"Ask away—I'll see what I can do."

  It was General Greene that replied.

  "We want to nuke the hole you made. Nuke it, patch up the breech and kill the creatures, all at one stroke."

  I lit another smoke to give myself time to think, then turned to the British Captain.

  "You encountered the big one off the Virgin Islands? That's a long way from the hole. What makes you think a nuke will do the job?"

  General Greene smiled grimly.

  "A big enough bang will cure just about everything."

  "Not this," I replied. "Not unless you deliver it down the drill shaft—exploding a nuke on the sea bed just risks opening the hole further—the real problem is probably six miles down, at the discontinuity itself. That's where these things are coming from—I'd bet my life on it—and I damned nearly did."

  Swan answered for the group.

  "If you've got a better idea, we're open to suggestions."

  "Well, I think I need to get a closer look at what's down there—at the spot where we drilled if possible?"

  I was mainly thinking out loud but they took me seriously.

  Less than 24 hours later I was on a British Navy vessel, heading south toward Gaudeloupe and the drill site.

  As you can probably guess, I was none too happy at getting so close—but now I had somebody's attention I couldn't in all honesty walk away. And I wasn't given too much time to think about it—it was only a couple of hours after the chopper dropped McGuiness and I off on the deck that we arrived over the drill site.

  Another chopper had brought a small Bathyscope and I waited for another two hours as it was carefully lowered to the sea floor—I was just glad it wasn't a manned unit, for I had no desire to get any closer than was necessary.

  "Are we in danger here?" McGuiness said as he joined me on deck for a smoke.

  "As long as we keep an eye on cable up from the Bathyscope we'll be fine," I replied. "The Isopods are bottom feeders—they can climb but they can't swim very well. You lost the boat in the Virgin Islands in shallow water—but there are hundreds of yards of sea below us here. We'll be safe."

  I wasn't exactly sure of that prognosis—but it was what I had to keep telling myself to stop me from running and screaming.

  We smoked a succession of cigarettes as the scope went down, then was brought back up, then had another agonizing wait while the film was developed and processed. It was late that afternoon before we were called in to the mess hall—temporarily turned into a small viewing room—to watch the footage that had come back up.

  I don't quite know what I'd been expecting but the sight almost took my breath away. It was in black and white of course—color cameras just won't work at that depth—but even then the screen seemed to shimmer and glow. The seabed looked like a scraped clean slab of stone, with tracks—almost like roadways—radiating out in all directions. We'd put the scope down at almost exactly the right spot—the crumpled wreck on the floor near the center of the radiating spikes was clearly the MOHO VOYAGER and just as clear was the tangled mass of metal that was all that remained of the drilling rig and tower. The wreckage lay just to the left of what was obviously the source of the problem. There was a hole, as wide as the length of wrecked hull of the VOYAGER, pulsing and glowing and gleaming like a flickering bulb—or a giant eye, looking up at us from out of the earth's crust, daring us to poke it again.

  And that wasn't the worst of it. As the scope got to its full depth I saw that the hole had cracks radiating out from it—the same radii that was mirrored in the scraped tracks on the seabed—glowing tendrils that seemed to pulse and spread even as we watched.

  Far from closing up, it seemed that the hole down to the discontinuity was not only still there—it was still growing.

  Even given what was clearly seen on the film, the military brass were still keen on nuking the site and were going ahead with exactly that plan in mind. I tried to convince them that it would probably make matters worse—stretching that hole would open the surface up to a clear channel to the discontinuity—and as a geologist I knew that stretched across a vast area and wasn't just confined to the spot under the drill shaft.

  But they wouldn't listen—and after the attack on Cuba their resolve only hardened further.

  McGuiness and I had adjourned to a bar in downtown Miami after the latest round of argument and counter argument. I was losing, despite Swan being on my side—as was, rather to my surprise, the young Scottish Captain McGuiness.

  "I saw yon seabed as clear as you did, Cameron," he said as we headed into our second beer. "No bomb—no matter how big—is going to improve that situation."

  And yet, without a better option, I had to agree that something—anything—must be done. The Scotsman and I were still mulling over another plan of approach when the news started to come in from Cuba.

  The docks and much of lower Havana was little more than a flattened, smoking ruin—at first I thought that we had reacted badly enough to Castro's rise to power that bombing him seemed like a sensible option. Then we saw the aerial shots, obviously taken from a circling plane high above the city. The footage was shaky to say the least and drifted in and out of focus but it was more than enough for us to make it out. It showed a giant Isopod—maybe even the same one that took the navy boat off the Virgin Islands—at least I hoped it was the same one, for the thought that there might be two of these monsters was almost too much to bear. It stomped all over the shoreline, wreaking havoc at every step. The plane was too high to make out much detail but the beast seemed to be feeding—and I had a good idea on what, for it seemed to target fleeing crowds of people. And it didn't pause, not even when strafed by diving bombers or pounded with weapons from a growing force of military personnel.

  The scene shifted to show an offshore boat, guns trained on the beast. It sent three shells bursting on and around the giant—and finally, slowly, the Isopod turned away from the shore. More shells burst around it as it slid, almost gracefully, back into the water. Within seconds there was no sign of it all, just the carnage it had left behind.

  The news reported that the beast was being tracked across the Caribbean and that a multinational naval exercise was underway to find and destroy it. I could make a good guess where that effort would be concentrated.

  McGuiness raised his glass and clinked it against mine.

  "Here's to the end of the world," he said grimly.

  I hoped it wasn't going to come to that.

  But I was by no means certain.

  They set off the bomb two days later, right over the drill shaft where it had all began. It made for a nice spectacle on the evening news and they even wheeled out General Greene in the studio and tried to get him to declare the emergency over. To his credit he would do no such thing, much to the news anchor's obvious chagrin. The old war-horse was proved right to have been circumspect.

  They sent a Bathyscope down the next morning, hoping to find that the breach had been closed. I have since seen that footage and I can see why it caused such a panic in Washington and brought martial law all along the Gulf coast—the glowing globe of shimmering light was now huge, almost filling the field of view. As the Bathyscope rose on its upward journey out of the deep it was clear that Isopods swarmed everywhere below. Big ones, small ones, a multitude of them, pouring up out of the discontinuity and spreading out along radial lines to all points of the compass, scuttling and scurrying and quickly lost in the dark seas beyond the camera's reach.

  They had wanted a successful conclusion.

  What they got was abject failure—and a new war.

  The first battles were fought out of sight of the media and they were all lost quickly. Small Caribbean islands fell, their vegetation stripped, their towns flattened, boats sunk and nobody really noticed. All eyes were on the military might being deployed by the USA along its Gulf coast and by Cuba, who turned to Russia for assistance against the threat of both the Isopods and the saber-rattling of its big northern neighbor.

  I was press ganged into service in the Biscayne Bay station, keeping an eye on the breach via films delivered from a series of Bathyscope dives and helping where I could to try to track the movements of the larger beasts. Given that they were all, somewhere, on the seabed, it was a thankless task akin to looking for a needle in a haystack, in the dark. Only the blue florescence gave the beasts away—a handy means of spotting them at night but of no use at all in daylight hours. The big ones could have been anywhere—the oceans were just too vast and empty to be searchable.

  As it turned out, it was the smaller Isopods that, initially at least, caused the most trouble.

  They started coming up out of the levees in New Orleans at high tide four days after the bomb went off and in such numbers that the thinly stretched National Guard were unable to stop the swarm. As I said, these were mostly small—three feet being the biggest dead one retrieved afterward—but even so the city fell in a matter of hours—those that could not, or would not, be evacuated being swamped in a frothing sea of scratching, tearing legs and biting pincers. I heard most of it in second hand tales but could picture it readily enough, having seen a smaller version of the swarm during that first infestation of THE MOHO VOYAGER. The lack of news footage wasn't enough to quiet my imagination. And as more stories came in, from further along the coast, from Mexican fishing towns and from the increasingly beleaguered islands, that same imagination went into overdrive. I took to drinking when I was off duty, trying, not very successfully, to quell a rising panic.

  The Scot, McGuiness, joined me two nights after New Orleans. He'd been out at the drill site supervising the latest filming and came to find me while the spool was being processed. So it was that he was with me when the news came in from Port-au-Prince. This time there was indeed footage—a British crew making a movie in the area was fortunate—or unfortunate—enough to capture the mayhem from the roof of the Hotel Oloffson.

  The thing that came ashore was the biggest yet—it loomed over the cruise ships in the port, capsizing them with as little thought as a child dunking a bath toy. Buildings collapsed, streets caved in to the sewers below and the populace tried to flee—and were caught, swept up into the huge maw of a mouth and crunched, torn and devoured alive, their screams too loud and too long.

  The story went out worldwide across the airways and tension started to turn into panic within hours. McGuiness and I got drunk—not happily but at least it was fast.

  I was still nursing a hangover the next morning when the Scotsman and I were called into the meeting room to see the latest Bathyscope footage. Professor Swan was at the head of the table again—he looked as tired as I felt, although in his case I suspected it was more caused by overwork than liquor. My own head pounded and even black coffee and a smoke did little to dispel the fug. But I sat up and paid attention when the latest footage started to play out on the screen.

  The shimmering hole around the drill shaft was larger again but that wasn't what drew my eye—some of the larger Isopods were clustered in the area, not moving out along the now well defined arterial paths but merely sitting, still. Scores—hundreds—of the smaller beasts came back along the lines out of the darkness—and they were swept up into the maws of the giants, to be chewed and devoured as eagerly as we had seen the Haitians be eaten.

  They were cannibalizing their own.

  "I think this is a prime example of population pressure," the Prof said but didn't get a chance to say anything more, for at that very moment the war we had been so far only observing on film and television arrived abruptly on our doorstep.

  I was just about to reply to the Prof when the floor shook and the projector fell off the table with a crash. A bell sounded out in the corridor, loud and insistent. McGuiness grabbed my arm and herded me toward the door. The scene outside was one of controlled chaos—armed men went one way as we civilians were funneled the other and I was quickly ushered out to the rear car parking area, heading for a jeep. But military efficiency was no match for a pair of huge Isopods—not as big as the one in Haiti but each as large as the one that had taken down my drill rig. One of them was fully intent on tossing our escape vehicles across the car park and but it was the other I was most worried about—it had seen us come out of the office block—and now we had its full attention.

  It rose up, balancing on its flat tail end and waved a flurry of legs in our direction. The huge maw of a mouth quivered and vibrated, setting up a hum that grated at my teeth and in my jaw, then it lunged forward. McGuiness was beside me—he pulled me around until I was behind him, raised a revolver and pumped four shots into the thing's head. He didn’t slow it any. It barreled into the Scot, grabbing him in its pincers and tearing the man apart like a rag doll. I tasted my friend's blood at my lips as it spattered my face, then I closed my eyes, preparing to meet the same fate.

  It never came. An explosion boomed in my ears, rocking me sideward, almost senseless. I turned as I fell away and saw two soldiers manhandling a bazooka for a second shot. But like poor McGuiness, they had no time to reload—their first shot had torn a gaping, smoking wound in the beast's belly but it had enough momentum to keep coming, as unstoppable as a freight train without brakes. It hit the men, knocking them aside and the bulk of the great body fell, as if in slow motion, toward me. I was partly under the overhang of the office's porch, which slowed the beast's tumble enough for me to crouch into a ball, trying to make myself as small and protected as possible. The roof took the Isopod's weight for a second, then squealed in protest as the supports gave way and the structure—with the Isopod on top of it, came down on top of me.

  I too fell, into a dark, dreamless unconsciousness that was almost comforting.

  I came out of it slowly. I still had a damned hangover but that was the least of my worries. It was dark, so much so that I thought I must be completely buried in rubble. Then I saw the flickering blue florescence—I was inside a small cave formed between the steps up to the office door and the collapsed roof, looking out through a small gap at the carnage in the car parking area.

  Two jeeps lay on their sides. A man lay half-in, half out of one of them—three small Isopods, none more than a meter long—were feeding on his corpse, their florescence flaring, almost excitedly, with each torn piece of flesh. The bulk of the dead giant was on top of the fallen porch roof, so I could only see its tail end and back legs—but there were more of the smaller Isopods gathered there, excitedly feeding from the remains of their huge brother.

  They cannibalize their own.

  Swan's words came back to me. I wondered if the Prof had made it out—I didn't remember seeing him in the melee at the front of the office—didn't remember much except the sight of poor McGuiness being torn to pieces. That is a sight that will be with me as long as I live.

  At that precise moment, I wasn't at all sure I'd see out the night. Isopods swarmed everywhere I could see through the small gap. Luckily I had not been spotted but I believe that was only because there was a plentiful supply of food laid out for them outside, both in the staff and guards from the office block and among their own dead kin, the large one above me in particular.

  The collapsed roof above me creaked alarmingly and I heard scurrying overhead—I didn't have to see it to imagine it—a host of smaller Isopods tearing the larger one to chunks to be consumed. I had another memory, of the beasts moving to and fro in their radial lines, back down to the discontinuity on the seabed.

  I started to form an idea but there was little I could do about it at that moment, trapped as I was in that dark enclosed space. I could only hope to survive the night and get a chance at escape once the feeding frenzy passed.

  Although my view was restricted to what I could see through the small gap, the sounds came all too clearly. I heard more skittering overhead, more of that deep vibrating hum that passed as communication between them—and sometimes, thankfully not often, the soft, moist, sucking as flesh was torn from bone and devoured. And, everywhere, the blue flickering florescence kept the dark of night at bay, a shimmering curtain that glowed and hissed and draped over everything I could see. In other circumstances it might almost have been beautiful.

  And so the long night went on—I had a bad moment when I thought my hideaway had been discovered—a four-foot long Isopod started to show interest in the spot where I hid and started to snuffle around just beyond the gap. It went as far as to poke its head through, feelers reaching toward me but I gave it a sharp tap on the head with a shard of glass and it retreated, never to return. There was more scurrying and scuttling overhead but slowly, over a period of some hours, it fell quiet around me and the blue luminescence dimmed, to be replaced by a gray, foggy dawn.

  I waited for another hour, making sure I could see no movement out in the car park then, with no little effort, managed to squeeze myself out from under the collapsed roof to stand, peering at the chaos around me.

  There was little left of the office building but a collapsed ruin. A larger brother of the Isopod that had almost crushed me lay atop the fallen building, a huge hole in its side evidence that at least some of our shells were capable of killing the beasts.

  There was no sign of any other survivors—no bodies either, although I was grateful not to have to look at dead friends and colleagues. I found a jeep with the keys in the ignition at the far end of the car park—there was slime and body tissue on the passenger seat but I forced myself to ignore it. A pack of smokes and matches sat on the dashboard—I tried not to think what might have happened to their owner and had a most welcome cigarette as I headed for the highway.

  I switched on the radio and it told me Miami was in trouble—I didn't need the broadcast to tell me, as I could see it all too clearly out of the windshield. I couldn't get much speed up on the road—there were overturned and abandoned cars strewn all along the highway and once again I saw signs that there had been frenzied, ravenous feeding.

 

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