by R. W. Ridley
The monster yanked me down to the ground. I scrambled back on the muddy surface. The Taker was on all fours. It snapped its mighty jaw as it lurched towards me. It suddenly lunged backwards and howled. Ajax was on its back, pounding it with his enormous gorilla fists. Kimball stuck his head down the hole. He barked, desperately wanting to jump down and help his friend, but it was too far down.
The Taker slammed backwards into the wall. Ajax bellowed in pain, but he fought on. I darted in and pulled the knife out of the monster's leg. The Taker swung its clawed hand at me, but missed when Ajax jerked it to the ground. It flailed on its back. It was now or never. I jumped up on its chest and with both hands around the knife's handle, I plunged it into the Taker's neck. It jerked and flopped, sending me flying against the tunnel wall. In a matter of minutes, it made one last spasm and then stopped moving.
Ajax was wounded. Blood was coming from his chest. The Taker had sliced him with its claws. I crawled to his side. He moaned and cupped his huge hand around my head. His breathing was uneven. "Hey," I said. "C'mon, now, they can't hurt you. You're a warrior."
He roared in pain.
I ran to the opening. "We got to get Ajax out of here. He's hurt."
"Now, how do you propose we get a 400-pound go-rilla out of that hole?" A familiar voice answered back.
"Wes?" I said.
Wes peered down the whole. "The one and only. Sorry I missed all the fun." He smiled. "Hold on to your britches. We'll get a ladder down to you."
"How did you…"
"I told you I was working on something. As soon as we get you and that ugly go-rilla out of there, I'll show you."
Ajax roared in protest at being called ugly. I sat next to him and waited for our old friend, Wes, to pull us out of the hole.
***
Topside, we tended to Ajax's wounds. He had two deep gashes that ran about four inches across his chest. They were deep cuts, but Valerie and Lou did a good job of patching him up.
I was anxious to talk to Wes, but I needed a moment to gather myself. I found a secluded spot in the manager's office in front of the warehouse and dropped to my knees. I was angry, happy, terrified, and emboldened all at once. My entire body was trembling. We had voluntarily engaged the Takers in battle, and we had won, but I didn't know if I had the courage to do it again. I allowed myself only a few moments of reflection before I returned to the others.
Wes took me outside and showed me what he had been working on. It was a 1972 VW bus. The short, green and yellow van glistened in the October sun.
"But the gas?" I said.
Wes smiled. "Converted it to run on propane.
"Propane?"
"Didn't think this old redneck could do much more than fart and cook on the grill, did ya'?" He walked over to the German-made vehicle and ran his hand across the driver's side door.
"You're a genius," I said.
"Nah, I ain't no genius. Just an old grease monkey who reads Popular Mechanics."
I walked over and looked inside the van. He had it half loaded with supplies, mostly food. Wes leaned against the VW and soaked in my admiration.
"I see you picked up a couple of strays," he said, motioning with his head toward Valerie and Tyrone standing inside the warehouse.
"Yeah." I leaned on the van next to him. "Picked them up outside of Chattanooga." I looked at Tyrone and could scarcely believe what he and I had just gone through in the tunnel. "How'd you find us anyway?"
"Seen the horses and wagon from the interstate." He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "You kids is playing with fire," he said. "Conjuring them things up will only lead to trouble."
I thought about how to respond. I couldn't tell him that, like Lou, I believed we were on a mission. It sounded too corny, and he would just think it was nonsense.
"We were prepared."
He was about to give me a lecture on the fallacy of that statement when we heard some whining and yelping from inside the van. His eyes opened wide. "Hell, I almost forgot." He ran around the other side of the van and opened the door. "Got me some future Greasywhopper killers."
I walked up as he was pulling out a box full of puppies from the van. There were eight. They were all, different variations of the colors black, tan, and white. They looked to be about six weeks old.
"Found 'em out back of my garage the other day. Don't know what happened to the mother. I waited for her to come around, but she never did, so I figured I had to bring 'em with me. Didn't feel right just leavin' them there."
I picked one up. Its little tail was wagging uncontrollably. It started licking my face. "It'll be a while before these things can take on a Greasywhopper."
"Old Kimball will give them all the training they need." We started to walk back to the warehouse. He carried the box with the remaining seven puppies, and I carried the other tightly to my chest. "You don't mind if this old redneck tags along with ya', do ya'?"
"Mind? I'd be mad if you didn't."
Predictably, Tyrone and Valerie were elated to see the box of puppies. They greeted us as we entered the warehouse and started plucking puppies from the box before Wes could set it down. I carried my puppy over to Ajax, who was resting comfortably on a stack of throw rugs, and placed the puppy next to him. His eyes lit up. I patted him on the shoulder as he gently picked up the puppy and began tickling its belly. Kimball watched the exchange with just a hint of jealousy.
I motioned for Lou to follow me to the manager's office, and invited Wes to look over our new weapons cache, asking him to come up with a list of things we would need from the outdoor shop. In truth it was just busy work so Lou and I could speak in private.
When Lou and I entered the manager's office, I turned to her and said, "What did the book say?"
"I didn't get that far ahead."
"You knew what was going to happen to Tyrone?"
She nodded. "It was in the book. I knew you were supposed to go in the tunnel after him."
"What happens next?"
"All I know is our next stop is the Atlanta Zoo."
"The Atlanta Zoo?"
"That's where I stopped reading."
I sat on the manager's desk and rubbed my eyes. "How many more pages do you have left?
"Twenty, maybe."
"Twenty?" I sighed deeply. "We'll never be able to pull this off."
"We have to." She looked at me, determined.
I nodded. "Agreed."
She smiled and started to walk away.
"But," I said.
She stopped and turned to me.
I hesitated and then said what had to be said. "We're not all going to make it. I just wanted you to know that."
She processed the information and nodded. "Understood." She exited the manager's office.
***
That night, after returning from the outdoor store with replenished supplies, we sat down to a meal prepared by Valerie. It was a decent assortment of raw vegetables and some powdered milk. In my life before the Takers, I would have barfed at the mere thought of such a meal, but our present situation changed my expectations and severely altered my tastes. I ate it as gratefully as I would have eaten a super-sized meal from McDonald's just weeks before.
"Something's been bothering me," Wes said after chomping a handful of carrots.
"What?" I said.
"No cars." He phrased it simply and offered no further explanation.
I turned and looked out the warehouse door to the interstate. I wasn't sure what he was talking about. "No cars?"
"Yeah. I ain't seen one car since I took off from Manchester yesterday."
Lou and I looked at each other. Of course he hasn't seen any cars. There's nobody left to drive them. "You do know what's going on out here, don't you?" I said.
"Of course I do," he said. "I ain't expectin' to see nobody drivin' around, but how come there ain't no cars on the sides of the highway or in the middle of the road for that matter?"
"What do you mean?" Lou asked.
I thought about it. He was right. We hadn't come across one car that was abandoned or wrecked on our entire journey. Not even the little side trips we took. I hadn't thought about it until now, but he was right. The Takers came suddenly and quickly. Surely people were driving when the Takers yanked them up.
"It's almost like somebody's give us a clear path." He said. "There's really only one question."
"What?" I asked.
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
I looked at Lou and the others. They had all stopped mid-chew thinking about Wes's question. I felt obligated to say something inspirational, but nothing particularly awe-inspiring came to mind. "It's good," I said with no explanation to back up my claim.
The others didn't buy my assertion, but they didn't offer any arguments either. They were all tired of talking about our current situation and what had to be done. They just wanted to relax and prepare for another day of travel.
***
We all awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of what we thought was thunder. Initially we didn't pay much attention, but as I lay there and listened to the rumbling of the thunder dissipate, I noticed that it actually wasn't dissipating. It was growing louder and more intense. It sounded as if it was building to a crescendo, that at any second, we would hear another roaring boom.
I turned on my side to look out the loading dock door and was surprised to see Ajax sitting in the open doorway, his silver back to us as he watched the night sky. I stood and joined him.
"Something wrong?" I asked.
Without acknowledging me he signed "Warrior," and then he made the sign of a 'V' with one hand and ran it across the palm of this other until it went over the edge of his fingertips. Before I could get up and get Dr. Fine's book, Lou was standing next to me with the book in her hand.
"It means fail," she said. "He's been sitting here for the last fifteen minutes signing 'Warriors fail' over and over again."
"Warriors fail?" I put my hand on his shoulder. "Did we fail, Ajax?"
He made the sign language symbol for the letter 'A' and first pointed in one direction and then another. Lou flipped through the book.
"Other," she said.
"Other warriors fail?" I said. The phrase shook me. Not only because the implications of it were horrifying, but also because it was the first time Ajax gave any indication that there were other warriors out there. "There are more like us?"
He grunted and nodded.
"And they failed, meaning the Takers got one of the Storytellers?
He signed, "Six now."
"How do you know?"
He pointed to the sky. I looked and saw a fat purple crack etching itself across the blackened horizon. "What is that?" It was sickening. There was no other way to describe it. It looked as if our world was being ripped apart.
"Day long here," Ajax signed.
"What's a day long?" Lou asked.
Ajax put both hands to his head, placed his thumbs to his forehead, held up two fingers on each hand and wiggled them up and down. I turned to Lou. She frantically flipped through the pages of the book. Her face turned ghost white when she found the description.
"What?" I asked.
She could not say it out loud so she held up the book. I shared her fear when I saw the meaning. I took the book from her and sat back down next to Ajax.
"Are you sure?" I asked him.
He nodded.
Wes had snuck up behind us. He had been standing there long enough to hear most of the conversation. "What's it mean?" he asked.
A little startled by his voice, I turned to him. I cleared my throat and said, "Demon."
SEVEN
I think it's time you come clean with me," Wes said. He was bent next to his propane-converted '72 VW bus checking the air pressure in the front passenger side tire. The sun was stretching above the horizon. The purple crack was ever present. "You kids seem to be messin' around with something you shouldn't be messin' around with."
I squatted next to him. "I don't know exactly what to tell you. I'm not really all that clear on everything."
"Why don't you tell me what you know then?" He sat down on the ground and leaned against the van.
I placed my hands on the paved surface and stretched my legs out. We looked deceptively relaxed, but we were far from it. The purple crack above us rattled both our nerves. "Well, come to find out we're warriors."
He raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean 'warriors'?"
"We have to protect Nate." I tried to make the conversation as matter a fact as possible.
"From what?"
"The Greasywhoppers."
He wiped his dirty hands on the front of his shirt, although I suspected they picked up more dirt from his shirt than they left behind. "What in Hades do them ugly buggers want with Nate?"
"He's a Storyteller." I said it, but didn't know how to explain it.
"Storyteller? The little guy can't even hold his head up. How you figure he's a storyteller?" Wes snickered at the idea.
"Because Ajax said…"
"Hold on, now," he interrupted. "You mean to tell me you're listening to the go-rilla?"
"He knows things," I said.
"He barely knows how to peel a banana."
"He says we're warriors. He says we have to protect Nate, to get him to something called the Keep."
"It's not the Keep," Lou said. She appeared from the back of the VW bus. "It's the Keepers."
"How do you know?" I asked.
She produced Dr. Fine's book from behind her back and pointed to a picture of one of Ajax's paintings. It was a simple, yet crude bright yellow circle. The caption read, "Ajax's Keepers."
"Don't you see?" she said. "If we get Nate to the Keepers, the Greasywhoppers will never be able to get to him."
"I still don't know what them things want with a little baby," Wes said.
"He's only a baby now. He'll grow up to be a Storyteller." She pointed to the purple crack in the sky. "See, the Greasywhoppers already got one of the Storytellers last night. What did Ajax say? Day long demons? That's what happens. They get the Storytellers and the others can cross over."
"What others?" I asked.
"The others," she said as if it were an unnecessary question on my part. "The other monsters that live in the minds of the Storytellers."
Something that Ajax had said a couple days earlier came to me. "Baby have army. That's what he meant."
Wes was still skeptical of the entire conversation. "You kids have gone plum crazy."
"Ajax said, 'Baby have army.' The Storytellers have the armies. The Greasywhoppers are building an army. They need the Storytellers to increase their numbers."
Wes let out a raspberry. "Look around ya', Oz. The Greasywhoppers don't need an army. They done destroyed and conquered. There's nobody left to fight."
Lou stood straight and proud. "There's us and the others that are out there."
Wes shook his head. "No offense, but it sure won't take a whole army to beat the likes of us."
"You're wrong," I said standing. "We're warriors."
***
We started out for Atlanta an hour later. Wes took Tyrone, Valerie, Ajax (who was still convalescing), and the puppies in his bus. They moved faster than us so they took point. They were miles ahead of us within just a few minutes. We kept in touch through a pair of high-powered two-way radios we'd picked up at Rankin's Outdoor Outfitters.
It was risky to split up like that, but Wes could not contain himself when he got behind the wheel of his VW bus. He had to drive as fast he could, which by his standards wasn't as fast as he was used to driving, but he still could out pace our horses and wagon by a good bit.
Lou and I didn't talk much. I think we had said all we could s
tand to say. We just sat and lost ourselves in the rhythmic clop-clop-clop of the horses' hooves on the pavement as we methodically made our way south.
The purple crack in the sky remained stamped on the horizon. It taunted us, letting us know that the Takers were not our only foes now. There were new creatures we had to deal with, and we knew nothing about them. Ajax had called them the Day Longs, although we couldn't be sure if that is what he really meant or if they were just the closest words in his vocabulary. We looked through Dr. Fine's book, but there were no references to these new monsters, or demons as Ajax called them. We had no idea what they looked like, or if they followed the same rules as the Takers. The comic book may have had some answers, but we could not chance another reading until we were all rested and healthy.
We got a call from Wes on the two-way that he was stopping at the Calhoun exit to wait for us to catch up. I could hear Valerie and Tyrone laughing through the static-filled airwaves of the radio. It made me smile. They were good kids who deserved a little bit of happiness. Unfortunately, that's about all the happiness you could find on this side of our planet's history, a little bit.
As soon as I put the radio down, I got the funny feeling we were being watched. I couldn't pinpoint from where, but I definitely could feel the eyes on me. I didn't tell Lou because I didn't want to ruin her moment of relative peace. I gave Phil and Ryder a light tap with the reins and urged them to pick up the pace.
As we went under an overpass, I got my first look of what or who had been watching us. I saw a shadowy figure on a horse. I got just a glimpse, but I could see that whoever it was, was not a master horseman. I watched the chubby figure in the saddle sway from side to side trying to get the horse to move behind an abandoned semi truck off the exit. The horse kicked up its back legs and whinnied. Lou was now aware of our visitor.