Banshee Worm King: Book Five of the Oz Chronicles (20 page)

“Shut up!” Thomas said.

“No,” Max said. “Bostic is bad.
 
We gotta say everything.”

“He won’t find out you said anything,” I said.
 
“I promise.”

Thomas reluctantly gave Max permission to tell me about Bostic.

“Bostic keeps the worms.
 
He feeds them.
 
He takes care of
them.”

“Why?” I said sounding a little dazed by the news.

“For the Myrmidons.”

I was even more confused.
 
“Why would he keep the worms for the Myrmidons?”

Max did his little shuffle dance. “It’s their jubilee
meat.
 
Makes them dance on their feet.”

I thought about his answer.
 
“The Myrmidons eat the worms?”

“They eat ‘em up like there is no tomorrow,” Max said.

“And it’s like this?” I asked holding up the sack.
 
“Once they eat it they can’t live without
it?
 
Literally?”

“It makes their heart go beat, beat, beat,” he said tapping
his chest with his open hand.

I processed the information and said, “What do you mean
‘baiting for him?’”

“We bring the Myrmidons in.
 
Travel night and day to find a pack of them and then slip them some
Banshee meat. Once it gets in them, they get drawn here like a fly to sugar
water.”

My shoulders dropped as I finally understood what was going
on.
 
“And Bostic hunts them down for the
meat.”

“Jubilee meat. Jubilee meat...”

I stopped Max mid-song and handed him the sack.
 
“Here.
 
Just stop singing and take this.”

Max looked at the sack wide-eyed and then ripped it out of
my hands.
 
He could barely contain his
excitement.
 
Holding up the sack he
yelled, “Jubilee meat!”

The Ratty-Bobs erupted in dance.

Thomas took the sack from Max and turned to the group,
“Time to eat our sweet, sweet jubilee meat!”

They ran for the other side of the clearing with Thomas
carrying the sack above his head.
 
I
stopped Max before he could join them.

“Gotta go before the meat’s gone,” he said as if he were
about to cry.

“I just want to know one thing.
 
What does Bostic feed the worms?”

Max looked at the others getting farther away and then
quickly back at me.
 
“He... He... He
feeds them most anything.
 
They ain’t
picky.
 
Won’t eat Myrmidon, but that’s
it.”
 
He tried to pull away.

“Wait.
 
What about
his people?”

“People?”

“The group that used to live in the trees with him. What
happened to them?”

“Bostic ain’t never had people.
 
The same people anyway.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I gotta go,” he said.

“Just tell me what you mean.”

Max stomped his foot like an angry kid and said, “He takes
in traveling folks like you every now and again.”

“Traveling folks?”

“People running from the scary stuff to the cold.
 
Come through here every two or three
months.
 
He takes them in.
 
Fattens them up.”

“Fattens them up?”

Max pulled away and said, “Bostic is bad.
 
I done told you that.”

“He feeds them to the worms?”

“The ones that don’t eat the jubilee meat,” he backed away
into the darkness.

“What happens to the ones that eat the jubilee meat?”

“They become one of us,” he said as he turned and ran
towards the other side of the clearing.

I watched him disappear into the darkness.
 
A wind came out of nowhere and whirled around
me.
 
It felt like every thought I had
ever had in my life was rushing through my head.
 
I couldn’t control them.
 
They came at lightning speed, making me
dizzier and dizzier by the second.
 
I
placed both hands over my ears and pressed.
 
I was going crazy.
 
I was sure of
it.
 
I breathed in deeply and the
thoughts slowed until eventually I was stuck with just a single thought
bouncing around in my head.

“Bostic is bad.”

I took a step back.
 
I was wasting time standing in the clearing fighting the thoughts in my
head.
 
I had to get back.
 
I stepped toward the line of trees and my
foot landed in a hole.
 
I felt my knee
pop and fell to the ground in pain.
 
Slapping the ground, I cursed my luck.
 
How could I have been so careless?
 
I flexed my knee and was relieved that it wasn’t hurt as badly as I’d
thought.

The ground beneath me rumbled as if there was a tiny
earthquake.
 
I sat up facing the
clearing.
 
Everything looked normal at
first. It was possible I’d just imagined the earthquake. I leaned forward to
get back on my feet, but stopped when I saw a hump appear on the other side of
the clearing.
 
At least I thought it
appeared.
 
It could have been there all
along.
 
It must have been there all
along.
 
Another hump appeared.
 
This time I was sure it hadn’t been there
before.
 
A giant white object surfaced
and then disappeared below ground.
 
The
Banshees.

I stood and tried to figure out why they would show
now.
 
Max said the Myrmidon meat would
keep them away... The Myrmidon meat.
 
I
didn’t have it anymore.
 
I was out in the
middle of the woods, at least a half a mile away from the treeway, and I had
nothing to protect me from the Banshees.
 

The worm surfaced again.
 
It had traveled fifty feet in just seconds.
 
It rose out the ground four or five feet, and
I could see the half-moon scar.
 

I went from being terrified to being angry, but not angry
enough.
 
Not the kind of anger I
experienced fighting Bostic.
 
I’d never
be able to dig up my Délon side in time.
 
My only option was to run.

I turned and took one step towards the woods and nearly
fell again.
 
A sharp pain shot through my
knee.
 
Whatever I’d done to it would
apparently slow me down when I really couldn’t afford to be slowed down.

I heard the worm surface behind me and decided the only
thing I could do was ignore the pain and run like it wasn’t there.
 
Four steps in, the pain became tolerable
enough for me to do just that.
 
I ran,
pumping my arms and legs like there was no tomorrow.
 
I reached the tree line and crashed through the
low lying brush and started my way up the hill in the direction of the treeway,
at least I hoped it was the direction of the treeway.
 
I couldn’t get my bearings.
 
I knew I had come down the hill to the
clearing, but I couldn’t remember which way down the hill.
 
Did I come straight down, from the right or
from the left?
 
I chose to go straight
up.

My foot slipped on a loose rock and my knee seized up in
pain.
 
I leaned up against a tree and
tried to work the pain out.

A small tree at the bottom of the hill moved and tilted to
the right.
 
A slightly bigger tree next
to it tilted to the left.
 
The worm was
churning its way underneath the mountain headed straight for me. There was no
way I was going to outrun it. I looked up.
 
I couldn’t climb any of the trees nearby.
 
I turned and scrambled farther up the
mountain, using my hands to help pull myself along the damp ground.
 
Every time I lost my footing, a shooting pain
shot up my leg.

I came to a tree that was large enough to climb and had a
branch low enough for me to use as leverage.
 
I grabbed it and crashed to the ground when it broke.
 
The hill started to cave in.
 
The Banshee surfaced and sensed I was close
by.
 
It let out a shriek and dove
underneath the ground.
 
I had a feeling
the next time it surfaced would be right underneath me.
 
I would be bitten in half before I found
another tree to climb.

Still, I couldn’t just wait for it to find me.
 
I forced myself to stand and scanned the area
for another tree.
 
There were plenty that
would have been perfect if my leg wasn’t killing me.
 
Finding one with a branch and foothold to
make it an easy climb was another matter.

The ground shifted underneath my feat.
 
It was here.
 
The pain in my leg went away as my mind went into full blown panic
mode.
 
I hugged the tree nearest me and
attempted to shimmy my way up its trunk.
 
I got three feet off the ground before the worm poked through the
dirt.
 
It probed the air and immediately
got a bead on me.
 
Slowly it stretched
its long body out of the ground until we were eye to mouth.
 
I could smell its putrid breath.
 
I was going to be eaten just like
Kimball.
 
When I thought of it that way,
I didn’t mind as much.

It leaned away and opened its mouth.
 
The next motion would be a quick head strike
followed by its teeth ripping through my flesh.
 
I prepared myself for the end.
 
This was all finally going to be over.
 
Maybe this is how I would make it home.
 

I heard a garbled roar and then watched as a huge black and
silver mass swung out of the tree and landed with a thud on the ground.
 

Ajax didn’t waste any time.
 
He leapt for the giant Banshee and yanked it back, pulling it away from
me.
 
He threw his huge fist into its
slimy body. The worm twisted so violently that it sent Ajax flying. He landed
ten feet away.
 
The gorilla rolled and
sprang to his feet and knuckles.
 
He
shook his powerful head to get rid of the cobwebs and then barreled towards the
Banshee again.
 
Sensing it was about to
be bashed again, the worm zipped its body underground.
 
Ajax didn’t give me time to say anything
before he scooped me up and pulled us both up into the top of the tree.

He panted and huffed, doing whatever he could do to catch
his breath.
 
We sat on a thick branch
that barely supported our weight, and I searched for what to say.
 
I didn’t know how he got there when he did,
but I owed him my life... again.

“I’m not sure what just happened,” I said, “but thanks.”

He wouldn’t look at me.

I thought of Kimball.
 
How could I not?
 
In my mind, Ajax
would always be linked to Kimball’s last horrible moments on this planet.
 
It was wrong of me to think that way.
 
I had to let go of the growing hatred I had
for the gorilla. “Listen, I need to say something to you,” I said.
 
“It’s about Kimball.”

He turned his back to me.

“I wouldn’t look at me either.”

He still didn’t acknowledge me.

I placed my hand on his shoulder and to my surprise he
reached over his shoulder and placed his hand on top of mine. “A life with
purpose can only end in honor.” That was it.
 
I didn’t need to say I was sorry because he knew.
 
Gorillas always know.
 

The worm poked through the ground and stretched a foot in
the air.
 
If it figured out we were
within stretching distance, it wouldn’t hesitate to come after us.
 
At the moment, it was looking for us. Waiting
for us to move so it could feel the vibrations. It smelled us, and knew we were
close.
 
But the more I watched it, the
more I felt certain it couldn’t hear.
 
It
found its prey by feeling it move.
 

I didn’t take any chances on being wrong about its
deafness.
 
I waited for it to submerge
before talking.
 
“We’ve got to figure out
a way to the treeway.”