The Clicking

The Clicking 
by Misbah Qureshi 

Upstream.

Upstream. They had swum upstream. 

It seemed ridiculous, in hindsight, but Morgan wasn’t laughing. 

When they’d first heard of these maritime loosejaws, it hardly seemed like a problem. Within hours of the first attack, scientists were practically yelling over each other to identify them as a mutant variety of the deep-sea stoplight loosejaws. 

“It’s a fluke,” they promised. 

“They’re ambush predators.” 

“They’re just animals.” 

And, for some weeks, it seemed like the loosejaws -- growing in number though they were -- had contented themselves with attacking coastal towns and beaches, most of which were evacuated. The few people that remained visited their local army surplus store and “geared up,” so to speak. As if pistols and small-caliber shotguns were going to help. But even that was okay because they were staying at the coast. 

Until they weren’t. 

All of this and more ran through Morgan’s head as he shoved clothes into a duffel bag. Alarms were going off all throughout the neighborhood, punctuated by the rise and fall of police sirens as cop cars circled around blocks, looking for anyone who needed help. The Longview PD wasn’t big or well-funded (their “website” was actually just a minor article with contact information on the official community website), but right now it was all hands on deck. 

“Dad.” 

Dana’s voice was low, but his senses were on high-alert and every instinct of his was tuned towards his daughter’s protection. He looked up and met her eyes. Dana, his seventeen-year-old daughter, was just an inch shorter than him and built like an Olympic athlete. She was on her high-school’s swim team, and he was grateful to God that she had been too sick to go to practice this week. Like him, she’d been woken by the sirens and automated emergency calls in the middle of the night, and like him, she’d thrown on whatever clothes were at hand. They were both wearing sweaters and jeans, and her hands were nervously, unconsciously kneading a beanie while she looked at him. 

“Dad,” Dana’s anxious tone cut through his rambling stream-of-consciousness, and he snapped back into the moment. 

“What is it?” He asked, trying to keep his tone even. 

“I’m gonna finish packing, okay?” As she said this, she walked over and took the duffel from his hands. “Maybe you should get the car warmed up?” 

Morgan nodded. Sensible. Calmer in a panic than he was, as well. He left her to it, grabbing the keys and heading to the front door through the kitchen. He halted in his tracks without knowing why and then turned, scanning the tops of the kitchen cabinets for something. There. An unassuming brown box with a simple combination lock on it. 

Morgan’s father had been a cop, and a paranoid one. He’d gotten early retirement after a suspect had broken into his home and shot him four times in the gut. He had died a few years back, but for as long as Morgan could remember, his dad had instilled one principle in him. The words came to him now as he dialed in the combination with shaking fingers. 

“Better to have a gun and not need it than not have one when you do need it.” He muttered the words under his breath. 

The lock clicked open, and he absently slid it into his pocket. The pistol inside was a 357, Smith & Wesson make. He tested the weight, feeling the familiar grip for the first time after years. The rest of the box was piled with ammo, and he shoved fistfuls of it into his pockets. The ammunition had cost his father a pretty penny back in the day, but it was worth it. Along with bequeathing the gun to him, his father had personally taken him to a shooting range and trained him on gun safety -- with a smaller caliber weapon first, of course. Morgan still visited the range every six months or so to keep up with his practice. 

He slid the gun into his pocket and went to warm up the car. 

Those three minutes he sat on the plush leather, warmed by the car’s heating, were some of the most difficult of his life. He was constantly checking his side and rearview mirrors and muttering prayers for the windows to defrost faster. 

Finally, the passenger door opened, and he jumped in his seat. The top of his head hit the ceiling with a muffled thud, and he rubbed at the bump on his scalp. 

“Damn, Dana,” he muttered. “Scared the hell out of me.” 

His daughter shot him a nervous smile and threw a duffel into the back. She leaned out, picked up two more, and repeated the process. 

“Food?” He asked. 

She nodded, and he sighed, waving her in to sit down.

Dana had just buckled her seatbelt when Morgan realized that something was wrong. 

He couldn’t hear the sirens anymore. 

Well, he could, but they were far off now. Several blocks away and getting quieter. He hurriedly checked his phone for updates on the evacuation zone and what he saw drained the blood from his face. 

“Dad?” Her voice was soft. 

Wordlessly, he showed the screen to her. 

They’d seen similar maps for the past couple of weeks, though mostly on the television and about coastal areas, bay towns. 

Longview wasn’t a coastal town. It was barely near a body of water. Sure, the Columbia River was close, and sure it fed into the Pacific, but it was ages away from the ocean. Those wretched monsters would have had to swim for hours, maybe days, to get this far upstream. 

But it didn’t matter how they’d done it or why they’d done it. 

They were here. 

Longview was in the red zone.  

There would be no evacuation for them here. 

Morgan passed his phone to Dana and shifted the car into Drive. He picked a direction and, turning on his headlights, pulled out of their driveway and onto the street. 

“See if the bridges are open,” he told her shortly. “Portland is less than fifty miles away and Seattle is double the distance, but we have to get to a major city.” 

Portland was on the Columbia, too, but at least they had a bigger chance of getting evacuated further inland from a major city. 

Dana nodded jerkily and rubbed at her reddening eyes even as she set about following his instructions. 

It turned out the bridges were open, but they wouldn’t be for long. Later, Morgan would regret going for the nearest bridge; it seemed convenient in the moment, but of course it was stupid. Of course, he shouldn’t have gone for a river or a lake. 

The rock came out of nowhere. One second he was on the 432, driving over the Cowlitz River Bridge -- the Cowlitz fed into the Columbia -- and the next second he was screaming, Dana was screaming, and the car was skidding. The rock was still embedded in the windshield and huge cracks spiderwebbed away from it. 

He wrenched the wheel in the other direction, trying to right the car, but it was too late. The skid turned into a spin and Dana bent over, looking a little green. Before she had even the opportunity to retch, though, the car flipped, and Morgan lost consciousness. 

#

Morgan woke to a faint clicking sound. His eyes were jammed shut and his scalp had been bleeding until the biting cold had frozen the blood. 

He raised one arm, gasping with pain as his ribs screamed out a complaint, and rubbed at his eyes until they opened. When he tried to move his other arm, he found that he couldn’t. It was jammed or pinned or otherwise held down somewhere. 

And where the hell was that incessant clicking noise coming from? 

Click. 

Click. 

Click. 

He craned his neck, looking around, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. 

At first, he thought he was laying on top of his car, but it soon became obvious that he was partially pinned underneath it. His body was twisted onto his right side and his left arm was stuck behind him. His shoulder felt wet with what he hoped was just engine oil or rain. His clothes were shredded, and he could feel the cement pressing into his cheek and shoulder. The car was totaled. 

Dana. Where was Dana? 

He tried to look around but couldn’t. 

The clicking noise went on. 

Click. 

Click. 

“Dad...” He heard her groan from behind him, from the other side of the car. 

With a burst of strength Morgan didn’t know he had in him, he shoved the car away with his arm and feet, sliding away from it. He finally came to a halt a few feet away, breathing hard. His throat was hoarse, and, in another moment, he realized why: he was screaming. 

In fact, he had been screaming the whole time. He tried to stop, but his mouth wasn’t obeying him. At least he couldn’t hear the clicking noise anymore. 

“DANA!” He screamed. At least he could do that much. “DANA WHERE ARE YOU?” 

Finally, his throat gave in, and he paused to take gulping breaths of sweet, cold air. 

He heard a whimper from the other side of the car. It energized him, and he pushed himself up to his hand and knees, crawling around the car. 

Click. 

Click. 

The clicking grew louder. 

Click. Click. Click click. 

Finally, as he turned the corner and his beautiful, beloved Dana came into view -- Dana the star athlete; Dana who argued with him about every little thing; Dana who gently reminded him of the little things like groceries when he’d forget to run those errands; Dana who proudly held her chin high whenever he drove her to school; Dana who had taken nearly as many pictures with her old dad as with her boyfriend on the night of her senior prom. She came into view, and Morgan suddenly realized where the clicking noise was coming from. 

They always told you that people dying looked serene, but his daughter looked terrified. Her eyes were pleading, and that was the most recognizable part of her. 

Like him, her clothes had been shredded in the crash. Bits of glass and plastic were sticking out of her skin -- what little of it remained. Her legs were entirely gone. Smears of blood on the pavement marked where they had once been. Her torso had awful bitemarks taken out of it, and the next breeze brought with it an awful stench of urine, feces, and blood. One of her arms was stripped of its flesh and what Morgan saw bent over the others would haunt him in his last moments. 

It certainly looked like the stock photos of stoplight loosejaws they had thrown up on the media broadcasts, but there was something... different... about it. It looked sleeker. More evolved. Its body was black and white. There was a keen intelligence in its eyes, behind the predatory vertical slit pupil. Like its deep-sea cousins, this one had a glowing patch of green on its cheek, just below its eyes and above its teeth. Oh, those awful teeth. Unlike the stoplight loosejaws, this one had four fully developed legs terminating in claws and a tail with ridges and spikes that seemed spliced straight from a crocodile. 

Distantly, as if he were hearing someone else talk about it, Morgan realized that he had wet his pants just staring at the thing. 

The loosejaw’s fangs were long and needlelike, tapering to jutting points. Its lower jaw was oversized, and the attached fangs were similarly much bigger, and coated with blood and bits of flesh. Dana’s flesh. As he watched, it opened its mouth, hinging the lower jaw open, and he saw that it was just... missing flesh from its jaw. It closed it shut and dislodged some of the flesh, snapping its head back and swallowing the meat, then repeated the process. The whole thing was eerie and punctuated by clicks as the teeth tapped and grated against each other. 

He couldn’t help himself; he threw up. 

The retching attracted the loosejaw’s attention, and it snapped its head in his direction. Its jaw halted mid-motion as it looked him over -- then summarily dismissed him. After all, what threat was he? 

He reached into his pocket, pulling out the first thing his fingers closed around. The lock. He threw it at the loosejaw, but it bounced off the creature’s hide and it ignored him. 

Morgan slumped back down to the ground and watched Dana. At some point between now and the last time he’d looked at her, the fight had gone out of her, and she’d simply died. Her eyes were empty and the flow of blood from her ravaged torso had slowed to a crawl now that her heart had finally ceased its rhythm. He stared at her and tried to bring himself to feel something, to care, but it didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem possible. 

Morgan heard the rush of wheels on concrete and, because his head was turned away from the main road, saw his shadow lengthen and shorten as headlights swept over him and then moved on. If he’d been able to move to see the car, maybe he would have turned his head, but his ribs were broken, and his breath was coming in gasps now. 

In a way, he was perversely glad that he hadn’t been able to turn, because what he saw next was somehow astonishing and mind-numbing. 

The loosejaw had perked up at the car’s approach and its eyes probed the ground expectantly for something. It wrapped the claws of one hand around a rock the size of a baseball, reared back on its hind legs, and whipped it in a smooth, practiced motion. Morgan heard the familiar shattering of glass and the squeal of tires on pavement as the car skidded. Exactly as his had before. 

He stared at the creature, thinking, Sure, this might as well happen, when it turned its head to look at him. That keen intelligence flared, and he sensed something else... a certain smugness. Satisfaction. It was showing off, and it wanted him to know that his crash hadn’t been coincidental. 

 The creature must have seen something shift in Morgan’s expression, because it resumed clicking its teeth and slowly, menacingly, started towards him. 

He backed away from it, more out of a sense that he should, than any expectation of salvation. He raised his arms to bring his hands between him and it -- and that’s when he saw what the source of the wetness on his left arm had been. His arm was simply gone at the elbow. Bitemarks in the shape of dozens of needles, just like Dana. The loosejaw must have nibbled on him to whet its appetite before it had gone after Dana. 

He dug into his pocket again, frantically, one last time. His hand closed around the 357 Magnum, and he drew it in a smooth motion, bringing it up to the loosejaw. It was a revolver; he probably didn’t have to pull the hammer back with his thumb, but it felt good to, so he did. Then, pointing it at this awful, horrid thing, he squeezed the trigger. 

The gunshot was deafening, and his wrist felt sprained, but he aimed towards the loosejaw, pulled back the hammer, and shot again, and again, until the revolver clicked empty. 

The gun fell from limp fingers and Morgan squinted, trying to spot the creature. 

It was still standing where it had been before, though now every muscle in its body stood out in tension. It had a single hole in its leg and blood seeped out of the hole, but otherwise the creature was uninjured. He’d missed. Five times.  

Unexpectedly, Morgan snorted. Then he started laughing. 

The loosejaw halted abruptly and tilted its head in a distinctly feline motion, as if it didn’t know what to make of him. Apparently, it wasn’t used to prey that laughed at it. It shook its injured leg as an afterthought, puzzled but unpained. 

He laughed for another solid minute before it resumed its steady saunter towards him. 

Finally, it was standing over him, one claw pressing down into his chest with increasing pressure, and he stared up through the hole in its lower jaw, into the roof of its mouth. He felt some mild irritation at the slime and bits of blood it was dripping on him. This sweater was new. Dana had gotten it for him on his bir -- 

Then the loosejaw leaned down and ripped a mouthful of meat out of his neck and Morgan’s thoughts slipped away like jelly. 

His head slapped against the pavement, but he was too far away from the pain. Too far away from anything, except... 

As it chewed his flesh, its teeth began to click together, the noise louder and louder with every passing second. He felt like screaming. That clicking... 

Click. 

Click. Click. 

Click click click clickclickclick -- 

It was almost a relief when it leaned down to tear off another piece. 

THE END

Click.