The Conqueror Worms Page 8

  After a short visit with our folks, Darius and Evelyn returned to Waynesboro. I spent the night in my old bedroom, but I couldn’t sleep a wink. All I did was lay there in my familiar bed and think of Rose. I couldn’t get her out of my head. By dawn, I knew what I needed to do. The next morning, during breakfast, I told my parents all about her and what I’d made up my mind to do. They understood, and I spent the day hitchhiking back to Waynesboro. Once again, I arrived after sundown, and when I knocked on the door and saw Rose, my heart sang. I’d been worried she might not be there.

  I asked her out to a movie that night and she said yes. Neither of us had any idea what film we saw. To this day, I couldn’t tell you what it was. We sat in the back row and pretty much had the place to ourselves. We never looked at the screen. Instead, we talked the whole time. After the movie was over and the lights came up, we walked home very slowly under the full moon and talked some more. We were awake until one in the morning, but before I said good night I kissed her good-bye.

  Holding her picture, I thought about that kiss, and of the next day—the first time I told her that I loved her, and how she’d whispered it back to me, her breath soft and sweet in my face.

  I love you…

  One week later, I wrote her a letter and asked her to marry me. She said yes. The rest, as they say, is history.

  In the darkness, the rain splattered against the roof and windows. Lying back down, I stared at the ceiling, listening to the rain until I finally drifted off again.

  I dreamt of Rose again, but this time we were walking down that lane under the same full moon. We stood there and we kissed—one long, lingering moment that lasted until the dawn.

  “I love you,” she whispered, and the sun was shining bright and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next day—yesterday—was Day Forty-two. That’s when the people from Baltimore fell out of the sky.

  I woke up the same time as always, still tired and groggy from the dreams about Rose. The bedroom was hot and sticky, and my pajamas clung to me. The weather had sent the humidity climbing. The extremes in temperature were just another weird effect of the constant rain. One moment it was sweltering and the next you needed a sweater to keep warm.

  As usual, I reached for my dip out of habit and grumbled when it wasn’t there. But I cheered up when I heard Carl moving about in his room. I’d forgotten he was here; his presence was a comfort.

  My body creaked and groaned as I climbed out of bed. I rubbed the stiffness from my joints and slipped into my old faded bathrobe. It was ripe enough to stand up on its own, so I reminded myself that I would have to do laundry in the washtub pretty soon. The washtub was an antique; it had belonged to my mother. I’d taken it after she died—sentimentality. But now that the power was out, it came in handy.

  Other than the sounds drifting from Carl’s room and the endless droning of the rain, the house was quiet. I listened for the bird and then I remembered what had happened the day before. After that, my good mood soured again.

  Carl must have heard me moving about. He came out of his room and we greeted each other sleepily. He looked tired, and I wondered if he’d had bad dreams, too. If so, he didn’t mention it and I didn’t ask. But there were dark circles under Carl’s eyes, circles that hadn’t been there yesterday, and his face looked drawn and haggard.

  I went outside to pee, and while I stood there yawning, I noticed the earthworms were still on my carport—now at least a foot deep. The image of the worms in my dream came to me then and I shivered, forcing it from my mind.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the rain. Then I went back inside.

  We had leftover stew and instant coffee for breakfast, and when we were done, I fooled with the crossword puzzle book a little more, still trying to think of a three-letter word for peccadillo.

  “It has to stop sometime,” Carl mused, watching the rain from the living room’s big picture window. “I mean, it can’t rain all the time, can it? The Lord wouldn’t allow something like that.”

  I gummed my pencil and tried to concentrate.

  “Teddy?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What if it don’t stop? You ever think about that? What if the rain just keeps falling?”

  “Then it’s going to be a mighty rough winter. Can you imagine what will happen once the temperature drops below freezing and all this water turns into snow and ice?”

  “No, I hadn’t thought of that. As bad as things are right now, I reckon that would be worse.”

  “Probably best not to think about it.”

  But now he had me considering the possibility. I tried to imagine all the moisture in the air turning to snow. It would be a blizzard, the type of which hadn’t been seen since the Ice Age. The house would be covered within days, and after that…

  There lay madness. Rather than thinking about it, I returned to the crossword puzzle. Carl picked up an old issue of Field & Stream and thumbed through it.

  It occurred to me that another Ice Age might occur anyway. Yes, there was still sunlight somewhere above the cloud cover. I knew this because there was a silver disc where the sun would normally be. But would the clouds and fog continue to block the sunlight? What would happen then?

  I shivered.

  “I’m guessing that the toilet don’t work?” Carl asked.

  “Yep,” I nodded. “If you’ve got to take a dump, you’ll have to use the outhouse. Just don’t sit in the spider webs.”

  Carl frowned. He hated spiders.

  “Okay. I’m going to go sit on the throne for a spell.”

  “Have fun. Don’t let anything bite you on the behind.”

  “That’s not funny, Teddy.”

  Carl put on his raincoat and boots, grabbed an umbrella and slogged outside with the magazine rolled up and tucked under his arm. I got up, wiped condensation from the kitchen window, and watched him make his way across the swampy yard. He was hurrying, so I figured he had to go bad.

  But five minutes later, he was moving even faster when he burst through the kitchen door, dripping water onto my linoleum.

  “Teddy!” he gasped. “You better come quick. There’s something in the outhouse!”

  “I told you there were spiders.”

  He shook his head, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  “Groundhog?” I’d had a problem last summer with them burrowing beneath the outhouse and shed.

  Carl swallowed hard. “No, it’s not a varmint. I’m not sure what it is, but it sounds big. Just come look, damn it!”

  I shrugged into my rain gear and followed him outside in annoyed resignation. The humidity had dropped again. The air was chilly, and the mist seemed to cling to my face. Even still, the fog wasn’t as heavy as the previous day, and I could see a little better. I noticed that my apple tree was leaning at a forty-five degree angle, the soil around it too wet for the roots to keep their purchase. Rose and I had planted that tree together when it was just a little sapling, and the sight made me sad.

  We reached the outhouse, and Carl suddenly stopped.

  “I don’t see anything,” I said.

  “Open the door and have a look inside.”

  I approached it cautiously, but didn’t hear or see anything unusual. I steeled myself and flung the door open. The hinges creaked. I stuck my head inside. There was that faint odor common to all outhouses, and I thought I caught a hint of that strange smell from the day before—the fishy stench. But it was muted. Other than that, everything seemed normal; two holes, three rolls of toilet paper, a bucket of lime to dump down in the hole, a can of aerosol disinfectant, and a lonely spider web hanging in the upper corner.

  I stepped back outside. “Yep, that spider sure is scary. Big, hairy sucker. I’m glad you called me out here, Carl. Give me the magazine and I’ll kill it for you. Then you can get about your business and I can go dry off.”

  “There’s no need to make fun of me, Teddy. I’m telling you,
I heard something inside. It sounded big.”

  “Well, there’s nothing in there now. Take a look for yourself.”

  He didn’t move. “It was down underneath—you know, beneath the outhouse.”

  “In the pit?”

  Carl nodded.

  I stepped back inside and stared down into the holes. And then I saw it.

  Well, actually, I didn’t see it.

  If you’ve never been in an outhouse, I reckon I should explain how they work. When you build an outhouse, you start by digging a pit. You make it as deep as you can—usually at least ten or fifteen feet. Then you construct your outhouse over the hole. The toilet itself goes right over the pit, so that when you do your business, your waste has somewhere to go. You sprinkle a bit of lime down the hole to aid in the waste’s eventual breakdown and to cut down on the smell. But every time you look down that hole, you’ll see an indicator of your previous visit: a congealed pile of urine and feces and toilet paper.

  That’s what I wasn’t seeing. It wasn’t there anymore. The waste pit was gone. There was nothing—just a black, seemingly bottomless hole, certainly deeper than the original pit I’d dug. Something had tunneled up beneath the outhouse, and decades worth of foulness had drained down into the trench and vanished from sight.

  “Well, I’ll be,” I whispered.

  “What is it?” Carl asked. “What do you see?”

  “I’m not sure. Remember the holes from yesterday?

  Out by the woodpile and in the field?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ve got another one.” I stepped back outside. “Something dug a hole underneath the outhouse and took a really nasty bath.”

  “Where does the hole go?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure not gonna crawl down inside and see. No thank you, sir.”

  We stared at each other while the rain soaked through our clothes.

  “Teddy, what the hell is going on? What kind of a critter makes a hole like that?”

  “I don’t—”

  A blast of thunder cut me off, and we both jumped. A second later, another blast followed. There was no lightning in the sky.

  That’s not thunder, I thought. Somebody was shooting. Heavy caliber, by the sound. Another blast rolled across the hills.

  “Did you hear that?” Carl asked me, still a master of asking the obvious.

  I put my finger to my lips. “Listen.”

  There was something else, over the gunshots—a thrumming sound, growing louder and closer.

  Carl stiffened. “It sounds like—”

  A helicopter exploded through the treetops, seesawing wildly as it roared overhead of us and swooped towards the empty field.

  “Maybe it’s the National Guard!” Carl shouted above the noise. “They finally came to get us!”

  My spirits lifted. It looked like we were saved.

  We waved our arms and shouted at the top of our lungs, but the helicopter continued away from us. It looked like it was in trouble. Black smoke billowed from its engine.

  Another gunshot rang out, and then a figure emerged from the forest. It was Earl Harper, still dressed in his combat fatigues and looking like a crazy, drowned rat. Just as mean, too.

  He hollered something unintelligible, raised the rifle, sighted through the scope, and squeezed the trigger. There was a flash of light and smoke, followed by another blast. Then he lowered the gun and ran towards us.

  “Good Lord,” Carl grunted. “What’s he gone and done now?”

  I couldn’t answer him. I felt numb, and my feet were rooted in the mud.

  Carl picked up a length of dead wood—a thick fallen tree branch—and held it at his side like a club. I just watched the helicopter in stunned disbelief.

  It veered to the left and then to the right, as if the pilot were flying drunk. It pitched back toward a grove of pine trees and away from of the field, then shot upward again. The engine whined.

  “I hit it,” Earl cackled as he ran up to us. “I got the bastards! Didn’t I tell you? A black fucking helicopter! It’s just like they talked about on the Coast-to-Coast AM show. I warned you all. God damned U.N. invasion troops!”

  The helicopter swerved back over the field again. Smoke now poured from the engine in a thick cloud. Earl sighted through the scope again and squeezed off another shot. The gun bucked against his shoulder. Visibility was poor because of the rain and I wondered how he could hit anything, but he did. The fleeing chopper plummeted from the sky like a stone. There was no explosion or big orange fireball like in the movies. Never is. There was just a sickening crunch as metal collapsed and shredded and the whirring blades tore into the earth. The engine sputtered.

  Then there was silence, followed seconds later by the sound of people screaming.

  Then silence again, except for my harsh breathing, Carl’s asthmatic wheezing, and the quiet click of Earl reloading the gun.

  And the rain in the background, of course. Always the rain.

  None of us moved. We just stared at each other. Earl pulled more ammo from his pocket and slid them into the gun.

  Carl gripped his club tightly. “What the hell is going on, Earl?”

  “I got them,” Earl whispered, a grin splitting his grizzled face wide open. He worked the rifle bolt and trudged toward the twisted, smoking wreckage. So intent was his approach that he didn’t see Carl sneak up behind him with the length of wood. Earl didn’t suspect a thing until Carl cracked him in the back of the head.

  Earl dropped to the ground with a groan, his face sinking into the soggy mud.

  Carl looked up at me, his face shocked. “You don’t suppose I killed him, do you?”

  “Not with that hard head of his. But pull his face out of the mud so he doesn’t drown.”

  While Carl did that and checked Earl’s pulse, I grabbed the rifle from where it fell. Then we loped toward the crash site. I clutched the gun so hard that my knuckles turned white. Carl picked up another fallen branch and held it out in front of him like a sword.

  “Oh, those poor people,” he murmured. “You reckon anybody is alive in there?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

  The stench of scorched metal hung thick in the air.

  Carl bent over, coughing. “Good Lord…”

  “You gonna be okay?” I asked him. “Because I need you here with me right now.”

  “I’m all right. Just been a while since I saw something like this. Since the war. I’d forgotten how the adrenaline rush can make a man sick. I’m fighting it off.”

  “Me too,” I said, even as the bile rose in my throat.

  Black, oily smoke twisted from the crash site, but there was no fire. The weather had taken care of that. It certainly didn’t look like a helicopter anymore. Bits of wreckage lay scattered across the field. The cockpit rested at the end of a deep trench gouged into the mud. It was this piece we approached. It had split in half. One section contained something unrecognizable—wet and red, with steam rising off of it. It wasn’t until Carl began to retch behind me that I realized what it was.

  The pilot. Or what was left of him. I’d seen the worst acts of human butchery during the war; seen living, breathing men reduced to nothing more than piles of shredded, smoking meat, seen the black stuff bubble out from deep inside their bodies—but it had been a long time.

  This brought it all back. Carl knelt on the ground, mud squirting through his clenched fists, and threw up his breakfast.

  The pilot must have been wearing his seatbelt, and that was what killed him. He was cut into sections, horizontally from his left shoulder and down across his chest to his right hip, and then severed in half again at the waist. His legs and groin remained in a sitting position on the gory seat, along with a steaming loop of gray intestines and splattered feces. His other two pieces had fallen to either side. His innards were spread across everything. As we watched, one length of intestine slithered off the seat like a snake, and plopped into the mud.

 
It reminded me of a worm.

  Carl wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a brown smear of mud across his face. He rose unsteadily. His face was stark white.

  I found the pilot’s head lying in the mud. His lower jaw had been sheared off, and rainwater pooled in his vacant eyes. I bent down and closed them.

  “You okay?” I asked Carl.

  He spat onto the ground. “Yeah. I’ll be fine. Like I said, it’s just been a long time since I’ve seen something this bad. Tell the truth, I’d hoped never to see it again.”

  “I know what you mean. I thought things like this were behind us now, in our old age.”

  Carl gagged, and then covered his nose with his hand.

  “You sure you’re okay?” I asked again.

  “I—I’d forgotten what it smells like. Blood and people’s insides.”

  The stench had gotten into my lungs as well and it was making me sick. I fought it off, trying to keep my head. My body ached, reminding me that I was no superhero, just an old man who’d been out in the rain too long.

  I turned around to check on Earl. He was still lying in the mud, unconscious.

  “We’re gonna have to deal with him,” Carl said.

  I nodded.

  There was a groan behind us. We turned and found an old man, probably about our age, lying on the ground and bleeding in a puddle. Carl knelt to examine him and the man moaned, sputtering as the cold rain showered him. His shirt sleeve had ridden up and I caught a glimpse of a black, faded tattoo on his bicep—a pair of anchors and a U.S.N. logo. He’d served in the Navy, whoever he was.

  “Who—” he began and then broke off, seized by a great, racking cough. He sprayed blood and spittle all over Carl’s raincoat.

  “You just lay back and rest, mister,” Carl assured him. He glanced up at me and then down at the man again. I followed his gaze to the man’s leg. Just below the knee, a jagged piece of bone, covered with pink bits, sprouted from his khaki pants. Arterial blood jetted from the wound, turning the rain puddle beneath him a rusty color. The man didn’t seem to notice. He lay back as Carl had told him to. Then he began to shake, his eyes rolling and teeth clenching.