The Takers: Book One of the Oz Chronicles (10 page)

I turned to Lou. "He's not making any sense."

"Maybe we're the ones not making any sense," she said. "I think he's telling us it's safe to read the comic book."

Ajax grinned and nodded. He signed, "No take army."

"I'm supposed to take an ape's word for it?" I said, frustrated. "Old future? Gorilla always know? I think you're nuts, Ajax."

He grinned wildly and shook his hands above his head as if to show me what crazy really was. When he calmed down, he signed, "Baby sentence tell."

"Well, now he's just lost it," I said. "'Baby sentence tell' doesn't make any sense at all."

"What do we have here?" a voice said. "Horse-boy is talkin' to the monkey." Reya and her gang had snuck up on us while we were talking. They lined up outside the picnic area. Devlin, Miles, and the kid who stood in the dark the night before held fast to the leashes of four pit bulls. The dogs had not barked but there was a raw bloodlust in their eyes that let everyone know they were killers.

Tyrone and Valerie stood back. They were soaked to the bone and shivering. It was obvious they did not want to be there.

Miles stepped forward with his pit bull. The chain link he had brandished as a weapon at Crazy Jay's was wrapped around his left hand and arm. "We got us some killer pits to take care of your stinkin' ape," he said proudly.

"Yeah," Devlin shouted. His pit bull pulled on its leash and nearly knocked him to the ground.

The other kid held on calmly to his two pit bulls. "These are fightin' dogs," he said. "They'll tear your gorilla and German shepherd apart." I could tell from his tone he was older, and he looked a lot like Reya. My guess was they were twins.

I looked at the four dogs. They were stout fierce animals, and they probably could kill Kimball with no problem. But I had my doubts they could put much more than a scratch on Ajax.

"All we want is the horses," Reya said.

"Get your own," I said.

"I'm going to snap your neck, horse-boy," Miles said.

"Seriously," I said, "there are probably hundreds of horses around here. Their owners certainly don't have any use for them anymore."

I could see Devlin scratch his head. "He's right. Why don't we just get our own?"

"Shut up," Reya screamed. "We're bandits. We take what we want. And we want your horses… and the gorilla, too."

Ajax stood on the table. He roared and pounded his chest.

"What are we going to do with a gorilla?" Devlin asked.

"Yeah, I don't know about that," Miles said.

"Shut up!" Reya was so mad she could hardly see straight.

"Tell you what," I said. "You figure out what it is you want and come back when you get it all straightened out."

Lou giggled, and Nate gurgled from his sling.

Reya stepped forward. "You got a baby in there?"

"What if we do?" I said.

She smiled. "We'll be takin' that, too."

Now they were starting to piss me off. I signed to Ajax, "Protect baby." He leapt forward with his fangs displayed. Kimball followed his friend into battle.

Devlin released his dog, which promptly ran as far away as it could. The other pit bulls cowered as the great ape approached on two legs, pounding his chest. They were fighting dogs, but they were also smart enough to know when they were outmatched. The remaining three dogs ripped free of their leashes and sprinted out of the area.

Reya and her gang stood dumbfounded. The rain drenched them as they struggled to come up with a dignified exit strategy. Ajax and Kimball stopped advancing, but they remained poised and ready to attack at a moment's notice.

"You're not very good bandits, are you?" I said.

"Call off your monkey," Miles said, arms raised, afraid to move.

"He's not a monkey. He's an ape same as you and me." I was starting to enjoy myself.

"Whatever," Devlin said on the verge of tears. "Just don't let him hurt us."

I thought about his request. "You've tried to steal my stuff twice now. Seems to me that it might make my life a whole lot easier to let him just rip you bandits to shreds. It would keep me from having to look over my shoulder all the time."

"Mister," Tyrone said. "Please don't let him rip us to shreds. Me and Valerie didn't want to come…"

Reya turned to him and screamed, "Shut up, you traitor!"

I stood and walked to the edge of the canopied picnic area. "Tell you what, I'll let you go on your merry way on one condition."

The kid whose name I didn't know cleared his throat. "What's that?"

"Tyrone and Valerie come with us." I looked at the two little kids. "You wouldn't mind that, would you?" They looked at each other and then me. They shook their heads.

Reya snarled. "No way. They're part of our gang."

"Ajax," I said. "When I count to three you start ripping these bandits apart." He looked at me and it was clear he had no idea what I was talking about, but Reya and her gang didn't know that. "One."

"C'mon," Miles said, pleading now.

"Two."

"Let him have the kids," the older boy said to Reya.

Reya hesitated and then relented "Okay okay you can have them." She motioned to them to join us under the canopy.

I called Ajax and Kimball off and they quickly joined us under the shelter.

The remaining bandits turned to mount their bicycles when Reya stopped. She looked at me with pure hatred and said, "We'll be back." With that the four bicycle bandits got on their bikes and disappeared in the rain.

"You hungry?" I asked Tyrone and Valerie. They nodded enthusiastically. I ran to the wagon and got them some food, which they gobbled up like they hadn't eaten in days.

"What do you reckon on doing with us?" Valerie asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know."

"You ain't going to feed us to your gorilla, are ya'?" Tyrone asked.

"He's not my gorilla," I said. "He eats what he wants."

Lou shook her head. "Gorillas don't eat people."

Valerie and Tyrone sighed in a moment of unified relief. Their faces were dirty, and their clothes were drenched. They looked like refugees. Kimball sat next to them and started licking the mud from their faces.

"Your dog's crazy, mister," Tyrone said between giggles.

"Don't call me mister," I said. "I'm only 13." I squatted down at the edge of the canopied picnic area and watched the rain pound the rest area grounds. "How'd you two end up with Reya and the others?"

"They found us in the hospital," Valerie said.

"Hospital?"

"In Chattanooga," Valerie said. "I had my tonsils out. See." She opened her mouth wide to show me her tonsil-less throat. "Anyway, that's where they found us."

"What were you doing there, Tyrone?" I asked.

"Visiting my granddad. He had a brain tutor."

"You mean 'tumor'?" I said.

"I guess," he said.

I stood and thought about my next question very carefully. I didn't want to traumatize the little kids by making them relive what they may have seen the Takers do, but in the end my need to know trumped my concerns for their mental well being. "Do you know what happened to everybody else at the hospital?"

They thought about it. The pained expressions on their faces verified they were drudging up some unwanted memories.

"The monsters got 'em," Tyrone said.

"Swallowed 'em up," Valerie said.

"How did you two get away?" Lou asked.

Valerie hesitated. She seemed to be studying Lou's question carefully, as if she was afraid that her answer might sound crazy. "An angel helped us."

Tyrone rolled his eyes, "He weren't no angel. He was the janitor."

"He was too an angel. I seen him fly." Valerie seemed hurt by Tyrone's protest.

Tyrone huffed. "How many angels you know named Stevie?"

The name struck me like a fist to the gut. "What did you say his name was?"

"Stevie," he said.

I avoided looking at Lou, but I could feel her looking at me. I knew what she was thinking. But she was wrong. She had to be. Stevie was a fairly common name. Just because this janitor was named Stevie doesn't mean he was Stevie Dayton. Besides it was impossible. Stevie Dayton was dead. I thought about that word "impossible" and how little meaning it had any more.

***

The rain continued into the evening. By the time it stopped it was too late to carry on with our travels, so we settled into the rest area for the night. The plan was that Lou would stand watch the first half of the night and I would take over the latter half. Although I could have volunteered to stand watch the whole night because there was very little chance I was going to get any sleep. And I wish it were because I was concerned about the bicycle bandits returning.

The truth of the matter is that as soon as the sun fell, I could feel the presence of the Takers slithering in the darkness. They were in the picnic area. They were in the restrooms. They were on the highway. They were everywhere, waiting to be noticed, to hear their name. I could feel their desperation. The wind carried the chattering of their teeth. Looking back over my life, I know now they had always been there. They were that unexplained noise whenever I was left home alone, that misplaced shadow on the wall of my bedroom that I would notice just as I was about to drift asleep. They were the disembodied cool breeze that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up straight. They had always been around, and they were harmless until somebody said their name, or until you read Stevie's comic book.

We heard the bathroom doors slam around midnight. The Takers' desperation had turned into frustration. They could smell us, but they couldn't find us until we found them.

The night air was cold. Valerie and Tyrone were buried under mounds of blankets. I couldn't see their faces, but I was sure they were awake, praying for God to make the monsters go away. Lou's posture told me all I needed to know about her state of mind. She held J.J. firmly with one hand and Nate's sling with the other. She was ready to fight to the death. Kimball and Ajax sat attentive but calm. They were soldiers waiting for their orders.

"The Music City Miracle," I said. "January 8, 2001. The Titans played the Buffalo Bills in the AFC wild-card playoff game." This drew a strange gaze from Lou. Tyrone and Valerie peeked out from under their blankets. "The Bills had just kicked a 41-yard field goal to go ahead of the Titans, 16 to 15. There were only 16 seconds left on the clock. Everyone in the Titans hometown stadium thought the game was over. I know. I was there with my Pop. I thought for sure that was the end for the Titans." All eyes were on me. "But what none of us knew was that the Titans had been practicing a play all year called Home Run Throwback. It was made just for situations like they were facing, down by less than a touchdown with just seconds left on the clock. The Bills were expected to squib kick on the kickoff to keep it out of the hands of the Titans return men." I got more and more excited as I relived the memory. "The Titans were waiting for them. The key to the play is to get the ball to Frank Wycheck, the Titans tight end. He would then take the ball and backwards pass it to Derrick Mason, their best return man. Mason would then follow a wall of blockers down the field and either get them into field goal range or take it all the way in for a touchdown. The only problem was Derrick Mason had left the game with a concussion. So they called on Kevin Dyson to take his place. Dyson had never run the play in practice. Well, what do you think happened?" I asked.

Tyrone was sitting up on his elbows now. "What?"

"The play worked to perfection," I said. "Steve Christie with the Bills kicked off to Lorenzo Neal with the Titans. Neal took the ball and handed it off to Wycheck on the 25-yard line. Wycheck lateraled the ball across the field to Dyson who ran 75 yards for the game-winning touchdown. Have you ever heard 67,000 fans screaming their heads off?" I was standing now. The elation of the memory swirled all through my body. "It was the most incredible thing I have ever seen."

"Not if you ask my granddad," Lou said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"He's a Bills fan. He says the lateral was an illegal forward pass." She smiled. "I don't know what that is, but he hates the Titans because of it."

"Your granddad's nuts," I said. "It was legal all the way." Neither one of us noticed that we had used the present tense in referring to her grandfather. We were so caught up in the story that we talked as if everything was normal, as if we were old friends back home talking about one of the greatest moments in NFL history.

Something else happened as I told the story. The Takers had gone away because we refused to notice them. I had successfully turned their frustration into futility. They had moved back into the shadows and seeped into the surrounding nothingness.

Riding into Chattanooga the next morning, we passed a billboard for a car dealership that had the word "Takers" spray-painted over it. We tried not to focus on it, and to a certain extent we were successful. But seeing the word written in such a public place made me curious. Was that how they did it? They write the name in enough public places so people see it, eventually read it out loud, maybe catch the eye of a TV station or a newspaper. They take pictures and run it as a news item. Suddenly the word "Takers" is in every home in every community. Hell, if you write it on the side of Air Force One or the White House it becomes national news. Pretty soon everyone in the whole country — the whole world for that matter — is seeing it, hearing it, and saying it. Who would have thought that something as innocuous as vandalism would cause the end of the world?

Under the shadow of Lookout Mountain, we passed a small one-foot by one-foot blue sign with a white letter "H" on it — Hospital. The details of Tyrone and Valerie's story came rushing back. An angel named Stevie saved them. Logic told me that it wasn't the same Stevie, but my mother once told me there is no such thing as a coincidence. A billboard for the hospital was a half mile ahead of us. Giant smiling doctors, nurses, and staff looked down on I-24 and welcomed the infirm to pay them a visit while they were in Chattanooga. A closer look at one of the staff members in the advertisement made me do a double take. A man, in a gray uniform and holding a mop, looked very similar to Stevie Dayton. I pulled back on the horses' reins and stopped. I stared at the billboard. Valerie and Tyrone peered from the back of the wagon.