“Giant octopus.” At first it had been impossibly long tentacles groping through the hole in the bulkhead wall. Then, as Harry Freeman spoke, its bulbous body/head squeezed into the engine room.
Freeman nodded. “Whaddya say we grab a seat on a lifeboat?”
“Works for me.” Brian Jacobs led the way along the catwalk.
Fifteen feet from the exit, a tentacle seized Jacobs’ ankle. Jacobs grabbed the railing and kicked at the suckers gripping his leg. Freeman grabbed his waist and pulled him upward.
With a groan, Jacobs unfastened his pants. The octopus stripped them and his left shoe away. Freeman hoisted him up and grabbed a wrench from a toolbox. Jacobs snagged a prybar.
Just as they reached the door, the tentacles shot up and blocked their escape. The octopus easily knocked their tools away.
“What now?” Jacobs asked.
“Run and jump. Only chance.”
Freeman took four steps back, charged, and flew through the arms before they could grab hold. Jacobs lost his other shoe, but landed otherwise unscathed. As they closed the hatch, tentacles tugged it back open.
“Not again, Bessie,” someone shouted inside the engine room.
Peering through the gap they saw everything bathed in blue light. Some of the glow hugged their equipment; other parts seemed from another vessel. A spectral crewman with PetrolScot on his coveralls swung a mallet over his head.
The door slammed shut, and Jacobs secured it. “Not a word,” he said, “or they’ll think we’ve been drinking.”
No comments:
Post a Comment