The Takers: Book One of the Oz Chronicles (3 page)

She stopped and smiled again. "Oz, take care of my son. He's your responsibility now."

"No…"

She moved to the stairs. "Once they've taken me, they'll leave. They always do. No matter what you hear, don't open the door." She started down the stairs and stopped. "Oh, and Oz, remember they can't see you if you don't notice them." With that she hurried down the stairs. I heard the door open and shut. Minutes later, all I could hear were the sounds of Mrs. Chalmers screaming.

Hours passed after Mrs. Chalmers's last scream before I dared to leave the attic. Had it not been for the baby crying and throwing a general fit, I probably would have waited even longer. As it was, he was in desperate need of a diaper change, and I suspected he was hungry again.

With Nate in my left arm, the baseball bat in my right hand, and Kimball at my feet, I descended the stairs as frightened as I have ever been. Mrs. Chalmers said they would leave after they took her, but I couldn't be absolutely sure she knew what she was talking about. She wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders.

Standing in the hallway of the second floor, I knew she was right. I don't know how exactly, but I could sense that they were gone. They brought with them the stench of terror, a sharp sour effervescence that seeps into your bones and sends a horrible sense of doom up and down your spine. If they'd remained in the house, I would have smelled them. Instead all I smelled was the kid's foul and disgusting diaper.

I moved into the Chalmers' master bedroom where they had set up a changing table. I had never changed a diaper before, but I had seen my aunt change my cousin's diaper when we visited them the Christmas before last. Until I woke up from my bout with mono to find that everybody in the world had disappeared, I counted that experience as my most horrible ever.

I set my bat down on the bed and laid Nate down on the flat cushioned top of the changing table. Kimball looked at me as if I were insane to even attempt to change the kid's diaper, but my only other option was to let him keep his soiled diaper on and learn to live with the awful, awful smell. It wasn't an option. I pulled back the adhesive tab on the diaper and lifted Nate's feet to get his hindquarters high enough to slip the diaper out. I was absolutely appalled at the milky green deposit Nate had made. Its consistency defied reason. I quickly wrapped the diaper up tight and tossed it in the nearby trashcan.

Nate kicked and thrashed about on the changing table. His eyes were closed tight. I cleaned his bottom with about a hundred baby wipes, and after several attempts, successfully put a clean diaper on him. Then before picking him up and heading down the stairs to the kitchen, I prayed that I would come across an adult before the kid crapped again. I was through with diaper-changing duty.

The kid gulped down his formula like he hadn't eaten in a month. After he finished the last drop, I soon learned that Nate's favorite thing to do after downing a bottle of formula was vomit. The little brat threw up all over my shirt. I was absolutely convinced he was the most disgusting baby ever born.

As Nate lay on the kitchen floor with Kimball watching over him, I washed my shirt out in the kitchen sink, and watched out the window as the sun sank in the sky. It would be completely dark soon. I decided that I would spend the night in the Chalmers' rather than slink through the neighborhood in the dead of night carrying a squirming baby the short distance to my house.

I raided the pantry for whatever looked edible and stuffed everything into a plastic garbage bag. My appetite was slowly returning to its old form. Much to my delight, the Chalmers were really into junk food. It seemed like they had every kind of chip, chocolate, and soda known to man. There was no dog food, but they did have a lot of canned tuna and chicken. Luckily, they all had pull-up tabs so no can opener would be needed.

The bag full, I scooped up the little kid and headed back up to the master bedroom where I would hole up for the night. I didn't like the attic. It made me feel trapped and boxed in. The master bedroom connected to Mr. Chalmers's office through a large walk-in closet, which gave me two exits. Besides, the baby was set up to sleep in the master bedroom. I figured if he was in familiar surroundings he might have an easier time of it.

By nine o'clock that night (I knew the correct time because I found Mr. Chalmers's watch on the desk in his office), it was obvious I was wrong. The kid howled and wailed from the moment I set foot back in the master bedroom. Mrs. Chalmers said he was colic. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but if it meant an enormous pain in the ass, he was definitely colic.

I paced the floor of the bedroom rocking the kid back and forth so long that my arm went numb. It was then that I found something that was labeled a baby sling. It was a device that hung around my shoulder and across my belly and had a pocket big enough to lay the kid in. As soon as he was inside, Nate went out like a light. From that moment on, that baby sling was always in my sight. As far as I was concerned, it was the most miraculous invention ever made.

I stretched out on the bed and drifted to sleep as Kimball took a spot next to me and closed his eyes.

***

At two in the morning, Nate woke up hungry. I fed him some formula and fought hard to stay awake. He was an annoying little bugger. There was a time when I was five or six years old that I begged my Mom to give me a kid brother. Lying there with one eye open, propped up on the Chalmers' bed feeding a flailing little blob some crap that he was going to throw up about two seconds after he got done, I was glad she didn't listen to me.

Despite my best efforts, I dozed off and let my head drop. I quickly jerked awake and breathed out deeply trying to will myself to stay alert. I stood and immediately froze as I looked out the window and saw a large pair of green eyes staring back at me. They were back.

Nate fed unaware of the danger. Kimball hopped out of the bed and charged the window. The eyes didn't move. Nor did I. We were locked in a stare. Mrs. Chalmers's words came back to me. "They can't see you if you don't notice them."

How could I not notice them? All I could see in the darkness were the eerie green eyes. They were there. I couldn't deny that. A tapping came at the window, then I could hear scratching. I looked closer at the green eyes. The thing turned its head, and they disappeared only to reappear seconds later. Kimball barked. I heard a hiss and a low raspy meow. I let out a sigh of relief. The glowing green eyes belonged to a cat. Kimball lunged at the window and the cat took off. I laid back down and Nate and I were asleep before Kimball returned to the bed.

***

I woke up the next morning thinking about Stevie Dayton. Six months earlier, he was found in his basement with a noose around his neck hanging from some pipes. My Mom told me like she expected me to crumple over in a grief-stricken heap. I could sense her disappointment when my only reply was, "Okay," and I went on about the important task of playing Madden on my Xbox.

Stevie was on my mind at that particular moment because I remembered his stories. He was retarded, or "mentally challenged" as my mother used to correct me, but he had an incredible imagination. He wrote comic books about bizarre worlds where people had three heads and eighty-six toes or potato peelers for fingers. It was crazy stuff that never made any sense. He worked on them constantly at school. His drawings were surprisingly good, but his handwriting was barely legible. The stories meant something to him. We, of course, teased him mercilessly about them. Looking back, it was perhaps the crudest thing we did to him, making fun of his stories. To him, they were the only places he felt real solace, and we set out to destroy them.

There was one story that haunted me this particular morning, a story about a group of creatures that hunted people. The details were vague to me, but I seemed to recall that they were invisible until you could see them. That was Stevie's logic, "invisible until you could see them." At the time, I thought it was the rambling reasoning of a retarded kid, but at that moment, hearing Mrs. Chalmers's voice in my head saying, "they can't see you if you don't notice them," I was beginning to wonder if Stevie knew something the rest of us didn't.

I put a fresh diaper on Nate, and packed up all the baby supplies that would fit in the garbage bag. With a great deal of hesitation, I exited the Chalmers' house with Nate in his sling and Kimball by my side. We made the short trip to my house without incident.

I struggled to come up with a plan for survival. I was thirteen, and I felt like I didn't know anything about anything that was important. Put me in front of a video game and I could tell you how to defeat the invading Xoran army on planet K-Zap and save the Chalathiun race from extinction. But I couldn't tell you squat about how to pack only the most essential food and other items to keep you alive on planet Earth when it appears you and a baby were the only humans left. I say appears because I had made up my mind that Mrs. Chalmers was wrong. Everyone wasn't gone. After all, what were the chances that three people in the same neighborhood were the only ones that survived? Somebody else had to be out there. I could either wait until they came to me, or I could go out and find them. I never was much for waiting.

I could not drive. I didn't know the first thing about the mechanics of making a car go and more importantly stop. I knew cars had a gas pedal and a brake pedal, but when I tried to imagine how much pressure was the proper amount to apply to either, I convinced myself that not knowing the exact answer to that question would result in a horrible wreck that would leave me either dead or badly injured. So, taking my parents' car was not an option, and since carrying a lot of equipment and Nate on my bike was impossible, I was left with my only mode of transportation being my feet.

I loaded my mom's garden wagon full of supplies; food, clothes, diapers, tools, kitchen knives, flashlights, matches, anything I could think of that would be useful. At one point, the wagon was so full I could hardly pull it. I unloaded it and eliminated whatever I could to make the load lighter. It was a process I repeated several times, until I got it down to a weight I was comfortable with.

With Nate in his sling and dangling from my shoulder, I made one last pass through my house. I stared at the family photos as long as I could, burning them into my memory. They were pictures of happy times, and I wanted those memories to be the ones I carried with me on my journey. I took the photo of my Mom and Pop's last anniversary, all three of us at Baskin Robbins eating our weight in ice cream, and stuffed it in my pocket. That's when I realized that I had not taken a picture of Nate's parents with me. It would be our first stop before we headed out of town.

Just in case, I left a note for my parents on the refrigerator. "Gone looking for you. Love, Oz." I think it was the first time I ever signed a note to my Mom and Pop with the word "love." It saddened me that they would probably never see it.

I took a picture from Nate's father's office. It was a picture of Mr. Chalmers, Mrs. Chalmers, and Nate at the hospital. Mr. Chalmers had the biggest smile I think I had ever seen. They all looked tired and on the verge of collapse, but I felt like it was their happiest moment. Nate should know that he made them happy.

As I was about to leave Mr. Chalmers's office, I noticed that he had a sword hanging on his wall. According to its plaque, it belonged to a Union Officer in the Civil War by the name of James J. Petty. I pulled it off the wall and was surprised at how heavy it was. It looked as if it were brand new. I dubbed the sword J.J. and brought it with me.

I positioned myself in the middle of the road. The temperature hovered somewhere in the high 50s. I put on my Tennessee Titans sweatshirt and made sure that Nate was bundled up tight in his blanket. I figured my body temperature would keep him warm. I gave my house one last look over my shoulder and then started pulling my wagon down Harper Street.

We crossed over to Collinwood and then Freemont Avenue where I made my next stop. I stood in front of Stevie Dayton's house, and felt a chill race through my bones. I avoided this house like the plague whenever I went bike riding for fear Stevie would see me and come running out after me, begging me to come in and read his latest story. It was the only time I was polite to him because his mom was always within earshot, and I didn't want her to know how I really treated her son.

I walked inside and like all the other houses it was empty. It was left intact like my house, but it was just as disturbing as all the other houses that had been ransacked. The faint odor of terror was in the air. I quickly made my way to Stevie's room and found his collection of stories in a series of boxes underneath his bed. Amazingly, they were all neatly filed away. I overturned the first box and rifled through the mound of monster and mutant stories. Stevie had written hundreds of comic books. I dumped the next box, and then the next. It wasn't there. All the boxes empty, I stood and backed out of his room.

At the end of the hall, I saw the door to the basement. "That's where they found him," I told myself. "He had it with him." I said it with a knowing that made no sense to me. How I thought I knew that he had the comic book I was looking for with him the day he killed himself, I don't know, but I was sure of it. I took a step toward the door and stopped. It was foolish to go down there without protection. I ran back to the wagon and got J.J. and a flashlight.

A rush of cold air struck me when I opened the door to the basement. Nate must have felt it too because he squirmed in his sling. I took one step down and looked at Kimball. He backed away from the door. "Kimball, c'mon," I said, but he backed away even farther. He would not make the trip downstairs with me.

Each stair creaked and sagged as I stepped on it. The beam from my flashlight created a bent tunnel of light surrounded by total darkness. I felt as if I were entering hell.

My feet touched the cement floor. I scanned my flashlight back and forth. It was an unfinished basement that served as the Dayton's laundry room. A basket of laundry sat on top of the dryer. I turned to my right. A series of pipes snaked across the ceiling to the far corner of the room. To the left, there were six metal shelves that contained tools and spare parts for various household items.