.

  There wasn't time for anything else but a frontal assault. Alex’s plan called for me to distract the lobsters while he slipped in to get the captives out. We’d originally hoped that I could get a bunch of the monsters to chase me. They didn’t seem too fast, so I ought to be able to outrun them. But at this point, we just needed to keep them from dragging those people into the bay.

  I launched into action. My first bound shot me up into the air almost fifteen feet. I crashed into the ground not far from the outer edge of their perimeter and got all of their attention immediately focused on me—so far, the plan was working out okay. Lobster creatures surged from behind their barricades, waving spears at me in a threatening manner.

  I ignored them. Instead, I jumped again, clearing their low wall with ease and landing behind the fighting line that had just formed. I wasn't interested in picking a fight while they still had hostages to threaten. Our first job had to be to free the prisoners. We could deal with the rest of the threat after that.

  A third bound and a quick dash forward, and I was within punching range. I'd lost my spear, but my fists were still more than enough to handle opponents like these. The guards watching the prisoners were all tier one. My first punch landed firmly in the thorax plate of the nearest lobster, cracking its shell and sending it flying ten feet backwards to crash into a mud wall.

  The others immediately dropped their hold on the ropes and prisoners, turning toward me with their claws clacking. One of them latched onto my right arm with both of its large claws. The monster’s eyes got very wide when his claws didn't punch through my skin, but it still slowed my movement. A second lobster grabbed my other arm. I saw the strategy immediately. If they could keep my arms pinned, then the rest of the lobsters could swarm me.

  Fortunately, I learned some important lessons fighting the triceratops earlier. One of them was that I was a lot stronger than I'd realized.

  With a heave, I lifted both of the lobsters pinning my arms off the ground and smashed them together in front of me. Both of them collapsed, clearly out of the fight.

  Another lobster grabbed me from behind, his claws catching both my shoulders. I half pivoted and threw a back elbow toward his face. I missed the face, but almost tore one of his claw arms off entirely. He let go, backing away and then falling to the ground in a crash. The final two lobster guards came at me. I grabbed the first by his claws and threw him hard enough that he broke one of the nearby mud walls.

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  The other went down from a baseball bat to the back of the head. Alex flashed me a grin.

  “How’d you get here so fast?” I asked.

  “I ran!” Alex panted.

  There was a brief lull in the action. I glanced around and saw more lobsters rushing at us from all directions, so the lull wasn't going to last for long. But it gave us the time I needed. I rushed the last few feet to the prisoners, grabbed their ropes in my hands, and snapped them.

  "Let's go, folks!" I shouted. "We need to get all of you out of here right away!"

  For a moment, they stood or lay there, like they couldn't believe what they were seeing. But then Alex rushed in, sliding an arm underneath an older woman's shoulder, helping her to her feet.

  "Up you go," he said. "Come on, everyone! Follow me."

  This time, it sank in that this was a real rescue. The captives were all on their feet in moments. They turned to follow Alex. But getting out wasn't going to be simple, not with all of the lobsters rushing our way.

  "Alex! We need to get the others from the hut, too!" I shouted.

  "I've got this," he replied. "You deal with the creatures. I'll make sure the prisoners get clear!"

  I snapped him a nod. That was a division of labor that I could handle. There was a wall of lobster monsters headed straight for us. If they reached Alex and the prisoners he was trying to save, all of them would be done for. Alex had a good collection of stones, but not enough to stand up against that sort of assault. I was the only chance we had.

  The further away they were when I brought the battle to them, the better. My objective here was to buy time for everyone else to escape. I rushed forward in a dash, a quick blow from my fist taking out the front runner of the oncoming force. He'd only been tier one—easy enough. But a bunch of the lobster soldiers behind him were tier two and I saw a couple of tier threes in the back making their way nearer. Those were the ones I really had to watch out for, because they were the ones who had the best chance of being able to actually injure me.

  “Come on, then! Let’s do this!” I roared, then stepped up to the oncoming force.

  The front rank stabbed at me with their spears, but the tips simply bounced off my skin without doing any damage. My clothes got torn up even more, though; I was starting to look like I was wearing rags instead of clothing. But even tier two creatures simply weren’t a major threat.

  I grabbed one of the spears with both hands. The lobster holding it wouldn’t let go, so I pushed down hard with one hand and up with the other, sending the creature spinning back over my shoulder to slam into the ground ten feet behind me.

  Another spear darted in. I snagged it, ripped it free from the hapless monster’s grip, then twirled it in a circle, knocking the spear’s wielder and six other lobster-creatures flying.

  “Thanks for the weapon,” I said. This was a much better crafted spear than the chunk of rebar I’d found underground. This one had a shaft made from some smooth, lightweight metal, with a barbed tip that looked more like what you’d see on a harpoon than a traditional spearhead.

  I snapped it around, knocking the legs out from under another lobster, then turned the spear over and stabbed another that was trying to close with me. One after another, I took them all down. Some of them were knocked flying, others knocked out, and a few stabbed with one of their own weapons. It was a brutal fight, but a brief one.

  By the time it was over, I was winded, but only barely. And every lobster-monster in the area was either dead or unconscious. I turned a circle, spear at the ready as I looked for more opponents, but there were none to be found. Alex had the captives across the street already. He had them hunkered down inside a storefront there, but once they were under some shelter he stepped back out and walked toward me.

  “All clear?” Alex called out.

  I nodded. “Let’s make sure there’s no more prisoners in those other huts.”

  I checked, but there weren’t. The other huts were storage for other things—loot from houses and shops in the area, from the looks of it. They’d been rummaging through homes and taking anything they thought looked useful. There were piles of clothes in one hut, but what they seemed to favor most was anything metal. There were a lot of wooden and plastic bins full of assorted metal objects, especially a lot of stainless steel.

  When I stepped back outside, I spotted Alex using his bat on one of the fallen creatures. I opened my mouth to say something, but it was already too late; the creature was clearly dead. Alex looted it for another crystal, then saw me watching him.

  “You left a few of them alive,” Alex said.

  “And you killed them?”

  He nodded. “Sure. If I left them alive, they’d just go back to killing more people. We need the crystals, yes; but the bigger picture is clear here, yes?”

  I shook my head. “Not really, no. What do you mean?”

  Alex sighed and rolled his eyes. “Look at this place. It’s a fortified beachhead. They’re raiding the surrounding area for raw materials they want, and the way they were hauling those prisoners into the water suggests they had no interest in keeping them alive. My guess is they’re looking at us like we’re food. Any monsters that look at human beings like a steak aren’t ones I want as neighbors.”

  “You think they were going to be eaten?” I asked. It made sense, in a sick way.

  “I can’t think of too many other reasons they’d drag living people into the ocean,” Alex replied. “It’s not like those people could breathe underwater. Once they were dragged down, they’d die. How many uses for a dead body can you think of?”

  Just one, really, which was gross to even think about. It was different somehow, when it was a spider trying to eat people. That made a certain sort of sense. It was an animal just doing what animals do. But these lobster-things were tool users. They had spears, build houses and walls, and in a lot of ways acted more like people than not.

  Although I guess I couldn’t blame them for deciding humans were lunch. Our species ate an awful lot of lobsters before the Event, so maybe this was about evening the score?

  Alex turned to face the water and went pale. “Shit.”

  I followed his gaze and froze. Out there in the water, hundreds of lobster heads rose above the surface, all formed up in steady ranks. Most of them were still tier two, but there were a lot more of them, this time. As we watched, even more surfaced, accompanied by the heads of massive crabs the size of a battle tank. The formation marched forward, heading directly toward us.

  “This isn’t a raid,” Alex said. “It’s an invasion.”

  “I don’t think I can fight that,” I replied. “We need to get those people to safety and warn others.”

  “Agreed. Let’s move, then,” Alex said, and he set off toward the shop where he’d hidden the people we rescued. I followed hot on his heels.

  The force behind us reached the sand and tromped up onto dry land, one row after another spreading out to retake their base. They saw us fleeing, but they didn’t come racing after us. Instead, they continued a slow, steady advance.

  I’d never served in the military, but I’d seen enough movies to know that a disciplined fighting force is far more dangerous than a wild one. More of the creatures rose from the water to join the army growing on the shore. The message was clear; they weren’t going to be chased off by losing a few of their warriors. This was an army, and they were here for blood.