The Conqueror Worms Read online

  “You too,” I called after her. Then she was gone.

  Another tremor struck, bouncing me off the wall. Chunks of plaster rained down on us. Deep inside the walls, something groaned.

  Lori wiped her eyes. “Kevin, will you hold me?”

  “Yeah.” I swallowed. “I’d like that very much.”

  “We’re not going to make it, are we?”

  I started to lie to her, but I couldn’t. Not anymore.

  “No,” I said, “we’re not going to make it, Lori. Not with that thing outside. It would kill us as soon as we tried to escape. We’re trapped.”

  “Let’s go to your room, then. I want to smell the pine tree in your garden while you hold me, and I want to fall asleep before it happens. I can fall asleep in your arms and not wake up.”

  “Okay. That sounds good.” Personally, I wondered how the hell we’d be able to fall asleep while a monster ripped the roof off the building, but I didn’t ask.

  We made it back to my room while the creature tore the building apart around us. We lay down on the bed, not bothering to remove our wet clothes and boots, and our bodies entwined. Legs, groins, chests, and arms—we were as close to each other as two human beings could be. The rain hammered at the skylight, rattling it in its frame, but I ignored the noise, concentrating solely on Lori. I wondered how we’d go. I hoped that the water would flood our level and engulf us. Drowning was better than being crushed under the wreckage—or suffering the same fate as those on the roof. I thought about Mike being eaten alive by the tentacles and silently vowed that Lori wouldn’t meet the same fate. I’d kill her myself, if I had to, before I’d let that happen.

  “Can you smell the pine?” she murmured.

  “Yes. It smells good. Not much else grew in that garden, but the tree did okay. Maybe I wasn’t such a bad gardener after all.”

  She nodded against my chest and closed her eyes.

  I closed mine as well. It wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. It felt good. Right. Leviathan’s rage was nothing more than background noise, faint and distant.

  “I love you, Lori.”

  “I love you, too.”

  This was a good way to die, surrounded by the warmth of someone you loved.

  So when there was a knock at the door, you can understand why I was pissed. Lori gasped in surprise and I jumped as well. Something heavy crashed into the ocean with a loud splash as the second knock came.

  “A tentacle?” Lori asked.

  “Can’t be,” I whispered. “I don’t think they can reach that far, and I don’t think it knows how to knock.”

  “Salty? Or Sarah, maybe?”

  “It has to be. Who else?”

  A third knock, more insistent.

  Lori sat up. “We can’t just leave them out there, Kevin.”

  “No, I guess we can’t.”

  I got up, sloshed to the door, and opened it on the fourth knock. Salty grinned at me, appearing embarrassed. Sarah stood behind him. Both of them looked small and afraid.

  “We’re sorry, Kevin,” Salty said. “But we just didn’t want to be alone.”

  “It’s okay,” I told them. “Come on—”

  Behind me, the skylight exploded, showering the bed and the garden with shards of broken glass and rain. Lori screamed. I turned in time to see the tentacle lift her from the bed and yank her through the hole.

  “Lori!”

  I ran towards her, and jumped up on the garden table. I reached for her, and she reached back, but it was too late. The image is burned into my mind, her arms outstretched, her face frozen in terror. With a final scream—a scream cut short by the creature’s squeeze—she was gone. Leviathan pulled her out into the night. Rain poured through the gaping hole where the skylight had been. I collapsed underneath it, sinking to the floor, shrieking and clenching sods of dirt from the garden in my fists. Broken glass cut my hands and my blood mixed with the mud.

  Then, the hole in the ceiling grew dark again. I sensed it even before Salty and Sarah cried out in alarm. I looked up and stared straight into that huge, malevolent, yellow eye. Leviathan stared back at me.

  I shook my bloody fists. “Give her back!”

  “Kevin,” Sarah shouted. “Get away from there!”

  I stayed where I was, rooted to the garden, staring into Leviathan’s eye.

  It blinked once, and then, with one last fading cry, it was gone, vanishing into the rainy night.

  Revenge. During the raid, the Satanists told us that the mermaid was Leviathan’s bride. I’d killed its lover, so now it had killed mine in return. Call it the laws of nature or the circle of fucking life.

  Blood streamed from my clenched fists. I lifted my face to the skies and the rain showered me. The droplets rolled off my cheeks and into the garden. They were seeds. Rain seeds. My own tears joined them, and I wept like the sky. I had finally learned how to cry.

  Kneeling there in my garden, I rained.

  PART III

  THE WORM TURNS

  Upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, every beast and every man. And every creeping thing…

  —Genesis

  Chapter 7, Verses 20 and 21

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I’m back again. That took a lot out of me, writing down Kevin’s story exactly the way he told it to us. Reminds me of the character in H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds. Halfway through the book, the protagonist told his brother’s story—about what happened to him in London and what the Martians did there. Of course, that was fiction and this isn’t. But the reader got a glimpse of what was happening elsewhere from it.

  I reckon you’ve gotten a glimpse of what was happening up north. Now you know everything that I know.

  So there’s that.

  I drifted off for a while after I’d finished relating Kevin’s tale, and I just woke up again. My hand hurts worse than ever. My fingers are swollen and there’s pain shooting up my wrist. Everything below my waist is still numb, though, and that’s a blessing.

  My broken leg is swollen up to about three times its normal size. It’s black-gray and greasy looking, like a sausage that’s been left out in the sun too long. It stinks, too. I can’t feel it, and I reckon that’s good, because it sure looks painful.

  Despite the pain, I’m hungry. Hungry and thirsty. And the nicotine cravings are still there, too.

  Something’s poking me on the inside, and I think it might be a rib. The purple bruise on my stomach is getting darker and I’m still spitting up blood. There seems to be more of it now. I woke up in a pool of it.

  Not good. Not at all.

  I’ve got to finish this. Finish before it’s too late. I’m in the home stretch now. The last part. Once I’m done, I’ll put this notebook up somewhere safe. Hopefully, it will stay dry. If I had a bottle that was big enough, I’d roll the notebook up and stick it inside. That would be funny. Just like the note in a bottle that a shipwrecked man tosses out into the sea.

  S.O.S.!!! Save me!!!

  Actually, now that I think about it, that’s not funny at all. Because I don’t think anyone is going to save me. There’s no cavalry riding to my rescue. There’s no ship on my horizon.

  God, I need a dip.

  And I’m rambling again. Ain’t gonna finish this at all if I keep that up.

  So…

  Carl and I were silent for a long time after Kevin finished telling us his story. Our coffee had grown cold and so had the house. I shivered and rolled the sleeves of my flannel shirt down to stay warm. Daylight, or the gray light that passed for it, was fading fast, and the fog grew thicker, pressing against the kitchen windows like a solid white wall. Sarah had joined us in the kitchen halfway through the story and she was quiet as well.

  Finally, I stirred. I reached for both of their hands, took them in my own, and said softly, “I’m very sorry for what both of you have lost.”

  “Thanks,” Kevin said. “That means a lot. It’s hard thinking
about it.”

  Sarah gave my hand a gentle squeeze and said nothing.

  Carl cleared his throat, scooted his chair back, and returned to his post at the window in the kitchen door—the door that led out onto the earthworm covered carport.

  “How about some more coffee?” I offered.

  “Awesome.” Kevin sat back and cracked his neck joints. “A cup of coffee would really hit the spot.”

  Sarah nodded. “Yeah, I could use some, too. Want me to get it?”

  “No,” I said. “You sit right back in that chair. I’m not so old that I can’t fix a cup of coffee for my guests.”

  With his index finger, Carl drew a smiley face in the condensation on the window. Then he added two little antennae.

  “Anything moving out there?” Kevin asked him.

  “Nope, but I can’t see more than a few feet on account of this fog. Can’t even make out the carport. It’s as thick as Rose’s potato soup out there.”

  The thought of Rose’s potato soup made my stomach grumble. I filled the kettle with bottled water and then put it on top of the kerosene heater to boil. I had decided long ago to dispense with my resolve to conserve kerosene. The way things were going, we probably wouldn’t be around much longer anyway and the conservation wouldn’t matter. While we waited for the kettle to whistle, I got out a bag of potato chips, some beef jerky, and what was left of the stew, and served them up.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s not exactly a meal fit for a king.”

  “It’s better than anything we’ve had in a long while,” Sarah said around a mouthful of cold stew. “These vegetables are great. I wasn’t hungry earlier when we ate, but now I’m starved.”

  I scratched my whiskered throat and watched them eat. “Earlier, you mentioned something you called ‘the White Fuzz.’ You said it grew on people?”

  Kevin nodded. “That’s right. Horrible stuff. Completely consumes you until there’s nothing left.”

  “I think I saw something like that down yonder in the hollow.” I pointed out the window. “Yesterday morning, when I was out looking for teaberry leaves. A pale white fungus. Never saw anything like it before.”

  Sarah’s tone was one of concern. “You didn’t touch it, did you?”

  “No. I didn’t like the looks of it, so I left it alone. But I saw it growing on a deer, too, and he looked sickly. It was growing up his legs and hindquarters. Kind of like mold or moss.”

  Kevin wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “That’s the White Fuzz, alright. Good thing you didn’t touch it, or you’d be covered by now. The stuff works fast. Consumes its host.”

  Carl turned away from the window. “Do you know what it is? Where it came from?”

  The two young people shook their heads.

  “It’s just one more consequence of the rain,” Sarah said. “Like the worms and everything else.”

  The kettle started to whistle, and I pulled it off the heater and filled their mugs. Kevin took a sip and smacked his lips in satisfaction. I got up and fetched the sugar. Then I turned on some music. The soft sounds of Ferlin Husky’s “Wings of a Dove” filled the house.

  “So what happened next?” Carl asked. “Did Leviathan come back? And how did you folks get from Baltimore to here?”

  “Carl,” I said, “maybe they’re tired of talking about it. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

  “Well, I reckon.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, but satisfaction brought him back.”

  “We can tell you the rest,” Kevin said. “That’s okay. It happened, you know? As incredible as it all sounds, it really happened. Not talking about it won’t make that any less so. It’s like they say in that old Led Zepplin song. ‘Upon us all a little rain must fall.’ But I would like to wash up first, if that’s okay?”

  “Sure.” I blew on my coffee to cool it. “I laid a towel and washcloth out for you in the bathroom. You’ll find them next to the sink. The washbasin is full of clean water, and there’s a bar of soap next to it.”

  “But I want to know what happened,” Carl said. “Listen, you can’t wash up now. This is like a Saturday matinee cliffhanger!”

  “For crying out loud, Carl,” I spat, disgusted with him. “You’re worse than a little kid.”

  “Sarah, you want to take over?” Kevin asked.

  She brushed her long, blond hair from her eyes. “Yeah. I’m okay to talk about it now. Those worms outside just brought it all back for a while.”

  I showed Kevin to the bathroom and when I came back, Ferlin Husky had been replaced with B. J. Thomas’s “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” B. J. wailed that he missed his baby. I missed mine, too, and I was starting to crave a dip again as well.

  Sarah hummed along with the tune. “My mother used to listen to this when I was little.”

  “Was she a country music fan?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess so. I don’t remember much about her, really. She died when I was eight years old.”

  She pushed her empty bowl away, drained her mug of coffee, and relieved Carl at the window. Carl sat down at the table.

  Sarah stared out into the fog for a moment, gathering her thoughts, and then she began.

  “After the creature, Leviathan, as Kevin insists on calling it, took Lori, it disappeared. We didn’t see it again. But we were still in trouble. Leviathan had destroyed most of the hotel during its assault, and the upper levels were flooding fast. The water was rising, and within a few hours, the nineteenth floor was underwater, and it was spilling into the twentieth. Plus, it was still trickling down from the roof, through the cracks in the ceiling and the walls. We could feel the building shake every time a strong wave hit it. We had to get out. It was either that or stay there and let the whole thing fall down around us.

  “Kevin was in bad shape. He just sat there in the garden, and we couldn’t get him to move. He just kept humming ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.’ When he talked, all he’d say was that he was waiting for Lori to come back, over and over. He’d really cut his hands up bad on the glass, and he was losing blood. But eventually we got him to understand the situation and he snapped out of it. The monster had destroyed the raft, but since Salty and I had watched Lee build it, we had a pretty good idea of how to make another one. I guess we could have swam for it, found another building that was safe, but after what we’d just been through, none of us wanted to swim in that water, not knowing what was lurking beneath the surface.

  “For the next hour, Salty and I gathered materials and put another raft together while Kevin bandaged his hands and half-heartedly salvaged supplies. By the time we cast off from the roof, the water had flooded the twentieth floor and was rising to the top of the hotel. We weren’t even a mile away when one entire corner of the building sheered off and collapsed into the ocean.”

  “It’s a good thing you made it out,” Carl said. “Sounds like it was just in the nick of time, too.”

  “Yeah, it was. But we weren’t out of the woods. Not by a long shot. The current pulled us out to sea, away from the city. We drifted for two days and we didn’t have paddles or a sail or anything to guide us. We couldn’t even be sure of which direction the raft was drifting. The rain blotted out the sun and moon and the stars, so we couldn’t navigate using those. I think we drifted southeast and then farther south, before coming back in over where land used to be. The tides tossed us around. The whole time, we worried about running into more mermaids, or what we’d do if Leviathan decided it was still hungry and came back for more. Luckily, we didn’t see anything other than seagulls and a few schools of fish. A shark passed pretty close at one point, but we scared it away by shouting at it. And we saw an albatross, which Salty said was a good omen.”

  Carl interrupted her. “Do you really think that squid thing was Leviathan from the Bible?”

  “Kevin sure did,” Sarah said, shrugging. “It’s as good a name as any, I guess. To b
e honest, Mr. Seaton, I never really believed in God or the Bible. I’m still not sure I do, completely. Despite what I said earlier, about God breaking His promise, I don’t believe that what’s happening outside is some sort of divine judgment. The rains are just the consequences of an environmental collapse; an apocalypse that we put into motion with the start of the industrial revolution. We’re humans. We fuck things up. That’s what we do, and that’s all we ever did.”

  “And that’s where we disagree,” said Kevin, stepping back into the kitchen. He smelled like soap, and his skin was red from scrubbing. His hair was still damp, but he looked like he felt better. “Sarah and I have argued about this at length. The greenhouse effect doesn’t explain what’s happening, and scientists had pretty much said so before the news stations stopped broadcasting. It doesn’t explain things like the White Fuzz or these creatures, either.”

  Carl leaned back in his chair. “So what does explain it?”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Kevin thinks this whole situation, everything that’s happening, was caused by black magic.”

  “Well think about it,” he insisted. “During the raid, the Satanists had a spell book, the Daemonolateria—whatever the hell that means—and supposedly they used it to summon up that squid thing. If they could do that, then doesn’t it make sense that they cast other spells too? It makes sense that they cast some sort of spell to cause all of this. Their leader told us as much, during the raid. How else do you explain the weather? One day, it starts raining all over the world, all at the same time. The Sahara, the Alps, London, Paris, New York, Baghdad—even in fucking Antarctica. That’s just not natural. Almost overnight, the entire world starts flooding. Storm surges stronger than anything a normal hurricane could generate wipe out most of the world’s coastal cities. Tsunamis eradicate entire islands—millions and millions of people dead in a matter of days. Not weeks, but days. Does that seem scientifically plausible to you? And what about the mermaid?”

  “We still don’t know that’s what it really was,” Sarah said. “They say that manatees look like—”