The Conqueror Worms Read online

Outside, Earl screamed—one long, drawn out wail. Rather than fading, it was cut off abruptly.

  Then, everything was still again.

  Carl returned with my pills, and the pain in my chest faded after I swallowed a few. I drank some more water, letting it soothe my scratchy throat.

  The rain continued falling.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Twenty minutes later, we were still crouched there on the kitchen floor, sitting in puddles from our wet clothes, huddled together for comfort. We’d have probably been more comfortable in a safer room, but the others didn’t want to move me until my chest pains subsided. Kevin peeked outside several times, but there were no signs of the giant worms or of Earl Harper. I bade them both good riddance. The big one had probably eaten Earl, and then, having had its fill, burrowed back into the earth.

  “Well,” I told Carl, “I guess now we know what happened to your house.”

  He nodded. “And Steve Porter’s hunting cabin, too.”

  Kevin looked puzzled. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Homes have been disappearing down into the ground,” I said. “Only thing left behind is a hole—about the same size as that thing out there.”

  “Shit.”

  Carl fetched some towels and spare clothes so everybody could dry off, and we cranked up the kerosene heater to its highest setting. Sarah put on one of Rose’s old sweaters and it fit her real nice. It was the first time I’d seen it out of her dresser since she died. Gave me a lump in my throat just looking at it. We didn’t say much to each other—just sat there with our teeth chattering and waited to get warm.

  When the pills kicked in and I felt better, I went to the spare bedroom and unlocked the gun cabinet. Kevin still had Earl’s rifle, and I found some ammunition for it. I gave Carl the Winchester 30-30, and I took the Remington 4.10, loaded with punkinballs. Then I pulled out Rose’s old Ruger .22 semi-automatic pistol (I’d bought it for her one birthday long ago, and Rose had become an excellent shot—even better than me). I handed it to Sarah. I considered asking her if she knew how to use it, but something told me she did.

  She eyed it skeptically. “That’s all? Don’t you have anything bigger?”

  “Afraid not. But that there pistol will surely kill a man if you aim right.”

  “It’s not a man I’m worried about. I was just thinking about stopping power. And as for killing, I don’t need a gun to do that.”

  Carl and I both shuffled our feet, not sure how to respond. After a moment, we realized that she was smiling.

  “You’re a regular spitfire,” Carl said, chuckling.

  Kevin positioned himself at the kitchen door and continued staring out the window. “There’s no sign of them. Those things, I mean. We might be okay. Maybe they won’t come back.”

  “Even still,” I replied, “I reckon one of us ought to stand guard at all times.”

  “What were those things?” Carl asked.

  I shrugged. “Worms.”

  “Teddy Garnett,” he scolded, “don’t you ever make fun of me for stating the obvious again!”

  Sarah and Kevin were silent.

  “Have either of you seen anything like them before?” I asked.

  Sarah shook her head, but she seemed hesitant.

  Kevin was quiet for a moment and then said, “No, not like them. But we have seen some weird things. Not worms, but similar creatures, in a way.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it right now, if that’s okay?”

  “Sure.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Let’s rest up first. You can fill us in later. I imagine we all have a tale to tell.”

  I looked at Sarah standing there in Rose’s sweater, and I suddenly missed my wife real bad. My eyes welled up. I excused myself, rushed down the hall, and locked myself in the bathroom.

  I put the commode lid down and sat on it, and that’s when it hit me. All of it. The horror I’d just experienced and the despair of the last two months and the sheer loss. It crashed down on me like a lead balloon. I sat there for twenty minutes, and I shook and I cried. But I did it quietly, without uttering a sound. I didn’t want the others to hear me. And to be honest, I was afraid I’d start screaming and not be able to stop.

  When I came out, they were all sitting around the kitchen table, drinking instant coffee while Carl told them about Old One-Eye, the legendary catfish that was supposed to inhabit a part of the Greenbrier River we locals called the Cat-Hole.

  “So then Hap Logan took his little bass boat out one night, about two weeks after Ernie Whitt’s dog vanished while swimming across the Cat-Hole. It was a quiet night, and Hap had just about nodded off, when all of a sudden his boat started rocking. He sat up and looked around, but he didn’t see anything. But the boat started swaying more, like it was bumping against a rock or something. So he grabbed his flashlight and pointed it at the river’s surface, and guess what he saw?”

  “What?” Kevin asked.

  “Old One-Eye. He’d come up under Hap’s boat. There was one good eye on the left side of the boat, and a blind, milky eye on the other. Scared him something awful, he said. A lot of folks thought he was making it up, but I’ll tell you one thing—Hap Logan never went fishing in the Cat-Hole again.”

  Sarah grinned. “Sounds like those worms aren’t the only big things around here.”

  As implausible as it sounded, the thought of sitting in a boat on the river at night and seeing one unblinking fish eye staring at you from one side, and a white, sightless orb from the other, had always made me shudder.

  I heated up what was left of the stew and served everyone a bowl, along with some crackers from the pantry. But nobody seemed to have much of an appetite.

  “The bathroom’s available if anybody wants it,” I announced. “You can’t use the toilet, but I’ve got a wash basin in there and a five-gallon bucket of spring water to clean up with.”

  “Ugh.” Sarah wrinkled her nose. “I’ve had enough of water for right now, but thanks anyway. Maybe later.”

  Kevin asked, “So where are we supposed to go to the bathroom?”

  “Good question,” I said. “To be honest—and my apologies to Sarah—but I’ve just been going out on the back porch when I had to go number one, and down to the outhouse for number two.”

  Carl shivered. “You ain’t getting me back in that outhouse again.”

  “No,” I agreed, “I don’t think any of us will be venturing back out there anytime soon. I reckon we’ll use a bucket, and then dump it outside when we’re done.”

  Kevin sighed. “Boy, there’s nothing like roughing it. This reminds me of summer camp back when I was a kid.”

  Carl crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, eyeing them. “So are you two…together?”

  “Us?” Sarah threw her head back and laughed.

  Kevin joined her a second later.

  Carl’s ears turned red. “I reckon that’s a ‘no.’ ”

  “Sorry,” Sarah giggled. “You just have to know us. I’m gay, and Kevin, well…”

  A shadow passed over Kevin’s face and Sarah trailed off, her grin fading. I could tell they didn’t want to talk about whatever it was, so I tried to change the subject.

  “By any chance, would either of you happen to have some cigarettes?”

  “Sorry,” Sarah apologized. “I don’t smoke.”

  “And I was getting ready to ask you and Carl the same thing,” Kevin said.

  “You a smoker?” I asked, hoping he’d say yes. Then at least I’d have someone to commiserate with. My misery needed some company.

  “I wasn’t,” Kevin replied. “But after what we’ve been through today, I’m tempted to start.”

  Chuckling, I dumped the uneaten stew back into the pot and put the crackers in the pantry. Then I poured myself some hot water and instant coffee into a mug, and pulled up a seat at the kitchen table.

  Sarah gestured to the pictures in the living room. “Those pictures—are they
your family?”

  “They were. I don’t reckon my daughter or my grandkids…Well, they lived closer to the ocean. And Rose, that’s my wife, she passed away of pneumonia three years ago. I figure I’ll see them all sooner rather than later.”

  Carl nodded and sipped his coffee. Kevin didn’t reply. Sarah stared out the window, then turned and looked at the hutch, where Darla, my granddaughter, stared back at us from a silver frame.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You remind me of her, actually. You’ve got her strength.”

  Sarah smiled, and yes, she did remind me of Darla at that moment.

  Carl sat his mug down on the table. “So what did you folks do before—all of this?”

  Kevin brightened for a moment. “I worked in a video store.”

  “I worked for McCormick,” Sarah added. “The spice manufacturer.”

  “Sure.” I nodded. “So you’re both from Baltimore?”

  “We are,” Kevin said. “Or were. What’s left of it, at least.”

  He let his gaze roam around the kitchen. It lingered on my three houseplants, and I wondered if he was some sort of amateur gardener. When he spotted my framed picture of Johnny Cash hanging on the wall, he turned to me.

  “You’re a fan of the Man in Black, huh? I saw him in concert when I was younger. Great show.”

  “You like country music?” Carl asked.

  “Some—but not all of it,” Kevin replied. “I guess I’m pretty eclectic. Mostly rock, metal, and hip-hop. But I liked Johnny Cash. And Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks are pretty cool. Or were. I bet you guys like them, right?”

  “No sir,” Carl said. “Don’t care much for that new country at all. We like the classics. Folks like Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, Porter Wagoner, and Patsy Cline.”

  “And Jerry Reed,” I added. “Can’t forget about some of those seventies trucking songs.”

  With a grin, Carl started humming the theme song from Smokey and the Bandit.

  “East bound and down,” I chuckled.

  “We’re gonna do what they say can’t be done,” he answered.

  Kevin looked stunned. “No Dixie Chicks or Shania?”

  “The Dixie Chicks make me break out in hives,” Carl said. “And Shania Twain is about as country as that rock and roll band, Metalli-something.”

  Kevin grinned. “Metallica.”

  We all laughed then, except for Sarah, who stood up and moved to the kitchen window. She looked out the rain-streaked pane, but her eyes weren’t fixed on anything. I could tell her thoughts were far away.

  “What is it?” Kevin asked her softly.

  “There are no more Dixie Chicks,” she said. “There’s no more Shania Twain or Metallica, and no more radio and Baltimore and—and I saw Cornwell after the crash, and he’d been sliced into three—” She stopped, unable to continue, and shut her eyes. “And poor, poor Salty.”

  “Baltimore’s flooded?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

  “Are you kidding?” Kevin snorted. “Baltimore’s fucking gone, man. Just like everything else.”

  “What happened out there,” Carl whispered, more to himself than to anybody. “What the hell happened?”

  “God broke His promise,” Sarah said from the window. “Decided He was tired of us messing up this nice planet He gave us and flooded it again.”

  “Can’t say as I blame Him,” Carl muttered.

  “I’m serious,” Sarah continued. “How else do you explain it? One morning, kiddie porn is a multibillion dollar industry, the President is pardoning drug dealers in exchange for campaign contributions and declaring war on any country he feels like, teens are shooting each other in school, and terrorists are blowing up places of worship. The next day, we wake up, and Pennsylvania’s Amish country is beachfront property and the survivors are making a pilgrimage to the Rocky fucking Mountains in Colorado!”

  “And Leviathan and Behemoth are loosed upon the earth,” I added.

  Kevin and Sarah both jumped, and Kevin’s coffee mug crashed to the floor.

  Carl rose to his feet. “You okay? What’s wrong? Did you see something outside?”

  The two young people shot wary glances at each other.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. My Rose taught Sunday School for thirty-some years. Behemoth and Leviathan were both biblical creatures. The book of Job, if I remember correctly.”

  “Rose always did know her Bible,” Carl said.

  Suddenly, bursting into tears, Sarah ran out of the kitchen and down the hallway. We heard the spare bedroom door slam shut.

  “What is it?” I asked Kevin. “Did I say something wrong? I’m sorry if I offended her.”

  He shook his head. “No, you didn’t. The word Leviathan…”

  He grabbed a towel and mopped up his coffee. Then he sat back down, folded his hands, and looked at Carl and me. His face was grave.

  “Maybe I’d better tell you guys our story. Then you’ll understand. You see, those worms aren’t the only things out there.”

  “There’s other things?” Carl asked. “Worse than the worms?”

  “Oh, yes.” Kevin’s voice was barely a whisper.

  I refilled Kevin’s mug. He stirred the crystals, watching them dissolve in the hot water. None of us said anything. Carl got up and stood at the window, keeping watch.

  After a bit, Kevin took a deep breath. His hands were shaking.

  This is what he told us…

  PART II

  UPON US ALL A LITTLE RAIN MUST FALL

  Water, water, every where,

  Nor any drop to drink.

  The very deep did rot: O Christ!

  That ever this should be!

  Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

  Upon the slimy sea.

  About, about, in reel and rout

  The death-fires danced at night;

  The water, like a witch’s oils,

  Burnt green, and blue and white.

  —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Satanists were surfing down Pratt Street when I found Jimmy’s head floating outside the fifteenth floor of the Chesapeake Apartments.

  Earlier that day, a jellyfish almost stung me while I was paddling off the roof of the Globe Capital building. It was a good place for scavenging since the top floors were still above water. I went in from the roof, looking for guns, food, cigarettes, disposable lighters—anything that might be useful. While untying the raft from the roof, I was busy wishing the National Guard Armory wasn’t at the bottom of the ocean, and didn’t notice the jellyfish until it was almost too late.

  All in all, between the rain, the Satanists, and the jellyfish, it was a bad day to be outside.

  I’d always hated rainy days. They brought me down.

  I hadn’t been happy in a long, long while.

  Finding Jimmy’s head did nothing to improve my mood. I barely managed to keep from screaming. I bit through my lip, tasting blood and stifling a yell, while the Satanists whooped and shouted to each other in the distance. Their surfboards were painted black.

  I turned back to Jimmy.

  There he was. My best friend. The guy I’d grown up with, reduced now to a severed head floating on the crests of the misplaced Atlantic Ocean.

  “Shit, Jimmy. What the fuck did they do to you?”

  I grabbed him by the hair before the tide could take him.

  His pallid skin felt like cottage cheese and his mouth was frozen in an expression of surprise, as if he’d died saying, “Oh!” But it was his eyes that really got to me. I shut mine, but I could still see that death stare, floating in the darkness.

  I opened my eyes and closed his.

  Blood and water dripped from his neck, pooling around my rubber boots. It didn’t matter. I was wet anyway. I hadn’t been dry in so long that I’d forgotten what being dry actually felt like. Most of us had de
veloped rashes, and we’d lost about two-dozen people to pneumonia and colds. My uncle used to talk about jungle rot, something they got in Vietnam from having damp feet. We had a new type of fungus, a version that covered your entire body in white fuzz. In fact, that’s what we called it: the White Fuzz. It ate at you until there was nothing left—a horrible way to die.

  Choking off my emotions and trying to be clinical about things, I turned over Jimmy’s head in my hands. It didn’t appear severed. Rather, the windpipe and neck were pinched and flattened like the end of a toothpaste tube. It looked like his attacker had squeezed the head off his body. I couldn’t be sure, of course. I’m not a medical examiner or crime scene investigator or anything like that. I’m just a guy who worked at a video store—until the rain started.

  The thing on his cheek was the worst, a reddishpurplish sore, open and leaking. It looked like Jimmy’s killer had given him a hickey and gnawed through his face at the same time.

  I knew who’d done it. The Satanists. Who else?

  My mind flashed back to fourth grade. Spending the night at Jimmy’s house, reading comic books until his parents went to sleep, and then sneaking a peek at his father’s porno magazines, staring at the pictures of naked women and reading the letters, and trying to figure out what it meant when a woman said “eat me.” Summers spent inner-tubing down the Codorus Creek, and buying more comic books at the flea market, and camping out in my backyard, and riding bikes all over town.

  We got our driver’s licenses at sixteen, and our bikes were replaced with muscle cars. About the same time, the girls from the magazines were replaced by flesh and blood, and we learned exactly what a woman meant when she said “eat me.”

  We’d planned on joining the Marines together, but then Jimmy got his DUI after a car wreck just over the border in York, Pennsylvania, and I got Becky pregnant. For our nineteenth birthdays, Jimmy went to jail for manslaughter (his girlfriend hadn’t survived the crash) and I got a job at Crown Video & DVD in Cockeysville, just outside of Baltimore. I’ve often thought that life is like a Bruce Springsteen song, and looking back on those days always reinforces that in my mind.