The Flock of Fury

by Tom Sniegoski

  “The stink was so bad you could bang nails into it.”

  “At first I thought it was all part of the show, y’know, like Smellavision? But then I threw up.”

  Halifax reached over and snatched the remote away.

  “You guys don’t need to be seeing that stuff,” the troll said quickly, turning the channel to something hopefully less disturbing.

  The ratlike face of the mayor of Monstros filled the screen.

  “Aaaaah!” Halifax shrieked. He dropped the remote to the floor and fumbled to retrieve it.

  The mayor was in the middle of a rant . . . a rant against Owlboy.

  “He calls himself a hero?” the politician screeched into the microphones. “Well, I call him a menace. It’s going to take months and a small fortune to clean all the spew out of my mansion . . . and that, I’m afraid, is going to result in higher taxes.”

  Zis-Boom-Bah stomped on the remote, turning the television off and plunging the room into silence.

  Nobody, it seemed, knew what to say.

  “I guess it could be worse,” Archebold said with a nervous chuckle.

  “Worse?” Billy asked. “Did you see what I just saw? They hate us.”

  “Correction,” Halifax said. “They hate you.”

  Billy slapped a hand over his face. “I can’t imagine a worse day.”

  But then he remembered what still waited for him at school tomorrow.

  The sad thing was, it was only going to get worse.

  Billy woke up the next morning feeling like a failure.

  It was the first real defeat he’d experienced since taking on the mantle of Owlboy, and it had left him feeling just awful.

  He got up, washed his failure face, put on his failure clothes, went downstairs and had a big bowl of failure flakes and then picked up his book bag full of failure and went to school, where he was pretty sure he was going to fail some more.

  By second period, he’d sat through two classes but hadn’t failed at anything else. Things weren’t quite so bad.

  Yet.

  Third period was when the poop hit the jet engine.

  Mr. Harpin had called all his science classes together in the school auditorium, breaking them down into their teams so that they could decide on topics for their project.

  Billy felt like a bloody piece of steak thrown to a cage full of hungry velociraptors.

  “So, Billy boy, any ideas?” Randy asked with a jagged, jack- o’-lantern-sized grin.

  Billy shrugged, staring stupidly at the three sub-humans who sat in the seats around him.

  “Nothing?” Randy asked. “That’s weird. I woulda thought you had something all worked up and ready to go.”

  Billy shrugged again, examining a black speck stuck beneath his thumbnail.

  Penny blew an enormous bubble, let it pop and peeled it from her face with her baby-poop-green claws.

  “Well, somebody better come up with something,” she said, and scowled, reminding Billy a little bit of Sireena Sassafras. “I hate science and I’m not gonna do it.”

  “I’m pretty sure I had a project,” Darious said, eyes darting around the auditorium. “But something made me forget it.”

  “Huh,” Mitchell said, giving Darious the hairy eyeball. “Imagine that.”

  The boy nodded. “Yeah, probably the government—they’ve stolen a bunch of my ideas before.”

  “It’s a good thing Mitchell and I have been talking, Hooten,” Randy said.

  Billy looked up into his archenemy’s cavemanlike face.

  “You two have come up with an idea for a project?”

  Randy and Mitchell nodded.

  “Don’t say that too loud,” Darious said, quickly looking around. “The walls have ears.”

  Randy ignored him. “Yesterday me and Mitchell saw a squirrel get run over by a truck and it got my gears going.”

  “It really did,” Mitchell said, and started to laugh.

  “After I saw the squirrel buy it, I said to Mitchell, hey, Mitchell, we should kill something and bring it back to life with electricity for our science project. We could be like Frankenstein, only not German.”

  “And I said awesome,” Mitchell added excitedly.

  “That’s totally sick,” Billy said, his face crinkled up in disgust.

  “Why?” Mitchell asked. “It would only be dead for a little while.”

  “You’re both insane,” Billy said. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Does in the movies,” Randy answered as Mitchell, Penny and Darious nodded. It was obvious that they all liked the idea.

  Big surprise.

  “Idiots,” Billy muttered beneath his breath. He had more ideas for science projects than he knew what to do with, but he refused to let these morons have any of them. They were his, and nobody—especially a gang with the accumulated IQ of a snow cone—was going to steal them from him.

  “What did you just call us?” Mitchell asked, standing up and glaring at Billy.

  Billy refused to answer, picking at the spot beneath his nail again.

  “Y’know, we could skip the animal part altogether and kill one of the team instead,” Randy suggested.

  Billy felt their eyes on him then, and swallowed with a loud gulp. Then out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement as Mr. Harpin made his way down the aisle toward them.

  “I noticed you people in the midst of heated discussion,” the science teacher said, pulling his eyeglasses from his shirt pocket and putting them on. He studied a piece of paper on a clipboard, making notes here and there. “So I’m guessing you have a topic that will knock my socks off.”

  He paused, waiting for them to answer.

  Billy didn’t want to open his mouth. In fact, he sent a special mental message to his vocal cords commanding them not to move. Unfortunately, they didn’t listen, and he knew immediately that his mouth and his vocal cords had teamed up with his brain to undermine his authority.

  “Our project is on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and its effects on Pompeii.”

  Mr. Harpin nodded. “Fascinating.” He took some more notes.

  “Glad you like it, sir,” Randy said. “We really had to rack our brains to come up with something unique.”

  “Really unique,” Mitchell said, nodding.

  Billy thought he was going to throw up.

  “Even though I hate science,” Penny said in between gum snaps, “I totally helped come up with this totally awesome idea.”

  “I don’t think it’s as good as the one that the government stole from me, but it has to be a close second,” Darious commented.

  Billy could only sit and fume.

  Mr. Harpin finished writing his notes and looked up. “This is an excellent idea,” he stated. “And I’m counting on this team to knock it out of the park.”

  “Oh, we will, sir,” Randy said, reaching over to smack Billy in the shoulder. “We’re all about the team, right, Bill?”

  It hurt like heck, but Billy forced a smile.

  “Now, you’re all aware that we have an accelerated deadline for the completion of these projects, right?” Mr. Harpin asked.

  “Accelerated deadline?” Billy squeaked.

  “Yes, you know, to be part of the statewide competition.”

  “So when is the project due?”

  “Next week.”

  “Next week?” Billy screamed.

  The science teacher looked at him and smiled. “Why, Mr. Hooten, it seems to me like you’ve got a team that will work together like a well-oiled machine. You shouldn’t have any problem getting this done by the deadline.”

  And he turned away, moving on to the next team.

  Billy couldn’t move. He felt as though he’d been poisoned by the deadly quills of a lion-fish. His entire body started to shut down.

  “A week,” Randy said with a slow nod.

  “Looks like you’ve got an awful lot of work to do, Hooten,” he added. “Better get crackin’.”

  CHAPTER 6r />
  Back in Monstros City, things at the Roost weren’t going much better.

  Archebold scanned the front of the Monstros City Times, reading the painful headline on the latest edition of the newspaper. HERO OR MENANCE? it asked in large black letters, alongside a photo of Billy taken at the parade given for Owlboy after he’d saved Monstros from Zis-Boom-Bah a few weeks back.

  “This is just too painful,” the goblin said, setting the paper down on a pile of others, each displaying similar headlines.

  Halifax was looking at the newest magazines to hit the stands, flipping through the latest issue of Wagging Tongue.

  It wasn’t very pretty.

  “It says here that Owlboy has been hitting the joy juice, which is why he fouled up those last three missions.” The troll set the magazine down. “That actually explains a lot,” he said.

  Archebold reached across the table and smacked Halifax on the side of his shaggy head.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he screeched.

  “What!” Halifax cried, raising his arms to block any further violence.

  “Joy juice? You actually believe this nonsense they’re printing about Billy?” Archebold asked in dis-belief. “Are you forgetting that we’re partially to blame for his troubles?”

  “Oh yeah,” Halifax said. “For a minute there, I was almost caught up in all the scandal.”

  Archebold slapped his wrinkly forehead. “Scandal? There is no scandal. . . . Owlboy had a bad day, that’s it in a nutshell.”

  “Coulda fooled me,” Halifax said sadly, lifting a stack of gossip magazines that all had something nasty to say about the hero.

  Ferdinand swooped by and blasted the stack of magazines with a gout of orange flame, incinerating the bad news.

  “Atta girl, Ferdinand,” Archebold praised the dragon.

  Zis-Boom-Bah had climbed up onto the table and was tearing up the newspapers and growling savagely . . . well, as savagely as ten inches of monster could.

  “You guys have the right idea,” the goblin said as the tiny dragon perched on his head.

  “So what’re we gonna do?” Halifax asked despondently. “I can fix just about anything, but I can’t fix this. It’s very frustrating.”

  “I know,” Archebold agreed. “We’ve got to rack our brains and come up with a way to get Owlboy back in the city’s good graces.”

  They sat in silence, the smell of burning plastic filling the air as they strained their thinking muscles.

  “I’ve got it,” Halifax said with a snap of his callused fingers.

  Archebold’s eyes gleamed in anticipation.

  “We throw a dance and invite everyone,” the troll said. “Everybody loves to dance. We’ll have food and everything.”

  Archebold just stared.

  “What?” Halifax asked. “Is it too much?”

  “A dance would never work,” the goblin said, stroking his rounded chin. Suddenly his eyes bugged and his long ears began to twitch. “But what about a bake sale?”

  “That’s a great idea!” Halifax said, jumping up from his chair.

  A violent tremor shook the Roost.

  “What the heck was that?” Archebold asked, grabbing hold of the table to keep from being shaken from his chair.

  Halifax looked around as multiple security alarms began to clang, clatter and hoot. “Oh jeez,” he said. “I’ve never heard that alarm before.”

  “What alarm?” Archebold asked as another shock wave went through the secret location.

  “The invasion alarm,” the troll said, looking around the room.

  “Invasion alarm?” Archebold repeated.

  “Yes! The Roost is being invaded!”

  Halifax’s eyes grew really big and locked on to Archebold’s, which were also quite large.

  “The Roost is being invaded!” they screamed in unison as the giant tree continued to tremble and shake.

  And then something exploded through the floor.

  Sireena Sassafras wanted to kill something.

  The troll supervillain wasn’t used to working with a team. It was hard enough working with her brother and her mother, but now she was being forced to work with a foul-smelling ghost, filthy bouncing monkeys and a guy who threw up at the drop of a hat.

  Killing something wouldn’t make working with this team of losers any easier, but it would sure make her feel better.

  The first to emerge from the tunnel they had dug through the earth and finally up into the ginormous old tree, Sireena tossed the atomic digging tool given to her by the Monarch onto the floor of the Roost.

  “This is his secret hideout?” she asked, looking around, her face twisted with distaste. “What a dump.” “Help your mother!” Mother Sassafras wailed from within the hole.

  Sireena bent down, took one of her mother’s large hands in her own and gave a powerful tug.

  “A lady shouldn’t be forced to crawl through dirty holes, especially in my delicate condition,” the troll woman said as she emerged. “She should be at home in front of a fire doing lady things, like skinning cats and hollowing out skulls to make decorative decanters.”

  “You can do your arts and crafts after we’ve ruined Owlboy for good,” Sireena told her.

  “I guess you’re right,” Mother Sassafras agreed, plucking at her giant stack of hair with a clawed hand. It resembled some sort of weird sculpture.

  The filthy monkey Bounder boys bounced from the hole into the room, chattering away, with Vomitor, the Gaseous Ghost and Sireena’s brother right behind them.

  “So where is he?” Sigmund asked, wiping dust and dirt from his clothes and unslinging his high-powered rifle from his shoulder. “If this is his secret hideout, then where’s Owlboy?”

  “Maybe he’s out getting milk?” Bobby Bounder suggested.

  “Or out for dinner with some friends?” offered Bernie.

  “Maybe he’s taking a ceramics class,” Bailey considered. “I’ve always wanted a ceramic cookie jar. I wonder if he’d make me one if I offered to pay him.”

  “If you offered to pay, I can’t see why he wouldn’t,” Balthasar said.

  “Vomitor bet he wouldn’t mind,” Vomitor added.

  “You don’t think so? I’ve been dying to have a jar that looks like a pig, with blue overalls and a straw hat that you lift up to get at the cookies inside his—”

  Sireena couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Enough about the cookie jar!” she screamed, resisting the urge to skin the monkeys and make them into a lovely fur vest.

  “All this talk about cookies makes me want some,” Bobby Bounder said.

  “We should try to find some,” Balthasar agreed.

  The Gaseous Ghost floated above their heads on a wave of stink. “The female Sassafras is correct,” he said. “Owlboy is a superhero; he wouldn’t make you a pig cookie jar even if you paid him twice.”

  “I didn’t . . . ,” Sireena began, but decided against finishing her statement. She seriously began to entertain the thought of murdering all of them, wondering how drastic the repercussions would be from her new employer.

  With that thought, she looked around the room again. The Monarch was supposed to be meeting them here for further instructions, but he didn’t seem to be around.

  “I see you have arrived,” said an all- too-familiar voice from multiple sets of speakers. A wall of television sets across the room suddenly went to static, then to an image of the Monarch sitting in his elaborate throne.

  “Excellent,” the Monarch hissed. “Have you found Owlboy yet?”

  “I don’t think he’s around,” Sireena said, moving closer to the screens. “Can’t imagine that he wouldn’t have come running once he knew we’d entered.”

  “We think he’s at ceramics,” Bailey Bounder said, coming to stand beside her.

  With a snarl, Sireena grabbed the monkey demon by the head and tossed him across the room.

  “Perhaps he isn’t here,” she suggested to the Monarch, regaining her c
omposure. “Perhaps he isn’t even in Monstros.”

  “Good point,” the crime lord allowed.

  “Perhaps he has returned to the world of humans above,” she added.

  Sireena heard a ruckus behind her and turned to see her mother swaying.

  “The world of humans,” the large troll woman said, throwing an arm dramatically across her brow. “Just the thought of that horrible, horrible place . . . I think I’m going to faint.”

  Sigmund ran to catch his mother but instead was knocked to the ground, trapped beneath her enormous weight.

  Sireena looked back to the television screens.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “My brother and I once paid a visit to the human world in pursuit of Owlboy and told her all about it.”

  “Quite all right,” the Monarch said. “An in teresting theory, though. If he has gone to the world above, we must see to it that he isn’t allowed to come back.”

  Sireena tilted her head quizzically to one side. “And how would we do that?”

  “Take your family and your favorite weapons and guard the shadow paths,” the Monarch instructed. “Prevent Owlboy from returning to Monstros until the damage is already done.”

  The Bounders and Vomitor were attempting to lift Mother Sassafras from atop Sigmund as the Ghost supervised the operation from above.

  “And if my brother, mother and I are guarding the shadow paths, what of the others?”

  “They will do what villains do best,” The Monarch said. “They will cause complete and total chaos.”

  “I think I’m going to pee my overalls,” Halifax whispered from inside one of the heating ducts. He and Archebold were peering down through a vent at the villains that had invaded their home.

  As soon as the hole had opened in the floor, Archebold had known they had big-time trouble with a capital T. He’d dragged his friends to the first hiding place he could think of.

  “Don’t you dare,” Archebold warned softly. “You’ll drown us for sure.”

  Ferdinand and Zis-Boom-Bah looked out through the vent at the bad guys and began to growl.

  “Hush, guys,” Archebold whispered. “We can’t let them know we’re here.”

  “What’re we gonna do?” Halifax asked. “We can’t stay here. . . . I hate cramped spaces—it feels like the walls are closing in on me.”