Jak was the next around the circle, his tumbling white hair making him stand out in the semidarkness. As Ryan reached him, the dark eyes of the skinny albino were already open. “Seen it,” he said quietly. Dean was the last.
Ryan eased himself toward his son, glancing back to see if the crab was showing any signs of surging into an attack. But it was still moving slowly, the great claws held clear of the water, opening and closing with a menacing, velvet softness.
Just as he was about to wake the boy, Ryan spotted a change in the crab’s movements. It had stopped, about twenty paces from the shingle, claws lifted higher, its long legs dancing up and down in the scummy water. It seemed to be gathering itself, bracing for an attack.
“Now,” Ryan said in a voice urgent enough to be heard by everyone around him.
Simultaneously the gigantic mutie crustacean at last made its move.
Claws waving, eyes revolving on their stalks, it began to rush toward its prey. It added a perspective of horror that the thing made almost no sound, apart from the lethal noise of its serrated claws closing and opening.
Everyone opened fire at once.
Right at Ryan’s side, Dean woke up at the sudden bedlam of gunfire, scrabbling for his own automatic, his eyes catching a sight of their gigantic adversary. “Oh, shit.”
In the ragged mist, and with the poor light, it was impossible to see precisely what sort of damage the hail of bullets was doing. Ryan could hear some of them ricocheting away, howling into the darkness, while others were actually striking sparks from the barnacle-crusted armored shell.
The crab didn’t exactly stagger away, but it did stop its advance, crouching, belly in the ocean, its claws waving faster as though it were trying to deflect the flying full-metal jackets from itself.
“Pick your target!” Ryan yelled. “Mildred, can you take out its eyes?”
“I’m already trying, for Christ’s sake!” she shouted back. “But the bastard’s moving too much.”
She was standing up, feet planted firmly apart in the pebbles, shooting as though she were in the butts at the Olympic finals, picking her shots.
Ryan was also trying for the eyes, until he decided that it was too difficult and he was wasting bullets, shifting his aim to what he imagined was the creature’s face.
Doc was struggling to shift the movable hammer on his commemoration Le Mat, so that he could begin to shoot the nine rounds of .36-caliber ammo.
“Coming at us!” yelled Trader, who was firing the Armalite from a kneeling position.
The crab had started to move again, edging sideways toward them. But it was clearly hurt. One of the legs, with spikes of thick hair at the joints, was dangling uselessly behind it, and a sort of dark, phosphorescent ichor was leaking over its shell in a number of places. Mildred had succeeded in picking off one of the questing eyes, and it seemed to have affected its sense of direction, so that it now crept parallel to the beach, rather than directly toward the blasters.
“Hold fire!” Ryan stood watching the mutie nightmare as it lurched, splashed and staggered, nearly falling over. One of the giant front claws had almost been severed by a burst of 9 mm bullets from the Uzi.
In a few seconds, the fearful specter from the ocean’s unplumbed deeps had become something tragic.
Dean was up on his feet at his father’s side. “Looks like it’s done for,” he said.
“I could probably take out the other eye, now it’s slowed down,” Mildred called.
Ryan shook his head. “No. Let’s wait and see whether it still wants to fight.”
“Chickenshit’s had enough,” Trader crowed, his exultant cry sounding oddly flat and hollow.
The crab was standing still, at the edge of the cove, its one eye glowering balefully at its intended prey, its single huge claw clicking open and shut.
“Had enough,” Abe said, echoing Trader.
“Looks like it,” Ryan agreed, reaching around to start reloading the SIG-Sauer, noticing that J.B. was doing the same with the Uzi.
“Yeah,” Dean breathed.
The monster finally decided that the meal wasn’t worth the suffering and turned clumsily, starting to make its way back through the sea of weed and driftwood toward the safety of deeper waters.