My eyes were drawn to a bunch of watermelons where the acid was already eating through the green rinds at an alarming pace, the juice of the fruit running down onto the floor. The same was happening along the back of the creature, blood and fluids running down, although the monster seemed to be fighting against the tide of damage, the wounds trying desperately to heal themselves. The creature let out a tremendous roar, and I could feel its pain hitting me as I stood at the edge of the effect.
“Keep it coming,” I yelled out to Jane, who was already scooping up another battery and charging it. Bat in hand, I went for the garlic. Round after round Jane and I kept the damage coming. As I swung at bulb after bulb, I couldn’t help but feel as though I was in some sort of surreal batting cage. I kept going, weakening the creature until it fell to its knees in a pool of its own blood. Jane called out.
“Simon!”
I was midswing. I kept my eye on the bulb I was popping up as I smacked it, then looked over at Jane. She was pointing down toward my feet. When I looked down, I could see why. I had been so intent on attacking the creature with bulb after bulb of garlic that I hadn’t noticed I had cleared a path all the way through the containment barrier.
“Shit,” I said.
It looked up from where the creature knelt before me, its body heaving with its labored breath. It noticed the cleared pathway, too, then craned its head up to look at me.
“Hi,” I said in a whisper of uncertain fear. As it tensed, I raced to lift my bat. I wanted to get at least one shot in before it could do anything, but even wounded, it was far too fast for me. It leapt straight at me, knocking me over and the bat out of my hand. It landed on me, pinning me to the floor with its crushing weight. Bits of drool and chunks of meat fell from its maw down onto me. Panicked, I tried to throw the monstrosity off, but it was no use. I was trapped.
“Watch your eyes,” I heard Jane call out. Without even giving it a thought, I shut them. The familiar thud of a battery hit the creature, followed by the dull pop of the seams giving away. The hiss of the acid filled my ears, but thankfully nothing hit my face, although I felt some of it drip down onto my coat. As the hissing got louder, I dared to open my eyes. Acid was eating into the leather of my coat the same way it was eating away at the creature’s skin. Its mouth was drawn back in a pained and horrifying expression. It looked back over its shoulder at Jane as if it was considering its options. To deal with her, it would have to get past the remaining barrier of garlic on her side. It looked down at me. Pinned there, I was no threat to it and with the circle broken on my side, it chose freedom over fight, but not before one last crush into me as it pounced off toward the exit.
I sat up, soreness kicking in the second I did. I gave myself a quick once-over, making sure none of the battery acid was about to eat through my flesh anywhere. Luckily, my coat had taken the brunt of the damage. It was totaled, unless Swiss cheese chic was going to be all the rage this season in fine leather.
Jane ran over, mindful of stepping into any of the acid pools, and offered me her hand, which I gladly took. Any paranormal encounter where you still had a hand to hold after it was okay in my book.
“You all right?” she said.
I looked around at the chaos we had made of the store, the swath of destruction that the creature had cut through it. “All things considered? Yeah.”
“You want me to go after it?”
I shook my head. “It’s long gone,” I said. “Did you see how fast that thing was?” I slid off my acid-covered coat. I barely let it fall to the floor before Jane grabbed me and hugged me. Tight. I tried not to wince given the tenderness from the fall. From the way she held me in her death grip, I could tell she was spooked. Much of her work was in the office, not in the field.
I kissed her on top of her head, hoping to calm her. “Thursdays are your day to rescue me, right?”
She laughed into my chest and I felt her grip loosen a little. She stood back and looked up at me, smiling.
“Nobody messes with Taco Night,” she said.
I reached down and gathered up my jacket. Several shards of battery casing had lodged themselves into the leather and I plucked one of the larger ones out, reading the bit of label still attached to it. “Explosion proof, my ass!”
“Hey!” a woman’s voice shouted out. I looked up and saw who I assumed was the store owner coming over to us. She was an older woman in her fifties with gray hair cut into a short bob. As she looked over the damage in the produce aisle, her eyes were so wide that I thought they might actually fall out and roll across the floor. She clutched an industrial-sized broom in her hands, but it looked puny in the face of all the damage. “What… what was that thing?”
Her accent was eight shades of old-school Brooklyn. I winced at the sound of it. “Rabid dog, ma’am,” I said, trying to put on a serious face.
“Rabid dog?” she said. “Seriously? Did you see the size of that thing? That wasn’t no dog.”
“No, really,” I said, not even buying my own story. The look on the woman’s face told me she wasn’t buying it, either. I unfolded my jacket and searched for the inside pocket, looking for one of the cards with the number for damage claims like this. I felt the edge of one and pulled it free. As I leaned forward to hand it to the store owner, the card disintegrated in my hand.
Jane slid her tiny backpack off her shoulders and produced one of her own, handing it to the woman with a reassuring smile. “You’d be surprised how big these poor mistreated animals grow when they’re left to a life in the sewers,” she said.
Something about the sweet, understanding look on Jane’s face soothed the woman. Hell, it soothed me.
“You call that number and speak to Mr. David Davidson,” Jane continued. “He’s with the Mayor’s Office. He’ll send a team out to assess the damage, and the city will see to the repairs.”
The woman remained silent, clutching the card as though it was the one thing that was keeping her mind from snapping. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the mountain of red tape downtown to process her claim might take longer than the store would last. That was government work for you. Jane and I left the woman standing there as people started coming out of hiding and looking around. We took our baskets of groceries up toward the register area, but everyone had gone off to the produce aisle to gawk at the epicenter of the incident. I bagged our groceries and left enough cash to cover them before heading out into the streets.
Jane and I checked for signs of the creature outside the store. I followed a trail of blood for about twenty feet before it vanished in the middle of the street.
“Too late,” I said. “I had hoped it would be bleeding bad enough that we could track it, but the way that thing kept healing, it dried up the trail quick.”
Jane looked disappointed, but also hopeful. “So… where to?” she asked. “Home?”
I nodded. “Some people might find an attack on their person by some half-crazed demonic monstrosity terribly unnerving, but not me.”
“No?” Jane asked, puzzled.
“Nope,” I said. “I’m more worried about the metric ton of paperwork this is going to generate back at the office.”
We headed back to my SoHo apartment nearby. I’d call the incident in to the Department of Extraordinary Affairs tonight and worry about the paperwork tomorrow. Right now I just wanted to get home and try to enjoy the precious little time off with Jane that I was able to catch these days. Besides, like the woman said, no one messes with Taco Night.