“The Flock of Fury,” Billy announced, his voice loud and clear so that all assembled on the downtown street could hear. “We’re the Flock of Fury!”
CHAPTER 11
Due to the strange way that time passed in Monstros City, it was still late Friday night when Billy and Victoria crawled out of the crypt in the Sprylock Family mausoleum.
Billy was actually glad to be back. This last adventure to Monstros had been exhausting.
Victoria waited impatiently for him to change out of his Owlboy costume. The little girl had already been wearing her Destructo Ballerina costume when they’d first hooked up, so there was no need for her to change.
“C’mon, Billy,” she said, stamping her foot—but not causing any devastating effects. “I don’t got all night. I’m ’zausted.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, pulling on the hooded sweatshirt he’d taken from the rolling suitcase he’d originally brought to Monstros.
Finished dressing, he poked his head out from the burial chamber to be sure that nobody was watching. The cemetery was eerily quiet.
“All clear,” Billy said, pushing the door open so that they could exit.
They walked the path in the cold night air, Billy pulling his suitcase loaded with his science fair projects/Monstros City secret weapons behind him.
The effort suddenly reminded him of what he had to do on Saturday, and he found himself becoming depressed. He had an entire day ahead of him during which he’d be doing a science fair project all by himself.
He helped Victoria over the stone wall into his yard, then tossed the suitcase over before climbing it himself.
“What’re you gonna do tomorrow, Billy?” Victoria asked him as they crossed his yard.
“Got some stuff to do for school,” he told her sadly.
“I think I’m gonna be a fairy princess tomorrow,” she said after some thought. “Gonna need a special tiara if I’m gonna be a real fairy princess.”
She stopped and stared at him with eager eyes.
“I know, I know,” he said. “I promised I’d buy you the fairy princess tiara at the Hero’s Hovel.”
He almost considered blowing off the science fair work, throwing his hands in the air and screaming, “Who cares!” Then on Saturday he would get up late, have some breakfast and maybe play a few video games before heading off to the Hovel to peruse some comic books and pick up the tiara he’d promised to buy Victoria. Why should I be the only one that gives a rat’s behind about this stupid project? he asked himself.
“Hey,” Victoria interrupted. “What about my fairy tiara?”
Billy was about to say that he’d go get it for her tomorrow, but realized, sadly, that if he were to do that, he’d likely feel guilty about it all day, and he’d just end up not having a good time because he’d be thinking about all the crap he wasn’t doing.
“I’ll get it for you during the week,” he said morosely.
“You promise?” the little girl asked.
Billy crossed his chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
She studied his face, looking for a sign that he was lying. Finding none, she went on her way.
“Okey-doke,” Victoria said, walking across the yard and squeezing through some bushes to go into her own yard. “See ya later, Billy.”
A second later she was back. Victoria stood beside a bush, watching Billy with a smile on her cute—yet strangely disturbing—face.
“What now?” he asked, his patience on the wane.
“Next time we go back to Monstros I’m gonna be Destructo Fairy Princess,” she said, eyes twinkling.
“Awesome,” he said, making a mental note to do everything in his power to make sure that day never came.
And then she was gone again, running up the steps of her back porch and sneaking into the house.
Billy opened the garage door, went inside and set his suitcase in the far corner. He walked over to the other corner of the garage to see if the uncharted passage to the shadow paths was still there, but it had obviously closed. Archebold had said something about the instability of those particular kinds of paths and how they often closed without any real reason. Billy had sort of hoped he would find the passage still open, providing him with another opportunity to escape what he still needed to do.
But deep down he knew: even if it had been open, he wouldn’t have gone through it.
He felt himself growing angry—angry at all the work he had to do, and angry at himself for being the only one doing it.
But what choice is there? a wimpy voice whined inside his head.
He’d always hated that voice, but he knew that it was often right. There wasn’t a choice, really; he needed to do the work so the project would get done.
Briefly he thought about the alternative.
If he didn’t do the project, they’d all fail science for sure, and he’d end up suffering just as much as his stupid enemies.
It was so frustrating he wanted to scream. It was the same kind of frustration he’d felt when he’d realized that he needed to do something to save Monstros, even though it had seemed as though they no longer wanted or needed him.
And how had he reacted? He’d put together a team.
Billy felt the gears slowly begin to turn inside his head.
I put together a team, he reminded himself. I acted like a leader and put together a team to solve a problem.
And suddenly he felt as though he could do that again. Yeah, it would probably all blow up in his face and end up with him receiving atomic wedgies for the rest of his life, but he realized that it needed to be done.
He wasn’t going to do this science fair project alone.
Billy was going to lead his team, atomic wedgies for life or not.
On the way to Randy Kulkowski’s house the next morning, Billy wondered if during his last trip to Monstros he had maybe lost his mind.
How else could he explain it?
He wondered if maybe the Gaseous Ghost’s noxious fumes had somehow affected his brain, turning him into a total nutjob, or at least very, very stupid.
Billy knew how absolutely crazy this was, walking right into the lion’s den—heck, into the lion’s freakin’ mouth—but it didn’t stop him. He kept right on going, all the while practicing exactly what he was going to say to the boy.
If anybody had heard him, they would have definitely called Happydale State Hospital for the Looney, but it was still relatively early and the streets of Bradbury were peacefully quiet.
Maybe I can catch him when he’s practically still asleep, Billy thought, checking the numbers on the houses as he walked. That way he’ll think it was all a dream and not tear me limb from limb when he finally catches up to me.
Nope, that wouldn’t do any good, he corrected himself. If he was going to do this, he was going to do this right, despite the threat of bodily harm.
Billy had decided that he was just going to tell it like it was. He would explain that he had no problem contributing to the science project, but he wasn’t going to do the whole thing without any help.
He could already feel the burning sting of the first atomic wedgie.
But it didn’t stop him.
Realizing that he’d walked too far down Cottage Street, he stopped and retraced his steps until he found the house he’d been searching for.
The mailboxes out front told him that the Kulkowskis lived on the first floor, and before he could even think about getting the heck out of there, he was climbing the stairs and pushing the doorbell.
All the things he had practiced—all the things that he was going to say to Randy—flowed through his mind in a tidal wave.
He was about to push the buzzer again when the door suddenly opened.
A large woman in a flowery housecoat stood in the doorway looking at him. For a moment, he thought Mother Sassafras had somehow escaped Beelzebub prison and relocated to Cottage Street in Bradbury, Massachusetts.
“Yeah?” she asked, painted fingernails scratching he
r pronounced belly.
“Is Randy home?” Billy asked, not believing that he was actually asking such a thing. It wouldn’t have sounded any crazier if he’d asked to be infected with the bubonic plague.
She looked at him for what seemed like hours but was likely only seconds, then stepped back and to the side so that he could see into the house and down the hall to the kitchen.
“Randy, you got a visitor,” she said, disappearing through a doorway on the left and leaving Billy with a good view of the kitchen at the end of the hall.
Billy could see him there, sitting at the table, turkey leg halfway to his mouth.
A turkey leg? the wimpy voice screamed in his ear, finding something else to complain about. Who eats a turkey leg for breakfast?
“Hooten,” Randy croaked, and before another word could come out of his caveman face, Billy opened up the floodgates and let him have it.
“I know that you’ll probably kill me for saying this, but you and the others are gonna help me with the science fair project whether you want to or not it’s not just me getting a grade on this it’s all of us and I’m not about to do all the work even if you threaten to give me atomic wedgies for the rest of my life and if you think . . .”
Billy couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d tried; it all came spilling out, sentence after sentence.
“And it was my idea, and I’m willing to let all you guys have a piece but I’m not going to do all the work. I’m not. I’m not. I’m not. I’ll do some of the work, like you’ll do some of the work, and Mitchell will do some of the work, and Penny will do some of the work and Darious will give us all the creeps, but he’ll do some of the work and . . .”
Randy looked like he was paralyzed, his eyes getting wider and wider the more Billy talked at him.
And finally, when it had all come out, Billy just stopped talking, turned around, and headed for home.
Billy had to admit, it had felt pretty good telling Randy off like that.
After closing the refrigerator door, he brought the milk over to the kitchen table and poured some on his cereal.
This could very well be my last meal of Sugar- Crusted Bombers, he thought, watching the cereal in his bowl start to swell up with milk. He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down.
He’d already gone upstairs and fished through his collection to find a few of his absolute favorite comics. If this was to be his last breakfast, he wanted to be sure he was doing something awesome while eating it.
He picked up his favorite spoon—Billy had no idea why this was his favorite, it was just the spoon that he used every day—and plunged it into the bowl, picking up one of the pieces. “You are a gorgeous thing,” he said to the saturated chocolate ball, anticipating every aspect of his first mouthful: the cold milk, the squishy feeling of the spongy breakfast bite on his tongue, the spurt of milk miraculously turning to chocolatey syrup as he chewed.
Heaven.
And after the first bite, the very first issue of Owlboy.
He set his spoon down, carefully removed the fragile comic book from the bag and laid it on the table—making sure there wasn’t anything wet or sticky there first, of course.
This was it, the original Owlboy comic book adventure, and the beginning of so much more.
Billy closed his eyes, letting the smell of the old comic book waft up into his nose, mixing with the chocolate taste and smell of his cereal. Why can’t the world smell like this all the time?
So he ate his cereal—two bowls, actually—and read his comics, thinking about how sad it would be when he was dead.
He guessed his death would likely come sometime at school on Monday. Billy made a mental note to say goodbye to all his pals when he first got in, because who knew how long he would last? He doubted he would make it to lunchtime.
Deciding then that he would play a game of Galactic Rangers, and finally destroy the Antarian Death Fleet as it prepared to release its zombie larvae upon the city of Shineopolis, he took his empty bowl to the sink. He was getting ready to slip his comics back into their plastic bags so that he could return them to his collection when there was a pounding on the back door.
Billy’s heart leapt in his chest.
Had death come for him here . . . in his own home?
He stared at the door, wishing that he had some kind of laser vision, imaging twin beams of red energy blasting through the door and turning whatever it was outside to screaming dust.
But what if it’s only the paperboy? That wouldn’t be good.
The pounding came again and he knew.
The paperboy didn’t knock like that: only Death in the apelike form of Randy Kulkowski knocked like that.
Billy was tempted to run down the hall and up the stairs to his parents’ room, not to beg for their help but to tell them how much he loved them and how he wished that he had seen the day that they finally raised his allowance to fifteen bucks a month instead of a measly twelve.
Again came the knock; more insistent, more violent.
Death wanted him bad.
Slowly, Billy crept toward the kitchen door and peeked behind the curtain over the window to see if he was mistaken.
He wasn’t; Randy Kulkowski’s apelike face glared at him through the window as he waited on the porch for Billy to answer.
“Hey, Hooten, open up,” Death commanded.
Not opening the door wasn’t an option. Billy knew the kind of beast Randy was, knew that he would stand and knock all day if he had to, which would just wake up Mom and Dad, making them mad enough to open the door and feed Billy to the hungry Kulkowski beast.
It was time to face the music.
As he unlocked the door, turning the knob to pull it open, he still had to admit: it had felt really good telling Randy how he thought it should be.
And that was a feeling that he would take with him to his early grave, or at least the intensive care unit at Bradbury Hospital.
“About freakin’ time,” Randy snarled, his hands shoved in the pockets of his stained winter jacket. “Are we just gonna stand out here all day or are we gonna work on that science project?”
It took a minute for Billy to process the information.
Randy Kulkowski was not alone. Standing at the foot of his back porch were Mitchell Spivey, Darious Fontague and Penny Feryurthotuss.
At first glance, Billy believed that Death had brought a team to dispose of him, that they were all going to take turns killing him slowly for defying them, but then he heard Randy’s words replay inside his head.
Are we gonna stand out here all day or are we gonna work on that science project?
“Excuse me?” Billy squeaked.
Randy smiled, showing off uneven, crusty teeth. “Bet you think yer hearing things,” he said. He looked down to the others and they were laughing and smiling as well.
“Bet he thinks he’s hearing things,” Mitchell repeated, cackling like a maniac.
“Thought you was gonna have some kind of nervous breakdown or something at my house,” Randy explained. “Didn’t want to get blamed for it, so I thought we should probably help you out with the project so you didn’t bust a blood vessel or anything.” He looked to the gang. “Right?”
They nodded, none of them looking all that thrilled but at the same time not wanting to incur the wrath of the Kulkowski monster.
“Hey, Billy, we’re cool now about that Jell-O,” Darious said with a flip of his head. “It’s all water under the bridge.”
“But I never took your Jell- O,” Billy started to explain again, but gave up. “So let me get this straight,”he said. “You guys have actually come to work on our science project . . . as a team.” He waited, sure that there had to be some sort of punch line to all this.
Randy shrugged. “That looks to be the case,” he said.
“So are we gonna do this or what?” Penny asked with a whiplike snap of her gum. “I really hate science and stuff and would, y’know, like get this over with as soon as I can.”
It’s like being back in Monstros, Billy thought as he ducked back into the kitchen to grab his coat. The impossible was happening, but it was here this time, at his house in Bradbury, Massachusetts.
He had formed a team back in the city of monsters to handle something too big to handle on his own, and the same thing was about to happen here.
Amazing.
“Didn’t think you had it in ya, Hooten,” Randy said as they descended the steps from his porch and headed to the garage.
“You’d be surprised at what I can do, Randy,” Billy said, opening the door on his workshop, where they would hopefully accomplish the task of creating the best science project imaginable. “Really, really surprised.”
EPILOGUE
A few days later . . .
Using his key, Billy let himself into the lower level of the Roost from the shadow passages.
“Hello?” he called, pulling the key from the door and slipping it back into one of the pouches on his utility belt. “It’s me.”
“We’re in here,” Archebold answered.
Billy strolled into the chamber and over to the monitor station.
Archebold and Halifax were reclined in chairs in front of the multiple television screens broadcasting the various happenings all across Monstros City.
“What’s up?” Billy asked, tugging on the ends of his Owlboy gloves for a tighter fit. He was ready for some serious action tonight and had hoped that something big was brewing, but seeing his two friends now, he wasn’t sure he’d be so lucky.
“Nothin’,” Archebold said, eating what looked like fried beetles from a bag in his lap as he stared ahead at the screens.
“Yeah, nothing,” Halifax reiterated, taking a sip from a mug that looked as if it had been made from a monkey skull.
There was a sudden screech and Billy turned to see Zis-Boom-Bah and Ferdinand waddling into the room.
“Hey, guys,” Billy said, noticing that the dragon was carrying what appeared to be a rag, and Zis-Boom-Bah a spray bottle.
“What’re you two up to?” he asked them.
They walked over to the monitor screens and began to clean them. Zis-Boom- Bah sprayed them first, and then Ferdinand wiped them with her cloth.