Read Online Hungry Darkness: A Deep Sea Thriller by Gabino Iglesias - Free Book Online Page A

between its eyes. If you can land a few shots in that general area, I think you could take him out. The thing about shooting them is that mass of their bodies contains no organs. Everything that matters is contained in its mantle, and while shooting a huge octopus in its mantle would be easy given its size, there’s no way to know what you’re hitting in there, so you could be taking him out or just making him angry. Odds of the latter being the case are much higher than I feel comfortable with. Also, I don’t think you’re taking into consideration the fact that if you’re close enough to try to shoot him between the eyes, he will be close enough to do whatever he damn well pleases with eight ridiculously powerful arms that are God knows how long. I mean, think about a regular octopus for a second. It feeds on mollusks and whatever else it can get a hold on. It uses its arms, which are mostly made up of muscle, to crush shells. Now multiply that…by a fucking lot. The result of that is a beast with arms that can probably wrap around your boat and snap in half with the same ease you snap a toothpick in half, not to mention what it can do to human flesh and bone.”
    Gabe had already been uncomfortable with turning himself into bait, and that feeling only worsened with each sentence that came out of Emanuel’s mouth. Instead of helping, the scientist was adding worries to his already heaping pile of them.
    The two men sat there looking at each other as if the solution to their problem was hiding somewhere in their eyes. Then Gabe had an idea. Shooting a very large octopus between the eyes with a gun while gigantic suckered arms lashed out at him sounded like a suicide mission, but if you added two more men and three powerful shotguns to the equation, things started to look a bit better.
    “Are the tentacles very hard?”
    Emanuel looked at him. Gabe feared he was going to correct him for the millionth time and tell him that octopodes had arms, not tentacles, but apparently the matter at hand was far more important than scientific accuracy.
    “They are harder than the mantle, but not incredibly hard. There’s a lot of muscle in there, but no bone. I can almost hear the grinding going on in that head of yours, man. What are you thinking?”
    Gabe wasn’t about to give Emanuel a penny for his efforts, but if the marine biologist could keep a secret and wanted to come along for the ride in the name of science, so be it.
    “I know shooting the octopus and killing him with a few bullets would be almost impossible, but what if instead of just me trying to put a single bullet into the beast’s brain I had two more people with me, and we all had shotguns?”
    “Shotguns? You want to put three people in a boat with shotguns and have them shoot at something that’s moving in the water? Sorry, Gabe, but that’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard, and I heard your idea about dropping poisoned fish all over the damn reef. For starters, using guns in a boat is as smart as wearing a steak suit to a pit bull convention. Second, it’d be really easy to shoot someone in such cramped quarters once things start getting hectic. Third, boats in the water tend to move, and firearms and movement don’t go very well together. Last but not least, you’re talking about an animal with eight arms that can crush you in a second and a beak that can probably bite chunks off your boat, so grazing it with a few pellets meant to kill small birds isn’t going to cut it.”
    Gabe had more or less thought about everything Emanuel was saying, but the idea still struck him as the best way to go. He doubted the wild-eyed man sitting across from him had anything better in mind.
    “Okay, so you say no shotguns because it’s too dangerous. We might not blow that monster to pieces before he gets us. Whatever. Great. What’s your idea then? How do we kill this thing?”
    “I…I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know. Okay. The damn expert has no