Banshee Worm King: Book Five of the Oz Chronicles (2 page)

“Nothing,” I said.
 
“Ajax is just being a pest.”

“Why is he saying that?”

“Saying what?”

“That word.
 
He keeps
saying ‘reverse’ over and over again.”

“Reverse?” I shrugged.
 
“Who knows?
 
I just asked him why
apes have to smell so bad.”

Ajax let out a growl like he was offended.
 
He clapped his huge hand against my shoulder
and shoved me to the ground.
 
He was
being as gentle as he could, but it still hurt like hell.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Lou said.

“He’s a gorilla.
 
What do you want?”
 
I sat back up
rubbing my shoulder.

The word ‘reverse’ stuck in my head as I stood.
 
Stevie had said something else in the
basement of his house.
 
Something about
reading the story... backwards.
 
I
wandered away from the others deep in thought, trying to remember his exact
words.
 
“It’s never the same when you
read it backwards,” I said so low that it sounded as if I was hissing.
 
“You see things you didn’t see before.”

Without paying attention, I had walked onto a marked path.
 
The branches in the trees clicked and rattled
as the wind blew through the area.
 

“You see things you didn’t see before.”

“What?”

I looked in the direction the question came from and saw
Tyrone sitting on a tree stump.
 
Every
time I saw him, I had trouble picturing him as the little kid I had first seen
riding with the bicycle bandits in South Pittsburg. He was taller than me now.

“Nothing,” I said in response to his question.
 
“You eat?”

“Lou gave me a power bar.”

“Yeah, me too.”

He stared up at the sky.
 
“Things are different.”

“What do you mean?”

“The sky.
 
The
air.
 
The smells.
 
I can’t really put my finger on it, but
things just feel different.”

I sniffed the air, but couldn’t really detect what he
detected.
 
“You think that’s bad or
good?”

He shook his head.
 
“Nothing good happens in this world.”

I nodded.
 
“You hear
we’re not going to Tullahoma now?
 
We’re
headed north.”

He shrugged.

I laughed.
 
“You
really don’t care, do you?”

“Why should I?”

“Well, it’s just that Wes and Lou...”

“Have something to go home to.”

“And you don’t?”

“Let me ask you something, Oz.
 
You think bringing our world back will bring
back the people who’ve died in this world?”

“This is about Valerie.”

He didn’t answer.

“I don’t know how it works, Tyrone.
 
It might.”

“It won’t,” he said.
 

“How can you be so sure?”

He thought about my question.
 
“Because the one thing I’ve learned being
here is that the only thing worse than today is tomorrow.
 
That’s just the way it is.”

“Man,” I said, “you’re a regular barrel of laughs.”

He stood.
 
“When we
heading out?”

“Morning.”

He nodded and looked up at the sky.
 
“Something’s definitely different.”

After he walked away, I sat on the tree stump and tried to
clear my head.
 
I just wanted to stop
thinking.
 
There was so much noise buzzing
through my brain that I couldn’t hold onto a single thought.
 
It was as if all the questions I’d ever asked
in my life were bombarding me all at once.
 

Kimball sat next to me and whined until I scratched his
head.
 
He moved in closer and rested his chin
on my leg.
 
I moved my hand down and
scratched the scruff of his neck.
 
He
responded by lying down on his back and exposing his belly.

“A belly rub, huh?
 
Man, you’re pushing it.”

He squirmed on the ground and snorted.
 
I didn’t know it at the time, but I
smiled.
 
I wished I had noticed it
because I would have really appreciated it.
 
I gave in and scratched his belly.
 

“If I had to choose the people I survived the end of the
world with, Kimball, you’d be first on my list.
 
It doesn’t really matter that you’re not people.”
 

He groaned and twisted his body back and forth as I
continued to scratch his belly.
 
I found
myself being comforted by it as much as he was. I settled in and savored every
second I could before he had enough and stood up.
 
He shook the dirt from his fur and
disappeared into the woods on the other side of the path.
 
I hated to see him go.
 

I leaned back and felt my eyelids start to close.
 
I fought it.
 
I’m not sure why.
 
They continued
to grow heavier and heavier. Despite my best efforts, I quickly dozed off.
 

I dreamt.

***

The halls were dank and dim.
 
Sputtering fluorescent lights crackled and
buzzed overhead as I moved down the corridor.
 
The smell of the place was familiar.
 
The odor of piss and sweat told me exactly where I was: the
facility.
 
The place where the dead had
visited me while I slept. The place where I’d met Bones and Scoop-face.
 

I turned a corner and recognized a doorway, Scoop-face’s
room.
 
It stopped me in my tracks.
 
I didn’t want to be here, not even in a
dream.
 
The sound of footsteps came from
the room.
 
I ignored every instinct to
run and instead moved towards it.

Reaching the open door, I gave myself a second to gather up
my courage before I turned to look.
 
As I
turned, I heard the squeak of the flimsy bedsprings and considered closing my
eyes, but I didn’t.

The figure sitting on the bed was lanky and hunched
over.
 
The man’s profile revealed a large
Roman nose.
 
It was Scoop-face before he
was Scoop-face, Archie.

“I remember this place,” he said.

I slowly moved into the room.

“I’ve never been here, but I remember it.
 
How can that be?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at me confused.
 
“You were here, too.”

I nodded.

“We didn’t belong here, did we?”

“It was a trick.
 
The
one they call the Pure created it.
 
He
wanted to get inside our heads.”

“The Pure?”

“He’s a Délon.
 
The
first Délon.”

Archie’s eyes darted back and forth as he processed this
new information.
 
“The Source,” he said.

“What about it?” I asked.

“That’s what this place was for. He created it to find his
source, the Source.
 
Where all Délons
came from.”

“That’s right.”

“He thought the Creyshaws would lead him to it.”
 
He stood and stepped across the room
absentmindedly laughing.

“What?”

“I’m dead.”

“Yeah,” I said, “you are.”

He spun around on his toes and locked eyes with me.
 
“You killed me.”

I didn’t answer.
 
I
couldn’t.
 
I could only bow my head.

He snapped his fingers as if he had received a great
thought out of the blue.
 
“But you had
to.”

I still couldn’t bring myself to say anything.

“I asked you to because if you didn’t we’d be back here.”

I let a chuckle escape and then looked at him.
 
“We are back here.”

“No.
 
Not like
before.”
 
He felt his face with both
hands and gently stroked the bridge of his nose.
 
“I have... my nose, my eyes.”

“Because,” I said.
 
“I...”

“You didn’t pull the Shunter off my face.”
 
He moved back to the bed and sat down.
 
“I remember now.
 
You pulled the Shunter off my face.
 
Each time you did, we were back here.
 
It was some weird loop, right?”

“Basically, but I never remembered being here.
 
Only you did.”

“And I asked you to kill me to break the cycle, so I
wouldn’t lose my face.”

I nodded.

His eyes welled up and a tear slid down his face.
 
“Thank you.”

“I wish that made me feel better about what I did,” I said.

“You had to do it.”

“Having to do something doesn’t make you feel good about
it.”

He wiped the tear from his face and smiled.
 
“That’s the price of being Creyshaw, I
guess.”

I sat down next to him.

“They’re losing control, you know?”

“The Délons? I know.”

He hesitated and then said, “Don’t ask me how I know this
because I don’t know, but you have the Source, don’t you?”

I considered his question and then remembered the picture
in Stevie’s room, the drawing of the Délon.
 
I frantically felt around in my pockets and sighed in relief when I
found a folded piece of paper.
 
Holding
it up, I said, “I do.”

“The Délons are hanging on by a thread.
 
That thing is the key to their power.
 
That’s why the Pure wants it.
 
That’s why General Roy wants it.
 
Whichever one gets it rules with nothing
standing in the way.
 
Whoever controls
the Source controls everything.”

“Which means that as long as I have it, they won’t stop
looking for me or the others.”

Archie took the paper from my hands and unfolded it.
 

“You want it?” I said with a snicker.

He handed it back.
 
“My Creyshaw days are over, my friend.”

“Okay, so any suggestions on what I should do with it?”

He stood.
 
“Yeah,
make a choice.”

“A choice?”

“The Pure or General Roy.”

I furrowed my brow.
 
“What?”

“You’ve got to hand it over to one of them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ve got in your possession the most powerful bargaining
chip in this world.
 
You can use it to
get whatever you want and be a king maker at the same time.
 
You might as well take advantage of it.”

“Yeah, but you’re telling me to just hand it over.
 
To give up.”

He laughed this time.
 
“You’ve already given up, Oz.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s over for you.
 
You ain’t looking for a way home anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if you do, you might find it.
 
If you find it, you lose Lou.
 
You ain’t willing to take that risk.”

I sat with the drawing in my hand, gripping it tighter and
tighter.
 

“Easy now,” Archie said gently reaching out for my
hand.
 
“Don’t destroy it.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

He carefully took the drawing from me.
 
“About Lou? Yeah, it’s true.”

“She’s not real.” I said it just to make sure we were
talking about the same thing.

“She is here, with you, fighting the Destroyers, but...”

“She can’t go back home with the rest of us.”

“This is her home.”

I heard a low humming and jerked my head up.
 
The fluorescent light over the bed flickered
erratically.
 
“I don’t want it to be
true.”