The Land of the Dead: Book Four of the Oz Chronicles (8 page)

“Oh man!” Gordy stomped his foot. “No one ever listens to me!”

“Because you’re a moron,” April said.

None of us noticed that she had spoken at first. Her voice was weak, but it was actually April speaking this time, not whatever it had been before. As if we were all connected to the same thought, everyone in the room did a delayed double take.

Lou rubbed her back. “Are you okay?”

April weakly shook her head. “No, not even close.” She winced. “I feel like my insides have been shredded.”

Mimic giggled. She brought her hands to her face and swayed back and forth. She was clearly happy to see April back to her old self… almost.

April turned to the Throwaway and recoiled. “What… June?”

Mimic smiled softly. “Does it please you?”

April scooted across the bed to get away from Mimic.

“June?” I looked to Lou to see if the name meant anything to her. She looked as confused as I was.

“No,” April said staring dumfounded at Mimic. “That’s impossible.”

“It is what you wanted,” Mimic said.

April was too shocked to respond.

“Who’s June?” I asked.

Mimic looked at me and smiled. “I am.”

“No!” April barked. “No, no, no!”

“April,” Lou said loudly, but gently. “Calm down. It’s okay.”

April looked at her in irritated awe. “Don’t tell me it’s okay. Don’t tell me that.” She pointed at Mimic and screamed. “You are dead… June is dead… My sister is dead!” She buried her face in the pillow and started to wail.

EIGHT

April cried herself to sleep. The rest of us tried to collect ourselves. We were all on pins and needles. All of us except the Throwaways. They were eerily calm. Even Mimic. We had to pry her away from April’s bedside. She told us several times that she needed to stay by her sister’s side, but at my prodding Tall Boy talked to her and convinced her to join the other Throwaways.

The questions came fast and furious among us non-Throwaways. First, Wes wanted me to explain what I meant when I said we had only nine days. I had to tell him on several occasions that I didn’t know. For some reason, he felt that if he asked me the question in a slightly different way over and over again, I would finally be able to give him the answer he wanted. All it really accomplished was making me more and more irritated with him and making him more and more frustrated with me.

We were at each other’s throats. Something was under our skin and I had a feeling it had very little to do with us.

Wes shook his head. “Let’s just settle down a bit here and go over what we know.”

“We know it don’t make a lick of sense to stick around here,” Gordy said.

“Stop your grousing,” Wes said. “It ain’t helping.”

Lou took a deep breath and composed herself. She was in better control of her emotions than the rest of us. “We know it took him… whoever he is… nine days to eat her… whoever she is.”

“He is Albert,” I said. “The Flish, and she is Grace.”

Wes looked puzzled. “Albert… the Flish and Grace. Why is that familiar?”

“Must be an old guy thing because it doesn’t mean a thing to me,” Gordy said.

I looked at Ajax. “What do you know?”

He sat back on his haunches and grunted. Nothing.

I shifted my gaze to Ariabod. “You?”

He signed and Lou interpreted. “Fish gets in.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Lou watched him sign again. “He said he means what he said.”

Ajax joined the conversation with some signing of his own.

Lou hesitated before she interpreted. “Ajax says he means fish haunts from within.” She added her own interpretation. “I think they’re saying the Flish possesses people.”

“Possess?” Gordy asked. “Like in the movies when a ghost takes over a person.”

“Not a ghost,” Lou said.

Gordy waited for Lou to expound on her statement, but she remained silent. He sighed and shook his head. “What is it if it isn’t a ghost?”

She still hesitated.

“Answer him,” I insisted.

She readied herself and said, “The devil.”

There was a burst of silence. That’s the only way to describe it. It practically blasted the room apart.

“The devil,” Gordy finally said. “Evil guy? Horns? Pitch fork? That’s what you’re saying, right?”

She shook her head. “I’m not saying it. Ariabod is.”

“No,” Gordy snapped. “He said the fish gets in. You took that and brought the devil into it.”

She began to lose her cool. She gritted her teeth and said, “I’m just trying to make sense of all this, that’s all.”

“Okay,” I said. “This isn’t working. We can’t keep jumping down each others’ throats.”

Wes chuckled. “That’s easier said than done, Oz. I’ll be honest with you, I got a knot in my gut that is irksome as hell.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

Lou grimaced. “No knot, but you all are definitely irritating me.”

Gordy shrugged. “Not sure what irksome means, but like my old man used to say, I feel like I’m wired for a fight.”

“So what do we do?” Lou asked.

“Wait it out,” Wes said.

Gordy groaned. “In the house?”

“Just for the night. We’ll head out in the morning…”

“No,” I said.

“No?” Wes replied.

“You’re forgetting the Land of the Dead.” I avoided eye contact with any of them.

“The Land of the Dead?” Gordy said. “You’ve got to be kidding? Who gives a flip about the Land of the Dead?”

“We were led here…” I started but Wes cut me off.

“The little piss-ant’s got a point. We should stick to the Tullahoma plan. Let’s get back there and find them comic books. I thought you said the answers was there?”

“They are… well, I’m pretty sure they are, but that doesn’t mean we can forget about everything else. They want us to go to the Land of the Dead. We have to go.”

“Who is they?” Wes asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know exactly, but they’ve been trying to get my attention for a long time.” I thought back to my time in the “facility” when they watched me sleep.

“Can we vote on this?” Gordy asked.

“No,” I said moving away from Wes and positioning myself closer to Lou. The pain in my gut eased. I stepped away from her and it got worse. I stepped back toward her, and the pain was gone. I quickly walked to Gordy. The pain intensified. I stood next to Wes. The same thing.

“What the hell you doing, boy?” Wes asked.

“It’s us,” I said.

“What’s us?”

“The knot… the thing that’s got us all on edge. It’s not this room or this house. It’s us.” I couldn’t explain why I didn’t get the feeling from Lou, but I definitely got it from the others. I suspected she would put the knot in my stomach soon enough.

Tyrone chimed in for the first time and his tone was so unnaturally calm it was unsettling. “He’s already inside us.”

I swallowed and whispered, “We have nine days.”

“What happens after nine days?” April asked.

Wes answered by repeating part of Jeremiah 19:9, “And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege.”

The burst of silence was back.

“He can’t make us… I mean we wouldn’t… I wouldn’t…” Lou couldn’t say it no matter how hard she tried.

Tyrone stared blankly. “That’s what the knot is, hunger.”

Gordy nervously cleared his throat and spoke in a squeaky voice. “If y’all want me to stop freaking out, you gotta stop telling me this stuff.”

“Relax,” I said.

“Relax?” Gordy roared. “Wes is already looking at me like a Twinkie.”

“Boy, I’m going to punch your teeth down your throat!” Wes said stepping toward him.

I got in the middle of them and shouted, “Enough!”

Everyone in the room worked to calm themselves.

“We have to separate,” I said.

“Separate?” Gordy said. “We have to leave.”

I shook my head. “Leaving won’t do any good. This thing will go with us.”

“You don’t know that,” Gordy laughed a little too loudly. “You don’t know anything.”

I fought to keep my emotions in check. “I know that the dead brought us here. We have to… I have to go to the Land of the Dead. Don’t ask me why because I don’t have an answer for you.”

Lou looked at me concerned. “I don’t think we should separate. What if something happens?”

“Something is going to happen if we stay together,” I said.

Wes breathed in deeply through his nostrils and stood tall. “Oz is right. We need to split up. We got enough two-ways to go around. We’ll keep in touch for as long as we can.” He looked at the Throwaways. “They don’t seem to be affected.”

I turned to them. They clearly weren’t at each other’s throats. “Then we won’t be alone at least. There are six of us and six of them. We’ll each take one.”

“Won’t we… eat them?” Gordy asked. He was even shocked by the words that had come out of his mouth.

“No,” I said. “I think they’re safe because they’re not… human.”

“Are we really saying this,” Lou asked. “You think he can make us eat…” She didn’t finish.

“I do,” I said as coldly and flatly as I could. I wanted her to understand that I wasn’t willing to consider any other possibilities. We needed to take action now, and it wasn’t open for debate.

She got the hint asking, “What about April?”

I grumbled because I had forgotten about April, and I was angry with Lou for reminding me. “You stay with her until she can take care of herself.”

Gordy laughed. “That’ll be never.”

“It’ll be by tomorrow,” I said. “Has to be.” To Lou, “I want you to put some distance between you and her in the morning. We’ve got no idea how this thing is going to go down. Explain it to her when she wakes up. Don’t let her talk you into staying. Mimic or June or whatever her name is should stay with April.”

Wes had retrieved all the walkie-talkies and handed them out.

“But she hates Mimic,” Lou said.

I nodded. “True, but Mimic seems pretty devoted to her. She’ll look after her.” I took the radio from Wes and turned it on to test it.

Gordy tapped me on the shoulder. “You’re forgetting something.” He pointed at Ajax and Ariabod. “Are they going to eat us?”

Ajax furrowed his brow and shook his massive head.

“There’s your answer,” I said.

“One of them goes with me,” Gordy said.

“Hold your water,” Wes said. “They go with the girls.”

“I can take care of myself,” Lou snarled.

“Ariabod goes with April,” I said.

“And Ajax?” Lou asked.

I hesitated because I knew she wouldn’t like my answer. “He goes with you.”

“I said I can take care of myself!” She said.

“I know you can, but you’re the only who can do the sign language thing. Might as well take advantage of that.” I smiled proudly. It was a plausible excuse, and that was a small part of the reason I wanted Ajax to go with her. The bigger part was I couldn’t stand the thought of her getting hurt or… killed. Ajax would look out for her just as I’d asked him to do at the convenience store.

I grabbed my pack and was headed toward the Throwaways to tell them the plan when I heard a woof. Kimball tilted his head and studied me. I managed a smile. “You’re with me.”

He barked.

DAY 1

NINE

I wanted to get as far away from the basement as possible, so I went up to the fourth floor. Tall Boy was my Throwaway companion. I didn’t pick him. He picked me. All the Throwaways made their own choice as to who they would pair up with. I didn’t mind Tall Boy’s company. I just wished he would talk more. It was a little unsettling to be with someone who only spoke when spoken to. I guess I was too used to Gordy spouting off about this and that nonstop.

We investigated the entire floor before settling on the Observatory as our base of operations. It was a two story room with a spiral staircase that led to a rooftop access. For some reason, I felt safe knowing that the room had an exit, even though that exit brought me face to face with gargoyle statues and the like. They were preferable to meeting up with the Flish.

I sat on a large chair and mulled over our current predicament. Away from the others, I felt like I could breathe again. The knot in my stomach was a distant memory. I was convinced that we made the right decision by splitting up. That’s not to say I was happy being apart from the others. I had had my fill of being without them. All that time spent in the facility made me realize that they were more than just a group of people I had survived the end of the world with. They were my new family. Having lost my first family, I wasn’t wild about the prospect of having to ditch Lou and the others.

Lou.

Her name bouncing around in my head was enough to make me insane with worry. I worried about the others, too, but not like I worried about Lou. I got a pain in my chest every time I imagined something terrible happening to her and, in this world, it was impossible not to think something horrible would happen to her.

I sighed and tried to push all thoughts of the others out of my head.

I heard Tall Boy sigh. I shook my head. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” he asked.

“That thing Mimic did with April.”

“What did she do?”

I rolled my eyes. “The mimic thing. She basically became April.”

“She did not,” Tall Boy answered. “She became June.”

I conceded his point. “Well, don’t do that then.”

He looked at me puzzled. “Of course not, June is already here.”

I snickered. “Well, she’s really just June-like, isn’t she?”

He thought about my question. “I don’t understand.”

“June… she’s real or she was real. Mimic just made herself look and sound like her.”

He still looked confused. “I don’t understand this ‘real’”

I struggled to find a good definition for him. “It means… actual. Something that really exists.”

“Exists?”

“Something you can touch and feel.”

He shrugged. “I can feel June.”

I groaned out of frustration. “Yeah, but she wasn’t meant to… be here.”

“She’s not here.”

I shook my head and unintentionally raised my voice. “No, I don’t mean here.” I illustrated my point by waving my arms in a circle. “I mean here, in this world.”

“What world does she belong in?”

I considered his question carefully. In trying to explain to him what ‘real’ meant, I was becoming more and more confused about the meaning myself. The fact was this was the perfect world for June. “I’m not explaining this right because we’re in a world that’s not real right now.”

He smiled faintly. “I think real is not so complicated. If a thing is, it is real.”

I smiled back. “Someone smarter than me could tell you exactly why you’re wrong, but since they’re not here, let’s just say you’re right.”

His smiled broadened.

“That doesn’t mean I want you to do what she did.”

“That is up to you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“Throwaways do not have a say in who they become. April made June.”

“How?”

He shook his head. “I have never become, so I don’t know. June only said that she felt a thought from April.”

“Felt a thought?”

“A void, as if something that should be wasn’t. For April, June should be.”

I searched my mind for a thought, something I could feel. There were too many to choose from, so I took a deep breath and attempted to push every thought out of my mind.

I peered over at the opposite corner of the room and admired the spiral staircase. It led up to a wrought iron balcony. Shadows danced and swayed on the walls. The motion relaxed me. It should have unnerved me, but for some reason I found it soothing. I felt my eyelids get heavier and heavier until I couldn’t keep them open any longer. Just before I closed them I said, “If I fall asleep, you’re in charge.”

Tall Boy didn’t answer.

“Hear me?” I asked.

He still didn’t answer.

I turned to him. He stared at me with a half-smile on his face. “Did you hear me?”

“I did,” he said. “I thought you were talking to Kimball.”

Kimball’s ears perked up at the mention of his name.

I chuckled. “You’ve got self-esteem issues, my friend.” I closed my eyes. “I was talking to you.”

“How do I be in charge?”

“Just sit there and wake me up if you hear anything…” I was asleep before he could ask another question.

***

I dreamed of Anthony and the day we both died. We were caught in the current and struggling to keep our heads above water. An invisible tide of water wrapped around my ankles and tugged me beneath the surface. I swallowed the salty water. I jerked and fought to release myself from the grip of the ocean. I peered through the murky water and saw Anthony. He was terrified. As hard as I struggled, he struggled twice as hard. I reached for him. Maybe together we could fight our way out of the current. A hand grabbed onto my wrist and pulled me away from Anthony. I watched as he grew smaller and smaller. A face appeared in the blue and green water beneath him. It was the boy from the Land of the Dead. He gently latched onto Anthony’s foot and pulled him down.

***

“I hear anything,” Tall Boy said.

I stirred out of my dream and opened one eye. “What?”

“I am waking you because I hear anything,” he said.

I processed the information and then sat up with a jolt. “What… What do you hear?”

Just as I asked, I heard a creaking as if someone or something was stepping on a loose floorboard. I stood. The scruff of Kimball’s neck was on end. “Who’s there?”

We heard the creaking again. It was coming from above us. Someone was on the roof.

Kimball woofed.

I located my crossbow and armed it.

“What do we do?” Tall Boy asked.

“We either wait for them to come to us or we go to them,” I answered.

Kimball barked.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” I said.

Tall Boy looked amused. “Did he say something?”

I nodded. “Plain as day.”

“What?”

“He says we should go to them.”

Tall Boy looked even more amused. “Is he always right?”

I smiled. “So far.” I moved to the staircase. Tall Boy started to follow. I motioned for him to stay back. “You be the fall back position.” I spotted a floor lamp. “Grab that lamp and if anything other than me comes down those stairs you knock the crap out of it, and then run like hell to warn the others.”

He nodded.

I looked at Kimball. “You help him.”

He sat and looked up at the roof access.

I started my climb up the spiral staircase. It was a narrow space that made me feel vulnerable. If whatever was making the noise decided to mount its attack at that moment, there wasn’t much I could do. I was a sitting duck.

The closer I got to the top of the stairs the more the creaking noise sounded like footsteps. I could hear the heels of a pair of boots landing softly on the roof just outside. A shadow of a person, or what I hoped was a person, moved past the window.

I moved slowly with the crossbow ready to fire. Each step I took was deliberate and planned. I did all I could to control my breathing.

Another shadow. This time I heard a voice. Male.

My heart thumped, but that wasn’t the only internal organ that reacted to the sound of the voice. The knot in my stomach was back. That meant two things. Whoever was outside on the roof was human, and… I was hungry.

“He’s got one of them arrow guns,” I heard someone say.

“Oz,” someone else said.

I froze. I thought I recognized the voice, but it couldn’t be.

“Oz, is that you?”

I felt a chill.

“Oz,” the familiar voice shouted.

I hesitated and then cleared my throat before saying, “Archie?”

A door to the roof opened and in stepped a small-framed figure followed by a man of medium height and build, Bobby and Archie. I didn’t move.

Archie smiled at the odd look on my face. “We ain’t ghosts.”

Bobby snickered. “Not hardly.”

“How…” I started the question, but got lost in a muddled mess of a thousand questions I wanted to ask. I was happy as could be to see him, but at the same time, I was horrified to see him. They were human… deliciously human.
Little Bobby
I thought.
The good meat is in the little one.
I shivered and stepped back.

“Kavi, saved our butts,” Archie said, looking confused by my behavior. “Took out three Délons ‘fore we could blink…” He suddenly looked very sad. “She got hurt.”

“Where is she?”

He pointed over his shoulder. “Out to the front of the house… dead. She led us to the ladder and made it pretty derned clear that we needed to get on the roof quick as a cat.” He paused. “Something’s coming.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “Haven’t the foggiest, but I can feel it, sure as I’m standing here.”

I chuckled and then sighed. “I’m not sure you really are.”

Bobby looked down at his feet and then at me. “Where do you think we’re standing?”

Ignoring his Storyteller’s question, Archie stepped forward. “It’s us, Oz…”

I stepped back. The gnawing in my stomach was stronger than it had ever been before. “Stop.”

“What…” Archie was annoyed by my request. “Gotta say I thought you’d be a little bit happier to see us.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, well I would be, but… I’m kind of dealing with something myself here.”

“What?” he snickered.

“The urge to eat you.”