No Small Bills by Rosenberg Aaron

Author:Rosenberg, Aaron [Rosenberg, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2013-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Who ordered the shrimp Fra Diablo?

It took a few seconds before what’d just happened sank in. Then I pushed myself back to my feet and dusted myself off. The others did the same.

“What the hell?” I finally asked.

“I have no idea,” Ned admitted. “Maybe the sharks of this world are cowardly vegetarians?”

“Oh, come on,” Tall told him. “Did you see those teeth? I’ve hunted great whites off the Barrier Reef, and that thing could be their bigger, uglier cousin! There’s no way it’s not an omnivore like they are!”

“A talking one, with legs,” I pointed out. “But yeah, I agree.” Of course the closest I’d gotten to hunting great white sharks was watching one of those treasure-hunt adventure movies where the heroes went up against sharks, but I figured it was much the same thing.

“The great white shark is one of Earth’s dominant aquatic lifeforms,” Mary mentioned. “If this creature holds a similar prowess, what could scare it enough to force it to take cover on this tiny island?”

I heard a weird hissing sound, and turned back toward the water to see bubbles of steam rising from a small patch—a patch that was growing steadily closer to our little refuge. “I have a feeling we’re about to find out.”

We all watched the bubbles approach. All except Sharky, who was still sobbing behind the trees.

“Anything we can do to defend ourselves?” I asked Ned over my shoulder.

“I might be able to rig a temporary forcefield,” he answered, extracting two of his technowands and rubbing them together. “It’d only last a few seconds, though. At best.” He checked the wands. “And it’d only be a foot across.”

Tall pulled out his pistol and checked the clip. “I’ve still got about six shots,” he offered.

“I have neither offensive nor defensive capabilities,” Mary said.

“Yeah, well, all I’ve got is the head of a duck, so we’re even,” I assured her. “Okay, here it comes, so let’s look alive. And hope that shark’s just got some kind of weird phobia for harmless little fish.”

The bubbles had reached the shore. They stopped there, hissing and steaming. And then they grew larger, bursting angrily and filling the air with a curtain of steam. And something rose within that wave of heat.

Rose and stepped onto the beach, only a few feet from us.

It was hard to make out more than a menacing shadow, all tentacles and waving limbs. The four of us shrank back together for protection, retreating until the trees were at our backs. Behind us Sharky was making little horrified squeaking noises.

Then the steam dispersed and the air cleared, and we could finally see the owner of that shadow—

It was a shrimp.

No, not a really short man. A shrimp. An actual shrimp. The kind you get stuck around a big cup filled with cocktail sauce, or skewered and buttered and grilled. A shrimp.

It was maybe six inches tall. Which, when you think about it, is actually huge for a shrimp. Like it was a giant shrimp.

And it was red.

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