The Pure: Book Three of the Oz Chronicles (22 page)

“Kill them!” he screamed.

Wes fumed. “Two minutes, pal! That’s all
I want. Two minutes alone with you!”

I knelt next to Ajax. Madison was alive,
but barely. Blood was coming out of her mouth. She struggled to breathe. She
looked at me with a blank stare. “I miss my mom.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

She swallowed. “It doesn’t hurt that
much.”

“Shut her up!” Carl screamed.

She laughed and then winced in pain. “He
destroyed himself.” With that, she took one last breath.

“What did she mean by that?” Carl asked.
“I didn’t destroy myself. I’m right here. I’m a god! Nothing can destroy me!”

I stood and approached Carl. His eyes
were as blank as his daughter’s. She was right. He did destroy himself. I
yanked the crossbow from his hand. I addressed his crew. “This is over.”

A quick scan of the perimeter revealed
dozens of ape eyes staring back at us.

Jerry pointed his arrow at me. “He did
what he had to. She was weak.”

I pushed the arrow down. “It’s over. You
can come with us, or you can go back to your complex. It’s up to you.”

Carl dropped to his knees. He began to
wail. “I am a god!”

The ground suddenly shook beneath our
feet. A belch of stale air rolled through the forest. I stuck my hands out to
balance myself. Most of Carl’s crew tumbled to the ground. The apes screeched
as the earth trembled.

Carl screamed, “I’m on fire!” His skin
began to drop off in chunks. His bones cracked and snapped as his body grew in
every direction. One-by-one, the same thing happened to everyone in his crew.

Gordy yelped in astonished horror. Wes
groaned, and Ajax yowled in disbelief. Lou was so shocked she couldn’t move.
She stood among the crippled crew and watched them morph into Myrmidons.

“Lou!” I shouted in order to be heard
over the sounds of Carl’s crew screaming. She couldn’t hear me. I ran to her.
“Lou.”

She looked up. It took a second or two
for her to register what was going on, who I was, and what she was doing
standing in the middle of human bodies literally being split apart.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and
whispered “You’re not leaving me again.” I pulled her out of the flailing mass
of people... or what were once people.

Wes limped to us. “What in tarnation...”

“Damn it!” Gordy yelled, “He didn’t make
it!”

“Who didn’t make it?” Wes asked.

“We don’t have time to discuss this,” I
said. “We need to get as far away from here as we quickly as we possibly can.”

We maneuvered through the trees and
headed down the mountain. Wes sucked in air with each step. The arrow was still
protruding from his leg. He hobbled along stopping briefly every other step in
order to muster up the strength to take another jolt of pain. As he planted his
foot in the loose dirt and one more shot of agony soaked every nerve in his
body, a thought came to him. “Wait! Where’s Ty and April?”

We all looked at each other. Gordy
finally spoke up. “Who’s April?”

“A girl we picked up outside of Edisto,”
Wes said. “She and Ty were together just before this whole mess started.” “What
about Valerie?” Gordy asked. “Where is she?”

Wes and Lou traded a look. Neither one
of them wanted to answer Gordy’s question so they simply didn’t.

Wes turned to head back up the slope.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I ain’t leaving Ty. I’m tired of losing
people.”

He took one step and nearly flopped to
the ground in pain. “I’d say that’s not going to happen,” I said. I called Ajax
over.

I held up two fingers. “Pick two apes to
find Tyrone and April.” He grunted and barreled across the fern-covered ground.
He stopped on the edge of a small clearing and signed to a much larger
silverback that I assumed was Ariabod. Ariabod in turn signaled to a young male
gorilla to his left. They looked our way and then disappeared into the nearby
bush.

“So help me,” Wes said breathing
heavily. “Those monkeys better bring them back alive.”

“They will,” I said. “And they’re not
monkeys...” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Lou staring at me. “What?” I
asked her.

“Are you real?” she asked.

I smiled. “I wish I knew.”

Gordy piped up. “Any idea where we’re
going? And shouldn’t we be getting the hell out of here? Or did you forget the
giant ant people?”

I strained to stop looking at Lou. I was
afraid if I let her out of my sight she would vanish into thin air. “Yeah...
sure, you’re right. Let’s go!” I said and then stopped short when I saw a boy
who had been one of the dead who watched me sleep at the facility. He was
standing amid a group of sapling pine trees. Our eyes locked and then the boy
turned and headed down the mountain.

“Okay,” Gordy said. “I guess we won’t be
going that way.”

“No,” I said my eyes still locked on the
boy. “I think we’re supposed to.”

“Oz,” Gordy responded. “That kid was
major stand-out-in-the-crowd-creepy, and that ain’t easy to achieve in this
place.”

“I’ve seen him before,” I said. “He’s
dead.”

“Nice!” Gordy shouted. “Just exactly
where is the dead kid taking us?”

Ajax rejoined us. He cupped his hands
with the palms up, moved his thumbs across his fingers, and then turned his
right palm down. He flipped the position of his hands. He repeated the signs a
few times.

“What’s he saying?” Wes asked.

“Don’t know,” I said.

Lou cleared her throat. “He’s saying ...
‘the land of the dead’.”

The End
of

Book Three