Banshee Worm King: Book Five of the Oz Chronicles (27 page)

Back to the cages, I looked at Wes and smiled.
 
He didn’t smile back.
 
I looked at the others and noticed something
or someone was missing.

“Where’s Lou?” I asked.

Wes tapped his forehead against the metal bars of his
cage.
 
“Damn it.
 
I was hoping she’d be with you.”

I felt a pressure in my ears and an unsettling lightness
came over me.
 
It was as if I would float
off into space if I let go of the tree.
 
I could barely bring myself to ask, “What do you mean?
 
Where is she?”

“Don’t know,” Wes said.
 
“A couple of Myrmidons and Bostic came and got her a while ago.”

“They said they were taking her to Bostic’s,” Tyrone said.

“Bostic’s?” I said.
 
The image of his treehouse on fire came to me.
 
She wasn’t in the house. She couldn’t have
been.
 
I would have known. Wouldn’t I?

“Take it easy,” Wes said.
 
“I know that look.
 
She’ll be
fine.
 
Get us out of these cages and
we’ll find her, round up April, and then get the hell out of these damn
mountains.”

I forced myself out of my funk.
 
“How am I supposed to get you out of there?”

“There’s keys somewhere,” Wes said.

I shook my head.
 
“That’s not real helpful.”

“There,” Gordy said pointing down at the base of the tree.

I followed his finger and saw the keys sitting on a large
boulder next to the tree.
 
I removed my
backpack, hung it on a sturdy branch, and dropped off the limb I had been
sitting on.
 
One step towards the keys
and the ground shook.
 
I knew what that
meant. A worm was coming.
 
I dove for the
keys and managed to land on the rock nose first.
 
Blood gushed and my eyes watered.
 
I blinked away the tears and felt something
slimy on my leg.
 
Looking down I saw a
medium-sized worm gently probing my leg as it tried to determine if I was food
or enemy.
 

As I was considering my next move, a Myrmidon lurched forward
and grabbed the Banshee.
 
He yanked on
the worm pulling it entirely out of the ground.
 
He held it up, let out a screech, and then tore a chunk of flesh out of
the worm with his teeth. The armor-skinned warrior didn’t even know I was
there.
 

I grabbed the keys and climbed up the tree.
 
With Ajax’s help, we got everyone out of the
cages while the Myrmidon chewed on his meal below us.

We sat on various limbs in the trees.
 
The fighting had turned into groups of
frenzied Myrmidons killing worms and eating them.
 

“What’s the plan?” Wes asked.

“Find Lou, get April, and get out of here,” I said.

“Then I guess it’s back to the treehouse,” Wes said.

“It’s not there anymore.”

Wes looked surprised.
 
“Where does a house go?”

“Up in flames.”

“You burned it down?”

I shrugged.
 
“I kind
of had to.
 
I just hope...”

“You hope what?”

I held my breath before asking a question I wasn’t sure I
wanted the answer to.
 
“When did Bostic
come get Lou?”

“Thirty minutes ago...” He stopped when he realized what I
was trying to figure out.
 
“Son, I doubt
very seriously they could have gone from here back to the treehouse in 30
minutes.
 
That’s a forty-five minute trip
without dragging an ornery girl like Lou along.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“You find Bostic.
 
You’ll find her.”

I thought of the last place I had seen Bostic. He was lying
unconscious just beyond the Myrmidon camp.
 
I found myself hoping that he wasn’t eaten by his worms.
 
I grabbed my backpack and prepared to climb
the tree, but reconsidered when I saw the ground below us moving.
 
The last screaming egg I had tossed into the
crowd had stopped screaming, and the worms were coming for the remaining eggs.

I opened the pack and turned to the others.
 
“Once I toss this thing, we’ll probably have
10 minutes to get to the other side of the camp, find Bostic, and make it to
the treeway.”

“Toss what thing?” Gordy asked.

I pulled the egg out of the pack and said, “This.”

“And what in tarnation is that?” Wes asked.

“An egg.”

A number of worms broke through the surface of the ground
and started stretching towards us.

“Seems that egg is popular with our worm friends down
there,” Wes said.

“It certainly is,” I said.
 
“And it’s about to get a whole lot more popular.”
 
Not wanting to waste an arrow, I broke a
small branch off the tree and jammed it into the egg.
 

The others were startled by its scream.
 
The worms returned the egg’s scream with
their own screams.
 
I tossed the egg as
far as I could into the middle of the camp.
 
The worms dove underground and raced off in the same direction.
 
The branches above us started to shake
violently.
 
We all dipped back when
dozens of climbers dove out of the top of the tree and onto a group of
Myrmidons in pursuit of the screaming egg.

“That’s a pretty neat trick,” Wes said.
 
“Got anymore of those?”

“Got one more, but I want to hold onto it for as long as
possible,” I said dropping off the tree.

“Why?” Tyrone asked.

“Because if we need more, they’re not exactly easy to get.”

***

We reached the area where I had left Bostic.
 
The ground was full of sinkholes and there
were outlines of trenches underneath the soil, but there was no Bostic.
 

“What now?” Tyrone asked.

A particularly high-pitched screech shot out of the
Myrmidon camp.

“We get to the treeway.
 
Bostic’s probably gone back to his treehouse... or tried to anyway.”

Another screech came from the camp.

We ran and made it to the platform by the time the sounds
of the fight between the Myrmidons and the Banshees had died down.
 
We had made it just in time.
 
The worms began burrowing their way towards
us.
 

***

When we stepped on the deck before the zip line platform, I
signaled everyone to stop and be quiet.
 
The smell of burnt wood traveled on the breeze and I heard two people
talking across the walkway. It was April and Bostic.
 
The constant fog that normally blocked his
view of the treehouse was now no doubt mixed with black smoke.
 
The zip line itself was probably unusable
because there was no longer a structure for it to be attached to.
 
Bostic knew without seeing the house what I
had done.
 
I carefully walked halfway out
onto the connecting bridge between the platforms and listened to their conversation.

“He burned my house down!”

“How do you know?”

“I can smell it!
 
It’s gone!
 
Everything is gone!”

“You’ll just build a new one, right?
 
I mean you did it before...”

“I didn’t build it!
 
I took it from the people that built it!”

“You what?
 
What
people?”

“What difference does it make?
 
We don’t have a house!
 
We don’t have any meat!
 
Everything is gone!”
 
We’re dead!”

“What do you mean?
 
You’ll just get more meat.
 
Like
you did last time.”

“It’s not just the Myrmidon meat that’s gone!
 
It’s the Banshee meat that’s gone, too!
 
I need the Banshee meat to give to the
Ratty-Bobs so they can set up the Myrmidons for the hunt!
 
Without the Banshee meat, I don’t have a
chance to hunt down the Myrmidons.”

“Well, just kill a Banshee, and you’ll have more meat.”

“That’s easier said than done. I can only do it without
risking my neck when the worms are asleep, and they only sleep after they’ve
eaten.
 
I need food.”

“So get food.”

“Are you that stupid?
 
I don’t have the kind of food I need.
 
Not enough of it anyway...”
 
He
stopped talking, and I started backing down the bridge.
 
“One tiny girl isn’t enough to make a
dent...”
 
I kept backing away.
 
“But if I had your other friends, that would
be more than enough.”

“What are you saying?” April asked.
 
“You feed the worms people?”

He laughed.
 
“What do
you care?
 
You need the Myrmidon meat
just as much as I do.
 
Does it really
matter how I get it.”

She didn’t answer right away, but to my horror she
eventually said, “I guess not.”

“Let’s go.”

I turned and headed down back to the platform.
 
“C’mon,” I said in whisper.
 
“Follow me.”
 
I was guessing that they were headed back towards the Myrmidon camp to
see if Wes and the others were still there, so I lead everyone down a bridge to
a platform that was in a different direction.

On the platform, I signaled for everyone to get down, and
we listened for April and Bostic to pass.
 

But they didn’t. They stopped on the previous platform, and
Bostic said, “Go look after the girl.
 
I’ll meet up with you in a couple of hours.”

He continued on and April stepped onto the walkway headed
towards us.
 
I waved everyone back and
hid behind the tree.
 
When she stepped
onto the platform, I stepped up from behind her and put my hand over her mouth
to muffle her scream.

“Shhh, April it’s us,” I said.

The others stepped forward, and I could feel her body
relax.

“You’re alive?” she said.

“For now,” I said.
 
“Where’s Lou?”

“She’s this way. I was just headed there.”

“I know,” I said.
 
“We heard.”

She looked back over the walkway and then back at us.
 
“I’m not with him.
 
I swear it.
 
I just didn’t know what to do.
 
He
has the meat.”

“Had the meat,” I said.

She looked at me and grinned.
 
“You did burn down his treehouse.”

“I did.”

“He’s not too happy,” She said.

“Not my concern.
 
Take us to Lou.”

She nodded and pushed her way in front of us.
 
“Hope you don’t mind caves.”

I rolled my eyes.
 
I
did mind caves.
 
In fact, I downright
hated caves after what the Pure had put me through.
 
There’s only one person I’d go back into a
cave for.

***

“Lou’s in there,” April said pointing up at a cave entrance
in the side of a mountain.
 
It was
different from all the other mountains.
 
There were few trees and little grass on the mountain.
 
It looked like a pile of rocks.
 
There was a trail at the bottom of the
mountain that led right into the mouth of the cave about 100 feet up.
 

We all stood on a platform that was a dead end in Bostic’s
treeway.
 

“How in tarnation do we get there?” Wes asked.

“There’re footholds on the tree,” April said.

“I ain’t concerned with the getting down as much as the how
we’re going to make it up that hill without becoming a meal for them worms.”

“Oh,” April said, “Bostic says they don’t come this far.
Says it’s past their territory.”

That’s all I needed to hear.
 
I stepped on the first foothold.

“Hold up,” Wes said. “Why we listening to her exactly?”