Earworm

by Aaron Thomas Milstead

  This time Dante seemed content to stay behind when we climbed out of the truck.

  Creek filled his tank with gasoline and then put on the silver flame retardant suit and a helmet that made him look a bit like a 1960’s alien from Lost in Space. “Just a warning,” Creek said, “when I’m wearing this suit I have tunnel vision. You keep an eye around us and don’t step in front of me when shit goes down.”

  “Got you.” I had the 1911 in a death grip, but I felt horribly underprepared for what we were attempting to do.

  “One more thing,” Creek said. He reached into a tool box and pulled out the garlic necklace, then handed it to me. “You’ll need this.”

  “I’m not doing anything to hurt, Bogart.”

  “It’s not for you,” Creek said. “That’s for your daughter, if—”

  “I get it,” I interrupted. I picked a few cloves from the necklace and put them in my pocket.

  As Creek led us through some dense foliage, I carefully avoided thick pockets of greenbrier vines and poison ivy, but his suit got hung up on it several times. I extracted the mutinous vines, but was unable to keep the suit from ripping in a few spots. Each time, Creek sighed like an astronaut in danger of sudden suffocation. The sun had set by the time we came out of the East Texas jungle, but the sky was cloudless and filled with countless stars that illuminated our surroundings.

  A two-story country style farmhouse sat up on a hill; the windows were dark and everything seemed still. If there was a car, it was hidden within an attached garage. An overwhelming stench wafted in on a gentle breeze. I leaned in towards Creek. “I can smell Chod.”

  Creek shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He pointed out past the farmhouse and asked, “Do you recognize those buildings?”

  I nodded. There were three identical chicken houses lined up just behind the farmhouse. “I don’t get it. Why would Chod be raising chickens? That seems like a lot of work just to be throwing us off the scent.”

  “I agree,” Creek said.

  Bogart?

  I don’t know, kid. It’s just as strange to me. Maybe there aren’t chickens in there.

  Shadow? Is that where Chod keeps . . . ?

  Might be, kid.

  “I think we should go there first,” I said. “Bogart thinks that might be where my daughter is being kept. Maybe we can get Shadow out of here before we deal with Chod.”

  “Okay,” Creek said. “To be honest, I’m not all that eager to confront her. Maybe I can work up some courage. Let’s go wide around the house and come at the chicken houses from the back.”

  “Good plan,” I said. We wrapped wide around the dark house and used the cover of darkness and the occasional pine tree to somewhat conceal our presence, but Creek was about as camouflaged as an albino at a Black Lives Matter march. The stars shone down on his silver suit as if to constantly mark our presence.

  The closer we came to the chicken houses the more the stench grew, making me fight off waves of nausea. It was not the first time I had been exposed to the horrors of East Texas chicken houses. At least twice a year I drew the short straw and was forced to spray for flies at the local Pilgrim’s Pride. Baby always had us use a heavy concentration of Demon Max, but it was like pissing on a roaring fire. For every thousand flies we managed to kill there were millions of maggots waiting to mature and take their place.

  The flies were probably the least horrific consequence of America’s fascination with chicken flesh, or as the industry likes to refer to them: broilers. The inside of a chicken house was the food industry’s equivalent of Auschwitz, which is a shame, because birds aren’t as worthless as most people assume. Believe it or not, birds are a subgroup of the reptile family and essentially the last living dinosaurs. I learned that one watching Jurassic Park. Chickens might not be the cream of the crop, but some birds are among the most intelligent creatures on earth.

  You’d never know it from walking into a chicken house, which is basically a massive windowless shed that holds tens of thousands of the birds at a time. Chickens function well in small groups, where they can find their spot in the pecking order, but it’s impossible for them to establish a social structure in such large numbers. Because of this the frustrated birds spend most of their time relentlessly pecking one another until most of them are badly injured or dead. If you think I’m drawing a parallel between a chicken house and modern society, you are not wrong.

  Such intensive confinement also breeds filth and disease. I remember the last time I sprayed one, the dust, feathers, feces, and ammonia choked out the oxygen and the large fans turned it all into airborne sandpaper that rubbed my uncovered skin raw. Because of this almost all chickens suffer from chronic respiratory illnesses and bacterial infections. Perhaps most unsettling is that most of the chickens also have internal parasites such as roundworms and tapeworms.

  You probably have already heard about the problems with the hormones they pump into the chickens so that there is a quick turn-around between birth and the kitchen table. Most of the chickens quickly become crippled because their fragile legs can’t support the weight of their bodies. It’s very common for the chickens to die from ascites, a disease thought to be caused by the inability of birds’ hearts and lungs to keep up with their rapid skeletal growth.

  It’s even worse for the breeder chickens. When the breeders are only a few days old, hot blades are used to cut off a portion of their sensitive beaks so they won’t peck each other. Sometimes they also cut off their toes, spurs, and combs. The birds are not given any painkillers to ease the agony of this mutilation and many of the debeaked chickens starve to death because it is too painful to eat. The broilers life span is a hormonally accelerated six-weeks, but the breeders must endure their torture for over a year. To stunt their growth so that they can continue to breed for the year, they are kept in a constant state of near starvation.

  These were my thoughts as we made our way to the nearest chicken house, but my first thought as we slid open the back door was that it was far too quiet to be occupied. I was wrong. It was dark inside the massive structure, but enough light shone in to show that the ground was covered with countless feathered mounds. “Are they dead?” Creek whispered.

  I studied their prone bodies. They were almost perfectly still, but I could occasionally see the gentle rising of their chests. That subtle movement was the only thing that distinguished them from statues.

  “They’re alive,” I said. My voice was louder than I’d intended and my words seemed to echo in the stillness of the stifling hot building. The feces were so high that the chickens were practically swimming in them, but if they cared they didn’t bother to express a complaint. However, my words did stir them to action. As one, the thousands of chickens all raised their heads and stared directly at me. The last few days had been horrifying, but this somehow chilled me most of all.

  Your daughter isn’t in here, kid.

  How do you know, Bogart?

  I can smell her. She’s . . . Carrion-Six-Toes has infected her. She’s close, but not in here.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Creek. “Shadow isn’t in here.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice.” Creek pointed at the throng of silently staring birds. “What the fuck is going on with those chickens?”

  “I don’t know, but Bogart says she isn’t in here.”

  “Yeah, Bayonet says she’s already been—”

  “I know.”

  We carefully backed out of the chicken house and slid the door shut.

  “Those chickens shouldn’t have been alive, should they?” Creek asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I mean did you see how much shit was in there? Mounds of it.”

  “What’s even stranger is I didn’t see any food in there,” I added. “The feeder bins were all empty and there was no water. And to top it off the fans weren’t even on; they should have all died from heat stroke.”

  “Chickens die from heat stroke?”

  “
Yeah, they don’t have sweat glands.”

  That’s when I realized that I could hear the familiar sound of the massive fans whining nearby. Not in that chicken house, but in one of the others. “You hear that?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Creek replied. “So why are the fans running in one of the chicken houses but not in all of them?”

  “Maybe because they have something else in . . . ”

  It’s her, kid. It’s her.

  I sprinted toward the sound of the fans. It was coming from the chicken house next to the one we had just left. I swung open the doors and shouted, “Shadow!”

  “Daddy.” Her voice was the softest whisper. She was tied to one of the empty feeding bins. I shuffled through a horde of stoic chickens and fell to my knees in front of her. She was filthy, but she was alive.

  “Jesus,” Creek muttered from the entryway. He carefully shuffled toward us.

  Thousands of chickens continued to hypnotically stare at my daughter as if they were guarding her. I ignored them. “Are you okay, baby?”

  Shadow shook her head.

  I began to untie her, but Bogart quickly interjected, Wait.It’s in her. It’s in there pretty deep.

  Creek put his hand on my shoulder and softly asked, “What do you want to do?”

  My mind was reeling. I should have expected this, but somehow, I thought that it was just a bluff. Surely if anything in this foul world was sacred, it was my daughter. There must be some taboos in this universe. Right? But there aren’t. There just aren’t. I pulled a clove of garlic out of my pocket and peeled it until the glistening worm like center was fully exposed.

  “Shadow,” I whispered. “I need for you to eat this.”

  She looked up at me with soft, wet eyes and nodded.

  “Creek, keep your hands in front of her left ear,” I ordered. “I’ll cover her right one.”

  Creek nodded.

  I slowly put the garlic into my daughter’s mouth and waited. She recoiled, but kept her mouth shut. I watched as she fought an urge to spit it out, but instead took a quick bite and then several others. Her body was shaking uncontrollably as she swallowed it.

  My hands cupped her left ear and a moment later I felt something tentatively push against my palms. I pressed harder against her ear and the thing inside her pushed against me with greater force. When I felt it bite into my palms I squeezed my hands together and gripped something that felt vaguely like a thin crab claw. I pulled it out of her ear easily, though it was at least a foot long.

  Somehow it was pale and jet black all at once. It shook in my grasp so fervently that I could barely see it, though I could make out its flat, triangular shaped head and I could feel its teeth trying to burrow into my palm. I squeezed it with all my might and felt a satisfying crunch as it’s exoskeleton caved in and began to squirt out it’s innards like a banana. It released its frantic grip on my palm and went limp, but I was not satisfied. I threw it to the ground and stomped it until all that remained were bits of shell and a mass of squished innards that resembled a nature video I’d seen when a sea cucumber had ejected its intestines as a self-defense strategy.

  It’s dead, kid.

  I quickly untied Shadow and held her close. She was still, but I could feel her heart rapidly beating. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was shallow, but steady. I whispered into her ear, “It’s going to be okay, baby. I’ve got you.”

  Creek leaned down and put a hand on my shoulder, “Let her sleep, she’s been through Hell.”

  I stood and cradled her in my arms, and for a moment she was a baby again. I imagined I was carrying her back to bed after one of her night terrors. I was so caught in the memory that I lost track of my feet and I felt the crunch of a chicken beneath me. I glanced down and watched as a large spidery shape slid out of its anus, unfolded, then scurried into the safety of the flock. The chickens continued to impassively stare up at me.

  “What the fuck?” Creek asked. “It’s in the chickens?”

  “It’s like they are incubators,” I muttered.

  “But there are fucking thousands of them, maybe a hundred thousand between the three chicken houses!”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “We have to get Shadow back to safety.”

  Creek stomped a chicken beneath his feet and watched as another shadowy creature quickly scurried out of it. “Jesus wept,” he muttered. “We can’t let them live.”

  The asshole’s right for once.

  Creek aimed the nozzle of his flamethrower down at the chickens.

  “Wait,” I shouted. “Let’s at least get Shadow back to the truck and I’ll come back with you. I promise.”

  “Okay,” Creek said. “I guess if Carrion-Six-Toes was here we’d already know it.”

  We quickly moved back to the truck, no longer working under any pretense of stealth. If Chod was around, then she was biding her time because there was no sign of her and Bogart remained silent.

  I gently placed Shadow in the front seat and Dante nuzzled up to her. Taken in a different context the two of them sleeping there might have been sweet, the sort of image that would have blown up Facebook. Beautiful child and adorable dog. The horror, of course, is what lay beneath that calm façade.

  We silently walked back towards the chicken houses, disregarding the dark farmhouse. As we came back up to the first chicken house Creek turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, man.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “It’s not though. I sacrificed so many other people because I was scared. I figured, what does it matter if a few people are . . . ? But now . . . ” Creek sobbed. “There are thousands of embryos in there. What is Carrion-Six-Toes planning? Do they mutate to the point that they can infect people who touch the chickens raw, like salmonella? Do they . . . ?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, “because you are fixing to roast all of them.”

  “Damn straight,” Creek said. “This whole building is metal, so it’s going to get very hot in here, but the fire should be fairly contained. You guard the door in case . . . You know.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m going to start toward the front and burn my way back to you. If things go south, don’t worry about me. Get back to the truck and get the fuck out of here.”

  He’s right, Bogart said. Carrion-Six-Toes isn’t going to let you two just burn down such a supreme effort. It must have taken decades to produce so many. You be ready to haul ass, kid.

  I can’t do that, Bogart.

  He did it to you.

  That doesn’t matter.

  Creek stomped his way toward the front of the chicken house and I watched as dark, slithery things quickly emerged from their crushed hosts and scurried to the perceived safety of the unharmed flock around them. Once Creek had stomped a trail that stretched the length of a football field, he glanced back at me then turned and aimed his flamethrower at the mass of chickens in front of him, bathing them in fire.

  Slowly he moved his unforgiving swathe of flame from left to right.”

  The hapless chickens simply stared at the incoming flame as it consumed them and the skittery dark things emerged to instant death—curling upon themselves like an ouroboros. Strangely the symbiotes refused to leave their hosts until they were already washed in flame and it was far too late for escape. With the methodical precision of an artist Creek slowly walked backward, retracing his path, while the flame ate everything it touched.

  The heat quickly became unbearable and I had to step outside.

  A few minutes later Creek emerged and quickly slid the door shut. He pulled off his helmet and mumbled, “Jesus Christ.” His hair was matted to his head and he was drenched in sweat. His eyes were wild.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I think you got all of them, nothing to it.”

  “Yeah, there was,” Creek said. “There was plenty to it. Couldn’t you hear them screaming? It was like they were women. I heard my Mom scream that way once when my dad . . . ” Creek wiped the sweat o
ut of his eyes and added, “It was like they were screaming with my mother’s voice.”

  “They didn’t make a sound,” I said.

  “It was so loud I couldn’t hear myself think,” Creek said. “It was more than that too. About halfway through I got confused and thought I was in a nursery, that they were all newborn children and I was . . . Jesus.”

  “It must be some sort of psychic self-defense mechanism,” I said. “But it didn’t work on you. You were strong enough to keep on going anyway.”

  Creek shook his head. “No, I was just too fucking scared to stop.”

  “Can you do it two more times?”

  “Yeah. I have to.”

  You think he’s going to be okay? I asked Bogart.

  Silence.

  Bogart?

  I recalled the last time Bogart had been silenced and quickly glanced back at the farmhouse. The porch light was on.

  “Creek,” I said. “There’s someone in the farmhouse.”

  “I see that, and Bayonet isn’t talking to me anymore. You know what that means, right?”

  “Yeah. Chod must be around.”

  “Fuck it,” Creek said. “Let’s go up to the house. I’d rather meet that thing head on rather than wait for it to take me from behind while I’m burning its children.”

  “They weren’t children.”

  “Yeah, of course not.”

  We slowly approached the house, and all was silent within and without. As we drew nearer I realized the front door was wide open. I turned to Creek. “I think we’re being invited inside.”

  “Yeah,” Creek agreed. “There’s no sneaking up on that thing anyway, with what we each have inside us. Stay behind me and remember what I said. When the going gets tough . . . ” He put the helmet back over his head and moved ahead of me.

  I held the gun at my side, finger clinched on the trigger.

  We stepped onto the front porch and I glanced over Creek’s shoulder, trying to see if anyone was inside, but the front porch light was the only illumination and the living room was filled with shadows that concealed any evil intentions.