Читать книгу Mail Order Massacres - Hunter Shea - Страница 11

Chapter Two

Nothing was better than the first day of summer vacation.

Nothing, that is, until Patrick checked the mail and saw the box with a return address from the Bakura Corporation. That’s where the Amazing Sea Serpents came from. It took all his will power not to tear the box open. But he’d promised to wait to do it with David.

The box was awful small.

In the ad, it looked like the Amazing Sea Serpents lived in this huge tank surrounded by a veritable underwater metropolis. Whatever was in the box would barely be enough room for a baby hamster to bop around.

Patrick changed quickly out of his school clothes and ran a brush over his teeth. He sprinted to David’s house with the box under his arm.

“David!” he shouted through the screen door.

“Oh hey, Patrick,” David’s mother said, stepping into the hallway. “Come in. David’s in his room.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Estrada.”

“You want something for breakfast? I just made pancakes.”

“That’s okay. I just ate three cinnamon Pop-Tarts.”

He didn’t bother knocking on the door. David was sound asleep in his room. It was as cold as a walk-in freezer.

“Wake up, lazy ass.”

One eye popped open.

“What the heck are you doing in my room?”

“Look what I got in the mail just now.” He held the box over his face.

David rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Oh damn! I almost forgot about them.”

“Come on, get dressed so we can put it all together.”

They set up shop in the kitchen of the downstairs apartment. Taking turns tearing the brown wrapper and slicing open the box, they carefully extracted the diminutive, oblong plastic tank. Inside it were two packets and a bottle that looked like something eyedrops would come in.

There was a small radio on the windowsill. Patrick turned it on while he shook the box. A folded-up paper landed in his palm. Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” came drifting through the lone speaker.

“Nope,” David said, turning the dial until he hit on “Call Me” by Blondie.

“All the directions are in Chinese or something,” Patrick said, unfolding the square of onionskin paper.

“We don’t need ’em,” David said. “The steps are written on the bottle and packets.”

The bottle was the water conditioner. David read the superfine print on the back of it.

“It says you have to fill the sea serpent home with tepid water.”

Patrick’s eyebrow shot up. “What the heck is tepid water?”

“It can’t mean hot. Or cold. Wouldn’t that kill the sea serpents?”

“Maybe it’s a special kind of water. You ever see tepid water at the store?”

David turned on the faucet. “We’ll just add room temperature water. It works for regular fish.”

“If you say so. You better not kill them before they’ve had a chance to hatch or grow or whatever they do.”

Patrick pinched one of the packets between his thumb and forefinger. It said: AMAZING SEA SERPENTS!

“How the heck can sea serpents be in here?” He shook the packet. It sounded as if it were filled with pepper.

“They’re supposed to grow when they hit the water, bozak,” David replied. He had the water all the way to the fill line. “Now, I have to add three drops to the water and we wait ten minutes.”

The other packet was labeled: FOOD.

There didn’t seem to be much of it. If these things were going to grow to look like they did in the comics, surely they’d need more than that.

Patrick was beginning to feel that his parents were right.

When it was time to open the sea serpent pack, he was dubious at best.

“What the hell?” David said as Patrick emptied the contents—tiny granules that looked like dark sand pebbles—into the tank. They floated for a moment, then sank lazily to the bottom.

“Well, there goes the serpent dust,” David said.

“There’s no way those things are gonna grow into sea serpents.”

“They look more like fish food, not fish.”

Patrick read the food packet, opening a corner and spilling some into the palm of his hand. The red flakes, each so small it could fit in the groove of a fingerprint, smelled like low tide at Orchard Beach.

“It says we don’t feed them until they’ve had a week to grow.”

David pinched his nose. “That reeks! Wash your hands, man. I don’t think we’re gonna have anything in a week to feed.”

Patrick scrubbed his hands clean.

The boys knelt close to the tank, watching the little black balls sit motionless.

“You think we got ripped off?” Patrick said.

“I don’t know. I hope not. Look, we’ll just leave them here and check on them every day. Maybe they’ll surprise us.”

“And where’s the city they’re supposed to live in? I thought we’d at least get some little buildings and stuff.”

David chuckled. “Maybe once they grow, they’ll build it themselves. Come on, let’s go see if Mike will let us in his pool.”

The Amazing Sea Serpents were left on the drain board, but were never far from their minds.