by R. W. Ridley
“Sure, sure.” I looked at Lou as she ducked her head to hide a smile. “Just like always.” We turned up the sidewalk and headed toward my house. “So, what brings you this way, Gordy?”
“Nothing... you know. On my way to school... I was just wondering if we could hang... I mean I was wondering if it would be all right if I hung with you... you and Lou, I mean?” He was growing more and more nervous as he talked.
I stopped walking. The others quickly followed suit. “Gordy, what is up with you?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You’re like all nervous and shaky.”
“I am?”
He looked at Lou. She confirmed my observation with a nod.
“Okay, maybe I am,” he said. “But, dude, you’re like king of those purple... things. How do you expect me to act?”
I thought about the question. He had a point. If I was in his position, I might be acting the same way. “I expect you to act like my friend.”
He smiled. “Really? Cool. I was kind of afraid that you were all... you know... too kingy for me now. Plus, you were about to feed me to one of those skinner thingies yesterday...”
“I told you I wasn’t going to let that happen,” I said.
“Yeah, and I told you I was about to kick some major ass. People say things, you know.”
I sighed. “Yeah, people say things.” We started walking again. I remembered some of the thoughts I was having last night. Particularly my regrets for not letting the skinner have its way with Gordy. How could I have felt that way? “If you thought I was going to feed you to the skinner, why would you want to hang with me?”
He smiled. “I’m no idiot. You’re the top dog, Ozzie. Ain’t nobody going to mess with me if we’re tight.”
I should have been offended, but I wasn’t. It was a smart move on his part. Gordy always had top-notch survival instincts. “That’s cool,” I said. “But you should know, I’m not planning on being king. You understand?”
“Dude, why not? Everybody will be falling all over themselves to treat you like... well, a king. You’d be a real dink to pass something like that up.” He caught himself and cleared his throat. “Oh, I so did not mean that. Don’t have me smited or nothing.”
“Relax,” I said. “It’s me - Oz. I’m not into smiting. Besides to become king, I have to become Délon. I’m not really into the spider leg dreadlocks.”
He laughed. “What other choice do you have? There’re only two kinds of humans on this planet. Those who are about to become Délon and those who are about to become food. Call me crazy, but I’m not ready to be fitted for a happy meal suit. I’d rather be purple and evil than fleshy colored and delicious.”
“You’re forgetting the third kind of human,” I said.
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“The warrior who defeats the Délons and restores the planet to the way it was.”
He shook his dead. “Oh, that kind - The kind that dies in a pointless show of heroism and bravery. Face it, Oz, the Délons are here to stay. You might as well join the party and get in on the fun.”
I stopped and grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt. “Do you want to hang or not?”
“Dude, take it easy. I absolutely want to hang, man. I am here to serve you, your Oz-ship.” He was back to his nervous self.
“Then shut up about the Délons.”
“You got it.” He put his hands up in the air as if he were surrendering. “Not another word about the purple people eaters.”
I let him go and continued my walk. I noticed Lou hadn’t disputed anything Gordy had said. That made me madder at her than him. She had no right to lose faith. She knew what I was capable of - what we were capable of. I could beat the Délons, and she had no right to doubt me.
“So,” Gordy said. “Why were you at the retard’s house?”
I slugged him without warning. He stumbled backwards off the curb onto the street. Lou stepped in front of me.
“Don’t,” she said.
“What is up with you?” Gordy asked.
“I don’t like that word,” I said.
“Since when? You practically invented it.” He was rubbing his jaw. Clearly, I didn’t have the power I had the night before, otherwise I imagine Gordy would be lying dead on the street. The effects of the marking must have completely worn off.
He was right of course. I did use the word a lot. I teased Stevie Dayton with it on a daily basis until he cried. I was just as big a sinner as Gordy was, but that didn’t change how I felt now. “I don’t use it any more and, if you still want to hang, you better lose it from your vocabulary.”
“It’s done, man. I’ll never say it again.” He stepped back up on the sidewalk. “Friends?” He extended his hand.
I shook it with some hesitation. I didn’t really like the new cowering Gordy, but he was still Gordy. It was kind of nice having him around because he reminded me of the world before crazy monsters took over. For the first time since I woke up in my bedroom, I thought about the others we used to run with. “Hey, where’re Tim and Larry?”
“Haven’t a clue,” Gordy said. We turned up Westwood Avenue. “They disappeared about a month ago. I figured they were taken to the farm.”
“The farm?” I asked.
Gordy looked past me and eyed Lou as we walked. “He don’t know about the farm?”
She shook her head sullenly.
“What’s the farm?”
Gordy cleared his throat. “I told you, man. There ain’t but two kinds of humans. Those that are about to become Délon and those that are about to become food.”
“Yeah I get it. Skinner food, right?” I didn’t like the direction this conversation was going.
He placed his hand on my shoulder as we walked. “Skinners ain’t the only ones that use humans as food.”
I walked in shocked despair. “What are you saying?”
“It ain’t that complicated, Ozzie.”
I looked at Lou. “They eat humans?”
She turned away from me and said. “They drink the blood.”
“Blood?” I remembered my craving from the night before. When I felt fear, I craved the blood of a human. It was unmistakable. “Like vampires?”
“They say it’s more like mosquitoes,” Gordy said. “They don’t drain ya’. They just drink until their bellies are full and move on.”
“And this farm?”
Gordy picked up a rock and started tossing it from hand to hand. “They herd up the humans that they ain’t planning on turning purple and keep them on a farm... I don’t know if it’s a farm, really. That’s just what we call it. I hear they keep you fat and happy with sweets and soda and all kinds of pizza and junk food. But...” He stopped tossing the rock and fixated on it as if he was lost in a thought that he didn’t want to find his way out of.
“But what?” I said.
He snapped out of his trance and started tossing the rock again. “It ain’t no fun when they pick you as their cocktail for the evening. There’s a lot of screaming and crying and praying for death.” He cocked his right arm back and threw the rock at a car parked on the street, cracking the windshield. The look on his face was frustration and anger. I was an expert on those two emotions after my marking. I could spot them anywhere.
“You’ve seen it happen?” I asked.
He nodded. “I seen ‘em do it to my mom. The ugly worms made me and my little sister watch. That’s when I realized there were only two kinds of humans.”
A horse whinnied in the distance. We heard the beating of hooves against the pavement. Through the trees and houses, I could see a horse and rider approaching from Crestwood. A horse with no rider followed. We stopped and watched as they turned up the other end of Westwood. At first, I wasn’t sure I was seeing things right. The rider . . . it just couldn’t be. I wiped my eyes and looked at Lou for confirmation. She was just as surprised as I was.
The rider was Roy. Not General Roy the Délon, but Roy th
e warrior. The one who had joined our gang on interstate 75 outside of Dalton, Georgia. The one who had fought with his sister to keep her in line, the one we had lost in the Georgia Dome.
He tapped Mr. Mobley lightly on the ribs with his heel and galloped up to our position. Lou and I stood motionless, mouths agape, trying to figure out what in the hell was going on.
“Friend of yours?” Gordy asked.
Neither Lou nor I answered. We simply couldn’t believe our eyes.
Roy slowed Mr. Mobley to a walk when he got close enough to talk without shouting. “I brought an old friend.” He motioned to the horse he was towing.
“Chubby,” I said. The horse I had ridden to Atlanta. It was strange, but I was glad to see him. He wasn’t my horse. He was just a mode a transportation I had used to get from point A to point B. Yet, there I was, absolutely giddy that he was back in my life. I walked over and stroked his long neck. For the moment, I had forgotten that Roy was Roy again.
“You want to go for a ride?” Roy asked.
I looked at him and then back at Lou and Gordy, still standing on the sidewalk. Lou was still mystified by Roy’s sudden reappearance.
“We got to get to school, Oz,” Gordy said.
Roy laughed. “School’s over for Oz.”
“What? No way,” Gordy said.
“Kings have very little need for school.” Roy’s face began to vibrate.
“What about king sidekicks?” Gordy asked. “I can’t see how school does us much good, either.”
Roy breathed deeply. He was trying to control something inside of him. His face twitched and his eyes bulged. “What is this sidekick business?” Roy struggled to ask me.
“Tell him, Oz,” Gordy interjected. “We’re tight, you and me. I’m his main man, his numero uno, his bench strength...”
“Gordy,” I said.
“I’m the head cheese in his cheese... collection. The sugar in his cup... no wait, that didn’t come out right,” Gordy said.
“Gordy,” I said again, a little louder, a little more forcefully.
“The important thing to know is that I’m not skinner bait or farm material because me and his royal kingship are like toast and jam, okay,” Gordy continued nervously. “We’re like salt and pepper. Wherever there’s one there is the other...”
“Gordy, shut up!” I said. I mounted Chubby. “Lou, can you look after him?”
She reluctantly nodded. “You sure you’ll be okay.”
I looked at Roy who had gotten his twitching face under control. “I’ll be fine.”
***
We rode for a half mile without saying a word. I had never seen Tullahoma from the back of a horse. The view was somehow different. It was purer, more utopian than it was from the window of a fast moving automobile. It smelled of pine and late fall. Taking in the sites of the small southern hamlet from the saddle made me feel whole. I didn’t know why, and quite frankly, I didn’t question it. I just enjoyed it.
Roy broke the silence. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer right away. I wasn’t sure beautiful was the right word. I wasn’t sure it was a big enough word. “A little more than that,” I said.
He smiled. “I know what you mean.”
“This is why you don’t travel by car?”
He nodded. “You can’t feel the land from a car. They’re necessary. That’s the only reason we allow them, but they’re not for Délons.”
I turned to him. His face twitched some more. It looked as if it would hop from his skull at any moment. “This is a trick, isn’t it?”
“Huh?” He touched his face. “Oh, this. I just thought this face would please you more.” I thought back to the Georgia Dome when Pepper’s man, Shaw, had morphed into a Délon right before our eyes. “Personally, it disgusts me. If you wish, I could return to my true self.”
“No,” I said. “I prefer this.”
“As you wish,” he answered.
We rode in silence a few minutes longer. I strained to observe him out of the corner of my eye without him noticing. At one point, I saw a spider leg emerge from his wind blown brown hair. It was more disturbing than seeing countless dozens of them dancing on top of his head.
He broke the silence again. “You can’t go home.”
I looked over my shoulder towards my house and then back at him. “Why? What’s going on at my house...?”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “You can’t go back to the way it was. I know you think you can, but you can’t.”
I swallowed hard and mulled over what he was telling me. “Why exactly am I supposed to believe you?”
“You are trying to change the nature of things...”
“The nature of things,” I laughed. “There is nothing natural about this place. It’s all a twisted fantasy of some poor mentally handicapped guy in New Jersey because jerks like me wouldn’t let him have a moment’s peace and live with some dignity.”
This time he laughed. “Cruelty is the heartbeat of nature.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“To be cruel is to be true to nature. A lion does not tenderly tear a zebra’s belly open and feed. It stalks it and chases it and sinks its teeth into the zebra’s neck until it chokes the life out of it. The strong feed on the weak. That is the way of nature.”
I snickered. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a zebra.”
“No,” he smiled. “You’re a lion. You fed on Stevie Dayton, ripped the hope and self-worth from him as efficiently as any carnivore has ripped the entrails from its prey.”
His words stung me like a hive of angry wasps. I wanted to deny it, to scream at him, to demand that he take it back, but I couldn’t. As much as I hated to hear it, it was the truth. He was right. I knew it. I had even admitted it to myself over and over again, but hearing it out loud, spoken with such clarity and admiration made me sick to my stomach. I was a Délon before Délons even existed.
“You spend too much time denying your true nature,” Roy said. “You are not just one of us.” He chuckled. “You are the reason for us.
“Is this why you asked me to ride with you, to make me feel like crap for what I’ve done?”
“On the contrary. I’m trying to make you feel proud.”
I dug my heels into Chubby’s ribs and whistled. “Get up, boy.” Chubby went into a trot and we pulled away from Roy and Mr. Mobley. I didn’t want to hear any more.
Roy put Mr. Mobley into a trot and it wasn’t long before the horses were matching each other stride for stride. “I’ve upset you,” Roy said.
“Go away.”
“I’m leaving for Délon City this afternoon.”
“Good for you.”
“Tomorrow, you will do the same. You will have a horse and supplies for the trip.” His left eye turned white as he spoke.
“Alone?”
“Not quite. Devlin will travel with you.”
I kicked Chubby again. His stride turned into a gallop. Again, Mr. Mobley quickly matched our pace. “And Lou?”
“She will go with us...”
“She goes with me,” I said.
His hair was replaced with the spider legs. He wanted to deny me my request, but he didn’t. “Fine, and I suppose the curly haired one will be joining you...”
“Gordy? Yeah why not.” With that I gave Chubby another kick in the ribs and he bounded into a full out sprint. Mr. Mobley quickly chased after his equestrian counterpart, and we were racing neck and neck. I glanced over at Roy. His humanity had completely disappeared. He was General Roy again. Apparently, disguising oneself as a human took a lot of energy and concentration. He couldn’t sustain it for very long.
Much as I tried not to, I was enjoying myself. Riding Chubby, racing Roy and Mr. Mobley felt liberating. I was in a miserable place with miserable freaks that sucked on humans for blood and turned the rest of humanity into freaks like them, yet all I could think about was how much fun I was having on the bac
k of that damn horse. I was deathly afraid of horses not long ago (or was it long ago, it was hard to keep up with the missing time), but there I was not wanting to ever have to dismount.
“You ride like a king,” General Roy shouted.
Upon hearing those words, I pulled back on the reigns, and quickly brought Chubby to a stop. General Roy rode a few feet farther and then did the same. He circled Mr. Mobley around and walked him toward me.
“We’re not friends,” I said.
“Kings have no friends,” he answered. “Just servants.”
“I’m not your king.” I turned Chubby around and trotted back toward Lou and Gordy. “I’m your enemy.” This time Roy did not follow. I could feel his dead eyes staring at me as I rode away. His anger burned. I could hear it crackling in my head. He meant to kill me, some time, somewhere. I wasn’t sure if even he knew it, but the desire was deep inside him. Eventually it would be too much for him to ignore.
***
Gordy and Lou were waiting for me at the back door to my house. I jumped off Chubby’s back feeling invigorated from the ride.
“Didn’t know you could ride,” Gordy said.
“Hope you can,” I said.
“Me, why?”
“We’re going to Délon City tomorrow.”
“We? Dude, on a horse?” Gordy was so nervous he was almost shaking.
“Me, too?” Lou asked.
“Yeah Devlin will be joining us...” As soon as the words came out of my mouth Délon Devlin stepped out the back door.
“That’s right. I’ve got to babysit you twerps all the way to Délon City. One wrong move from any of you and you’re skinner food. You comprehend me?” He shoved Gordy in the back and stepped onto the bricked walkway.
“Gotcha’, cuz,” Gordy said. “No wrong moves here.”
“Were you always this spineless or do I bring out the best in you?” Devlin asked Gordy.
“It’s all you, big guy,” Gordy answered. “All you.”
Devlin grabbed Lou by the face and pulled her close. “How ‘bout you, female, do you fear me?”
Without thinking, I ran and kicked Devlin in the back of the knees as hard as I could. He fell hard to the ground. “Hands off, Devlin.”