Kid vs. Squid

by Greg Van Eekhout

  An L-shaped brass tube rose up in front of the turtle’s path: a periscope. Then, in an eruption of bubbles that rivaled the turtle’s, a spiral-shaped white seashell with red stripes surfaced. The size of an elephant, it gave off odors of motor oil and diesel fuel. With a determined frown, Trudy peered at us through a porthole of Griswald’s death-trap submarine.

  A hatch popped open on the top of the shell, and Shoal and I wasted no time. Shoal took a running leap across the turtle’s back and flung herself at the hatch. I was right behind her.

  “No!” Skalla roared.

  There was a slow-motion moment when the turtle was no longer beneath my feet, when I was sailing across the distance between the turtle and the sub with nothing but ocean beneath me. And then, teeth.

  Not a shark, but eels. Big ones, with teeth like ice picks. They had arms, and also hair, and their pointed snouts came at me like missiles.

  The eels bit into the bottom of the pillowcase and tore open the fabric. The head fell free. I reached for it, putting my hand within range of those terrible, needle-lined mouths. My fingertips caught the tips of Skalla’s stiff hair, but the eels had a better grip on her. They had her, and I caught Skalla’s malevolent glare just before the turtle angled down into a steep dive. Left holding nothing but limp cloth, I climbed into the nautilus shell.

  “Follow that turtle!” I shouted, securing the hatch after me.

  Trudy sat on a bicycle banana seat before an array of controls, including a cassette tape deck and a builtin cigarette lighter. She threw a lever, her feet furiously spinning bike pedals. Behind her, on another seat, Shoal spun another pair of pedals, and there were yet more pedals and seats behind her. I hopped on and got to work.

  “Hello, Trudy,” said Shoal. “Thank you for coming to our rescue. But where did you obtain a submarine?”

  “Back in the Shanghai tunnel. Once I saw Thatcher go underwater, I figured I needed a way to go chase him, so I commandeered the nautilus. Griswald helped me launch it. He said it was built by one of the old Keepers.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Drowned in shallow water,” said Trudy, peering through the porthole into the murk.

  In the sub’s dim headlight, I could just make out Skalla’s head and the eels, still clinging to the back of the paddling turtle.

  I told Trudy and Shoal what I’d learned about Skalla’s scheme to rule over a new Atlantis, and that prompted us to pedal faster. The submarine groaned under the pressure of the depths. I tried not to pay too much attention to the water dribbling through the hatch seal.

  “Hey,” said Trudy. “I just noticed this button labeled torpedo.”

  “Press it!” Shoal shouted, with something like glee. “Here, I will do it!”

  Trudy placed her hand protectively over the button. “Maybe we should know what it does first?”

  “I presume it launches a torpedo,” I offered helpfully.

  “But how do we know it’s not tipped with a thermonuclear warhead?”

  “Because that kind of firepower would be awfully ambitious for a giant nautilus shell powered by bicycle pedals? Besides, we’re falling behind. Come on, this might be our only chance to catch the turtle.”

  Trudy gritted her teeth. “Okay, okay, I’m pressing it. I’m pressing a button, even though I don’t know what it does, and hopefully I won’t turn the whole continent into a smoking radioactive wasteland of—”

  Shoal leaned forward and slammed her palm down on the button.

  With a violent shudder, the submarine surged forward and we were hurtling along at great speed.

  “Stop pedaling!” Trudy said, desperately grasping at the controls to stay on course.

  But we weren’t pedaling anymore. The submarine was under its own power now. We were the torpedo, and I figured we’d explode on impact with anything we struck.

  The turtle came up fast in the porthole. Too fast.

  “Trudy, watch out, we’re going to—”

  And we did. Crashed. Right into the giant’s butt. The sub didn’t so much explode as shatter, the shell walls cracking like an egg into thousands of tiny fragments. Water gushed in, and then the shell and the submarine were just more flotsam. Trudy, Shoal, and I followed a cascade of air bubbles to the surface.

  A shark greeted us there.

  “Howdy do,” it said, lifting its face out of the water. Its teeth looked like hatchet blades. “Swim with us to shore or we’ll eat your legs.”

  Behind us, the sea turtle rose to the top of the choppy waters. Still riding on its back with her eels, Skalla was having herself a fine, horrific laugh.

  CHAPTER 16

  An army of Skalla’s creatures waited for us on the beach in a drenching downpour. There were dozens and dozens of them: Lobster men and kelp guys and women with writhing eels for hair. There were manta rays with legs, their broad wings trailing awkwardly in the sand. There were lazily sprawled elephant seals wearing glasses, and five-limbed starfish smoking cigarettes, and little urchin children bristling with spines. And Tommy and Dicky, of course, the jellies. And the big sumo lobster from the Tunnel of Love.

  With Skalla on its back, the turtle emerged from the surf and walked up the beach.

  “You don’t look much worse for the wear,” said the witch. “That’s good. I am pleased to see it. I’d hate for you to spill too much of your blood. It’s quite precious to me.”

  “Why are you so … nasty?” I asked. “Was it too much junk food? Or just a lack of good adult role models?”

  I was desperate to figure out what made her tick. If there was a chink in her armor, I needed to find it now.

  “Isn’t the answer obvious, little oyster? The king of Atlantis cut off my head. What more should it take to deserve my enmity? He took my body! Wouldn’t you hate him if he’d done the same to you? Wouldn’t you punish him for taking what can never be restored?”

  I knew the answer. Of course I would hate him. Even if I’d deserved it, I’d hate him. But would that give me the right to respond with even more cruelty?

  “But what about her?” I said, gesturing at Shoal. “And Trudy? What about all these people?” My gesture now encompassed her monstrous hybrids. “We didn’t do anything to you.”

  I’d never seen Skalla smolder with more malice.

  “Take them to the Ferris wheel,” she spat. “And don’t forget his kelp-gardening tool, and the girl’s backpack.”

  One of the lobster men—the sumo—stripped Trudy and me of our weapons, and with shoves and jabs from his bandaged claw, steered us to a cave opening in the cliffs. I’d have given anything for a pot of boiling water and a few pounds of butter.

  Skalla’s servants took us on a short march into a tunnel beneath the boardwalk, then up stairs carved out of sandstone. We emerged behind the construction fence surrounding the Ferris wheel. The wheel towered over us, a structure of algae green steel and rust with dangling bucket seats.

  Murals decorated the backside of the construction fence. Similar to those in the Flotsam’s summer palace, they depicted Atlantean history, but here the story was told from a different point of view. Here, Coriolis was a tyrant overseeing slaves. And Skalla was the hero, trying to liberate her people. She wore a brilliant blue skirt, like the color of the ocean on a sunny day. Sea horse tattoos curled around the long, lean muscles of her arms and legs. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she was strong.

  And something about those tattoos nagged at me.

  I could still hear the waves smashing the shore like bombs. The air had gotten so damp, I felt as if I was a deep-sea diver, walking to my execution on the ocean floor. Things didn’t feel like the regular world anymore. We’d crossed over into Skalla’s territory.

  Skalla rode up on her turtle to the edge of a trench surrounding the Ferris wheel. “Behold, little clown fish,” she said. “My new palace.”

  I looked up at the wheel. I looked all around the muddy grounds. “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Look down, boy,
” said Skalla.

  Lobsters pushed us closer to the rim of the trench, the big sumo giving me an extra hard shove. The trench went down a long way, at least as far as a mine shaft, maybe deeper. There was an entire world down there, the Ferris wheel just the cap of a tower plunging into the earth. Built of ocean-stained salvage— pieces that looked like parts of ships and bridges and oil-drilling platforms—the tower featured terraces and arches and catwalks. Scaffolding spiraled around the entire structure. Massive sea spiders with legs the size of construction cranes lifted girders and beams.

  “I had the spiders outfit my tower with pontoons and stabilizers and sky-iron gyroscopes,” Skalla said casually, like my dad talking about how he’d refurbished our bathroom. “Once my tidal wave strikes, we’ll pull up anchor and float. There are engines too, and rudders, and cannons. I’ll be able to take my city anywhere, to seek refuge, or to engage in conquest. It will be good to be queen.” She waited a moment, as if we were supposed to applaud or something. When we didn’t, she called out, “Let us launch my new era.” Her voice echoed down the deep trench. The spiders below turned valves. Great jets of water thundered from pipes in the side of the pit.

  Above us shrieked a devilish wind, drawing metallic groans from the Ferris wheel and rocking the bucket seats. Bodies spilled out from them, their falls arrested by cables fastened around their legs. The bodies swung in the wind. I recognized them.

  “Father!” screamed Shoal.

  Coriolis hung upside-down, along with Fin, and Concha the bike lady, and the guy who sold churros on the boardwalk, and the roller-coaster ticket taker— all of the Flotsam. And Griswald too. Skalla’s creatures must have taken him while I was busy with the fish. He struggled, his face a bearded radish as blood rushed to his head.

  “More water!” barked Skalla, and from the bottom of the pit came an enormous upswell of churning, foaming seawater. It was as if the only thing holding back the ocean had crumbled away, and now all the world’s seas were rushing in. The water swirled in a furious whirlpool, faster and faster, the force so strong the ground shook. The steel supports of the Ferris wheel rattled, and the Atlanteans swung like piñatas.

  With mud sliding beneath my feet, I almost slipped. And I learned something about lobsters then. Or at least about human abominations reshaped into lobsters. They’re not so steady on two legs. Especially not lobsters the size of sumo wrestlers. My big guard went sprawling, and seeing my chance, I pounced. I dove on him and pummeled his face with both fists. Not that he felt it. But as he sloshed around in the mud, trying to stand, I snatched the kelp-gardening implement from his distracted claw and scrambled away.

  Now all I needed to do was … what? Stab something? Poke something? The weather raged around us. This wasn’t just a storm. This was Skalla preparing to drown Los Huesos and everything else for miles around.

  “Kill her,” Shoal entreated me.

  I shook my head. “Even if I do, we’ll all still be cursed.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. She must not be allowed to extract her magic residue from us. She’ll destroy everything.”

  Shoal was right.

  Skalla had left us with no other choices.

  I turned to her, my blade ready. Her creatures watched, waiting for her next order.

  “Squid,” said Skalla, calmly.

  With a huge sploosh, a dusky red tentacle as thick as a telephone pole shot from the pit. Another followed, and both wrapped themselves around the lower struts of the Ferris wheel.

  “Squiiiiiiid!” I screamed.

  Which seemed like an obvious thing to say, but I wasn’t wrong. The tentacles belonged to a squid. A giant squid. A colossal squid. A monstrous, ginormous, seriously and insanely huge squid. Eight arms, each thicker than the first two tentacles, lifted from the water and curled around the Ferris wheel. The ride creaked and groaned as the beast hauled itself from the water and climbed up the spokes. Then an arrow-shaped head longer than a school bus emerged. Its parrotlike beak could have snapped a freeway in half. Of all Skalla’s creatures, this was the most awful. Its eyes were gigantic but still human, complete with eyelashes.

  My throat hurt, and I realized I’d been screaming for quite some time. I screamed even more when an arm lashed out and encircled my chest. I only stopped screaming when it cut off my air with a squeeze. Suction cups lined with teeth bit into my flesh. Through blood-hazed tunnel vision, I saw Trudy and Shoal getting the same treatment. The squid yanked us up high among the Ferris wheel’s upper spokes, and I’d have puked if I hadn’t been gripped so tight my innards couldn’t move. I tried to free my sword hand, but it was no use.

  Trudy struggled to get my attention. The squid’s arms had her by the chest and throat. “Muh,” she gasped, turning blue. “Muhmmah! Heehorse!”

  She was speaking the language of suffocation.

  “Wah?” I answered back. Lack of oxygen had me seeing curtains of red. My head pounded with internal hammers.

  From this high up I could see the entire boardwalk. Tourists ran screaming, though a few remained, staring up in dumb fascination. We’d get no help from them.

  The wind tore gaps in the construction fence, sending plywood panels flying. A big piece helicoptered by me, depicting Coriolis’s mistreatment of Skalla, the witch standing tall before his sword, her chin lifted proudly, her sea horse–tattooed arms tied behind her back.

  There was something about those tattoos …

  The witch’s witchy cackle floated up to us, carried on wind and salt and spray. “Such a sweet sight. Just look at you, small fry, all strung up like cod on the smoking rack.”

  She snarled a command. From the whirlpool, sleek fish rocketed up at us in silver streaks. One passed close enough to brush my shoulder with the edge of its wing-fin. I felt nothing at first, but then a warm trickle ran down my arm: blood. Another fish gashed me over my eyebrow. They were like flying knives, circling me and my friends and the Flotsam, slicing our flesh. I watched my own blood dripping down, falling into the water.

  I strained against the giant squid’s arm as Skalla prepared to cast her final spell.

  CHAPTER 17

  Recoiling from the flying razor fish, I caught Trudy’s eye. She was still trying to say something, but she was close to spent. So was Shoal. The three of us exchanged a look. I can’t tell you what my friends were thinking, but I knew we shared something with that look, and I felt doomed but a little bit more brave.

  Meanwhile, Griswald, hanging from a Ferris wheel seat above us, seemed to be choking. His throat produced a clucking little whine. It didn’t sound human. It almost sounded like the keening cry of a… seagull?

  A flying chaos of gray and white feathers slammedinto the squid’s eyes: seagulls. The squid screamed with a bizarre, buzzing, squirting wail that sounded like the world’s biggest malfunctioning toilet. Still gripping us all, its arms flailed, and we went wheeling through the air. It wasn’t so bad, I tried to convince myself. It was just like a carnival ride: the Tilt-a-Squid.

  Joking about it in my head that way did make it just the slightest bit more tolerable. At least it kept me from going out of my mind with misery and fear and defeat and barfing.

  Distracted by the assault of beak and claw, the squid loosened its grip, just a little. I managed to wiggle one hand loose enough to yank at the suction cups biting into my opposite shoulder. My sword arm popped free, and I went berserk, chopping away with the kelp-gardening implement. Having already experienced chopping beyond my ability to chop, I knew I wouldn’t fail. The squid’s arm went limp, and I skidded down, digging my heels into its rubbery flesh to slow my descent and falling the last several feet into the soft mud at the foot of the Ferris wheel.

  The gulls continued their battle with the squid and, amazingly, they seemed to be having an impact, like a bee swarm attacking a bear. The monster’s tentacles began to sag, and Trudy and Shoal tumbled down its arms to land beside me. The squid whooshed its arms through the air in a vain attempt to ward off th
e birds. One by one, thwop by thwop, it pulled its suction cups off the Ferris wheel struts until it wasn’t holding on to anything, and the great cephalopod plummeted into the whirlpool with a mighty splash.

  Drenched, panting, and cut, Shoal and Trudy and I helped one another to our feet. Trudy didn’t look good at all. A huge sucker mark bruised her throat, and her lips were blue.

  “Muhmmuh,” she said, her eyes wide.

  Shoal and I held her steady and told her not to try to speak. But that just agitated her even more.

  “Heeorse!”

  Just a few yards from where we’d landed, Skalla’s head sat atop her turtle. She didn’t look enraged. She didn’t look upset. She looked happy.

  “You failed, little plankton. Failed to stop me. Failed to save your fellow Flotsam. First I’ll wash away Los Huesos. I’ll drown San Francisco. And Santa Cruz. And Monterey and Carmel and Pismo and Los Angeles and San Diego. I’ll wash away anything I please and replace it with a kingdom more to my liking.” Her eyes had gone dark and heavy as magnets, and when she spoke again, her voice wasn’t human, as if the words were coming out sideways. Feathers, saltwater, and blood flew on the wind.

  At the horizon rose a mountain of water. The churning wave boiled with all the energy of an earthquake, a tornado, a hurricane, a nuclear bomb, rushing toward us.

  We had lost. It was over.

  I turned toward my friends one last time. I wanted to say good-bye but my tongue froze in my mouth. Something had caught my attention. At my feet lay wreckage from the construction fence, a board with part of a mural of Skalla. Just one of her arms. Long and brown, decorated with sea horses.

  “Heeorse!” Trudy coughed. “Muhmmmah!”

  And I got it.

  With the tidal wave’s cold shadow blanketing my shoulders, I said, “Call it off. I know what you need.”

  There was murder in Skalla’s eyes.