TV Dinners from Hell Read online

  Kurr darted ahead, planted his feet, and threw his mighty spear directly at one of the enormous insects as it lifted one of the defense force infantry off her feet and began chewing on her shoulder. It was distracted, and Kurr’s shot was true. The blade of his spear penetrated the insect’s abdomen, causing it to drop its prey. The injured woman scooted backward from the creature, black blood running over her pale skin and staining her uniform.

  The creature whirled on its attacker, shrieked an ear-piercing cry, and tore the spear from its middle, tossing it to the ground like a child’s toy. Thick green ichor ran down its side from the enormous hole Kurr’s spear had left, but the injury did not seem to faze the beast.

  Instantly, Lurra was there, raising her enormous two-handed axe high over her head and bringing it down in a devastating blow. The sharp blade plunged through layers of chiton and ichor. The beetle fell to the ground, its wings folding instinctively as it tried in vain to protect itself. Lurra hacked it into four oozing, foul-smelling pieces in short order.

  Kulg turned to face another of the invaders as it approached first to aid, then to avenge, its fallen comrade. His own battle cries mingled with the great bug’s as they clashed in battle. Kulg’s lances severed limbs, but still the attacker came, spraying greenish fluid that mingled with the black blood soaking into the fertile farmland-turned-battleground.

  It wasn’t until Kulg managed to decapitate the insect that it finally ceased its attack, falling to the ground in a broken heap.

  Another call went up from the defense force, a pattern of four short bursts and one long sound, repeated twice. Kulg could not believe his ears. It was the order to fall back.

  Lurra raised her eyes to the horizon, taking note of the columns of smoke in the distance, of the craters and swarms of invading hostiles as far as the eye could see. She met her mate’s gaze and they shared a moment of perfect understanding. There was no purpose in retreating. They would fight together until their last breaths.

  What remained of the defense force was desperately trying to make it back to the illusion of safety that the city gates represented when a meteor careened right into the structures, sending rubble into the lines of soldiers and killing several. Many others were wounded and cried out to their still-standing allies for help.

  The insects swarmed on what remained of the defense force, slashing with their weapons, and ripping and tearing flesh with their great mandibles. Without words, Kurr and his parents made their way to the wreckage of the gates.

  Lurra swung her great axe, crying out her fury at the invaders even as she severed their wings and limbs, spattered their life fluids on the ground, and broke open their carapaces. Kurr’s spear was guided by his own rage at seeing his homeland laid to ruin. He plunged it deep into the bodies of the dying invaders his parents had injured, finishing the job they had begun as they moved on to other members of the invading horde.

  More and more of the invading insects swarmed the trio of defenders, lashing out with sharp feet and snapping mandibles. They could only be kept at bay so long.

  A particularly large, shiny beetle darted around Lurra, slicing a chitinous blade across the backs of her legs. Lurra stumbled forward, calling out to Kulg and Kurr, pain slurring her words. Kulg looked over his shoulder, prying himself from a fight, as his mate’s foe delivered a devastating blow, stabbing her through the middle with its great blade.

  Oily black blood ran from Lurra’s lips. Her eyes went wide. Her great axe fell to the ground moments before she herself joined it, her blood mingling with the green and black mire—mud formed by the blood of the fallen mixed with the planet’s rich, dark soil.

  Kulg’s cry tore something in his throat, and he tasted the acid of his own blood. It wasn’t as bitter as his rage and despair. He left one of his lances in the abdomen of the insect he’d just stabbed and dropped the other to the ground before picking up Lurra’s great axe. He swung his new weapon in a circle, feeling its heft, and plunged it deep into the carapace of its owner’s killer.

  He didn’t feel the insect’s blade as it stabbed through his chest, but he saw its tip coated in black blood as it emerged in front of him. He fell beside his mate, their fluids mingling almost as they had in happier times.

  The last thing Kulg saw was one of the invaders biting off Kurr’s head.

  * * *

  THE SHARK THAT ATE EVERYTHING

  The global warming alarmists warned us of the damage we were doing to the planet and the dire consequences that would result, but they never said anything about the sharks…

  * * *

  The first incident was just off the coast of Barrow, Alaska. Some Undiscovered Channel nature documentary was filming a pod of killer whales for one of their Predators of the Sea specials. I don’t remember which one it was, exactly, but that isn’t important. What’s important is what they caught on camera.

  The narrator/host of the show, some famous Brit, was going on and on about the mating rituals of orcas while his crew filmed several angles of the animals in the ocean below from their special, camera-equipped helicopter when one of the cameramen cried out, “Holy fucking shit! What the fuck is that?”

  At first, the host looked annoyed that one of his crewmen had ruined the take, and then he looked down. His eyes opened so wide that just watching the video was enough to cause sympathy pains. His wrinkled hand went to his mouth. “God save us,” he muttered.

  Thankfully, the cameraman (the one who did the initial swearing, I think) had the presence of mind to keep filming, but, even if he hadn’t, one of the robotic cameras on the outside of the helicopter would’ve caught at least some of the action on film.

  The scene starts out exactly like you’d expect—five or six of the black and white whales swimming together in a pod, occasionally breaking the surface with their majestic fins pointing skyward. Then the ocean just beyond them darkens, almost like a shadow is passing over it. For a second or two, it looks like a large cloud moving in front of the sun or something, no big deal. Then the whales make a sharp turn away from the shadow, towards land, which is completely uncharacteristic of them. The shadow darkens. One of the whales is a little slower than the others; it lags a bit as the pack surges forward. Suddenly an enormous creature emerges from the shadow—no, it is the shadow! A set of impossibly large jaws filled with teeth that must easily be two or three feet long clamps around the whale, biting it in half.

  “What the fuck was that?” someone asks.

  “Did that thing just eat a fucking killer whale?” asks someone else as the shadow recedes once more into the depths of the ocean, leaving bloody water and bits of whale backwash in its wake.

  The video, of course, went viral. But there were too many detractors, too many people insisting it was fake for anyone to pay much attention. Until the next time the creature surfaced.

  * * *

  About a week after the first sighting of the creature up near Alaska, a group of “disaster tourists” had just disembarked from their medium-sized luxury boat, The Intrepid, and were making their way inland along what used to be Route 11 just outside of Volcanoes National Park near Hilo, Hawaii.

  Disaster tourism had become something of a pastime for the rich—those unaffected by the rising of the oceans. There were plenty of desperate residents of Hawaii, California, the remains of Florida, and other affected states, who were only too happy to oblige the whims of the elite by taking them on tours of their own flooded homes. Some of those same tour guides still lived in them, despite the risks. It was sad and awful, but, at the same time, it was a living.

  There were seven tourists in all, led by a husband and wife team of tour guides who had lived on the island all their lives. They pointed out landmarks as they went and talked about the native wildlife. It was amazing how much life had changed since the oceans started to rise. Less than a foot of water had displaced hundreds of thousands of people, practically destroyed the economy of dozens of countries, deplete
d the food supply, killed thousands of people and animals, and created the perfect conditions to spread disease to anyone close enough. And it was about to get a whole lot worse.

  As you might expect, the tourists all had their smartphones out and were snapping pictures all over the place. Resorts in the distance that had been rendered useless and uninhabitable after a foot of water took over the first floor, submerged roads, signs, debris, and other artifacts of the island’s previous life. A few of them even took shots of bloated corpses, human and animal, as they floated by. The water was only up to everyone’s knees, at best, and they were all wearing fishing waders, but still. It was worrying how few of them seemed to care about the death and disease all around them, like they were insulated from it or somehow protected just because they had enough money to move further inland as the ocean encroached.

  One of the guides turned back towards the ocean and the boat, which had been anchored a mile off shore so it wouldn’t scrape up the hull on what used to be the beach. The little motorboat they’d taken ashore was tied to a pair of palm trees off to the side.

  The guide was herding her group of tourists, making sure no one fell too far behind. She was in the middle of explaining to an older gentleman and his female companion that taking selfies with a bloated corpse wasn’t a good idea when something caught her attention. She stopped mid-sentence, mouth agape, as the largest shark she had ever seen—wait, that couldn’t be a shark, could it? No shark was that big!—surfaced underneath The Intrepid and bit the front half of the vessel clean off. Four of the tourists took pictures, capturing the terrifying creature in all of its awful glory. Two of them took video. One managed to capture the entire event. With so many eyewitness accounts, so much photographic evidence, it was much harder to deny the existence of the monster shark this time.

  It wasn’t long before the scientific community caught wind of the gigantic shark sightings and became interested enough to tear themselves away from efforts related to global warming and the rising seas. As it turned out, though, the two were actually related.

  It seemed like the entire world, suffering though it was, stopped and turned its collective attention away from the heat, humidity, and the rising ocean level, and toward the gigantic shark-creature. Those naval vessels left in operation began patrolling the areas where it had been sighted, looking for any trace of the massive beast. Everyone anywhere near the coast kept their eyes peeled for an enormous fin or monstrous head or tail appearing from beneath the waves. Politicians and government officials of all sorts began offering bounties on the thing (although it wasn’t exactly like anything short of a nuke would be able to take out a creature of that size, at least the people were being reassured that something was being done about the threat.

  Some industrious entrepreneurs began printing t-shirts and hats with slogans like “I survived the MONSTER SHARK!” along with a silly caricature of the massive animal. The whole world watched as the attacks continued, and as the unforeseen side effects of introducing a monstrous predator into the already fragile, damaged ocean ecosystem presented themselves.

  What happens to an alpha predator like, say, a great white shark, when it’s no longer the big fish, so to speak? When a bigger, badder fish invades its territory, maybe even decides that ol’ greaty looks like a nice snack? I’ll tell you what, because I saw it firsthand: The entire prey/predator table shifts drastically and sharks start appearing in places they shouldn’t. Places like home.

  Venice was the site of the first disaster. As a city already besieged by some of the worst flooding due to the waterways, and, even worse, contamination due to the pollution and garbage already prevalent in said waterways, Venice was hardly prepared for yet another blow when it came. And it came, all right. In the form of an influx of sharks.

  Now, I'm not talking about that great mythic shark. I mean the other sharks. The ones he or she had displaced from their position on the food chain. Everything from threshers and hammerheads to nurse sharks and, yes, even a great white or two, found their way into Venice proper. And, once inside the city, they did what came natural to them—they hunted and they ate. Anything and everything they could get their pointy little teeth into was on the menu: humans, pets like dogs and cats, even other sharks. The waters of Venice ran red with blood, and videos of the carnage flooded the remaining news outlets much the same way.

  It wasn't long, though, before attention turned away from Venice. A bigger story had broken out to the north.

  A Russian research sub had located the colossal shark just south of the Arctic Circle, and, of course, they had gone to investigate. The foolhardy investigators never stood a chance, even if their sub had been equipped with weaponry of any kind. The shark swallowed the vessel whole. The crew continued broadcasting for nearly nine hours after they'd been eaten. But before the transmissions ceased, they had revealed the awful truth about our enormous new attraction's origin…and its friends.

  Surprisingly, the Russians hadn't originally been looking for the shark. They were actually gathering samples of ice from the underside of a great glacier, trying to do futile research on the whole global warming thing. How passé.

  What they'd found in that glacier wasn't an answer to the melting of the polar ice caps, however. It was a hole. A hole just a little bit bigger than the enormous shark that had been causing all the trouble. And it wasn't alone. There were three more holes of a similar size and shape nearby, and one was still occupied. The grainy submarine camera footage clearly shows an enormous, shadowy shape encased within the ice. The ship moves closer, the dark shape taking up almost the entire frame, and then the shape moves. It shifts within the ice, giving a shuddering little jerk not unlike a chick hatching from an egg. A few minutes and several more tremor-like convulsions later, chunks of the ice larger than the submarine itself start to break free, releasing that enormous beast into the water, directly in front of the sub.

  Now, I imagine being trapped inside a giant chunk of ice for thousands and thousands of years might make you hungry. I don't know, personally, but I think it's a pretty safe bet. So, it was hardly a shocker when the shark opened up a mouth easily the size of an airplane hangar and just sort of engulfed the submarine, crew and all.

  They were absolutely terrified. I don't speak Russian, but their fear was evident from the gasps and panicked screams that could clearly be heard over this odd, throbbing sound on the video. Eventually, after several viewings, I realized that the throbbing sound was the creature's heart beating in its cavernous chest. Yikes.

  If you watch all nine hours of the footage, you'll see that the crew eventually gets bored before going totally batshit crazy. I guess I would lose my marbles, too.

  The shark attacks—regular sharks, I mean, not the giant ones—continued. The new coastal regions—places like central Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Arkansas—had it bad enough with all the plague-carrying dead bodies floating around and the flooding and all, but after wave upon wave of hungry, terrified predators began showing up, things went from bad to worse to fucking nightmare level real quick.

  News outlets started disappearing one by one as the waters began to rise more rapidly. You see, those giant sharks escaping their icy containment had broken at least one major glacier into smaller chunks, and smaller chunks of ice melt faster than large ones. Something about having more surface area, I think. I don't know, thermodynamics was never really my thing. Maybe the oceans were just warming up faster than predicted. Whatever the case, the sea continued to eat up the land like that giant shark had eaten up that killer whale during its first appearance. It was closing in faster than we could evacuate, even if there was anywhere left to evacuate to.

  The news outlets might have been just about the only thing on earth drying up. Print and television ones, anyway. The internet was alive and well, however. Plenty of people lost power as the nearest power plants became flooded, but as long as they had a charge on their smart phones—or, at least, a spare batte
ry—they could still watch videos of people being eaten by sharks big and small all over the world.

  The next sighting of one of the mammoth sharks was off the coast of what remained of Northern Texas. An offshore oilrig that had been converted to hold refugees, but that had been abandoned when the waters overtook it, somehow still had working security cameras. Maybe they were special because the rig they were monitoring was out in the ocean, I don't know. What I do know is that those cameras picked up something big, and I mean big, headed inland towards the US. As soon as someone reviewed the tape and saw what was headed for us, helicopters were dispatched.

  The choppers flew for miles before they found anything unusual. Unless you counted the bloated corpses of the former inhabitants of the Frank Buck Zoo in Gainesville, Texas, as unusual. Perhaps the helicopters should have stayed at a higher altitude instead of dipping down to investigate the bodies of giraffes and rhinos. After all, sharks are attracted to the scent of death. Or so I've been told.

  At any rate, the helicopters were all equipped with gyroscopic cameras. At least one of them must've decided to get closer to the corpses for a better look, or maybe they saw something or someone worth rescuing. Whatever the reason, one helicopter in specific sank very low, the dead animals floating in the ocean beneath him coming into stark, detailed clarity as the wind from the blades whipped the water into a foamy froth the shape of a circle around them. Maybe that's what did it. Sharks are attracted to movement like splashing water, aren't they?

  The helicopter zooms in on the body of a dead lion for some reason, and you're so focused on that that you fail to notice the enormous black shadow beneath it. There's a second, maybe less, to react before an unfathomably large mouth appears, growing quickly larger, until it fills the entire frame, then static.