31.
"1982, we lost a destroyer between Hawaii and Bremerton." Janice had pulled up an older video on her laptop. This one while clearly lower quality than the recent ferry video, had a lot of similarities. "At the time the pentagon believed it was the russians, General Joe Hollings, at the time he was a colonel, believed differently."
"Yeah Joe's always had this thing about Krakens, I don't rightly know what it is, but anytime there is some kind of water event he suspects Krakens, never have proved they exist." Gilbert had seen the footage, he was there when they shot it. Janice forwarded the video to the same yellow goo, except this time there was a least a couple living sailors struggling in it. Clarissa let out a yelp when she saw someone on camera shoot the men dead.
"They were already dead, they looked alive, but believe me that was a mercy."
"You guys were there?"
"Yeah it was Janice's first op with Special Eliminations, my, god I don't know, several hundred."
"Thousand probably."
"Yes Janice I'm old thank you."
"Either way, we weren't exactly thought of as highly as we are today, so us putting forward a theory that a gigantic octupus like creature had killed those men and left that goo behind wasn't met with much acceptance. Even less so when we couldn't prove anything and so until now the encounter sat in a file under the 'unknown category'," Janice closed her laptop.
"So now you and the General want us to kill a Kraken, even though we still don't know if that's what this is, and only have its most recent meal."
"What is a Kraken again?" Clarissa was confused, she felt like she was only hearing part of a conversation. Gilbert reached into his bag and produced an old well worn leather book and flipped to a marked page that showed drawings of a huge octopus attacking some kind of old ship.
"Big octopus basically, supposedly they spit that goo shit on to things to eat them. Melts you down and then they suck it back up."
"That's disgusting."
"Either way Gilbert, the General wants you here, and so you're here, no more questions." Gilbert smiled.
"Aye aye Starbuck, anything for the captain."
****
The ferry was partially in the water and not. It looked wrong to Clarissa when they saw it along side the beach. She'd seen ferry's before, but never partially out of the water and it looked enormous. Clarissa felt a chill go up her spine at the thought of a creature big enough to harm the boat, let alone to wedge it along the shore like that. The coast guard ship had pulled up toward what looked like the front of the ship, it was still bobbing slightly with the waves.
The cdc folks had already disembarked by the time Gilbert and Clarissa left the ship. Janice had stayed behind to "coordinate" but Gilbert knew that mainly meant not be in the line of fire. Janice hadn't exactly been the get her hands dirty type when he knew her in the past. Gilbert had brought some stuff he had read could work against a Kraken, but seeing as they weren't really a well known entity it was all guesswork. He didn't tell Clarissa this, if only not to scare her, on top of that, he suspected the Kraken was long gone and all he'd be doing is what he did in the past, nothing.
"So what is this stuff again?" Gilbert had attached to a couple of Clarissa's arrows some poison, she had an arrow notched as they walked around the ship, Gilbert didn't tell her how ridiculous it looked.
"Fire poison, I've used it on the past with some monster fish, fairly effective, you put it into the creature, and then it uses their blood to ignite."
"Good god why are there so many different kinds of poison?"
"Lots of things need killing Clarissa, lots of things, you want to know about a lot of lethal things let me go through all the various explosives I've used over the years you'd lose your mind."
"So what are we looking for again?"
"I don't rightly know." Clarissa chuckled, Gilbert felt honesty was the best policy, he didn't know what they expected to find, certainly not the Kraken. They weren't very far into the ship when he first heard the banging, at first he thought it was some CDC people doing a test or something, or maybe even a passenger that had managed to survive the slaughter. Eventually Gilbert figured it out that it was gun fire, he felt stupid for not thinking of that at first, and even dumber when he realized he had his walkie talkie turned off.
"Where the fuck are you Gilbert?" Gilbert could barely hear Janice over the sounds of gunfire.
"Middle of the ship, what's going on? What are you shooting at?"
"The undead! Didn't you hear my previous messages?"
"Nope had it turned off, we have undead?"
"Yeah look like passengers, lots of them, and hungry, did you bring any Yanya root?"
"Probably in my damn bag which I don't have."
"Iron's keeping them down, but I'll need something more permanent get up here." The walkie went silent and Gilbert looked to Clarissa who looked startled.
"Undead?"
"Yeah."
"So that's probably what got the ship right?"
"No, if anything according to lore we're more on target than ever, Kraken's don't just kill you they turn you, supposedly, shit, you've got some iron headed arrows, you'll need them to kill the undead, I have to go top side help out."
"Wait where am I going?" Gilbert pointed deeper in.
"CDC guys won't have brought weapons Clarissa."
"But they are assholes Gilbert."
"We save assholes, its what we do." Clarissa nodded and swapped the poison arrow for a more traditional iron headed one.
"So I save the CDC dicks proving the power of the common man and then meet you up top to get out of here right?"
"Sure that's the plan."
"You don't sound convinced."
"I'm not, lore says the undead show up and then..."
"The Kraken."
"Stay safe, the undead can't spread to you like a zombie film, but their bite can give you a nasty infection."
"Got it."
"Oh and Clarissa hows your shoulder?" Clarissa flipped Gilbert off and went deeper into the ship, Gilbert looked back towards the way they had come and sighed. It was going to be a long day.
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