Just for you guys and gals here at the Vault...the prologue and first chapter of Crustacean carnage for your pulp reading enjoyment.
Crustacean Carnage
by
Kevin ‘Jaqhama’ Lumley
Prologue
Tracey Tanner reached behind her back and pulled loose the thin straps that secured her miniscule black bikini top.
Smiling at the young man standing in the clear blue water in front of her she pulled the top completely off, revealing her lightly tanned breasts.
Alberto grinned at her. “Nice,” he said.
The pair of them stood waist deep in the ocean that surrounded the tropical island.
They had met earlier that morning, down at the Beach Hut Café. A regular hangout for tourists and locals alike.
The attraction between them had been almost instantaneous.
They were both in their early twenties. He with the slim musculature of an athlete. She with the lithe and curvaceous body of a dancer.
Tracey glanced down at the other’s crotch. A growing bulge inside Alberto’s board shorts made her smile even wider.
She took a step backwards, a little deeper in the water.
Putting her hands on her hips she slowly slid the bottom half of her bikini down over her sculptured thighs.
Casting a seductive glance at her male companion Tracey ran her tongue suggestively across her lips.
Alberto, grinning hugely, walked closer to her.
He caught the wisp of thin black fabric she tossed toward him.
She stretched her arms out to him.
He was almost within touching distance of her, his arms already open to take her into his embrace, when he noticed a strange expression on her face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Her arms were still stretched out toward him.
Alberto slid his hands along them and cupped his hands under Tracey’s armpits. Laughing he lifted her up, out of the water.
She was much lighter than he expected.
Her breasts swung gently in front of his face. He pushed his head forward and took a taut nipple in his mouth, sucking on it.
Pulling his mouth away a moment later he smiled into the girl’s face.
He frowned.
Her eyes looked blank, appeared to be staring over his shoulder.
“Hey?”
There was no response.
It was then that Alberto realised that a widening pool of red was spreading throughout the water around him.
He looked down.
And screamed.
Tracey’s body ended at her waist. Blood was pouring from her torso. A long, tangled mess of greyish intestines and ropy gristle hung down into the water.
Alberto screamed again.
Dropping Tracey’s severed torso into the water he staggered backwards, toward the shore.
Something tugged at his right leg.
He tried to pull away from the pressure, it resisted for a moment but then let him go.
He took another step, frantic to reach the sandy beach that was only a few metres away from him.
Suddenly he found himself face down in the gentle surf.
He could feel the sand underneath him but he couldn’t seem to get his legs working properly.
He rolled over, onto his back, and looked down at himself.
He screamed again and then began to cry.
His right leg ended just above the knee. His own blood was pouring out of the massive wound, blending with Tracey’s blood in the clear water.
Alberto was still screaming when a huge, dark form, emerged from the ocean in front of him.
* * * * *
Every morning Marc Sarrett jogged the five kilometres along Driftwood Beach.
He went from his cabin, built into the hillside of Lookout Point, down to the Beach Hut Café.
Marc’s idea of jogging wasn’t quite the same as other people.
He would begin with a slow trot, building up to a slightly faster pace, then without warning, break into a full speed sprint for a hundred metres or more. Then he would slow and trot along for a short distance before increasing the pace and beginning another sprint.
In this manner he would arrive at Andre’s café. Hardly winded from his punishing routine.
Andre, seeing his friend, would then nod and smile and begin to assemble Marc’s breakfast…while Marc hung upside down from a metal bar next to the café and performed a hundred, upside down, sit-ups.
Marc Sarrett was fit. Perhaps even fitter than when he’d been in the Legion. La Legion Etrangere. The infamous French Foreign Legion. A little above average height, Marc’s body was a map of slim but muscular definition. Burnt to a golden hue by the tropical sun, normally dressed only in a pair of cut off denim shorts and a t-shirt, he hardly looked like a man in his middle thirties.
His dark hair was cut short and his tanned, clean shaven face accentuated his ice blue eyes. He cut an impressive figure.
This did not go unnoticed by the many female tourists who frequented the small, south pacific island of Moa.
It was said locally that if Marc Sarrett did not have an attractive woman in his bed every night, it was only because he needed a good night’s sleep.
Women of all ages practically threw themselves at him with amazing regularity.
Married, or on holiday with fiancés or boyfriends, it seemingly made no difference. One look at the tanned ex-legionnaire made most women forget everything and everyone.
Marc himself seemed supremely indifferent to all of this. When he wanted a woman he looked around for one that took his fancy, smiled at her and then let nature take its course.
He wondered, as he slowed from a sprint to a jog, if the new plane load of tourists that had arrived yesterday would produce anything out of the ordinary.
He’d had young women, middle aged women, even on occasion well kept women in their fifties. He liked middle aged women best. Between thirty and forty. They had outgrown the hormonal, puppy love stage that afflicted their younger counterparts and normally saw sex as something of a pastime. A pleasing diversion. Nothing to take too seriously. Marc disliked complications.
He was musing on these things as he jogged along when something in front of him caught his eye.
He stopped, curious.
Without needing to resort to looking at a watch, which he wasn’t wearing anyway, he knew that it just past seven thirty in the morning.
At this time of day Driftwood Beach was deserted. The sand below the high tide mark smooth and unmarked, save perhaps for the tiny tracks of night foraging crabs, the odd turtle or two and the footprints of various birds.
This morning however, something was different.
The smooth sand in front of him was gouged, chopped up, churned up. And for a considerable distance.
Breathing deeply, hands on his hips Marc looked about himself.
The churned up sand gave the impression, to his trained eye, of a trail. A trail that started at the water’s edge and then moved up toward the high tide mark.
Curiosity getting the better of him the ex-legionnaire followed the churned up marks in the sand. He walked past the high tide mark and continued on to the point where the sand gradually gave way to soft island grass, and then walked a little further, into what became the fertile surrounds of non-primary jungle. Or J as his former associates would have called it.
Marc wondered what had made the trail. Could someone have dragged a kayak or a canoe or a small boat, out of the water and then all the way up the beach and into the foliage?
It seemed a long way to bother dragging any of those things.
If the person (or persons) were worried about the ocean taking their small craft back out to sea…why hadn’t they stopped just above the high tide mark? It was easily visible, marked as it was with seaweed and bits of flotsam and jetsam.
Unless the owners of whatever it was didn’t want anyone seeing their vessel.
With this thought Marc’s senses become acutely alert. A small flash of adrenalin flowed through his body.
The only people who wouldn’t want their equipment discovered would most likely be drug smugglers.
He stepped to one side and slipped behind a palm tree. The easy relaxed way he had moved with previously was gone. Now he glided from tree to tree, bush to bush, like a stalking panther. Eyes flickering everywhere. Ears alert for the faintest sound. Body tense. Without even realising it his hands had formed themselves into flat, spade like shapes. The mark of a practiced karateka.
*
