Jack James and the Tribe of the Teddy Bear (7 page)

AMELIA SAT ATTENTIVE and alert the whole time Jack spoke of his father. Despite her civility, he began to question the sanity of anyone who would still be in the same room with him after hearing such a wild story.

Of course, he was glad she didn’t run for the hills. And actually listening to him without so much as breaking into a giggle? A development of galactic proportions. It was nothing, though, compared to what she did next.

“Let me try something,” she grabbed his right wrist without waiting for permission. “I gotta see if I’m right.”

“Right about what?”

“Hold on,” she flipped his hand over, examining every finger, every crease.

“What? Are you going to read my palm?” he snickered.

“Shhh!” she glared at him, then placed an open palm over his while cupping her other hand on the feather dangling from her necklace.

“What’s with the feather?” he tried again not to laugh.

She said nothing. Her stare widened. She jerked away, inhaling deep and trembling as if she felt an icy touch down her back. Then she let out her breath, her expression of worry replaced by one of confidence. “I knew it!”

“What? You knew what?”

“Your spirit clothes.”

“My spirit clothes?”

“Yeah, your aura. Off the charts, man.”

“What does that mean?” Jack was skeptical, yet intrigued.

SEVEN

THE VOICES SOUNDED faint at first. Gentle, lapping waves. Steadily, though, they became more and more distinct, like some enigmatic code being deciphered in his subconscious.

“I tell you, he’s drunk!”

“For the last time, he’s not drunk! He had one of these.”

“An energy drink? One energy drink and he passed out?”

“What a lightweight.”

“He must be allergic to caffeine or something.”

“Haha! He’s a wimp!”

“Now, Pud. You know how you get with garlic.”

An explosive burst of flatulence, followed by a guttural belch and finally a sheepish, “‘Scuze me.”

“Pud!” three voices broke out in unanimous disapproval—three hauntingly familiar voices.

Were they Tanakee? It had to be a dream. He was on the supermarket floor, conjuring it all up unconsciously. Still, it sure did seem awfully real. Even started to smell real. The unmistakable scent of his own species reawakened in him a faint glimmer of awareness, pulling him out of the hallucination.

“Wait, he’s moving. I think he’s coming to,” said a male Tanakee.

“We should knock him out again. Better safe than sorry,” proposed a different Tanakee, a female.

“No, no, no,” said another female. Her voice grew louder. “He’s one of us. We have to help him.”

Takota felt his head being gently lifted from the cold floor and cradled in a cozy, soft lap. He coaxed open his eyes to a glorious vision of a cream-colored angel. He knew by her cheekmarks she was the same as him, a Tanakee, though he’d never seen her in his woods. Her pearlescent, fluffy fur gave her an ethereal appearance. And an emerald, luminous haze surrounding her created even more mystery. An exquisite image of heaven itself.

“I love you,” he said to her, and the one she’d called Pud broke out in noisy laughter.

“All right, all right. That’s enough” the first male pulled her away from Takota. His cranium unceremoniously slid off her lap and hit the thinly tiled concrete with a
Plunk!

“Ow!” Takota cried. The laughing hyena roared even louder.

“Serves you right, flirting with another guy’s girl,” declared the surly female. With his sight coming back, Takota made out her features. He wished his vision would fail again. She wasn’t ugly, far from it. Her black and silver striping and richly colored cheekmarks made her blue eyes sparkle like gemstones at the bottom of a sunny stream. It was the way she used them, though, scolding and squinting. It reminded him of Orzabal back home.

“I’m sorry,” he squeaked. His stomach churned. It was still calling the shots, and it didn’t approve of him speaking.

“You sure are,” she bent down, grabbed two good handfuls of his fur and forced him to his wobbly feet. “Come on. Get up.”

“Okay, okay. Wait a sec,” he rested against the cooler, desperate to calm his angry gut.

“Uh-oh! He’s gonna puke!” howled Pud, an orangish, scruffy bum with the wildest hair and malformed cheekmarks. The oddest things about him were his eyes. Light blue on the right and dark brown on the left. And all the greaseball did was laugh. How rude.

Takota took a step. The floor buckled beneath his knees and he had to lean back. Then an enormous wave convulsed in his stomach, forcing up chunks of half-digested human food in a colorful vomit fountain.

“Wow!” the comedian sounded impressed. “Funky!”

“Are you okay?” cried the nice one, the fluffy, snowy angel.

“Um, yeah. I think so,” Takota answered, and meant it. He did feel better.

“Get him something to drink, not another one of those energy things, either,” she ordered her mate. Reluctantly he obeyed.

“Who’s gonna clean this up?” he sounded disgusted, tiptoeing through globs of barf.

“
He
is,” the mean one pointed her finger at Takota. “It’s his mess, he cleans it up.”

“Have you seen this place, Ayita?” he handed a bottle of water to Takota. “This is bad.”

Ah,
Takota thought. It
has a name—Ayita
.

“Good job, Cheyton!” Ayita hissed. “Now he knows my name. I told you not to use my name!”

“Ayita! Ayita! Ayita!” shouted Pud.

“Pud, you hush!” she barked. “We don’t need to encourage him.”

Takota had started to feel better, but Ayita’s rotten mood caused a relapse of his dizziness. The others—Cheyton, the Angel, even Pud the joker he could have learned to get along with. But Ayita, she wasn’t nice at all.

“Don’t worry,” Takota guaranteed her. “I’m sure I won’t have any reason to use your name. Not now. Not ever.”

“Good!” she stomped her foot.

“Good!” he copied her.

“Why you…” she would have lunged headlong into Takota if it weren’t for Cheyton. In one decisive sweep with his tiny yet powerful arm, he caught her midsection and hugged her into submission.

“Okay, sis,” he told her. “Take it easy.”

“Take it easy? Take it easy?” she tore away. “You want me to take it easy? Look around, dear brother. This entire store’s in shambles. There’s so much to do, so much to clean up. And on top of that there’s less than an hour left to do it. Does that sound easy to you? Because I don’t think we can afford to take it easy. We’re gonna get caught this time for sure!”

Cheyton refused to panic. Takota sensed from his calm demeanor he was the natural leader of the group. Slightly larger than Takota, he had a rugged handsomeness and a steady, alert posture which oozed confidence. Bright blue eyes and robust cheekmarks set against the black and silver bands in his fur completed the package, the striking color contrast of a powerful Tanakee family. He and Ayita appeared much alike, though they acted much differently.

“Don’t lose your cool here, okay?” he tried to console her. “We’ve been in worse shape, remember? I’m sure if we all work together we can have this place good as new in no time.”

“What’s this
we
stuff?” she demanded. “
We
aren’t cleaning,
he’s
cleaning!”

“No time for that, you know it. We’re each gonna have to take a section of the store.”

Ayita’s shoulders drooped. She released a long, demoralized sigh, glaring at Takota.

“I’m not cleaning the puke,” Pud sang.

“I’ll take the produce section. That seems to be the worst hit,” Cheyton continued.

“I mean it. I won’t do that spew,” Pud again used a comedic little tune.

“Enola,” Cheyton gestured toward the Angel.
So her name’s Enola. Kind, thoughtful Enola
. “You get the meat and seafood department, and make sure to find all the bones. He went kind of wild over there.”

“Seriously, dude,” Pud’s melodic message began to crescendo. “Don’t ask me to clean up that nasty barf.”

“Ayita, you inspect each and every aisle, okay? Make sure all the stuff he knocked over is picked up.”

“I’m not kidding, me no wanna cleana da puka,” Pud made his final plea. Cheyton, ignoring his every word, ruined his hopes.

“Pud, since you’ve had so much experience with your own vomit, you can stay here and help him clean this up.”

“Noooooo!” his face plunged into his hands.

“All right,” Cheyton cleared his throat. “We have our assignments, let’s…”

He stopped in mid-sentence and skewed his head. He’d heard something. Takota sensed it too, a slight metallic clanging.

“Oh, no!” Ayita yelped, then covered her own mouth.

“Too late!” Cheyton’s voice went into a hoarse whisper. “Code Red! Code Red!”

They all scattered in a blur, all except Takota. He stood frozen, dumbfounded by the commotion.

“You!” in a blinding display of speed, Cheyton returned, sliding to a stop and clutching Takota’s arm. “Whatsyourface, come with me!”

“My name’s Takota.”

“Dakota?”

“TA-kota!”

“Oh, who cares!” Cheyton tightened his grip and directed his attention toward the front. Takota heard it. The faint, yet unmistakable sound of someone coming.

“Let’s GO!”

Cheyton started with such an immense burst of velocity, it stunned Takota. And dragging him along made it even more impressive. After the initial shock from the sudden exercise, Takota’s muscular, agile physique responded. He’d always been proud of how fast he could run, one of his claims to fame back in Wind Whisper Woods. Some of his friends were stronger, some had more developed Eteea, but he was simply faster than anyone he’d ever raced against. Except Cheyton.

Takota promptly snapped into shape at the challenge, forgetting all about his stomach woes. It came easy for him, blinding strides, an aerodynamic posture, slicing through the very molecules of the air. And right there, step for lightning-fast step, was Cheyton, wearing a self-assured grin.

Takota hadn’t noticed how quickly they were running out of real estate. The store was big, not endless. The far wall wasn’t that far anymore, and it closed in fast. Luckily Takota turned left in time to avoid a messy crash into a shelf full of stuff called, ‘motor oil.’

After the confusion, Takota noticed Cheyton had abandoned him. He stopped and cautiously scanned his new surroundings—colorful packages with images of smiling, playing human children.

Overhead, dozens of artificial lights fizzled and popped to life, glowing red, then orange, then white, filling the store with illumination and him with panic. He was about to hide when a familiar voice stopped him.

“Here, you moron!”

It was Ayita, whispering and yelling at the same time. But from where? He searched behind some boxes and found nobody. Then he threw himself to the floor and inspected underneath the shelves. Nobody.

“Up here!”

“Where?” he called. “You guys are playing with me, aren’t you?”

Cheyton whipped down on a column that extended from floor to ceiling. He clutched Takota’s arm and lifted him several feet to a large collection of items covered in fake fur, stuffed with artificial fabric, and made to resemble real animals.

“This place is amazing!” Takota blurted.

“Quiet, fool,” Ayita fixated on the human activity below, as did the rest of the pack.

“I have a name, you know.”

She shushed him without turning away.

Still annoyed, he lowered his voice and continued.

“It’s Takota.”

“Potato?” Pud giggled.

“No, Takota.”

“All right, all right,” Cheyton looked at him. “Nice to meet you, Takota. Now be quiet. No telling what’s gonna happen when those people get a load of that mess of yours. It’s just a good thing we got the…wait! Pud! Tell me you took care of the surveillance video!”

Pud’s proud smile dropped, replaced by an elongated expression of horror.

“Oh, crap! Gotta go!” he dove headfirst off the makeshift nest.

Cheyton forced a space between a donkey and a unicorn and peered down. Takota pushed aside a rainbow trout and a stuffed lion to get a peek.

“What’s he doing?” he asked.

“He’s got to delete and replace the footage from the security cameras,” Cheyton said.

“The what?”

“Don’t you know anything?” Ayita looked through a gap in the toy animals, avoiding eye contact with him.

“Easy, now,” Enola patted her shoulder.

“Up there,” Cheyton pointed to a black sphere stuck into the ceiling. Takota hadn’t noticed them before. Now that he did, they seemed to be everywhere.

“Hey, there are a bunch of those suckers. What are they?”

“Cameras,” Cheyton kept watching while Pud, far below, sneaked past the front checkout counters one by one. “They record everything around here, all day long, all night long.”

“What do you mean, ‘record?’”

“Oh Eteea! What a simpleton!” Ayita slapped her own forehead. “He’s gonna get us caught for sure.”

Enola cleared her throat. “If I remember correctly, you had no clue about those cameras. None of us did at first. It was blind luck Pud was tinkering with the computer in the office and saw the recordings when he did. Otherwise, we would have been discovered after our first night here. All I can say is thank Eteea for Pud’s mischievous curiosity.”

“Yeah,” Ayita huffed. “Probably the one and only time we could say that.”

Takota scratched his ear. “So this…footage with the recordings of us, of me—it’s in the office?”

“Yeah,” answered Cheyton. “And he’s almost there. He’s got to replace the old footage with a dummy recording, one without you running around like a wild animal.”

Takota wasn’t sure he understood, but he knew it was serious. Monitoring Pud’s progress, he felt his heart jump when he saw a human. He knew she was a store employee by her green apron.

“Whew! He made it,” he watched Pud dash up some stairs and behind the office door, safely ahead of the employee.

Each Tanakee reacted with a start when the woman shrieked. She must have noticed the mess they never got the chance to clean.

“Al! Come quick!”

“What? What’s wrong?” a man yelled from out of sight.