Banshee Worm King: Book Five of the Oz Chronicles (3 page)

“Doesn’t make it any less true.”
 
He carefully folded the paper and handed it
back to me.
 
“Treat this like it’s your
last kidney, kid.
 
Keep it safe.”

I yanked it out of his hand.
 
“I don’t really care what happens to it.”

He shook his head.
 
“You should because if that thing gets ruined, all hell breaks loose.”

“All hell?
 
You’re
kidding, right?”

“Don’t be fooled into thinking things can’t get worse,
Oz.
 
Because they can. Much worse.”

The light overhead popped so loudly I ducked, expecting
shards of glass to rain down on my head.
 
I was surprised when they didn’t.

“That drawing gets destroyed and you’ll have a war on your
hands.
 
The Délons will have nothing left
to stay in power.
 
All the other
Destroyers will swoop in and make their claim to the throne of this crappy
world.”

“Fine.
 
Let them
fight each other.”

His face soured.
 
“You think you won’t get caught in the middle of their war? You think
the Keepers won’t get caught in the middle of it?
 
You think Nate will still be safe?
 
That drawing gets destroyed and all bets are
off.
 
You hear me?
 
There’s no more order, which means there are
no more rules.
 
You don’t want that kind
of hell, Oz. Trust me.”

Just as the word “me” left Archie’s mouth, the long tubular
light exploded and the room went pitch black.
 
I covered my head with my hands and fell to the floor waiting for the
glass to fall.
 
I waited a few seconds
and then peered out into the darkness.

I was kneeling on the muddy ground, trees all around
me.
 

The dream was over.

Two

We talked, but we didn’t really say anything that
mattered.
 
The morning brought the
coldest temperatures yet so most of our conversation centered on the weather
and how we needed to find warmer clothing.
 

Wes pointed out that we were on top of a mountain on a
planet that was pretty much dead.
 
Every
store from here on out would most likely have been picked clean of anything
useful to us or other survivors, if there were any.

“What do you suggest we do?” April asked.
 
Her voice was weak and her face was drained
of color. She looked like an extra in a zombie movie.
 

“Don’t know,” Wes said. “Just making an observation.”

Gordy was sitting up for the first time since we arrived at
our little spot on the highlands.
 
His
arms were crossed tightly in front of his chest, and he was shaking violently.

Lou knelt beside him and gave him a sip of water.
 
“The cold isn’t doing Gordy any good.”

“You ain’t lying,” Gordy said.
 
He tried to smile, but he was too weak.

Lou held the bottle of water out.
 
“We’re running low on supplies, too.”
 

“Sitting here and complaining isn’t very useful,” Tyrone
said.

I didn’t like his tone, but he was right.
 
“First things first,” I said.
 
“We need to find shelter.
 
Get out of this cold.”

“What do you suggest?” Wes asked.

I looked up and down the trail.
 
“We’re on a mountain in the woods.
 
Gotta be a cabin around here somewhere,
right?”

April’s eye widened. “A cabin?”

“Something wrong with that?”

“It’s just that last time we took shelter in an abandoned
house we all tried to eat each other.”

Gordy let out a short cough and said, “She’s got a point.”

“Don’t worry.
 
We’ll
steer clear of any creepy mansions we come across.”
 
I stood.
 
“Tyrone and I will scout out the area ahead.
 
We’ll take Kimball and Ariabod... you know,
just in case we run into trouble.”

“We know,” Wes said.

“Wait,” Lou said standing.
 
“We shouldn’t split up.”

“We shouldn’t do a lot of things,” I said.
 
“But we don’t have much choice.
 
Gordy’s in no shape to go exploring.”

The resolve left her face.
 
She knew I was right.
 
“Just don’t
do anything stupid. We can’t afford to lose you two.”

Ariabod huffed.

Lou rolled her eyes.
 
“We can’t afford to lose any of you.”

“Don’t worry,” I said turning up the trail.
 
“I’ll be just stupid enough.”

“That’s not funny,” she said.

Tyrone joined me and we headed up the trail with Ariabod
and Kimball in tow.
 

We walked out of range of the other’s voices before we
started talking to each other.
 
It was
Tyrone who started the conversation.

“I was thinking the other day.”
 
He paused to step up a steep incline and then
continued.
 
“I was thinking about how old
I was when all this started. I was eight, right?”

I nodded and stepped up the incline. “If you say so.”

“How long ago was that?”

I gave his question some thought.
 
“I don’t know. Must have been...”

“You don’t know, do you?”

I tried hard to come up with a number.
 
“I must have lost track.”

“Me, too,” he said.
 
“And that don’t seem right to me.
 
We should have some idea of how much time’s gone by.
 
We were only in that Biltmore place less than
10 days, but it feels like years.
 
That
can’t be right, can it?”

I sized him up.
 
“Anything can be right in this world.
 
Even if it’s wrong.
 
By the looks
of you, I’d say you’re thirteen... fourteen, maybe.”

“What would that make you?”

I did the math and gasped.
 
I couldn’t be that old.
 
I mean
really that old.
 
This wasn’t the
facility where I was tricked into thinking I was a middle-aged man.
 
This was real life... well, as real as this
life could get. I never stopped to think that seeing Tyrone look so different,
so much older, meant that people must think the same thing about me.

“That makes you about 18, right?”

I nodded.

“How could that many years go by and none of us really
notice?”

I shrugged tentatively. “When you’re struggling not to get
eaten or tortured or pummeled by monsters, I guess you just don’t pay attention
to those sorts of things. Besides maybe we can’t think of years as years in
this place.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re in a story, Tyrone.
 
We’re as old as the Storyteller needs us to be...”

We heard the sound of a stick breaking.
 
It stopped us dead in our tracks.
 
I held up a hand urging for quiet.
 
Kimball and Ariabod froze.
 
Tyrone grabbed the handle of his knife and
turned his face to stone.

The sound of feet walking on the debris on the forest floor
followed.
 

“You two squawk too damn much,” a low gravelly voice
said.
 

I heard the sound of Tyrone’s knife being slowly pulled
from its sheath.

I gripped his wrist and shook my head.

“Not just you two.
 
Every damn person in your party yaps like there ain’t nothing to be
afraid of in these damn woods.”

“Who are you?” I asked.
 
“Show yourself.”

The man with the gravelly voice broke out into
laughter.
 
“That’s a fine request, boy,
when your companion’s drawn a knife on me.”

“Put it back,” I said to Tyrone.

He grimaced and reluctantly put his knife back in its
sheath.

“Come up the way,” the voice said.

We didn’t move.

Exasperated, he said, “I’m too damn old to traipse up and
down this mountain more than necessary.
 
Come up the way to the peak in the path and you’ll lay your eyes on
me.”
 
He laughed.
 
“And a prettier sight you shall not see!”

We still didn’t move.

“Shit on a stick.
 
Send the dog up.
 
He’ll let you
know I ain’t got nothing nefarious on my mind.
 
Dogs can tell.”
 
He whistled.

Kimball bolted up the slope before I could stop him.
 
He reached the top of the path and stopped. A
hand reached out from behind a tree and scratched behind his ear.
 
He wagged his tail and licked the hand.

“Fine dog,” the voice said.

I motioned for Ariabod to move on ahead of us, and he
sauntered up the slope effortlessly.
 
Once at the top of the incline, he showed minimal interest in the man
behind the tree.
 
Tyrone and I slowly
made our way up the path.

Reaching the top, we discovered an enormous, heavily
bearded man propped up against the trunk of the tree.

“Howdy,” he said.

“Who are you?” Tyrone asked.

“You two ain’t much on niceties, are you?”
 
He struggled to push himself away from the
tree.
 
He towered over us.
 
He was a tall, thick man dressed in clothes
made from what appeared to be hides of various animals. “Bostic’s the name.”

“You following us?” I asked.

He shook his head.
 
“That ain’t how it works, young fella’.”

“Sorry?”

“You don’t get to ask me two questions in a row like
that.
 
There’s got to be some flow to
this conversation, some back and forth.
 
You asked me who I was.
 
I
answered.
 
Now it’s your turn.
 
Who are you?”

“I’m Oz...”

He groaned.
 
“I know
your names.
 
Told you before I’ve heard
everyone in your damn party spouting off about this and that.
 
You’re Oz.
 
He’s Tyrone.
 
The dog’s
Kimball.
 
That ape over there is Airopod.
 
And then back yonder is Wes, Lou, April,
Gordy - boy’s about to bite it, by the way - and then there’s that other ape,
Apex or Apax or some fool name like that.”

“Ajax,” I said.

Ariabod grunted.

“And that one’s Ariabod, not Airopod,” Tyrone said.

“Whatever.”

“How do you know so much about us?” I asked.

“Told you.
 
You talk
too damn loud.”

“You spying on us, old man?” Tyrone asked.

Bostic raised a bushy eyebrow.
 
“Son, this old man could hogtie and skin you
before you could count to what-for.”

Tyrone glared at him curiously.
 
“What-for?
 
How the hell do you count to what-for?”

“Smart-ass punk is what you are,” Bostic said.

“Hold on,” I said.
 
“Let’s get back on track here. Were you spying on us?”

Bostic held Tyrone in a stare for a moment longer before he
turned his attention to me.
 
“Not
spying.
 
Living.”

“Living?”

He pointed up to the forest canopy.
 
“In the trees.”

I looked at the tree trunk he had been leaning against.
Small blocks of wood were evenly spaced apart and nailed all the way up the
tree. “You live in the trees?”

He nodded and scratched his thick beard.
 
“Yep.
 
They can’t get me up there.”

Tyrone and I traded a look.
 

“Who can’t get you?” I asked.

“The Banshee worms.”

“Banshee worms?”

“That’s what I call them.
 
Don’t know what they’re really called.”

Tyrone groaned.
 
“I
don’t suppose these are little bitty worms like earth worms.”