by Hunter Shea
Carl flicked on the light and descended. What he needed was stacked on a small pallet in the back.
He counted six boxes in total. He hoped it would be enough.
Each box was filled with wasabi stems, grown along riverbanks in various farms around Japan. The pungent, hot condiment had been gaining popularity in their restaurant, now that more and more people were coming in for the sushi. The hibachi side of the restaurant was still the moneymaker, but he’d been pleased to see their patrons willing to explore something so exotic, at least for their taste.
Every morning, the staff opened a box of wasabi stems, finely grating it as they did fresh ginger root.
He was able to carry two of the boxes back up to the kitchen. Once there, he grabbed half a dozen oroshigane graters. They would be very, very busy for the next hour, preparing the only thing that could stop the Hakuri, if they could even be stopped now.
Amazing Sea Serpents!
These Hakuri were much like the ones he’d heard about growing up, but something was different. They were altered somehow, their growth accelerated. America was a much different land than Japan. The Hakuri were highly adaptable. Whatever toxins resided here would only serve to fuel their abnormal growth.
What evil mind infiltrated a toy company, willing to sell such horrid creatures to unsuspecting children? Perhaps they were simply misguided, only wanting to spare Japan. Still . . .
And where did they find their eggs?
So many questions, but no one to answer them.
For now, the only thing to worry about was killing the Hakuri.
As Carl turned the lock to exit the back door, he heard the front plate-glass window shatter. The floor thundered with the reverberations of immense footfalls.
Carl slipped out the door, making sure to lock it behind him.
He ran to the apartment, the top box teetering, wondering if the boys had been minutes too late in coming to him.
Chapter Sixteen
“We saw it go in the restaurant!” Patrick exclaimed the moment
Carl burst through the door.
“We do not have much time. Quick!”
He handed out what looked like handheld cheese graters to everyone, tearing the lids off the boxes. One of the busboys—Patrick wished he knew his name—dashed to the kitchen and got bowls for everyone.
Carl gave them each handfuls of what looked like thick, green tree roots.
“We must grate as much as we can. Boys, grate the wasabi over the bowl and be careful. The oroshigane is extremely sharp.”
David got right to work. “I help my mom in the kitchen all the time. After everything, I’m not worried about cutting my finger.”
Carl’s frantic gaze bore into both of them like hot pokers. “You must not get blood in the wasabi. It will make it powerless.”
Patrick took a deep breath, grabbed a root and started grating, slowly at first. “Okay, no blood in the wasabi.”
While they worked, the building shook as the sea serpent went hog wild in the restaurant.
The other men worked in total silence, sweat streaming down their faces.
“Why is that sea serpent down there?” Patrick asked, picking up the pace.
“The Hakuri have a very good sense of smell,” Carl said, his arms working so fast, his hand was a blur. “It knows the method of its destruction is here. It wants to obliterate it.”
David smirked. “Yeah, well, they have a very distinctive smell of their own.”
The reek of spoiled fish and hot garbage made its way through the floorboards.
A sudden thought made Patrick stop grating the wasabi. “Wait, that means it can smell what we’re doing up here?”
Carl didn’t raise his head from his task. “Yes. So grate faster!”
The bowls were filling with the acrid paste, used up roots tossed to the floor. It sounded like the sea serpent had gotten into the kitchen and was ripping appliances from the floor, tossing them around like toy blocks. No one could stop themselves from flinching with each crash.
“What do we do with all this wasabi once we grate it?” David asked, his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth while he worked.
“I will figure that out when the time comes,” Carl replied. “Now, no more talking.”
Patrick’s stomach flipped like a flapjack when he heard the distinctive sound of the back door exploding, metal screeching on the concrete.
One of the men got up and looked out the small window facing the yard. He said something in Japanese. Carl stood up and went to the kitchen. Out of a drawer he took a knife that looked as if it could fillet a whale.
Using a paper towel, he coated both sides of the long blade with wasabi.
With one hand on the doorknob, he looked to Patrick and David. “You did a very good thing, coming to me. No matter what happens, all of you take the wasabi and find someone in authority. Tell them they must dip all of their weapons in wasabi. Fill buckets of it if they can. With luck, the Hakuri will slumber for another hundred years.”
“Carl, don’t!” Patrick pleaded, but it was too late. Their favorite hibachi chef was out the door, blade held high.
Everyone ran to the window.
With a loud war cry, Carl rushed down the stairs.
The sea serpent looked up at him with its tiny, obsidian eyes. It was easily twice his height and four times wider. Patrick remembered the story of David and Goliath from CCD class. He’d always thought it was just a fairy tale. If Carl somehow defeated the sea serpent, he’d never doubt it or anything else Sister Marie taught him again.
Midway down the creaking stairs, Carl leaped over the banister, hurtling toward the sea serpent from above.
The sea serpent spread its stunted arms as if to hug a long-lost friend. Its hideous mouth opened wide.
The blade sliced right down its throat, along with most of Carl’s arms. The sea serpent caught him, immediately locking its arms around his waist and squeezing.
Carl’s scream nearly made Patrick wet his pants again.
“Holy crap!” David said, glued to the horrific spectacle.
Carl drove the knife deeper, cutting off the sea serpent’s wails. The veins on the sides of Carl’s neck bulged until they began to burst, mini volcanoes rupturing on a smooth coastline of flesh.
Great gouts of green foam spilled from the sea serpent’s mouth.
“Look!” Patrick said, pointing at its flat belly.
The foam burned its way through the creature’s stomach, splattering onto its feet. The sea serpent’s tail swished violently back and forth, its knees buckling. Carl rolled free, his face blue, body as lifeless as a rag doll.
The sea serpent melted from the inside out, retching up half-digested human remains, blood and more of that welcome, verdant froth.
It took several minutes for it to die, but die it did, collapsing onto itself like a deflating jumping castle.
“Poor Carl,” Patrick said, his hand on the window. He could feel everyone’s hot breath on the back of his neck.
David broke their mourning for Carl. “We need to make a whole lot more wasabi.”
Heads nodded and they went back to work.
Within the hour, they had enough wasabi to do some serious damage.
“We need to get this to the right people,” Patrick said.
They stared at the door, knowing they had to leave the relative safety of the apartment. But at least they now had a chance to survive.
“Unless we’re the right people,” David said.
The boys carried ten sealed bowls of fresh wasabi. The moment they stepped outside the door, it slammed behind them, the lock snapping with sharp finality.
“Chickenshits,” David shouted at the door. More people to add to his list.
Patrick looked at the bowls in his arms. “At least they made the wasabi.”
Chapter Seventeen
Tuckerville Road was as quiet as a cemetery at night, and filled with just as many bodies.
W
ell, the scattered remains of as many bodies.
The sea serpents had done a pretty thorough job of digesting as much of every victim as they could, but there were still stray limbs, a few fingers, the top of a scalp, odd bits of clothes and shoes and, draped over a parking meter, the flap of someone’s entire face.
“Oh man, that’s gross,” Patrick said.
Their eyes darted in every direction as they walked down the middle of the street, waiting for a sea serpent to attack.
They’d hoped to find someone alive, maybe even a cop who’d survived the massacre who could radio in what they knew.
Luck was not their lady today.
“Okay,” David said. “I say we get back home, where it all started. If the phones are still working, we can call the cops and tell them, not that they’ll believe us. Then I think we need to dump some of this wasabi in the sewer.”
“Why the heck would we waste it?”
“Maybe they have a nest down there, with little ones still growing. We need to destroy everything.”
“We? We’re just kids.”
“Yeah, kids who know what those things are and how to kill them. Kids who will also be told to be quiet and let the grown-ups do the work. While we wait, more people will die.”
Maybe even my parents, David thought, if they’re not dead already.
Just then, a sea serpent came tearing around the corner of Tuckerville and Grassy Sprain road. It must have spotted them first, anxious for its next meal.
David ripped the top off of one of the containers. The waves of wasabi stink stung his eyes.
Patrick did the same.
They put the other containers down, holding their ground, waiting. The sea serpent wasn’t as big as the one Carl had fought, but it could still probably eat them in one bite.
“Holy crap, I’m scared,” Patrick said, his legs shaking.
“Me too, bozak. Just make sure you don’t miss.”
The sea serpent got overanxious, using its tail to take to the air to cover the last few feet. The boys stepped away from one another, chucking the wasabi at the creature as it sailed between them. The wasabi peppered its flesh with a hot hiss. Green scum bubbled on its slick skin.
When it hit the ground, it stayed there, writhing in agony. The wasabi ate away at it the way the creature ate people, with unrelenting efficiency. David’s muscles remained coiled, ready to dump more wasabi if he needed to.
He didn’t.
He and Patrick bashed it with their bats, the blades slicing deep, rending great, seeping gashes in its flesh.
The sea serpent let out a final breath that smelled like Satan’s fart. The boys backed away, fanning the air.
“Well, that worked,” David said, unable to keep the quaver from his voice. They’d killed it, but he’d almost had a heart attack in the process.
Patrick’s face lit up. “Yeah, we did. Holy cow, we did. Let’s go home!”
Strengthened by confidence, they ran, slower now that they were carrying all the wasabi and their legs and lungs were worn out.
* * *
They were two blocks from their houses when another sea serpent, this one only about their size, popped out of a sewer like a slice of bread from a toaster. It scared Patrick right off his feet, some wasabi spilling on his shirt. David hoped it would keep the monster from biting his friend.
“Take a long walk off a short pier,” David said, tossing a handful of wasabi in the sea serpent’s face. The acid sizzled and the beast flipped backward, falling into the open sewer. Its death cries echoed in the deep, dark tunnel.
“It should have put the manhole cover back,” Patrick joked. David grabbed his hand, lifting him to his feet.
David’s house was on the left, Patrick’s on the right. David said, “Get your BB gun and meet me at my house. I have an idea.”
When Patrick left, David went to Alan and Chris’s house. The boys were reluctant to answer, but looked relieved when they saw it was him through the window.
“Why are you carrying a bunch of Tupperware?” Alan asked.
“The stuff in here kills those things,” David replied, breathlessly. “You want to help us kick their asses?”
Chris snorted. “I seriously doubt leftovers will kill them.”
“This ain’t leftovers. It’s fresh made and deadly. Trust me. Pat and I just killed two of them getting back here. You still have your bow and arrows?”
The brothers took archery lessons and were pretty good shots.
“Of course we do,” Alan said.
“Get them and come to my house. Hurry!”
David was deflated to walk in his door and find his parents still hadn’t returned. He shook all negative thoughts away. He had a job to do.
Patrick was the first to arrive. He’d put the bowls and his BB gun and a box of BBs in a lawn bag. He emptied the contents out on David’s living room rug. Alan and Chris showed up next. They had four quivers loaded with arrows.
“And here’s my contribution,” David said, emptying his box of contraband Chinese throwing stars. He’d been buying them on the sly from the headshop down on Virginia Avenue. His parents had banned them from the house after he got busted in school launching them at a telephone pole. How was he to know Karen Fitzgerald was going to walk past the one time he didn’t hit his mark?
He was exceedingly glad he’d kept buying them, storing them under his bed.
“All right, now what?” Alan asked.
“Make sure you get this stuff all over everything,” David said, opening the wasabi.
The brothers cringed. “Smells nasty,” Chris said.
“It burns them like acid,” Patrick said. “Stops them right in their tracks.”
While they worked getting wasabi on the arrowheads, throwing stars and BBs, David and Patrick told them everything Carl had revealed. The brothers took them at their word, anxious to see how the wasabi worked.
Patrick said, “Carl told us that they have a very good sense of smell. One of them came right for the restaurant because it got the wasabi’s scent. I say we just go outside and let them come to us.”
David was impressed by Patrick’s newfound bravery. Maybe they really were superheroes now.
All four boys carried the wasabi and weapons outside, standing in the middle of the street, facing north, south, east and west. They opened all of the Tupperware bowls, letting the wasabi scent waft on the summer breeze.
They waited, taut as guitar strings.
“Maybe we should have seen you guys kill one of them before we agreed to this,” Chris said, an arrow notched in the bow.
He was answered by a multitude of high-pitched cries.
David had a throwing star in each hand.
“Here they come!”
Chapter Eighteen
And come they did.
Sea serpents cantered down both ends of the street. There had to be at least forty of them, all in different sizes, which meant some were eating better than others.
“I need to take a shit,” Alan said.
“Join the club,” David said.
“Chris, are they close enough for you guys?” Patrick asked.
Chris sighted down the arrow. “Yep.”
“Let ’er rip!”
The arrow flew straight and true into the lead sea serpent. It hit with a wet thunk right between its eyes. Green spume exploded from the wound. The creature fell face-forward, twitching madly while the others trampled over its body.
“Holy shit, it worked,” Alan said. He followed with a direct hit of his own. Chris let another one sail.
The sea serpents kept coming, but their numbers were thinning.
“My turn,” Patrick said. He estimated there was just enough distance between them now for his BBs to hit home. He pulled the trigger rapidly, moving from one creature to the next. Little blasts from the CO2 cartridge spewed the BBs in an arcing line.
He knew they hit from the gouts of green erupting from the sea serpents’ flesh, but the B
Bs were too small, delivering too tiny a payload to drop the beasts with the cold efficiency of the arrows.
“Oh damn,” he said.
David sidled up next to him and threw a star as hard as he could, grunting. The star caught one in the leg and it collapsed, screeching as it pawed at its melting appendage.
“Looks like we need to team up,” he said.
“Like Green Arrow and Green Lantern,” Patrick said.
David gestured toward the brothers. “They’re Green Arrow. We’re like Power Man and Iron Fist!”
The boys let loose with everything they had. The sea serpents’ attack started to slow as the lumbering monsters got tangled up in the writhing mass of the dying. As soon as they hit the ground, an arrow, BB or star, each wasabi dipped, found its way into their backs, finishing them off.
But some were still getting close. Too close.
“The bowls!” David shouted. He and Patrick grabbed several bowls, running toward the charging sea serpents. They emptied the contents on them, the spray pelting multiple creatures at once. Their ghastly flesh popped and fizzled, small holes expanding to gaping chasms, the inner stuff that was muscle and sinew pouring out like hot lead.
The sea serpents howled. One of them kept charging blindly, the wasabi melting its eyes and collapsing its head. It knocked into Alan, whose shot went wild.
“Get it off me!” Alan screamed.
David poured more wasabi on it, enough to get it to scramble away and off his friend.
“Give me a bowl,” Chris demanded.
The remaining sea serpents were too close for arrow work. It was going to be wasabi-to-claw combat from here on in.
The four boys tossed wasabi like they would douse each other with the hose on a hot day. The stench of frying sea serpent flesh and muscle was so bad, it made their eyes water.
But they fought through the blurry haze.
Claws and tails lashed out, slicing the boys on the arms and legs. One just missed disemboweling David, who was quick enough to jump back, only receiving a burning slash on his midsection.
Another lodged a claw in Patrick’s hand. Patrick grunted, the agony making his head spin. Just like Captain America would explain his acrobatics in the comics, Patrick went with the momentum of the monster’s downward swipe. By doing that, he was able to pull the top of his hand out from the claw. The sea serpent teetered, off balance. Patrick finished it off by dumping wasabi on the back of its skull while it hit the ground.