Definitely Not Kansas (Nocturnia Book 1)

by Thomas Monteleone

  But Ryan didn’t think any of these jumpsuited folks were going to back down from her.

  What was happening to them? This was just too crazy, too nuts…

  Another door opened before them. He was pushed through and landed in a heap on a stone floor. Emma soon followed, looking both furious and afraid.

  Dr. Koertig stood in the center of the windowless space with half a dozen others. He was tall and lean, with a well-proportioned body. But his oversized head didn’t go with the rest of him. He had a big nose, a wide mouth with crooked teeth, and wild black hair that shot out in all directions. His right arm still sported the crab pincer instead of a normal right hand.

  “I need a cigarette after that,” he said, staring at them. “Do either of you have any?”

  “Cigarettes?” Ryan blurted. “We just… you just…” He couldn’t form the words. “And you’re asking us about cigarettes?’

  “Filtered, unfiltered, I am not particular.”

  “We don’t smoke!” Emma said, pulling her glasses out of a pocket. “Nobody with any brains smokes!”

  This earned a laugh from all except Dr. Koertig.

  “Pity,” he said. “I’ll have to smoke one of my own. And my supply is getting low.”

  He produced a crinkled red box of Marlboros with his normal hand and removed a cigarette with the crab pincer. As he held the filtered end to his lips, one of his companions produced a lighter and lit the tip.

  Ryan took a close look at that one with the lighter. His eyes were sunken and his skin had a grayish cast. And was that rot on his forehead?

  Others around him were just as bizarre. One looked like he’d been sewn together; a couple more, wearing military-like uniforms, resembled the guy with the lighter… kind of like dead. Only the guys in the jumpsuits looked normal.

  Dr. Koertig fixed Ryan and Emma with an intent stare as he exhaled. “I didn’t think they’d be so young.”

  One of the goggled-men shrugged. “Well, Falzon wanted some kids.”

  The second jumpsuited guy turned out not to be a guy at all, but revealed herself as a beefy woman when she removed her goggles and stripped off her yellow gloves.

  “Now he’s got ’em,” she said. “Hey, what happened back there, Doc? Things got real hairy when you couldn’t shut the gate.”

  Hairy…with a start Ryan realized the jumpsuiters’ ungloved palms were covered in hair. He had to revise his opinion of their normalcy.

  “An overheated circuit,” the doctor said.

  Ryan rose and stepped toward Dr. Koertig. “What’s going on? Where are we?”

  The doctor looked like he was ready to reply when Emma blurted, “Why didn’t you save them? Our folks?”

  The doctor looked down his bulbous nose at her. “We barely saved ourselves. What do you mean, ‘your folks’?”

  “Our family, our parents. They were in that farmhouse.”

  “Yes,” Ryan said. “Can we go back there? They may need help.”

  “‘May’?” His bushy eyebrows lifted. “If they were in that farmhouse, they are quite beyond help."

  “What…what do you mean?” Emma said.

  “That was an F5 tornado. We clocked its winds at 298 miles per hour. No one survives a direct hit from something like that. Your ‘folks’ are gone, I can assure you. Just as well, perhaps. They wouldn't have liked it here anyway.” Koertig turned away from them.

  Emma looked like all the blood had been drained out of her.

  “That’s no way to talk to kids, even if they are humans,” the woman said in a scolding tone. “Did the good doctor forget and leave his heart at home today?”

  “Don’t be impertinent, Bertha. Facts are facts. Wishing otherwise doesn’t change things. And human or otherwise, they’re orphan kids now. Might as well get used to it.”

  Orphans…the word hit Ryan like a punch to the gut.

  He threw up.

  As everyone backed away from the mess, including Ryan, he heard Bertha tell the doctor, “Now look what you’ve done. Proud of yourself?”

  “You may have the honor of cleaning it up, Bertha.”

  Ryan swallowed back more bile. He’d always had a sensitive stomach. He tended to hurl when he was upset, and he’d never been this upset in his entire life. Mom and Dad gone… it couldn’t be. He couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t believe it.

  No…they’d made it to the storm cellar. They’d survived.

  But what about Emma and him? Would they survive this… whatever this was?

  After a few deep breaths, Emma had regained her composure. Ryan pulled himself together and glared at the doctor.

  The doctor considered him from under his bushy eyebrows. “Something very strange is going on here.”

  “Ya think?” Ryan blurted.

  “Filter, Ryan,” Emma said behind him, whispering: “They may be creeps, but they saved our lives, remember?”

  He turned to look at her. “Right. By showing up at just the right moment on the edge of a tornado. Doesn’t that seem just a little too convenient to you?”

  Emma’s eyes said Shut up, but he couldn’t. Too many questions. He turned back to Dr. Koertig.

  “How did you know we were going to be there when even we didn’t know we were going to be there?”

  Dr. Koertig frowned. “It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “There’s lots of things I don’t understand.” He turned again to Emma. “Maybe you were right about Professor Polonius being a creep. The time and coordinates he gave us put us right in the path of the tornado. Almost as if he knew it was coming and wanted us there.”

  Someone grabbed Ryan’s shoulder and spun him around: Dr. Koertig, using his normal hand. He wore an alarmed expression.

  “Wait-wait-wait! Someone sent you to that spot? Who?”

  “Professor Polonius. You know him?”

  “Never heard of him. What does he look like?”

  “About your age, your height, but silver white hair – lots of it.” Ryan held back on adding that he wasn’t nearly as ugly.

  Dr. Koertig shook his head and began to turn away. “Don’t know him. But I don’t like this. Especially with the alarm going off. No, I don’t like it at all.”

  Ryan looked around. “Who are you guys? Where are we?”

  One of the jumpsuits snickered. “No place humans wanna be…”

  Hey, that was the third or fourth time someone had called them “human.”

  Emma must have noticed too, because she said, “What do you mean by that – aren’t you human too?”

  As the assorted group burst into laughter, the doctor leaned forward and regarded her with obvious distaste. “I should very well hope we are not.” Then, to no one in particular: “Take them to the holding pens.”

  Ryan definitely didn’t like the sound of that.

  5

  They found themselves being herded along another narrow passage with mortared stone walls. Emma had started fighting again when they grabbed her and Ryan had tried to kick free. Neither response worked very well. The floor sloped steadily downward and Ryan felt the air becoming cool and damp.

  Not good.

  Emma kept asking them who they were, where they were going, but the men said nothing. Then they reached what Ryan bet were the “holding pens.”

  Another room, dimly lit and divided into a row of barred cells like a jail. The air was stale and a sour stench seemed to leak out of the walls. Each had a rickety cot and all were unoccupied. Seeing this, Ryan wondered how often they were used and how long anybody was kept here.

  One of the guys opened the nearest enclosure and pushed Emma roughly into the pen. She turned and glared at him, but said nothing.

  Ryan was next. As the door clanged shut and the guy turned to depart, Ryan called out to him.

  “Hey, c’mon, man…tell us what’s going on!”

  The guy in the yellow overalls chuckled as he shuffled away. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  And t
hat was it.

  Emma reached toward Ryan through the bars between them. “What’re we going to do?”

  He took her hand. It felt good to touch someone who was on his side. He felt so alone.

  “Doesn’t look like we have many options.”

  “Mom and Dad…Ryan, they’re gone.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.” He had nothing to substantiate his words, but his sister needed something to hold on to right now. So did he. “Our storm cellar is deep and tough. They made it.”

  “But that doctor said–”

  “What does he know? Nothing about our storm cellar, that’s for sure. Look, we’ve got to hope for the best.”

  “How can you be so…so calm?”

  “Is that what you think I’m being? C’mon, Em…I’m just trying to hang onto what’s going on here with us. And I hate to say it, but Mom and Dad are probably better off than we are right now – probably worried sick that we died in the storm. So we’ve got to stop wondering about them, just for a moment, and start worrying about us. I mean, haven’t you taken a good look at these people? There’s something majorly weird going on here.”

  “I know. Who are they? What do they want with us?”

  “Wish I knew. That doctor guy looked like some sort of Frankenstein creature – I mean I saw him replace a normal arm with that claw-thing. And a couple of them looked like… like zombies!”

  “Ryan, please…that’s crazy.”

  He knew he sounded a little goofy talking like this, but…

  “What about those two with hair on their palms? That’s supposedly the Mark of the Beast, which means–”

  “They’re werewolves. I know. I saw that movie too. But it was just a movie, little brother. This is real life.”

  “Is it? Could’ve fooled me.”

  As he looked at Emma, huddled shivering against the bars in this damp, nasty, foul-smelling place, he couldn’t believe they’d been riding their bikes through town just a little while ago. But he had to hang tough – couldn’t give in to the fear or the hopelessness that hovered over them. Had to keep thinking, keep trying to figure things out. That was their only hope.

  Neither of them spoke for the next few minutes and the silence grew ever more awkward. He wanted to say something encouraging, but didn’t want to sound like an idiot, either. He thought about messing with his deck of cards, just to distract himself, but he didn’t want Emma to get the wrong idea – that he was more interested in tricks than their safety. She didn’t understand that working out the logic and mechanics of his tricks allowed him to think more clearly. It was like the Rubik’s cube – Telly had assured him that working on its solution was like aerobics for the mind.

  Emma broke the silence. “Do you really think Professor Polonius set us up?”

  “What else can I think? He put us right in the path of that tornado. I mean, think about it: he even gave us a GPS to make sure we found the exact spot.”

  Ryan wished he had that GPS now but, like his bike, the funnel cloud had swept it away.

  “But how could he know ahead of time?” she said. “And why would he want to kill us?”

  “I don’t think he did. I think it’s a good bet he knew we’d be picked and brought here – wherever here is.”

  “But why?”

  “The only reason I can think of is he wants us here – wherever that is…”

  “But–?”

  Ryan raised a hand as he heard footfalls along the passageway.

  One of the guys in the yellow jumpsuits appeared with a coarse burlap sack and what looked like a tall, narrow jug. Reaching into the bag with a hairy-palmed hand, he tossed a chunk of bread in at Ryan. He caught it and noticed it had something white smeared on it – lard? Yuk.

  “Eat it,” said the guy. “It’s all you’ll be gettin’.” He placed the jug on the stone floor. “You can share the water.”

  He tossed another bread chunk to Emma and turned to leave.

  “That’s it?” Ryan said.

  “That’s it, brat.”

  His mind raced and he again thought of his cards. “If I can read your mind, can we have more?”

  The guy turned back, a smile playing about his lips. “A mind-reading human. Okay, what am I thinking?”

  “We’ll use cards.” He pulled out his deck and glanced at the bottom card – a seven of diamonds – before fanning it. “Pick a card, any card.”

  Ryan heard Emma start to say something but waved her to silence.

  The man shrugged, reached through the bars, and picked a card. He glanced at it and said, “Okay. Now what?”

  Ryan held the deck out on his palm. “Keep that card in mind and place it on top of the deck.” When the guy did so, Ryan said, “Now cut the deck.”

  Once it was cut, he began sorting through it as he’d done with the professor, saying, “Keep thinking about that card and I’ll read your mind and pick it out.”

  He searched for the seven of diamonds because the card he wanted would be sitting in front of that. But another card kept popping into his head. He could see it: the ten of clubs… ten of clubs… why the ten of clubs?

  He found the seven of diamonds, pulled out the card in front of it, and held it up.

  “Four of hearts, right?”

  The guy’s grin broadened. “That was the card I picked, but not the card I was thinking of. You lose, brat.”

  As he started to turn away, Ryan took a chance and flipped though the cards again. “Wait-wait-wait!” He found the ten of clubs and held it up. “Was it this?”

  The man’s eyes widened. “Close enough, brat. I was thinking of the ten of cups, but that’s close enough.”

  Ten of cups?

  The man tossed Ryan and Emma an extra piece of bread.

  “So I guess this means you want to keep us alive?” said Ryan.

  The guy paused and looked at him with a twisted grin. “Well, I’d say so. Falzon’s got no need for ya dead.”

  “Who?” said Emma. “Fal-zon? Who’s that?”

  Yellow jumpsuit chuckled. “He’s the guy what owns you.”

  “What?” Ryan cried as the man disappeared into the passage. “Nobody owns us!”

  “Think again, brat,” echoed back. “Lights out.”

  And then everything went dark. Deeper than dark – black.

  Emma yelped and grabbed for his hand.

  “It’s okay,” he said, but his stomach was threatening to hurl again. “It’s just us here, and we’ll be okay.”

  After a while, Emma said, “What just happened – with the cards, I mean?”

  “Huh?”

  “That man…he tried to fool you, but you outsmarted him.”

  “Just lucky.”

  But it hadn’t been just luck. He’d kept seeing the ten of clubs in his head. The guy had called it the “ten of cups” but obviously it had been close enough. Had he read his mind?

  No. Nobody could read another person’s mind. And he had never done anything like that before. Never.

  But then how to explain…?

  He bit into his crummy-tasting bread and decided to put off thinking about it till later. He had more immediate concerns.

  Sitting there with hardly anything to eat made him remember all the times over the years when Emma would swap him her meat for his veggies. It made him smile a little because it had become one of those unspoken rituals, one of those little things they did because they knew each other so well.

  After they’d eaten, they decided to slide their cots over against the bars so they could sleep near each other. The damp, thin, ratty blanket did next to nothing to combat the chill, but in the long run it had to be better than a real nothing. He thought about home and the lacrosse practice he’d missed, but then, they’d probably canceled soccer because of the tornado–

  Oh, jeez, the tornado.

  Mom and Dad were all right, they had to be all right, they were all right. He felt a lump build in his throat. He missed them. When would he see the
m again? Would he ever see them again?

  But winding through it all was the question that wouldn’t go away: Had Professor Polonius tricked them into the path of the tornado, knowing they’d be picked up by these weirdoes? If so, Dr. Koertig didn’t seem in on it. In fact, he’d seemed a little bent out of shape about them being kids. Like he’d expected to rescue some adults.

  So what did that mean? What did any of this mean?

  His Dad would often remark that Ryan had always been one of those kids who “never missed a trick.” And he guessed his father had been pretty much on the mark – Ryan was always noticing the little details, the subtle things that his friends and kids in class never seemed to pick up on. Sometimes it was a good thing, and it helped him in school, especially math class.

  But sometimes it got him in trouble with adults, who felt kind of threatened by the scrutiny – as if kids shouldn’t be so aware of the world around them. They didn’t like it when kids asked too many questions. Which is definitely where things were right now with Ryan. He had way too many questions and practically no answers.

  Ryan pushed the questions away and hunted sleep. He doubted he’d find it, but despite the fear and the cold and the terrible sense of loss that seemed to permeate the air around him, he felt himself slipping into slumber, drifting off –

  Until a hand grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

  “Ryan!” – Emma’s voice in a harsh whisper.

  “What? You almost scared the life out of me. What is it?”

  “It’s Telly! Remember how I said he was gone? Well, he’s not. At least not anymore. I just had this weird chill pass through me. It’s a signal! I can feel it. He’s here! Wherever we are, Ryan, Telly is here too!”

  6

  Emma had to trust her feelings on this one.

  It didn’t matter what Ryan might say – even though he was usually pretty good at cutting through any silliness to see the truth of something – Emma knew she was right. Telly was here in this weird place with them, and that knowledge somehow made her feel safer.