Boxing the Octopus, page 27
She looked almost sad as she raised the gun and took aim.
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Oscar almost felt sad as he watched the humans fighting.
He was less emotional by nature than the bipeds he watched in his zoo, the crystal cave through which these strange creatures traveled every day. He sometimes wondered how they felt to be trapped on the other side of the wall, unable to swim freely like Oscar.
Oscar could travel to the open ocean anytime he wanted. Most creatures didn’t realize that even a giant octopus could collapse into a ball the size of a sea anemone, or slip through a crack no wider than a frond of coral.
Oscar lived here because he wanted to—plenty of food, no natural predators, and a front row seat. Never dull.
Some of the bipeds were familiar to him. The ones who passed through daily, pointing or waving at Oscar as they guided others through the maze. Like the one resting below him right now, sitting on the floor of the cave. His aura was dimmed for some reason, so Oscar had a hard time discerning movement.
The other creatures were radiating tension in all directions, dark hues of purple, red, and orange coloring their every move.
One of them in particular held Oscar’s attention, a figure near the center of the room. Insofar as Oscar ever wondered about these creatures’ mating habits, it seemed to be a male. Slight stature, an unremarkable specimen in every way, except for the energy around him. A vortex of conflicting colors swirled around his body, alternating between light and dark.
Oscar didn’t have strong feelings, but he did have good instincts—and he decided that he didn’t like this biped, not one bit. Even through the wall, Oscar felt this creature might be some kind of threat.
Oscar realized that if they ever met on his side of the wall, one of them would have to die.
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Cape realized he was about to die.
The thought really pissed him off. He had suspected he might be walking into a trap yet somehow still ended up on the floor with a gun pointed at his head.
The odds of reaching his revolver before Vera fired were worse than the state lottery—but Cape had always been a gambler. He made the lunge.
As Vera squeezed the trigger, George W. Bush hit her in the face.
The nesting doll split apart on the bridge of her nose. Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice fell to pieces at Vera’s feet. She staggered back on her heels as the gun discharged.
The nine-millimeter was exponentially louder and more powerful than the tiny semiautomatic Cragg had fired. When the bullet hit the ceiling, fissures ran like tributaries off the spider web made by the previous shots.
Cape grabbed his revolver and slid across the floor, twisting to find a clear angle. Vera pivoted and was about to fire again when Vladmir Putin knocked her in the jaw. Her shot went wide, carving a divot the size of a snow cone into the wall behind Cape.
“Godammit!” Vera kicked Putin across the floor and shifted her attention to Sergey, who was wielding two more nesting dolls. He cocked his arm and threw as hard as he could.
Barack Obama fell apart halfway through his arc as if reliving the midterm elections. Before Obama could even come close to kicking Vera in the head, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton were competing for airtime. The nesting doll fell in unequal halves on either side of its intended target.
Vera pointed her gun at Sergey’s crotch.
Sergey froze, Mao Zedong trembling in his right hand.
Cape didn’t have time to stand or aim, so he stayed close to the ground and took the only clear shot he had.
Cape shot his client in the foot. He had shot himself in the foot so many times on this case, it seemed only fair. The bullet tore through Vera’s left shoe in a geyser of leather, bone, and blood.
Vera tumbled sideways and hit the floor, landing hard on her right side.
Cape swallowed a wave of nausea and guilt as he lined up his next shot.
Vera howled as a searing rage, kept under pressure for years, boiled over. She thrust the gun forward, pointing at the entire universe. At everyone who ever fucked her over. At fate. She pulled the trigger again and again, until the clip was empty and bullets flew like molten hail.
Cape felt a metallic fist punch him in the side, hard enough to send him sliding backward across the floor.
Sergey doubled over like a wallet snapping closed. His right hand clutched his thigh where a crimson bloom was spreading.
Mao Zedong spun on his head, his view of the world forever upside down.
Eva felt her heart stop as her brother fell. She ran toward her gun, which was only inches from the dead pirate. She spared only the briefest glance at Lou as she passed.
Lou stood frozen, mesmerized by Vera’s turn to savagery, unsure of whose side he was on anymore. Bullets zipped past him as giant snowflakes appeared on the walls and ceiling. Brilliant fractals expanded rapidly, as if a sudden frost had come to their undersea kingdom.
Cape clutched his side to staunch the bleeding and felt a cascade of water on his neck. He worried about going into shock, but the cold slap revived him. He rolled onto his back to catch some water on his face.
Eva had bent over to grab the gun when she sensed the Doctor behind her. His arm was around her neck before she could turn. He slid the inside of his left elbow against her larynx, knowing just where to apply pressure. Eva swung her right arm backward, turning the barrel of the gun toward what she hoped was the Doctor’s leg, but his right arm caught her wrist and held it fast. She might fire into the floor but wouldn’t hit him.
Eva would be unconscious soon or her neck would be broken.
Fortunately, she had an older brother, and most of her life had played with his friends—the kind of boys that her sister told her to avoid. Adolescent assholes who believed they could take whatever they wanted by force.
Eva raised her right leg until her knee was almost at her chest, then drove the heel of her boot into the Doctor’s shin, scraping all the way down before stomping on his instep like a jackhammer. The Doctor yelped and Eva ducked, slipping her head through his arm.
Clutching her pistol like a pair of brass knuckles, Eva pirouetted and punched the Doctor in the throat. He fell on his ass like most of her brother’s childhood friends.
Eva rushed to her brother’s side but the heel of her boot slipped on a puddle of seawater and she landed on top of Sergey, knocking the wind out of both of them. The pistol flew from her hand and skidded across the floor. Eva took no notice. She hugged her brother hard enough to make sure his heart was still beating.
Cape sighted down the barrel of the .357, aiming for Vera’s shoulder, but didn’t even cock the hammer on his revolver. He waited until his ears stopped ringing to confirm what his eyes were saying. Vera was dry-firing, squeezing the trigger on an empty gun, trying to shoot the world.
Cape groaned as he crawled to her. Blood from his wound fell like rain through his fingers while the downpour from above soaked his back.
Vera raised the gun, but Cape knocked it aside, the swing of his arm sending liquid pain running down his side. He collapsed onto his right shoulder, still holding his gun, his face directly over hers. She didn’t meet his gaze until Cape wrapped his arms around her, less to restrain her than to let her know someone was there. He watched Vera’s rage melt into pools of pure sorrow.
“Sorry I shot you,” said Vera.
“I shot you first,” said Cape.
Cape’s hair was drenched, seawater running down the sides of his face and into his mouth, tasting like tears. As he shifted his weight to pull her closer, a voice came between them.
“You ruined everything.”
The Doctor was standing ten feet away, Eva’s pistol in his right hand. He was looking straight at Vera. He rubbed idly at his crotch with his left hand, then turned his head and coughed.
Cape still had the revolver, but his right arm was pinned under Vera’s left shoulder. Their eyes met as he cocked the gun slowly.
“Nobody has to die.” The Doctor took a step forward. “Don’t you get it?” Water spat from the ceiling in jagged bursts and drenched him where he stood, but the Doctor didn’t seem to notice. “Not from cancer, not from heart disease, not from Alzheimer’s. We can cure all of it…me…I can cure all of it.”
Cape felt blood oozing from his side. He bit his lip and blinked water from his eyes as he scanned the room, trying to map where everyone was standing. He wondered if there were any more guns in play.
“I’m trying to save the world.” Disdain for humanity was etched onto his face but the Doctor’s ire was focused on Vera. “And you want to tear it apart because of one dead kid?”
Cape rolled onto his back and fired.
The roar of the .357 was a sonic boom, and the Doctor jumped despite not being hit. He hesitated as Cape fired again, then a third time, each shot an anvil thrown straight at heaven.
A seismic bolt of lightning tore across the ceiling, connecting all the cracks in a constellation of ruin. The room imploded with a roar that only the ocean could make. Before the Doctor could recover, all 187 quintillion gallons of the Pacific Ocean pushed San Francisco Bay into the room.
As the air turned to water, Cape wrapped his arms around Vera and took a deep breath.
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Oscar spread his arms and took a deep gulp of water as the ground shook and worlds collided.
He was directly above the bothersome biped, the one with an aura out of sync with the natural world. Always black or white, no color or nuance to indicate harmony with its surroundings.
This creature stood apart, and to Oscar, that marked it as a predator.
A vibration like a rogue current ran through the crystalline surface beneath Oscar’s arms. As the pressure became an inexorable tide, he felt himself falling faster than he had ever swum in the open ocean. Oscar extended his tentacles as far as they could reach, instinctively trying to slow his descent.
He opened his beak as he fell. Oscar could tell he was going to land on top of the creature, and he wanted to be ready.
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The Doctor wasn’t ready to die, and he wasn’t the hugging type.
The octopus flew at him like one of those forest spiders from Lord of the Rings. The Doctor’s primal instincts screamed run but there was no time to dodge, so his frontal cortex switched the command to kill!
He fired into the torrent of water, hoping to burst the gelatinous balloon of Oscar’s head. The Doctor fired four shots in rapid succession.
The octopus spun like a hallucinogenic pinwheel as bullets ripped through one of the tentacles. By the time the creature landed on the Doctor, the shredded arm was torn in half.
Blue blood flowed like wine.
The Doctor crumpled onto his back. The octopus weighed over three hundred pounds and felt like a Buick made of Jell-O parked on his chest. A sudden stabbing pain near the sternum, the animal’s beak or a popped rib. The Doctor started kicking like Quint in the final scene of Jaws, but there was no escape.
The water rose and the air-to-sea balance tipped in Oscar’s favor. The Doctor slipped his right arm free and reached for one of Oscar’s eyes, knowing that if he could get a hand in there, the creature might release him. His fate depended on which of them was more determined to survive, and who was smarter. His brain against Oscar’s nine. The Doctor knew it could go either way.
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Cape knew it could go either way. They could drown or get out alive. He hugged Vera with both arms as the water raged to reclaim the land.
The room was disintegrating faster than Cape thought possible. The deluge from above tossed them toward the front entrance like a pair of empty bottles. They bobbed and sank, slamming against the floor as waves collided.
His eyes screamed against the saltwater but Cape strained to keep them open, fighting an urge to black out. The water was deathly cold but his side was on fire. He gasped at every opportunity, gulping as much air and as little seawater as he could manage.
He glimpsed the Russians clutched in a similar embrace, getting swept in the opposite direction, toward the main hall. Somewhere in the primal part of his brain, Cape wondered what would happen to all the glass tanks when the tsunami hit. There was already so much blood in the water.
An amorphous shape soared overhead on a cross current, narrowly missing them. The water displacement created a vortex, and before Cape realized what was happening, he and Vera were spinning like lily pads in a whirlpool.
The shadowy horror drifted upward toward the open ocean, a blood-orange cloud with nine arms, two legs, and two heads. A much smaller figure was being drawn in the wake of the monster. Cape couldn’t be sure but guessed it might be the driver, Lou, getting sucked into the bay.
They were completely submerged now. Cape saw flashes at the corners of his vision, his nervous system’s way of signaling imminent death. He kicked with the current, knowing water would do what water does and push everything out of its way. Vera was limp in his arms, a maroon ribbon streaming from the wound in her foot.
A tidal surge slammed against the outer doors, the wave using their bodies as a battering ram. Doors burst apart and Cape lost his grip on Vera as they were hurled across the gift shop. He sucked air and foam into his lungs as his face broke the surface. The outer glass doors were coming up fast.
As the rogue wave propelled them forward across the narrow space, they picked up speed. Cape could see the steps outside leading to the pier, but there was no way to change his velocity. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vera crash into a table full of stuffed animals—cuddly jellyfish with no sting and smiling sharks with no bite. He grabbed desperately at a clothing rack, but T-shirts tore off the hangers as the wave rocketed him toward the glass windows.
Cape tucked his head into the wave and grabbed his knees, hoping to become a cannonball before hitting the windows. A scream of bubbles escaped his lips from the pain in his side.
Talons of ice tore into his back as glass shattered. He made landfall in a cataclysm of broken windows, torn clothing, and stuffed animals, tumbling down the concrete steps like a Slinky with a drinking problem.
Cape hit the pier headfirst as the angry ocean chased him down the stairs.
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Sally headed first to the pier but was too late.
Surveying the bedlam around the aquarium, she realized there was nothing she could do, and that was the worst feeling in the world.
Pools of water eddied across the pier like packs of dogs chasing a ball. Tourists tried to capture carnage selfies while uniformed police established a perimeter around the aquarium. A colorful assortment of sea creatures littered the ground—some were stuffed toys and others actual animals free of their tanks. Two ambulances had pulled onto the access road, their lights still flashing.
Sally watched as paramedics loaded Cape onto a gurney.
Though Sally stood some distance away, she could tell he was unresponsive. The blue sheet they wrapped around his body revealed lilac splotches across his torso, but Sally took solace from the fact they didn’t pull the sheet over his face.
Cape’s chances depended on the kindness of strangers and the whims of fate, and Sally didn’t trust either. She would visit the hospital later, but there was nothing she could do here. No one she could save, and no one left to kill.
Sally headed back to Chinatown.
Sing Chong and Sing Fat were waiting for her at the corner of Grant Avenue and California Street, looking down on her and everyone else.
These two iconic buildings had been guarding the intersection and protecting the neighborhood for over a century. After the 1906 earthquake and fire nearly destroyed the city, opportunistic politicians tried to relocate Chinatown away from the heart of the city. The Chinese immigrants responded by building Sing Chong and Sing Fat in record time, marking their territory and rebuilding the neighborhood that had become their home.
Straddling the main cable car line, both buildings featured traditional Chinese architectural flourishes designed to celebrate their heritage and attract tourists. Extravagant designs reminiscent of temples on the other side of the world—yellow brick and red tile, sloping roofs with towers at the corners overlooking the street.
As Sally ascended the steep incline of California Street, she realized Sing Chong was calling to her.
The building was surrounded by bamboo scaffolding as used in Hong Kong for short-term construction and repairs. Sally spent enough time on rooftops to know that the tar on the older buildings was resealed every year before the rains came. Once the tar cooled, water was run continuously through hoses spread across the roof to check for any leaks.
Water streamed over the edges of the Sing Chong roof. The sky was clear, yet this building had its own rain cloud. A waterfall of tears cascaded over the bamboo, sluiced along the fire escape, and pooled at the edges of the sidewalk before splitting into streams that flowed into the gutter.
The building that cries.
A weeping house.
Sally sidestepped a gaggle of tourists, swung herself onto the first platform of scaffolding, and was climbing up the fire escape before anyone took notice.
She considered the layout of the building and trusted her gut. The logical place would be the tower, its sweeping curves and open columns so familiar to anyone who grew up in Hong Kong. A pagoda with sides open to the elements, capped by a roof with eaves that turned upward at the corners like a genie’s slippers. The crenellated design was distinctly Chinese, and it reminded Sally that no matter how far she may have come, her childhood was always right behind her.
The roof was deserted. A tangled web of hoses pulsed rhythmically in warning. Sally stepped over them as if they were snakes and moved laterally toward the tower.
