Piranha: Firing Point

He kept watching the vines and the leaves, amazed at how interesting the pattern was as a redness became added to it, a sort of paint or liquid spreading over the pattern. At the same time he noticed that he was cold, as if lying outside in the snow. The red then became a sort of grayish black, the dirty green of the vine a shade of light gray. The gray shades, synchronized, began to become darker together, the picture fading as if from a television screen that had lost its power, the view becoming dark black. At first the black was shiny, but then the shimmer began to dim until there was nothing but the dull liquid blackness, and the liquid gave way to vapor, until the blackness was nothing and he was surrounded by nothing and there was nothing.

The door crashed aside, taking much more effort than Chu had expected.

Then he saw that the hatch had spun a Japanese officer against the wall. Still screaming, Chu turned briefly toward the officer, his AK-80 pistol smoothly arcing as well. He squeezed the trigger just for a fraction of a second, enough for the weapon to cough out four rounds at the upper body of the Japanese man. A line of bullet holes popped red dots on his orange coveralls.

Instinctively the arc of the gun swung back to the only other man in the passageway. Chu had a split-second impression of a slender man, also in orange coveralls, with multiple patches and insignia on his uniform, holding an automatic rifle with both hands, the weapon aimed at Chu’s knees. Chu’s trigger, almost of its own volition, squeezed, firing three rounds. Bright red blood sprayed onto the man’s torso. At first he spun a half turn, but then froze. Chu’s sense of time had dramatically dilated with the adrenaline, and the man’s collapse to the deck took what seemed like an hour. Chu didn’t wait, he charged the man, still only a half lungful into his scream of fury. It was Chu’s push more than the bullet wounds that dropped the man to the deck.

Suruki Gama looked up and saw his worst nightmare.

The hatch flew open so violently that Gama was sure a hand grenade had gone off, yet the explosion sounded strange, an angry human scream, a shriek straight from the bowels of Hell. The opening hatch pushed aside Sugimota as if he were a doll, slamming him into the bulkhead.

A tall, thin phantom, covered from head to toe in black, burst through the opening. His mouth was open, his red tongue stark against his white teeth. A glaringly bright light shone from his thick chest, the glint from it momentarily blinding Gama.

Behind the phantom stood several other men in black, all clutching machine pistols. With that realization Gama raised his R-35 to aim at the invader’s chest. Before he could fire, a hot razor sliced into him. Bright red arterial blood spurted from the right side of his chest. Gama watched several droplets of the blood fly up and outward, gliding gracefully toward the bulkhead, where they splattered, and Gama realized his view now was completely filled by the bulkhead. Somehow the entire room, the entire ship, had spun around, and the men from the pantry were gone, leaving him to a blood-splashed wall of wood.

The scream continued, and Gama felt something — a truck perhaps — crash into him. He plummeted to the deck, the feeling of heat deep in his right side insistent.

It took quite a while to fall to the deck. As the carpeted deck came up to meet him, the room swiveled until the deck was vertical, turning what had been the deck to a wall. Gama stayed glued to that wall, oddly not sliding toward the pantry.

Sounds now, thumping, boots on carpeting, shaking the deck where his right ear rested. Coughing sounds, whooshing noises — bullets, he thought. Finally the scream from the first invader ended, replaced by short staccato whimpers from other men, one coming from somewhere overhead, the second from behind him. The thumping noises continued. He thought he saw a boot, close in his vision, dull black, no laces… he stared at it without blinking.

A hand on his cheek, the fingers blunt, coarse, warm, pulling his face over. The world swirled by, rotating around him. What was once the overhead of the compartment came into view. A black unfocused shape crouched beside him, the shape possessing two eyes, a slash of a mouth.

Loud guttural sounds from the mouth of the shape.

Gama could not blink, his eyes frozen looking at the overhead. The hand on his cheek withdrew, and the ship swirled around again, until he saw just the carpeting and the wood in front of him, both beginning to fade in and out.

He felt his tongue fall out of his mouth, the fibers of the carpet irritating it. A copper taste seeped in, the red of his own blood flowing over the carpet and into his mouth. Still unable to blink, he lay like that until it seemed as if he were lying in ice water, the cold coming for him and finding him.