by Greg Taylor
Turning away from the window, Toby saw an obvious escape route: a large tree in the backyard of the Child house. It would take a slight leap to make it to the tree’s branches that reached out across the yard toward the roof. Nothing too dangerous.
“You go first,” Annabel said.
Toby made the jump, then looked back at Annabel. Instead of leaping from the roof, Annabel looked like her feet were glued to it.
“Annabel? You okay?”
Clearly Annabel wasn’t okay. She looked absolutely petrified. “Maybe now’s not the time to mention this,” she said. “But I’m afraid of heights.”
Toby had to stifle a smile. Annabel—the quick study, the can-do person, the actual descendant of a sixteenth-century samurai, maybe—was afraid of heights? It didn’t seem possible.
“I see you smiling,” Annabel said, looking embarrassed as she clung to the eave of a dormer roof overhang.
“No, I’m not.”
“Just … get me out of here, okay?”
5
After repeated encouragement from Toby, Annabel did manage the leap from roof to tree, after which she and Toby were able to make their getaway. Driving away from the Child house, Harvey congratulated the trio on the success of their first Killer Pizza “search warrant.”
Two days later, after testing hair and skin samples from Child’s shaver and comparing it to the DNA in the blood from Sammy’s system, Harvey was able to confirm that Chris Child was, indeed, the victim of a guttata bite.
“Stakeout time,” Strobe said after hearing the news.
“That’s right,” Harvey replied. “Two of you at a time. One three-hour shift a night, starting at sunset. Steve and I will take turns on the long midnight to six A.M. shift.”
“What about the daylight hours?” Annabel asked. She and Toby, Strobe, Harvey, and Steve were all gathered in Harvey’s downstairs office.
“Doubtful Child will return to his house during the day. His eyes will be especially sensitive for some time after the transformation. Who wants to take tonight’s shift?”
Annabel and Strobe immediately raised their hands. Harvey nodded. “Off with you. It’s already dark. See you at midnight. Be sure to take all of your gear. The guttata are also interested in finding out who their lost comrade infected, assuming they already haven’t. Be on the lookout for them, as well.”
As the group started to break up, an intercom on the wall crackled to life. “Steve, we need some help!” a harried voice said. “A Little League team just arrived. It’s a traffic jam!”
The workers overhead thought the intercom connected them to Steve’s office on the first floor, where he was never to be disturbed.
“Mind taking it, Toby?” Steve asked.
Of course, Toby didn’t mind taking it. He walked up the spiral staircase, pushed through the door into the storage room, and walked down the hall to the kitchen. Putting on his apron, Toby looked around with a frown.
“No wonder you’re having a meltdown,” he said to the frenzied cook next to him. “You’re short a man.”
“Yeah, Ryan called in sick.”
Toby immediately stopped what he was doing. “Sick? What, does he have a cold or something?”
“Don’t know. He sounded terrible, though. Couldn’t even get out of bed. He’s not sure what he has.”
Toby’s senses suddenly seemed hyperactive. He excused himself and headed back downstairs. Did the guy just have a cold? Or the flu, maybe? Somehow Toby didn’t think so. He knew he needed to tell Harvey about his sick Killer Pizza employee, that’s for sure.
Double-timing it down the spiral staircase, two words reverberated in Toby’s brain. Two chilling words that had been spoken to him that horrible night in the woods:
We’re everywhere.
The Child house was located at the bottom of Prospect Park, the park where Toby, Annabel, and Strobe had made their collective decision to sign up for the MCO Academy. A large stand of bushes bordered one side of the park, and that’s where Annabel and Strobe set up their stakeout. They hollowed out a portion of the bushes, creating a small cave-like area that was completely hidden from passersby, then sat down to watch the house below.
When Steve appeared three hours later, Strobe and Annabel had nothing to report. There had been no sign of suspicious activity anywhere in the neighborhood. It was now Steve’s turn to sit in the claustrophobic, leafy cavern. He settled in for the long midnight-to-dawn shift.
As Strobe and Annabel headed home from their inaugural Killer Pizza stakeout, Chris Child was resting in a hollow that he had carved out from a short bluff that bordered one of the streams near North Park.
Child’s bizarre transformation, which had begun a few days ago, had already distorted his features to a hair-raising, alarming degree. Strangely enough, Child felt pretty good at this point in his otherworldly voyage. Physically, anyway. He was confused about what was happening to him, to be sure, but he felt stronger than he ever had in his entire life. Not only that, the scents and sounds in the woods beyond his self-made cave were sharper and more exciting than anything Child had ever experienced before. It was like a natural high.
So now, Child—a rather unnerving-looking combination of human-guttata—was waiting. The same instinct that had instructed him to seek a private place to complete his transformation also told him that someone—something—was coming to help him.
But a spark of human impulse still resided in Chris. A spark that continued to whisper … go home. Chris resisted the pull of that human call. He sensed it was too soon to go back to his “nest.”
Another deeply imbedded human impulse caused Chris to look at his watch. Ooops. When would he stop doing that? The Swatch timepiece had slipped off a few days ago when Chris’s arm had begun to grow longer. And bonier.
Chris grunted—more a guttata sound than human—in exasperation. He knew that he was more than a little whacked-out. He didn’t know if he was coming or going. He did know that his life had changed in a most far-out and unexpected way.
After all, just last month he’d been working at the Echo 8-Plex Theaters down on Streets Run. From that … to this. A detour totally beyond weird.
Unfortunately, as much as the former Chris Child might want to go back to his former life, there was nothing he could do at this point but sit and wait. In the damp hollow of his cave. And fight that premature urge to go back home.
6
“No, Carl! Absolutely not!”
“We already punished him once, Jean. I say we let the boy stay home.”
“Why, so he can have a bunch of wild parties while we’re gone?”
Toby was listening from his bedroom as his parents argued about whether or not to allow him to stay home when they went on their annual vacation to Orlando, which would kick off the following morning.
Toby had no intention of going. He was getting too old to go on vacations with his family. Besides, he had important work to do at Killer Pizza. But at this point it sounded like his mom wasn’t budging. After his “all-nighter,” she clearly didn’t trust him to stay home alone.
Toby didn’t stick around to hear the resolution to his parents’ battle. He had some free time before heading off to Prospect Park—where he and Annabel would be taking the sunset-to-midnight stakeout shift—and had decided to go see Chelsea in the hospital.
Unfortunately, after briefly showing signs of improvement, Chelsea had started to weaken. The stress and strain of the guttata bite had apparently been too much for her. The KP doctor wasn’t even sure if Chelsea was going to make it, a supremely depressing thought for Toby.
He took a detour on his bike ride to the hospital to buy some flowers. He’d never visited anyone in the hospital before, but he thought that’s what you were supposed to do. Bring flowers with you.
As Toby walked toward Chelsea’s hospital room, a nurse passed him in the hall. Toby froze and glanced over his shoulder at the nurse. He thought he had just seen the nurse’s left hand shaking! Toby
studied the nurse as she walked down the hall, away from him. Her hand looked okay, now. Still, Toby was pretty sure … .
She’s okay, Toby tried to convince himself. Check it out. She looks perfectly fine.
There was a very good reason for Toby’s hypersensitivity to anything that looked suspiciously “guttata-like,” besides the fact that he’d been thinking about practically nothing else but guttata for the past month. Harvey had called Toby just a few hours earlier to inform him that he had paid a visit to Killer Pizza’s sick employee. All signs pointed to the young man being a guttata-bite victim.
So, yes, the screws were tightening. The pressure building. Now, more than ever, it really did feel to Toby as though the guttata were everywhere and were closing in on him and his KP partners.
The nurse had stopped to talk to a doctor. Toby waited a moment to see if the telltale shaking of the left hand reappeared. When it didn’t, he turned and approached Chelsea’s room. He would inquire about the nurse’s name after seeing Chelsea. That’s what he’d do. That way Harvey could check up on her, just to be sure.
After a final look down the hall at the nurse, Toby knocked on Chelsea’s door. He cautiously entered the room when no one answered. Chelsea was lying in bed, asleep. Hooked up to a number of monitors, she didn’t look much different from the last time Toby had seen her. Seeing Chelsea like this gave Toby a hopeless and empty feeling. He looked around the room, placed his flowers on a nearby shelf, then wasn’t sure what to do. Leave? Wait to see if Chelsea woke up?
Toby decided to stay for a while. Sitting in a chair near the bed, watching Chelsea, hearing her strained, raspy breath, Toby’s low spirits were suddenly pushed aside by a shot of anger. It wasn’t fair, what had happened to Chelsea. She didn’t ask for this.
“Who’re you?”
Toby was jolted out of his thoughts by Chelsea’s whispered question. Her eyes were barely open, as though it were a strain just to keep her lids at half-mast.
“I’m … Toby. Toby Magill.”
Chelsea’s eyes narrowed as she studied him. “Oh, yeah, right. You were at The Zone the other night.”
Toby nodded. He had been informed that Chelsea’s recent memory was spotty at best.
“What are you doin’ here?”
“I heard you were in the hospital, so … I figured I’d come visit.”
“Pretty flowers. You bring ’em?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind are they?”
“I’m not sure.”
“They smell good.”
Chelsea’s eyes started to close. “It’s real sweet of you to come. Hardly anyone’s been by to see me.”
“Well … I’m happy I stopped by.”
Chelsea didn’t respond. Her eyes had closed and she looked like she had fallen back asleep. But then she frowned and looked at Toby.
“What’s wrong?”
“I remember you asking me if anything had bitten me. How did you know that?”
“I don’t know … a wild guess?”
“No, it wasn’t, was it? You know. You know what bit me.”
Toby was silent.
“You have to tell me. I was so out of it that night, I think I told the doctor I’d been bitten by an alien. Should have seen his face. All I want to know is … was I just seeing things? Am I crazy? I really don’t know anymore.”
Toby sensed a kind of desperation in Chelsea to know the answer to her question. He couldn’t deny her.
“You’re not crazy, Chelsea. But it wasn’t an alien that bit you. It was a monster.”
A half hour later, Toby was walking down the hospital hallway. Chelsea had fallen asleep right after he had revealed to her that monsters did exist, and that she’d met one of them. Chelsea had not looked surprised when Toby told her that. Matter-of-fact, it seemed to Toby as though she had gained a small amount of peace from the news. She wasn’t crazy, after all.
Turning a corner, Toby suddenly stopped in his tracks. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Lenny and a few of his pals were coming toward him!
Toby wasn’t sure what to do. Continue down the hall or head in the opposite direction? Lenny gave him a blank look as he approached. The bully didn’t recognize him! But then the bald-headed tough’s eyes sparked darkly when he was almost shoulder to shoulder with Toby.
Toby walked quickly past Lenny, avoiding his glare. The last thing he wanted right now was another confrontation with this guy. He had more important things to do.
“Hey, dude. Where you think you’re going?” Lenny said the words low and cold. Toby continued on down the hall. No way was he going to respond to Lenny’s question. “The more important question,” Lenny continued. “Where you comin’ from?” Suddenly, just like the night at the Fun Zone, Toby felt Lenny grab him painfully from behind.
This time Toby’s reaction was slightly different.
Using the most elementary of martial arts moves he had learned in class, Toby spun around, at the same time jerking up his right arm to knock Lenny’s hand away from his shoulder.
BAM!!!
Toby followed his spin with a clenched left fist, palm-down shot to Lenny’s chest. Lenny staggered back from the short, powerful punch, his mouth forming an O of surprise.
Toby should have left it at that. But he wasn’t thinking clearly. Heck, he wasn’t thinking at all. He had snapped into a zone. He was executing a combination of moves that Steve had drilled into him.
So Toby twirled to his right, bringing his leg up and out as he executed his martial arts pirouette.
GOMPH!!!
Toby’s right foot slammed into Lenny’s jaw, dropping him instantly to the floor. As though coming out of a trance, Toby looked down in surprise at Lenny’s inert body.
Whoa! He’d never been able to do that in class!
The hospital security guard was summoned. Then the police. As Toby sat silently in the small security guard’s office waiting for the police to arrive, two very different emotions were duking it out inside him.
Toby couldn’t help but feel a certain amount of pride at being able to deal with the older and more powerful Lenny Baker.
But he also felt badly about what he had done. One of the first things he learned from Steve in self-defense class was the importance of self-control in the martial arts. He had taken his confrontation with Lenny, who had suffered a dislocated jaw, too far, that’s for sure.
When the police arrived they questioned Lenny’s pals and Toby about what had happened. They quickly bought Toby’s version of the story. Lenny’s pals’ spin on the events—that Toby had attacked Lenny, unprovoked—was pretty easy to discount, especially considering Lenny and his gang’s spotty reputation. So, checking this one off as a clear-cut case of self-defense, Toby was not escorted to the police station and booked with assault. But the police did call Toby’s father, who came to the hospital to take his son back home.
Toby and his father were silent as Mr. Magill drove along the twisting streets of Hidden Hills. Toby could only imagine what was going through his dad’s head.
“I really need to get new windshield wipers,” Mr. Magill said. A summer shower had greeted Toby and his dad when they came out of the hospital. Toby looked over to see his father squinting to see past the streaks on the windshield caused by the faulty wipers.
“Is that really what you’re thinking about, Dad? Getting new windshield wipers? I mean, after what just happened?”
Mr. Magill was silent. Toby wasn’t sure if his dad was going to respond to his question. “You know, Toby …” Mr. Magill finally said. “I’m not sure what to say. What would you say if a policeman gave you a call to let you know your son just leveled a kid with a kick to the head? Keep in mind that you didn’t even know that your son was taking any kind of martial arts classes.”
“I don’t know,” Toby had to admit.
“There you go.”
More silence in the car. Then …
“I will say this. You’ve been quite a surp
rise to me this summer. You’ve certainly changed over the past couple months, that’s for sure.”
“Changed?”
“Absolutely. Physically, of course, I already noticed that. You never looked better, Toby. But it’s more than just those muscles of yours. I think it’s your job. It’s made you more responsible. More confident.” Mr. Magill suddenly frowned. “But then you go and pull off a stunt like your ‘all-nighter.’ And now, tonight. It’s a little confusing, I have to admit. I’m not sure who I’m dealing with, day to day, Toby.”
Toby wished he could tell his dad about that “all-nighter.” Maybe one of these days, he would be able to.
“Anyway, you really took that guy down, huh?”
“Yes, I guess I did.”
“Well … watch that foot of yours in the future. Okay?”
That was the end of the lecture, Toby realized. From his dad, anyway. His mom would be a different story. No matter what went down in that particular conversation, Toby had every intention of sneaking out afterward to join Annabel on the stakeout. No way was he going to let his KP partner sit all by herself for three hours, watching the Child house.
7
At the same time Annabel was sitting in her hiding place, studying the Child house and waiting for Toby to arrive, the blue-eyed woman was walking down a dark, deserted coal mine tunnel located a few miles east of North Park. Her superior sense of smell and hearing, more so than sight, allowed her to navigate the pitch-dark passageway.
Except for the night in the woods with her Alpha leader a few days ago, the woman had spent all of her time trying to locate her fallen comrade’s two marks. After checking out a fistful of the missing persons reports, she had finally locked on to a trail that first led her to a hollowed-out cave in North Park, then to this abandoned coal mine.
