Invasion of the Road Weenies (14 page)

“Why?” Shawn asked.

“Maybe something awful happened to him,” Arnie said.
“You know, something so terrible, he lost his voice. Maybe he was in a horrible accident. Yeah, that's got to be the answer. I'll bet the teachers know about it, and that's why they don't make him speak in class.”

This explanation was our favorite. But, that day, it wasn't enough for me. That day, I had to open my big mouth. “I don't know what the reason is, but I'm going to find out.” I'd already tried asking him. We'd all tried at least a couple of times. But Tommy just kind of half-smiled and shrugged like he didn't understand the question.

Once, about a month after Tommy showed up at the school last year, Kent, who is about the worst bully in the class, threatened him. “Say something or I'll pound you,” Kent had shouted. Tommy stood there looking at him. He didn't move a muscle; he didn't blink. I don't know what went through Kent's head, but he just muttered, “It ain't worth the effort,” and walked off, leaving the crowd without their taste of blood.

I didn't get off so easily when I bragged that I'd find out the reason. Everyone jumped all over me. “Yeah, right,” Shawn said.

“Sure,” Arnie said. “He'll talk to you. Yup.”

They were laughing and snickering. What could I do? It had become a matter of pride. I followed Tommy Griffin home that day. I stayed far enough behind so he wouldn't spot me. It wasn't hard. He never looked back. He just walked along with those funny little steps of his, going straight down the middle of the sidewalk. He was one strange kid.

I kept pretending I was some sort of super-detective. At
first, it was fun. After a while, I began to understand where the term “flatfoot” came from. We just kept on walking—Tommy went along without a clue that I was there, and I followed him without a clue where we were going. If I hadn't boasted in front of all my friends, I would have just turned around and gone home. I realized there was at least one big advantage to not talking—you didn't get stuck having to do what you said you'd do.

We must have gone a couple miles. The neighborhood started to change. It happened slowly. One house needed a paint job. Another was missing some shutters over the windows. One farther down was missing windows. Then the changes came more quickly.

I started to feel uncomfortable. It didn't look like anybody lived around here.
Enough of this,
I thought. So what if everyone kidded me. They'd forget about it soon enough. I was about to give up and head for home when Tommy finally moved from the center of the sidewalk. He turned, walked through an opening in a fence where the front gate had rusted off, and went up five warped wooden steps into a small house at the end of a row of small houses. There wasn't a sign of another person anywhere.

Now what?
I walked past the house and around the corner. The fence ran along the side, but it had several large holes near the bottom. I could see a yard in the back. It was almost all dirt—just one or two small patches of dying grass. I ducked through one of the holes and crawled into the yard.

What would I say if he came out? “Hi, Tommy, just
wanted to drop by for a chat.” Yeah, that would fool him for sure. I just hoped he hadn't seen me.

There were two windows in the back on the first floor. I went up to one and tried to look through. It was so dirty it might as well have been made of slate. I tried another. It was a bit better. There was movement inside the house. I found a corner of the glass that wasn't as dirty as the rest and peered into Tommy's world.

He was facing away from me, standing in front of this large box. It was about six inches high, and about six feet on a side, like a big sandbox. It looked like it was filled with dirt. Tommy stepped up into it, then stretched out his arms and flopped forward.

He just lay there, facedown in the dirt.

Slowly, Tommy changed. His fingers grew longer. Oh man, I didn't believe what I was seeing. Tommy was growing into the soil. His feet were bare. His toes burrowed into the ground, too.

I must have watched for at least an hour. I wanted to run, but I had to see. Tommy was no longer recognizable as human in any sense. His body, the middle part, was still on top of the soil, but his arms and legs and head had sunk into the earth.

I had to get out of there. This was all too weird. I started to take a step away.

I couldn't.

Something was clutching my foot. I looked down. A thick vine had come up from the ground by my feet and wrapped around my ankle. It had caught me.

Tommy had caught me.

I never talk in
school. I could, I guess, if I wanted to. But I have nothing in common with these flesh creatures, these children and teachers. It's not a problem. My mind is very strong, and they bend to my will. I'm not lonely. I talk with Tommy every night. We have a lot to say to each other. A whole lot. We talk and we plan, and we decide who will join us next.

A
s the school bus
rattled down the road, Marlon looked out the window and spotted a jogger coming toward him. The guy was wearing blue shorts, a sweat-streaked white T-shirt, and a red baseball cap. When the bus reached the man, Marlon noticed something else. The jogger was frowning.

“They never smile,” Marlon said.

“Who?” Hector asked.

“The joggers.” Marlon turned toward his seatmate. “Have you ever seen one smile?”

“Guess not,” Hector said. “So?”

“I don't know. But what's the point if it isn't fun? They always look like they're hurting themselves.”

Hector shrugged and zipped open his backpack, reached in, pulled out his homework, then shoved it back in. That drove Marlon crazy. Every day, Hector would check his pack a dozen times during the ride.

“It's not going to vanish,” Marlon said.

“I just want to make sure it's there,” Hector said. He let out a nervous laugh. “Seeing is believing.”

On the way to school, Marlon saw three more joggers. Different ages, different clothes, but the same pained expression. He started thinking of them as road weenies—mindless, grim-faced creatures who puffed and gasped all over town for reasons nobody would ever know.

During class, while looking out a window from the second floor, Marlon noticed another jogger slogging along the road that ran past the school. Marlon had a hard time telling from the distance, but he was pretty sure this jogger wasn't smiling, either.

On the long bus ride home—Marlon's was the next to last stop—he spotted four more joggers. No smiles. And, odder yet, no familiar faces.

I don't know any of them,
Marlon realized as he got off the bus. He'd lived in Lynchville all his life and knew most of his neighbors, but there wasn't a single familiar face among the joggers.

That night, Marlon drew a rough map of the town in his notebook. At the top of the map, he wrote
RW
for road weenies. The next morning, he marked the spot where he saw each jogger. He used initials:
RH
for the guy with the red hat, BB for the guy with the black beard,
SV
for the woman with the sun visor, and so on. The bus was often a couple minutes early or late, depending on traffic. So Marlon saw the joggers at slightly different times each day. From where they were on the road, he was able to figure out part of each jogger's path.

Marlon spent three weeks gathering all the information. When he was done, he discovered that the map revealed a secret.
They cover every single road in town,
he thought. Each day, the joggers ran over every mile of roadway.

On Sunday, Marlon got on his bike, ducked into the tall weeds in a gully along Locust Street, and waited for a jogger to pass. It didn't take long. Marlon watched until the man was far ahead. Then he climbed out of his hiding place and pedaled slowly behind, keeping back where he wouldn't be spotted.

The man jogged all the way to the end of Locust, then turned south on Bryar. He covered half of Bryar, all of Elm, and the eastern part of Flagler. Finally, he disappeared into an old barn at the edge of town.

Marlon was about to pedal closer when another jogger came along. This one also slipped into the barn. Marlon stayed back and watched. As the morning passed, five more joggers showed up and went inside. Three joggers left the barn, but they were different people—not the same ones who had come in that morning.

Finally, as curiosity overwhelmed caution, Marlon took a chance and sneaked toward the barn from the side opposite the door. He knelt by the wall, then crept around the corner and moved along until he reached a spot below a small window. Holding his breath, Marlon stood and peeked inside.

The barn was filled with men and women. Marlon recognized some of the joggers he'd seen. They were all just standing there in a line. As Marlon watched, another jogger
came through the door. He walked to the rear of the line. A jogger at the other end walked to the door, then loped out.

As each jogger returned, another left. This continued until the sun began to set. Then, as the rest came in, nobody else went out to replace them. By dark, they were all inside, standing motionless. The last jogger to return was a man with red jogging shorts and a white T-shirt. He walked up and down the line once, as if he was in charge, and then took his place at the back.

Marlon crept quietly around to the front of the barn. He found a stick and slid it through the handles on the double doors, locking them closed.

That night, in bed, Marlon wondered what he hoped to accomplish. He wasn't sure why he'd locked the joggers inside. Maybe to help figure out what was going on.

He didn't see any joggers the next morning.

“Weird,” Hector said as they rode toward school. “I just got these glasses.” He pulled them off and squinted in the direction of the window. Then he wiped the glasses with the bottom of his shirt and put them back on. “They seemed fine last night. Do the trees look out of focus to you?”

“Nope.” Marlon wasn't really listening to Hector. He was busy staring out the window, wondering what had happened after he'd locked the barn door.

I'll go to the barn after school,
he told himself. But he was halfway afraid to go back.

The next morning, the world was a little blurry when Marlon got up. On the way to school, he blinked and stared
through the window of the bus, looking for joggers. There weren't any.

“I don't remember everything ever being so fuzzy,” Hector said. “Something is definitely different.”

That night, Marlon went to the barn.

He pulled out the stick and opened the door. The joggers were inside, standing the way he'd left them. “Come on,” he called. “Get out there. Come on. Jog!”

They didn't move. Marlon stared out the door at the blurry, dim land around him. The world looked like a faded memory.

Faded memory . . . Something seen once, but slowly forgotten. Maybe seeing was even more than believing. Maybe seeing was all that kept things real. Most people never bothered to look at the world. They were too busy talking or playing. But the joggers—all they did was stare ahead.

Marlon started to jog, running the map of town through his head, wondering how long it would take him to cover every street and see every part of town. How long would it take to freshen the memory?

It took all night. But in the morning, as he reached the barn, finishing the circuit, the world seemed more real.

When Marlon opened the door, the man in the red shorts was waiting for him, along with the other joggers. “Glad you could join us,” the man said. “You'd better get going. It's time to start today's run.” He told Marlon what route to take.

“But . . .” Marlon was exhausted from jogging all night.

“Get going,” the man said. His voice had turned cold.

Marlon started jogging up the road. He didn't smile.

K
ids notice things that
adults never see. That's how I found the
INSERT
button on the TV remote control. When my folks are home from work, my dad does the channel surfing, so he uses the remote a lot in the evening. But after school, I usually have the TV all to myself for about an hour. Then my stepbrother Harold gets home and takes away the remote.

I was sitting there one afternoon, trying to find something worth watching, when I ran my finger along the side of the remote control. Instead of a smooth edge, I felt a seam. I tore my eyes from the TV—it was an old western movie—and looked at the remote. Sure enough, the front was in two pieces. I pushed and pulled at the bottom until a piece slid open. It was like a battery compartment, but I knew the battery went in the back. This front compartment just held two buttons:
INSERT
and
REMOVE
.

Not giving it any special thought, I pressed
INSERT.
In a flash, there were cowboys all around me. They were trying
to control a cattle stampede. There were also cows all around. I'd inserted myself into the program.