Banshee Worm King: Book Five of the Oz Chronicles (9 page)

I hesitated and then turned back to the wall.
 
“There’s nothing anyone can do.”

I felt him sitting behind me for a few more minutes before
standing and walking away.
 
He whispered
something to someone and then I heard someone taking his place in the chair.

“Oz,” Lou said, “won’t you at least try to get some sleep?”

“I’ll sleep when I’m tired.”

“But you’ve been up all night.”

I shrugged.
 
“I’m not
tired.”

She didn’t push it.
 
I felt her ease back in the chair.

“Did you get a look at it?”

She didn’t answer right away.
 
“Look at what?”

“The worm.”

“The worm?
 
You mean
the one...”

“Yeah, the one.
 
It
had a scar on the right side of its head.
 
Half moon shape, about six inches long.”

“I didn’t see,” she said.
 
“It moved so fast.”

“I saw it.
 
Been
thinking about it all night long.
 
I keep
picturing that scar.”

“Oh,” she said not knowing what else to say.
 

“I’m going to kill it.”

The chair creaked as she leaned forward.

“I’m going after it.
 
I’m going to find it and cut it up into little pieces.”
 
I finally turned and looked at her and wasn’t
at all surprised to see the terrified expression on her face.
 
“I’m going to kill that stinking worm,
Lou.”
 
I gritted my teeth and raised my
hand in a fist.
 
“And I’m going to squish
all the little pieces with my bare hands.”
 

There was silence. I squeezed my fist into a white-knuckled
ball.
 
The faces of the others standing
on the other side of the room turned from concern to horror.
 
I lowered my fist.

Bostic stepped forward with his thumbs looped through his
homemade belt.
 
“You gone Ahab on us,
kid.”

I didn’t reply because I didn’t know what he meant.

“Moby Dick?”
 
He
asked stepping even closer.

“What about it?” I asked.

“It’s a book.
 
You
heard of it?”

“Heard of it,” I said. “Never read it.”

He scratched his beard.
 
“I read the damn thing.
 
Tried to
anyway.
 
Assigned reading in school when
I was your age.”

“I haven’t been in school in a long time.”

He nodded.
 
“That’s
right.
 
Time gets away from me.
 
You would have been too young to read
it.
 
Lucky,” he said propping his foot up
on a small stool.
 
“Damn book’s a tough
read, but it does lay out a nice cautionary tale about revenge.”

“Nothing wrong with revenge,” I said dismissively.

He leaned forward propping himself up with his hand on his
thigh.
 
“You’d think that, wouldn’t
you?
 
Feels right.
 
Feels like even-Steven is the only way to
go.
 
Captain Ahab went after that white
whale because it took his leg.
 
He wanted
to make that accursed white whale bleed, suffer for what it did to him and his
ship.
 
But, as you can probably imagine,
it didn’t turn out too well for him and a good many of his men.”

“What’s your point?” I asked.

“My point is, boy, that you lost your dog today, but that
ain’t nothing compared to what you will lose if you go after that worm.
 
No good will come of it. Not for you or none
of these other people who seem to care a good bit about you.”

Tyrone stepped forward.
 
“I’ll help you get it, Oz.”

Bostic chuckled.
 
“There,
you see.
 
The angry fella is on your
side.
 
What does that tell you?”

“I ain’t angry,” Tyrone said.
 
“But...” he stopped and grunted back the urge
to cry.
 
“I’d like to get in on some of
that revenge stuff.”

Bostic stood up straight and shook his head.
 
He turned to Wes.
 
“Are you going to say something?”

Wes had his head hung low, but he peered up at Bostic and
said, “I’m with my boys on this one. I want that worm hunted and gutted quick
as a hiccup for what it did to Kimball.”

Bostic turned to Lou.
 
“I suppose you’re of the same mind.”

Lou darted her eyes from Bostic to me, pulled the muscles
in her jaw taut and nodded.
 

“Ain’t none of you got a lick of sense.
 
You’re going to go off all half-cocked into
the woods and hunt down a killer that lives beneath your feet.
 
It can come up on you without a warning.
 
It’s got thousands of wormy cousins that are
just as sneaky and hungry as it is, and not a one of you thinks this is a bad
idea!”

“I do,” April said mildly.
 

Bostic put his hand over his heart and said, “Well thank
the good Lord above for small miracles.
 
This time tomorrow all that will be left is me, her, and your dying
friend over there.”

We all shifted our attention to Gordy.
 
He lay on the cot soaked in sweat.
 
His chest expanded and collapsed dramatically
with each breath he took.
 
He smacked his
dry lips together with eyes tightly closed.

I stood up and moved to his bedside.
 
“Gordy’s not dying,” I said with a
forcefulness that even I didn’t think I could muster.
 
I had lost the world, my parents, fellow
warriors, including my dog.
 
I was not
going to lose my only friend from the time before.

Bostic sighed.

I was about to tear into him like there was no tomorrow
when I saw Ajax and Ariabod sitting at the backdoor.
 
They had their backs to everyone and were
signing the same thing over and over again.
 

“What are they doing?” I asked.

Lou said, “Praying... more or less.”

“Praying?
 
What are
they saying?”

“Literally?
 
‘A
purpose life only end in honor.’”
 
She
choked back tears and repeated the phrase in her own words, “A life with
purpose can only end in honor.”

Upon hearing Lou, Ajax did a half turn towards us.
 
As soon as I saw his face, my mind flashed
back to the worm surfacing, and I shook my head.
 
I owed Ajax my life, but I couldn’t stop
myself from blaming him for letting Kimball die.
 
Why didn’t he save Kimball?
 
He could have.
 
I turned away from him.
 
Maybe he couldn’t have saved Kimball, but as
long as I had doubts, there was no way I could look at him, not without
thinking of that awful, awful moment.
 

“Tell them to stop,” I said.

“What?” Lou asked even though she heard me.

“I don’t want them to do that anymore.”

“But they want to do it.
 
They need to.”

“They’ve never done it before.”

“But this is different.
 
This is Kimball.
 
He was special.”

I practically growled before saying, “I know he was
special!
 
You don’t think I know
that?
 
He was my dog!
 
Tell them to stop!”

She looked crushed by my outburst.
 
She gathered herself and suppressed the urge
to let me have it for being so selfish.
 
She gave me a stern nod, approached the gorillas and simply signed,
‘stop.’

Both gorillas complied without argument and lumbered off to
a corner of the room.

Lou avoided turning in my direction and moved to the
kitchen.

I grabbed Gordy’s hand and whispered, “A life with purpose
can only end in honor.”

I mumbled the phrase to myself until I fell asleep with my
head resting on my arms on Gordy’s bed.

***

I woke up with Tyrone shaking me by my shoulder.
 
My eyelids felt like they were being pulled
down and it was a struggle to open them.
 
It was dark and quiet.
 
The others
were asleep.

Tyrone leaned in and whispered, “Where’s Gordy?”

“What do you mean?”
 
I sat up and looked at Gordy’s empty bed.
 
The sight of it startled me.
 
I stood up.
 
“Where is he?”

As soon as the question left my mouth, we heard voices
coming from the back of the house.
 
Tyrone was halfway across the room before I could even stand up.
 
When we got closer to the voices, we realized
they were coming from outside.
 

Tyrone pulled the backdoor open, and we both rushed
outside. We were met by the quick sound of footsteps running on the wood
deck.
 
We turned to see who they belonged
to, but it was too dark.
 
We saw a figure
dash around the back corner of the house.

“Who was that?” Tyrone asked.

The sound of the shaking branches and leaves distracted us
for the moment.
 
When we reached the
railing of the deck, we saw a figure climbing down the tree.

“Hey,” I said.

A pale sickly face looked up at us.
 
“Oz?”

I leaned over the deck to get a better view of the
person.
 
“Gordy?”

“Hey, boss man.”

“What are you doing there?”

“The man with the monkey told me there was food down
here.
 
I’m starving.”

“Man with the monkey?”
 
Tyrone asked.

“Don’t go any farther,” I said to Gordy.

“You got food?” Gordy asked.

“No,” I said.
 
“Not
on me.”

“Well, the man with the monkey said there’s food down here
and I’m starving.”

“You go down there and you are the food,” Tyrone said.

Gordy laughed and continued to climb down. It was pretty
clear he was delirious.

“What’s going on?” Lou asked from the door.

“Gordy’s up,” Tyrone said, “and he’s climbing down the
tree.”

“What?” she said running to the railing.

I jumped to the tree and had a vivid flashback of the last
time I had been there.
 
That white worm
with the half moon scar surfaced in my mind, but I shook it off.

“Gordy!” Lou yelled.

He stopped briefly to look up at her and smile.
 
“Lou, Lou, the blue Lou.” He giggled madly
and reached out for a limb to support himself, but slipped and crashed down to
the next level of limbs.

“Stop,” I said.
 
“I’m
coming to get you.”

“Whatever, dude,” Gordy said pushing himself off the
limb.
 
In a move that looked way too
acrobatic for Gordy, he gripped another limb and swung clear of the tree and
dropped down to the ground.
 
He groaned
in pain, but still managed to hobble a few feet away from the tree.
 
“Where’s the food, monkey dude?”

Ariabod appeared out of nowhere above me and quickly
climbed down the tree.
 
Ajax appeared
right behind him.
 
He stopped on the limb
below me, blocking my way.

“Move, Ajax,” I said.

He didn’t acknowledge me at all.
 

I climbed down a limb and attempted to pass him.
 
He grabbed my wrist.
 
When I attempted to work free from his grasp,
he growled and let me know in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t going to allow
me to go after Gordy.
 

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
 
“Are you going to let Gordy get eaten, too?”

His determined glare turned dark and then sad.
 

I heard the thump of Ariabod hitting the ground and watched
as he sniffed the air.

“Ariabod,” Gordy said excitedly.
 
“My main gorilla.
 
Where’s the food?”

The ground began to rise and fall around him.
 
The Banshee worms were circling him.