Read Crab Town for Free Online

rubble they thought he was injured and no longer able to walk. Some of them would get him, claw slices into his arms and back. But once his leg was free, he would continue smashing them to a soupy pulp.
    Then Jack realized Sailboat wasn’t after crab shit. You only have to kill one crab to get enough crab shit to last several days. Sailboat was in the melt zone just so he could kill crabs. Jack smiled at the strange young man, fascinated by him. He just sat there and watched, to see how long the kid could keep it up.
    But when Sailboat ran across a black plate the size of a basketball court, Jack realized he had to intervene.
    “Get out of there!” Jack called.
    Sailboat turned and looked up at him.
    “Under your feet!” Jack pointed at the black ground beneath Sailboat. “Get off of there!”
    But it was too late. The ground rumbled, knocking Sailboat on his ass. He found himself being lifted two stories out of the rubble. When he rolled off of the black shell and slammed down on a bed of concrete, he found himself looking up at a monster. It was one of the giant mutant crabs that are usually only found deep in the bay.
    Jack pulled a repeater out of his coat and ran down into the crater, shooting at the massive crustacean to draw its attention. But Sailboat didn’t use the opportunity to get away. Once the crab turned toward Jack, Sailboat attacked the thing with his bat. He swung at one of its legs as hard as he could, but the bat just bounced off. It was like trying to chop down an olive tree with a two-by-four.
    The crab roared like an angry elephant as it went for Sailboat. A crane-like pincher came down on him, crashing through a brick wall above his head. The other pincher cut a charred Buick in half as Sailboat ran between its legs.
    Jack aimed for its head and fired a few rounds, planting one of them in the soft spot above its mouth. The crab roared again, turning to Jack. It scuttled like a threshing machine up the hill, pulverizing the asphalt beneath its feet. Jack fired as it came closer, several hitting right in the thing’s face, but it didn’t slow it down. Then his gun clicked empty, just as it hovered over him with a claw snapping in his direction.
    Jack turned to run, but his foot broke through a rusted sheet of metal, pinning him to the ground. As he tried to free himself, he could hear the pinchers thundering behind him, exploding against the earth below as the creature attacked.
    By the time his foot was liberated, the crab was shrieking ferociously. Jack couldn’t tell why the creature was thrashing and roaring, until he saw Sailboat standing on top of the crab’s shell. The large man had climbed the crab’s back and was now hacking at its head, using a jagged old stop sign like an axe. Green sludge sprayed from its face, its eyes mutilated on the stalks. When Sailboat used the pointed edge at the bottom of the sign’s pole like a spear, piercing through its face deep into its brain matter, the crab dropped to the ground.
    Jack rolled out of way, barely escaping the impact as it fell. Then he stared at the monster as its legs curled slowly against its abdomen.
    When they were sure it was dead, Sailboat and Jack leaned against its mossy shell and caught their breath. Jack smiled over at the large white guy and shook his head at him.
    He said, “Why the hell are you picking fights with crabs all the way out here in the melt zone?”
    Sailboat looked over at him. “Crabs piss me off.”
    “You come all the way out to the melt zone just to take out your aggression on crustaceans?”
    The big guy chuckled. “Maybe not.”
    Then he looked up at the red sun and wiped blood from his forehead. “As long as these sewer crabs are breeding out here, kids are going to be dying from doing too much crab shit. Maybe I figured somebody should do something about that.”
    “You were planning on bringing the crabs to extinction, single-handedly, one bat-swing at a time?”
    “Something like