by Greg Taylor
“I had him,” Strobe said angrily. Turning 360 degrees as he studied the woods, Strobe tried to detect anything that would betray the Tall Man’s escape route. Which turned out to be pretty easy.
Spotting something on the ground through his NVGs, Strobe cautiously approached the site, his crossbow at the ready. Kicking first one, then another shoe aside, Strobe followed the path suggested by the discarded apparel. He frowned when he saw what was just beyond them in the underbrush. The Tall Man’s hat. His rain slicker. His heavy coat. A little farther along … the man’s old-fashioned trousers. Then his shirt. Finally, underwear.
The discarded clothing meant one of two things. Either the Tall Man had stripped and was running through the woods nude. Or he had changed, transformed into something else. Strobe was pretty sure the dekayi hadn’t become a streaker. Running around in Central Park totally naked wasn’t the best way to lose someone who was chasing you.
Just then Strobe heard a sharp, high-pitched, and very hair-raising sound in the woods beyond. The sound was otherworldly, alien, unlike anything Strobe had ever heard before. It was also difficult to gauge where the sound had come from. Strobe’s immediate impulse was to track the sound. But a faint inner voice warned … Don’t do it.
When Strobe heard a repeat of the strange and terrifying sound, he reluctantly backed off in the direction he had just come. His inner voice appeared to be winning out. But then Strobe stopped and reconsidered his decision to retreat from the dark, pathless woods.
Hissssssss!!!
The eerie sound was much closer this time. Whatever the Tall Man had become, he was coming for Strobe, that much was clear. That did it for Strobe. He turned and headed for a street lamp that illuminated a concrete path about fifty yards away. Shouldering aside branches as he made his way toward the light, Strobe hated the feeling of cutting and running. He was a fighter at heart, but he also knew it was unwise to take on the unknown. Better to live to fight another day than take a chance like that.
Reaching the path, Strobe stopped to take a look behind him. “Later, dude.” With that parting promise, Strobe took off down the walkway, toward the lights of the city.
8
After making his way back to KP headquarters, Strobe found Toby and Annabel in the locker room. In the time it had taken Strobe to track the Tall Man and then return to the Flatiron Building, his partners had showered, changed into clean clothes, and were now waiting to hear how Calanthe was doing. The last report they had received from Harvey was … no change. Calanthe was still unconscious, her shoulder still undergoing its mysterious healing process.
“What happened with you, Strobe?” Toby asked after he and Annabel brought their partner up to date on Calanthe’s condition.
“Tracked the guy back to Central Park, had him in my scope, then … just like that, he disappeared. Changed.”
“Changed? Into what?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t stick around to find out.”
“That’s not like you,” Annabel said.
“Yeah, well … if you’d heard the sound that guy made you probably would have done the same.”
Just then Harvey entered the locker room. “Strobe. Good to see you’re back. Any luck?”
Strobe shook his head no.
“How’s Calanthe?” Annabel asked.
“Still out. Her heart rate appears to be steady, anyway.”
“I’m happy to hear that. When I took her pulse in the alley, it was very odd, very irregular.”
“Actually, I think that’s the way a dekayi’s blood is pumped. Two quick beats. Then a slow one. I don’t think it’s irregular.”
“So at this point, there’s nothing you can do to help her?”
“Not really. I don’t want to experiment and possibly do some harm. So I’m just going to keep an eye on her. And wait. You three look exhausted. Why don’t I show you to your dorm rooms.”
The trio didn’t argue with Harvey’s suggestion that it might be time to shut it down for the night. Keyed up as they were from their high-charged nighttime romp and brutal battle with the rukh, they knew it was time to give their depleted bodies a rest. A short while later, when three heads hit three pillows, Toby, Annabel, and Strobe fell into a deep sleep.
* * *
They were up early.
No alarm clock was needed. The trio naturally woke, got dressed, and met in the hallway outside their dorm rooms. Harvey had pointed out a cafeteria the night before—or “mess hall” as he called it—and that’s where they went.
A man wearing a white chef’s jacket was behind a cafeteria-style counter, cooking up something that smelled gloriously mouthwatering. Harvey was in a corner booth, hands cupped around a huge mug of coffee, his posture and blank expression betraying an all-nighter. When he saw his three MCOs, he nodded toward the counter. “Grab a tray, get something to eat. Then we’ll talk.”
After the trio had complied with Harvey’s order and were sitting in the booth with their breakfast, Harvey relayed what had happened overnight. Which turned out to be not much of anything.
“I think what might be happening here is Calanthe has entered a kind of coma, a hibernation state,” Harvey surmised. “Perhaps this is what dekayi do when they’ve been injured. Calanthe’s shoulder has not completely healed. So, until it has, until she is completely healthy, she sleeps. That’s my best guess, anyway.”
“What happens in the meantime?” Strobe asked. “With us, I mean.”
“There’s no sense in you staying for the rest of the weekend. Steve was supposed to be your host, give you the grand tour. But he’s still off in Mexico, and now I’m going to be tied up with Calanthe and other business matters.”
“Why can’t we stay?” Annabel asked. “I don’t really care about the tour. I’d just like to see how things turn out with Calanthe.”
“Which could take a while,” Harvey countered. “It’s better you go. I have you booked on a plane for this afternoon.”
“But you’ll let us know the second anything happens with her, right?”
“Of course.”
“Where’s the company doc, by the way?” Toby asked. “Shouldn’t he be here, helping you out with Calanthe?”
“He’s out in the field, with everyone else.”
“You are stretched pretty thin, aren’t you, Chief?” Strobe observed.
“To the limit.”
* * *
Toby, Annabel, and Strobe didn’t have to take the subway to the airport. Harvey drove them in his Jeepster Commando. When he pulled up at the curb, he swung around so that he could see Toby and Strobe in the backseat, as well as Annabel, who was riding shotgun.
“I want you all to know how impressed I am with what you accomplished last night. You went up against a totally unknown species, and you managed to save that girl. No matter what happens to her, you’ve given her a chance at a new life. Remember that.”
Annabel, Toby, and Strobe nodded somberly, then gathered up their backpacks and got out of the vehicle. After giving their KP boss a parting wave, they headed off to catch the plane that would take them back to Hidden Hills, back to their much more predictable and sedate everyday lives.
1
From his position behind the counter, Toby could see the flickering black-and-white images of the giant spider—smashing into a house with awesomely destructive force—on the building across the street from Killer Pizza.
It was Saturday night, and there was a large crowd outside the KP building watching Tarantula, the fourth movie to be shown as part of Killer Pizza’s Monster Mash-up Saturday-night event. Some of the crowd were sitting on folding chairs they had brought for the occasion, some were lying or sitting on sleeping bags spread out on the dead-end street and sidewalk, others stood in groups on the outskirts of the crowd.
It had been Toby’s brainstorm to project movies on the building opposite KP on Saturday nights. Immediately seizing on his Monster Mash-up idea, Harvey had placed Toby in charge of running the event. This had meant that
in addition to such things as creating an advertising campaign and securing a projector to show the DVD movies, Toby was the one who selected the films to be shown on the white wall of the wholesale appliance store.
Toby had been surprised at how quickly M/M had caught on. He thought a few people would show up, anyway. But right from the start the crowds had gathered outside the KP window. Not being a big fan of the super-intense Saw kind of horror movies, Toby’s main criteria for M/M was that the films had to be fun. He assumed that his relatively tame selection of classic horror, fifties’ sci-fi and Japanese creature features wouldn’t appeal to the majority of Hidden Hills teens. But there they were, out there every Saturday night, along with a younger crowd and an increasing amount of adults.
“Hello? Anyone in there?”
Toby shifted his eyes from Tarantula to a surly-looking teen, someone he vaguely recognized as a Triple H classmate. “Sorry. What did you say you wanted?”
“Creature Double Feature with sausage, pepperoni, and Canadian bacon.”
“You’re a meat man,” Toby said with a smile, which was met by a deadpan look from the guy. Never joke around with a hungry person! Toby reminded himself. “It’ll be up in fifteen minutes.”
Entering the kitchen, Toby immediately started in on the Creature Double Feature. He had to jockey for counter space with Strobe and Annabel, who were in constant motion as they juggled a bewildering array of pizza and side-dish orders between them. After shoving several Monstrosities into the oven, Strobe elbowed Toby aside brusquely on his return to the counter.
“Hey, watch it, man,” Toby said, annoyed that Strobe’s nudge had caused him to spill half of the tomato sauce from his ladle onto the counter.
“I’ll watch it, all right.”
Oh, boy, here we go, Toby thought. He knew from experience how quickly Strobe’s moods could change. Just a little while before, the guy had seemed in a perfectly okay frame of mind. “What’s the matter, Strobe, can’t take the heat?”
“You and your Monster Mash-up idea.” Strobe was flattening out a thin layer of dough for an order of Mummy Wraps.
“Yeah … what about it?”
“We’re only about three times busier than we were before this thing started. And we were busy enough as it was.” After applying the Mummy Wrap innards, Strobe twisted the dough around the small mound of ingredients and shaped the wrap until it resembled a mummy lying in its sarcophagus.
“Hey, I can’t help it if you don’t appreciate the difference between a Ray Harryhausen or a Wah Chang special effect. If you did, you might actually look forward to our little Saturday evenings together. Besides, I thought it was a good thing for a business to be busy. Business. Busy? Get it?” Toby’s lame pun received zero reaction from Strobe.
“Hang in there, Strobe,” Annabel said. “A few more weeks, and it’ll be too cold to show movies outside at night.” Tossing a large doughy pie high into the air, Annabel caught it and slapped it onto the flour-dusty counter. “This is the fifth Dragon Breath I’ve made tonight,” she told Toby with a smile.
Toby nodded modestly. The Dragon Breath pizza had been his creation, and it had proved to be a popular item on the KP menu.
“If I were you, I’d talk to Harvey about getting a piece of the action on that one,” Strobe suggested.
Annabel rolled her eyes at Strobe’s comment as she picked out the spicy ingredients for the Dragon Breath. “It’s always about the money with you, Strobe.”
“Just because you…”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m just sayin’. When you got it, you don’t have to worry about it.”
“What makes you think I have it? I’m getting the same salary as you are.”
“Touché, Annabel,” Toby said.
Strobe let the topic drop. He knew he shouldn’t get into Annabel’s home life. She and her dad hadn’t been getting along very well lately, mainly because her wealthy, autocratic father—who had very firm plans for his daughter’s future—regarded Annabel’s decision to work at a lowly pizza shop for minimum wage instead of at one of his business supply stores as an irritating form of teenage rebellion. Which, in some ways, it was.
So Strobe just concentrated on his Monstrosities and Vampire Stakes and Frankensausages, and the trio continued with their nonstop pizza making—punctuated by occasional conversation—for the next hour, then called it a night when the late-shift crew arrived. Being minors, Toby, Annabel, and Strobe could only work until nine o’clock.
The trio were now free of any kitchen duties until the following weekend. At Harvey’s request, they had agreed to work at Killer Pizza on Friday and Saturday nights. A new manager—unaware of the secret underground basement in the KP building, where Toby, Annabel, and Strobe continued to train a couple of times during the week—had been hired by Harvey and was running the day-to-day operations of the place.
“Well … night, you two,” Annabel said after she and her two coworkers had pushed through the front door of the KP building. Toby and Strobe waved so long to Annabel, then watched as she walked off through the crowd.
“Gonna stay for the rest of the movie?” Toby asked Strobe after Annabel had gotten on her bike and disappeared around the far corner of Industrial Avenue.
“I think I have about a million better things to do. Don’t tell me … you are.”
“Of course.”
“I thought you already watched this masterpiece.”
“I did.” Good, bad, or ugly, Toby watched every movie he was considering for Monster Mash-up all the way through. “Your point being?”
“You know how it turns out. Why watch it again?”
“What kind of question is that? If you like something … a movie, book, recipe … it’s fun to experience it all over again.”
“I don’t see the fun in that, man. It’s like spinning your wheels. I want the new experience.”
“Yeah, well…” Toby shrugged. “Just another thing that makes us different.”
Strobe slapped Toby on the shoulder. “Later.” Toby nodded a good-bye, then picked out a spot to watch the climax of the movie. An all-out battle to defeat the gigantic tarantula was underway on the building across the street.
The irony of selecting creature features for M/M while he continued to train to fight the real thing wasn’t lost on Toby. Just another interesting wrinkle in his new MCO life, is the way Toby looked at it. Besides, after his wild experience in New York, Toby was happy to deal with monsters of the cinematic variety. At least for the time being.
* * *
After the movie was over, Toby stored the DVD projector in KP’s back room, spent a few moments chatting with the late-shift kitchen staff, then went home to a typical Saturday night scene.
His sister Stacey and her rambunctious group of friends were in the family room, laughing and screeching over one another as they watched music videos and laid waste to a prodigious supply of snacks provided by Toby’s mother.
Speaking of whom, Mrs. Magill was on the phone in the living room, talking to either one of her local PTA pals or her long-distance mother or brother or sister. Toby was amazed at how much time his mom could spend on the phone. By contrast, he rarely saw his dad anywhere near a phone. He was the only person Toby knew who didn’t own a cell.
“Hey, Dad,” Toby said after opening the hallway door that led to the garage. He knew that’s where his dad would be, in his little workshop space at the far end of the garage, restoring another dilapidated jukebox he had found in the green sheet or at a swap meet or one of the estate sales he loved to attend.
“Hey, there, Toby. How’d it go tonight?”
“Good.”
“We on for tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
A late morning/early afternoon Sunday ritual had recently been established at the Magill household. A Sunday brunch, just for Toby and his father, who had developed a keen interest in his son’s culinary ambitions.
“What are we having tomo
rrow?” Mr. Magill’s voice was muffled, having asked the question while lying on his back, his head stuck inside the jukebox.
“You know that’s a secret.”
“Just a hint.”
“Okay, for just one of the dishes.”
“Well, that’s better than none.”
“Can you spell chocolate?”
“Oh, man, you just hit me where I live!”
Toby smiled as he shut the hallway door. Going upstairs, he headed straight for his bedroom. Like any teen fortunate enough to have his own room, Toby’s was his sanctuary. Stocked with all the necessary items near and dear to teendom—computer, video games, the proper posters on the walls, graphic novels, a few action figures left over from his nerdy younger years—Toby’s room also contained his ready-for-combat black KP field pack, Monsters of the World textbook, and last but not least, his crossbow.
All MCO items were carefully hidden, of course. For the most part, Toby’s mother and father observed the bedroom off-limits rule typically enjoyed by teenagers, but Stacey was a notorious, numero-uno pain-in-the-butt snoop.
Firmly closing his door, Toby went to his desk and opened a side drawer. This is where he kept his recipe notebook. Filled with ideas for new dishes, Toby wanted to tweak his latest concoction, which was one of the dishes he would be trying out on his dad the following day.
Toby noodled around with the recipe—taking an occasional break to thumb through a pile of Hidden Hills Library cookbooks he had taken out for inspiration and ideas—but his concentration was constantly being interrupted by thoughts of Calanthe.
Annabel had relayed to Toby and Strobe earlier in the evening there was nothing new to report regarding the girl’s condition. It had already been a week since their return from New York, and Calanthe was still in her mysterious coma-like state.
Which Toby found pretty depressing. Truth was, a day hadn’t passed since the trio’s return from New York that he hadn’t thought about the girl they had saved from the monstrous rukh. It was Calanthe’s eyes, more than anything, that had a hold on Toby. There was something about them, something dark and mysterious, that had gripped his imagination and wouldn’t let go.
