Worm

by wildbow

  He turned, returning to the passenger side door of the van, then paused. “We’ll be parked on the beach. We can blur out your faces if we need to.”

  It took them a minute to get their camera packed away and leave. Sure enough, they made their way to the beach. Charlotte could see the headlights illuminating the sand. Then they went out, and the van was effectively invisible.

  “Guards,” Forrest said. “Take shifts. We’re not giving them anything.”

  “You’re wanting to protect Skitter?” someone asked, from the crowd.

  “I worked for her,” Forrest said. “Most of you know that. In a way, I still think I work for her, even if she isn’t here anymore. A lot of us owe her.”

  “She brought us as much trouble as she stopped,” the person said. Charlotte could see it was a tall man who’d hidden a receding hairline and bald spot by shaving his head. There was only stubble, now.

  “She made it possible to rebuild, Scott.”

  “Everyone’s rebuilding. We got a head start, that’s all. You’re saying that’s worth it? Mannequin came here because of her. Burnscar came here because of her. Or didn’t you hear?”

  Forrest folded his arms.

  Scott said, “My sister-in-law works for the PRT. Wears a uniform. She said the Slaughterhouse Nine were here because they were recruiting. They picked a bunch of people across the city, trying to recruit them, and Skitter was one. Obviously. So it’s her fault the people died here. The help she gave? She was probably guilty.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Forrest said.

  “Bullshit. You were there, that first time, when Mannequin was in the warehouse on Shell. He was wagging his finger at her. Why? He was there for her.”

  “I was there,” Forrest said. “Remember? I stepped up. I dragged that bastard to where we could tie his head up. I smashed his head with a concrete block.”

  “And I won’t deny that,” Scott answered. “I would’ve been right there with you if I didn’t have my wife and kid to protect. We both saw how it played out. Going by what my sister-in-law said, you wouldn’t have had to do that if Skitter had been somewhere else.”

  “I would have,” Forrest said. “I know Skitter. Taylor. Weaver. Whatever you call her. We’ve talked, talked a lot. I’ve heard her side of things, and I know you’re off base.”

  “You’re saying my family’s lying?” Scott asked, raising his voice a touch. “Or maybe you’re blind. Can’t see what’s going on because of your own basic, underlying bias.”

  Scott approached, moving through the crowd. He was clearly irritated, a big guy, undoubtedly a dock worker, breathing just a little harder than normal. Charlotte found herself biting her lip and backing away as he drew closer. Her stomach twisted as he passed her, as though it were a towel someone was wringing out. Not an unfamiliar sensation.

  For a moment, she could imagine him in her face, hooting, hollering, a vein standing out on his bald head.

  The wrenching got worse at the idea, until it felt like everything below her shoulders was being crushed.

  The crowd around her was too much, now. Too evocative.

  She fled, pushing her way through the crowd. For every part of her that wanted to follow the discussion, there was another part that could hear the discordant music blaring, could hear the yelling, smell the sweat, the smoke and incense.

  She’d seen what people were like when everything else was stripped away. Not everyone, not always, but often enough. It was easy to descend to that level. Taylor had offered security. Strength, and the ruthlessness necessary to cut out the cancer.

  It wasn’t rational to think this way. Charlotte knew, generally speaking, that the people here were good. The bad ones had been scared off, or cut out of the deals that kept everyone else loyal.

  On a less rational level? She hated the idea that this place could devolve into that. Into what the Merchants had become.

  She was upset, she wasn’t thinking straight, and she couldn’t afford to return to the kids like this. Ben and Kathy would look after the littlest ones for five more minutes. She could keep walking, burn off this nervous energy and get in a better headsp—

  “Miss?”

  She jumped, swiftly backing away.

  It was a man. Thin, with glasses, reaching out—

  Groping, greedy for a handful of flesh.

  No. To get her attention. Nothing more. His hand dropped to his side.

  “Are you a reporter?”

  “I—do I look like a reporter?” he looked anxious, and the expression was unrelated to his question.

  “No,” she said.

  “I was asking around, for someone who knew Taylor. Someone told me to look for a girl about your height, with long, dark hair, like yours, with kids around her. I was going to ask some more, but then the crowd came, and I decided to hang back.”

  So he is here to ask questions. But he said Taylor instead of Skitter. “You really aren’t a reporter?”

  “If you know who they were talking about, maybe you could point me in the right direction?”

  Charlotte frowned. “They were talking about me. What do you want?”

  “I’m her father. Danny.”

  Oh. She could see the resemblance, now that she knew to look for it. Both he and Taylor were above average height, both were narrow. She must have gotten her hair and mouth from her mom, though.

  “Okay,” she said. She forced herself to relax a touch. He’s safe. Mostly. “O—” She exhaled as she spoke, and her breath caught. She was still a little out of sorts.

  “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head. “Yes.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “A lot to deal with, all at once.”

  “Yes.”

  She glanced up at him, saw how troubled he looked. “Do you drink tea?”

  “Coffee.”

  “We can do coffee,” she said. She reached into her back pocket for her phone. “Stand still.”

  He looked confused as she turned the phone his way. The flash went off.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Protocols,” she said.

  “Protocols?”

  She typed out a text and sent the text, picture included, to Tattletale.

  “I worked for her.”

  “Oh. Oh.”

  “Come on. We’ll, um, we’ll hear soon, if you’re okay to come inside. But I have to head back that way anyways.”

  He nodded.

  “Why aren’t you with her?” she asked, as they started walking.

  “Things turned ugly.”

  “Oh. Alexandria?”

  “I only just found out about Alexandria. Maybe I shouldn’t say, but things don’t seem to add up. What people were saying before, what happened, and what seems to have happened after.”

  “Yeah,” she said, though she didn’t quite understand.

  “All the way through this, I told myself I’d trust her. That she was the same child my wife and I raised for the last sixteen years. That things were muddled, but she was the same person deep down inside.”

  “Isn’t she?”

  “I’m not so sure anymore.”

  The phone vibrated. Charlotte checked.

  Tt:

  A-okay. Treat him well.

  “You’re clear to come inside,” Charlotte said. She used her hand to indicate a change of direction, leading him towards the beach.

  “All this secrecy? It’s necessary? I thought she left.”

  “We still have enemies. People who’d hurt her by hurting us. We have to stay safe.”

  He fell silent.

  “What?”

  “I haven’t really been thinking along those lines. About the greater scale of things, my life being at risk because I’m connected to her.”

  “You learn,” Charlotte said. “You learn to think that way.”

  “Why? I mean. I don’t have a choice, but you—you could walk away from this, and you haven’t.”

&nbs
p; “I can’t walk away from this,” Charlotte said. “I’m probably more tied up in this than you are.”

  “How’s that?”

  She glanced down the beach. The people who were watching out for those who might talk to the reporter were far enough away. Still, it would be a bad idea to use her flashlight. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a glove, pulling it on. “You’ll see in a minute. Hold my hand and don’t let go. Neither of us want you to get turned around in here. Not much room to get lost, but yeah.”

  She could barely see him in the gloom. There were no lights on the beach. Still, when she reached out for his hand, he took it, holding tight.

  Carefully, Charlotte led Taylor’s father into the storm drain. Her gloved hand traced the wall. First right. Skip the next right, with a few seconds of nerve-wracking isolation in the darkness, then follow the wall… one right, turn left at the t-junction.

  They ascended to the cellar, first, and then up to the living room.

  “It’s a house?” he asked. He looked even more bewildered than before as he took in the particulars, the living room, with young girls clustered on one couch, boys on the other couch and the floor, the appliances, the stacks of boxed-up food that had yet to be unpacked. “Children?”

  “Orphans,” Charlotte said, keeping her voice low. Both Mai and Ephraim could break down in tears at the slightest reminder of their departed parents. “I’ve been looking after them.”

  “You can’t do that. Not like this, without certification, others checking in.”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s only for a little while longer.”

  “This is why you can’t leave?”

  “Part of it. There’s more.”

  “This is what she was doing, all that time? Taking care of these children?”

  “That was only a small part of it. She mostly paid me to look after them and make sure people got the food they needed. She looked after everyone. When they were all in the worst situations they’d ever faced, struggling for food, worrying every hour if they would be attacked or preyed on, she stepped up.”

  “You’re trying to defend her. To justify what she did.”

  “Only a little.”

  Ethan approached. He gave Taylor’s dad a curious look.

  “It’s Taylor’s daddy,” Charlotte explained.

  “Danny,” Danny said.

  “Oh,” Ethan said. He looked down at the floor.

  “Do you want to run an errand for me?” Charlotte asked.

  Ethan nodded, still not making eye contact. Charlotte could see how he’d set his jaw, so stern for a little man.

  “Go tell Forrest that Skitter’s daddy is here. And if anyone approaches you to ask you questions, you don’t answer, okay? No matter how nice they seem, don’t say a word, and blow your whistle. There are reporters out there we don’t want to talk to.”

  Ethan nodded.

  “Don’t take too long,” she warned.

  The little boy, no older than eight, ran off, opening the front door and unchaining the shutter. A moment later, he was gone into the night.

  “Is that okay?” Danny asked. “A little boy going out alone after dark?”

  “The area’s safe, the people know each other. It’s a community, and the community will look after the kids. Besides, he’s got a whistle in case he gets in trouble.”

  “It almost looked like he was asking for an errand.”

  “He was.”

  Danny gave her a curious look.

  Charlotte walked around the kitchen counter to get into the kitchen, starting the water boiling for the coffee. She still had a habit of keeping the kettle full for Taylor. “Ethan’s bottling up a lot of hurt, but he’s convinced himself that big boys shouldn’t cry, and nothing will convince him otherwise. For now, I’ll let him take five to twenty minutes longer than he should when I tell him to go do something, and I won’t say a word if he comes back with red eyes and a runny nose. If he needs to find a quiet place to cry on his own, that’s okay.”

  “There has to be a better way to handle it,” Danny said. His eyes were still roving, as if trying to find and identify Taylor’s signature touches on the surroundings.

  “There probably is. But for now, it works for him and it works for me. The other kids—” she lowered her voice a fraction, “They all have their individual needs. Some get aggressive. Some internalize it, have nightmares or wet the bed. Others withdraw.”

  Danny sighed. “Kids are hard, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Charlotte said. Then she changed her mind. “No.”

  “No?”

  “People are hard to deal with.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  “You should really be with her.”

  “I was there,” Danny said. “I told myself I’d stand by her, and then… all at once, it wasn’t her. I’ve seen her in a crisis, after her mom died. She was one of the people who withdrew. When she was bullied at school, she withdrew. But there? At the PRT headquarters? That wasn’t her.”

  “It was,” Charlotte said. “Maybe you lost sight of who she was becoming, somewhere down the line. I don’t think anyone would fault you, with the secrets she was keeping.”

  “No,” Danny said. “I don’t think it was her, not really. For just a minute, she became a monster.”

  “We all have a monster somewhere inside us,” Charlotte said. “Like I was saying about the kids. Sometimes it’s aggressive, sometimes it finds other forms of attack, and other times it’s a cowardly one.”

  Like mine.

  Danny sighed.

  “You don’t agree? I’m still off target?”

  “I don’t know. I think maybe you’re right. I’ve got my own demons. But… whatever monster that was, it was a big one.”

  Charlotte didn’t have an answer to that.

  There was a knock on the shutter. Then it raised a fraction. Forrest stepped inside, growled and made threatening gestures as the kids practically leaped off of the couches and swarmed him.

  He gave Danny a funny look.

  “Taylor’s dad,” Charlotte said.

  “Nice to meet you,” Forrest said. He waded through the cluster of kids and, straight-legged, he leaned over the kitchen counter to shake Danny’s hand. “Right, rugrats! If you stand up to pee, get yourselves into the bath, pronto!”

  “I can pee standing up!” Mai said. “A girl at school showed me how.”

  “Then… if you think action figures are better than dolls!”

  “I think army men are better than dolls!” Mai said.

  “Then let’s go with those who’d rather be a baseball player than a princess!”

  “I—” Mai stopped short, shrieking as Forrest swept her up in his arms.

  “I get the point,” he said. “As penance, I’m letting you ride on my shoulders.”

  Mai squealed in glee.

  “With a blindfold, in case the menfolk are bashful. Move along, tykes.”

  Ben, Ephraim and Aidan made their way into the bathroom, followed by Forrest, with Mai sitting on his shoulders. Forrest practically had to get on his knees to get through the doorway without hitting Mai’s head on the doorframe. The door shut behind him.

  “Coffee will be done in a few minutes,” Charlotte said, making sure things were set up. She moved to the living room, and beckoned for Kathy to come closer. Kathy scowled but obeyed, sitting beside Charlotte as Charlotte set to brushing out her hair.

  “I couldn’t recognize my own daughter,” Danny said. “Every step of the way, I’ve wanted to help her, but I didn’t know how. Did she say anything? About me?”

  “No,” Charlotte said. She could see Danny’s face fall.

  “But,” she said. “She acted on it. When it came down to it, she wanted to spend time with you, even if it meant that all the rest of this was harder.”

  “When it came down to it,” he said, “she chose her friends over me. She chose to fight, to go all out, instead of making a concession
and possibly coming home at some point.”

  “Bigger things,” Charlotte said. “I—the rest of us feel a little betrayed too, but we’re little more than specks, with the sheer scale of the stuff she’s focused on.”

  Danny sighed. “I came here to make a decision. To work up some courage. But I feel as conflicted as ever. Worse, if anything.”

  “A decision?”

  “Taylor has to join the Wards, if she’s going to join an official team. Her lawyer got in contact with me, to let me know that there’s certain procedures. She needs a parent, guardian, notary, or a person in authority to vouch for her, and it has to be someone who’s otherwise free of connections to superheroes or supervillains, someone that knows her and can testify about her character.”

  “Do it.”

  “I’m wondering if I should.”

  Charlotte gave him a hard look. He took it without flinching.

  “My number one instinct is to keep my daughter safe. If she went to juvenile detention, it would… it wouldn’t be good, but it’d keep her out of the line of fire. It’d stop her from going down this reckless path.”

  “She’d hate you,” Charlotte said. “She’d still love you, but she’d be angry.”

  “She would be safe,” he said.

  Charlotte didn’t have much to say in response to that. She turned her attention to the girls, instead. “Five more minutes of cartoons, then bed. I’ll fix your hair in just a second, okay, Jessie?”

  Jessie nodded.

  “I could, if it would make it easier,” Danny offered.

  Charlotte felt that twang of alarm at the notion of a relative stranger touching ‘her’ kids. She could rationalize that this was Taylor’s dad, but…

  Jessie made the decision for her. Standing and approaching Danny, before sitting beside him. Charlotte tossed the man a hairbrush.

  For long minutes, they worked on combing through knots and tangles. Kathy made sure to grunt with every one.

  The boys exited the bathroom, each with a towel wrapped around them, while Forrest carried a squealing, giggling Mai under one arm, a sock tied over her eyes, her hair now dry and combed straight.

  “You’re better than Char,” Jessie said, as Danny finished. She hopped down from the armrest of the chair, before scampering off to the bedroom.