“Bok choy!” he screams, and with a sudden burst he jumps over my head and runs past me to the wall. I topple over, startled.
“Bok Choy, no!” I call after him. But it’s too late. Before Dad can even untangle himself from the skiff, little Bok Choy has scampered up the wall and disappeared the same way Cole went.
“Shit!” I shout, climbing back to my feet. We don’t have any communicators or anything, so there’s no way to tell Cole there’s a teeny-tiny Jin’Kai coming up behind him. And if the kid catches the Devastators’ attention . . .
“Go,” Dad says, reading my mind. “Get him. I can handle this.”
“You sure?” I ask.
“Piece of cake.”
I’m not nearly as spry climbing the wall as Cole or Baby Bok, but I manage to get to the top easily enough and pull my way over to the open exit. I find myself in the promenade gaming area, which is completely dark, given the fact that there’s no power or windows. All of the game consoles appear to be broken, but they’re still standing, giving the little bugger plenty of places to hide. It’s incredibly icy, and I have to be careful not to slip backward as I walk uphill. Whenever possible, I latch on to one of the consoles and pull myself forward, bracing my back against one or another before pushing ahead. I scan the dark room for any sign of movement. I’d call out again, but I’m afraid there might be someone else lurking about whose attention I most certainly do not want to attract.
“Here, Bok Choy,” I whisper under my breath. “Here, little alien freak baby. Er, big alien freak baby.”
After I’ve made it about halfway through the long promenade, I see a shadow flicker out of the corner of my eye. I turn just in time to notice the shadow disappear into a stairwell leading up. I move to the stairs as fast as I can without falling on my ass. When I get inside the stairwell, I hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet on the stairs above me. I bolt up the stairs after him as fast as I can—which is no easy task, seeing as the stairs are, you know, slanted. This kid’s flipping fast for a one-month-old, but I can just see a flash of alien tush as he bolts out of the stairwell onto a level two flights above me.
I run out of the stairwell and realize that he’s led me to one of the sleeping decks, where my old stateroom used to be. The kid could be in any of these rooms, and there’s dozens and dozens of them—there’s no way I have time to search them all. Those fit-bots will only distract the Devastators for so long, and the makeshift explosives Marsden has been cobbling together and Zee’s been setting up—on the off chance we could lead one of the meanies into them—aren’t guaranteed to kill them either.
I’m searching for a naked needle in a haystack, and my time is ticking away fast.
My mind races as I make my way down the shadowy hallway, peeking around each door, and then, finally, it bumps into something. A real desperate shot in the dark, perhaps, but the thought is as good as anything I’m going to come up with.
“I love you . . . ,” I start, my voice quiet but strong. “A bushel and a peck. A bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck.”
It works on Olivia, I figure, so why not on this kid? Unless, of course, he’s gotten used to Devastator lullabies, which probably sound like cats being pushed through a wood chipper.
“A hug around the neck, and a barrel and a heap . . .”
There’s movement down the hallway about four rooms down. I continue singing quietly, channeling all the inner calm I can muster into the words. Calm, calm, calm. I get down on my knees and move no closer.
“A barrel and a heap, and I’m talking in my sleep about you . . .”
First I notice the little fingers wrapping themselves around the frame of the door, and then, seconds later, a pair of little eyes peeks out at me.
“Hey, buddy,” I say gently. “Why don’t you come over here?” He’s hovering in the door now, probably confused why this weirdo stranger is singing to him. But I guess even he figures it’s better than running.
“I love you, a bushel and a peck. You bet your pretty neck I do . . .”
The alien scamp inches out into the hallway and takes a few furtive steps toward me. When I reach out my hand, though, he freezes, letting out a stream of “Bokchoybokchoybokchoy!”
“It’s all right,” I say, reeling my hand back in slowly. I gradually shift my legs underneath me so that I’m sitting cross-legged, and I pat the frozen floor in front of me. Bok Choy relaxes some and inches closer. Then slightly closer. He is staring at my face, fascinated. I don’t know if there are any reflective surfaces where he’s been kept, but he seems to be able to distinguish the difference between me and his current caretakers—I look like him, and I’m guessing those other dudes don’t.
Point: Elvie.
I pat the floor again, and his gaze goes to my hand. I move it in a circle, and he follows it with his eyes, round and round. And then, before he knows it, he’s standing right in front of me.
“Boop,” I say as I touch his nose with my finger. And wouldn’t you know it—this creepy, accelerated-growth-having alien child laughs. Bright, joyful children’s laughter, ringing down the halls.
Loudly.
“Okay, shhh,” I say, putting my finger to my lips. “Quiet. Shhhh.”
“Boop!” he shouts, touching my nose with his finger. “Bok Choy!” He runs his hand down my cheek, over and over, fascinated with my skin.
“Yes, Bok Choy, boop. Now let’s be superquiet so we don’t disturb any—”
“Bok choy!” he screams again, still laughing. Only this time he’s not talking to me. He’s looking over my shoulder. Suddenly my nose is filled with an unmistakably pungent odor, a smell I’ve only experienced once before. The acrid stench invades my nostrils with violent ferocity, causing my eyes to fill with water almost immediately. Slowly I turn and follow Bok Choy’s gaze . . .
Oh well, I think to myself as I look up at the redonkulously large creature that has managed to race here all the way from my deepest darkest nightmare just to end up hovering over us in the hallway.
Life was nice while it lasted.
Chapter Eleven
Wherein the Baddies Give Stan Winston a Run for His Money
Ducky wasn’t kidding about how flipping freaky the Devastators are. The thing standing before me in the hallway has a face like a cross between a Japanese oni mask and a prehistoric bonefish. It stands well over three meters high—and higher than that if you count its top two arms, which arch over the thing’s massive triangle-shaped head. I say top two because the thing has another set of longer, stronger-looking arms in the middle of its torso with very different-looking hands. The top arms have hands ending in four thin articulated fingers, while the second set each have three thick fingers—two long and one stubby. The creature stands on powerful haunches that look like a reptilian version of a minotaur out of Greek mythology, with jagged, sharp cloven hooves, each with three long, sharp-looking toes.
It smells like a zombie’s overripe adult diaper.
“Bok choy!” Bok Choy greets the beast gleefully, pointing at me for the Devastator’s benefit.
The monster arches its back and raises itself slightly higher on its legs, making it seem even taller, stretching its four arms wide.
And then the son of a bitch roars at me.
I don’t throw the word “blood-curdling” around a whole lot, because while I’m never one to avoid a good hyperbole, I really don’t like the visual the expression conjures up. But that’s exactly what my blood does when I hear that awful explosion of sound escape from the Devastator’s mouth—it curdles. The animal’s deep-purple skin (or is it a shell? I can’t really tell, and it seems like an inopportune time to ask. But I will say that the sucker seems to have some sort of exoskeleton like a giant bug or something. It isn’t altogether pleasant) seems to shimmer and pulse with a faint luminescence as it flexes, and its four beady eyes—two on each side of its gargantuan head—focus directly on me.
And all of this is, obviously, creepy and awful. But th
e worst thing about the Devastator is its mouth, for the following reasons:
A) It’s huge.
B) It’s huge.
C) It has, like, approximately one billion teeth.
D) The teeth have joints.
Yeah, seriously. Joints. When the monster opens and closes his hinged jaws, the teeth actually bend in and out on what look like finger joints connected by thin black muscle tissue. The creature bellows a second time, and the teeth extend outward almost as if they were pointing at me.
Good thing I haven’t had much food in the past few days, or I’m positive I’d be sitting in my own feces right now.
To my surprise, Bok Choy also seems startled by the Devastator’s roar. Maybe these guys are typically really lenient when it comes to childrearing. Or maybe after seeing someone who looks more like he does, the kid is realizing that giant roaring monsters with six limbs and flexing teeth are not as warm and fuzzy as he’d been led to believe. Bok Choy clutches me in a big hug, peeking at the Devastator over my shoulder.
The beast, obviously not too cool with his child’s latest choice of friends, takes a heavy step toward us, its toes clanking on the floor almost like metal. I rise up and hold the kid close to me, keeping him against my chest . . .
So that the monster can’t see I’m reaching for my gun.
After easing my hand inside my thermal, my fingers close around the curved grip of Dr. Marsden’s ray gun.
“You really feel the need to act tough and scare a little kid?” I scream at the Devastator, who takes another several steps forward. “You think that makes you a badass, picking on either of us? I probably weigh as much as one of your balls. Assuming you have balls.”
The creature hisses and snaps at me in a weird syncopated pattern, and I realize that it’s probably speaking to me. Or cursing me out. Whatever it’s saying, it makes Bok Choy even more restless than he was.
“Bokchoyflexinnachtrauglebok!” comes the angry goobledy-gook from the boy’s mouth. The Devastator responds with more rhythmic hissing and snapping. Bok Choy clutches me tighter.
“It’s okay, baby,” I coo. I yank the gun out of my top and point it directly at the Devastator, who immediately freezes.
“Yeah, that’s right, not so tough now, are ya?” I say, trying not to shake so hard that I drop the gun (as I’ve been known to do in the past). “Let’s see how tough you look when I blast your ugly face off,” I say.
I really should be thinking up some killer one-liners to send my nemeses out on, ’cause these situations continue to present themselves with far more regularity than I ever could have anticipated just a few months ago, and I continue to find myself at a loss. Still, even if I had a line worthy of a flat-pic action hero, this fellow wouldn’t understand it anyway.
I pull the trigger.
And nothing happens.
My body goes numb. I press the trigger again. Nothing. The gun is dead. In fact, it’s probably been dead a very, very long time.
Marsden, you motherfucker.
“Okay, so . . . ,” I say as the Devastator bares its creepy teeth once more, in what I can only imagine passes for an evil grin in Devastator Town.
“Bok Choy?” I ask my naked little buddy, setting the kid’s feet down firmly on the ground. “You want to learn a new word?”
“Bok choy?”
“Run!”
I take off down the hallway, grasping Bok Choy by the arm. Thankfully, he seems to have no problem following me. Our only hope is if the north stairwell is still passable. Even if it is, it’s all the way at the far end of the deck. And I don’t know if we can outrun this monster.
The Devastator starts galloping after us, and I seriously wish I did not turn around to look, because as he runs, his two strong middle arms come down to the ground and serve as a second set of legs, allowing him to move at tremendous speed. We’ve got a decent head start, but the stairwell is so far away. We are, to put it bluntly, screwed.
And then the whole ship rocks, sending us careening into the wall.
What was that? The ice breaking? One of Marsden’s explosions?
No time to think. The shock has caused the Devastator to slip and fall, giving us a momentary break as he scrambles to right himself. With a burst of speed I didn’t know I had, I make it to the north stairwell and exit the hallway. Bok Choy sprints along easily beside me, seeming to enjoy this game of chase quite a bit.
As soon as we enter the stairwell, however, I discover that the stairs on this level and all those below have completely collapsed. I skate right off the edge and am a hair’s breadth away from falling to my doom, but I just manage to reach out and catch the edge of the last stair above my head and hang on by my fingertips, dangling over a two-hundred-meter drop.
Bok Choy deftly leaps over me and lands high up on the stairs right above me. He bends down and grabs my wrists.
“Careful!” I shout, knowing that he can’t understand me. Fortunately, he does seem to understand that GIANT FLIPPING HOLES = BAD. Even more fortunately, these Jin’Kai fellows apparently gain their strength at a very young age. With minimal effort the little bugger pulls me up onto the stair, saving my life.
At least for the moment.
The Devastator crashes through the doorway, and Bok Choy and I book it up the stairs in the only direction we can go. The ship is starting to shift and turn. It is sinking. Why now, I don’t know, but the way it’s pitching means that the stairs are starting to level out straight, so that climbing them is like running across a ridged floor. It also means the next flight is practically pointed straight up. Impassable.
“Looks like this is our floor!” I shout as we make a run for the door.
We’re on one of the old entertaining decks, which was left abandoned when the ship was turned into the Hanover School. It’s mostly halls of shops and gimmicky restaurants, creating the feel of a chintzy shopping mall. The floor slants steeply downward, too steep to go in any other direction. We skim down the hallway with the Devastator still in pursuit.
Past all the empty store stalls at the end of the hallway lies the battered remains of an ornate set of swinging doors, one of which hangs loosely from its hinges while the other has broken away completely. It’s the old ballroom. I’ve only been in there once, when the Hanover faculty thought the girls might enjoy a salsa dancing program in lieu of our normal aerobics regimen. That lasted about half an hour before it became clear that when both dance partners are sporting big old pregnant bellies, it’s hard to successfully pull off a full dip.
I forgot how enormous the parquet ballroom floor was. It’s easily half the size of a soccer field. Currently it’s scattered with debris—overturned chairs and tables, fallen chandeliers, and assorted bits of caved-in ceiling. There are huge rows of aluminum windows on this level, so that dancers back in the day got a good look at the stars while they tangoed and waltzed. The sun is streaming in, and as my eyes adjust to the sudden brightness, I can see the ice rotate as the ship continues to move. We are very clearly sinking under the surface. Very soon this ship is going to bite it, and it looks like it’s going to take every bit of ingenuity I have to get out alive.
Gee, I could’ve sworn I’ve been here before.
Again, Bok Choy and I have no choice but to follow the slope of the room. Judging by the view out the windows, however, a maneuver like that is going to put us below sea level, and I don’t know how we’re going to make it back out. But I guess we’ll just have to cross that ice bridge when we come to it.
A deafening roar behind us clues us in that the Devastator has discovered our whereabouts. I spin around quick and watch as the behemoth barrels into the room, bringing the remaining door off its hinge. The Devastator stands up on just his hind legs and reaches behind his back with his middle two limbs. When he pulls them around again, he is wielding two enormous blades—straight along the back, rounded at the bottom, and running to a sharp point. Each blade is about the size of Bok Choy.
Nice craftsmanship, th
ough.
The Devastator moves toward us, brandishing his weapons, just as the ship is suddenly jolted again. And then again. Two big blasts, one after another. The first blast shatters the windows along the side of the room. The second sends the ship lurching once more, and in a move so serendipitous it seems preposterous, a chandelier that was still hanging from the ceiling breaks free and crashes down right on top of our would-be assailant, covering him completely in rubble.
“Bok Choy,” I say, “I’m starting to think that someone up there likes me.”
“Bok choy,” Bok Choy replies. He’s kind of a one-note conversationalist.
I turn back around, and my stomach drops. Water is pouring into the ballroom at the far end, and more is sure to follow as the ship continues its vertical realignment.
“We have to get out of here,” I tell my cabbage-obsessed friend. We start back toward the door we came in . . .
And the chandelier lying in front of us flies up into the air. Underneath, the Devastator rears up, fanning his arms out and leaning toward us, gnashing and flexing his grotesque teeth.
The ship bucks sharply and we sliiiiiiiiiiiiiide down the steep incline to the side of the room that is rapidly filling with water. The Devastator loses purchase on the ground again (guess those big honking claw feet weren’t built for smooth, slick surfaces) and rolls along with us. Just as suddenly, the ship lurches back down horizontally, shuddering with intense force as the aft section slams into the ice. When I manage to lift myself to my feet once more, I find myself standing ankle-deep in the water—which is rising rapidly.
While Bok Choy squats easily in the water behind me, I wince at the icy pain in my feet, looking around for anything I can use to defend myself. But even if there was something nearby, it probably wouldn’t do much good against . . .
Against a monster who has stopped just a few meters from us, and looks . . . nervous.
The water, I realize. The cold.
They have very durable exoskeletons, Marsden said, but no internal mechanisms to generate sufficient body heat to survive the climate here.
A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) Page 19
