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Chapter Four

“Time out!”

Patrick waved his arms in the air.

“What for?” his friend Alan said, the bat still in his hand. He was midway between home plate (a chalk outline in the street) and first base (Mr. Arthur’s yellow Chevy Nova).

“The ball went down the sewer.”

David blurted out, “Ground rule double!”

Alan grumbled. “Man, that would have been a home run. Patrick would have never been able to get it back in time.”

“A rule’s a rule,” David said. He looked back at Patrick, who was four houses away. It was a hell of a blast by Alan, but unfortunately for him, it rolled into the curb and followed the path all the way to ground rule double territory. “You want me to get a coat hanger?”

Patrick stood over the sewer. It smelled worse than usual. But it was a hot summer day.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

For some reason, he didn’t want to get the ball. He kept thinking of the sea serpents and that awful funk. There was no way he was going to touch any ball that came in contact with it.

Instead, he ran to his house. “I have a tube of new tennis balls. I’ll go get them.”

* * * *

Patrick’s alien voice thundered down the sewer.

The black wads of snot from the Amazing Sea Serpent tank were no longer lifeless balls. In the week since their unceremonious dumping into this mélange of waste, they’d sprouted legs and arms and the beginnings of tails. Far from serpents, they resembled a kind of bipedal pollywog.

The pollywogs rolled in the mire, feeding off it, growing more and more each day.

When the ball slipped into the sewer, it crushed one of the pollywogs flat. The thing exploded with a barely audible squish.

The moment the ball rolled away, the other pollywogs descended on their fallen brother, devouring its inky remains with oval mouths filled with tiny points. Food was food.

And lately, they’d been getting very hungry.

* * * *

It took only a few days for the rats to be fair game for their carnivorous desires. The sea serpents grew exponentially. They needed meat, and there were more than enough rats scampering around the old pipes and pathways.

And scamper they did.

More like ran for their lives.

If anyone would have listened, they would have heard the cries of the rats darting into every tight nook and crevice they could find, desperate to get away from the new alpha beasts in the sewer.

The sea serpents, now the size of cats, weren’t necessarily fast, but they worked together. They set traps. While a few scared up a nest of rats, driving them down a long, dark tunnel, the rest waited at the other end, ready to feast.

With each day, each meal, the sea serpents grew bigger, taller, deadlier. Their teeth sharpened, and once-gelatinous stumps at the end of their slimy arms morphed into savage claws.

By the time they cleared the sewer of the entire rat population, they’d evolved into child-sized animals with the appetites of hyenas.

They sensed they must leave the safety of their dank, rotten home. Their instinct for survival fueled their fervent appetite.

When night fell, the sunless sky resembled their dwelling enough for them to skulk from the sewer, the heavy manhole cover an obstacle easily removed.

Martin Henderson’s black cat Asphalt peered at the emerging shapes from what it thought was the safety of a row of azalea bushes. It knew these creatures weren’t like the other bugs it had chased.

Asphalt didn’t detect the sea serpent at its back before it was too late. The black cat’s tail was pierced by a razor-like talon, rooting it to its hiding spot. It growled in unmitigated fear.

Little did it know, its cries were nothing more than a dinner bell for the sea serpents.