Délon City: Book Two of the Oz Chronicles

by R. W. Ridley

  Part of me felt it was cowardly to think that way. After all, my parents were dying at the other end of the house and I was lying in bed thinking of ways not to make the Délons mad. A real warrior wouldn’t assess the risks. He would act and rely on his instincts to see him through a battle. I wasn’t a real warrior. I don’t think I even wanted to be one anymore. Fighting was too hard. I was just a kid. I shouldn’t have to fight. It wasn’t fair to expect me to take on the Délons. It wasn’t too long ago that I had trouble matching my socks without my mom’s help. Now I was trying to figure out how to save the world. It didn’t make sense.

  The room to my door slowly opened. I sat up in bed to see Gordy enter. He was yawning and wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Dude, Purple Pete says we’ve got to move out soon.”

  “Who?”

  “Purple Pete, the big Délon...”

  “Devlin.”

  “Whatever. He went out to get his grub on. He wants us up

  and ready to go by the time he gets back.”

  I kicked the covers off and hung my feet over the side of the bed. “The horses here?”

  “Yeah, but we’re not really riding those things are we?”

  I smiled. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “What’s wrong with taking a van or something. Hell, you’re the king. Let’s take a Hummer.”

  “I’m not the king.” I stood and stretched. “Besides Délons don’t ride in cars... apparently.”

  “That’s so weird.”

  “That’s weird? Have you looked outside lately, Gordy? This whole world’s weird.”

  “You know what I mean.” He walked over to my desk and grabbed my regulation size NFL football. Without looking at me he said, “How bad you think it hurts?”

  “What?”

  “The change... you know...”

  Unfortunately, I did know. I thought about my parents. Watching those shunters digging into their skulls and doing whatever they do did not look like a trip to an amusement park. “A lot.”

  “Not to sound like a real Nancy-boy, but I’d pay a million dollars if I could get out of that.”

  “You and me both.” A thought suddenly came to me. “Where’s your solifipod?”

  “My what?”

  “Your solifipod.” I pointed to the corner of the room where my solifipod was breathing in and out.

  “I don’t have one.”

  I grabbed the football out his hand. He was lying to me. Beware of G, popped into my head. “Bull. You got marked. You told me yourself.”

  “So.”

  “If you get marked, you get one of those little bug-in-a-bag thingies as a nice little door price.” I was trying to remain calm, but my distrust for Gordy was growing by the second.

  “Fine then,” he said. “It’s at my house.”

  “Show me.” I scrambled to find my shoes.

  “Show you? We don’t have time to walk over to my house and get back here before grumpy Purple Pete comes back from breakfast.” He was looking nervous, and that didn’t make me happy.

  “We’ll take the horses. Lou can stall Devlin if he gets back before us.” One shoe on, I slipped my foot into the other. “Let’s go.” I grabbed Gordy by the arm and led him out of the room.

  “This is crazy,” he said. “Let’s just leave it.”

  “This isn’t about taking it with us. This is about proving you have one.”

  “You don’t believe me?” Gordy said sounding genuinely hurt.

  Lou watched in wide-eyed wonder as I practically dragged Gordy out of my room. “What’s going on?”

  Gordy shook loose of my grip. “I’ve got one, you dink. I’m not lying.”

  “Yeah, well you’re going to have to prove it.”

  “I thought we were friends,” he shouted.

  “Not anymore,” I shouted back. “Not here, not in this world. This is a whole new ball game. I don’t know who is who or what is what. If we make this trip to Atlanta or Délon City or whatever you want to call it, the Délons are going to expect those of us who’ve been marked to bring their solifipods with them. Am I right, Lou?”

  “You’re right,” she said.

  “What about her?” Gordy snapped. “Aren’t you going to ask where her solif... a-thing is?”

  I looked at her. It had never occurred to me to ask her before. She had been a prisoner of General Roy and Reya for months now. Surely they would have marked her.

  “I haven’t been marked,” she said. “The general has special plans for me.”

  I hesitated because I didn’t know if I believed her. I didn’t know if I believed anybody. I quickly turned my attention back to Gordy. “Let’s go.”

  “But I can’t ride a horse. I don’t know how.”

  “I’ll show you.” I grabbed him and shoved him towards the door.

  “Okay, okay, but I’m telling you right now, I’m not taking that little creepy thing with me.”

  “You’ll do what I say,” I said as I pushed him out the door. I turned back to Lou. I scanned her face to see if I could see any eye twitches or irregular breathing. Anything to let me know she was lying. Nothing. “We’ll be back.”

  ***

  The ride to Gordy’s house was just a few miles, but Gordy’s lack of riding skills made the trip slow and long. He sat in the saddle like there were thorns on it, and he seemed to be hyperventilating the entire time he was on the horse’s back.

  I dismounted Chubby as soon as we arrived at Gordy’s house. Despite Gordy’s obvious dislike for his horse, he didn’t dismount right away. He stared at the house as if it would swoop down and gobble him up. As I watched him slowly and clumsily swing his right leg over the saddle and slide off his horse’s back, I got the feeling he hadn’t been to his house in days, maybe weeks.

  He stood next to his horse and glared at his house. Tears welled up in his eyes. I suddenly felt like the world’s biggest jerk for forcing him to come back here. We should have gotten back on the horses and ridden away as fast as we could. If I had the chance to do it over again a thousand times, that’s exactly what I would do every time given what I know now about what was in that house.

  I started walking toward the front door.

  “No,” Gordy said with a sense of urgency. “It’s in the garage.” He stepped away from the horse and breathed deeply.

  I motioned for him to move ahead of me so that I could follow. He complied with a great deal of reluctance. It was as if I were marching him down the corridor of an old prison to the electric chair. He was ghost white and shaking all over.

  “I’ll show you this silly-pod thing and then we’re out of here, okay?” he said.

  “Sure, sure,” I answered.

  He kept an eye on the front door as he lead me to the garage. He walked as if he could be attacked from any direction at any moment. His head was on a swivel.

  A thought came to me. “Where’s your dad?”

  “The creep’s in Délon City with the rest of the purple whack pack.”

  “Do all the Délons live in Délon City?”

  “Only the good ones, and by good I mean big, bad, and ugly.” We reached the corner of the garage and moved to the side door. Gordy put his hand on the knob. “Remember, I prove this thing’s here and we leave.”

  I nodded.

  He pushed the door open and stepped inside. A stale, humid wind exited the garage as we entered. It was a dark and musty expanse inside. One car sat in the two-car garage like a slumbering beast. The rest of the space was an oddly organized mishmash of neatly stacked boxes and erratic heaps of household items.

  In the corner of the room was a huge chest-high white freezer. Gordy’s old man used it to store venison after his hunting trips. It looked like an industrial-sized coffin. It let out a low hum. If I had just arrived here from another planet, I would have thought it was alive.

  Gordy pointed at the freezer. “It’s in there.”

  “Open it,” I said.

  “Not me,” Gordy said
backing away. “You want to see it so bad, you open it.”

  I took a step toward the freezer, and then reconsidered. “I think you should do it.”

  “I don’t think either of us should do it,” he said.

  “It’s your solifipod.”

  “You can have it.” He laughed nervously.

  “I’m king, remember.”

  “Suddenly you want to be king?” he asked.

  “I... I...”

  He cut me off. “I-I nothing. It was your idea to come over here and find this thing. You should be the one who opens the freezer. Since we’re not friends anymore, you can suck on a rotten egg for all I care.”

  “I didn’t mean we’re not friends anymore exactly...”

  “Whatever. All I know is that freezer ain’t going to open itself.” He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “This is your party.”

  I shook my head and sighed. He was right. I walked to the freezer, placed my hand on the recessed handle on the top and stopped. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I turned and searched the garage for a weapon. I spotted a tool chest on the opposite side of the garage and ran to it. Inside was a hammer. I retrieved it and returned to the freezer. Gordy watched me with baffled wonderment the whole time.

  I counted to three and ripped opened the freezer. Cold air escaped and then sucked back into the frozen enclosure. My hammer raised in one hand, I reached inside with the other and searched through the icy fog for the solifipod. My hand skimmed across dozens of packs of deer meat before I found it. It was frozen and lifeless. The cold fog lifted, and I could finally see it. It was dead.

  “Did you find it?” Gordy asked, still standing in his original spot.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Well?”

  “I don’t understand. These things are tuned into the Délon collective. You should be dead.”

  “It’s the cold,” he said.

  “What?”

  “My old man let it slip when he was going through the change. Délons don’t last long in the cold because they get cut off from the collective. Which is weird because when I went through my marking I didn’t feel nothing but cold.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “So, that’s it, right? We can leave?”

  “Yeah, we can leave...” A crash came from above our heads. “What was that?”

  “Nothing, man. Let’s just go.” Gordy bolted for the door.

  The crash came again, and I heard a muffled cry.

  “There’s somebody in your house, Gordy.”

  “No there ain’t. Come on.”

  A voice shot through the walls. “Gordy?”

  Gordy turned sickly white.

  “Gordy?” the voice cried again.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  But Gordy didn’t answer. He fell to his knees and began to weep.

  “What’s going on, Gordy?”

  “It’s my sister!” he shouted. “It’s my sister, all right. You happy? It’s my stinking little sister!”

  “I thought you said the Délons fed her to the skinners?”

  She cried out again. “Gordy?”

  “I told you we shouldn’t have come here,” he said. “I told you.” He wiped the snot from his nose.

  “You said...”

  “I said they fed her to the skinners,” he shouted. “And they did.”

  Another crash from overhead.

  “But they didn’t let them finish,” Gordy continued.

  “What are you saying?” I kept my eyes on the garage ceiling.

  “I’m saying the Délons are dirty filthy pigs who get their sick kicks all kinds of ways. They let the skinners do what they do until sis didn’t have a shred of skin, and then they killed the little stick bugs.”

  My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. “You mean...”

  “She lived for a couple of days. I tried to take care of her, but what do I know? She died because she couldn’t take the pain anymore.”

  I looked at him confused. “She died? But she’s not dead.”

  “There’s all kinds of dead in the Délons’ world.” He stood.

  His sister shouted in anger this time. “Gordy, come here!”

  “What kind of dead is that?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to know, Oz. You don’t want to know.”

  “Please, Gordy,” his sister begged this time.

  “We have to help her,” I said.

  “Trust me. There ain’t nothing to help. That ain’t my sister.” He quickly moved to the door to leave the garage.

  “I’m going up,” I said.

  “No,” he barked. “Not a chance. I won’t let you do it. It’s my sister. Just leave it alone.”

  “You just said that wasn’t your sister.” I walked past the car and opened the door to the house.

  “Dude, don’t do this. I’m telling you... I’m not coming with you,” He said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Go wait by the horses.”

  “If you go up there, I won’t have nothing to wait for. She’s skinner dead.”

  I turned to him. “What’s that mean?”

  “That means she ain’t nothing but a walkin’, talkin’, skinless skinner. She’s got one thing on her mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Eating,” he said. He gave me one last look and then exited the garage.

  That should have been enough for me to turn back, but it wasn’t. Something deep inside of me drove me to walk through the door and stand in the dark kitchen of Gordy’s house.

  NINE

  I stood in the kitchen for what seemed an eternity. All the while I could hear Gordy’s sister begging for help upstairs. I gripped and re-gripped the handle of the hammer 50 or so times as I worked up the courage to make the first step toward the stairs. The longer I hesitated the more it seemed like a bad idea. Then something unexpected happened. Gordy’s sister called out my name.

  “Oz Griffin. I smell Oz Griffin.” She cackled and then wept. “Help me, Oz Griffin.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and stepped toward the hallway leading to the stairs. My heart was fluttering like a nervous butterfly. As I got closer to the stairs, I asked myself one question. “What the hell are you doing, Oz?”

  I had no acceptable answer, but still I pushed forward. I took the stairs one step at a time, stopping to reassess what I was doing every step of the way. I gripped the hammer with both hands now. My breathing was labored.

  I reached the top of the stairs and made myself as flat as I could against the wall. I scanned both ends of the hallway.

  “Someone’s upstairs,” Gordy’s sister called out. “And someone smells so good... so tasty...”

  That was all I needed to hear. I bolted back down the stairs. Halfway down, I heard a deafening screaming. “Oz, help me! Don’t let them get me!”

  I stopped. It was a trap. My mind knew it. But it was Gordy’s sister. If there was the smallest chance she could be helped, then I had to help her. I walked back up the stairs as if I were climbing the final peak on Everest. Every step was carefully calculated, and every prayer I had ever heard in my life came spewing out of my mouth uncontrollably.

  I stood in the upstairs hallway, eyes focused on the room above the garage. I flipped the light switch, but nothing came on.

  “No lights. No eyelids. No lights. No eyelids.” The voice screeched throughout the house.

  I moved down the hallway as silently as I could, but still she heard me. She counted each step I took. “Three steps closer. Four steps closer. Here he comes. Here he comes!”

  “Allie,” I said.

  “He calls me Allie!” Her voice was shrill with excitement.

  “Allie Flynn.”

  “Ten steps closer. Eleven steps closer. Twelve steps and at the door. He’s at the door! He’s at the door!”

  “Allie,” I said. “You’re not making this easy. I want to help you.”

  “Help me, Oz Griffin. Please
, help me.”

  I turned the knob and let the door open slowly on its own. The room was a guest bedroom. The mattress from the bed was stacked against the window to keep out the light. No lights. No eyelids. She had said.

  In the darkest corner of the room, directly opposite the door, I saw a silhouette of a little girl. She stood motionless. She was taller than I remember.

  “We’re so hungry, Oz Griffin.”

  I forced myself to move forward. The hammer was raised, cocked back, and ready to crash down on her head at any time. “Take it easy, Allie. I’m here to help.”

  Two-thirds of the way to Allie, I realized it wasn’t her at all. It was a coat rack. I stood in the middle of the room, completely vulnerable. I scanned the room in every direction. My heart went from a nervous flutter to a brutal pounding. “Allie?”

  “We’re so hungry.”

  The voice came from above me. I jerked my head up. There, crawling on the ceiling like an insect, was Gordy’s little sister. Her skinless body was fire red with patches of black. She wore a lipless grin.

  “Can’t you see how hungry we are?” she cried.

  “We?”

  Slowly dozens of skinners emerged from underneath her, their razor-like mandibles rubbing together.

  I attempted to back away, but tripped over the naked bed frame. Skinners started to rain from the ceiling. Allie leapt from the ceiling and landed on my chest.

  “Thank you for bringing us food,” she said. Her lidless eyes bulged. Saliva dripped from her mouth as she chomped her teeth. I could feel the skinners starting to take little bites.

  “Get off!” I screamed. “Gordy, help!”

  A beam of light shot across the room, and struck Allie in the face. She screeched and leapt out of its path. The skinners were still nibbling away. I stood, shaking and swatting at the bugs.

  “Leave!” a voice commanded. It was Délon Devlin standing in the doorway with a flashlight. I was never so glad to see a Délon.

  “How...”

  “Leave before the skinners eat my king.”

  “No light. No eyelids!” Gordy’s sister screamed.

  I rushed to the door. “What about her?”

  He smiled. “Don’t worry, I will show her mercy.” He stepped back and let me pass. “And I will have fun doing so.”