CHAPTER TEN - Belly
"You're awfully quiet."
Emerald hadn't said one word to her dad in the jeep.
She was still trying to come to grips with the idea that her friend had tried to kill her. And mostly that somehow, despite her best intentions, she broke her promise to Trinket and left her in the Organic Food Store. She had no recollection of how she got out. But she knew, she would never have left on purpose without Trinket.
She imagined her trapped there. Terrified, alone. Emerald looked out through the open window and watched the sea crashing into the cliffs, felt the salty breeze sting her cheeks.
"Okay, if you won't talk...I will," said her dad, cheerfully.
"Moo and Derby and I spent the day out on the reef in the boat." he said, not looking at her.
Moo and Derby were Howard's pals, and fellow marine biologists. They all went to graduate school together and often worked together on projects. Right now, they were focused on why small and medium-sized fish were disappearing off the coast of Sydney.
"All the shrimp are gone. The mussels, clams, lobster, squid, the bottom feeders," he said, turning the car off the cliff road and pulling into the street where Emerald's school was. She could've walked, but she figured her dad wanted to check in.
Emerald kept looking out the window.
"The coastal life is being decimated. We haven't seen a shark, a tuna, a mackerel, a sting ray in weeks."
"It sucks," she said, dismally, still looking out the window, "...probably global warming, climate change..."
"Sure, okay.....Or a giant, rogue sea monster, maybe?"
Emerald turned and looked at her dad.
"What?"
"I've been studying the board in your room..."
She couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Wait. You looked at my private research?" she was turned to him now, her anger flaring like a bottle rocket.
"You know we don't breach each other's research."
The jeep pulled up to the school. There were news vans and police cars parked everywhere.
Emerald threw open the door and jumped out. Slamming it hard.
"How could you look at my private stuff, dad?"
"Emerald," Howard said, in a calm voice, leaning across the seat.
"I wasn't snooping on you. I mean it's not like I read some diary entry about how you liked some boy," he said with a smile.
Howard almost never got angry. He was calm in his heart.
"Ew, dad...shut up!" Emerald said, her arms crossed over her chest. Then, she laughed. She couldn't help herself. Howard laughed, too.
"Yeah, I'm not ready for you to like boys...or girls...or whoever you decide to date, you know, whenever you're ready...." Howard said, fumbling for the right words.
"...which hopefully will be after I'm dead."
"Ew dad, shut up. My brain is melting," she said, grabbing her head like it was falling apart.
" I can't talk about this with you."
"I know...' Howard said, pushing the hair back on his head
"I wish your mother was here...She knew how to talk to you about everything."
They were silent. They pretended to watch something outside and far away.
"Your research is good," he said, finally.
They were both happy not to dwell in their sadness and science helped distract them.
"I had discounted that a super-fish could exist, but it's possible."
"It's happening, dad," she got back in the jeep, and told him everything that happened.
It was an unbelievable tale. The more cynical part of him, the dispassionate academic, wanted to discount all of it, but his daughter's face was just like Imogen's when she was on the trail of some scientific puzzle. There was nothing dispassionate about either of his daughter or his wife, he considered, as he watched Emerald tell him everything that happened at the Organic Food Store.
He couldn't turn away from his daughter, even if all of it seemed implausible and slightly crazy. And he wanted to help her find Trinket, and if there was a possibility they could do that, they had to try it.
Howard and Emerald hugged it out in the jeep. After school, they planned to pool their research. Between them, maybe they could save Trinket.
Maybe they could even save Josie.
&&&&
Emerald threw her backpack on the bed. She checked her phone and saw there were 72 text messages, which was a lot since she barely had time to get to know anyone at school.
Something big was happening, and she was pretty sure it wasn't good.
It was a video.
She sat on her bed, threw her shoes and socks in the corner, unzipped her hoodie, and dumped it on the floor.
She clicked the button on her phone and watched the video. It was Josie, climbing out of the bathroom window of what could only be the boys room. Then some movement, the screen shifting and moving, and Josie sitting in the tree outside school.
Whoever shot the film, and she had a good idea who it was, edited in words on the bottom of the screen: Josie Brown, escaped child kidnapper, on the loose in Tamamara.
She noticed that the video had gone out to every kid in their school and that a stream of messages and had cropped up discussing it. Kids formed gangs to find Josie, headed up by Grotty Greg. They wanted to get to him before the cops did. Maybe torture him a little with pipes and bush knives before they turned him over.
Emerald pulled her t-shirt up over her head and flung it on the floor. She unbuttoned her jeans. She needed to be comfortable to think.
"OH. MY. GOD. STOP!!"
She jumped and screamed.
Josie came out of the closet with his hands over his eyes.
"I don't want to see you naked," he whimpered.
"Really, you're scared of naked girls, Giraffe Boy?"
She breathed out, relieved, and worked the t-shirt back over her body, and buttoned her jeans.
"You can look now..." she said.
"...and what are doing here, Josie? I mean isn't it enough you tried to kill me, and you left Trinket in that-that-haunted store with fish who have legs and big fat sponge heads," her arms were flying around her head, and she was exasperated and talking so fast.
"...and oh, oh, oh, this is the best, you are basically now mind-melted with Bangkok," her hands made an exaggerated melting together gesture around her head.
"There is a gang of kids looking to beat you senseless for escaping the police at school," she shoved her phone at him and he saw that someone had filmed him leaving the bathroom. By now, everyone was looking for him.
Emerald was still yelling at him.
"I'm not sure who is the bigger predator, you or Bangkok, and you're..."
"Marty's gone."
That was all he could say.
She had a hundred questions all at once and wanted to blurt them out at the same time, but she couldn't find her voice.
"Marty? Who's Marty?" she hadn't quite learned all the names of the kids yet.
The boy who lives down the street...His older sister has the..." Josie made a swooping gesture over his head like Manhattan's faux hawk.
"Yeah, his sister's in my science class..."
"Manhattan," he said.
"Marty is gone. Bangkok took him....Or I-I-I took him. The police are looking for me right now."
Emerald raced to the window and looked out. She saw squad cars, news vans converging on the street, and throngs of neighbors coming out their houses to see what was happening. A helicopter sat whirling in the air above her house. Then, she saw Manhattan, the big hawk unmissable in the crowd.
Emerald had not gotten a firm read on all the kids at school, but she wasn't entirely sure she liked Manhattan. Where Emerald liked her books, her maps, her adventures, the deep parts of the ocean, Manhattan seemed like a slacker. Too tan, too eye-shadowed, her shorts just a little too short. She was their age, but already she hung out with an older crowd. Her friends were surfer dudes on the beach and skate kids at the park, like she was too cool to just have normal friends.
Manhattan had all kinds of hard edges. Emerald was sure she had secrets. Probably ugly ones. And what kind of a name was Manhattan anyway?
"I see Manhattan," Emerald said to Josie. He came to the window.
"Right there, with her dog."
"She's looking for him," Josie said, watching Manhattan run past the Organic Food Store, calling Marty's name, Bacon at her heels.
"Little does she know, he's right there." Emerald said, her voice trailing off.
They heard the front door open and close.
"Emerald!"
It was her dad.
"Crap!" Josie whisper-shouted.
"I gotta get outta here."
"You home, honey?"
"Closet!" Emerald whisper-shouted.
"Just a sec, dad!"
Emerald stuffed Josie into her closet, so that he went flying backwards into it, which caused a box of shoes on the high shelf, to come raining down on top of him.
"Ow!"
"Shush!'
"Jeez, unpack a box, will ya?" Josie said, while Emerald pushed the door closed.
Emerald opened the bedroom door.
"Hey dad...Just trying to clean up," but they both looked around the room and saw it for the mess it was.
"Nice job!" Howard said sarcastically, a big smile plastered across his face.
He stepped into the room. He was holding a thick pile of papers and an iPad.
"Did you hear about the boy down the street?" Emerald asked.
"I did...you think the disappearances are related?" Howard asked over his glasses.
Emerald nodded and stood next to the closet as if her body was blocking it from view.
"Look, I've been thinking a lot about what you said..." Howard started. He moved a pile of sweaters to one side, pushed a pile of dirty socks away, and set all his research out on the floor. He pushed the home button on his iPad.
Emerald took a seat next to him.
Thud.
Emerald threw an annoyed glance toward the closet door, but Howard didn't seem to notice.
"Okay, look at this," Howard said, rolling out a big piece of paper with lines drawn into it, and tapping on the iPad screen.
"I think your Bangkok is a Kraken," he said.
"A what?"
"A Kraken...." Howard said, cueing up a video on his laptop.
"See, for many years, sailors and fishermen believed that giant squid or octopi could be found in the ocean. They were often so large they could be seen lying as still as a land mass on the water, like an island, and sometimes, when they were alive, they could rise up and sink boats and pull grown men into the water."
"Check this out." Howard said, and showed Emerald a wordless, soundless film of a giant squid, moving through water.
"This was taken by our documentary team at the bottom of the ocean. This cephalopod, a squid, is huge, and its the only one ever photographed. It's maybe 100 feet, and with all kinds of power. It can easily kill humans, or just about any sea creature out there, even sperm whales.
"But aren't Kraken a myth?"
Emerald got up and pulled the curtain back on her research board. She pointed to an old black and white pencil drawing on yellowed paper of a huge squid, its tentacles stretching out of the ocean and grasping two huge ships, tossing them this way and that, the waves tumultuous, huge, angry, evil black water and foam.
Emerald leaned in close and saw the little figures falling overboard, terrified, helpless humans, the monster rattling the ships like plastic toys. She thought of Bangkok, his tentacles coming at her through the Organic Food Store windows. She shivered and rubbed her arms.
"We never knew," Harold said, scratching his head.
"But scientists only understand about 5% of what goes on in the ocean. There could be thousands of different kinds of sea monsters down at the ocean floor. We just haven't developed the technology to see them yet."
"But Bangkok is-is....haunted. Weird things happen. Scuplin. Meat ghosts. It doesn't have sea creature power. It has super-natural power."
"I think you're right."
"You do?" She couldn't help but be a little surprised he believed her story, even though Howard had always seemed to believe all her crazy stories and schemes.
But in the closet, Josie was not buying it. It seemed incomprehensible to him that any adult would take any kid seriously. That they would listen.
In his whole life, no adult, except maybe Grandpa Jack, had ever really listened to him, and he figured grandfathers didn't count. He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to imagine his parents working out theories about Bangkok, strategizing about how to clear his name and take down the monster. But he couldn't because he knew his parents were out on the streets, searching for him, so they could turn him into the police. His parents never believed in him.
A small hurting stone formed in his belly.
Howard got up and went to Emerald's board.
"When I was looking at your research, I realized that we had only been thinking of Kraken as a myth or an exaggeration of the real thing, something that was still a cephalopod." Harold said, grabbing the long paper with the lines on it and tacking it up on Emerald's board.
"But what if this particular Kraken, Bangkok, had his metabolic structure changed..."
"How?...a volcano, an earthquake..." Emerald said spitting out any natural disasters she could think of, until she realized what her father was thinking.
"A tsunami?
"That's right."
"Fukushima," she said, clapping her hands together.
"Yes! That's right." Howard chimed in, feeling equally ecstatic that they were onto something.
"Here's what I'm thinking....After the earthquakes in Fukushima, Japan in 2011, there was a seismic shift," Howard ran his finger along a line on the paper that was straight and then jumped up and down in quick scribbles.
"Marine biologists saw lots of creatures from the deep coming to the surface. Fish and crustaceans that should have stayed in the dark, murky bottom were floating dead on the water in bays and shallow reefs."
"Earthquakes change how sea creatures behave..."
"That's right, so I think many sea animals were already traumatized, their metabolic systems compromised and then two important things happened..."
"The earthquake caused the tsunami," Emerald chimed in.
"That's right," Howard said, "a series of huge walls of water, pounding the coast, put stress on sea life, and brought more deep sea creatures up to the surface and slammed them onto the coast and shallow waters...And then, the Tsunami collapsed the nuclear power plant at Fukushima..."
"Bangkok went nuclear."
"Yes, I suppose you could say that..." Howard said, reaching for his ipad on the floor and punching the keys. There was something about her comment, how blunt it was, that made him smile. It was something Imogen would've said.
Bangkok went nuclear.
Howard felt energized. His head was buzzing with ideas. Emerald felt the same way.
"Radioactive materials that flowed into the ocean have changed him," Howard said, putting a pen to his lips, "It could've made him mutate with other creatures driven into the shallow water...
"...like moray eels."
Howard couldn't help but smile.
"Yes, like moray eels."
They were finishing each other's sentences, a team, just like Imogen and Howard used to be. Howard couldn't help but enjoy it a little, the two of them, scribbling notes frantically, tacking up new ideas on the board, using one idea to generate another. It was the first time they had really been on the same page since Imogen died.
"Mutations....radiation...." Emerald grabbed a marker and started writing furious mathematical calculations on her white board.
Howard looked carefully at Emerald's calculations.
"No wonder Bangkok is so powerful. He's mutating, that's why he can live on land, why he feeds on land and in the sea...And when he goes back out to sea, and immerses himself in the radioactive materials, he regenerates even more, becomes more powerful..."
"And the other creatures that follow him, the Scuplin, the Meat Ghosts, and the things inside the creepy Food Store?" Emerald asked. "Dad, what are they?'
"Well, there are still so many things science cannot explain," Howard said, pushing his glasses up on his nose." "But I think they are sea creatures who's brains and bodies have been distorted by the radiation. It scrambles their brains. They are alive, but not fully alive, like, well, zombies."
Emerald's head dropped into her hands. Zombies. Haunted, radiated super-creatures from the deep. She could barely wrap her mind around it all.
"So there's nothing we can do?...They will just keep stealing kids and growing in power?"
Howard flipped a strand of hair across his head and worked a few buttons on the iPad.
Josie put his ear closer to the door to hear what he was about to say.
"Well, these big Kraken's have a very soft inner belly....right here..." Howard pointed to a small pink area under the tentacles.
"That gets punctured by a Great White bite or harpoon...and well, its over for the Kraken."
"I don't think that helps us, dad. We're fresh out of whale harpoons."
Emerald sunk into herself. This was all looking hopeless. Trinket and Marty were as good as eaten and Josie was going to jail.
"Look, Em, when nuclear reactors melt down and Bangkok is so radiated the creatures follow him, like bugs following light, and they know what he's thinking, do his bidding...they have mind-melted with the Kraken."
"Like Josie?"
Josie heard his name and pressed himself tighter against the door to hear what was being said about him.
"My guess is that Josie is especially sensitive to radiation, " Howard said, "Just being near the radioactive particles changes his thought process...." He wiped his brow with the back of his hand.
"So, do you think Josie hurt Trinket and Marty? Or is he just reading Bangkok's thoughts??"
Josie pressed himself up hard against the door.
"I'm not sure, honey..." Howard said to Emerald and put an arm around her. Together, they stared up at the information on the white board.
"I bet Josie doesn't know either."
And that was when the door gave way, and Josie fell, along with a loud jumble of boxes and bins, out of the closet and onto the floor of Emerald's room.