Fighter jets screamed through the sky and something exploded deep within the city. A starburst of rubble and flame briefly littered the skyline. Gunfire and chattering helicopter engines echoed and overlapped. Donnie saw planes and helicopters, and more teams of soldiers on rooftops high above the water, but no one made it a priority to stop him. In a couple of towers he spotted snipers with long, intimidating guns. If one of them really wanted to keep him out of the way by killing him, then he would never see it coming. The windshield would implode in front of his face and then nothing.
“I’m coming, Alessa, I’m coming,” Donnie said.
Same as he would have done if driving home, Donnie made it to the freeway. It was on slightly higher ground, inland, and he had to zag around some onramps that restricted his path. He couldn’t go over a submerged bridge so he went around, onto and across the swift current, back into areas flooded beneath the water and thick with trash. Gas station and fast food signs were all that remained of some buildings, jutting above the surface.
“So many,” Donnie said.
At moments when the murk cleared, Donnie could see rows of cars under the flood. Hundreds, maybe thousands had died along this road with no warning as the tsunami rolled through. Bodies and floating bits of debris swamped the surface. And then, off to the sides of the road, in places were suburbs which again rolled into lower lying areas. Some roofs, not even all of them, poked out of the waters like islands. So many people who would have been hit and drowned with little to no warning. Thankfully, he saw movement in some places. People heard his engine and tried to wave him down from a distance. Donnie would have liked to help them but Alessa had to be his first priority. Even as he took some hope from them though, Donnie reflected on just how small of a percentage had actually survived compared to how many had died. Donnie was surprised he didn’t see anyone clinging to the freeway signs or other raised portions around the freeway. Maybe some good samaritans had already happened by and taken them onward. Maybe something worse had gotten them instead.
Half-sunken signs pointed the exit to Chatsdale. Rain fell in sheets but there was enough glare off the grey sky that Donnie shielded his eyes. He could pick out their apartment building from the freeway. It loomed among other apartment blocks and some glass office towers. A few ramps breached the water up ahead, abandoned cars scattered on top of them. Donnie couldn’t quite see their actual apartment yet but he was so close. He was exhausted. While it was still technically morning, Donnie couldn’t say he’d slept well the last two nights. His muscles ached. After jumping from the building into the water, he was still soaking wet. Given the damp in the air, the layers he had on had done little drying. But relief flooded his body and he was grateful to be so close.
Donnie slowed, finding more debris and, unfortunately, bodies in the water. He didn’t want to get caught on something or snarl the engines when he was so close. Pulling gently toward the submerged exit, suddenly something slammed into the bottom of his boat. He yelped, staggering sideways, and yanked the throttle to neutral. It was like he’d hit a building under the surface, but the motion wasn’t quite right. It didn’t feel like he’d driven into something but instead like it had come straight up, hit him, and then sunk back down.
“What the fuck?”
The twin engines grumbled in neutral, screws not turning, and the boat drifted sideways in the current. Then it happened again. This time, Donnie knew he hadn’t hit something but that something had hit him. A hump swelled in the water and the boat jumped, lifting a good couple of feet out of the water. Something scraped against the keel right under his feet. Then it was gone again, dropping and leaving the boat heaving up and down in place. His stomach lurched. He barely managed to keep his footing.
“Oh, Jesus,” Donnie said. “Shit!”
Something was inspecting him. He had only seen one thing big enough to make those kinds of hits. He was pretty sure the giant crab monster they had seen this morning hadn’t followed him so he must have run into another one, under the surface. A huge, tan shape as long as a train carriage turned in the water, big as a whale but harder, heavier. A massive head like a horseshoe crab breached, water and trash running down the sides of its shell. The boat was thrown sideways, forcing Donnie to cling on.
“Shit!”
The creature’s blunt nose smacked the side of Donnie’s boat. Beneath the curved plate of armour that made up the creature’s eyeless head, wider than a pickup truck was long, complex mandibles opened. Instead of a crablike maw or a vertical mouth like the tentacled creatures had, a fleshy gullet appeared filled with rows and rows of hard, sharp teeth, more like a giant shark than anything else. Gaps opened between segments of carapace on the creature’s back. Thick tentacles, like the man-sized creatures’ tentacles but far bigger, stretched into the open. A couple of large ones slapped the boat’s cabin and back deck.
Donnie was so close, after coming so far. “No! No, get away!”
Tentacles started to wrap around the boat as if to drag it down. One smacked the windshield, cracking it. Donnie lunged, grabbing the steering controls and slamming the throttle forward again. The sudden motion ripped the boat free. Donnie was thrown from side to side, barely clinging to the controls. Spinning motors bit into the water and sent the boat shooting forward. Thick trails of foam kicked up behind them. The crab monster was left directly behind him, dark tentacles thrashing. Donnie spun around and went tearing across the flooded exit, around the ramp, and into Chatsdale.
“God, God, please don’t let me die! Not so close!” Donnie said.
Hissing, the crab monster sank and surged after the watercraft. Huge, paddling limbs powered it forward with speed that easily compared to the boat’s twin engines. Bits of carapace cut through the water in Donnie’s wake. He glanced back every few seconds, getting a bead on the monster. It was gaining on him from a cold start.
Water wasn’t as deep here as it had been in the city. About one and a half stories off the ground. More rooftops and signage poked through the surface. There was less of a current, so bodies and debris bobbed in place. Unable to avoid all the submerged objects, Donnie went scything through it all and hoped for the best. The boat swept around the flooded remains of a gas station. The crab monster crashed through it, knocking down a tall sign with a large ball on the top. It crushed the roof that would have covered the gas station’s pumps. A tentacle picked up a large chunk of wreckage and threw it, a piece of jagged metal the size of a parking space that whipped through the air like a frisbee. Something must have been hit under the surface. A stench like gasoline filled the air as rainbow-hued fluid bubbled to the surface. It spread out in a large, oily puddle as the crab continued after Donnie’s boat.
“Fuck!” Donnie looked around for some kind of escape.
The windshield was cracked and smeared with rain. Donnie couldn’t go home, even if it was so close. If Alessa was home and safe as he’d hoped, then he’d be leading the monster straight to her and the other inhabitants of their building. More glass towers, office blocks, sat in the direction he steered toward. Something caught his eye from the upper corner of the windshield.
“What is-, shit!”
Donnie veered the boat sideways, sending up a spray of floodwater. A car had been pitched directly up by the crab, and it came back down in what would have been Donnie’s path. The white sedan plunged through the surface, sending up an eruption of white foam. It splattered the side of Donnie’s boat as he raced around it and the splash rocked him to the left.
“I can’t outrun this thing forever!”
Turning hard, Donnie pushed the boat into another flooded street. A dam of broken trees and building debris filled the road. While he would have gone around the dam previously out of concern for the boat and its engines, this time he powered forward and slammed into the structure. Branches crunched and scraped down the boat’s sides. The engines churned but then he was free, tossing bits of wreckage behind him. A wave surged into the street. Bits of tan armour and tentacles could be glimpsed beneath the froth. What remained of the dam was blown apart, splinters and shrapnel hailing the surrounding buildings.
“Okay! Come on, come on!”
An alleyway filled with floating trash was tucked behind one office block. It was just wide enough to accommodate the crab’s giant head but maybe not the rest of its bulk. Donnie slowed and pulled into it, pushing through a scum of floating trash. He hoped to use the alley to gain some ground by shooting through to the other side, maybe even get the creature stuck and lose it, but as soon as he’d pulled in he could see he’d made a mistake. The alley was a dead end, a smooth, grey wall looming ahead. He was stuck.
Space was too tight to manoeuvre the boat around. Donnie looked back to reverse but the crab monster erupted out of the water with its jaws wide. It hammered its head against the buildings. Serrated limbs and tentacles ripped at the surrounding walls, tearing loose huge bits of masonry. Donnie pushed the boat forward again, out of reach at least for the moment.
“Shit!” Donnie said. “Alessa, oh, God, I’m sorry.”
Windows lined the sides of the alley. If he was trapped, Donnie wondered if he could make it to one of them and escape into the building. But losing the boat would mean he’d struggle to get back to his apartment and Alessa, so close and yet so far. His Serbu shotgun lay on the table nearby. It wouldn’t scratch the hissing beast but it could blow out a window. He only had three shells left.
Waves tossed Donnie and the boat. The crab monster rose, gripping the surrounding walls, and revealed segments of carapace on its belly. Tentacles slid in and out of gaps between the segments. As Donnie watched, one tentacle retreated and another dark blue shape filled the gap, slipping out and hitting the water with a splash. Covered in viscous fluid, it almost looked like the crab had birthed it, or shat it out. The dark shape trailed tentacles of its own and disappeared under the water with a couple of strokes. One of the man-sized creatures, the aliens. He’d been right, Donnie thought. The crab creature was an organic tank. The crab hadn’t given birth to the tentacled creature, the creature had been riding around inside of it and was now exiting its craft.
Then, as Donnie watched, two more sections yawned open. Two more slimy creatures slipped out and entered the water like seals, tentacles trailing behind them. He had dealt with two of these creatures, one on one, but now three at once were coming for him. He couldn’t even escape into the building as planned, they would easily be able to follow.
“Oh, shit! Shit!”
Something hit the side of the boat again, a lot smaller than the impact of the crab tank but strong and angry. Tentacles gripped the side and then one of the squidlike creatures launched itself onto the deck. Red eyes littered the sides of its vertical mouth. Another launched itself up and over the nose of the boat. Donnie’s head snapped back and forth. He was trapped, swarmed, and didn’t know what to do. The creature on the back deck produced a four-sided shuriken from beneath its tentacles.
Donnie grabbed and slammed the throttle into reverse as hard and fast as it would go. Engines howled and jerked the boat backward. The tentacled creature on the nose of the boat slipped and had to cling on. The one on the back deck had been midway through throwing its weapon. The shuriken whirled into the cabin and Donnie ducked. Ricocheting off hard surfaces, the bladed weapon missed, clattering around the cabin a couple of times before burying itself in the faux wood of the table. He gripped the steering wheel and tried to hold it steady as the boat roared down the alley, backwards.
The boat smashed into one side of the alley, was flung sideways and slammed into the other side. Ribbons of fibreglass ripped off the hull. Despite that, the boat picked up speed as it rocketed toward the crab monster blocking the mouth of the alley. It was reared up, exposing its segmented belly, complicated legs, and its tentacles. Donnie caught it or whatever was steering it by surprise. The engines cut through one of its tentacles laying across the top of the water, slicing apart the jellied flesh. Both spinning screws and the leading edge of the back deck crashed into the crab monster’s underside. Hissing, it leapt backward. A surge almost as tall as Donnie himself blasted in all directions as the crab tank fell back into the water, disappearing under the surface again. It opened enough of a gap that Donnie was able to hurtle back into the street, in reverse, blowing out spray and bits of garbage. Staying low, he grabbed the throttle and hammered it back to forward. The crab monster floundered and righted itself. The two tentacled creatures were clinging to either end of the boat and he wasn’t sure if he’d lost the third or if it was just out of sight. If he didn’t act, these things would kill him. So close, and he would never get home. While terrified, and overwhelmed by everything that was going on, Donnie also got mad. He’d survived the small crablike creatures and two of the tentacled things with no idea of what he was dealing with. He’d struggled on makeshift rafts. He’d climbed down the side of a goddamn building, dozens of stories off the ground. He deserved a break, he deserved some peace.
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The boat jerked and jolted, and raced down the centre of the flooded street. Donnie let go of the steering wheel and left it hurtling forward, unsteered. He grabbed the Serbu and unfolded its vertical foregrip in one fist. Bracing his legs, Donnie raised the weapon on the shape occupying the back deck and fired. The tentacled creature looked no different from the others he’d faced, a torso-sized mass supported by tentacles, thick and thin, and two flipper-shaped limbs. Its vertical mouth, like a seam down its chest, seemed to sneer. The shotgun exploded and bucked against Donnie’s hand. Jellied flesh and brackish ichor sprayed off some of its tentacles. The squidlike creature lurched, wounded. Its mouth peeled open, snarling, blood red eyes alive with hate.
Out of control, the twin engine boat kept barreling forward but drifted off to one side. Donnie thumped the pump action. A smoking shell corkscrewed to the wet deck. Only two shells left. Donnie aimed at the central mass and fired. Shot punched through the quivering flesh, blinding several eyes and tearing open one side of its mouth. The creature howled but still wasn’t dead, and refused to die as Donnie racked out the second shell.
“Fuck you!” Donnie yelled.
The shotgun was down to its last shell. Donnie badly wanted to save it, knowing there were two more tentacled creatures, as well as the giant crab, but as the wounded creature recovered and lunged he had no choice. One last shell was no good to him if he was already dead. Tentacles spread, the creature flew at Donnie. He shoved the shotgun forward toward the top of its mouth and fired. The blast nearly tore the weapon out of his hands. Shot punched right through the creature’s face and blew out its back, ichor and ejecta whipped away by the wind. The creature fell, tumbling to one of the corners of the deck. He took a split second to feel a sense of relief.
With an ear-splitting crash, the unsteered, speeding boat drifted into the facade of a building. Glass smashed, showering the back deck. Bits of metal and brick clawed the boat, tearing pieces free. Donnie was hurled sideways. He lost his grip on the empty shotgun and lost sight of it in the chaos. His hands came up to protect his face and he smacked the deck. Pain jolted through his body.
Donnie forced himself to stand. Rain lashed him and made every movement that much harder. The screaming of fibreglass against concrete and metal went on and on. Crouched, Donnie scrambled back into the cabin and lurched for the steering controls. He yanked them to the right, back into the street. The shrieking stopped but the boat was still virtually out of control.
The creature on the nose of the boat flattened itself against the windshield. It pushed as if about to force itself through the cracks. Donnie, if he wanted to steer, could only glimpse slivers of what was directly ahead around the creature’s bulk. Red eyes and its twisted mouth pressed on the glass. It looked like a glimpse into Satan’s own fish tank.
“Get off my boat, motherfucker! Get off my boat!” Donnie yelled.
At the end of the block was an empty space the size of a football field, bordered by buildings and trees. Just from knowing the area, Donnie knew it was a construction site that hadn’t gone much further than being cleared and flattened. All the equipment and construction materials that would be used as the project went ahead, if it ever went ahead now, were underwater. The water was thick and murky, filled with trash and dirt. Needing room to manoeuvre, Donnie steered toward the flooded site.
The tentacled creature held one of those black harpoons. It punched it at the glass, throwing it through the hole. The harpoon shot toward Donnie but being forced through the glass knocked off its trajectory. Donnie sidestepped and the harpoon fly through the middle of the cabin. The creature kept pressing against the glass, leering.
One of the portholes erupted. The third tentacled monstrosity was clinging to the side of the boat after all. A tentacle snared Donnie and yanked him against the wall. The boat was out of control again. Wheel twisted, it started to tear doughnuts around and around the flooded construction site.
The tentacle poking through the porthole wrapped around one of Donnie’s shoulders, pulling him against the wall. The table with the knives, cooking spray and candles was beside him. Donnie grabbed one of the knives with his left hand. He lashed out, stabbing at the tentacle. The creature shrieked and drew back, its tentacle sliced open. Donnie stumbled free. The creature pressed several of its berry red eyes to the shattered porthole. He didn’t hesitate, trading the knife to his right hand and lunging. He drove the knife through the porthole and into the eyes, several times, ichor flying. The creature shrieked and jerked back, pulling away with the knife sticking out of its ugly face.
Part of the windshield collapsed, showering the cabin with glass. Tentacles swarmed through the gap. Donnie heard a human screaming and realised it was him. Everything was happening all at once. He had steered the boat into the open site hoping to throw the creature off the nose but it clearly wasn’t going anywhere. Neither was the one he’d stabbed, clinging to the side.
Something slammed the side of the boat. A big, dark tentacle lashed the back deck. Donnie glanced through the doorway and saw gaping jaws. The crab tank lunged and tried to bite down on one of the engines but the spinning rotors drove it back. He was dead, Donnie thought with detachment. If he didn’t do something completely insane, he was dead.
Without thinking, Donnie grabbed one of the cans of cooking oil and uncapped it. Shaking it with one hand, Donnie yanked the steering wheel with his other hand and then used the can to spray. He didn’t have time to put a candle or match in front of it and make a flamethrower. The tentacled creature trying to cram its hump of a head through the gap of the windshield caught the spray in the face and reacted like it had been maced, shrieking and jerking backward. Donnie turned and sprayed a blast at the porthole for good measure. It was a temporary reprieve though, and the crab monster loomed behind them.
“Okay, okay, fuck this!”
Donnie pulled the boat out of its spinning doughnut, yanking it straight. The crab tank lurched and crashed into the water where the boat had been, floundering for a moment. Through the broken windshield, Donnie spotted one of the glass office blocks directly ahead, across the street from the construction site. It might have been madness but Donnie grabbed the throttle and pumped it to the max, jetting ahead. The squids clung to the boat despite the increase in speed.
The long, powerful tentacles of the crab monster tried to wrap around the boat but it tore free. It skimmed over the surface of the water, hardly seeming to touch down. Uprooted from the construction site, a turquoise portable toilet the size of a closet floated on the surface, half-submerged like a log. The keel of the boat crashed into it and jumped, screws spinning and spitting misty sprays of water. Donnie gripped the wheel with white knuckles, steering straight at the office tower. Its walls were made of floor to ceiling glass. He had no idea if they would break, or if the boat would smash up against them. Whether the flood would be high enough inside for the boat to keep going. There almost certainly wasn’t enough clearance for the roof of the cabin to fit within the frame. Donnie didn’t know if he was about to escape, or kill himself. He kept speeding forward as if expecting the building to get out of his way.
Another tentacle stretched through the porthole and grabbed Donnie from behind. It wrapped around his throat, choking him. He lost his grip as he was pulled backward. Gagging, eyes bulging, Donnie saw the building fill the windshield behind the other monster on the nose of the boat. The boat leapt and rocketed into the building like a torpedo.
The nose of the Struck Lucky punched into one of the glass panels, disintegrating it. The top of the frame came level to a point about halfway up the boat’s shattered windshield. At the last second, with all his strength, Donnie bent at the waist and threw himself forward, fighting the boa constrictor strength of the tentacle choking him. The windshield imploded. With an ear-splitting shriek, the roof and walls were ripped away. The top of the floor to ceiling window frame, backed by solid concrete, tore the roof off the cabin like the top of a cereal box, taking some of the sides with it. Donnie was battered with glass and debris. He fell to the deck, covering his face. The tentacle around his throat jerked and went slack.
The boat had been slowed by the crash but kept churning forward into the building, bashing and smashing. Donnie straightened and groped for the steering wheel. It was yanked from side to side as the boat bulldozed through desks and cubicles. Roof tiles and bits of lighting were ripped apart and fell, shredded and shattered, across Donnie’s back. He tried to pull the boat straight, hoping the engines and momentum would carry him straight through the building and out the other side. The tentacle wrapped around his neck fell loose and Donnie realised it wasn’t attached to anything anymore, just a ragged stump. The other squid, on the nose of the boat, had been torn in two. Its remains were smeared and impaled across what remained of the windshield.
Behind Donnie, the crab monster slammed into the building. Several more panels of floor to ceiling windows were shattered or popped out of their frames. Donnie glanced back and saw toothy jaws yawning open. Huge tentacles swept ahead of it, clearing aside wreckage. It forced its way inside the flooded building. Segmented claws gripped the floor and drove the giant, blunt head deeper.
“God, come on! Come on!”
The boat banged and scraped, engines churning. Despite the cloud of wreckage around him, Donnie got a sense of rainy daylight up ahead. The throttle was still pushed up, powering forward. With another smash, the nose hit another section of glass. Less dramatically than the first hit, the boat bashed its way back out of the office building. The battered craft spilled out of the window with a wash of filthy water and broken office furniture, spinning across the surface.
The crab monster smashed through the building. Its head, however, punched through the ceiling that Donnie had already left broken in his wake. Not only ceiling tiles and bits of lighting came down, the crab knocked out chunks of concrete, then desks and chairs, computers, bigger and more solid bits of wreckage that poured down on the crab tank. The floor collapsed under its armoured body. Just as Donnie had been hoping, the building was coming down around it. It would get stuck if not killed by the rubble. Donnie lost sight as dust and mist and wreckage filled his view, surrounding the crab. In trying to tunnel through, it had fallen through the floor and buried itself under tonnes of rubble. The creature screamed and then was abruptly silent.
The trashed boat spun, wallowing sideways. Covered in roof tiles, plaster dust and broken glass, and dark ichor, Donnie wrestled with the wheel. Something in the steering felt broken. He yanked the throttle back to neutral. He was cut and bruised in a dozen or more places but in one piece. At mid-chest height, the cabin had been completely ripped away leaving jagged edges behind. Wreckage filled the boat’s interior, and the back deck where the first dead creature lay. Ichor sprayed down the side of the boat where the porthole had been. The creature on the nose had been flattered and ripped totally in half when the boat hit the building and it looked like the third one had been torn apart by the impact as well. One engine had been destroyed. The boat seemed to be shifting sideways as if taking on water on that side. The craft was badly damaged but the creatures were dead and the crab monster trapped. Falling rain started to tamp down the dust and wreckage filling the boat.
Donnie pumped his arms in the air, face open in victory. “Yes! Yes!”
Donnie let the boat drift for a few moments. As the adrenaline plunged, his body felt jittery and drained. Exhaustion would come quickly. Even as the boat tipped, he could limp it back to the apartment building from here. He felt elated.
Suddenly, part of the office tower exploded. With a tea kettle screech, the giant crab punched out of the face of the building. Panels of glass, office furniture, and other debris sprayed outward. It drove through the walls with its blunt head, tentacles pushing out of its carapace, tossing rubble aside. The crab tank hit the water again and sent spray and waves in all directions.
“No!” Donnie turned, gaping, and fell on the controls again.
Donnie hit the throttle, pushing it up. The crab monster wheeled around, hunting for him. He wondered vaguely if another tentacled creature was steering it, if there were more on board, or if the living tank was now acting on its own initiative. Without thinking, he headed back toward his apartment building and the freeway.
The crab’s halfmoon head pierced the water’s surface. Huge limbs powered it after Donnie’s boat. It looked a little bit scratched and battered after tunnelling through the building but was otherwise intact. With only one engine, Donnie’s boat kept pulling to one side and he wrestled with the steering. Rain splattered his face. The creature was gaining, even with the throttle pushed all the way up Donnie couldn’t go anywhere near as fast as before.
One last crazy idea occurred to Donnie. He couldn’t bury the crab monster under another building. Even if a second attempt worked, the boat wouldn’t survive it. But Donnie had one more insane ploy in him. Steering the limping boat with one hand, Donnie turned back and started combing through the wreckage covering the cabin table. The table was still in one piece. Donnie hoped the objects it had been holding were intact as well. He uncovered a bundle of half a dozen candles, all wrapped together, and, even more importantly, a box of long kitchen matches.
“Okay, okay!” Donnie said. “You want to do this? Let do this!”
The crab smashed into the boat’s back end, driving the nose of the craft forward. Donnie sped on, wrenching the boat sideways. The crab’s tentacles snapped at him. He managed to gain a little bit of space, rocketing sideways.
“Come on, come on.”
One handed, Donnie fumbled with the box of matches. He scratched one, lit it, and started lighting the wicks of the bundled candles. Ahead was his apartment building, the freeway interchange, and the gas station beneath the water which the crab tank had torn through. A gasoline stink wafted through the air. The wicks of the candles and the match in Donnie’s hand started to flare and snap aggressively. The layer of petroleum that had come bubbling up from below had grown, blanketing the water’s surface. It was rainbow hued and created a haze in the air above the pool. Flammable, but diluted, and with the rain coming down Donnie was having a hard enough time keeping the candles lit let alone getting the gas to catch.
Donnie let the boat steer straight through the middle of the gasoline. He let go of the wheel, letting the boat missile on, out of control. With both hands, he ripped apart the tape holding the candles together, their wicks burning, already dripping hot wax.
The crab monster surged straight into the pool of gasoline, straight after Donnie. Praying this would work, Donnie started pitching lit candles off the back of the boat. They sailed through the air and into the cloud of fumes. A couple of candles went dead seemingly as soon as they left Donnie’s hand, extinguished by the rain, trailing smoke as they spiralled into the water. A couple spun through the cloud, lit the entire time, but plopped into the gasoline pool and went out as they landed, sinking from sight. The giant crab closed in. Donnie ignored his screaming instincts to turn and run, and threw the last couple of candles.
A flash lit the storm. A wall of flame caught and flared, the heat washing over Donnie’s face. It mushroomed upward in a raised fist against the sky and suddenly the surface of the water was on fire. The crab monster shrieked as it found itself bordered by flames on all sides. It didn’t burn well but the crab had covered itself in gasoline which now burned across its shell and thrashing tentacles. Like the tentacled creature last night, when Donnie had hit it with the makeshift flamethrower, it was distressed, confused and hurt, driven mindlessly back. It tried to submerge but gasoline clung to the surface. It came back up still burning and boiling.
Donnie took the controls again, spinning away. Once he gained some distance, he glanced back. The giant crab, biological tank or living animal, gave up. Wallowing, it submerged again and turned tail. Creating a wide wake in the water, the crab fled back in the direction of the freeway, defeated.