THIRTEEN - Prey (Part 2)
Glass flew everywhere as one giant, slithering eel tentacle slammed through the glass doors, and then another, and, another, until the freezer cases along the far wall were obliterated.
With them came the rush of sea water pouring in.
The doors gave way and flew out into the market, a rush of green sea water slammed through the aisles. The eels slithered through and over the aisles, counters and shelves. They hissed and grabbed boxes and bottles of food and tore them open with their knife-teeth and spit out whatever they didn't inhale back out onto the floor.
They were oily, these eels, and when they moved they secreted a black oily stink, that made trails behind them, so that the room was like the bottom of the sea, while the beasts searched for prey to ease their hunger, in one aisle, down the next, their rabid eyes always searching, their bodies slithering, always moving.
Grotty Greg stood there. Not sure what was happening or where to move. He picked up the imbecilic dog that was attacking his feet. If the eels wanted food, this dog was going to be a little snack. He plucked Bacon under his arm, while the dog whined and wiggled, trying to free himself.
Grotty was not sure at all what he was seeing. He had not even imagined something so great and fearsome in his mind. And so he watched the stinking sea water pool at his shins, and the black tentacle creatures slinking and moving around him.
Bacon, flung himself hard against Grotty, trying to get away and Grotty dropped his phone in the water.
"Stupid, mutt!" he yelled at Bacon, and swatted him on the top of his head, a little too hard.
Bacon squealed.
Then, not sure of what else to do, he ran as fast as he could through the thick swells of water, dog under his arm, and dove behind one of the check out counters in the front of the store. He did a whopping belly flop, and Bacon yelped, and water splashed up onto the front windows and the cash register, like great tidal wave.
And that's when the eels heard him and Bacon, and turned toward the sound and echo of the water. Food, they thought in their primitive, simple brains.
Get the food.
&&&&
Manhattan and Emerald could not get the lid off the tank.
What they found when they got back to the lobster tank in the little alcove in the very back of the store, was two small kids terrified and very aware that there was a stream of water filling the tank, and when that water got to the top, and there was no more space for them to open their mouths and breathe air, when it covered them completely, they would have seconds until they died.
Manhattan thought the bottom of her world was going to fall out when she got to the tank and saw Marty, his eyes, wide and on fire, banging his hands against the lid of the tank, the water, skimming his chest.
When he saw her he stopped and pushed his face and hands to the glass.
"Ra- Ra," he said it softly, it was his name for her.
"You came." There was relief in his voice, as if he was certain now he and Trinket would be set free.
"Of course, squirt," she said, as if she had just found him in the backyard of their house.
"We'll get you out. No sweat," she said, as if it were just that easy.
"Where's Bacon?"
Manhattan looked around. She wasn't sure, but he was never far away. Teta said he was like velcro. She wasn't worried. He would turn up.
"He's playing guard dog!" she said.
"You know he thinks he's a doberman."
He smiled a little. This gave him comfort.
"We're here, baby," Emerald said to Trinket, tapping lightly on the window to get her attention.
Trinket was in bad shape. She was balled up into the corner. She was smaller, so the water, pooled around her neck. Her face was scarlet, almost blue, and puffy. And she was unable to speak or shout out. She crunched down in the corner, her lips were two blue quivering caterpillars.
That's when they heard the shower of glass, metal scraping against metal, the rush of water, the hiss of eels.
"We don't have time to waste. Let's do this!" Emerald screamed.
Manhattan jumped up on the top of the tank in one jump. She was so athletic and agile, Emerald thought for a second she might be a super hero or something. Emerald threw Manhattan a screw driver and a hammer and she jammed the metal end into the corner of the tank, and tried to pry a hole there.
"It's not coming!" Manhattan screamed.
"Why isn't it coming?"
"Because he wants these kids!" Emerald said, wedging her crow bar between the lid of the tank and the glass. She pushed down on the crow bar. It caught and the bar went flying off over her shoulder.
"He's not getting these kids!" Manhattan screamed back.
Emerald watched her crow bar slam to the ground and slide out toward the cookie aisle.
"Damn!"
She ran out to retrieve it. She could see that the market was filling up, just like the tank. It sloshed at her knees. She bent down to find the crow bar, feeling along the floor with her hands. Nothing Nothing. It disappeared.
"Damn it!" she shouted, as if swearing might help.
She needed the crow bar if they had any chance of wedging off the lid.
Then she felt it, something, grabbed it.
And then, from around the corner, meeting her face-to-face, its jaws wide and slamming, an eel. She dropped the crow bar and fell over, shrieking. The eel was in her face, rasping, its teeth bared and hissing, it's tongue pulsing.
She felt the crow bar with her foot.
"Keep it together, Emerald" she coached herself, as the eel made it's way around her, and would itself up close to her, its slimy coldness touching her, its tongue dancing on her cheek, the stench of rotting fish blowing onto her face.
She swore she heard the eel say, "Tasty", as it opened its huge mouth and came down on her neck with blunt force.
She felt the slam on her body, teeth puncturing skin. Her whole body crumpled up on her.
"Stay calm...stay calm," she told herself.
She pushed her foot to the end of the bar and stepped on it, hard, so that it flipped up through the water and into the air. She caught it with one hand, and brought it down across the eels head, so that it screamed and wailed and fell off her body, taking with it small chunks of her flesh, and leaving her bleeding and scraped.
Emerald raised the crow bar over her head and drove the whole long spike into the soft flesh of the monster, right between its eyes, and right through the head into the wooden floor, so that it writhed and wailed and contorted in the water, its head nailed into the wood.
It died there, looking up at her.
"Well, so much for that crow bar," Emerald muttered and looked out into the market to see if she could see Josie.
He wasn't there.
"Not a good sign."
She ran back to the tank. It was on her and Manhattan now to free the kids.
&&&&
When Emerald got back to the tank, she secretly hoped she would see Manhattan pulling the kids out, but that wasn't what she found.
The water had risen in the tank. Trinket had her face pushed up into a tiny bubble of air in the corner, and it was coming to Marty's chin.
He was crying now, and Manhattan stood on top of the tank, beating the sides with a small sledgehammer she had foraged from Emerald's back pack. Manhattan was strong, both inside and out, Emerald could see that, but it didn't seem to matter.
Manhattan took long hard swings at the tank, but each time the glass held.
Emerald tried to see where the water was coming from. There was no hose, no outside source. The sea water was streaming in from the top of the glass, as if it were an infinity pool. The water started no where, and ended no where.
They weren't getting the kids out.
Manhattan stopped swinging for a second and let the sledge hammer fall to the floor. She was sweating and nearly out of breath. She had given everything she had to this, to saving Marty and Trinket.
"What can we do?" she asked Emerald, her voice limp and frail, her eyes filling with tears.
She jumped down off the tank now, and pressed her fingers against the glass. Marty moved over to her and did the same, his fingers right against hers, only the glass between them.
"It's okay," he said, before she could say anything.
Her tears were big now.
"I don't know how to save you," she said to him.
"It's okay," he said, the water now sloshing his nose.
"It's okay. You save me everyday."
He had minutes, maybe seconds to live, and he was the brave one, the one comforting her. It was almost too much for her to bear.
"Love you, Ra-Ra."
"Love you, too, Squirt."
Manhattan laid her cheek against the glass, and Marty held his breath went under water, and kissed her there. She could even feel him through the glass. Then he was up on the surface again, breathing, looking at her. His eyes so clear. He was not afraid to die.
And then, without any warning, Manhattan had had enough of goodbyes and bad things happening to her family, and she spun around and splashed through the water that was now pouring in to the alcove, and coming up to her hips. She swam out into the market, climbed up onto a display of light bulbs and raised her arms in the air.
"C'mon you stupid, Monster!...I'm over here."
"Right here....you want to take him. You can take me too!"
Emerald considered that Manhattan, in her deep grief, was doing one of those impetuous anger-fueled stupid things again. It seemed asinine to bring the monster to them. But then what if somehow they could make that work for them? Her mind went through a list of possibilities.
What if they could use the monster to free the kids?
Not that they had any choice. The eels had seen Manhattan, couldn't miss her, and they moved like submarines through the water, streaming down the aisles toward them, squealing with hunger and joy.
Emerald ran back to the tank.
"Hold on!" she said to Marty and Trinket, who were now nearly covered in water.
Marty had swum to the other end of the tank and pulled Trinket to him. She had passed out or she was dead, Emerald couldn't tell, but Marty was holding her face up into the last spaces of air in the tank. Emerald grabbed a small metal cart that was used to stock the shelves and pushed it in front of the tank. Then, as hard as she could, until it slid off its base, she pushed the tank, pushed and pushed until it fell off onto the cart.
The kids tumbled, but Marty found the last air pocket and pulled Trinket and himself into it. Emerald pushed the cart through the water, past the fish department into an aisle that had several eel tentacles teeming toward them. She positioned the lobster tank right there in front of them, the middle of the aisle.
She noticed the tank was full now, sea water had covered Marty and Trinkets heads. Marty was holding his breath, but this wasn't going to last long. He was blowing bubbles out of his mouth.
"C'mon, you suckers, here we are!" she said as she jumped up onto a nearby shelf.
"Come and get us!"
And as she said the words, two eels, black as truck tires, came streaming up out of the water and slamming into the tank. A blue current of electricity flashed and the tank popped like a toy, and glass went flying everywhere. Emerald went flying back, slamming into the cheese counter, the kids fell straight into the water, the electricity still thrumming through their bodies.
And the eels, like a swarm of bees, came beating down on the children, their teeth gnashing, their bodies, electric and pulsing blue light, and their mouths poised to scoop them up.
And just as they were about to eat them, feast on their delicate bones and delectable young bodies, there was a great stir from the freezer cases, an angry sea of water storming in, white waves, slapping against the shelves and the counters, the air pitted with the smell of deadness, and more eel tentacles streaming in, and after them, the great heaving, pulsing jelly-like body of the squid.
Bangkok. There to take them all.
&&&&
Bangkok, and ocean, filled the store.
Emerald pulled herself out of the cheese bin and climbed up on a high shelf, just above the water line. She saw that Bangkok was clearly some kind of Kraken, a squid, for sure. The eels, she realized, grew out of his face, as if the meat and tissue of his face were a fertile garden for them. His eyes were dark fish eyes, moving and scouring for movement. His body was a long pink cone, that did not seem to yet be tarnished by the black rot of the eels.
Emerald could see now why Bangkok needed to eat children to energize. He was nothing but a scavenger yard for the hungry eels, a host for them to feed on. He had to feed on young meat to stay alive. They eels were not his companions, his servants. They were his predators.
They were eating him alive.
Emerald looked across the aisle and saw Manhattan pulling Marty up onto the display with her. He was okay. And then she watched Manhattan hop into the water and pull Trinket's limp body into her arms, and bring her up onto the display.
She pushed soup cans off the high shelf and laid her out, wrapped her in blankets and towels she found in one aisle and put her mouth on hers and tried to breathe for her.
Manhattan was not unaware that Bangkok was there, and ready to take them. He was huge and unmissable, but she didn't care. The kids were out of the tank, and Manhattan saw that they had a chance to survive this, and she was going to take that chance.
They were going to save the kids.
Emerald checked for eels, jumped off the high shelf, waded across the aisle, and climbed up to where Manhattan was. She grabbed a few blankets on the way and handed one to Marty.
He wrapped himself up.
"That was pretty cool what you did," Manhattan said to Emerald, between breaths for Trinket.
"You know, getting the eels to burst the tank?"
"It was luck."
"Just thanks." Manhattan said and looked over at Marty, who was blue, and exhausted and scared, but alive.
And that's when they noticed the water was rocking harder now, a torrent of angry waves, lapping at them. Bangkok had moved to the front of the store. He was looking at something. His great maw was open and he was slamming into the water to feed on something. They felt the water rock and heave. Felt the mist and the stink and the oil.
They watched the great terrifying beast take someone, a boy, into his mouth.
Manhattan and Emerald looked at each other.
"Josie," Manhattan whispered.
The monster rose up out of the water.
He raised his great head into the air, and with it all the eels, like black flags unfurling across the miraculously infinite ceiling of the Organic Food Store.
And then, the eels and the monster himself, bellowed the great guttural wails of predators who got their prey.