A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) (24 page)

“I believe they’ve been worrying an opening over yonder,” Dad says, gesturing absentmindedly toward the front wall in the flooded area without ever taking his eyes off what he’s doing. Sure enough, along the wall just at the surface of the water there are huge score marks running several meters high and across, like someone has been slowly and deliberately cutting away at the hull with an energy cutter. Like, say, a ray gun.

“That must have taken
days
,” I say, practically whistling through my teeth. “But what happens if they—”

The sound of splashing water interrupts me, like something emerging from beneath the surface. I whip around to look at the water, expecting a Devastator ambush.

Instead, what I find is something altogether different. A small, raven-haired boy of about six years old. Stark naked, and standing knee-deep in the freezing water.

Zuh?

“Dad,”
I whisper. My father pokes his head up from the skiff and follows my gaze.

“Oh my,” he says. “Is that the child Marsden was talking about? I thought he said it was a baby.”

It’s barely been a month since Other Cheerleader gave birth to her little bundle of Jin’Kai joy, but the creature that Marsden implanted in her when he swapped out her Almiri child was engineered to develop quickly (according to Desi, our own personal Jin’Kai defector). I guess I assumed the baby’s growth would normalize after it was born. But either Marsden made some sort of mistake . . . or he hasn’t been telling anyone
the extent of what he’s been up to from the get-go.

One month old, and the kid looks ready for first grade.

“Hello there,” I say, smiling. I take a step toward the kid, and he instinctively backs away, his face frozen in a look of wary curiosity.

“Bok choy,”
the kid hisses at us. At least, it
sounds
like “bok choy.”

“I don’t think he understands English,” Dad offers helpfully. Because, you know, I hadn’t figured that out. I hold out my hand and take another step forward. The kid tenses up, crouching even farther into the water. I’m amazed that he can stand the cold. I’m not sure that even Cole could handle the temperature buck-naked like that.

“It’s okay,” I coo in the soothing voice I used on the neighbor’s awful cat when I was trying to coax it out of whatever space in our house it had managed to steal into. “No one’s going to hurt you. Just come over here, all right?”

“
Bok . . . choy
?” the kid says, cocking his head to the side like a puppy.

“That’s right, bok choy. Sure.”

I take another step, and then another. I’m only a meter or so away from him now, my feet just at the edge of the water. The kid holds his hand out toward me, more in a mimicking gesture than anything else. I reach the final gap to take his hand and . . .

“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.

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 the 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.