Banshee Worm King: Book Five of the Oz Chronicles (23 page)

I took the Banshee meat out of his hand.
 
“You sure about that?”

“That stuff ain’t failed me yet. I give a sample to one or
two in a group and then arrange a meeting where I’ll give them a truckload of
meat.”

“You lure them out of camp.”

“Yep... well most of them.
 
A few stay behind to guard the camp.”

“And that’s when Bostic goes on his hunts.”

He nodded.
 
“And bad
Bostic can hunt the fire out of Myrmidons, too.”

“Did Bostic send you here today?”

“No, sir. I run into a couple of them Myrmidons on the
south side of the ridge.
 
They brought me
back to discuss terms with their superiors.
 
I was just on my way to Bostic’s to let him know I set up a hunt.”

I studied the slimy meat. My eye caught my shoe.
 
“The smell of Myrmidons keeps the Banshees
away, right?”

“It does indeed.
 
That’s why the Myrmidons need the Ratty-Bobs to bring them the Banshee
meat.
 
They can’t never get close enough
to kill ‘em themselves.”

I leaned my head back and lightly thumped it against the
tree.
 
“There’s got to be way to get the
Banshees in close to the Myrmidon camp.”

“Whatcha want to do that for?”

“I’ve got to get my friends out of that camp.”

Max looked to the camp and then back at us.
 
“Banshees won’t come within a quarter mile of
the Myrmidons.”
 
He stood.
 
“No sir, there just ain’t no way to go about
it.
 
No sensible way, anyway.”
 

“No sensible way?”

He ignored what I said.
 
“You going to hold onto all the jubilee meat?
 
I’d be happy to take some of it off your
hands.”

“Is there a way that’s not sensible?” I asked.

He was focused on the jubilee meat.
 
“You don’t want to be caught by the Myrmidons
with that stuff.
 
I can promise you
that.
 
They will be none too happy to
find you with it.”

I pulled the sack of meat out.
 
“You want some meat?”

He started to salivate just looking at the sack.
 
“Mister, I’ll give you my last ear for some
of that meat.”

“Then tell me what you meant by ‘no sensible way.’”

“Huh?” He asked licking his lips.
 
“Oh that.
 
I meant the only to do what you got in mind is about as sensible as
shooting yourself with one of those arrows.”

I reached in the sack and pulled out the meat.
 
“Tell me the way.”

He nearly passed out when he saw the meat.
 
Gathering himself he said, “You need eggs.”

“Eggs?”

“Not the climbers, neither.
 
You need the fresh lays.”

“Climbers?”
 
I looked
at Ajax to see if he understood.
 
His
expression told me he was as confused as I was.
 
“What climbers?”

Still in a trance-like state, Max tried to explain.
 
“The Banshees start out as little soft
eggs.
 
Stay that way for about three days
and then they sprout a skinny little body with arms and legs.
 
They take to climbing the trees like a bunch
of monkeys.”

I nearly gasped. “Monkey-worms.”
 

“Can I have some meat now?”

I took out my knife and quickly cut off a sliver of
meat.
 
Handing it to him I said, “I’ll
give you more if you tell me where to find the fresh lays.”

He snatched the thin slice of meat out of my hands and
hurriedly stuffed it in his mouth.
 
“I’ll
tell you, but it still don’t make it sensible.”

I cut off some more meat and said, “You let me worry about
that.”

***

Ajax and I followed Max to a lake nestled in a small valley
three miles from the Myrmidon camp.
 
The
wind created a chilly looking chop, and I hoped Max was just stopping on the
muddy shore to rest.
 
I wouldn’t be that
lucky.

“It’s deeper than it looks,” Max said.

“Please don’t tell me the eggs are in the water.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Well?”

“I can’t say nothing.”

“Why not?”

“Because you asked me polite-like not to.”

“Crap!”

“If you hadn’t said please, I may have told you, but I was
taught to pay respect to pleases.”

I bent over and placed my hands on my knees.
 
I was not looking forward to getting in that
water. “How far down?”

“Thirty feet, give or take a foot or two.”

“Let me guess.
 
The
eggs are heavily guarded by a bunch of worms.”

“Not a bunch,” he said.
 
“There’s usually just one, but he’s pretty darn good at guarding them.
 
Big, too.
 
Biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

I sat down and took my shoes off.
 
“The Myrmidon smell will wash off in the
water, won’t it?”

“It will.
 
Wouldn’t
do you any good if it didn’t anyway.
 
The
egg guarder don’t pay no mind to it.”

I got down to my underwear and slipped on my now-empty
backpack.
 
I dipped my toe into the
disturbingly cold water.
 
“Anyone ever
done this before?”

Max scratched his head and gave the question some
thought.
 
“I’ve known about a dozen or so
who’ve tried.
 
Only one fella made it
down and back up.
 
He didn’t have no eggs
or left arm by the time he got back to shore.”

I shook my head.
 
“This just gets better and better.
 
How did he make it?”

“Well, now he come up with a theory that the guarder can’t
see nor smell nor hear.
 
It feels you in
the water.
 
You splash around and kick
and whatnot, it’ll find you before you barely get wet.
 
He swam quiet like a fish.”

“How do you swim quiet like a fish?”

“Ain’t sure.
 
All I
know is he did it and was doing fine with it until he was on his way back up.”

“What happened on his way back up?”

“He bumped into the guarder.
 
Scared him crazy.
 
He took to kicking and moving like he was on
fire.
 
Guarder got a bead on him then.”

I stepped in the water.
 
My toes felt like they were instantly frozen.
 
I asked Max one last question before wading
in deeper.
 
“How far out do I need to
go?”

“Smack dab in the middle.
 
Dive down and look for mounds that are about eight foot high.”

“Mounds?”

“Yeah, they got a hole on one side.
 
That’s where the eggs are.
 
They got air inside, so you can catch your
breath before you come back up.”

The water got deeper and deeper as I slowly approached the
middle of the lake.
 
When I lost the
bottom, I swam as quietly as I could.
 
Every time I heard myself splash some water around, I winced.
 
I even bit my cheek when my teeth began to
chatter from the cold. The farther out I got, the colder the water got.
 
Near the center of the lake, something
brushed my feet.
 
I stopped moving as
much as I could without sinking. Something brushed my leg.
 
My heart began to beat impossibly fast.
 
I felt all the air leave my lungs.
 
There was something underneath me.
 
I waited a minute to see if it would brush me
again.
 
When it didn’t, I told myself it
was just a fish and continued towards the center.
 
I heard something break the surface behind
me, but I couldn’t bring myself to look. Something brushed my leg again.
 
It felt as though my heart was going to beat
out of my chest.
 
I stopped, closed my
eyes, and slowly turned to see what had surfaced.
 
A white hump disappeared underneath the water
as soon as my head was all the way around.
 

Ajax paced on the shore.
 
He approached the water on a couple of occasions, but retreated.
 
He wanted to jump in the water and help me,
but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
 

“He’s looking for you,” Max shouted.
 
“He don’t know where you’re at, but he’s got
a pretty good idea you’re in the water. Oh, Lord, he’s a crafty one!”

If I could have shouted back I would have asked him to
please shut up. I didn’t need to be told a giant worm with teeth was looking
for me.

“You ain’t got much farther.
 
Maybe ten feet.
 
Then dive.”

The worm surfaced again.
 
Its head came out of the water about fifteen feet.
 
Max was right.
 
It was huge.
 
It was as big around as a whale.
 
I couldn’t tell how long it was, but it didn’t matter.
 

It bent down and gently touched the water with the point of
its head.
 
It reared up and came back
down, touching the water a few feet from where it did before.
 
It did this same thing a number of times.
 
It was probing the water trying to find
me.
 
It did it one more time, missing me
by just inches.

I heard a splash from the shore.
 
Ajax had waded in a few feet and was slapping
the surface of the water.
 
The worm
slipped underneath the water and disappeared.
 
It was going after Ajax.
 
The
silverback continued to slap the water, trying to draw attention to himself,
and he was succeeding.
 
In fact, he
succeeded too well. The worm surfaced and stretched towards Ajax, hiding the
gorilla from my view.
 
The Banshee
splashed into the shallow water, and I could see Ajax diving out of the way at
the last second. He rolled, regained his feet, and splashed the water again.

The worm rose up again.

“Ain’t going to have a better chance,” Max yelled.
 
“Get to swimming and diving. Go, go, go!”

I took his advice and quickly but quietly covered the next
ten feet.
 
Counting to three in my head,
I took a deep breath and dove.

The water went from bitterly cold to downright icy as I
swam down.
 
I couldn’t see anything but a
murky green haze in front of me.
 
My
whole body was numb.
 
I swam down, down,
down with no real concept of how deep I was.
 
The water got colder and colder as I went.
 
My lungs started to ache.
 
I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the
bottom. I was sure of it.
 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a change in the
light.
 
Something was moving, and I had a
pretty good idea what that something was.
 

I stretched my hand out in front of me and kicked my feet
as fast as I could.
 
I didn’t really care
if the movement helped the worm find me.
 
I was pretty sure he already knew where I was.
 

I wanted to take a breath.
 
I needed to take a breath.
 
My
lungs were shrinking and the cold water seemed to be crushing my chest.
 
How far was 30 feet?
 
It couldn’t be much farther, could it?

My hand crashed into something that felt slimy and hard.
 
The worm was underneath me.
 
I drew my hand back and tried desperately to
see what I had touched.
 
A pinhole view
cleared away in the murk, and I saw something brown.
 
I reached out and touched it.
 
It was the mound.
 
I hurried down and felt my way around the
structure.
 
Max had said there was an
opening somewhere, but I wasn’t sure I was going to find it before I ran out of
air.
 
I kicked my feet and patted up and
down the side of the mound.

The light above me disappeared and came back.
 
The worm was above me.
 
I began to think the best thing that could
happen to me is to run out of air and float to the top.
 
At least I wouldn’t be eaten alive.