Banshee Worm King: Book Five of the Oz Chronicles (15 page)

I shrugged.
 
“Maybe
they didn’t think you could handle the responsibility.”

He rolled his eyes.
 
“That’s exactly what they said.
 
What are you, a psychic?”

“Nope.
 
My parents
said the same thing to me the first thousand times I asked for a puppy.
 
I had to water my Mom’s house plants and move
them in and out of the sunlight for a whole month just to prove that I could
take care of something before they let me get Kimball.”

He snorted out a laughed.
 
“Forget that.
 
Who wants to take
care of plants for a month?”

“Somebody who’s willing to do anything to get his parents
to let him have a dog.”

He shook his head.
 
“Turns out I didn’t need my own dog.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because my best friend had one, and his super cool Mom told
me that when I was over at their house, I should consider Kimball my dog, too.”

I choked back a tear and looked away.

“I’m going to help you get those worms, Oz.
 
You can count on that.”
 
He held out his hand and I shook it.
 
“For Kimball.”

“For Kimball,” I said.

Bostic appeared in the doorway.
 
“You ready, Oz?”

“For what?” I asked.

“The hunt.
 
We need
to get on our way if we want to get to the Myrmidon camp before dark.”

“Myrmidon camp?” Gordy asked.

“Don’t ask,” I said walking into the house.

I dropped my pack on the floor and retrieved a crossbow
from the corner of the room.
 
Lou was
getting her stuff together for the hunt.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Same thing you are,” she said.

“You’re not going,” I said.

“Says who?” she asked with a grimace.

“Me.
 
You need to
stay back here with Gordy.”

She scoffed and continued getting supplies together. “April
can do it.”

April chimed in from the opposite corner.
 
“Yeah, I can do it.”

I gathered my arrows and headed for the door.
 
“I’m not sure why we’re talking about
this.
 
Lou stays.
 
April goes.”

Wes approached from the kitchen.
 
“That don’t make a lick of sense.
 
April ain’t exactly combat ready, and Lou’s
the best shooter we got.”

“And I might get hurt,” April said.

“Lou might get hurt, too,” I said.

“But it doesn’t matter as much,” April said before
realizing what she was actually saying.
 
“I mean she’s tougher.”

I glared at April.

Lou shook her head and walked out on the deck.
 
“I’m going, Oz.
 
Get over it.”

I watched her walk to the harnesses.
 
“You know, you people keep on telling me I’m
the leader of this group, but none of you listen to me.”

Lou turned with a smile on her face.
 
“Yeah we do.
 
When you make good decisions.”
 
She put on a harness.

***

We traveled the treeway until it ended on a ridge about
three miles away.
 
Bostic was confident
that we were outside of the Banshees’ territory, so it was safe to travel on
the ground to the next ridge.

The weather seemed to be getting colder by the second.
 
Our breath came out of our mouths in hazy pillows
of mist, and the cold damp air burned our lungs when we breathed in.
 

“One thing I ain’t clear on,” Wes said.
 
“How are we going to carry two Myrmidons back
to the treehouse.
 
Those things are
enormous.”

“Well,” Bostic said, “that is a bit of a puzzle.”
 
He held up some canvas sacks with straps
attached to them.
 
“Made these bags for
carrying meat.
 
I figure we can strap
them to the gorillas to carry the heaviest chunks.
 
We’ll divide the rest up between us.
 
That should do it.”

“Divide the rest up?” Tyrone asked.

“What’s your confusion, young fella?”

“Are you saying we’re going to cut them up into pieces?”
Tyrone’s voice got higher and higher as he spoke.
 
He couldn’t believe what Bostic was
suggesting.
 
None of us could.

He reached into his pack and pulled out an axe.
 
“Normally, I just field dress the kill in the
woods, but as Wes pointed out, lugging two Myrmidons back to my place would be
a near impossible task if they were kept in one piece.
 
It will be necessary to divide them up into
more manageable pieces.”

Lou stopped.
 
“This
is insane.”

“This is how I eat, young lady,” Bostic said.

“But we just left a place where we were trying to eat each
other,” Lou said conveniently leaving out that she didn’t try to eat anybody
nor did anyone try to eat her.
 
“Now you
got us traipsing through the mountains to kill and butcher two people for
meat.”

“Darling,” Bostic said sounding condescending, “these are
not people.”

“They were,” Lou said.

“‘Were’ ain’t ‘is.’”
 
He pulled himself up an incline using a small tree.
 
The tree nearly snapped supporting his
weight.
 
“Now, we really need to keep
moving otherwise we’ll be tangling with those two Myrmidons in the dark.”

Lou threw up her hands.
 
“Are you going to say something, Oz?”

I turned to her and said, “A, I told you not to come, and
B, this is the deal we made with Bostic.
 
He gave us shelter and treated Gordy.
 
We help him hunt.”

Disgusted she grabbed onto the same tree Bostic had used
and pulled herself up the hill.
 
“Fine,
but I’m telling you right now I am not cutting anything up.
 
And I’m sure as hell not eating any of the...
meat.”

“Don’t know what you’re missing,” Bostic said.
 
“The Myrmidon is by far the tastiest
freak-beasts out there today. Ratty-Bobs love Myrmidon meat.
 
They’d trade their grandmothers for it.”

“You trade with the Ratty-Bobs?” I asked.

“I do.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?
 
They don’t seem like the most sane people to deal with.”

“They’re not, but they’re pretty much harmless.”

“Pretty much?” Wes asked.

“I’ve only had one run in with them that got a little out
of hand.
 
Me and the one from last night
got into an altercation that didn’t end well for him.”

“How so?” Tyrone asked.

“He lost an ear.
 
I
kind of felt bad about that.”

“Kind of?” Wes asked.
 
“You’re a regular humanitarian, aren’t you?”

Bostic placed his meaty hand on a tree trunk and tilted his
head back.
 
His massive chest expanded
and contracted with each deliberate breath he took. “Lord have mercy!
 
I am spent like a quarter in a video
arcade!”
 
He stretched his legs.
 
“And to your point, Mr. Wes, my humanitarian
efforts ended when humanity ended.
 
Surviving ain’t about peace, love, and happiness.
 
Surviving is about getting there first or
fierce.
 
That’s just the way it is.”

Wes passed Bostic on the way up the hill.
 
He fought hard to hide just how exhausted he
was from the trek.
 
“You got it wrong,
Bostic.
 
Humanity didn’t end.”
 
He reached the top of the ridge and looked
down at us.
 
“Just the belief in it
ended.”

Bostic was about to respond when the sound of branches
snapping diverted his attention.
 
He held
his finger up to his mouth.
 
We all stood
like statues.
 
Another snap.
 
He motioned for us to duck for cover, and we
did so without hesitation.

He slowly scanned the terrain until he spotted some
movement.
 
“There,” he said in a
whisper.
 

I followed the direction of his outstretched finger and saw
a half dozen Myrmidons passing through a thicket of underbrush below us.
 
They had no idea we were there.
 
They were big just like everything else in
this world.
 
Their armor-like skin was
thick and heavy.
 
They looked impossible
to kill.
 
I knew they weren’t.
 
We had fought them before.
 
I had seen Ariabod and Ajax pummel one of
them to a bloody pulp, but it seemed to me that beating them without casualties
required a large amount of luck, and you couldn’t count on luck.

They moved swiftly through the woods.
 
Their tremendous weight basically obliterated
everything in their path.
 
It was almost
as if they were living, breathing tanks.
 
We watched them until they scaled the small ridge below us and
disappeared.

“We got about an hour before they head back to camp,”
Bostic said.
 
“They scout out every
perimeter on their patrols.
 
They’re
headed West and that’s usually their final perimeter check before heading back
to camp.”

“Usually?” I asked.

“They haven’t veered from that pattern yet.
 
Let’s just put it that way.”

“What’s the plan?” Wes asked.

Bostic scrambled up the hill.
 
Standing next to Wes, he wielded his
axe.
 
“We go in fierce.”

“Go in where?” Wes asked.

Bostic pointed down to the other side of the ridge.
 
“There.”

The rest of us jogged up the hill and saw that “there” was
an encampment made up of six mud huts.
 
It was lifeless with the exception of a dying fire in the center of the
camp.
 
A crudely made rack holding four
Medieval-type weapons was located near the farthest hut from us.
 
Given that the rack could hold more weapons,
I assumed the patrol we’d seen had taken the others.
 
Four weapons meant there were four Myrmidons
in camp, not two.

“Load up and bow up, boys and girls, because the fun is
just about to get started,” Bostic said with an evil grin.
 
A change had come over him.
 
He wasn’t the giant country-bumpkin anymore.
 
He was an animal on the hunt, and you could
see the joy in his eyes.
 
He was about to
kill something, and he couldn’t have been happier.

“I’m not so sure that would be a good idea,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.
 
He
held his axe in his hand and started to hop up and down on his toes, as if he
was warming up to go for a run around a track.

“There are four Myrmidons down there.”

“So,” Bostic said huffing out huge billowing mists of air.

“So, you said there would only be two.”

“Did I?”

I looked at the others to see if I was crazy, they all
nodded confirmed that I was right.
 
“Yes,
you did.”

He shrugged.
 
“No worries.”
 
He raised the axe above his head.
 
“It’s time.” With that he raced down the hill
letting out a warrior’s cry.
 

“What is he doing?” Lou said dumbfounded.

“He’s getting himself killed,” Wes said.

I growled as I loaded my crossbow.
 
“Stupid idiot!”

“What are you doing?” Wes asked.

“We told him we’d help him on his hunt.
 
I’m going to help him.”
 
I stood and started to make my way down to
the Myrmidon camp with my crossbow at the ready.
 

Lou appeared at my side shortly after and I heard the
telltale sign of Tyrone pulling his knife from his sheath.
 
With a grumble and muttered curse word or
two, Wes eventually joined us.

Bostic disappeared near a mud hut.
 
We could hear the sound of his axe blade
striking something hard, and then we watched as he came flying back, feet in
the air, his axe tumbling out of his hand.