MKSheppard wrote:Results:
Crab breeding grounds destroyed by NDBs. Shepistani Amphibian population plunges due to increased UV emissions. Shepistanis issue contract to Umerians for Genetic engineering to replace craboid and amphibianoid population.
Gayte Gulf, Montgomery
Shepistan
5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
The mushroom cloud rose high into the sky, tall and imposing like an engorged nucleonic member. As it was an underwater detonation, the blast cause the very oceans to erupt, spewing white foamy liquids and vaporized steams into the vast firmament above them in an ejaculation of mighty atomic violence. This was one of the crab breeding grounds of Montgomery, favored by the crabbers and fishermengs for the quality of crustaceans harvested there. They had protested this affront, this unnecessary vaporization of their livelihood. For suspected sympathies towards the Amplitur menace, and because their livelihood necessitated them to sail to waters uncovered by BFGs thus making them prime candidates for psychokinetic subversion, they were shot to a man. Other suspected suspects were renditioned, to be either detained in a Shepistani SIS blacksite in the Feelipeenis, or outright handed over to the Bragulans for more thorough 'processing'.
So it was that the once pristine waters of the Gayte gulf became a wretched brisket stew of floating fishies, deadened by the blast overpressure. At the same time, fragments and pieces and chunks of corals and sea creatures began to rain from the heavens. The vaporized water turned into a fine mist, and as the light refracted from the suspended droplets, a beautiful rainbow arced above them all, above even the mighty mushroom cloud. It was... it was
beautiful.
"Well... that's a wrap," said a Shepistani officer, marveling at the sight of sheer marine mutilation they had done then and there. To shield his eyes from the harsh sunlight, as well as from the nuclear flashout, he wore Gay-Ban sunglasses. Shepistani Gay-Bands were the most sought after sunglasses in the galaxy, for they were rated to polarize and protect eyes not just from UV radiations, but also the flash of nuclear detonations. All Shepistani military personnel had Gay-Bans. "Crab site secured. That's the last one."
"Damn shame, I liked crab legs. Guess we won't have any of those anymore, since we just killed all the crabs. Am I rite?"
"Shut up, Strak," the officer growled.
***
Guess we won't have any of those anymore, since we just killed all the crabs. Am I rite? that haughty proclamation echoed through the depths of the seas.
Guess we won't have any of those anymore, since we just killed all the crabs. Am I rite?
Guess we won't have any of those anymore, since we just killed all the crabs. Am I rite?
A voice growled back from the black abyss of Shepistan, the very ocean's heart of darkness. It pronounced but one word.
Wrong.
***
The Shepistani ship was long, hard and full of seamen. Thus when the long shaft-like vessel went to its home port, it docked with a wide-open circular bay. Then it disgorged its seamen. Inside the bay.
Sergeant Hudson Strak was relishing his shore leave. He planned on getting laid by one of those mail-ordered Feelipeena whores serving in a brothel right outside the base, which was pretty fitting since the place, Gayte Gulf, was also named after some place in the Feelipeenis where the Shepistani Navy destroyed a hueg Japanistani fleet and won the war (and after that, Shepistan would eat up Japanistan and they would both become superbestfriends forever with the Japanistanis providing cheapo electronics and cars).
But first he had to meet his physiologic needs. He was hungry, and it was only fitting for him to go to a seaside restaurant and order some crabs before potentially getting crabs from some Feelipeena hooker. Now that they had extinctified the entire crab population of Shepistan, or were in the process of doing so, eating what could possibly be the last crab on Shepistan was something he
had to do. It was one for the history books!
Apparently, everyone else had the same idea as Hudson Strak and everyone else in the restaurant was stuffing their faces with crabs too.
"What a bunch of fatties," Strak said under his breath. He got his order of crabs and began smashing it with a mallet, in order to break the shell and eat the succulent meats inside it. It was strange, using a mallet. Was it a traditional Feelipeeni custom, because this was a traditional Feelipeeni restaurant? Or did they just run out of nutcrackers because all those fatties were also eating crabs? "Fucking fatties."
He was in the process of smashing his crab open with an eating stick when he heard a shrill scream of pure unadulterated horrer. He did a spittake, which was remarkable because he hadn't even gulped any of the ice cold
Shroom Miguel Feelipeeni beer yet, which meant that he was doing a spittake with his own saliva coming out of his nose. Oh man!
He bolted out of his table and drew his sidearm while also holding his crab mallet in his other hand, brandishing it like a weapon.
"What's going on?!" he demanded.
"The horrer!" the bestricken woman pointed out to the window. Everyone in the restaurant looked out to the shoreline and saw what she saw. They made a collective gasp of pure unadulterated, "Horrer...!"
There on the shoreline was a red mass. The sands were all covered in wretched chitinous clawed and carapaced crawling creatures creeping up from the waters and to dry land. It was moving towards them.
Sergeant Strak thought quickly and put on his Gay-Bans. Not only could they protect eyes from UV radiation, which was important since Operation Blow Up The Ocean had once again depleted the ozone layers, not only could it polarize and shield the eyes from nuclear flashouts, but it could also zoom in like a macroscope! The more expensive versions even had X-ray vision! So Sergeant Strak zoomed in and intensified the magnifications, and he saw the
true form of that crimson tide coming forth towards them.
"No... it can't be."
But it was.
Those who were sunbathing by the beach, taking the opportunity ozone layer depletion presented itself to bask in even more UV rays to work up their tan even more despite the carcinogenic nature of sunlight, were the first victims. The crabs came and conquered. They scuttled up towards these people and attacked them viciously, clawing at them with their claws, biting at them with their mandibles, all whilst glaring at them with all the harshness of their inhuman compound eyes. Yes, while one crab was no match for a largish semi-muscular human being, a full ten thousand of them working as one to kill a single man was more than enough. Like army ants disemboweling a felled beast to the bone, so too did these tiny enemy crabs work by clawing off the facial features of the beach goers, these
beaches. Men, women, children, all wretched humans. The crabs had been compelled by an irrational force and driven from their normal biological rhythms and patterns, and now they migrated to dry land not to mate or spawn or feed, but to
kill. An irrational hatred for human beings had been implanted within their primitive invertebrate brains, and they exacted this command with all the uncompromising willingness of the simple biological killing machines they were.
"They're coming out of the water! They're coming out of the goddamn water!" Sgt. Hudson Strak screamed to his radio. Reinforcements were en route, but most of the troopers had taken their shore leave opportunities to go to the brothels near the base, so mobilization would take some time. Shit. He looked out the window with his Gay-Bans and saw that the humongous craboid mass had surrounded their restaurant. Somehow, someway, while they had been dining on their crabs unaware, the crabs had been crawling closer and closer, fully intent on dining on
them. By the time they had noticed the crabs coming, it was too late, they were surrounded. Those who tried to run, who got in their cars, were consumed because the damned things were already there, waiting for them.
"No, these are not Amplitur. At least, not adults. Maybe they're larva. But they look like... they look like normal crabs. And they're attacking us! Fuck!" Strak shouted. A chef ran out of the kitchen, screaming because a crab had latched on to him and was using its pincers to strangle him. Strak ran to the chef and smashed the crab to pieces with his stick. Another saucier ran out, in a similar predicament, but a stupider restaurant patron used a butcher's knife rather than a mallet - and instead of smashing the crab, he missed and his knife went into the saucier's throat instead! Strak cursed and continued barking to his radio. "I repeat! These are not giant enemy crabs! Negatory! These are... tiny enemy crabs!"
The saucier with a slit throat collapsed to the ground, blood gushing from his neck. The crab that was on him, satisfied in a job well done, crawled away to find a new victim. Strak blew it away with his service pistol. Then he grabbed the stupid restaurant patron's knife away and punched him in the face.
"Put pressure on his throat!" Strak said, pointing to the bleeder. Then, he faced the rest of the restaurant patrons, those fatties who had been busy eating crab meat - just like him. "Alright, listen up! I've radioed HQ but reinforcements are still en route. So we have to make a stand, right here and right now. There are too many crabs out there. They've blocked the exits. They're in the cars. So we can't run. We can't hide either, cause they're gonna come in here AND THEY'RE GONNA GET US!"
He capitalized those words to hammer the point through. Now they'd listen to him, they'd have to.
"So we're not going to run, we're not going to hide. We're going to fight!" he said, thrusting his chest forward and raising his chin, while brandishing his sidearm and his mallet for them all to see. "Grab whatever weapons you can find. Improvise. Use knives, sharp sticks. Mallets. Fire extinguishers. Forks. Sporks. Boiling water. Anything."
They prepared for the war. But little did they know that war had come to them.
Hundreds upon hundreds of crabs had gathered. Somehow directed by a malignant alien intelligence, they accumulated to the doorways and vents and other entry areas. There were so many of them that, eventually, through sheer weight the doors broke down and then they scuttled inside the restaurant. But the defenders were ready.
"Here they come!" Hudson Strak yelled. "Kill em! KILL EM ALL!"
The bar patrons all drew forth their weapons. Everyone in the room was armed, even the children. Some had shotguns, some had handguns, some had Ocelot revolvers, a few even had M2411s, and an old geezer had somehow managed to produce a massive Bragnum 44mm. At this sight, the crabs hesitated momentarily, as though collectively gulping upon seeing so many firearms arrayed at them. But then, for these were not creatures of the earth, not of land or of the air, but foul beasts of the deepest depths, they attacked without fear or any other emotion known to both mankind and the denizens of the animal kingdoms' myriad chordatas.
The bullets tore furrows into the red waves of craboids. But for each dozen crabs brought down by Shepistani Special Pistol rounds, two dozen more swarmed forth. The room was filled with the deafening noise of gunfire, sirens and screams. The sound of shells cracking and popping, the rattle of spent casing falling to the floor, emptied magazines discarded, clips shoved back in, slides pulled, safeties deactivated, rounds chambered, and the resumption of the furious fusillade of fire.
Then there was silence. Not because the crabs had stopped, but because there were more crabs than the people had bullets - they had run out of bullets, but the crabs had not run out. Of crabs, which were still aplenty. They again regarded the humans coldly with their compound eyes, as though mocking them and chastising them for their futile resistance. Then, once more did the crimson tide beat against the jagged rocks of human resistance.
The humans resignedly discarded their firearms. But then -
"On my command!" Hudson Strak shouted with all the authority of a Roman general of the Felix Legions. "UNLEASH HELL!"
On cue, old ladies hobbled forth and sprayed the nearest of the craboids with the fire extinguishers. The subzero carbon dioxide, the frigid foam, and the halon gas petrified the cold-blooded crustacean creatures, leaving them open for the men who moved upon them like a phalanx and began smashing the frozen crabs to tiny icy bits. Then they withdrew and the shield bearers, who used the tables to form a barrier, ran up and smashed the crabs aside. Again, the cycle was repeated when the women returned to douse the craboids with liquid nitrogen. Spear-bearers, with knives and forks tied to chair legs, then began stabbing the creatures while mallet-bearers mashed them up. Then the shields came up again, and the attackers withdrew. Waiters and waitresses brought fresh water and foods and wine to them, so they could eat and drink and regain energy before once more returning to the fray.
But what were few dozen men compared to the inexorable might of the craboids, ten hundred thousand million strong? It was good that the restauranteurs had had a hearty breakfast, for tonight they most certainly would dine. In hell.
The makeshift shields finally broke, while the chairleg spears snapped, and the blades grew dull, and the mallets likewise shattered after one too many batterments. After a long and grueling ordeal, the men, women and children had been exhausted - while the crabs were relentless in their lack of relentation. The formation broke, the phalanx dissolved. Some of the older women collapsed, their thigh bones dislocating from their hip replacements, they fell and moaned and groaned and begged for mercy. Some tried to help them, to drag them before they were washed away by the waves of red pincer and claws. But it was for naught. The claws began to tear at their senile skins, clamping on the wrinkles and using the leverage to basically peel the flesh off their old beaten bodies. They howled in pain as the crabs did so, and as the geriatrics thrashed and screamed, the crabs were eerily silent in doing their evil work.
The ground went red. Not only was there blood, but it was filled with innumerable tiny crablings. So many that they carpeted the whole floor, crept up the peoples' legs and dived into their orifices to consume the succulent flesh within their bodies.
As he watched his legion collapse all around him, as he listened to the screams and cries, something inside Sergeant Hudson Strak snapped. He brandished a frying pan and a spatula and began slaying as many of the beasts as he could. Then he screamed, challenging them all in mortal combat.
"Come on! Come on! Come and get it, baby! Come on! I don't got all day! Come on! Come on! Come on you bastard! Come on, you too! Oh, you want some of this? Fuck you!"
He flailed blindly and madly, smashing countless creaturoids in his incomprehensible rage. It was this sensation of human outrage, the sheer emotionality of it, that distinguished man from the soulless craboid beasts that died by the score at Hudson Strak's hands. With each monster destroyed, he shouted for all to hear mighty fighting words dedicated to those who fought with him and who succumbed to the ravagements of the craboids, he dedicated his words to the victorious dead.
"WHO KNEW!" he screamed at the top of his lungs as he stomped a crab and smeared it underfoot.
"AM I RITE?!" he asked the hatchlings as he took a dead woman's hairspray can, and a candle that lit a now-dead couple's dinner date, and fashioned a flamethrower with which to burn the baby craboids. They replied to him by making popping sounds as their entrails erupted within their carapaces.
"
I'M A SMARMY ASSHOLE!!!" he roared as he spilled a whole vat of cooking oil on the crabs, who writhed as they were deep fried. In doing so, he had burned his hands while handling the vat. Oil had also spilled on his arms. Hudson Strak screamed as the surviving crabs took this opportunity and ganged him, their pincers clawed at his burned arms and began peeling off the blistered skin. This autoexcruciation was pain unlike any he had ever felt. "
FATTY NERDS ARE LAME!"
With his arms crippled, he had no choice but to attack
with his face. He confronted a massive spider crab that had traveled all the way from the Laurentian Abyss just to challenge him. He confronted it and headbutted it, slamming his head against its shell again and again and again and again and again
and again and again and again. The skin of his forehead was torn, bloodied and bruised, but he prevailed as in the enfuryment of his blows the crab's own shell was smashed into a liquefied pulp.
Lobsters, with their massive claws, clamped hard at Strak's ankles and he fell to the floor. Then the hundreds of crabs descended towards him, intent on finishing it all.
And then everything exploded. Everything, up to and including the crabs all around him.
COMMUNIST THREAT DETECTED! a mechanical voice boomed.
BETTER DEAD THAN RED!
Large metal hands plucked the injured Strak off his crucible and placed him on the safety of a steel shoulder.
"
What? Strak babbled incoherently.
COMMUNIST THREAT DETECTED! BETTER DEAD THAN RED! the umistakable sound of an atomic deathray could be heard, followed by what could only be the noise of the entire restaurant - and the crabs inside it - exploding in a micro-nuclear explosion.
HAIL FREEDOM. HAIL DEMOCRACY. HAIL THE SHEPISTANI REPUBLIC.
Strak opened his eyes and saw his saviors.
The FREEDOM PRIMES had arrived. These were special operations variants, the robots that had more than what met the eye because they could go in disguise. They could reconfigurate themselves into seemingly ordinary vehicles to roll out on wheels that would propel them faster than legs could. Then, upon entering the combat zone, they would transform and maximize, assuming their combat modes.
The FREEDOM PRIMES were hastily deployed. They were easily reprogrammable for this mission. The crabs were all red. Communists were red. One of the pre-programmed FREEDOM PRIME subroutines was to automatically track and destroy
anything colored red, because they were programmed to destroy any and all communists - and now crabs were also communists, together with the color red!
COMMUNIST THREAT DETECTED! BETTER DEAD THAN RED! the FREEDOM PRIME declared as it vaporized a whole hive cluster of craboids.
COMMUNIST THREAT DETECTED! BETTER DEAD THAN RED! a second FREEDOM PRIME declared as it vaporized a car that had the color red.
COMMUNIST THREAT DETECTED! BETTER DEAD THAN RED! then it vaporized a house that had been painted red.
An innocent bystander in a red shirt ran screaming from the crabs.
COMMUNIST THREAT DETECTED! BETTER DEAD THAN RED! an atomic beam vaporized the crabs that were chasing him.
COMMUNIST THREAT DETECTED! BETTER DEAD THAN RED! an atomic beam vaporized him too.
Another person, in a red shirt that also had stripes of white and blue - the flag of the Shepistani Republic - was detected.
COMMUNIST THREAT... NOT DETECTED.
"Oh God, I was so scared! Thank you!" the woman cried.
MADAM YOU HAVE SUFFERED AN EMOTIONAL SHOCK I WILL NOTIFY A CRAB CRISIS CENTER
"
- PeZook
]
