Oddkins: A Fable for All Ages

by Dean Koontz

  Stinger had been perched on the rim of a garbage can, but Jack Weasel’s excitement had been transmitted to the bee. He took flight, swooped five or six stories straight up, dive-bombed down, darted this way and that, and finally hovered in front of Rex.

  “Do you ssssmell them?” Stinger asked in his shrill little voice. His crimson eyes glowed with evil pleasure. “The children? Hmmmmm? Do you ssssmell them all around ussss, Rex?”

  Rex smelled them, of course, and he was tempted by the sweetness and innocence of all those children. It would be so easy to find the nearest apartment building, climb a fire escape, pry open the window of a child’s bedroom. …

  “Thoussssandssss of children all around ussss,” Stinger said. “A city full of children waiting to be ssssssstung.”

  “I smell them,” Lizzie confirmed. She lifted her cigarette holder, and the tip of the plastic cigarette suddenly glowed red-hot. “We could live here in the city forever, hiding out during the day, creeping around at night, tracking down one child after another, tormenting hundreds of them. We’d never run out of prey.”

  Gear worked his metal hands as if wrenching and pinching the skin of a child. His yellow eyes burned even brighter than the bee’s crimson orbs. His jagged metal mouth cracked open. His jaws worked up and down. In his iron voice he said, “Gear wants to tear. Gear wants to break.”

  Rex shook his head violently, not merely because he was denying them what they wanted but because he was trying to clear his own mind of the overwhelming desire to seek out a child right now and torment it. “No. No, no, no! We will have plenty of time to make children’s lives miserable after we catch the Oddkins.”

  “Now, now, now,” Jack Weasel said urgently.

  “No! We must not get sidetracked. First we’ve got to stop the Oddkins from reaching Mrs. Shannon’s toy shop, stop them from letting her know that she’s been chosen to be the next toymaker. If she takes over Leben Toys before our kind seize control of the factory, we’ll have to return to the subcellar and go back to sleep in our crates for another generation or two. We’ll have lost.”

  “I don’t like to lose,” said Lizzie.

  “Losing is inefficient,” said Gear in his hard machinelike voice.

  “I hate Oddkins,” Jack said.

  “Ssssting them, ssssting them,” the bee said, doing a series of barrel rolls in the air.

  “First the Oddkins,” Rex said sternly. “First the Oddkins—and then the children.” After adjusting his sodden, white bowtie, after smoothing the satin lapels of his rain-soaked tuxedo jacket, Rex raised his black cane and pointed toward the far end of the alley. “The soft-bellied goody-goodies are that way.”

  He led the Charon toys from one deserted alleyway to another. They were careful to move only through purple-black shadows and through the concealing tentacles of fog that had begun to form near the ground.

  Once, when they had to cross a main street, they hid under a bus-stop bench until no traffic was in sight. Then they sprinted for the cover of a couple of big mailboxes on the far side of the broad avenue.

  In ten minutes they reached the parking lot behind the veterans’ hospital. They found the army truck in which the Oddkins had been riding.

  “Where now?” Lizzie asked.

  Rex tilted his head one way, then the other, trying to hear the voice of the Dark One. His master did not fail him. He listened, smiled, and said, “Across the parking lot, that way, north.”

  4.

  VICTOR BODKINS SUPPOSED THAT if people saw him they would think he was a crazy wino, one of those sadly ruined people who lived on the streets of big cities.

  He had parked his car near the construction yard where the toys had jumped off the pipe truck. He almost missed seeing them dash into the alley. He would not have spotted them if he had not been looking so hard. From there he pursued his fantastic quarry on foot.

  To avoid being seen by the frightful little creatures, Victor scurried from one pool of shadows to another. He hid behind overflowing garbage cans and crawled along filthy alleyways on his hands and knees. The patter, slosh, and gurgle of the rain helped mask the sounds he made.

  He was astonished by his own behavior. He had always been a prim, proper, dignified man. In his worst nightmares he had never dreamed of crawling through garbage as if he were a drunken bum.

  But he could not stop himself. He had seen impossible things, and he had to know the meaning of them. For his entire adult life—and for most of his childhood, in fact—Victor’s imagination had been like a rusted machine, the gears welded together by corrosion. But now suddenly that machine of imagination had come to life. The gears were turning, turning, whirling. Victor had lost control; his imagination was racing, unstoppable, dragging him along as if it were a runaway car.

  As he scuttled-crept-crawled along the alleyways in pursuit of the toys, his pants became soaked and dirty. He tore his raincoat. Flecks and smears of garbage were stuck to his clothes, unidentifiable stuff so gummy that not even the constant rain could wash it off him. Passing through the edge of the yellowish lightfall from a street lamp, he saw that his hands were grimy. His face was probably no cleaner.

  I look like a bum, he thought with dismay. I look like a dirty, tattered old bum.

  He did not care what he looked like. The only thing he cared about was keeping track of the toys.

  But in the parking lot of the veterans’ hospital, he lost them. He was crouched behind a Ford, watching as the toys gathered at the rear of the army truck, but then they headed north, vanishing among the rows of cars. Though Victor raced after them, though he looked down one row of vehicles after another, though he fell to his knees and peered under half the cars in the lot, he could find no trace of the marionettes, the robot, the jack-in-the-box, or the bee.

  He was flat on the pavement, squinting into the gloom beneath a Chevrolet, when someone said, “What’re you looking for? Are you all right?”

  Startled, Victor rolled over and scrambled to his feet.

  One of the hospital’s doctors was standing nearby, under a big black umbrella. Victor knew the stranger was a doctor because the man’s raincoat was open, revealing hospital whites and a dangling stethoscope.

  “Are you all right?” the doctor asked.

  “There was this robot,” Victor said, surprised by the urgency of his own voice. “Yellow eyes and a jagged little mouth.”

  The doctor frowned. “Robot?”

  “Did you see it? Did it pass you? Did you see which way it went? A robot … about eighteen inches high.”

  The doctor stared at him a moment. Then in a gentle, reassuring tone of voice, he said, “Don’t you worry. I know all about the little robot.”

  “You do?” Victor said. “Where did it go?”

  “These little robots won’t harm anyone.”

  “It tried to harm me!” Victor assured him.

  “Easy now. Easy,” the doctor said. “The robots want to be our friends. They come from another planet in tiny little flying saucers, and they want to be our friends.”

  “I’m serious!” Victor shouted. “You think I’m a crazy old bum, but I’m not. A toy robot. And two marionettes without strings. And a jack-in-the-box. And a flying toy bee. They’re chasing a bunch of stuffed animals. I don’t know why. Did you see them or not?”

  The doctor edged closer and said, “Yes, I saw them, along with a Raggedy Ann doll. They sent me here to bring you to them. They want to talk with you.”

  Victor backed away from him. “Don’t humor me! There wasn’t any Raggedy Ann doll! That’s silly. You just think I’m crazy, and you want to take me into the hospital. Raggedy Ann doll? Listen, I’m not foolish enough to fall for that!”

  He turned away from the doctor and ran toward the far end of the parking lot. He heard the man shouting after him, but he did not look back.

  5.

  FOR A MOMENT THERE was a lull in the storm. The sky closed up, and rain stopped falling.

  Patch hoped that h
is hat would dry out quickly and regain some of its stylish shape.

  At the center of a long alleyway was an area lit by a single bulb in a wire security cage above a wooden door. As Amos led his team of furry adventurers to the edge of that light, the cats appeared. Real cats.

  The first of the felines made its presence known with a hiss and a sharp, challenging screech.

  Amos, Gibbons, and Butterscotch gasped in surprise.

  Startled, in search of the source of the sound, Skippy whirled so suddenly that his huge floppy ears wrapped around his face, covering his mouth and leaving only one eye revealed. “Mmmphhh spmmmph,” he said.

  “It must be a lion,” Burl said, “just like on the veldt.”

  “Mmmmphhh.”

  The cat was above them, crouched on the first landing of an iron fire escape. It was big, coal-black, with glowing eyes. Judging by its angry tone, it wanted to know why they were trespassing in its territory.

  As if called forth by the cry of their leader above, two other cats appeared from behind an overflowing green dumpster and an empty, wooden packing crate. One was gray. One was yellow-orange with tigerlike markings. Both were large and scruffy.

  Patch was mortified. He would have blushed if he had not been a stuffed toy and therefore incapable of blushing. He stepped forward and said, “Brothers, fellow cats, dear kin of mine, please accept my apologies for my dreadful appearance. I am quite ashamed. But we’ve come a long way under difficult circumstances. And although I have struggled continuously to keep myself well groomed, I’m afraid I’ve not been entirely successful.”

  The gray and orange cats halted ten feet from him. They crouched, their tails and heads held low, their gazes riveted on Patch.

  He said, “I assure you that usually my cavalier boots are well polished, my trousers pressed, my shirt spotless. Ordinarily my hat is not soaked and drooping, nor is my fur matted with mud.” He peered thoughtfully at his tense kin and added: “In fact, I am usually far better groomed than either of you. If you’ll excuse my saying so, neither of you is a good example to young kittens.”

  All three cats—the one above and the two in front of Patch—hissed angrily. One of them growled deep in its throat.

  “Oh, no offense intended, of course,” Patch said quickly. “But after all, we cats must uphold our noble reputation for being fussy about our personal appearance.”

  Having unwrapped his ears from his face, Skippy stepped forward and said, “Listen, Douglas Furball, these guys are alley cats, feline hoodlums.”

  “Don’t call me Douglas Furball,” Patch said, “or I’ll tie your ears to your ankles and roll you along like a hoop.”

  “Uncle Isaac—”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Patch said, “Uncle Isaac called me Douglas Furball because I shared his taste for those old Douglas Fairbanks movies about swashbucklers. But only Uncle Isaac could call me that. No one else. You understand?”

  “Touchy, touchy,” Skippy said.

  The alley cats growled and advanced one step, then another.

  Patch noticed traces of foul garbage on their whiskers and was revolted.

  Behind Patch, Amos said, “Everyone form a circle with your backs to one another. Be prepared to defend yourselves.”

  “No!” Patch said, drawing the rubber sword from the scabbard on his hip. “Butterscotch dealt with the nasty mongrel who was an embarrassment to her kind, so I should deal with these poor excuses for cats.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Look at them—badly groomed, garbage-eating, unmannered ruffians of the worst kind.”

  The tiger-striped cat leaped forward.

  Patch slapped it across the face with his rubber sword.

  The mangy villain squealed, whirled, and retreated in fear and confusion.

  On the fire escape, the black cat screeched angrily and started down the iron steps.

  “Uh,” Skippy said, “maybe they’re just cross because their lives are so grim. Poor homeless creatures without television sets and no chance ever to go to the movies. Maybe they’re desperately in need of some first-rate entertainment. A few jokes might make them feel more friendly, more—”

  Amos rushed in behind the rabbit, grabbed his ears, wrapped them around his head again to cover his mouth, and pulled him backward.

  “Mmmmphhh spmmmphhh!”

  The gray cat sprinted forward.

  Patch danced nimbly to his left and used the flat, broad side of his sword on the beast’s flank as it darted past him.

  The gray cat squalled angrily.

  Its courage regained, the tiger cat sprinted at Patch once more.

  Patch stepped forward to meet it, brandishing his rubber blade.

  The cat halted but took a swipe at him with one paw, leaving a two-inch tear in his trousers.

  “You villain! You black-hearted fiend!” cried Patch. “You’ve ripped my costume, and for that you’ll pay dearly!”

  He launched himself at the tiger-striped ruffian, slapping it repeatedly with his sword, driving it backward. But then the gray one attacked him from behind, leaping on him, knocking him off his feet. And the black cat, having descended the fire escape, was upon him too. The four of them rolled back and forth, squealing and hissing and screeching.

  A claw dug at Patch’s face. One of his painted glass eyes popped loose, and he could see only half as well as before. Abruptly—and reluctantly—Patch realized that he was no match for an entire pack of alley cats.

  Before he could cry for help, however, the other Oddkins came to his rescue. Burl trumpeted in a voice that was similar to, though quieter than, that of a real elephant, and he stomped his stumpy feet. He shouted, “Rogue elephant! Rogue elephant on the rampage! Look out, you mangy cats, there’s a rogue elephant loose in this alleyway! Everybody’s gonna get squished if they don’t watch out. Squish-squish! Squish-squish!”

  Amos waded into the tangled mass of cats, swinging a foot-long piece of wood that he had picked up from beside one of the broken packing crates. Patch saw that Amos was using the makeshift sword with little grace; actually, the bear was wielding it more like a club. But right now there was no time for style. The only thing that mattered was survival.

  With his cane, Gibbons hacked at the three cats.

  Barking, Butterscotch leaped into the fray.

  Skippy suddenly appeared out of the low fog, waving his arms and shouting, “Booga-booga-booga-booga!”

  “Squish-squish! Squish-squish!”

  “Arf, arf, arf!”

  “Booga-booga-booooooga!”

  The alley cats were bold creatures, but they had never been faced with such a group of unpredictable adversaries. Retreating from the blows administered by Amos and Gibbons, confused and frightened by the strange cries of the rabbit, intimidated by the barking dog and the elephant, they fled at last.

  Though he was now missing one eye, Patch leaped to his feet and raised his sword. He called after the departing hoodlums: “You’d make better rats than cats, you worthless vermin!”

  “Booga-booga-booga!” Skippy added.

  6.

  NICK JAGG WAS SITTING on one of the wooden benches in the terminal’s main lounge, waiting for the bus, when the night clerk called to him from the ticket counter. “Hey, bad news, I’m afraid. The bus you’re waiting for has broken down. There’s going to be a three-hour delay before the next one.”

  “Three hours?” Jagg said irritably.

  “Sorry,” the clerk said, and shrugged.

  From his conversation with the creature in the men’s room mirror, Jagg had gotten the idea that he must assume the role of toymaker as quickly as possible. His mission was urgent. Now he wondered how he was going to get to the city to buy the toy factory tonight.

  He looked worriedly toward the front doors of the terminal. As his gaze fixed on the rainy night beyond, a bus pulled up at the curb. It was black and strange looking.

  The sound of the brakes drew the clerk’s attention away from the book he was reading. “What line�
��s that? Nothing’s due in now.”

  Jagg picked up the money-filled suitcase and walked to the front doors of the terminal. He peered through the rain-speckled glass.

  Outside, the doors of the night-black bus opened, but no one got out of it.

  Jagg knew this ride had been sent just for him—sent by the same creature he had seen in the mirror.

  “That’s not Greyhound, is it?” the clerk asked. “Not Trailways, either, is it?”

  Without answering, Jagg pushed through the doors and stood for a moment on the sidewalk, in the rain, looking up at the bus. The windows were all tinted, so he could see nothing of the interior.

  He went to the open doors, climbed three metal steps, and came face to face with the driver. The man was as pale as new-fallen snow, with cold gray eyes. He wore a black suit, an equally black shirt, and a black tie. He nodded at Jagg and closed the doors.

  Jagg saw that the bus was empty. He went to a seat in the middle and settled down by the window as the vehicle got underway.

  Once they were out of town and on the main highway, they moved very fast, even though the rain had turned to sleet and was painting a crust of ice on the road.

  7.

  THE ODDKINS COULD NOT find the painted glass bauble that had been Patch’s left eye. It was flat on one side rather than completely round, so it could not have rolled far. They looked under and behind the green dumpster. They searched around the large packing crates and all along the litter-strewn alley, but the bright green bit of glass was nowhere to be seen.

  Patch was not in agony, for he did not have the capacity for serious physical pain. He could feel emotions like fear, love, joy, and sadness. But being just a stuffed-toy cat, he was not much bothered by heat, cold, or other physical sensations.