Monsters Take Manhattan, page 20
“This is my Pump Monster,” King Neptune announces as he gleefully watches the trunk hose continue to extend. “Down, down, down through the elevator shaft it goes, down through the basement, until . . .”
The Pump Monster’s pointed roof hat abruptly flips open, and a powerful geyser erupts from its head.
“Up, up, up comes the water!” King Neptune shouts.
The geyser is blasting out a ridiculous amount of liquid, some of which is flooding the roof, most of which is flooding the city below, like a torrential downpour times ten. The six hose arms start spewing water as well, wildly waving in the air around and above us, like out-of-control fire hoses.
“It’s happening!” Neptune is hopping from foot to foot, a little celebratory dance. “It’s all happening! Finally. My home! Thanks to you, young prince!”
“Oh man,” I whisper.
35
Split in Two
Eric
Before I can say a word to them, Brickman and Brickman start sprinting toward the Pump Monster. I have no idea how they’ll be able to take on a beast so much larger than they are, but maybe their size will be an asset. Maybe they’ll be able to climb up its legs and find some weakness on its body, some hidden vulnerability they can use their smallness to exploit.
POP! POP!
My stomach drops as both Brickmen turn to black dust, stabbed in quick succession by King Neptune’s trident.
“It’s wired up with acetone,” he says with a grin. “Comes out of these tubes attached to the tips. Wasn’t taking any chances.”
And now it’s just me up here, fifty-eight stories above the city. Me, Eric “Doodles” “Sketch” King, facing off against the god of the sea and his gigantic, crazed Pump Monster.
I don’t want to be pessimistic, but hopeless is the only word that’s coming to mind.
“You must take in the view, young prince!” King Neptune calls. He’s looking out over the front edge of the roof. “See what you’ve helped make happen! My whole life I’ve worked for this. And I’d almost given up until you put the answer directly into the palm of my hand!”
One of the Pump Monster’s hoses whips past me, and I dive to the ground just in time to dodge it. I army-crawl through a couple of inches of water toward the edge of the roof, a little ways down from where King Neptune is. I slowly and carefully get to my feet to peek over the five-foot-high ledge at the world below.
The view is dizzying. Broadway is flooded, the water level rising by the second.
I step away from the ledge.
I helped make this happen.
I need to stop it.
But what can I possibly do?
I have the marker and one more jar of ink left in my backpack, but I just saw how effective Brickman or any other monster is going to be in this particular situation.
I have no other weapons to speak of.
My vague, half-formed plan has finally hit a wall.
The only thing I have left . . . is me. So I start talking.
“I understand what you mean about wanting a home,” I shout at King Neptune. With the Pump Monster blasting out seven separate streams, and the fire alarm ironically still blaring, it’s like trying to speak over a malfunctioning waterfall.
I say it again, and I can tell from the way Neptune’s shoulders rise that this time he’s heard me. “Until last summer,” I go on, shouting every word, “my home was Coney Island. With my mom and dad. I loved it there so much. But now our home is split in two, and I’m mostly here in Manhattan.” I have no idea where I’m going with this, but suddenly I find myself getting choked up. “It doesn’t feel like my home at all. It’s been really hard.”
King Neptune turns toward me. “You know nothing of what I’ve been through, young prince! Nothing!”
He’s shouting. He’s angry. He’s listening. So I keep going.
“Back in Coney, everyone called me Doodles. But then here I became Sketch.” I crouch to barely avoid another hose blast. It’s like a sprinkler system on steroids. “And it’s hard to know which one of those is the real me, you know?”
“I know who I am!” King Neptune bellows, taking several terrifying steps toward me. “I am King Neptune, god of the sea!”
An idea comes to me, and I start frantically digging around in my backpack.
“You are!” I shout. “But you’re also him!” I pull out a couple of photos from the front pocket and thrust them into the air. “Oscar!”
“I am not—” He stops in mid-sentence as he recognizes what’s in my hand. Him and Aunt Betty at Coney Island. He is visibly thrown, and he slowly walks the rest of the way down the ledge until he’s right next to me. “How did you— How did you obtain these?”
“These were Betty’s,” I say. “She saved them.”
Neptune opens and closes his mouth, but no words come out.
“Yeah. All these years later. Because even though you hurt her, she loved you once. And once you’ve loved someone, that love might shrink or change, but it never fully goes away. It becomes one of your layers.”
King Neptune takes the photos from me. In spite of all the chaos continuing around us, I’m surprised to see his eyes well up as he stares at them.
And suddenly I understand.
He didn’t come to the cemetery to intimidate me.
He came for Betty.
He loved her. He really loved her.
Sure, maybe he was also scamming her all those years back, but deep down, he cared too.
She was a home to him.
“No!” Neptune abruptly shouts, flinging the photos to the ground. They float on the surface of the now-ankle-deep water. “Who cares if she kept the photos? Lots of people keep lots of things! I’ve been working for this my entire life! I am a god!”
“But you don’t have to do this!” I retrieve the photos from the ground, flapping them back and forth to try to dry them. “A flooded New York City isn’t Atlantis, man. It won’t be a home. Not really. And you’re gonna do so much damage and harm to so many people. There’s another way. You know there has to be!”
“And what is it?!” King Neptune throws his arms to his sides, still holding his trident, his eyes burning into my soul like he’s genuinely asking. “What is the other way?!”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I admit, slipping the photos into my pocket. “But I do know that Oscar wouldn’t want you to destroy the magic of this city the same way you accidentally destroyed the magic of Isaac’s sideshow.”
“It wasn’t my fault!” King Neptune’s voice cracks and quavers, and he starts sobbing, almost like a child. It’s actually scarier than when he was screaming at me. “It wasn’t my fault!”
“I know,” I say, taking a step toward him, not at all sure what to do.
“No one knows!” he shouts, and he starts pacing in a circle, almost like he’s lost all awareness of his surroundings. “Not my father, not my mother, not—”
“Neptune, watch out!” He walks straight into the path of one of Pump Monster’s arm streams, and the force of the blast knocks him to his knees. “Aaagh!” he shouts as he drops his trident, right at my feet.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He just sobs.
“Neptune, are you hurt?”
He holds his head in his hands and rocks back and forth, completely unreachable.
There’s no more time to waste.
But now, at least, I have a weapon.
I pick up King Neptune’s trident and, seeing no other options, charge toward the Pump Monster.
36
Out of My Depth
Eric
It takes approximately fourteen seconds before I realize how profoundly out of my depth I am.
Yes, I have a gold trident.
Yes, it’s wired up to pump out acetone, the one surefire weapon against the magical ink.
But also: yes, the Pump Monster is absolutely huge.
Its arms seem to be getting more wildly erratic by the second, and they are gushing explosive water in every direction, impossibly unpredictable in their movements. I’m dodging and weaving and jumping like I’m on American Ninja Warrior.
My stabs at the Pump Monster’s long metallic legs do seem to burn some small holes in its skin, but to think that’s going to destroy it is a joke. It’s like trying to vacuum up an ocean a few drops at a time.
Speaking of which, the roof water is now at least four inches deep. My clothes are soaked. I have no doubt the city below us, receiving the massive volume of water still erupting from the Pump Monster’s head, is doing far worse.
Like I said, I am so out of my depth.
Not so different from when I stood on top of the Parachute Jump facing off against the humongous Crumple Noodle.
I defeated that thing.
Maybe I can defeat this thing too.
I leap forward and drive Neptune’s trident into another one of the Pump Monster’s legs. I hear a sizzling sound as tiny wisps of black dust rise from the spots where I’ve made contact. Far above me, the monster lets out a bubbly roar, its arms whipping around.
I bend low and hop out of the way, first to one side, then quickly to the other. I need to keep fighting, but my stabs don’t seem to be slowing Pump Monster, and I won’t be able to keep this up much longer. I need a better strategy.
The trunk.
That mammoth monster trunk, pulling up all the water from underground. If I can destroy it, I would cut off the water supply and prevent any more flooding. It probably wouldn’t kill the monster, but it will stop it from submerging the city.
The problem is, to get to the trunk, I need to pass through the Pump Monster’s arms, which have formed a gauntlet in front of it.
If I’m fast, though—
I’ve taken just a few steps toward the trunk when two of the arms blast me directly, the spray so powerful that I drop the trident and am thrown to the edge of the roof.
I’m lying on top of the stone ledge, hugging it for dear life, however many stories over the street below.
I slowly rise up to a sitting position, intentionally not looking down, but while I’m lowering one leg to the roof, another blast connects with my right shoulder, propelling me backward again.
I frantically wave my arms, like I’m trying to swim my way back to the surface.
But it’s air, not water, so it doesn’t work.
I feel myself slip and fall off the ledge.
37
Twelve Years Old
Neptune
It wasn’t his fault.
It wasn’t his fault.
Sure, King Neptune knows that his presence at King’s Sideshow set off a chain of events that created the fire that burned the place down, but that doesn’t mean it was his fault.
He was just twelve years old. A child!
He is sitting on the roof of his building, arms wrapped around his knees, sobbing, a position not dissimilar to one he used to assume in his childhood bedroom.
This is unsightly, inappropriate behavior for a god, he knows, but he cannot help himself.
The King kid is still on the roof with his monstrous creation. He has his fallen trident, but Neptune cannot bring himself to care.
He is in too much pain as it is.
Betty kept the photos of him.
All these years later.
She truly cared about him.
And he cared about her. He did.
His search for the ink may have been how it started, but he’d felt something with Betty. Something real. And though the aquarium had indeed felt like home all those years, the best moment he had there wasn’t with his creatures.
It was with Betty.
To connect with someone in that way was—
Neptune suddenly notices what is happening across the roof.
The King boy is battling the Pump Monster.
Dodging. Weaving. Striking.
It stirs something within him, though it takes him a long moment to figure out what that is.
Of course.
It transports him back to that same moment, when he was twelve, before everything fell apart, when he’d stood in the darkness backstage at the King’s Sideshow Extraordinaire warehouse, secretly watching the King Neptune crab monster tattoo battle Leo the lion monster.
It was glorious.
Here, again, a battle unfolds before his eyes: the young prince, with his trident, doing all he can to stop his powerful adversary, in spite of the immense odds against him.
But why would the boy risk so much? Put himself directly in harm’s way?
All at once, King Neptune understands.
The boy feels responsible. He’s taking it upon himself to right his wrongs.
It is this type of courage and accountability and selfless sacrifice that makes a hero, much less a god.
King Neptune has truly lost himself.
Because the young prince was right:
He is King Neptune, but he is also still Oscar.
He is both of them.
Perhaps transforming Manhattan into his home was never the answer. The beauty of the magic he first witnessed when he was a boy was its ability to create, not destroy.
King Neptune wipes off his face, inhales snot, tries to center himself.
He looks up, experiencing a jolt as he watches the young prince get blasted so hard by his monster that the boy is flung twenty feet, right toward the edge of the roof, where he clings to the ledge for dear life.
King Neptune is stunned for a moment by the reality of what he’s done, the danger he’s put the boy in, the damage he’s inflicting all around on such an epic scale.
Because, unlike when he was twelve, it is unquestionably his fault.
38
Regret in Waterworld
Eric
Time has slowed down.
Mere seconds are passing, yet, as I flail and then fall off the ledge of the Woolworth Building, my brain cycles through thousands of thoughts and images, like it has all the time in the world. Thoughts like:
Can I grab on to something? Can I save myself?
If I land in the floodwater fifty-eight stories below, will that allow me to survive?
This is the end, isn’t it?
Yes. Yes it is.
And images like:
Mom kissing me on the forehead. Dad fixing a ride at Wonderland. Pepper nuzzling my leg. Yoo laughing as he holds up that strongman outfit. Monster Club standing together on the beach. Jenni holding my hand. Bobo calling me hard-core. Beanie stirring Swedish licorice in a water bottle. Pete bringing me up to light a candle.
Somehow even Terry makes the cut, giving me his special D&D—
Time freezes.
Or maybe it’s not time. Maybe it’s me.
Whatever the culprit is, I have stopped falling.
Oh—
There is a hand.
Gripping my forearm.
“Gotcha, kid.”
It is King Neptune, his face turning red with the strain of holding on to me. He starts pulling me up, his other hand braced on the ledge. It’s like every muscle in his body is tensed, veins bulging, tendons about to pop.
Slowly but surely, he pulls me back to safety, and we collapse onto the roof, lying in the still-rising pond that has formed.
“You saved me.” I am shocked.
“Young prince,” King Neptune says, breathing hard. “You were right. I lost myself. I am a god. But I am also Oscar. I am all of it. And this is not the path I intended to go down. Gods are courageous. So let us be courageous and destroy this beast.”
We look over at the Pump Monster, steadily terrifying as it continues pushing out gallon upon gallon of water. My whole body is shaking, my heart is thumping in my ears, and I can’t quite process this turnaround. If King Neptune hadn’t just saved my life, I would definitely think this was another trap.
Is it possible that my words actually . . . worked?
“Are you well enough to take this on with me, young prince?” King Neptune asks, getting to his feet and putting a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll go alone if need be.”
“No, no.” I am slowly coming back to myself. “Let’s stop this thing. When I got hit, I was trying to attack the trunk with your trident. Like, thinking maybe that would cut off the water supply.”
“Very wise,” Neptune says. “That’s exactly right.”
“But the monster wasn’t having it,” I say, pushing up from the water to stand. “As soon as I made a move toward the trunk, those arms attacked me.”
“Unfortunately that’s what I designed the monster to do, kid. So that it would be unstoppable.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. I’m having some second thoughts about that now.”
The water around us seems to be rising faster. It’s up to our calves.
“But if we do cut off the water supply,” King Neptune goes on, “the spigots will dry up, and the arms won’t have anything to spray at us. We’ll have a clear path to attack.”
“When I stabbed at the monster’s metal legs, though,” I say, “the trident did pretty much nothing.”
“Ah, yes. The legs are its strongest parts because they don’t need to carry water. The arms and trunk, however, will be much more vulnerable. That’s why I made them so difficult to get to.”
“So, let me get this straight. . . . We won’t be able to attack the trunk until we cut off the water supply and stop the arms. But the only way to cut off the water supply and stop the arms is to attack the trunk?”
“That’s right.”
“We’re screwed,” I say.
“Perhaps.” As King Neptune stares at his creation, wheels in his brain spinning, I cautiously approach the ledge of the roof again. I stare down, wondering if all my friends are still out there, whether they’ve gone home. It’s like I’m staring down at a lake. I don’t see them.
“Wait,” I shout to Neptune over the perpetually aggressive white noise of the gushing water. “The monster’s trunk goes down to the basement, right? That’s where it’s accessing the water supply?”
