The Search for Artemis (The Chronicles of Landon Wicker) (4 page)

The next morning the men in black showed up again, and Landon moved to a dark spot next to a dumpster behind a convenience store.

• • • • •

Landon awoke with a start. The convenience store clerk had thrown a bag of garbage into the dumpster he was sleeping behind, and the metallic clank reverberated in his ears. Watching the rusty water drip from the back of the green dumpster, Landon came to reality. Fortunately, the heat wave had lifted, and a breeze coursed through the dim alleyway. The wind flipped through page after page of the notebook lying next to him on the pavement, each leaf covered in his doodles and notes.

Based on the date printed on the newspaper he’d slept on, it had been just over three weeks since he ran away. If he were at home, Landon would have woken up resenting the fact that he was about to spend another boring day walking the halls of his high school. Landon actually wished he were sitting in a sterile sophomore classroom listening to the monotone ramblings of a biology teacher. He even dreamed about the school lunches. After a week or so of living off of other people’s scraps, school lunches started to seem gourmet.

Landon slowly rose to his feet. His body ached from head to foot after sleeping so many nights on the hard asphalt. Once he stretched, he picked up his notebook, stashed it in his duffle bag, and threw the bag over his shoulder. Maybe he would be able to find a half-eaten meal lying on top of a trashcan. That would be the most luck he had experienced in a week.

The alley shot off of Hugo Street, one of the city’s major roadways. It was lined in dumpsters and garbage cans intended to serve the tenants of the storefronts and apartments and spacious enough for a garbage or supply truck to drive through. Loose pieces of paper and debris littered the ground and trickling down the middle of the asphalt, a small stream of grimy water snaked toward the open street. Even with its size, the alley was probably the most depressing and disgusting place Landon had slept since he ran away.

He stared at the metallic zigzag of a fire escape as it cascaded down the brick facing of an apartment building. Since he went back to his apartment complex, he had been haunted by random images in his dreams. They were never more than images, but they didn’t make any sense to him. How could visions of flying books or couches on the ceiling make sense to anyone?

After looking through the garbage the store clerk had thrown into the dumpster for a potential morsel of food that resembled a breakfast, Landon decided to move on into the streets of the city. He wasn’t sure of the time of the day, but the city was alive. Cars congested the roads and honked at one another as they drove to their respective destinations. The sidewalks teemed with people who fought their way down the narrow paths. Landon noticed over the past couple of days that he didn’t have as much trouble moving through the streets as everyone else. People seemed to want to avoid him in any way possible and making eye contact was out of the question. He felt like an outcast. Was it the way he looked or just the way he smelled? When he ran away that night, he hadn’t thought to grab his deodorant off the dresser. Even so, this was more than stench. People seemed to avoid him like a plague, as if he were some sort of diseased menace to society. It started to take its toll on him because apart from feeling like he was running for his life, he also felt more alone than he ever had before.

As he walked down the sidewalk, he noticed a woman that looked surprisingly like his mother. He stopped in his tracks and turned, catching a glimpse of the back of her head moments before a sea of pedestrians blocked his line of sight.
Could it really be her?
Without thinking, Landon began to weave through the crowd, determined to catch another look. He ricocheted off a businessman and tumbled into a crowd of teenage girls, but none of this could avert his eyes from this woman who may be his mother. He started to gain ground, and he couldn’t wait to see her again. She looked just as he remembered. Her hair was large, brownish-black and frizzy from all her wild curls. It lay right under her shoulders and bounced with life as she walked. She also wore her favorite color, emerald green, and she was right there. Did he look so different now that she hadn’t noticed him when they crossed paths moments before? That must be it. It made sense; Landon was covered in dirt, his hair was greasy and matted to his head, and stains overran his clothes. Then he crashed into something and seconds later was plastered to the sidewalk.

He thought he’d collided with a phone booth or maybe a street lamp. It took him a few moments to realize he was now sitting on the cold cement, but then he remembered his mother. He tried to peer through the legs and torsos of the crowd to see her, but she had disappeared. He’d lost her again. This wasn’t the first time he thought he had seen her since running away. Was she ever there or was Landon’s hunger and exhaustion playing tricks on him?

Defeated, he looked back to find out what broke his chase. He first focused on a pair of well-polished black dress shoes. They were big and wide, the laces were perfectly tied, and an even bow rested lightly on the shiny patent leather. As he raised his head, he followed the smooth legs of a pair of black pleated slacks. Once his eyes reached the man’s waist, Landon noticed the pressed white shirt with a sleek black tie and a boxy black suit jacket. The man was bulky and muscular; he hadn’t even moved an inch when Landon plowed right into him. Landon rose to his feet and looked back at the man he had run into. As he raised his head to apologize, a little scrap of paper in the man’s hand caught his attention. In a flash, Landon saw it. It was only a moment, but that was all it took for Landon to see that this suited man carried a picture of him. It was his high school photo they took for the yearbook that his mother had ordered personal copies of. Landon shot his head upward to see the face of the man who held it. He looked like all the rest of them. He had a square head and a clean-shaven, rigid jaw. His blond hair was cut the same as the others, and out of his right ear extended a coiled wire that disappeared under his white collar.

Landon began to sweat. Drops of perspiration beaded on his forehead and his hands became clammy. He felt his heart race as his body went momentarily numb. All the sounds of the busy street faded away.
They found me.

In that moment, Landon thought of one possible thing to do. He turned on the spot and began to sprint down the sidewalk, running away from the mysterious man. He forced his way through the crowds of people, who cast agitated looks at him as he bumped and pushed them.

“Wait! Stop!”

Landon heard the suited man’s shouts as he pursue him.  

“We just want to talk to you!”

But Landon didn’t want to talk. He sped through the crowds of people, and once he reached the convenience store, he turned into the smelly alley where he had slept for the past few days. As he ran, he jolted from side to side, pulling down trash cans and throwing boxes in the path of his pursuer, hoping it would slow him down. It didn’t seem to work. Landon could hear the staccato clapping of the suited man’s shoes as he raced through the alleyway, close on his heels. The small rests in his steps made Landon envision the effortless hurdling the boxes and trashcans he’d placed in his path.

Once he reached the end of the alley, Landon turned right and sped down the sidewalk. The sound of the man’s steps gradually increased in volume as he got closer and closer. When Landon looked, he saw the man was only about fifteen yards behind him, but he seemed to have more trouble working through the crowds of people.

He reached the end of the block and crossed the street. After a few days staying in the area, Landon learned this part of town well, and he figured if he got to the Financial District, he could lose himself in the thick crowds of commuters. Momentarily, Landon thought he might get away, but once he arrived at the other side of the street, he noticed another suited man running straight at him. He was almost a carbon copy of the other. If it weren’t for this one’s brown hair, Landon would have thought the blond man behind him possessed some sort of magical powers.

Abruptly, Landon stopped in his tracks. His brain raced with potential routes as he tried to devise a new plan of escape, calibrating a new route like a GPS. The sound of his pounding heart bounced around in his head, making it next to impossible to concentrate. Unable to think, Landon just decided to run. He moved across the intersection, putting as much distance as he could between him and his two pursuers.

As he flew down the sidewalk, he noticed a small alley to the left and darted in once he reached it. It was narrow, making it hard to move around the debris that littered the ground. Landon realized that he’d never gone down this alley before, and then he saw the brick wall directly in front of him—a dead end.

Frantically, Landon began to run from door to door, attempting to open any that he could. They were all locked. While gripping a new door, he looked back and saw the two men effortlessly jumping over the litter on the ground. Landon was caught. He was in a dead-end alley and the only exit available was behind two huge men determined to capture him. Landon tried the door once again, wishing it would unlock. Then Landon thought he heard a faint click, and when he pulled again, the door swung open.

He jumped through the door and found himself in the back kitchen of a restaurant. Based on the smell, he imagined it was a breakfast joint. The smell of bacon wafted into his nose, stealing him away from his purpose and making him salivate. Even though he ran for his life, feelings of hunger and exhaustion were starting to creep into his mind, and that bacon smelled fantastic. The startled staff and chefs yelled at him as he ran toward the service door leading into the dining room.

Landon determinedly bit his lower lip as he reached the door and lowered a shoulder, busted through it, and unexpectedly collided with a bus boy carrying a tray of dirty dishes. Their bodies flew to the ground in a heap, dishes crashing and glasses shattering as he and the bus boy bowled into a table. The diners rose to their feet to get a look at the cause of the commotion. Landon popped up to his feet amidst the gasps and hollers, and looked around at all the staring faces of the shocked patrons. Once he spotted the front door, he dodged back and forth around the tables, making his way to the exit. When he pushed the door open, the bell dangling from the handle made a short melodic ring. It prompted him to glance back only to see the suited men emerging from the swinging service door, and he knew he wasn’t in the clear yet.

Landon sprinted to the end of the block, but he could still hear the screams of the two men behind him as they tried to convince him to stop and talk. Landon had no intention of turning himself in for something he wasn’t sure he had done.

He turned the corner and rushed down the sidewalk. Sweat streamed down his face and his legs started to feel like Jell-O. He also cringed with pain. He hurt his shoulder in the restaurant, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. Moving quickly, he turned, zigzagged through the cars that were stopped in traffic to the other side of the road, and dipped into another alleyway. This time it was one he recognized.

It was much wider than the last and there wasn’t much litter. For a brief moment, Landon’s mind wandered, and he contemplated why he hadn’t slept in this one for the past few nights. It seemed much cleaner than the alleyway behind the convenience store.

“Landon! Wait! Please! We aren’t going to hurt you! We just need to talk to you! We can help you!”

Landon halted to a stop at the intersection of another alley. But with no time to think, Landon just went to the right. Luckily, Landon found almost no one on the sidewalk. The street was congested with cars, but the sidewalks were empty, except for the occasional person or couple strolling. He ran down the street at a full sprint, but exhaustion started to take hold. Having eaten very little for days, he’d depleted all of his energy and his body wasn’t going to support the physical exertion much longer.

To make matters worse, he could still hear the clicks of their shoes on the pavement amid the city’s sounds, and it was getting louder by the second. The men seemed to move faster than ever when they didn’t need to dodge people or jump over garbage. Landon winced as he pulled the duffle bag off his shoulder and tossed it to the side of the road. He hoped ditching his only possessions would free himself up to run faster.

Turning up his speed, he dashed onto another road and ran down it as fast as possible to finally get away. But before he could lose his pursuers, a large crowd of people began to file out of a museum. The bodies were densely packed; Landon had no chance of getting through. It was an impenetrable wall of camera-bearing, fanny-pack-wearing tourists. Skidding to a halt, Landon turned to go back the way he came, but the suited men had crossed the street and moved closer and closer to him. He turned around to find the stream of tourists continuing with no end in sight. Again he spun around, the suited men were mere yards away. With the time leading to his capture ticking to an end and no option in sight, Landon bolted toward the road. He took two steps toward the busy street, noticing the small break in the traffic and for a moment Landon was filled with hope. However, that hope quickly turned to surprise as he felt his foot slip off the curb.

Suddenly, he was having an out-of-body experience. He watched as his body tumbled into the street. He watched the arms of the suited men as they reached out to catch him while continuing to run up the sidewalk, too far away to be of any assistance. He watched as his body flew in front of a parked red convertible. He even had enough time to watch as the black asphalt came toward him.