by R. W. Ridley
“Yes, sir,” I said. I stood and watched as the man who may or may not have been my father walked by.
He was baffled when I didn’t follow him. “C’mon, get in the truck.”
The truck? The truck... that meant... gas was now usable. Cars ran. The Délons had changed that much. The Takers had somehow sabotaged the gasoline supply and rendered motorized transportation useless. The Délons returned that part of society back to normal. I could see that I was going to have to get used to a whole new set of rules.
***
The truck barreled down Lincoln Street. Pop and I had not spoken since we left the house. I was scared of the man. I stared at his head waiting for the spider legs to jet out and reach for me.
Tullahoma looked like home. But, like my bedroom, it was too normal. November was creeping up on the small little southern town, and the foliage had turned brown. The cool crisp air of the season almost sparkled it was so pure. The happy faces of the townsfolk we passed seemed to be painted on. Nothing seemed real.
My backpack with the grotesque cocoon inside it was on the seat between Pop and me. It continued to chirp.
“Annoying little booger, isn’t it?” Pop said. He smiled. When he did, I could see that some of his teeth were missing. That unsettled me even more and Pop noticed. “What’s wrong, boy?”
I didn’t know what to say. There were so many things wrong. I didn’t know how to narrow it down into one brief, coherent sentence. What could I say that wouldn’t morph the man driving my Pop’s truck into a full-on Délon that would devour my brains before the next traffic light?
“Nothing,” I said.
“Look,” he said. “Don’t think I don’t know this is all scary to you. Hell, it scared me, too.”
“It did?”
“You bet. But it really isn’t that bad. It certainly isn’t like it used to be. The Délon’s are more careful now.”
“Careful?”
“Absolutely. They take it easy. They know transformation can be rough for us humans.” He patted the backpack. “This little fella will make sure you come out of this thing okay. He’s your best friend. My therapist says he comes from the best breeder in the country. He may even come from the General’s stock.”
“Really,” I said trying to sound excited.
“You could sound a little more enthused than that, Oz. Having one of the General’s solifipods is like having a blank check.”
“Solifipod?”
“Cocoon, whatever you want to call it. The point is somebody in high places likes you.” He pointed to the backpack. “That little shunter in there could be this family’s ticket to the Royal Council.”
Part of me wanted to ask him what a shunter was, but the other part of me wished I had never even heard the word. It sounded violent and painful. My instincts were to roll down my window and toss the backpack into the nearest ditch, but I knew Pop would throw a fit.
We turned into the Sergeant York Middle School parking lot. “Today’s the first day of the rest of your life, or I should say the best of your life,” Pop said. He pulled up to the curb and put the truck in park. He gave me a creepy half-toothed grin. “Today you get marked.”
“Marked?” I didn’t like the sound of it.
“I’m not going to lie to you, son. It’s going to hurt. A lot.” He opened his door and climbed out of the truck. “But it’s worth the pain, trust me.”
That was it. I had had enough quality time with freaky-turning purple-Pop. I opened my door and stepped onto the pavement with the intentions of bolting for the woods in the back of the school. But I only managed a half step before I ran into a seemingly immovable object and fell ass-first to the ground. I hit the pavement with a thud and looked up. There hovering over me was Coach Denton. I should say half of the thing standing over me was Coach Denton. The other half was a Délon with one dead eye and half its head outlined with flailing spider leg tentacles. The other eye was blue and the human half of the head was covered with a drooping comb over. The body was an impossible combination of sleek Délon design and the Coach’s doughboy build. Mandibles shot out of its mouth and snapped towards me.
“Going somewhere, Oz?” the Coach hissed.
Pop came around the truck. “They always try to run on their day of marking.”
Coach reached down and yanked me to my feet with his Délon hand. “Day of marking?” His dead eye bulged. “Well, congratulations, Oz.” He pulled me close. “It’s going to hurt like hell, but it will make a man out of you or, should I say, a Délon out of you.” He cackled or hacked some disturbing sound that rattled my bones. It made me regret killing the Taker Queen.
Pop reached in the truck and pulled out my backpack. “We brought his solifipod. It should be a couple of days before his shunter comes out, but we thought it best he keep it close by.”
Coach Denton sniffed the air. He held my arm tightly, and moved in closer to the backpack, breathing in deeply. “This is the general’s line.”
My Pop almost burst with excitement. “Really? We had been told that it was possible, but... Are you sure?”
Coach Denton breathed in even deeper. “Definitely. I’ve met General Roy on several occasions. This is his scent. I’d know it anywhere.”
General Roy? Was it possible? Was it the Roy I knew? The warrior I had betrayed? The one I had let fall victim to the Délons?
The Coach scanned me with his dead eye. “This can only mean one thing. You are to sit on the general’s Royal Council.” He looked at my Pop. “We are not prepared for this kind of marking.”
Pop’s posture visibly sank. He had never been more disappointed. “But we got a letter. This is Oz’s day of marking.” He pulled an envelope out of his back pocket and handed it to Coach Denton.
The half-freak/half comb-over disaster let me go and read the letter with great interest. “But I don’t understand. The Minister of Regents must be present for such a marking.”
“He couldn’t make it,” a voice boomed. Three Délons approached on horses from the West. They galloped across the schoolyard. I immediately recognized the middle horse, Mr. Mobley. Roy’s horse.
Coach Denton and Pop collapsed to their knees.
The Délon who was once my friend and fellow warrior, Roy, dismounted Mr. Mobley. “I hope I will do.”
“General...” Coach Denton’s voice was quivering.
Pop tried to pull me to my knees but I shook him off.
General Roy was a commanding figure. The spider legs on his head did not flail like I had seen them do on every other Délon. They hugged his head as if they were hairs in a tightly woven pattern of cornrows. His milky eyes beamed confidence. He smiled and nodded. “Oz.”
“Roy,” I said. Pop and Coach Denton gasped at my insolence.
The other two Délons jumped off their horses. I don’t know how, but I could tell right away they were Miles and Devlin, two more of my former warriors.
Miles tilted his head. “Ozzie boy, how’s it hanging?”
“General, this is such an honor,” Pop said.
I looked at him and was disgusted by his groveling.
“The honor is mine, Mr. Griffin,” General Roy said. “Your son is a hero.”
Coach Denton giggled. “Oz, a hero?”
Devlin stepped forward and slapped the Coach. “Shut up, you filthy halfer.”
Pop swallowed hard. “I don’t understand.”
General Roy circled me as he spoke. “The legend of the Battle of Atlanta. The boy warrior. The Taker slayer. Surely you know your history, Mr. Griffin.”
“Yes, sir,” Pop said. “But... You mean...”
“I do indeed.” General Roy knelt before me. “Meet your new king.”
TWO
I sat in the principal’s office alone for a long time. King? Me? It was a laughable concept. Had I not just lived through the end of the world, I would have thought this whole turn of events was a bizarre dream.
I placed my hand on the principal’s desk and felt
the same sticky substance that had been on my desk at home. I examined the rest of the room more closely. The walls, the filing cabinet, the clock, everything was covered in it. Even the chair I was sitting in. In fact, the substance seemed to be creeping up on my jeans and slowly covering me. I stood and wiped off as much of the goo as possible.
Roy entered, not the Roy I once knew and fought side-byside with, but General Roy, the leader of a purple army of monstrosities that had no business ruling the planet. And I was supposed to be their king? It was too twisted to even think about.
General Roy approached me and placed his hand on my shoulder. I got the same chilling sensation that I’d had when Pop put his hand on my shoulder earlier that morning. “Oz, my friend, it is so good to see you.”
I didn’t feel the same, but I didn’t have the guts to say it. I simply nodded.
“I know this is a lot to take in, and I wish I could give you some time to digest this new revelation, but time is something we don’t have.”
“What do you mean?”
He smiled. Délon smiles are not something to long for. They are wicked moments in time that are so visually disturbing they send little pricks of pain through the back of your head. “It will all be explained to you after your marking.”
There was that word again, marking. I was getting tired of hearing it. It didn’t exactly conjure up pleasant prospects.
Roy moved around the principal’s desk and sat in the ergonomic chair. “Unfortunately, the royal scarab has not emerged yet.”
“Scarab?” I couldn’t recall where but I had heard that word before. I repeated the word in my mind over and over again hoping it would spark a memory.
“They are skittish little things. A nuisance really, but we can’t have a marking without them. The royal scarab is particularly nasty. Has a mind of its own really.”
“I don’t understand...”
“Of course you don’t,” General Roy said. “You’re still human.”
“And I want to stay that way.” I said expecting a fierce rebuke. But Roy simply gave me a bigger, more disturbing Délon smile.
“You only think that because you’re human. Believe me, once you begin the transformation you will pray for Délon blood and Délon blood alone to run through your veins.”
“Why...” I stopped myself. I was about to ask a question I didn’t want to know the answer to, but Roy read my mind.
“You’re wondering why I don’t do it myself. Why I don’t just grab you the way I was grabbed in the Georgia Dome and dig my mandibles through your skull and into your brain? Suck out your weak and feeble human essence and replace it with the glorious Délon essence?”
“Well,” I said. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but, yeah.”
He laughed the same laugh I had heard on the banks of Alltoona Lake. It wasn’t just him. It was a demented chorus of laughter. Every Délon on the planet was laughing through him. “A king with a sense of humor. It is just what we need.” He stood and moved around the desk. “We discovered that sort of transformation is successful only during battle. We’ve tried it on various humans since the end of the war, but they either died or became halfers.”
“Halfers? Like Coach Denton?”
He nodded. “Foul, disgusting creatures really. They’re not to be trusted by either Délon or human.”
The Délon version of Devlin entered the room carrying my backpack and the brown paper bag full of maggots. “Here are his things, General.” He smiled and held up the paper bag. “Seven perfectly good screamers going to waste.” He looked at me. “Do you mind?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Be my guest.”
Devlin reached in the bag and pulled out one of the white wriggling worms. His mandibles shot out from his mouth and snatched the maggot from his hand. The slimy little worm screamed as the mandibles retracted inside Devlin’s mouth. He swallowed and sighed in pure joy. “The screaming’s the best part.”
I cringed.
Devlin shook his head. “I don’t get humans. You don’t know what’s good.”
Without thinking, I snickered.
“What?” Devlin was visibly upset at my unintentional laughter.
“If I remember correctly, you were human yourself not too long ago.”
This set Devlin off. He charged me and grabbed me by the throat. He definitely wasn’t the same Devlin I had known, the chubby little middle-schooler who spent most of his time and energy looking for his next chocolate bar. That Devlin was soft and almost lovable. This Devlin was brutal and reeked of evil. “I was never human,” he growled.
General Roy stood. The spider legs on his head flared for the first time. He let out a sustained. Devlin released me and backed away. I tried to massage the pain out of my throat.
“Forgive me, General,” Devlin said as if he were pleading for his life.
“You dare lay your hands on our king!” General Roy approached his frightened soldier with murderous intent.
“Wait,” I said through bruised vocal cords.
General Roy backhanded Devlin sending him crashing into the filing cabinets.
“Stop!” I yelled.
General Roy turned to me. “Such insolence is only punishable by death.”
“But it’s Devlin.” I looked at the now kneeling purple beast with spider legs floundering on his head and though I didn’t see one shred of Devlin in him, he was still Devlin, and I couldn’t let General Roy kill him.
“You are... too human to understand.” General Roy pulled a twig from the pouch he wore on his belt. The twig sprouted long willowy legs and screeched. Upon closer review it was a praying mantis of some kind. It was a foot long and anxious to get at Devlin.
“But I am your king, and I say he deserves mercy.”
General Roy turned to me with a baffled expression. “Mercy?”
The concept was foreign to him. “I am ordering you not to kill him.”
General Roy smiled. “A human cannot order a Délon to do anything.”
“But I am your king. You said it yourself.”
“You are once you are a Délon. For now, you are merely a human who is to be our king.”
The praying mantis reached for Devlin, and Devlin cowered. The stick bug struggled violently to release itself from General Roy’s grip.
“If I am merely human, then Devlin was not insolent for what he did.”
This caused the general to pause. I could see the gears turning in his grotesque head. It was a logical argument that he could not get around. He looked at Devlin and then back at me. There was a bloodlust boiling inside him that he was fighting to control. He raised the hand that grasped the praying mantis and with a quick, forceful squeeze broke the insect in half. Breathing deeply, trying to calm himself, he stepped away from Devlin.
Devlin stood with his head down. He was in shock. He had escaped death when he fully expected to die.
General Roy was shaking. “This is mercy?”
I nodded.
“I don’t like it.” He spun toward Devlin. “Bring me a human.”
“Yes, General,” Devlin said as he bowed. He looked at me before he stepped out of the room. He clearly didn’t know what to make of what just happened. I couldn’t tell if he was grateful or angry.
“Why do you want a human?” I asked.
“This mercy has left a bad taste in my mouth. I must... exorcise it.”
“What are you going to do?” I was panicked. Had I just spared the life of a Délon at the expense of a human?
“What I was created to do?” He scanned me from head to toe. “You are weak.”
“Listen to me, you don’t have to do this. The drawing. Remember the drawing? The one Hollis talked about?”
He ignored my question. “I thought you’d be stronger, but you advocate this mercy. It is for the weak.” He was sounding more and more disappointed with each word.
I tried to reason with him, although clearly it was hopeless. “Hollis talked about Hyper Mental Imag
ing. HMI, remember? In the Georgia Dome... He said the Délons were the creation of a boy, a boy with Down syndrome who could image his visualizations onto the real world...”
“Our Storyteller, our prisoner, thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me?” In an instant it was all too clear to me. Before, the Takers held the Délons’ Storyteller. Because of that, the Délons were subservient to the Takers. When I killed the Taker Queen, the Délons took charge of their own Storyteller. They controlled their creator. They ruled the world because of me. I had done it again. The Takers existed because of the way I treated Stevie Dayton, and now the Délons were infesting the planet because I killed the Taker Queen.
Devlin burst through the door dragging a husky, curly-haired seventh grade boy behind him. It was Gordy Flynn. My best friend in the whole world... well, the world where Takers and Délons were nothing more than demented figments of the imagination. “Got one, boss,” Devlin said grinning as he tossed Gordy toward the back wall.
“Good.” General Roy reached out and gently took my face in his ice-cold hand. “We must rid you of this mercy. This one is yours.”
I pulled away. “Mine?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he laughed. “I have my own.” He pointed out the window. “You remember my... what was that word again... sister, is it?”
I turned to see another Délon standing in the school courtyard. This one had a slightly feminine air about it. It was Reya, Roy’s twin sister.
“And her friend,” General Roy continued.
Stepping out from behind Reya was Lou, her hands and legs in shackles, every bit as pretty and human as I had last seen her.
“Lou,” I whispered.
“Yes,” General Roy said. “Lou is mine.” He motioned to Gordy crawling on the floor, backing into the corner of the room. “This one is yours.”
“Oz,” Gordy pleaded. “Help me, man.”
Devlin began to cackle. “Oh, beautiful. We got us a beggar. I love it when they beg.”
“What do you expect me to do?” I asked.
“Kill him,” General Roy said flatly. He motioned to Reya to join us. She grabbed the chain of Lou’s shackles and yanked her toward the front door.