Free Clickers vs Zombies by Brian Keene, J.F. Gonzalez

a diagonal slit down the soft underbelly of the abdomen, slipping his fingers past the exoskeleton and gently pulling it apart. As he worked, he narrated his findings. Internally, the creature had the same physiological make-up as a common-day scorpion or lobster. As Al removed organs and set them aside for further testing and weighing, he noted several key differences.
    For one, the creature possessed both gills and lungs. Second, its claws were considerably stronger and heavier than those of a common North American Lobster of similar size. The serrated pincers were beautiful, in a way—tinted with a delicate crisscross pattern of red and magenta, deepening to a thick, almost obsidian shade of black at the tips. Alfred took density tests of both claws, then amputated the limbs from the thorax, which was harder than he’d originally thought. He wound up having to use a pair of heavy duty shears, like the kind used to cut through rib cages, just to cut through the heavy cartilage and exoskeleton. Once he had the limbs severed he set them aside for later study. He turned his attention to the tail.
    When he pinned the tail back and prepared to cut into the lower portion of the thorax to get at the lower digestive tract and the reproductive organs, the body began to move. Al gasped and took an involuntary step back, almost colliding with the table behind him. His heart leaped into his chest as he watched the creature writhe on the table. The rear portion of the creature was moving more rapidly, and as Al watched he realized that what he was seeing was a result of post mortem nerve stimuli, which caused the muscles to spasm. A moment later the writhing movement slowed, then ceased altogether. With a relieved sigh, Dr. Post warily approached the table again and resumed his work.
    Holding the tail end of the creature flat to the table, he continued to cut into the lower portion of the creature, revealing the lower intestine and bowel and reproductive area. Surprisingly, Al discovered the creature possessed both sexual organs, which wasn’t normal for most lobster species he knew. He set this set of viscera aside for further tests, then turned his attention to what he presumed to be the poison sac, located at the base of the tail.
    He removed the poison sac, set it aside, then turned his attention to the tail itself. Smoothing it out lengthwise on the table, he marveled at the size of the stinger—it was a good six inches long and as hard as steel. So far, from what he’d seen, the anatomy of its defense mechanism was very much like a common scorpion. With that in mind, Al set the blade of the scalpel at the base of the tail and began to slice downward toward the stinger.
    He was halfway down when a yellowish liquid began to spurt from the tail and pool along the edge of the sheet of plastic the specimen had been laid on. Alfred paid it no mind; that’s what the latex gloves were for. He recognized it as the creature’s venom, which was unusual. In modern scorpions, the venom sac was located in the telson section of the tail, right at the base of the stinger. He paused for a moment, noting that the stinger on this specimen was positioned much differently than that of a scorpion. While the tail was segmented, the last piece—the telson in a normal scorpion—was not present. This meant the venom sac was located elsewhere, probably at the very base of the tail. He would have to root around in that area when he was finished slicing through the length of the tail and pay greater attention to that. Most likely venom was sent through the poison sac through a tube that ran lengthwise along the tail to the hypodermic-like stinger.
    Dr. Post turned his attention to the stinger itself. He sliced carefully at the base of the stinger, sliced through the vein-like tube that delivered venom, then plucked the stinger free. He held it up to the light, noting the hollowed center. My God, he thought. This thing is capable of delivering a huge