The Conqueror Worms Read online

  “We are—were. For fuck’s sake, man, he was my best friend! I knew him since we were little kids! I just…fuck it.”

  I unwrapped Jimmy’s head and hoisted it by the hair, holding him up in the glow of the lanterns. Several of them gasped, and a few turned away—but not as many as I would have expected.

  There was silence for a few seconds while they all got a good look.

  “Doesn’t look like it was cut off.” Juan stroked his goatee. “It looks squeezed or something.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “I noticed that, too.”

  “What would do that?” Nate asked. “What kind of weapon could squeeze his head off? And what’s that weird bruise on his cheek?”

  “A jellyfish sting, maybe?” Mike offered.

  “Maybe it wasn’t the Satanists,” Taz said, cracking his knuckles. “Could have been a shark or some shit. Bit his head off and swallowed the rest.”

  He started humming the Jaws theme, and Ducky and Lashawn broke into wild laughter. For a second, I seriously considered killing all three of them. Juan and Sarah both shot them a dirty look and they shut up.

  “Weren’t no shark.”

  Salty hovered in the rear, his back to the elevator doors. He lit a cigarette.

  “Weren’t no shark,” he repeated. “ ’Twas a Kraken.”

  Ducky giggled. “A crackhead?”

  “A Kraken,” Salty corrected him, and then grew quiet again.

  Mindy looked at Lori and Sarah and rolled her eyes. A few of the others were grinning. But for a moment, Salty reminded me of Quint, from Jaws. I halfexpected him to start showing us his scars.

  Juan stared at him. “What the fuck is a Kraken?”

  “A mythological beast,” Lee spoke up. “It’s like a giant squid or octopus, except bigger. Much bigger. They show up pretty frequently in the old sea stories. I once had my ninth-graders do a paper on them and other Old World myths.”

  “Ain’t no myth, either.” Salty inhaled cigarette smoke, coughed, and then focused on us with his bloodshot eyes. “You’re a smart man, teacher. I’m sure you know all about grammar and famous people and splitting the atom, but you don’t know shit about the sea. There’s been whales that have sucker scars on them the size of truck tires.”

  Lee shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well yes, marine researchers have reported that from time to time, but a Kraken? Those were just a legend, based on mariner sightings of the giant squid. There’s nothing in the ocean big enough to pull an entire ship down!”

  “Tell that to the crew of the Alecton,” the old man snorted. “Eighteen sixty-one it was, when the Alecton sailed from France to the island of Madeira. Crew saw something round and flat and full of arms. Looked like a tree pulled up by the roots. They decided to catch it. Harpooned the thing and slipped a rope around its tail. Tried hauling it back to port, but it began to rot and they had to let it go. Nobody believed them. Said they were crazy.”

  He lit a cigarette, hacked up a wad of phlegm, swallowed it back down, and continued.

  “Another washed up on the beach in Dingle-Cosh, Ireland, back in sixteen seventy-three. Had a long body, two huge eyes, and ten tentacles. They say it measured over forty feet long. Carnival owner by the name of James Steward came to see the monster. He cut off two eight-foot sections of tentacle and put ’em on display in his carnival. The rest of the carcass washed out to sea. Nobody believed him, either—said he made it up.”

  Everybody sat still, transfixed by the story. Even Taz and Ducky, who could usually be counted on to make a mockery of anything, were quiet.

  “During the winter, I used to sit in the library on cold days. I’d read a lot. Wasn’t much else to do. Nobody ever believed them folks, but today, the giant squid is recognized as an animal. Scientists say they live way deep down in the ocean. Biggest one accepted by science was found on November second, eighteen seventy-eight. A fisherman named Sperring and two of his buddies were fishing off the coast of Newfoundland. Spotted something big in the water, bigger than a whale. Thinking it was part of a wrecked ship, they rowed toward it. But when they got closer, they found out the damned thing was alive.”

  I drained my can of warm soda, listening.

  “It got stranded in the shallows,” Salty continued, “and it was beating at the water with its tail and arms, trying to get back out. Must have been an awful sight. Sperring was spooked by its eyes. He said the eyes looked human, but they were more than a foot and a half across.

  “They watched it for a while and saw that it was wounded and weak. Then, just like the crew of the Alecton, they slipped a rope around its tail, and when the tide went out, that thing was high and dry. They cut it up for dog food, but not before a scientist come along and took some measurements. It was at least fifty-seven feet long, from the tip of its tail to the tentacles.”

  “That’s a lot of fucking dog food,” Taz snickered.

  Salty glowered at him.

  Lee cleared his throat. “Those are indeed some fascinating stories, Salty. But that’s all ancient history.”

  “Wrong. There were reports of one coming up out of the Chagos Trench in nineteen eighty-five. People stationed at the Navy base in Diego Garcia saw it. Over twenty-five witnesses, and the government had pictures, too. And another one washed up on the beach in St. Augustine in nineteen twenty-seven, and there’re samples of its flesh preserved at the Smithsonian and Yale. I’m sure you’d believe them, teacher.”

  Lee shrugged. “I’m familiar with those, but they were simply giant squid. That’s all. As I said, the Kraken myth was based on ancient sightings of those creatures.”

  “No, it wasn’t. And they weren’t just giant squid. Those things were the Kraken’s babies.”

  “If you guys don’t mind,” I interrupted, “I’d like to go bury my friend now. You can all stay here and play Jacques Cousteau if you want.”

  I stalked out of the lobby with Jimmy’s head cradled under my arm. Behind me, Lee and Salty continued to debate nautical myths. I heard some of the others get up, starting to drift away as well.

  Lori ran after me. “Kevin?”

  “Yeah?” I stopped and turned.

  “Are you all right?” She touched my shoulder, and her fingers felt warm. The moment was brief, fleeting, but I relished the sensation. There’s so little warmth these days.

  “Sure, I’ll be okay.” I tried a weak smile, and almost managed it.

  “I’m here if you need me.”

  “I know. I appreciate that. Thanks.”

  I left her standing there. Any other time, I would have welcomed her presence. But not then. Not at that moment. I pushed the stairwell door open and walked up one flight to the twentieth floor, listening to my footsteps echo in the shadows. Even in there, the air was damp. Water stains were starting to appear on the ceiling, and black mold grew in patches along the walls. We were going to be in trouble if that continued. But I was too exhausted to worry anymore about it just then.

  I exited the stairwell and went to the room at the end of the hall. My room.

  My garden.

  Originally, it had been a king-sized business suite; the conference room type, with a television built into the wall and lots of space for meetings and parties. The TV didn’t work anymore, and neither did the minifridge behind the bar. But that was okay since I didn’t plan on throwing a party anytime soon.

  The room’s best feature was the large skylight in the center of the ceiling. It measured ten feet across, facing out into the gray sky. At night, I’d lie in bed and listen to the rain beat against it. The sound of the rain was always there, day and night, no matter where you went. Eventually, you got used to it and it became nothing but background noise. At night, though, it got pervasive again.

  I wasn’t a gardener, but I’d started a garden anyway, directly beneath the skylight. It didn’t matter that there was no sunshine peeking through the clouds. I still wanted to try it. Maybe it was hopeless or perhaps I just wanted to break the monotony. Maybe
I thought some ultraviolet rays would creep through and photosynthesis would magically happen. I was also just fucking tired of eating fish, seabirds, and kelp, along with the occasional scavenged bag of potato chips or a can of corn from an abandoned building.

  Jimmy and a few of the others had helped me bring some pool tables up from the sixteenth floor. They were the heavy, slate-bottom type, and it had been a full day’s work. We’d placed them beneath the skylight, and then used plywood to shore up their sides. I filled them with what little dirt we could find at the time and added to it when I found more. Now there was a foot of soil layered evenly on top of the tables. We used fish bones, bird feathers, and other organic waste from our catches for fertilizer. The smell was bad, but I’d grown used to it. At one point, Lee suggested we use our own excrement for fertilizer, but I’d balked. I still had to sleep there and wasn’t thrilled at the idea of smelling and tilling through my fellow castaways’ shit.

  So far, nothing was growing, except for some potatoes and a few baby pine trees and spider plants that Jimmy and I had scavenged from other buildings. Anna and Sarah used the potatoes sparingly, careful not to deplete them all until we were sure they’d continue growing. On the rare occasions when they did cook with them, they made a wonderful addition to our seafood diet. Desperate for some greens, we’d even debated eating the pine trees and spider plants, but decided we couldn’t. Not yet, at least.

  I pulled out the houseplant, the bag of potting soil, and the seed packets that I’d found earlier that day, and then I unwrapped Jimmy’s head. For a moment, I saw him standing there, not so long ago.

  He had stooped over a baby pine tree, inhaling the fresh scent.

  “Damn, that smells good, dude! I forgot how pine trees smelled.”

  “Yeah.” I sipped instant coffee, brewed with saltwater to avoid depleting the fresh water supplies. It tasted like shit, but it was still better than eating the instant coffee with a spoon. “I’d give my left nut to be standing in a pine forest right now, feeling the needle carpet beneath my feet and breathing that in.”

  “Hell,” Jimmy had laughed, “while we’re at it, I’d give both nuts to be in bed with Hillary Duff and Britney Spears, and have a nice, rare sirloin steak to go with them. One that’s cold and red in the middle. And maybe a baked potato, too, with butter and sour cream, and an ice-cold beer. God damn, that would hit the spot, wouldn’t it?”

  “Fucking aye, brother,” I’d agreed.

  “Fucking aye.”

  How long ago had that been? It was hard to tell these days. Calendars and holidays seem to have been washed away with the rest of civilization. No one even looks at their watches anymore. At least, I don’t. What does it matter what time it is?

  I held up Jimmy’s head and looked him in the eyes.

  “Well bro,” I said, “I couldn’t get you the girls or the steak or the beer, but you liked the pine tree, so I guess this will have to do. Sorry, man.”

  I dug a hole near one of the baby pine trees and then placed Jimmy’s head in it, covering him up with the potting soil. When I was done, I planted the seeds and moved the houseplant from its tiny pot into the garden. I placed it directly over his head, so that it could feed as it grew.

  While I did this, I thought about when we were kids.

  I tried really hard to cry, but it didn’t happen.

  Across the room, Jimmy’s bed sat empty, the sheets still rumpled from the night before. His things sat nearby, odds and ends he’d gathered during various scavenger trips: automobile and nudie magazines, cigarettes, a boombox and a half-dozen compact discs, toiletries, a half bottle of Jim Beam, and a Rolex that had taken a licking but was no longer ticking.

  The room seemed quiet without him. I made sure there were batteries in the boom box and then put in a disc by Pantera. I played “Cemetery Gates,” which had always been Jimmy’s favorite song.

  I said good-bye to my friend.

  When it was over, I took out Pantera and played some Lewis and Walker. The acoustic guitar melodies washed over me and I closed my eyes, thinking about life before the rains came. It seemed like it had all happened a long time ago, and to someone else, as if I’d seen it in a movie or read it in a book.

  I couldn’t remember being dry. Or warm. Or safe.

  Later in the night, Lori slipped into my room. I heard the door creak open, and when I rolled over in bed, she stood beside me, wearing a flimsy nylon nightgown. She smiled, and I smiled back. I opened my mouth to speak, but she put a finger to my lips, looking at me with those sad brown eyes in the soft glow of the lantern. She held out her arms and we melted together. Silently, we undressed each other and then, without a word, we made love. Even our orgasms were quiet, despite their intensity. When it was over, I trembled in her arms, but still, I did not cry.

  After the tremors subsided, I snuffed out the lantern and we lay there in the dark, in a room smelling faintly of rotting fish and pine trees, until the rain lulled us both to sleep.

  For the first time since the rains started, I didn’t have any nightmares.

  My dreams were as dry as my eyes.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lori was still sleeping beside me when I woke up. Her honey-brown hair spilled across her face, and I don’t remember ever seeing anything quite so beautiful in my life. She looked so peaceful—but troubled at the same time. Her brow was furrowed, and her eyes darted beneath the lids. I wondered what she was dreaming about. The whole thing seemed unreal. I’d forgotten how good it felt to be with someone. Not just the sex, but to actually have someone there with you, to hear them breathe, feel them move, watch them sleep. I snuggled close to her, shut my eyes, and sniffed her scent. Our musk from the previous night still clung to the bed and I savored it.

  So this was love. Or the start of it, at least.

  I liked it.

  She felt warm—and dry. Dryness had never been erotic before the rains came, but now I couldn’t think of anything more pleasurable.

  I wasn’t sure what would happen with us next. I’d been lonely. Sarah was off limits, Mindy had hooked up with Mike, and Anna was out of my age range. I’d been interested in Lori all this time, but so had Jimmy. Because of that, I’d never made a move. Now, Jimmy wasn’t even twenty-four hours in the ground and here was Lori, sleeping next to me.

  She stirred, then opened an eye and stretched like a cat.

  “Morning.” She smiled, flashing white teeth. Looking back on it now, that was the exact moment I fell in love with her. God, she had a beautiful smile.

  Yep. This was love.

  And I liked it more and more with each passing moment.

  “Morning yourself,” I smiled back. “How’d you sleep?”

  “Better than I have in a long time,” she yawned. “You?”

  “Amazingly. Especially after—well, you know.” It wasn’t in my nature to play coy, but Lori had a weird effect on me. I glanced at the garden and then back to her. My ears felt hot.

  Smiling, Lori nodded in understanding.

  We both blushed. Neither of us spoke for a minute.

  “You know what’s weird?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  “Hmm?”

  “Every morning, I still wake up and look at the alarm clock. But, of course, it doesn’t work. I should just throw it out.”

  I laughed. “I do that too, sometimes. A few days ago, I was dreaming about life before the rain. When I woke up, I thought I was late for work. Jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and shoes, and then it hit me. There is no more work. The video store is gone. It really bummed me out. Never thought I’d say this, but I actually miss work.”

  “I don’t. College maybe, but not work. I miss television—and music, too.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “There’s a lot of good movies they were in the process of making that we’ll never get to see. The third Star Wars, and the remake of High Plains Drifter. It’s just so weird that they’ll never be seen by anyone.”

  “I know what you mean.
” She snuggled closer. Her breasts brushed against my forearm. Her nipples were erect and I felt myself harden in response.

  We grew quiet again, lost in our own thoughts. She felt so warm beside me. I could have happily stayed there all day.

  “You know what else I miss?” She said it so quietly that I almost didn’t hear her.

  “What’s that?”

  “The sun. I miss waking up and feeling it on my face when it comes through the window, and hearing birds singing outside. The only birds I ever hear now are those damn seagulls.”

  “Yeah. Sometimes I can’t remember what the sun felt like. You know what I mean?”

  “Mm-hmm.” She stretched again, and as she yawned, the sheet slid down an inch, revealing the dark triangle between her legs. I stiffened even more.

  “Lori, about last night…” My voice was thick.

  She pressed a finger against my lips. “Don’t say it, Kevin. Don’t say anything. You needed someone. I wanted to be that someone. Neither of us has to explain it or make excuses for it. What happened is what happened.”

  I grinned. “Does that mean it can’t happen again?”

  Giggling, we disappeared beneath the covers.

  Later, I figured we’d go to breakfast together, but Lori went back to her room instead, saying that she wanted to fix herself up. I accepted with a smile and a kiss, but after she left, I wondered if she didn’t want the others to see us together.

  Even in a post-apocalyptic world, women were still women, and I still didn’t fucking understand them. Some things don’t change, despite the weather.

  The hotel’s restaurant and kitchen on the lower floors were both underwater, so we’d converted one room on the twentieth floor into a galley. When I walked in, Anna and Sarah were hard at work making breakfast, and Juan, Nate, Lee, Mike, and Mindy were already eating. I pulled up a chair and joined them.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” Anna said. “Late night?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Juan, Nate, and Lee chuckled. Lee elbowed Juan in the ribs and shoved some bacon into his mouth.