Chapter 71: S#12. Texas Top Shark Massacre (3)

What walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?

The answer was created on the spot.

A saw blade shot out and sliced off the old man’s leg.

“Aaaaaargh!!”

The old man collapsed. Blood gushed from his severed leg, turning the ground red.

The sawfish that had taken his leg had already disappeared into the ground.

A dorsal fin briefly broke the surface before vanishing. It moved so fast that only an afterimage was visible.

I dropped the broken saw blade in my hand.

I realized that the creature we had hit with Ellen’s car had returned.

It had brought its kin for revenge, targeting us for breaking its blade.

I carried the groaning old man into the gas station building.

I thought of monster movies featuring creatures that burrowed through the ground.

– Dune

– Tremors

– Starship Troopers

– Sand Sharks

– Mongolian Death Worm…

Their range of activity was underground and on the surface. Usually, being inside a building meant safety.

At that moment, the window shattered.

A sawfish burst through the broken window.

The creature was 3 meters long, its brown body twisted and grotesque, as if irradiated. It looked like a shark rolled in muddy water.

Its long saw-like snout was covered in blood.

The sawfish flapped its body and opened its mouth wide. Sharp teeth glistened inside.

I swung an axe at its head.

Through the broken window, I saw the scene outside.

The Texas wilderness bathed in blue moonlight. In the distance, a massive sandstorm was approaching.

It was driven by dorsal fins rushing towards us at incredible speed.

The shark gang was coming.

—
Raei  Translations
—

“Aaaaaargh!!!”

The old man screamed and writhed. Blood splattered everywhere.

The trail of blood stretched from the first floor to the second.

I laid the old man down in the living room. I found a bandage and wrapped his severed leg. The white bandage quickly turned red.

The old woman, who had been asleep in her armchair, slowly woke up.

“Dear…? Where’s your leg?”

“Can’t you see, you damn old hag…? A shark took it!!!”

The old man grabbed my shoulder.

“Listen, young man! The sawfish have smelled the blood! More will be coming!”

“But they swim underground. No matter how high they jump, they can’t reach the second floor, right?”

“They won’t come up to the second floor. The second floor will go down!”

The building shook.

I looked out the window. Sawfish with dorsal fins sticking out of the ground were digging and creating a sinkhole.

The gas station building began to sink slowly into the sand.

At a slow but steady pace, it was tilting.

“If this continues, we’re all going to die. Is there a way to deal with this?”

The old man handed me a shotgun.

Even after losing his leg and being carried here, he hadn’t let go of the shotgun.

I took the shotgun from him.

Normally, I would have swung an axe and slaughtered the creatures, but the sawfish were too fast. They were like fighter jets racing underground.

Close combat was impossible, but if I could attack from a distance, it would be different.

I aimed the shotgun out the window.

I counted seven visible dorsal fins. More were on the way.

But there were only two shells in the shotgun.

“What about more ammo?”

“It’s on the first floor!”

I had to go back to the first floor.

There was no time to hesitate. The building was tilting more every second.

Just as I headed for the stairs, the door opened.

“Summer, what’s happening…?”

Nancy came out, moving groggily.

When she saw the old man with the severed leg and the trail of blood, her eyes widened.

“What? This was a dream?”

“…”

“This is such a weird dream. Well, Summer, keep doing what you were doing.”

“I don’t know what you think I was doing, but Nancy, snap out of it. This isn’t a dream.”

I pinched her cheek. She yelped in pain and came to her senses.

Realizing it was reality, Nancy gasped and collapsed to the floor when she looked out the window.

There was no time to reassure her.

I hurried downstairs to gather ammunition.

As the building tilted, sand was pouring in through the entrance.

Two sawfish were swimming halfway out of the sand with their grotesque bodies.

I aimed and pulled the trigger, blasting their heads apart.

I spotted the ammo box on a shelf.

Walking was difficult due to the slanted floor, but I moved quickly before more creatures and sand could enter.

Just as I reached for the ammo box, the entrance collapsed.

“Ugh…”

Sand and debris flew everywhere.

The creature that had smashed the entrance was not an ordinary sawfish. It was a colossal sawfish, the size of a school bus.

It was more like a whale than a shark.

The building creaked and tilted heavily.

The colossal sawfish pushed its body into the building, lifting its head and thrashing its saw blade.

The blade pierced the ceiling, breaking through the boundary between the first and second floors.

Through the opening, I saw the grandmother fall from her armchair.

“Oh, oh, noooo!”

The colossal sawfish opened its massive jaws and swallowed the falling grandmother whole.

“Old woman!!”

The grandfather’s anguished cry came from above the collapsed ceiling.

There was no time to load the shotgun.

If this continued, the entire building would collapse. Nancy and Ellen would end up like the grandmother.

I threw myself at the sawfish, aiming for its lower jaw with my axe.

I inflicted a deep wound but couldn’t deliver a fatal blow.

The enraged sawfish swung its saw blade. The 7-meter blade spun, slicing through the concrete walls like paper.

Vroom-

The blade grazed my chest, tearing the flesh.

“Damn…!”

Pain shot through me, feeling as if my heart had been ripped apart.

To make matters worse, another part of the ceiling collapsed.

This time, a bed fell instead of an armchair.

Ellen, still asleep, was on the bed. Despite landing on the sand piling up on the first floor, she didn’t wake up.

The colossal sawfish shifted, trying to swallow Ellen and the bed whole.

“Ellen, wake up!”

“Mmm… Summer…? Is this a dream?”

“No!!”

I picked Ellen up.

Barely making it to the stairs, the first floor was a chaos of sawfish and sand.

Over twenty dorsal fins were rushing in.

The gas station was sinking.

—
Raei  Translations
—

The building had tilted more than 45 degrees.

I led the survivors to the roof for safety.

The mother and daughter from the gas station had somber expressions, realizing they had lost the grandmother and the old man had lost a leg.

Nancy and Ellen, somewhat accustomed to such situations, remained calm.

I looked outside. Dorsal fins were circling the gas station like a ritual dance.

The first floor was filling with sawfish and sand entering through the broken entrance.

We were completely surrounded. If this continued, the gas station would sink entirely into the sand.

The old man grabbed my pant leg and raged.

“This is all your fault…!”

“…”

“If you hadn’t brought that broken saw, they wouldn’t have chased us! They ate my wife… my wife…!!”

The old man screamed, calling me a murderer.

I felt ashamed, but there was no time for guilt.

We were being pulled closer to death with each passing moment.

Nancy spoke up.

“Summer, look. The parked truck is still intact. If we run to it, we might be able to escape.”

“It’s impossible. Even at full speed, we’ll be caught.”

Even if we miraculously reached the truck, escaping would be uncertain.

The sawfish were incredibly fast and could catch up immediately.

I suddenly remembered a game I used to play as a child.

The floor is lava.

You pretend the floor is lava and only step on the sidewalk curbs or the white lines of crosswalks to avoid touching the ground.

This situation was a real-life version of that game. If you stepped on the ground, the sharks would eat you.

And there were no platforms at all.

But if there are no platforms, you have to create them.

If we waited any longer, we’d end up as shark food.

Ellen pointed to a corner of the roof.

“There’s a fuel can over there.”

Gasoline.

But it wasn’t nearly enough to burn all of them to death.

“Is there any way we can draw their attention?” Ellen muttered.

I looked beyond the railing. Near the gas pump was a cylindrical structure. A fuel tank.

Normally, it would be buried, but probably due to the sawfish burrowing underground, it wasn’t.

“If we blow up that fuel tank…”

…we could kill all the sawfish.

A plan formed in my mind.

The ground rumbled as the building tilted further. The roof felt like the deck of the Titanic.

A giant sawfish poked its head out of the ground.

Swinging its upper jaw, it sliced through the roof railing.

The women screamed, their cries piercing the night.

The old man trembled with fear.

“Damn… this is the end for me! Save my daughter-in-law and granddaughter!”

“No. We all have to survive. Your wife would want that too.”

I said, tearing my shirt. I immediately set the plan into action.

The gash on my chest from the giant sawfish’s attack. I wiped the blood with the torn shirt.

I untied the bandage from the old man’s severed leg.

Blood gushed out, soaking the torn shirt. I quickly rewrapped the bandage.

“Nancy, I need some of your blood.”

I took a bit of blood from the cut on Nancy’s forehead as well.

The torn shirt, now soaked in blood, was like a gourmet meal to the sharks.

The sawfish went into a frenzy, thrashing and poking their heads out of the sand like starving demons.

“What’s going on, Summer…?”

“We’re going to have a fireworks show.”

I opened the cap of the fuel can in the corner.

I took out the axe and doused the blade with gasoline.

I borrowed the old man’s lighter and set the axe blade on fire.

The blazing axe.

I threw the blood-soaked shirt towards the fuel tank.

The dorsal fins rushed towards it like a pack of wolves.

This was the moment. I hurled the flaming axe at the fuel tank.

The axe, engulfed in flames, struck the tank.

Boom───────────!

The explosion rocked the ground. An enormous flash lit up the night.

A firestorm erupted, engulfing the sawfish that had gathered around.

The sawfish evolved into firefish.

The flaming dorsal fins thrashed about wildly, creating a spectacular display across the moonlit wilderness.

It was a dazzling sight.

“We did it!”

We headed down to the first floor.

The tilted space was half-buried in sand.

A baby sawfish with a broken saw was gasping for air.

It was clearly the culprit that had collided with Ellen’s car.

I grabbed its body and drove my knee into it. I heard the satisfying crunch of its spine.

Outside, the air was thick with the smell of burning.

I apologized to the old man.

“I’m sorry. The gas station… it exploded.”

“Do you think an apology is enough? You’re going to have to pay for everything!”

The old man shook with anger.

He had every right to be furious, having lost his gas station, one leg, and his wife.

As I struggled for words, Ellen stepped forward confidently.

“Yes, we will compensate you for everything.”

“Hmph. People in the city think they can solve everything with money. Your brains are rotten. How do you plan to compensate for my leg?”

“I didn’t see what happened since I was asleep… but I’ll buy you a prosthetic.”

“Really? You might have been asleep, but my wife died because of you! How will you compensate for that? Huh?!”

“I’ll give you compensation.”

“Compensation? Ha! You think you can put a price on a human life? Don’t mock my wife’s death with your money…!!”

“Would $100,000 be enough?”

“Hmm. Now that I think about it, maybe you can mock it a little.”

The old man, swayed by the power of money, nodded.

The little girl who had been hiding behind her mother stepped forward hesitantly.

She seemed more afraid of me than the sawfish. Now, she was mustering the courage to tell me something.

“…Jetzt werde ich euch alle töten!”

The girl said. It was unfamiliar German.

“Uh, your granddaughter speaks German.”

“That’s because we’re German.”

Something popped out of the sand.

It wasn’t a sawfish dorsal fin. It was a long machine gun.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-

Bullets sprayed from the muzzle.

I was hit in the abdomen. I fell to the ground without being able to resist.

“Summer!!”

Ellen and Nancy screamed in unison.

A tattered gas mask emerged from the sand. Soon, a giant in a Nazi uniform appeared.

The daughter-in-law and granddaughter grabbed Nancy. The old man grabbed Ellen.

As the Nazi giant approached, the old man smiled and said,

“…Let me introduce you to my son.”

—