Up From The Deep Vaughn Jackson (book club suggestions TXT) 📖

up and clustered together for as far down that tunnel as he could see. Quietly, he reached out a hand and rapped on the hard shell.

“What are you doing?” Chaplin hissed, bringing his gun to the ready.

“Shush,” Brannigan said. “Listen.”

The creature, curled tight in its ball, chittered softly, but did not uncurl.

“They’re threatened, and this is their defense,” Brannigan said. “They won’t uncurl until the threat up there has passed.”

“Okay, then let’s go,” Chaplin said.

“We can’t let these things live,” Brannigan said. “Do we have any explosives left?”

Chaplin rummaged through his pack. “No, but we do have these,” he said, holding up five incendiaries. “And one grenade.”

“Give them here.” Brannigan pressed the firebomb to the side of the creature’s shell, wedging it in place. More chittering from inside the shell, but still no activity. “Reach in my pack and give me the bottle.”

“Is this vodka?” Chaplin said, doing as he was told.

“It’ll work.”

“That’s not why I was asking.”

“Then shut up.” Brannigan placed an explosive near the shell of each creature in the largest clusters he could find and poured a trail of vodka between each until all five were placed. On the last one, he looked down and saw a skeleton lying in the dirt, still fresh and red.

“Bowman,” Chaplin said. “And over there, Collins.”

“Get their tags,” Brannigan said. A pang of guilt washed over him as he realized he hadn’t been able to get Hicks or Thayer’s.

The rumbling overhead was getting quieter. Down the tunnel, Brannigan could hear the isopods beginning to uncurl and skitter to life.

“We need to go, now,” he shouted.

The door was only a hundred yards away, and Brannigan had never run so fast in his life. Chaplin pulled up to the door almost immediately after him. They forced it open just as the first scream of the swarm alerted the rest to their presence. Brannigan and Chaplin got as far away from the portal as they could before Brannigan pulled the pin on the grenade and hurled it back into the service tunnel. They bolted through the door and slammed it shut, a spray of rust raining down from the top.

“Three…two…one.”

The grenade went off with a muffled boom behind the solid door. Hundreds of screams rose up in agony as the firebombs went off in a series of successive detonations filling the whole tunnel with 4000° flames. Even from behind the door, they could feel the heat. The grenade must have damaged the integrity of the tunnel, since over top of the screams they heard the sound of collapsing concrete and groaning metal. Eventually all they heard was the muted hiss of the phosphorous flames still burning even beneath all the rubble.

Chaplin turned to walk away and Brannigan held up a hand. A bit of the rubble was moving, from beneath dirt and crumbled debris, a lone isopod emerged from the ground to the side of the door, its shell cracked, two of its legs gone entirely, and a purple green fluid leaking from one gaping eye socket. Brannigan lowered his rifle, pulled out his handgun, and put a bullet right in its head.

“Just to be sure,” he said, pulling out a flask. He poured alcohol over the creature’s dead body, flicked a lighter he produced from another pocket and set the corpse alight. “Eggs or something.”

Chaplin shuddered and turned around. “Ah, our ride.”

Lieutenant Greenwood emerged from the Humvee, a look of concern and fear blanketing her features.

“And bearing wonderful news, it seems,” Brannigan said dryly.

“You completed your mission,” Greenwood said, “but...there’s been a complication. Come with me.”

“Always a fucking complication,” Brannigan sighed.

#

The video quality was grainy at best. Brannigan didn’t expect much better from a news helicopter. The scene of the explosion was so much more violent from above; two creatures wreathed in an expanding ball of fire, smoke, and debris, shrieking in rage.

“So we got them,” he said, a tinge of excitement in his voice.

“Keep watching,” Devonte said, leaning in like a man invested in the suspense of a movie.

From the smoke and ash, Vornax was the first to rise, his wings beating away the inky black cloud. He hovered above the island crying down to his mate, and she responded in turn.

“Fuck,” Brannigan said, slamming his fist on the wall, “so we accomplished nothing?”

“Keep watching,” Devonte said, still refusing to look at the screen.

Inkanyamba rose from the settling cloud of explosive dust, the shell on her back split straight down the middle. She reached around with her neck and took hold of the left chunk, prying it off of her body with obvious discomfort. Vornax dove down and wrenched the second half, tearing it into the air before dropping it into the bay. Inkanyamba shuddered, and something fell from her back, draping the ground around her feet.

“No way,” Brannigan said, eyes wide.

The sea creature screamed to the heavens, unfurling a pair of frilled wings that blocked the whole horizon.

“It can fly too?”

“It gets worse,” Skylar said. “Look at its back.”

Clustered on Inkanyamba’s back, in the space between her wings, appeared to be a clutch of eggs, stuck to her skin by a mucus-like substance. Brannigan stopped counting around twenty, but he knew there had to be more.

“She’s pregnant,” he whispered.

“Technically, she was pregnant,” Skylar said. “Now she’s raising her young.”

“I don’t understand.”

“From what I can tell, Inkanyamba’s species doesn’t naturally have a shell. It forms one using materials gathered at the depths of the ocean and seals it with that mucus to protect the clutch of eggs. If she’s so willing to part with it now…it must be just about time.” Skylar’s face was grim. “The eggs will hatch soon.”

#

“Behold its beauty,” Martin said, gesturing at the on-screen image. “A true storm dragon.”

Kurtis nodded. “And a whole ton of babies.”

“I want one of those eggs,” Martin shouted, practically vibrating with manic energy.

“Not sure you are cut out for the parenting lifestyle,” Kurtis muttered.

“But think of it! The Hands of Fate, leaders of an immortal empire enforced by an endless supply of storm