Chapter 3 We Have Dinner with Wormzilla #2
“Harper, no!” Zuri hissed.
Harper touched the worm’s head. A tremor ran down its glistening milky-white trunk.
“Oh,” Harper said with surprise. “Yes, we…we have lots more garbage. My friends will go get it.”
The rest of us shared confused looks.
“Harper, are you talking to the worm?” I asked.
Harper held up his index finger to shush me.
“We’re sorry,” he said. It definitely looked like he was talking to the worm. “We just haven’t met a lot of your kind. Absolutely, my friends are getting that garbage right now.”
He shot us an urgent glance. “Right, team?”
Harper hadn’t been exaggerating earlier. Others found him attractive no matter how bad he looked or smelled. Even giant trash worms loved him. But I wasn’t sure how long he could keep the thing pacified.
Zuri, Benny, and I hustled off to collect the rest of the garbage.
“My horoscope was right,” Zuri grumbled as we hauled bags of food waste to the well. “I do regret getting out of bed this morning.”
After three more trips, we had dumped all the waste into the Pit.
The worm frolicked through the trash bags, looping in and out of the dirt, clearly enjoying itself.
When the last few mounds of potato salad had disappeared down its maw, the worm looked up at us (or seemed to, since it didn’t have eyes), let loose a sound somewhere between a belch and a growl, and then disappeared again beneath the dirt.
“You’re welcome,” said Harper, almost wistfully. “Good night, Mr. Worm.”
Benny looked dazed, but he set the wooden cover back over the well. “This is a compost bin.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You mean like those spinning tumbler boxes you put food scraps in and magically get dirt?”
“It’s not magic—it’s decay,” Benny said. “But yeah. Worms in the bin eat the scraps, and their castings—uh, poop—become compost. We had a bunch of bins back on the farm where I grew up.” His forehead wrinkled. “But the worms were a little smaller.”
Now the holes in the lid made more sense. They were air holes for the worm.
I eyeballed the Pit. I wondered how deep it went, and if more giant worms were lurking down there. If so, the Pit was probably more like a series of tunnels.
I thought about the fissure Grant and I found in the woods and wondered if there was any way it connected. Maybe Grant had been able to take shelter in a tunnel with friendly trash-eating Wormzillas. Maybe one would lead him back to camp through a secret compost tunnel….
I shook my head.
I was too exhausted to think straight. Grant was probably safely back in the Ares cabin by now. He’d tease me mercilessly when he saw me covered in garbage slime and heard that we’d been condemned to two weeks of kitchen patrol.
I squinted toward the cabins in the distance. “I think we should go to bed before we get in any more trouble.”
Benny wiped a fleck of barbecue sauce off his face. “Yeah…I think you’re right.”
For once, we were all in agreement. We trekked back toward the cabins, trying to be quiet so we wouldn’t wake our fellow campers or attract more attention from harpies.
Zuri veered off at the Apollo cabin, which looked modest from the outside. A brass number 7 hung on the door beneath the stylized symbol of a harp. Cheerful yellow flowers bloomed in the window boxes. “This is me,” she whispered. “Good night.”
She sounded pretty anxious to be rid of us, but I couldn’t blame her. It had been a long night.
Harper left us at Cabin Ten. Judging from the fact that it was bright pink, the front deck was elaborately painted with flowers and doves, and perfume wafted out the windows, I cleverly deduced that it was the Aphrodite cabin.
“Good luck!” Harper told us as he climbed the porch.
After all we’d been through tonight, I wasn’t sure why we needed luck now, but then I realized Harper had a point. We still had to get cleaned up, face the scrutiny of our cabinmates, and hopefully grab a little sleep before dawn.
Finally, I arrived at the Ares cabin, number five.
Home sweet home. Its outer walls were dark red—a shade the paint company probably sold as Blood of My Enemies.
The roof was ringed with barbed wire. A gruesome boar’s head was mounted above the door.
No light came from the windows, but rock music blasted from inside: “You want to have my heaaart? Why don’t you eat my faaarts? !”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “Give me strength.”
Benny chuckled. “Hey, heart does rhyme with fart.”
“Any chance you want to switch parents with me?”
His smile faltered. Too late, I remembered he was unclaimed.
“That was thoughtless,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” He shrugged, though the tightness around his eyes suggested this wasn’t his favorite subject. “I’d be happy if I could just narrow down my divine parent to a god or a goddess.”
My eyes widened. “Wait, you don’t know either of your birth parents?”
He shook his head.
“Benny, I’m so sorry….” I studied the other cabins. “Then…where are you supposed to sleep?”
He pointed toward the last cabin in the row—a rambling, run-down structure with peeling paint and the symbol of Hermes over the door: a winged staff entwined with snakes.
“Cabin Eleven,” Benny said. “Hermes, the god of travelers, drifters, guests. They take in anyone, even me. It’s not so bad.”
He gave me a brave smile, but my heart still broke for him a little.
“Well,” I said, “I guess it beats sleeping in the worm pit.”
Benny snorted. “That thing scared the castings out of me.” We both laughed and he added, “I’m sorry for earlier, coming down on you so hard about leaving Grant.”
I shook my head. “No, you were right. I shouldn’t have left him.” I glanced at my cabin. “I should check to see if he’s back yet.”
Benny nodded. “Find me tomorrow and let me know.”
“Absolutely,” I said, and we parted ways.
On the steps of Cabin Five, I steeled my nerves.
With that music blasting inside, I figured my cabinmates must be up.
I had no idea what kind of reception I would get, so I decided to make an impression.
I threw back my shoulders and pasted on a bright smile.
Then I kicked open the door, sending it flying off its hinges.
Oops.
Like I mentioned, sometimes my Ares-given strength gets the best of me when I’m stressed. There was nothing to do now but roll with it.
“Katie Kim in the cabin!” I hooted.
Twenty pillows hurtled my way.
“Shut up!”
“Some of us are sleeping!”
I shielded my head with my arm. “But there’s music playing!”
“Yeah, from Hate Faction’s Rock Yourself to Sleep album! Duh!”
Clarisse stormed toward me with a sour look on her face. Her hair was flattened on one side. A sleeping mask with metal spikes was strapped across her forehead, and her nightshirt was decorated with the schematics for a nuclear bomb.
“It’s quiet hours, newbie,” she snarled. “And only I get to kick down the front door.”
I glanced at the unhinged slab of wood on the floor. “My bad.” Then I looked past Clarisse, and the last of my bravado crumbled. Grant’s bunk was empty. The covers were still perfectly made.
“Where is he?” I asked.