The Conqueror Worms Read online

  I didn’t reply. We drove on in silence, both of us lost in our own thoughts. Carl whipped around a fallen tree limb and turned into my lane. As we drove through the hollow, I looked out on the flooded pasture and froze.

  “Carl, stop!”

  He slammed the brake pedal and the truck fishtailed, skidding to a halt.

  “Take a look at that.” I pointed out the window.

  In the middle of the pasture, amidst the water puddles and mud, was a hole much bigger than the one in my backyard. A trenchlike track marked where something had slithered out of it and crawled away through the mud. It looked like the marks a snake would make—if the snake were as thick as a cow.

  “Something weird is going on, Teddy. That ain’t a normal hole.”

  “Anybody ever tell youthat you’re the master of understatement?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” I sighed. “Let’s just go have a look at that track. Best bring your rifle.”

  We stepped out into the rain again and walked into the pasture. We hadn’t gone five steps before we sank into the mud up past our ankles.

  Carl pulled his foot free with a loud sucking sound, and shook the mud off of it.

  I chuckled. “At least you didn’t lose your shoe again.”

  “This is no good, Teddy. We’re gonna get stuck out here.”

  Reluctantly, I agreed with him. I took one last look at the hole and noticed the rainwater was running down inside it. Already, the walls of the hole were collapsing. I thought about Steve Porter’s missing hunting cabin again and what had happened to Carl’s house.

  As long as it doesn’t get closer to mine, I thought.

  “Let’s go on home and get dry,” I said, slogging back to the truck. “I’ll fix us some dinner. And I reckon you’d better sleep here, on account of your house caving in and all.”

  Carl looked grateful. “That’d be good. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, and I was hoping you’d offer. I sure do appreciate it, Teddy.”

  I waved my hand. “Don’t mention it. That’s what friends are for. Can’t very well let you sleep outside in the rain. Besides, it’ll be good to watch each other’s backs.”

  “You mean from Earl? You think there’s gonna be trouble?”

  I nodded. I did think Earl Harper was going to be trouble. But I was thinking about other things as well. I was thinking about that white fuzz I’d seen in the woods and what I’d heard crashing around after me. I was thinking about holes and bloodstains and trails of white, glistening slime that smelled like sex.

  And worms. I was thinking about worms.

  Worms big enough to eat a bird.

  I was thinking about the things that grow up out of the dust of the earth and destroy the hope of man.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For the second time that day (well, the third for me, and the second for Carl), we shrugged out of our wet clothes and put on some dry ones. Lucky for him we were about the same size and he could pull stuff out of my closet. Our boots were soaked clean through, and I cranked up the kerosene heater and sat them next to it to dry out. Then, while Carl propped his bare feet up and flipped through a four-month-old copy of American Sportsman, I fixed us dinner in a pot on top of the heater: a hodge-podge stew of canned deer meat, beans, carrots, tomatoes, and corn. The aroma filled the house, and both our stomachs grumbled in anticipation. My mouth was watering.

  I brought the battery-operated tape player into the living room and put on some music, one of those compilation tapes you could buy at the Wal-Mart for a dollar, with bluegrass and country music for old folks like us. When the stew was ready, we ate in silence, listening to Porter Wagoner’s “Misery Loves Company,” Marty Robbins’s “El Paso City” (the version from the 70s, rather than his 50s song “El Paso”), Claude King’s “Wolverton Mountain,” the Texas Playboys’s “Rose of San Antoine,” and Henson Cargill’s “Skip A Rope.” Carl joined in with Waylon Jennings for a trip to “Luckenbach, Texas” and wailed about getting back to the basics of love while I suffered and wished for some cotton to put in my ears. He sounded like a cat in a burlap sack that had just been tossed into a pond after being dragged across a hot tin roof. For an encore, Carl sang along with Jack Green on “There Goes My Everything,” and I finally told him to be quiet and eat his supper. He did, accompanied by burps and slurping noises.

  Despite his terrible singing voice and even worse table manners, it felt good to have him there. I hadn’t realized just how lonely I’d been until his arrival. I was surprised that we didn’t talk more during that dinner. For the last few weeks, Carl only had his dog to talk to and I’d been conversing with myself. You’d think we would have been a pair of Chatty Sarah dolls, but we weren’t. The only sounds we made were the grunts and sighs of contentment when we’d finished. I guess we didn’t need to talk. It felt good just to have somebody there with me. To know that there was somebody else still alive.

  Carl pushed his empty paper plate away and let out a window-rattling belch.

  “Liked it, did you?” I asked.

  “My compliments to the chef. So, what do you think happened to all the folks that got evacuated? All of our friends, I mean? Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they took them to White Sulphur Springs.”

  White Sulphur Springs had once been the site of the underground Pentagon. I don’t know if that’s what it really was, but that’s what the locals called it. It was a government base carved into the limestone beneath the mountains; an impregnable, indestructible concrete and steel bunker that supposedly would be used to house our elected officials in case of a nuclear war. Vice President Cheney had gone there on September 11th, when the country came under attack. They had bunkers like that all over the country back in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, before Ronald Reagan won the Cold War; back when Iraq was still our friend and George Bush, Sr. was attending cocktail parties with Saddam Hussein. I knew of one near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and another in Hellertown, Pennsylvania, and a third in Gardner, Illinois. And then there was the NORAD base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. But the one in White Sulphur Springs was ours, and we had a strange pride about it, even after it was decommissioned and opened up to tourists. Of course, Earl Harper said it wasn’t really decommissioned and was now being used as an advance staging area for United Nations security force invaders. But then again, Earl said the same thing about Fred Laudermilk’s grain silo down in Renick.

  Carl undid the top button of his pants and patted his stomach. He sighed with contentment. “That was a fine meal, Teddy. Best I’ve had in quite awhile. I’m fit to burst.”

  “Glad you liked it. If we ever run into Nancy again, we’ll have to compliment her on her canning abilities. Most of that was food I took from her cupboard.”

  “I reckon so.”

  “We’ll have the leftovers for breakfast. And I won’t even make you do the dishes.”

  Carl looked around the kitchen. “What have you been doing with the paper plates, anyway?”

  “Throwing them outside.”

  “But Teddy, that’s littering!”

  I pointed to the window. “Do you think it really matters at this point?”

  “I guess not. Don’t suppose Smoky the Bear will be showing up anytime soon.”

  He was right about one thing, though. It had been a good meal. Damn good. And now I was craving some tobacco again. I think the nicotine desire is at its very worst after you’ve eaten.

  To distract myself, I cleared the paper plates and Styrofoam bowls from the table and put them in the trash. I’d been carrying the garbage bags down to the tree line once a week, and tossing them into the forest. Broke my heart to do so because, like Carl had said, it was littering. But I couldn’t just let it pile up inside the house, and burning it outside like I used to do just wasn’t possible anymore.

  Carl rubbed his arthritic knee. “So, if the National Guard took all those folks to White Sulphur Springs, you reckon we shou
ld make our way there too?”

  “You still got that old bass boat we used to take down the Greenbrier?”

  He shook his head. “No, I sold it to Billy Anderson for fifty bucks and few rolls of hay.”

  “Sounds like you ripped Billy off.”

  “He didn’t have no complaints.”

  “Well, without the boat, I don’t know how we’d make it. Truthfully, I doubt there’s much left in White Sulphur Springs, anyway. Remember, it’s in a valley.”

  “You reckon that it’s underwater then?”

  “Not one hundred percent sure, mind you, but yeah, I would guess so. I’m pretty sure everything else is flooded, except up here on top of the mountain.”

  “So it’s just us. And the waters are rising.” His voice sounded very small and quiet. And afraid. It echoed the same hopelessness I felt deep down in my heart.

  “No.” I tried to smile. “It’s not just us. We’ve still got Earl to keep us company. Reckon he’ll come over and apologize for his rude behavior?”

  Carl made a face like he’d just bit into a lemon, while Skeeter Davis sang to us from my little stereo. She was singing about the end of the world.

  Time passed. It was a good night—the first good night either of us had enjoyed in a long time. I lent Carl a pair of my pajamas and hauled out the deck of cards. We stayed up late playing poker and blackjack and war and hearts, and switched back and forth between the country music tape and the radio dial, hoping against hope to hear something other than static.

  But we didn’t. Just the white noise of dead air and the rain coming down outside.

  Always the rain.

  We talked a lot—about our missing friends and cars and politics and football, and how there probably wouldn’t be any of those things anymore. I think that was what really brought it all home to Carl; how he wouldn’t be able to watch another West Virginia Mountaineers game next season. We talked about hunting and fishing victories of the past, of our glory days before we got married, of our wives and women we’d known before our wives, and eventually the war.

  We both grew pretty maudlin after that, and when Carl farted, it broke the tension like a sledgehammer through glass. I laughed till I thought I’d have a heart attack, and Carl laughed, too, and it felt good. It felt real.

  We talked late into the night, bathed in the soft glow of the kerosene lamp. I whooped Carl’s butt at cards.

  The two things we didn’t talk about were what we’d seen earlier at Dave and Nancy’s house and the holes that we’d found. The wormholes, as I’d taken to thinking of them, even though God had never made worms that big.

  We went to sleep long after midnight. I fixed up the bed in the spare room, and gave Carl an extra flashlight so he could see his way around. Then I went out on the back porch and pissed. The rain had backed up the seepage bed, making the toilet useless, and I didn’t feel like making the hike to the outhouse.

  It was pitch black outside, and I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I thought I heard a wet, squelching sound from somewhere in the darkness. I froze. My breath caught in my throat and my penis shriveled in my hand like a frightened turtle. But when I cocked my head and listened again, all I heard was the rain.

  Shivering, I shook myself off and hurried back inside. I made sure the door was locked, and then I double checked it.

  On my way down the hall to my bedroom I stopped at Carl’s door to make sure he didn’t need anything else. I raised my fist to knock, then paused. His voice was muffled, and at first, I thought he was talking to somebody. Then I realized Carl was singing Skeeter Davis’s “The End of the World.”

  “Don’t they know it’s the end of the world? It ended when you said good-bye.”

  His crooning still hadn’t improved. Carl sounded like a cat with its tail plugged into an electrical socket, but it was the most beautiful and sad thing I’d heard in some time. A lump swelled in my throat. Instead of knocking on the door, I shuffled off to bed. I climbed under the blankets and lay there in the darkness, craving nicotine and missing my wife.

  It was a long time before I slept.

  When I finally did, Rose came to visit me.

  In the dream, I woke up to find that the house had flooded. Everything was underwater and my bed floated on the surface, gently rocking back and forth. The water level grew higher, and my bed rose with it. I had to duck my head to keep from hitting it on the ceiling. The bed swayed. I hollered for Carl, but he didn’t answer. I shifted on the mattress, and the sudden movement caused the bed to tilt, spilling me into the water. I plunged downward to the carpet and opened my eyes.

  Rose stared back at me, as beautiful and lovely as the first time we’d met. Her nightgown floated around her, the same one she’d been wearing when she died.

  She opened her mouth and sang. Each word was crystal clear, even though we were underwater. That’s just the way it is in dreams.

  “I can’t understand, no, I can’t understand how life goes on the way it does.”

  Skeeter Davis. She was singing the same song that Carl had been singing before bed.

  “I miss you, Rosie,” I said, and bubbles came out of my mouth. But despite that, I wasn’t drowning.

  “I miss you, too, Teddy. It’s been hard to watch what you’re going through.”

  “What? An old man, fooling with crossword puzzles and trying to figure out a three-letter word for peccadillo? Afraid to go out into the rain because he might catch pneumonia? Yeah, I reckon that would be hard to watch. Must be pretty boring.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. Don’t you know it’s the end of the world?”

  “No, it’s not,” I told her. “It ended when you said good-bye, Rosie. Just like in the song.”

  “It’s going to get worse. The rain is just the beginning. They’re coming, Teddy.”

  “Who is coming? What do you mean? The worms? I thought maybe I was going crazy.”

  If she heard me, she didn’t give any indication. Instead of answering, she swam forward and kissed my forehead. Her lips were cool, soft, and wet. I’d missed them, and I wanted that kiss to last forever.

  “They’re coming,” she repeated, drifting away. “You and Carl need to get ready. It’s going to be bad.”

  “Who’s coming, Rosie? Tell me. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “The people from the sky.”

  “What?”

  She suddenly bent over, clutching her stomach.

  “Rosie? Rose! What’s wrong?”

  Convulsions racked her body, and her abdomen swelled as if she’d suddenly become nine months pregnant. I swam to her, but it was too late. She looked up at me, her eyes wide with panic, and vomited earthworms into the water. They exploded from her mouth, swimming around us. More of them slithered out of her nose and erupted from her ears and the corners of her eyes. Beneath her nightgown, in that magical place that only I had known, the place that had given birth to our children, something squirmed.

  “They’re coming, Teddy. They’re coming soon!”

  The earthworms wriggled through the water towards me.

  I opened my mouth to scream, and this time, the water rushed in, choking me. With it, the worms slid down my throat.

  I woke up clutching the sheets and still trying to scream. My mouth was open wide, but no sound came out. It felt like I was drowning, just like in the dream. My heart thundered in my chest and my lungs exploded with pain. I fumbled on the nightstand for my medicine, popped a pill, and waited for my pulse to stop racing. I was glad for the pills, but they were almost gone, and I wasn’t sure how I’d get more.

  My pajamas were drenched with sweat, and both the mattress and the sheets were damp. At first I thought I’d wet myself, but it was just perspiration. I shook my head, trying to clear it.

  The last few wisps of the nightmare ran through my mind. I wondered what it all meant and decided that it was just my subconscious getting rid of the trash from the da
y; thoughts of Rose and Carl’s rendition of the Skeeter Davis song and the worms from the carport. But knowing that didn’t ease my fears. Even then, I refused to consider the other things I’d seen. My brain just didn’t want to accept the weirdness of it. Probably a defense mechanism of some kind.

  After a bit, I sat up and lit the kerosene lamp. Rose’s picture stared at me from the nightstand. I picked it up and cradled it in my arms, thinking about how we’d met.

  In 1943, my sister, Evelyn, and her husband, Darius, owned a five-and-dime store down in Waynesboro, Virginia. Rose and Evelyn were good friends, and she was staying with them and working at the store. Meanwhile, I had been stationed in Panama and Gal—pagos for ten months, and I came home that April for a seven-day leave. My visit was unannounced. I figured I’d just show up and surprise everybody. I took the train from Norfolk to Waynesboro and got there just after sundown. Darius, Evelyn, and Rose were sitting down for supper when I knocked on the door, looking pretty sharp in my dress uniform, if I do say so myself.

  Darius and Evelyn were happy to see me and they made a big fuss. Rose kind of sat there quietly in the background until things settled down, but I saw her right away. The first thing I noticed when we were finally introduced was her smile, and the second thing was her eyes. That was all it took. Just one look into those eyes and I fell in love. Folks these days (what’s left of them) may scoff at the notion of love at first sight, but I’m here to tell you that it really happens. It happened to Rose and me.

  We communicated with each other that evening through stolen glances, but that was all. There was no real opportunity for us to talk. The next day, Darius and Evelyn gave me a ride to Greenbank, where my parents lived. I told Rose good-bye and that I was glad to have met her. As she shook my hand, I thought that I saw a special look, a message just for me (and later on, I found out that I was right). We piled into Darius’s truck. As we drove away, I was surprised to find myself feeling lonesome and sad because I didn’t expect to see Rose again. My plans were to catch the train in Greenbank after my leave was up and then head on to Tucson, where I was supposed to be stationed next.