Beast With Eight Arms

About the Book

A large octopus terrorizes a seacoast town in California. The story begins with it attacking a fishing boat in a bad storm. Sailors shoot at it, with no effect on the beast. The boat capsizes from a huge wave because no one is in the bridge. A tentacle smashed a window in the bridge and the crew was afraid to man the steering wheel. They manage to send an S.O.S., picked up by a Coast Guard Cutter and Doctor Jeff Thorpe, a Marine Biologist. The cutter goes to the area of the stricken vessel, but they find nothing. The boat has already sunk. Doc Thorpe consoles the captain’s wife the next day when he meets her on the beach, on his way to work. That same day, a lobster fisherman finds all of his lobster pots tampered with and thinks it’s the work of some college kids looking for some kicks. He gets his gun and prepares to wait all night to scare them with it, not knowing it’s the work of the octopus. The octopus sneaks up on the fisherman, and knocks him overboard and eats him. This is witnessed by Willie, the town drunk. He screams and stumbles down the street. A police car sees him. He tells him what happened. The cop thinks he has the DTs and brings him into headquarters. They think he has the DTs too. The next day two young men, planning to water ski, find a human skull. The fisherman’s wife identifies it as her husband because of the perfect set of teeth, with an eyetooth missing due to a barroom fight. Doc tries to get the Mayor of the town to close the beach. He refuses. Closing the beach will hurt the summer tourist trade that the merchants of town depend on to stay in business. Doc takes it upon himself to warn the citizens by rowing his rowboat up and down the beach, warning people to stay away. He almost gets arrested for his effort. There’s a plastics company, Wesley Products, that’s indirectly responsible for this octopus’ actions. The owners of this company, Mapes, Wellington and DuBois, hire Ted Canarsie to dump drums of Polychlorinated Biphenyl, a deadly byproduct of making plastics, into the ocean. Some of the drums leak, spilling that poison for miles around, which poisons lobsters and crabs that this octopus normally feeds on. One of the owners of this company, Nat Mapes, owns a yacht. He goes to sea with it with his six best friends and his fiancé. The octopus attacks the yacht, killing everybody except Mapes. While he’s in the water, he thinks he and his partners are responsible because they dumped that poison into the sea. He pleads with God if he survives he will squeal on his partners. He is spared and he does confess to the police. Doc finds out about this and he talks to Mapes. He finds out where they’ve been dumping. DuBois, Wellington and Canarsie are arrested, with Canarsie almost killing Mapes in jail. Doc submerges to the ocean floor in the Marine Biology’s submarine. There he finds many drums, dead and dying sea animals, and the octopus. The octopus attacks the sub, but Doc had it electrified to fend off the beast. Doc contacts a friend of his, an Admiral Brin, to clean up the mess. He also gets an idea how to kill this octopus; by depth charges. He contacts this same Brin, who tells him he’ll re-commission a PT Boat with a depth charge expeller. They go after this creature to chase them, Doc and a Navy Seal, in a small two-man, open cockpit sub. A depth bomb dispenses the octopus at the expense of the submarine. Doc saves the Navy Seal’s life by swimming through shark-infested waters by buddy breathing.

About the Author