THIRTEEN - Prey (Part 1)
Grotty Greg was pretty sure that he would find Josie Brown if he just sat in the alley between the Baby Killer's house and the Organic Food Store.
It was true, as his friends had told him, that Baby Killer, or now just BK to keep it simple, might be long gone, but Grotty knew he had no chance of finding him if the coward slipped out into the beach crowds at Bondi. But if he didn't, if BK stayed nearby, he might try to get back into his room. Grotty Greg was willing to bet BK would try to come back.
Grotty's friends - Moey, Seb and his twin sister who they all called, Poo - thought Grotty was on a fool's run, and they all went home to have warm dinners and watch TV in their cozy living rooms.
For Grotty, he had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. He had been a big boy since the moment he came out of his mum at better than seven kilos, or the size of a small turkey. Since that time, he felt like he had to be the guy who ate a small frog during science class, the guy who forced other guys to eat worms on a dare, the guy who cut Bean Kelly's braid off while she bent over to pick up a pencil in homeroom.
Grotty was the guy who threw a stink bomb into the girl's locker room, planted tissues and a bra in Desta Orange's locker so everyone thought she stuffed, and he routinely dropped little Bertie Hood head first into whatever rubbish cans were nearby.
No one was immune from his special brand of cruel humor.
Grotty perfected the art of being revolting to everyone, and he was feared, and people laughed at his terrible jokes. But no one ever made fun of him or his considerable thickness, which was the thing that scared him the most, the thing he would do anything to prevent.
"Get them before they get you," was the force that drove his life.
But that was changing. The folks of Tamarama looked at him in a new way because of the video he took of Josie breaking out of school. He could be the good guy, he saw that now, and he wanted to be the good guy more than anything.
That's why he was hunkered down in the dark just under Josie Brown's bedroom window, his feet planted up against the side of the Organic Food Store. He was going to do what the police and the neighborhood couldn't do - catch BK. Then, after he caught Josie Brown, he would save the kids.
Grotty Greg was not going to be grotty anymore. For once in his life, he was going to be the hero.
Grotty was thinking of that - being the hero - hoisted on people's shoulders, being cheered, maybe making a few morning news shows, when he heard the first sounds. At first it was footsteps, which he figured were just reporters coming out of their news vans, but then he heard the voices. Low, hushed whispers, male and female, a grunt of some kind.
Grotty got up moved out from under the bedroom window, over to a garbage can. He folded himself up as small as his large frame would fold.
He fumbled in his pocket to find his phone. It was night now, but there would be just enough light from the lamp post if he needed to shoot video. He poised his phone, camera ready.
And he waited, for the chance of his life.
&&&&
Grotty saw the whole thing.
He watched Josie, Emerald and Manhattan, and her mangy mutt, climb in through the window. They were in the Organic Food Store. They never saw him. Which was good because he got them all on his phone, their faces, their words, everything. There was no doubt about what they were doing. Obviously they were keeping the kids there. They probably were going into feed them.
"Why didn't the police ever check there?" he thought to himself, scrolling back through the video on his phone.
"Didn't they search all the buildings on Tamarama Street?"
"Stupid cops," he muttered and thumbed the button for his email.
It surprised him that Josie had accomplices, he was a such a loner. In fact, Grotty Greg had really never seen BK speak to anyone or hang out with anyone. He seemed lone wolfish, but not in a cool way, in a weirdo-psycho-serial-killer kind of way, like he was making bombs in his bedroom or something. Grotty couldn't imagine Josie convincing anyone to commit a crime with him. But obviously he did.
The new girl was a wild card, he didn't know her at all, and Manhattan, well, she was stuck up, hung out with buff surfer dudes, the kind of guys who wore Speedos. Grotty hated guys who wore Speedos on principal, and also the girls who hung out with them.
"So why were the three of them taking kids?" he wondered.
He didn't know. Couldn't even imagine it. But he knew he had to find out. This was his chance to save the kids, to be noticed for his bravery and smarts. This is the day that would change his life.
Grotty Greg pushed his big thumb into the keyboard and sent the video to everyone on his contacts list, including Angus Louden, all the kids at school and Rhonda Blathers. In no time, they would all be here, at the Organic Food Store, to see him save Trinket and Marty.
Greg Umple looked up and saw that they hadn't closed the side window.
"Perfect," he heard himself say.
It was like the store was inviting him in.
Grotty pulled himself up onto the trash can, and heaved himself through the window. He landed in a bucket of mops, and amid all the crashing and clattering of brooms and dust pans, he missed the window sliding shut, the lock bolting closed.
Not that it mattered. Nothing would stop him from being inside the Organic Food Store. This was the day that was going to change everything in his life.
He just knew it.
&&&&
It was easy to get in the side window. They knew it would be.
But what struck Josie as odd the minute he fell through the window, onto the floor, somewhere to the left of where he landed the last time, on the dead baby skeleton, was the smell.
It wasn't like that before.
It was acrid, sweet, rotting.
Like something was dying. The others, Emerald and Manhattan, with Bacon poking out of the top of her back pack, smelled it too.
Bacon grumbled low, sniffing the air, and Manhattan put a hand gently on his head to comfort him, and then put him on the floor, letting him nose around.
"It's okay, boy."
But they all knew it wasn't. Something had gone terribly wrong in the Organic Food Store.
That's when Josie heard something - the crackling and scurrying of something below him. He looked down, a roach, a big one, stumbled along the pitted wooden floors and tumbled under an old dusty table and then scurried under the door to the cold room.
"Just a roach," he said.
He was used to seeing them under the kitchen sink, behind the washer. Sydney was hot and cockroaches loved the warm climate. They were in every house, and they could fly.
"I hate roaches!" Manhattan squeaked and lifted herself up on her toes to try and avoid any more that might be floating around.
"Figures." Emerald said, rolling her eyes, wondering why anyone would be afraid of a little bug.
She bent down, and squashed the bug with your fingers, and wiped them off on her pants.
"That was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen," Manhattan said.
"We have to go through the cold room to get to the market," Emerald said, adjusting her pack, and holding a crow bar in her hand. She gave Manhattan a quick look, who was still looking a little green.
"Get over it, will ya?" Emerald asked and walked toward the cold room.
"Scratch, scratch, scratch..."
Josie put his hand out to stop Emerald.
"Listen!" Josie whispered.
It was quiet for a minute, then more scraping, and clawing.
"Scratch, scratch. scratch..."
Another cockroach came crawling out of the paneled walls and stumbled over Josie's shoe.
Then another, And another. All heading to the cold room, and scurrying under the door.
Emerald looked around, and shined her head lamp at the walls.
That's when she saw it.
Roaches everywhere. They were crawling up and down the walls, over the dusty piled up furniture, over the floors, making nests in old volumes of cookbooks. They were madly frantic. Going in and out of the cracks in the door, back and forth, with a purpose that Josie figured involved food.
Bacon lunged at a fat roach walking by and barked at it, turning it over with his paw and licking it with his tongue. When it hustled away, he put his head on his paws and whined.
Manhattan was freaking out. Her face had gone green. She looked like she might faint.
"It's okay," Josie said to her. He tried to sound sure of himself.
"They won't hurt you."
Manhattan pushed her hood up over her head, so none could fall into her hair and get tangled up, and pushed her sweatshirt sleeves down over her arms.
"Let's go," she said, her voice hardened over the fear.
"They are just feeding. They have no interest in us," he heard his voice be reassuring and calm. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about. This amazed him, that he could carry it off, because his head was filling with a dense smokey cloud.
Bangkok was on the move, coming closer.
He would be there soon. He was hungry, so hungry, for the children.
Josie had this crazy urge to grab a particularly thick roach off the floor and pop it in his mouth.
He summoned Teta. Called her to him in his thoughts, and heard the old lady's voice speaking Arabic, in some kind of trance.
A prayer for him? Maybe?
The words made him stronger and he felt the foggy feeling lift a little.
"We have to move," he said.
He pulled the door of the cold room open, and the three of them were hit hard in the face with a blast of heat and the stench of rotten meat. The cold room was no longer cold. The Meat Ghosts weren't moving at all.
It was weirdly silent and still.
The three of them walked into the room. Emerald flicked a roach off her sleeve and put a handkerchief over her face.
"Gross," Manhattan said behind her.
They could barely breathe in the stink. Josie hit the light switch and the lights stumbled on, blue, glitching, buzzing on one second and off the next. They struggled to adjust their eyes.
Josie walked over to one of the Meat Ghosts. It was huge and pink and veiny and hanging there on a hook. It was silent, but something in Josie's head prepared for it to jump out at him.
He got close enough to touch it, leaning his body in only a little, and twirled the carcass around on it's hook, so the hollowed out belly was right in front of him.
And there it was.
A belly of rats and roaches and maggots boring into the pink tissue and devouring it clean. The creatures tore into the muscle and sinews of the belly, roaches streamed in and out, up and down the legs, and the rats squeaked as they ripped at the flesh. Josie looked down and saw that thousands of maggots made a stupendous nest in the crook of the rib cage, and they swarmed out and around the bones like a great colony of miniature hyenas in the ecstasy of a feeding frenzy.
Bacon barked frantically. Manhattan held him back, but he was snapping and growling as if he were some ferocious attack dog.
Emerald turned away disgusted at the carcass. But when she looked up again, she saw that Josie did not turn away. He was staring at the rotting Meat Ghost, standing there, mesmerized by it, and she remembered that this had happened before.
She ran to Josie and tried to pull him back. But he was steadfast.
"Josie, it's Bangkok. Fight back!" she screamed at him.
But Josie had gone somewhere in his head.
He saw the meat in all its pink, perfect deliciousness. Felt the hunger in his belly, saw the enjoyment of the creatures excavating inside the carcass. He heard Emerald scream at him. Heard his name, but it was in some far off distant fog, that meant nothing to him. It was better to be the monster, better to have the power, better to be strong and feared.
Better to be Bangkok, than Josie.
Josie opened up his arms, wide and far, felt the power of Bangkok fill him. Felt the light blink on and off as if the room was being charged by a giant bolt of lightning.
Bangkok was close. Very close. Or maybe he was Bangkok all along. Maybe they were the same.
And then he dove into the carcass. Pushing aside the rats and roaches, he pushed his face into the juicy, stinking meat, felt the rancidness fill his nostrils, and he bit down into the gloriousness of it. He let the blood fall over his face and into his mouth, letting all of it fill the vast emptiness that wanted to be filled.
He had no idea how long he was in the carcass, gouging out the belly with his teeth, or how much meat he consumed.
What he remembered was waking up to Bacon standing over him, licking the blood off his face.
&&&&
"OMG, that was disgusting, even for me," Emerald said.
"Does he always do that biting raw meat thing?" Manhattan asked.
The two of them were standing over him. Josie blinked his eyes open and saw the lights swinging over head, blue and glitchy.
Bacon found a chunk of meat in his neck and was gnawing at it, happily.
"Ugh, my head," he tried to get up, but the world spun around him.
Emerald put her hand on his chest.
"Not going anywhere for a minute," she told him.
"But Bangkok..."
"Is coming. But you have to get your head right."
Josie closed his eyes.
Bangkok was on land now, crawling closer. Josie's brain had turned to mash potatoes. But the hunger was gone. He had eaten, satiated himself and somehow that made his head feel better, less dizzy, less ravenous, less prone to being taken over by Bangkok. Although his stomach was leaden and sick.
He held onto his words and thoughts, tried to clear his head, tried to summon Teta.
No, she was gone. Whatever magic she could've done, she could do no more. He was on his own.
Josie looked up at his friends.
"We have to get the kids now," Manhattan said, there was worry in her voice.
A red light flashed outside the building, pulsing against the walls and making everything look like a seedy bar. It was police, and probably reporters, the whole neighborhood.
"Are you strong enough?" Emerald asked with some urgency.
He nodded yes, and got to his feet, but he didn't mean it. He had no capabilities against Bangkok. Emerald handed him her handkerchief and he wiped off whatever blood Bacon had left. The plan had to be to get the kids out of the Store before Bangkok got there, because surely if they didn't, he would kill them all. And eat the children.
They ran for the door that led into the market proper. Emerald got there first, and yanked it open. She expected some kind of resistance, some trap, but the Organic Food Store wanted them there.
Bangkok wanted them there.
The shop front windows were huge, and they easily saw the chaos exploding on the sidewalks around the store. All of Sydney, maybe all of Australia, was watching them now, knew something was happening, although they all knew the Organic Food Store wasn't letting any of the people on the street see inside.
Emerald could see her house. Her father on the lawn, his arms crossed in front of him, worried, holding himself together.
The rest of them, the neighbors, in house coats and slippers, had come out to see what was happening. Every police cruiser in Sydney seemed to be pulled up, filling the curbs. And the news vans, now they were two deep into the streets, people busily setting up cameras, reporters ready with their microphones, looking for the first scoop.
Or as Josie saw it, the first chance to put him away.
Emerald found an old TV, sitting on a shelf behind a cash register. She turned it on. The video of them breaking into the Organic Food Store was playing.
"Grotty Greg," Emerald said, disgusted.
"Great." Manhattan said.
"Bacon get over here."
But Bacon wasn't listening.
Bacon was clawing at something near the meat department, a dark piece of cloth hastily thrown into a pile next to the cheese case.
"A nest of roaches," Manhattan rolled her eyes.
Whatever made him happy.
They watched the TV. Rhonda Blathers was interviewing two people. She put the microphone
up to their faces and that's when Josie saw his parents. His father, stone-faced and angry. His mother, weeping inconsolably.
Emerald tried to stop him, but he turned up the volume and watched.
"Please find our son....before he hurts someone else," Portland was saying.
"Did you ever think you could raise a child murderer?" Rhonda asked, sticking her microphone in his face, but the question was too much, too pointed.
"No more, please, no more," his mother said, bursting into a fireworks display of tears and moans. She put her hand up to the camera. Portland put his arm around her and shuttled her away.
Then Rhonda looked straight into the camera.
"I'll be talking to the parents of Josie Brown later, but first, our 10 things to look for if you think your child might be a serial killer."
Then, Rhonda smiled, "And now, back to the studio, Dan."
Emerald was right next to Josie, feeling his weight.
"Don't think about this," she said, encouragingly.
"It's not over yet."
But Josie sensed it was. The kids were not in the crab pot. He could see it from where he was standing. The pot was sitting there, torn up, pulled off the wall, empty.
If they didn't find the kids before Bangkok got there, he knew he wouldn't be strong enough to fight him, or save them. And the kids would die.
"We have to look for them," he shouted, and started through the store.
"They have to be here somewhere."
The three of them tore off through the store, upending displays and looking behind counters, under shelves, anywhere two kids could be stashed.
"They aren't here," Manhattan said, meeting Josie and Emerald in the middle of the market, after they had looked in every possible crack and crevice.
"We aren't going to find them, are we?" she asked, her eyes filling with tears. She was sure of it now - she wasn't going to see her brother again.
"I'll find him," Josie said, his eyes as sure and as confident as he could muster.
"I'l find both of them," he said, and he meant it, he wouldn't stop until he found them.
"But, but...how?" Manhattan wanted facts, a plan, a way out.
He knew he couldn't explain how or what would happen next, but he was going to get those kids back or die trying.
"I will. I will find them."
Bacon started barking furiously.
And that's when the black discarded cloth next to the cheese case started to move. It squirmed at first, wiggled, and then, rose up as if it it were a towering black bear reared up on its haunches. The three of them screamed, and Bacon barked ferociously, attacking the creature at its ankles. The creature moved toward them. It's arms long and outstretched, trying to tackle them, grab them, eat them.
The creature kicked at Bacon, but he persisted. He bit its ankles, and growled and snarled, and bit the black cloth until he had bitten a hole, and then using his paw, pulled the black cloth off the creature.
They all gasped.
Grotty Greg. With his iPhone camera trained right on them.
"Gotcha!" said Grotty.
Emerald rolled her eyes. "Got what?"
"You don't know anything," Manhattan said, "And you are stopping us from finding my brother and Trinket, so get out of here, creep."
"He's going to save your brother because he's the one who took him," Greg said, his voice flaring like hot steel and pointing at Josie.
"Where'd you stash the kids, Baby Killer?
"Greg, you need to get out of here, " Josie said.
He felt his head and thoughts grow dense and he knew Bangkok was close, so close. He felt the hunger again, the kids, the monster wanted the kids so bad.
But this time, Josie could see that Bangkok knew where the kids were, and how to get to them. He saw them in his minds eye, the kids terrified, wide-eyed, shrieking, but encased in something.
Josie closed his eyes and tried to delve into his mind harder. That was tricky, he knew. There was a point where he couldn't bring himself back. Where Bangkok would take over and take him. He didn't care. He focused harder, went deeper and deeper into his brain to see where they were.
They were in a tank. A fish tank?...No, no a lobster tank. The one in the back of the store. The big one in the store room that they use to hold the lobsters before putting them out in the market.
It was working. He pushed his mind harder, and fell, almost through a hole in his brain, falling, falling, tumbling down, until he saw them. In the back of the store, in the lobster tank.
And there was water streaming in, rancid, dead sea water, streaming, and soon it would fill the tank and they would both drown. Trinket was a wreck, withering into the corner, coughing out the water, as it slopped and splashed around her. Marty was fighting. He was old enough to know that he wouldn't be able to breathe when the water reacher the top, so he pounded the cover of the tank trying to wedge it open.
They were terrified, cold, their lips purple, their eyes searching frantically.
Josie had to tell Emerald and Manhattan. He tried to climb out of the hole in his brain, fight the smog, come back to them. But Bangkok was on him, slithering through his brain, kicking him back to the murkiness, pulling him down, down.
Josie summoned all his strength, pulled it in from the core of his belly, thought of Teta, her words like a prayer his head. Not her exactly - she was gone - but remembering her grounded him. He imagined her there, talking him through it, that warm, soft, low voice, a whisper of Arabic, a swirl of her magic.
He fought back from under the murk that swallowed him like ocean. He pulled at the monster, and pushed against him, harder and up, harder and up, swimming up through all the confusion, until he saw light coming up, the surface, his head exploding back into reality.
"The kids are in the lobster tank!" he screamed at them, not seeing them, but hoping they were still near and could hear him.
He heard foot steps, running. It was the girls. He heard their steps moving away from him. Bacon was still there growling. And then his head was pulled under the force of the water, the crush of blackness, the sensation of being ripped from the surface, dragged down, the cold of scaly fish skin, the rasp of eels, the wet hunger, the hunger ripping at him from his belly.
Bangkok. Bangkok, the tentacles slamming around him. Going under. Total black.
Josie Brown fell into a clump on the floor. His mind dark and empty. Completely taken over by the monster.
He didn't hear the first eel tentacle slam it's way through the freezer case of the Organic Food Store.