The Takers: Book One of the Oz Chronicles

by R. W. Ridley

  The Takers

  Copyright © 2005 R.W. Ridley

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1-4196-0958-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2005930591

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  R.W.

  RIDLEY

  THE

  TAKERS

  BOOK ONE OF THE OZ

  CHRONICLES

  The Takers

  For Mom, Dad, and Marianna

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  ONE

  We killed the retarded boy. He took his own life, but we killed him just the same. Everybody should have the right to go through life unnoticed, and we took that right away from him. We reminded him that he was different every chance we got. It was harmless fun, harassing the retarded kid, thrusting disgrace upon him everyday. We were kids. What did we know? He was like a dumb animal to us. He didn't absorb the abuse. He shed it like a snake sheds its skin, or so we thought. We didn't know that with each degrading remark and act of humiliation that we forced him to perform, a sense of tangible worthlessness was building up inside of him. He put the horrific pieces of his seemingly useless life together in his damaged mind. Slowly he saw that he was less than human, not because God made him that way but because we saw him that way.

  His name was Stevie Dayton, and I think about him almost every minute of every day. In fact, it's pretty much all I think about since the world ended.

  ***

  On October 10, 2006, I had a fever of 104. I was 13 and the kissing disease, mono, had claimed me as one of its latest victims. Because I had never done more than kiss a girl on the cheek, the doctor was fairly certain I contracted the disease some other way, which to a 13-year-old boy, not quite interested in girls yet, is splendid news.

  I don't remember much that following week. I was in and out of consciousness. You'd be surprised how much your brain shuts down when your body is fighting for your life. But I do remember bits and pieces. The first day or so my mother was constantly by my side, feeding me broth, keeping me cool with a cold compress, putting her soft cheek against my forehead and whispering, "Mamma's little baby," over and over again. If I had had full use of my faculties, I would have protested. But when you're sick, and helpless, you desperately want to be somebody's "little baby."

  By the third day, my mother's presence by my bedside had become sporadic. I heard her talking with my father in the distance, but their voices were like distorted radio signals. I couldn't make out a word they were saying. I could sense a panic in their voices. I assumed it stemmed from their concern over my well being, but looking back it may have been because of what was happening in the outside world.

  On day four, I could feel my father lifting me out of my bed and carrying me a short distance. Where he was carrying me I don't know because my vision was shot. I could only make out the simplest shapes of objects. When he put me down, I felt him stand and then my world suddenly went completely dark. I never felt the touch or heard the voices of my mother and father again.

  Days later, I don't know how many, I broke the fever. I was still in total darkness. When I first opened my eyes, the only thing I could immediately determine was that I was buried under mounds of clothes. I sat up and realized that I was on the floor of my parents' walk-in closet. Finding yourself in such a place, after several days of a semi-conscious state, you tend to be beset by confusion, and if I did not have the almost intolerable urge to pee, I may have stayed in that closet forever.

  I pushed the door open and peered into my parents' bedroom. It was still. The air was dry and stale. I inhaled and could smell my mother's perfume. As I stepped out of the closet, I heard the familiar tap, tap, tap of my dog Kimball's claws on the hallway floor. The door leading to the hallway was shut. My need to piss trumped my desire to see Kimball's friendly face so I bolted to the bathroom as fast as I could.

  I can't tell you how long it had been since I peed, but I can tell you I have never felt such relief in my entire life. It felt like I was making up for at least a week of missed opportunities to empty my bladder.

  I flushed and stepped back into my parents' bedroom, anxious to see my old friend Kimball. The door leading to the hallway was locked. As I put my hand on the doorknob, I could hear Kimball's deep penetrating growl. Kimball was a good-natured old pup. I had only heard him growl a few times in my life, mostly at other dogs. So to hear him growling at that moment, when I felt confused and vulnerable, was very disturbing. Part of me didn't want to open the door, but a bigger part of me knew that Kimball would never hurt me. He certainly could if he wanted to. He was a 90-pound German shepherd with paws as big as dinner plates, but he was as sweet as a six-week-old kitten. With deep, deep feelings of doubt, I unlocked the door and slowly turned the knob. The door open just a crack, I peeked into the hallway. Kimball was crouched down, the hair on his back raised. His teeth were bared, and he was ready to attack, but not me. He was looking down the hall toward the entrance of the house.

  I opened the door but could not will myself to look at what was making Kimball so upset. He was fixated on it. He gave no indication at all that he was even aware I had opened the bedroom door. "What is it, Kimball?" I asked. With that, Kimball barreled down the hallway. The growl was replaced by a rapid series of barks. I turned to look at what he was chasing, but I could only make out a fast moving shadow. I heard the front door open. A sudden splash of sunlight reflected on the wall. Kimball's bark faded as he pursued the unknown intruder out of the house.

  I was paralyzed by fear. With great hesitation, I moved down the long, dark hallway. The walls were decorated with family photos and framed inspirational passages from the Bible. My mother was a religious woman who endlessly sought to negate my father's blasphemous behavior with Biblical knickknacks throughout the entire house.

  At the end of the hallway I turned and saw the open front door. Kimball was already making his way back. I could see the scowl was gone. He was grinning with his tongue dangling from his mouth. His ears were pinned down and his tail was wagging back and forth a million miles a minute. He leapt through the open doorway and nearly tackled me to the ground. He whined and covered my face with kisses. I had never seen him so happy.

  I had awakened from a long sickly slumber, and as a result I was thin and gaunt. Getting a closer look at Kimball, I could see he was in the same condition. He had not eaten for a while. I suspected the source of his happiness was that my presence meant he would eat.

  "Where are Mom and Pop?" I asked. He, of course, did not answer. They obviously had been gone for some time by the looks of his emaciated body. He was the best-fed dog in the county. Pop never let him miss a meal. Something was definitely wrong.

  I didn't notice the electricity wasn't working until I tried to open a can of dog food for Kimball. The electric can opener was dead. I tried the light switch in the kitchen. Nothing. I retrieved a screwdriver and hammer from the utility drawer and pounded on the top of the can until I eventually opened it wide enough to stick a spoon in and dig the contents out. Mom would have killed me if she saw me use one of her good spoons like that.

  While Kimball inhaled his food, I looked for something that I could keep down. My stomach was a gurgling volcano that I knew would accept only bland and light food that possessed little to no smel
l or taste. I found a can of broth with a pull back tab on the lid and considered it. Without electricity, I couldn't heat it up. The mere thought of cold broth almost made me vomit. I settled for some saltines and warm ginger ale. As I ate, I noticed that the kitchen was as clean and organized as my mother always kept it.

  The rest of the house was in order. Not one stick of furniture was out of place. My clothes were still neatly folded in my drawer and hanging in my closet. My Pop's office was as messy as usual. There was nothing to indicate that my parents wouldn't be home soon, that they hadn't just gone to visit the neighbors or driven to the store to do some shopping. I couldn't quite reconcile the fact that they left me, their extremely sick son, home alone. Was there some sort of emergency that required both of them to be present? There was no time to get a sitter, and I was obviously too sick to travel. Waking up in the closet was easy enough to explain. I had been known to sleepwalk. I must have gone on one of my nocturnal excursions and ended up in the closet.

  Kimball was harder to explain. Why had he gone so long without food, and what or who did he chase out of the house? The more I thought about it, the more frightened I became. I deadbolted the back and front doors of the house, and made sure every window was locked. I then sat in the den and tried to convince myself my parents would be home soon.

  I sat there and listened to the ticking of the grandfather clock in the front foyer. It ticked away while Kimball and I sat there waiting for my parents to come home. The clock struck one. An hour had passed, and I had accomplished nothing except making myself more convinced that something was horribly wrong. I soon realized that sitting there wasn't the answer. Calling my parents' cell phone was out of the question because the phones were out of service. I had to do something.

  The first order of business was to change out of my clothes. They reeked of sickness. I entered my room with Kimball following close behind. Neither one of us wanted to be out of the other's sight. We were both scared out of our minds. I grabbed a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt and moved to my bathroom. I took my first good look at myself in the mirror. My face was pale and drawn. My brown hair was matted and disheveled. My frame was built out of more bone than muscle. I wasn't the same Oz Griffin I was before I got mono. I must've shed twenty pounds.

  I turned on the faucet and splashed water on my face. To my surprise, the water warmed up. That meant the water heater was working. Later I would determine that it was because the water heater was gas operated, but at the time, it didn't occur to me. I considered a shower, but concluded finding my parents was far more important than going out into the world clean and refreshed. I dressed as quickly as I could. I was still suffering some of the effects of the fever. My equilibrium was off and my head felt light. Doing anything quickly was a rather difficult task. When I finally finished dressing, I was weak-kneed and out of breath.

  When I regained my energy, I ventured outside, uncertain, and unsteady. I carried a baseball bat with me, but given my physical state I had no confidence I'd be able to swing it with any kind of authority. Kimball was with me, but most of his strength had been zapped as well. We were two pathetic explorers entering a world of unknown dangers.

  The neighborhood was vacant. There were cars in the driveways. A wind blew through the trees. Piles of leaves were scattered throughout the neighborhood. But there were no signs of life beyond Kimball and me. When the wind stopped, the silence set in, and the neighborhood felt less than empty, it felt dead.

  I walked to the Mueller's. Their house was what my grandmother called a shotgun house. If you opened the front door, you could see the back door. It was small, but functional. The Mueller's, an older couple, were the unofficial overseers of the neighborhood. We had no neighborhood association or rules, but they let you know when they felt your yard was out of control or your house wasn't up to their standards. I figured if anyone knew where my parents were, they did. They knew everybody's business.

  Their front door was open. Kimball and I slowly stepped up on their front porch. "Mr. Mueller?" I said. There was no answer. I looked at Kimball. He looked at me. "I don't like this." Kimball wagged his tail in agreement. "Mrs. Mueller?" I said, as if she would not have answered when I called out Mr. Mueller's name.

  I entered the house. My heart was racing. I was sweating despite the cool fall temperature. Kimball was panting like he had just chased a rabbit for a mile and a half. It seemed neither of us wanted to enter the house, but we felt compelled to.

  It was in shambles. Wallpaper was ripped from the walls. Furniture was torn apart. Garbage was strewn throughout the entire house. There were stains on the carpet that my imagination immediately identified as blood. Whether it was or not is still a mystery to me, but given what I know now, it most likely was.

  Kimball and I inched our way down the hall. Common sense told me to turn back at the first sign of trouble, but curiosity drove me farther into the house. I reached the bathroom. It was in the same condition as the rest of the house. The ceramic tile floor was cracked and the toilet was ripped from its molding and lying in the bathtub. I could see all this from the hallway. There was no reason to go inside, but I did. Till this day, I wish I hadn't because once inside I turned to my left and saw written in red on the shattered mirror, Beware the Takers.

  The message jolted me and I backed out of the bathroom. I whispered the slogan to myself trying to make sense of it. "Beware the Takers." The front door slammed shut. I told myself it was a gust of wind, but tightened my grip on my bat just in case. Above me, in the attic, I heard what I thought were heavy footsteps. Thump. Thump. Thump. Kimball began to bark. Chaos was breaking out all around me. I dashed down the hall and through the kitchen. "C'mon, Kimball," I shouted. "C'mon!" He ran after me. I opened the back door, and we exited the house like runners out of the starting blocks.

  The backyard was enclosed by a six-foot wood fence with a padlocked gate on the side of the house. I could scale it with some difficulty, but Kimball was another story. I couldn't get him out, and I wasn't about to leave him. I pushed on the gate to see if there was any give. To my surprise, the gate pushed back. Kimball's fur on his back stood straight up and he began to growl just as he had done before. The gate shook violently. I looked around me. We were trapped.

  "We've got to find a way out, Kimball."

  He looked at me as if he understood me and then took off towards the back of the fence that lined a patch of woods. There was an area where the ground dipped and left a small crawl space underneath the fence. Had I not been sick and just shed twenty pounds, I would never have been able to fit, but given my new slimmer build, I followed Kimball through the crawl space with no problem. Safely on the other side, I heard the gate to the fence crash open.

  I was exhausted but knew that we could not hang around to find out if whatever was on the other side of the fence could fit through the crawl space. Kimball and I quickly navigated our way through the thick mass of trees and bush until the fence was out of sight. I fell to my knees gasping for air next to a large fallen oak. Kimball made a small circle around me, panting, his legs wobbly and unstable. He could have collapsed at any moment, but he remained vigilant.

  I rested for no more than two minutes. When I pulled myself up on my feet, my thighs burned and itched. My legs were getting exercise for the first time in more than a week, and they were protesting.

  There are sounds deep in the woods that don't exist anywhere else on the planet. Traversing the dead pine needles and leaves, I heard crackles, crunches, pops, snaps, and thwacks coming from every direction. As long as Kimball wasn't alarmed, I remained relatively calm. He would know if real danger was afoot.

  We reached the vacant lot at the back of our neighborhood, which put us about three blocks from my house. I wanted to lie down and take a nap. I wanted to be back in my parents' closet, still asleep, oblivious to what was happening outside. I wanted to be lying in my bed with my mother sitting next to me saying "Momma's little baby." I closed my eyes and hoped again
st hope that when I opened them I would be back in my house awakening from a bad dream.

  I opened my eyes and found myself still standing in the vacant lot. Kimball was looking up at me with a curious tilted gaze. He barked as if to tell me to get myself together and keep moving. He was right. I was standing in an open field like a sitting duck. I moved to the house next to the lot and stooped down behind the front bush. A quick scan of the immediate area told me the coast was clear, I moved to the next house and then the next and the next, each time stopping and hiding behind the biggest bush I could find.

  When I got to the Chalmers' house, just two houses down from mine, I did as I had done at all the others, I found a bush and bent down. I was about to move on when a noise caught my attention. It was a scream; a high-pitched squawk that at once chilled and confused me. I didn't want to even think it, but it sounded human. It came in waves and every once in a while would end with a horrible breathless cough. I lost track of Kimball while I sat and listened to the sound. It wasn't until I heard him scratching on the Chalmers' front door that I realized he was trying to get in their house. "Kimball, no," I whispered emphatically. He didn't listen. He continued to scratch at the door. "Kimball."

  He worked his paw between the door and frame and finally got the door open enough to fit his body through. I jumped up and reluctantly moved up the porch and into the house. The Chalmers' house was in disarray, too, though not nearly as much as the Mueller's. The screaming was louder inside the house.

  Kimball was at the top of the stairs by the time I walked through the door. With a great deal of difficulty I followed. The screaming grew more intense. Kimball galloped down the hall and stopped. When I reached him, he was calmly sitting at a door at the end of the hall. The screaming was clearly coming from the other side. I looked at Kimball. "A baby," I said. Before I had gotten sick, Mrs. Chalmers was pregnant. Had she had the baby while I was fighting my fever?