Chapter 2
The next morning, Eddie wakes up already sitting in front of the TV, which is not where he fell asleep the night before. Venom is in full manifest around him, watching the news report, and he’s growling to himself. From within, Eddie can feel the contempt rolling around in their shared gullet.
(That’s always been the weirdest thing, how much more bodily he feels both the symbiote’s emotions as well as his own. Venom had said from day one that they didn’t have secrets, but every so often Eddie gets reminded of just how much privacy he doesn’t have.)
“ Police say the body was found just a few blocks away from the last place the victim was seen- ” the news report says, and it shows a bar Eddie knows is sandwiched right between Union Square and the Tenderloin. They go on to say that if anyone has any information, they should contact authorities, and then they switch to the next story. Venom sits back on the couch and sinks back into his body, and it's clear by the way he's sitting under Eddie's skin that he's upset, or frustrated. Or something.
“Well, good morning to you too, buddy,” Eddie says aloud. He’s long since stopped feeling weird about talking to himself - or, ‘himself’ - in his own apartment. He leaves the news on and goes to fix himself a fresh pot of coffee. He still needs to do dishes, and the trash probably needs to go out, but he is going to ignore that in favor of literally anything else because he is not awake enough to deal with that nonsense. A bagel goes into the toaster for himself and a good pile of tater tots go into the toaster oven for Venom; Eddie figures he might as well just do it, because his favorite sentient puddle seems like he’s upset about the murders and he might as well make him breakfast.
Venom doesn't speak for another couple minutes, and Eddie almost thinks he’s sulking. Finally he says, I SUSPECT ANOTHER ONE SURVIVED THE LIFE FOUNDATION.
“What? I thought you were the last one out of that place?”
ONE DIED BEFORE WE LEFT THAT PLACE. THE OTHER WAS WELL ON THEIR WAY OUT. I THOUGHT FOR SURE THEY WOULD BE A STAIN ON THE FLOOR BY NOW. Suddenly Eddie thinks he has an idea why Venom is feeling so conflicted about this. EDDIE, IF THEY TRY TO RETURN TO THE REST OF OUR KIND, WE ARE ALL DEAD. WE NEED TO FIND THEM.
Eddie can feel, in a vague sort of way, that this means more to Venom than he’s verbalizing. And anyway, even if it didn’t, he can’t really argue with the logic he’s presenting. The thing with Riot was a practical disaster, and even though there wasn’t exactly another handy spaceship lying around in the Bay Area that he knew of, who knew when they would find out about, like, NASA or something. “Well,” Eddie turns off the TV and finishes off his coffee, “I suppose we could go to that bar and see what we can find. Good thing we’ve got experience digging up dirt.”
—
The owner of the bar is a fifty-something woman named Marsha who just looks tired of answering questions, but shockingly, she recognizes Eddie from his show, and she lets him look at the security footage.
And, honestly, the guy was kind of a dick. He was at the bar for a couple hours, doing a lot of harassing and groping of young women. Eventually, near the end of the tape, he latched on to one girl playing darts. She was by herself; He challenged her to a round, and at some point during the game he discreetly passed a hand over her drink. Eddie immediately loses all sympathy for the guy as soon as he sees it. When she takes her next sip, while the guy is focusing on the dartboard, he and Venom both watch her shape shudder and ripple. Not in a way that Marsha or any cop would catch, and even Eddie might not have caught it if not for Venom’s focus latching onto that moment.
THERE. THAT’S IT. WE MUST FIND THEM.
He skips the tape forward a bit. Roughly half an hour later, as they’re leaving, she’s stumbling enough that she hands him a key ring. They get into a yellow van parked on the street, speed off, and the tape ends.
Eddie looks at Marsha, who is royally pissed. “Any chance she’s a regular?”
“Comes in every few days. God, I knew I should have kicked him out.” Marsha takes a deep breath and sighs. “I think she lives in that van. She mentioned going to the Monterey aquarium this weekend, though. Might find her down that direction?”
Eddie can feel Venom crawling up his throat with the intent of getting the hell to Monterey, “I’ll try to find her, see if we can’t figure out what’s happened.”
“Good. When you see her, tell her I’m sorry I didn’t catch him, will you?
—
It’s roughly a two hour drive to Monterey, where Eddie finds the older-model conversion van in question parked near a public beach. It’s a pleasant pastel yellow color, bedecked with sunflowers. They’re painted on the sides, printed on the seat covers, there’s even a sunflower-shaped air freshener hanging from the rearview. The back door is open, facing the water, and beneath the door Eddie can see a pair of legs dangling barely an inch from the ground.
It’s late enough in the evening and they’re far enough out of town that people have left this part of the beach empty, so if this gets out of hand he won’t feel so self conscious about EATING HER FACE AND THEN HER KIDNEYS-
“We are not going to eat her face or her kidneys,” Eddie mutters to the oil slick in the back of his brain, “We’re just going to talk.”
EDDIE SHE IS ENCROACHING ON OUR TERRITORY. I REFUSE TO SHARE.
“Oh, is that what this is about?”
NOT ONLY WILL THEY BRING ABOUT THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PLANET IF LEFT ALONE, BUT THEY ARE EATING FROM MY PLATE, AS IT WERE.
He crosses the last ten paces or so to the van and knocks on the side.
He hears the girl on the other side of the door swear under her breath. “I’m not sleeping, this is a public parking lot,” she yells. Eddie hears her bare feet hit the ground before the door swings closed. Her shirt has a sunflower print almost identical to the one from the seat covers, and it matches the baseball bat she’s holding that someone clearly spent a lot of time custom-painting.
She isn’t threatening him with it yet, but Eddie knows a defensive streak like that comes from experience, so he throws his hands up casually, even as he can feel Venom roil beneath his skin at the indignation. “I’m not the cops,” he says, “I just wanna talk.” Her grip on the bat shifts, but doesn’t relax, and she just stares at him expectantly, so he continues. “Look, there’s no easy way to put this. Have you been killing and possibly eating young men in the Bay Area lately?”
The next ten seconds move really quickly. The young woman swings the bat at Eddie’s head, it gets blocked by Venom’s arm, she drops the bat and turns navy blue and grows two feet and tries to claw Eddie’s face off, and Venom decides that he has HAD ENOUGH and just kind of goes for it. They struggle, liquidly, kind of like how they did with Riot except that Venom is a lot more confident and Eddie is a lot less willing to straight up murder this kid, she barely looks old enough to drink. She, or whoever the blue thing is, tosses them out on the sand, face first.
After a second, she says beneath the voice of her symbiote, “You have one up your ass, too?”
Then, Venom yells, “METHOD, WHAT ARE YOU DOING STILL ALIVE?”