Délon City: Book Two of the Oz Chronicles (9 page)

Lou’s eyelids started to droop. She smiled and let them fall shut. The energy I had awoken with was gone. An achy sleep started to overtake me. I fought it. I don’t know why, but it felt wrong. I had a world to save. There was no time for sleep.

***

My next recollection was foggy. I’m not sure if it was a dream or not. But somewhere in that state between sleep and consciousness, I heard my Mom and Pop leave the house. Mom was still droning on about being hungry for something alive. Pop grew more and more impatient as he tried to quiet her and get her out of the house. My eyes were closed but I could see them in my mind’s eye. Pop, dressed in his usual work attire, one arm around Mom, who was dressed in jeans and a baby blue sweater coat that hung to her knees, her hair unkempt as far as Mom’s old standards. Pop’s other hand was digging in his pocket looking for his keys. He wanted her to tell her to shut up about being hungry, but he didn’t.

They exited the house, him gently nudging her out the door and pulling it closed behind them. I heard the key slide into the lock and turn to the left. Their heads passed the window as they headed for the garage.

The truck backed out of the garage and down the driveway, turning left on Westwood. They drove out of my thoughts.

As I began to draw my thoughts backwards, the vision of Westwood Avenue began to fade into blackness. The faint image of another vehicle coming down the road caught my attention. It was a green and yellow 1972 VW bus.

SIX

I
sprang out of the recliner and raced to the window. Only I didn’t really because I was already at the window. Or did I? Had I been nodding off to sleep, or had I actually seen my Mom and Pop leave the house? Lou and Gordy were out cold. I looked out the window. The green and yellow VW bus was just arriving.

An echo of a voice sounded off in my head. “Let’s just say time doesn’t really make much sense any more. It kind of jumps all over the clock...” That’s what Lou had said at Stevie Dayton’s house. It was the only answer. I had experienced a time jump.

I shook off my muddled mindset and bolted out the front door of my house. The round little van idled on the street as I ran towards it. Clouds of gray smoke billowed from the exhaust. One thought shot out from the back of my mind. Was I still asleep or was this real?

I could see the outline of the driver. He sat, both hands on the wheel, one chin resting on top of another, a ball cap positioned on his round head, the bill just 10 or so degrees from sitting at a 90 degree angle.

The harder I ran, the farther I got from the van. This was a dream. There was no other explanation.

The engine revved. The putt-putt-putt of the ancient foreignmade cylinders crept out from the back of the fat little bus. The smell of burning propane filled the air. It was Wes’s little van. That was no longer in question. The only thing left to determine was if this was just a cruel, taunting movie being played out in my head while I slept, or was this... could I dare to hope that it was real.

“Wes!” I yelled.

The driver honked. The weak unthreatening sound of it was almost laughable. The absurdity was too much. Wes was proudly redneck - NASCAR watching, tobacco chewing, beer drinking, football loving redneck to the very core. Yet, there he sat in his custom made 1972 VW green and yellow bus with a horn that sounded like it belonged on a tricycle. It was like watching a bear take the SATs. It just wasn’t right.

I finally made headway. Twenty feet from the van, I could see Wes’s yellow-toothed green. He tapped the bill of his cap. In an instant, his face was blacked out by something climbing in the passenger seat from the back of the bus. My eyes and mind adjusted. The something had fur . . . a tricolor coat, pointed ears, long powerful muzzle.

I stopped, concentrated, forced focused my disbelieving eyes. “Kimball?” I said, or may not have said. The shock of it displaced me - my actions, my inactions, all rolled up into one gigantic memory. I did everything and nothing in that moment.

The dog in the passenger seat barked.

“Kimball!” I screamed. This time I knew I had spoken out loud. I could feel the sound vibrate every inch of my body. My dog was alive. Wes was alive. The ugly green and yellow VW bus was even alive. “Kimball!”

“Oz?” A distant voice rang out.

I ignored it and started to run again.

“Oz?”

I turned to see Lou standing by the couch. “You okay?” she asked.

I was once again standing at the window. I watched as Pop’s truck pulled out of the driveway.

“I’m not dreaming,” I said.

“What?” Lou approached.

The sputtering engine of the VW bus came roaring down the street.

“They’re alive.” This time I ran out the back door, and mounted Chubby. With a kick and flip of the reigns, he turned and bounded down the driveway. I didn’t look back to see if Lou had followed. I didn’t have to. I could feel her watching me at the window as I galloped toward the street.

The van streaked by the house. I steered Chubby after it. The sometimes clunky stride of the steed became silky smooth. His powerful head bobbed effortlessly as we caught up with the sputtering bus. In no time, I was looking in the driver side window at my old friend Wes.

He smiled. “’Bout time, kid,” he yelled over the sounds of his engine and my panting horse. “’Bout damn time.”

“Is it really you?” I cried.

He laughed. “What kind of fool question is that? Course it’s me.”

“Kimball?”

My dog stuck his head out from the back of the van and barked.

I wanted to cry I was so happy. “Pull over.”

“Can’t,” Wes snarled. “They’re on me like a June bug on a shrub.”

I looked around. There was no one in sight. “I don’t see anybody.”

“They don’t much care to be seen, but trust me, they’re there.” He pulled up a plastic Pepsi bottle he had nestled between his legs and spit in it. A dark chunk of saliva dripped down inside. “Meet me at the mattress store at midnight.”

“The mattress store?”

“You ain’t forgot, have ya’?” he asked. I could see the tobacco pinched between his lower lip and gums.

“No,” I said.

He nodded. “You best pull back now. I gotta skedaddle.”

I let Chubby sprint for a little while longer. I couldn’t take my eyes off Kimball. I didn’t want to let him or Wes out of my sight.

“Kid,” Wes said, “it’s all right. Just be at the mattress store tonight at midnight.”

With that, I pulled back on Chubby’s reigns and watched the 1972 green and yellow VW bus race down to the end of Westwood and onto Lincoln Street.

***

“Was that...?” Lou stopped herself from asking a question she thought ridiculous. She had seen the van. She knew that it was Wes’s, but to assume that Wes was actually driving it just seemed too much to hope for.

I stood in my living room looking over her and Gordy, not knowing what to say. Inside, I was jumping for joy. Hell, it was like midnight on New Year’s eve in my head, but something inside of me, a distant ungraspable knowing, told me to keep this to myself. Still, the urge to share my excitement was almost too much to bear. “It was...” I started, but stopped. A vision popped in my head.

I stood in a darkened warehouse. Shattered wooden crates were strewn throughout the dingy space. I was covered in the red blood of humans and the purple blood of Délons. In my hand was my old sword, J.J. I wielded it with a weakened grip. In one corner of the room, Gordy was being tortured and maimed by a creature I did not recognize. It was opaque and covered in a sheen of mucus. It stood on four crab-like legs. Its upper body appeared human. Its head rested on its neck upside down. Its eyes were where its mouth should be, and its mouth, sewn shut in a wilted frown, was on its forehead. It had two hands with five willowy fingers each that ended in railroad-sized spikes.

I attempted to turn to help Gordy, but something lay across my feet. I looked down and saw the bloodied body of Lou, a puncture wound to her chest. I had killed her.

With a painful rip, the vision disappeared from my mind. My mouth went dry, and my knees wobbled. “Don’t tell them!” a voice raged in my head. “Don’t you dare tell them!”

“It . . . wasn’t who you think it was,” I said in a reedy voice.

Lou’s eyes narrowed, and she bowed her head. “Of course it wasn’t.” The disappointment in her voice was palpable.

“Wasn’t who?” Gordy asked.

“An old friend,” I answered. I couldn’t look at him without seeing him being thrashed by the creature in my vision. “Listen, Gordy, maybe you should... go home.”

“What? Why?” He sounded hurt and anxious all at once.

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be around me...”

He cut me off. “What is this? You said I could hang. You said we were friends again. What you’re like king now and you don’t need old Gordy around any more? Is that it?”

“No,” I said. “It’s just not safe...”

“Safe?” He laughed. “Safe went out the window when our purple friends showed up!”

“Bad things tend to happen when I’m around,” I said raising my voice above his. I was trying to save the poor slob’s life, and he was throwing a hissy fit.

“When you’re around?” He laughed again. Not a real laugh, but an angry, disgusted guttural release of air from the pit of his stomach. “Were you around when they beat the crap out of my old man and sucked the blood out of my mom? Were you around when they fed my little sister to a pack of skinners? Were you around when they marked me?”

I looked at him struggling to say something – anything that didn’t make me an even bigger jerk.

“Yeah that’s right, jackass, I’ve been marked!” He was shrieking now. Spit was coming out of the corners of his mouth. He was angry and confused and scared. “This isn’t just about you! Bad stuff has happened to all of us! If you don’t want me around because I cramp your king... ness, then fine, but don’t pretend you’re trying to protect me because there’s nowhere I’m safer than with you!” He started to cry, a shoulder quaking, snot flopping, shallow breathing type of cry.

Lou put her arm around his shoulder and helped him sit back down on the sofa. “He’s right,” she said. She hesitated and then spoke again. “We saw it, too.”

“Saw it? The vision?” I was stunned and ashamed.

“It wasn’t a vision.” She rocked with Gordy and patted his back. She looked at me, eyes steady and penetrating. “It was the future.”

“The future?” I backed away.

“I should say, a future. Happening now...”

“A time jump,” I said.

She nodded.

“But I would never... do that to you.” I couldn’t say the word “kill” out loud.

She released Gordy from her comforting embrace and stood. She approached me with a relentless seriousness in her face. “Listen to me,” she barked. “You do whatever it takes to get the world back to the way it was. Do you understand me?”

“But...”

“No! No buts!” This isn’t a game. None of us are more important than our final objective!”

“I’m not killing anyone!” I shouted.

Délon Devlin entered the house chewing on a wriggling screamer. He held a paper bag full of the wormy munchables in his hand. He felt the heat from our exchange and chuckled. “What’s wrong? You kiddies can’t decide which cartoon to watch?”

I backed away from Lou and headed toward my room. “What time will the rest of the horses be here?”

Devlin swallowed his screamer. “In the morning, sixish.”

“See that nobody disturbs me until then,” I said.

Devlin looked bemused. “Are you giving me an order?”

I stopped at the door and turned to him. I was flummoxed by my little exchange with Lou and I was in no mood for Devlin’s crap. “Look, let’s stop playing this stupid game. I’m your king, like it or not. The fact that I don’t have purple skin and a spider leg afro are just formalities. So, unless you want my first official act as your dead-eyed lord and master to have your head shaved and your tongue ripped out by Canter, then just do what I say, and save us all a lot of trouble!”

Devlin dithered. He looked at Lou and Gordy. They were just as surprised by my behavior as he was. He looked back at me and, after some consideration, meekly said, “Okay.”

I shut the door to my room, and cried the same shoulder quaking, snot flopping, shallow breathing cry that Gordy had cried. But unlike him, I didn’t have the courage to do it out loud.

***

After nightfall, I crawled out of my window and silently guided Chubby through the yard into our neighbor’s, the Drucker’s, backyard. There was a time that they would have immediately stormed out of their house and ran to my mother and father, demanding that my parents punish me for trespassing on their perfect lawn of Bermuda grass. Instead, Mr. Drucker, a round little man with thinning blonde hair and thick black-rimmed glasses, smiled a phony smile from his living room window as I passed. Mrs. Drucker, purple complexion, grayish hair mixed with spider legs, eyes not quite dead, stood beside him holding a live mouse by the tail. Dinner.

I climbed on top of Chubby and began my journey to Manchester. I had not thought about Wes’s mattress shop for a long time. It was a nice end-of-the-world setup, situated next to a grocery store, not far from a Wal-Mart. You had a nice place to lay your head at night, your choice of an assortment of nonperishable food items, and the company was pretty good.

As I rode, I wondered how different things would be if we had decided to stay in that little mattress store and not tried to set things right by destroying the Takers. The Takers were mindless brutes. Not a group you’d have over for Christmas dinner, but as far as soulless, evil rulers of the planet, they were a lot better than the Délons.

From out of nowhere I heard
“DON’T TRUST G”
in my head. Gordy was a scared, sometimes spineless little kid, but he was still my friend. We had a history together that went back to before we could both walk and feed ourselves. If there was anyone left on this planet I could still trust, it was him. Then my vision, or leap to the future, came back to me. He was being tortured by some thing, some horrible thing. I was turning to help him... The image became clearer. My hand, the one holding J.J., was covered in a flaky purple rash. I wasn’t turning to help Gordy. I was turning to help the creature, the horrible crab-legged creature with the upside down face, finish Gordy off.