The Takers: Book One of the Oz Chronicles

by R. W. Ridley

  Nate finished his formula, and I put him on the bed. Lou quickly walked over, picked up the baby and gently put him over her shoulder. She started to pat his back. Nate let out a loud belch. Lou looked at me and smiled. "You've got to burp him," she whispered.

  I raised an eyebrow. "You can talk?"

  She nodded.

  "But Wes said…"

  "They can hear you talk," she whispered even lower.

  I looked out the front window of the store. "You mean…"

  She nodded. "They don't hear screaming or laughing or dogs barking or cats meowing or most anything else, but they can hear people talk."

  I sat down on the bed. "Why can't they hear us now?"

  "I don't know. I guess they're not looking for us." She started to rock Nate back and forth.

  "They took your parents?" I asked.

  "My Mom and Stepdad. We were going to Disney World." She sat next to me. "I don't know about the rest of my family. My little brother and grandparents were going to meet us there." A sudden sadness covered her eyes. "What about you?"

  "I'm not sure," I said. "I've been kind of out of it with a fever for the last week or so. I woke up and everybody was gone."

  Kimball jumped off the bed and started sniffing the wagon. I knew that meant he was hungry so I opened one of the grocery bags and retrieved a pouch of wet dog food and tore it open. I dumped the contents on the floor and Kimball devoured it.

  I looked at Lou. "What is your name, by the way?"

  She frowned and looked at Wes. "Call me Lou. I think it makes him feel better."

  I looked down and much to my delight she had rocked little Nate to sleep. "Thanks, Lou," I said.

  She looked at me with tears in her eyes. "I miss my family."

  "Me, too," I said.

  She stood and handed me the baby. "You should get some sleep while you can. He'll be awake in a couple of hours ready to eat again." She stood and moved to the back corner of the store. She disappeared behind an adjustable bed.

  I lay down and tucked Nate between my arm and body. Kimball jumped up and lay at the foot of the mattress. I did not fall asleep immediately. I thought about Wes's story. I wondered if it was a load of crap or if he really had killed one of the Greasywhoppers, as he called them. I had only seen a few shadows. I hadn't seen the actual creatures. I had no idea if his description was accurate. As I drifted off to sleep, I thought about Stevie's comic book in the wagon. It was possible the answers I needed were in there, but Mrs. Chalmers had told me the less I knew the better off I was.

  "Hey," I heard Lou whisper.

  I carefully sat up. She was peeking over the adjustable bed. "Yeah?" I said.

  "What's your name?"

  "Oz Griffin."

  "The baby?"

  "Nate."

  "Good night, Nate, good night, Oz Griffin," she said. "Try not to dream about the Greasywhoppers. They can get you there, too." She disappeared behind the adjustable bed again.

  I closed my eyes and tried not dream about the Greasywhoppers.

  THREE

  As promised, Wes fired up the grill behind the mattress store the next morning and roasted half a dozen corn-on-the-cobs. They tasted fantastic. We each took two and ate them in record time. Wes warmed himself a pot of coffee on the grill. Had somebody seen a snapshot of us they may have guessed we were on a camping trip having the time of our lives.

  "Sure could go for a steak right about now," Wes said, corn stuck between his teeth. "Meat in the store's done turned on me."

  "What about a generator?" I asked. "Doesn't Wal-Mart have one of those?"

  "Course it does," he said. "But they don't work."

  "They don't?"

  "No, sir," he said. "They run on gas and the gas ain't no good no more. Them Greasywhoppers ruined just about everything."

  Nate let out a cry from inside the mattress store. I started to stand, but Lou beat me to it. She ran inside the store.

  Wes burped and threw his stripped corncob behind him. "You still figurin' on heading east?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  "It ain't gonna be easy. You got Monteagle to cross. It could take you two, three days to make it to the other side. Temperature's about twenty degrees cooler up there. You get stuck up there, that baby's liable to freeze to death."

  "I'll just stick to the interstate. We'll be fine."

  "Maybe," he said. "Course you could just stay here. Me and the girl will help you with the baby."

  He said it casually, but I had a feeling he really wanted me to stay. "Maybe a day or two."

  "Suit yourself, but the girl ain't going to be none too happy…"

  A crash came from the other end of the building. Wes and I jumped to our feet. Kimball stood point, sniffing the air, his ears straight up. Wes held his hunting knife in front of him. I thought about running to get J.J., but I decided there wasn't time. I searched the immediate area and found a board from a broken palette. We waited. Another crash came. This time Kimball took off like a shot towards it.

  "Kimball," I shouted. "Stop!" He didn't obey.

  "We best get inside," Wes said.

  "I can't…" Before I could protest a large fast moving animal with black fur burst out from the corner of the building and charged Kimball. Kimball didn't waver. I moved in closer. Wes grabbed my arm. "Get inside," he insisted. I ripped my arm from his grasp and chased after Kimball.

  Suddenly the animal and Kimball stopped. They faced each other. I got within ten feet of them and finally could tell what the animal was. I could recognize it, but I couldn't explain what it was doing in Manchester, Tennessee, about 150 miles from the closest zoo. It was majestic, powerful arms, an enormous head that came to a point, black eyes underneath a prominent brow ridge. It was a gorilla. Correction, it was an angry gorilla. It beat its chest, displayed its three-inch fangs, and let out an earth-shattering roar. Kimball barked.

  I moved in slowly. "It's okay," I said. "It's okay." I grabbed Kimball's collar and pulled him back. The gorilla paced and let out the occasional grunt.

  I looked at the gorilla. We made brief eye contact. It was as scared as we were. It growled and lunged forward. I pulled Kimball back some more. The gorilla turned and slowly walked back to the corner of the building where it picked up a doll and a blanket and disappeared behind a dumpster.

  Wes joined Kimball and me. "That weren't no Greasywhopper," he said.

  "It was…" I hesitated. "It was a gorilla."

  "A go-rilla?" he said, emphasis on the first syllable. He chuckled. "I wondered where that thing went."

  I looked at him like he was crazy.

  "C'mon, I'll show you," he said.

  We headed back toward the grill. He stopped and yelled inside to Lou. "Back in a minute, Lou. Keep a watch over the baby and mind the go-rilla out back." He laughed. "A go-rilla. Lordy, the end of the world sure do make for some interesting times."

  ***

  Wes took Kimball and me to a convenience store about a mile and a half from the mattress store and about a half mile from the interstate. Parked on the side near the diesel pumps was a large customized bus. The bus had pictures of a gorilla and the words "AJAX, The World's Only Talking Silverback" painted on the side.

  "I figured they stopped for gas when the Greasywhoppers got 'em," Wes said stepping up inside the bus. Kimball and I followed. The inside of the bus was torn apart. "You can see they put up a pretty good fight." The bus was obviously a home to Ajax and his owners. It had a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom with a double-sized bed, and a large cage in the back. The keys to the cage were still in the door. He picked up a book off the floor and handed it to me. "The go-rilla can't really talk. He just knows some of that sign language stuff. The kind deaf people use."

  The book was about Ajax. It was a detailed account of his upbringing and training. I flipped through it. It had pictures of Ajax from a baby all the way to an adult, working with some dark haired woman named Dr. Alice Fine. She loved Ajax. You could tell that from the
impossible smile she had in every picture. According to one of the captions under the pictures, Ajax knew over 1500 words in American Sign Language.

  "All this set me to wonderin'," Wes said. "They's a lot of zoos and such all across this country. What do you reckon happened to all those animals?"

  I shrugged my shoulders. "Maybe the Take…" I stopped myself. I did not want to say that name again. "I mean, maybe the Greasywhoppers took them."

  He shook his head. "They got no use for animals. I seen dozens of stray cats and dogs since this all started. I'm bettin' there's lions and tigers and monkeys of every kind runnin' around this country free as field mice."

  "Maybe they're still locked up in the zoos." The thought of those animals starving to death behind their enclosures sickened me, but it was probably the unpleasant truth.

  "Some of them," he said. "But I bet you dollars to donuts some of them got out some how some way, and they's out there looking for something to hunt."

  I thought about what he said, and concluded that he was probably right. That meant that the Greasywhoppers weren't the only danger we had to cope with. With no guns or fast moving vehicles, my journey to Charleston was looking more and more perilous with each passing moment.

  ***

  Back at the mattress store, I went through the book about Ajax. He was an amazing gorilla. Dr. Fine believed that he had a real understanding of the world and could even hold conversations about great works of art, music, and war. He watched movies and had a monthly article in a national magazine reviewing the latest releases. Dr. Fine wrote the articles, of course, but they were all Ajax's opinions. He was something of an artist, too. His paintings had actually sold for thousands of dollars.

  Lou had taken over Nate duty and was busy walking him around the store. Kimball was snoozing away on one of the mattresses. Wes was nowhere to be found. I continued to flip through the book. I discovered that Ajax's favorite food was peaches. I excused myself, exited the mattress store, careful not to disturb Kimball, and headed for the grocery store.

  Inside the store, I found a couple dozen peaches in the produce department. I grabbed as many as I could and went out the back door. I made my way to the area I had last seen Ajax and dumped the peaches on the ground. I found a hiding spot behind a stack of empty boxes and waited to see what would happen.

  Minutes passed and nothing. Just as I was about to give up, I saw a long arm covered in black fur reach out from behind the dumpster and grab a couple of peaches. I could hear Ajax gobbling up the juicy fruit.

  I inched my way out of hiding. I could make out half of Ajax's face behind the dumpster. He saw me and hoot-growled in attempt to shoo me away, but I didn't move. He continued to eat the peaches. I watched him for about ten minutes and then got up and walked back to the mattress store, feeling Ajax's eyes on me the whole way.

  Back in the mattress store, I lay down on one of the beds. Lou had gotten Nate to sleep. She was standing guard over him like he was a lost treasure. "What do you think happened, Lou? I mean with the Greasywhoppers. Why are they here?"

  She looked at me for a long time before answering. "I think we made God mad," she said.

  I thought about her answer. "How do you figure?"

  "This is what happens in the Bible, isn't it? Jesus comes down and takes everybody way, all the good people anyway."

  "I'm a good person," I said, a little offended by her assessment.

  "Maybe Jesus doesn't think so."

  I turned away from her. "I liked it better when I thought you didn't talk." I didn't want her to be right, but I considered the possibility. I thought about Stevie Dayton. I wasn't such a good person to him. If he had any kind of vote in who Jesus took back with him, then I surely wouldn't have made the list. But then again, neither would've Gordy, Larry, or Tim.

  I looked at the wagon and considered getting the comic book out and reading it, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. If I notice them, I thought, they will notice me. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

  ***

  I woke up with Lou sitting on the bed next to me, staring holes through me. I wiped my eyes and sat up. "Can I help you?" I said.

  "What do you think happened?" she asked.

  I looked at the wagon. "I don't know."

  "I think we're supposed to do something," she said. "I think there's a reason they didn't take us."

  "It's not for a lack of trying," I said. "They've come after me a couple of times." I stood up and stretched.

  "Yeah, but they never got you. Most everybody else didn't have a chance to get away, but you and me and Wes and Nate, we all found a way to escape."

  "So."

  "So, I think there's a reason for that," she said. "I think we have a mission."

  "A mission?" I laughed. "You watch too many movies. We just got lucky, that's all. Truth is, it's just a matter of time. They'll get us all sooner or later."

  She gasped at the thought and bowed her head. I suddenly felt bad for dismissing her theory and providing her with such a prediction of doom. I looked at the wagon. What if she were right? What if we were supposed to do something? Maybe Stevie Dayton wrote about more than just the creatures. Maybe he wrote about… our mission.

  "Look," I said. "Don't pay any attention to me. Right now our mission is to survive. We'll figure out the rest as we go along."

  I grabbed the book on Ajax and left the store. Lou put Nate in his sling and followed. "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "To make a new friend," I said.

  We walked to the grocery store, grabbed as many peaches as we could carry, and headed out the back to pay Ajax another visit. Now that I knew he was open to accepting food, I was hoping he would be open to accepting our friendship.

  I instructed Lou to take my previous position behind the stack of boxes while I put the peaches a little farther away from the dumpster than I had placed them the first time. I sat about ten feet away in the open. After several seconds, Ajax poked his head out from behind the dumpster. I opened the book to the section on American Sign Language and searched for the sign for friend. Ajax stretched his body out and grabbed a peach.

  The book was a little difficult to decipher, but I did my best and interlocked my right index finger over my left index finger and then switched their positions. Ajax ignored me at first, but when he reached out for his second peach he saw what I was doing and huffed. I didn't know if he was telling me I was doing it wrong or to get lost. He took the peach and peered out from behind the dumpster as he ate it. I lightly touched my fingers to my cheek and pulled my hand away, the sign for peach. I did it over and over again until Ajax responded by throwing his half eaten peach at me. I felt I had won a small victory.

  I was looking for another word to sign when Nate let out his usual afternoon wail. Ajax stopped in mid stretch for another peach and howled in anger. I turned to Lou signaling for her to get Nate to shut up, knowing full well there was nothing she could do. I turned back to Ajax and to my surprise he was now sitting just three feet away from me. I was shocked and felt myself having difficulty breathing. Ajax looked in the direction of the stack of boxes and then back at me. Nate continued to cry. Ajax looked back and forth from me to the baby, and then to my astonishment he put his arms together like he was forming a cradle and rocked them from left to right, the sign for baby.

  He put his right hand to his mouth and then brought it forward to his left hand. I searched through the book to find the gesture. I learned it meant good. "Baby good," he was telling me.

  I looked up the word yes and signed it to him.

  He responded by signing, "Baby good," and then he added another sign, his hands locked in a defensive motion in front of him. I scrambled to look up the word. After flipping through several pages, I found it, protect. "Baby good protect."

  I searched through the book to find the signs for my question. I made the sign for "protect" and then pulled my right index finger away from my left index finger for the word "from" and then struck my ri
ght index finger across my left palm for the word "what." "Protect from what?"

  He grunted, frustrated. He backed away. I asked again. "Protect from what?"

  He made a gesture with his right hand as if he were grabbing for something and then moved it across his body. He did this several times adding the signs for "protect," "baby," and "from." After repeating the message several times, he turned to the peaches, sat with his back to me and ate. I looked up the sign. My heart skipped a beat when I found it. Ajax had just signed, "Protect baby from take."

  I stood up and silently urged Lou to follow me. We made our way back to the mattress store with little Nate crying the whole way.

  "That was cool," Lou said.

  "Yeah," I said, not wanting to let on that the whole thing had freaked me out. "Cool."

  "What did he say?"

  "Just something about the baby. Never could really get all of it." I lied not to protect her, but to protect me from having to repeat the message.

  She lay Nate on the bed and prepared to change and feed him. She periodically interrupted her preparations by mimicking Ajax's message. "Protect baby from take," she signed several times without realizing what she was signing.

  "Would you cut that out?" I finally asked.

  "Why?" she said just a little annoyed.

  "It's getting on my nerves, that's all."

  "So don't look at me," she said.

  "I thought you were afraid to talk?"

  She pursed her lips together and shot me a death glare. She returned her attention to Nate.

  We spent the next couple of hours in silence. I looked out the back door occasionally to see if Ajax would re-emerge, but he never did. Around mid afternoon, Wes returned, and he wasn't alone.

  "Got something to show ya'," he said.

  Lou (with Nate in his sling) and I followed Wes out the front of the store. Tied to a support column to the left were two horses.

  "Meet Phil and Ryder," Wes said. They were beautiful, enormous animals, sturdy and tan with blonde manes and tails. The only difference between the two was that Phil had a white diamond patch between his eyes. "They's Belgian's. Good work horses."