Délon City: Book Two of the Oz Chronicles

by R. W. Ridley

  My eyes started to well up from frustration. I didn’t know what to do. I heard a high-pitched scream and laugh come from the other end of the parking lot. I turned to see Tyrone and Valerie kicking a ball they’d found in the convenience store. I had an idea. “The kids,” I said.

  “Son, there ain’t nothing but kids here, you’re going to have to be more specific”

  “Valerie and Tyrone – they can stay and watch over Devlin.” In my mind, it was the perfect solution.

  “No,” Wes said flatly. “Not a snowball’s chance in hell.”

  “Yes,” I replied, my voice rising above his. “He needs somebody to stay behind. He’s going to run out of food.”

  “And what if trouble comes? Tyrone and Valerie will be left to fend for themselves. I ain’t going to have that.” His face was turning red.

  “They can take care of themselves,” I said. “They’re warriors.”

  “They was kids two seconds ago,” he responded. The veins in his neck were bulging. He was getting angrier by the second.

  “You know what I mean,” I said.

  “No I don’t because you don’t know what you mean!” His voice had finally risen to the level of a yell.

  Lou and Gordy stepped out of the convenience store to investigate. The dogs, Valerie and Tyrone – all eyes had shifted to us.

  “Then you tell me what to do,” I snapped back.

  “Leave him,” Wes barked. His voice rang through my ears.

  I stood as I felt the earth spinning out of control. I couldn’t even tell if I had a heartbeat anymore. My breathing was labored. I think this is what my mother used to call a panic attack. I would have fallen to the ground if Wes hadn’t caught me. I heard the footsteps of the others running toward us. I shook my head and gathered my thoughts. I wanted to be standing on my own before the others reached us. Wes let go. He understood that I had to stand on my own. I breathed in through my nose and exhaled deeply through my mouth. It was over as quickly as it came.

  “Oz, dude, you all right?” Gordy asked as he approached.

  “You should sit down,” Lou suggested.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “We need to hit the road. They’re expecting us.” I turned to Wes. “You’ll follow. Not too close. Have you figured out how to get in the city?”

  He looked at me confused. He wasn’t sure if the Devlin issue was resolved. “Tarak gave us a contact. Another Keeper. He... or it will know how to contact you once we’re inside the city.”

  “Then that’s that,” I said. I walked toward the horses.

  “What about Devlin?” Lou asked.

  Without stopping I said, “We’re leaving him.”

  THIRTEEN

  You smell Délon City before you see it. Actually, you can almost see the smell it’s so pungent. The odor was a mixture of raw sewage, burning rubber, and decay. When I got my first glance at the twisted hulk of a city, it looked like it smelled... rotten.

  The city was under a dome of death. Carcasses, animal, human, insect, and Délon were woven together into an enormous, macabre shield that surrounded the entire city.

  Upon first seeing it, I stopped Chubby. The shunter in my backpack must have sensed we were near the city because it vibrated, twitched, and screeched like never before. I had thought about sticking the little blob in the walk-in freezer with Devlin, but General Roy would have known I didn’t have it with me the second I set foot in Délon City. I would have to deal with the little face sucker when it finally emerged. There was just no way around it.

  Gordy rode on, mouth agape, unable to fathom what he was seeing. Lou continued on nonplussed. This was old hat to her. It was so unremarkable to her that she didn’t even think to mention it to us, to warn us of the horror of it all.

  It took her several seconds to realize that I was no longer riding beside her. She looked over her shoulder and saw my appalled expression. She quickly turned her horse and galloped toward me.

  “I tell myself it’s not real,” she said.

  I was dazed. “What?”

  “I tell myself that Oz Griffin will make this all go away. He got rid of the Takers. He can get rid of the Délons.”

  I shifted my gaze from the death dome to her brown eyes.

  “That’s how I’ve been able to survive all this. That’s how I can look at that horrible thing day after day. I knew you’d come back, Oz. I knew it.” She motioned to Délon City. “That place doesn’t exist. One of these days, soon, I’m going to be back on my family’s RV headed towards Disney World just like I was before this all started, and you’re going to make that happen, Oz.”

  I swallowed hard. “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because,” she said. “Because I know.” She turned her horse back around and headed for the entrance of the city.

  Gordy turned to me and shook his head. His eyes pleading. He waited for me to abort the mission and just ride back to Tullahoma as fast as I could. I disappointed him and pressed forward.

  The entrance to Délon City was big enough for a tractor trailer to enter. Both sides of the dome opening were guarded by no less than twenty Délons. They watched us enter, but never approached. I was surprised at the variety of their appearance. They were all tall and lean, and they all had the typical spider leg hairdo, but some of them had spider leg beards. I looked for signs that this gave them rank over the others, but it didn’t seem to make a difference.

  Lou led us through the now darkened highway. The dome ceiling blacked out the sun, but the temperature inside the city was at least 20 degrees warmer than outside.

  The massive skyscrapers that made up Atlanta’s horizon were still present, but they were dying shells of what they once were. A dark purple soot seemed to cover every inch of their exterior.

  Abandoned cars, buses, and trucks riddled the highways, just as they had when the Takers were in control, only now half of them were set on fire. I guessed they were used to help keep the temperatures up in the city.

  Between the smoke and the smell, it was not easy to breathe, but we managed somehow. Gordy coughed and hacked more than Lou or me, but much to his credit, he kept on pace with us without a word of complaint. It may have been that he was afraid of being left behind if he stopped to protest. After all, we’d left Devlin behind.

  There were Délons by the thousands - the tens of thousands even. They were literally crawling all over each other like a colony of army ants. Every once in a while a pair of dead eyes would focus on us as we rode through the streets of Délon City. A Délon would raise its head in our direction and sniff and then return to doing whatever it was doing.

  I even saw the occasional Taker. They were obviously subservient to the Délons. If I had to guess, they were being used as slave labor. The spoils of victory. Only the Délons were victorious because I killed the Taker Queen. Never did I regret that more than riding through the streets of Délon City. I had made a terrible mistake. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t do it again.

  About an hour after we entered the city, we finally arrived at About an hour after we entered the city, we finally arrived at story building, but the walls of the building were alive with scores of Délons crawling all over each other to the top of the building and back down. It looked like a pointless exercise on their part, but it must have served a purpose.

  “We’re here,” Lou said.

  “Where?” Gordy asked in between a hack and a cough.

  “General Roy’s headquarters.”

  “Great,” Gordy coughed. “We’ve seen it. Can we go home now?”

  “Our guests!” A voice boomed. Roy stood at the top of the stairs leading to the front door. “We’ve been waiting!” He descended the stairs. I could see his eyes moving as he scanned our numbers. “You’re one short... A Délon short.”

  I could hear Gordy swallow. He scooted back in his saddle. Lou looked to me to reply. It was then I wished I had prepared a lie for this inevitable situation. Not a lie exactly. The Délons would detect that.
When the truth will get you in a heap of trouble, just give them the facts. That’s what my grandfather used to say.

  “We were attacked by Dacs,” I said. “We lost Devlin.” Those were the facts.

  “Where?”

  “Outside of Dalton.”

  The general reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped. He raised his hand. The crawling Délons stopped. They focused on Roy. He flicked his wrist to the right, and a hundred or so Délons broke off from the once crawling mass. They approached their general in uniform columns of four. He flicked his wrist to the left, and the columns sprinted toward the city’s entrance.

  General Roy smiled. “He will be avenged.”

  “We took care of that,” I said. “I mean we already killed the Dacs.”

  He cocked his head and studied us. “Really, just the three of you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You are a great warrior.” He laughed. “There are more to kill,” he said. “On that you can rely.” He held out his hand and motioned us to dismount. “Come, come, I have a few surprises for you.”

  The three of us dismounted and slowly made our way to the front door of the building. General Roy held the door for us. When we entered, a sour looking Reya was waiting for us on the other side. She found it impossible to hide her disdain for me.

  “Welcome,” she said with no feeling at all.

  I didn’t bother returning the fake nicety. Délon Miles waited for us on the elevator. He never questioned where Devlin was. They were inseparable as humans. Now, Miles couldn’t care less where his old friend was.

  The six of us rode to the top floor. The elevator doors opened and we stepped into a hallway lined on both sides by Délons. They stood at attention while we walked by with the general, but it felt like a lot of them were looking at Lou, Gordy, and me as food.

  Knowing now that the general had concocted the whole king scenario to trick me into leading them to their Source made me feel vulnerable. As soon as he determined I was useless, we were all dead. I hoped to be out of the city long before then. I was here to get Ajax. How I was going to do that, I didn’t know.

  We reached the end of the hallway and stood in front of a set of double doors. “Your accommodations,” General Roy said. With a nod of his grotesque head, he ordered Miles to open the doors.

  It was an enormous penthouse condominium that was probably one of the premier properties when Délon City was Atlanta. Basically it was intact. The stench of the city still seeped through the walls, but if you just saw it in a photograph you would be wowed. It had marble floors throughout, four bedrooms, five bathrooms, a view of the city that was currently obstructed by Délons crawling up and down the building. The furniture, although covered in the telltale transparent purple slime, looked expensive, like the stuff my mom used to pine over in catalogs.

  “I trust this will do,” General Roy said.

  “Boy, oh boy,” Gordy replied. “It is good to be king, huh, Oz?”

  “Yeah,” I said flatly.

  “Well, we’ll let you rest up from your trip,” Roy said guiding Reya and Miles back in the hallway. “We have a special dinner for you tonight with some special guests.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “No, no,” Roy said. “It’s a surprise.”

  “What about the football game?” Gordy asked.

  “Cancelled,” Roy smiled. “In Oz’s honor. We have something much more entertaining in store.”

  The three Délons stood outside the doorway looking in the apartment as if we were some exhibit in a zoo. “Come, Lou,” General Roy said. Miles and Reya practically licked their chops.

  Lou’s chin dropped and she stepped toward them. I held out my arm and stopped her. “She stays.”

  “We have plans for her,” Roy said, the irritation in his voice was apparent.

  “I have plans for her,” I said.

  “She is ours, human,” Reya snapped. General Roy gave her a stern glare.

  “Not tonight,” I said. I wasn’t about to let them have their favorite snack.

  I could see the spider legs on General Roy’s head twitch, but he fought to keep himself under control. “Very well.” They exited the condo, but not without Reya giving me one last look of total contempt.

  “Whoa, bro,” Gordy said. “That Délon chick does not like you, man.”

  “She never has...” We were interrupted by a loud popping sound. I felt a thump against the middle of my back. “What the...?” A wet, oozing warmth began to spread up and down my spine. “You guys feel that?”

  “Feel what?” Gordy asked.

  “Take off your backpack,” Lou demanded.

  “What?” I couldn’t imagine why she was so insistent.

  “Take it off!” She didn’t wait for me to comply. She grabbed one of the shoulder straps and yanked it down.

  The shunter.

  I wriggled and turned and jumped as if I were on fire. “Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!” I could feel its jellyfish tentacles probing through the thick material of the backpack.

  I finally slipped both arms through the shoulder straps and let the now soaked backpack fall to the floor. Gordy jumped up on a nearby chair while Lou ran to the kitchen. She returned with a cleaver. I cursed myself for leaving J.J. on Chubby’s saddle.

  “What do we do? What do we do?” Gordy shouted.

  “Why are you so scared?” I asked. “I’m the marked one.”

  “Yeah, but you heard Devlin,” he said. “If it can’t find the marked, it’ll latch onto pretty much anything and suck its brains out.”

  “Can’t find the marked? I’m right here!”

  “Oh,” Gordy said. “Yeah, right.” I could feel the terror drain from his body once he realized he was no longer in danger.

  A tiny hole appeared on the backpack and a thread thin tentacle stretched out of it.

  Lou stood at the ready with the cleaver. Every fiber of her being wanted to raise it above her head and bring it crashing down on the squirmy little shunter, but she knew as soon as she did the Délons outside the window would come storming in.

  “The kitchen,” I said. “We can put it in the freezer.” I picked the backpack up by one of its straps and held it at arm’s length. A second tentacle had burrowed another hole in the thick fabric. I hurried across the marble floor through the formal dining room and pushed opened the swinging door to the kitchen. The refrigerator was in sight when the third and fourth tentacles ripped through the backpack. The shunter was tearing it to shreds.

  Lou zipped around me, and ran to the refrigerator. Gordy chose not join to us. I pictured him casually reading a Sports Illustrated on the couch, not giving us a second thought. We would have to have a serious talk about teamwork.

  Lou opened the freezer and began tossing out all the frozen food items left by the previous owners. The shunter had torn a flap in the backpack. I could see its jelly like body. If it had eyes, it would have been peering out at me. I could hear the fabric of the backpack ripping.

  “Hurry,” I said

  “There’s a lot of crap in here,” Lou answered. “Some of it’s frozen to the sides of the freezer.”

  I put the backpack down on a nearby counter. “Here,” I said. “Let me.”

  Somewhat insulted, Lou stood and let me try to remove the items stuck to the sides of the freezer. I knelt down and tugged at a carton of ice cream. I could feel Lou’s sense of satisfaction when I couldn’t budge it. I gave it a more forceful yank and the entire shelf came out while I stumbled backwards to the kitchen floor. A cascade of frozen food came tumbling out of the freezer. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done.

  There was no time to pat myself on the back. I jumped up and raced to the counter where I had left the backpack. I knew I was running out of time. I picked it up, and almost had a heart attack when the solifipod rolled out of a huge gaping hole in the backpack. The shunter had torn through the pack, and what’s worse, neither Lou nor I knew where it was.

&nb
sp; “Oh boy,” I said.

  Lou held her cleaver at the ready. “This is not good.”

  I searched the surrounding area for a weapon. “Next time,” I said, “don’t let me leave J.J. with the horses.” I opened a drawer and found a rolling pin. It would have to do.

  We heard the sound of thousands of little tentacles scampering across the floor.

  “Do you see it?” I asked.

  “No, but I hear it,” Lou answered.

  We were back to back now, slowly circling and looking in every direction.

  “I’m really getting tired of creepy crawlies,” I said.

  The shunter let out a series of chirps. My left eye twitched in response. I frantically started kicking the frozen food items away from the freezer. The little face sucker was about to make its move, and I didn’t want anything obstructing the door. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen fast.

  “Got any ideas?” Lou asked.

  “Not really,” I said. “Nothing to do but wait...” I stopped mid-sentence. The room started to spin as the chirping got louder. The twitching in my eye spread throughout my whole body. I fell to my knees and dropped the rolling pin.

  “Oz?” Lou said. Her voice was shallow and distant. I heard her scream. No, it wasn’t her screaming. It was the shunter. A flash of bright white hit me. Lou stood over me. Another flash of bright white.

  “What the hell?” It was Gordy’s voice.

  Everything went black.

  ***

  When I came to, I was lying on a couch. It took me a minute to get my bearings. I was in the penthouse condo. I had just been in the kitchen. How did I get here? I turned to the right. Lou was sitting on the coffee table staring at me. She had a red welt that stretched diagonally across her face.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “It’s called the shunter’s song,” Lou said. “It subdues the marked with a series of chirps.”

  “You went down like a sack of potatoes,” Gordy said. He leaned over the back of the couch and stared down at me. “Lucky for you I’m here.”