Worm

by Curran, Tim

  “Don’t worry, baby Jesse,” she said, “Mama will get you out of this. One way or another.”

  Weak from the loss of blood, she blinked away the dizziness that made her world pitch this way and that. She had to concentrate or she’d never get them out of this. Luckily, the baby didn’t weigh much.

  She moved forward, being very careful of where she placed her feet. It wouldn’t do to slip in the muck now.

  Sobbing, she clutched the baby tighter to her breast even though the agony of doing so sent white jolts of pain through her. But that was okay. The pain kept her conscious and kept her moving.

  She wondered if anyone was left in the neighborhood.

  She saw a few lights, but that didn’t mean anything.

  “Okay, Jesse, Mama’s going to keep walking until she gets us somewhere.”

  Kathleen didn’t know where that would be because so many of the houses on Pine Street were coming apart now. But she had to keep looking because it wouldn’t do to have Jesse out in this and, by God, she needed to sit down.

  Moving with the stiff-legged locomotion of an automaton, she moved forward into the mud sea.

  22

  At the O’Connor household, Fern waited.

  She waited in the kitchen, peering out into the darkness.

  Marv’s been gone an awful long time, she thought as she stared down into the drain, wrinkling her nose at the smell coming up which was enough to curl the hairs in her nose. He should have been back by now.

  There was no point in calling over to Tessa’s. She’d already done that three times now and there was no answer.

  Fern didn’t know for sure what she was afraid of, but the fear would not leave her. It existed inside her, cold and slow-crawling, casting a shadow over her rational mind. There were a lot of things that could have happened. Marv could have been washed under and drowned. That seemed unlikely because he was a very sturdy, strong sort of man. He could have been overcome by the gases. But again, that didn’t seem plausible either. The houses in the neighborhood were coming apart and he could have been caught in a fall of wreckage. The only thing that had saved their house thus far, she figured, was that it was made of brick and would have probably outlasted the others by many decades if not a century.

  When Tessa called earlier, she claimed she had been attacked. Attacked. But by whom or what? This was what Fern feared most, that whatever had gotten Tessa had also gotten Marv.

  Oh, why hadn’t he taken his rifle with him?

  Fern listened to the girls in the other room. They had uplinked their Nintendo DS systems and were having some kind of war. They were laughing, teasing each other, squealing with joy and growling with derision. Kids were really something. They could adapt very quickly. Thank God the Internet was still working or they’d have to play a board game or (gasp) read a book.

  Barbaric, perfectly barbaric.

  The smell coming out of the drain was getting worse.

  So bad it made Fern almost woozy.

  “Well, there’s only one cure for this,” she said under her breath. She went into the broom closet and came back with a jug of Hilex bleach. There wasn’t anything down there bleach couldn’t handle.

  At least, she hoped not.

  23

  It was Tony that found Marv after Marv staggered out of Tessa Saldane’s house, the carving knife still in his hand.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Marv clicked on a flashlight and aimed the beam directly in his face.

  “Jesus,” Tony said, covering his eyes.

  “Who…Tony?” Marv breathed. “What’re you trying to do? Give me a heart attack?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I guess we’re all on edge tonight.”

  “Yeah.” Tony swallowed. “Ain’t that the truth?”

  “I’m glad you’re still kicking.”

  “Neither of us’ll be kicking long if we don’t get out of this slop.”

  They trudged side by side. After a time, Marv said, “The worms?”

  “Yeah.”

  They exchanged stories quickly. There was no beating around the bush. They’d both seen them and there was no doubting the reality of the things. The hows and whys would have to be hashed out later.

  “Have you checked out any other houses?” Marv asked.

  “Yeah. They’re either empty or…well, they’re not empty and nothing’s alive in them.”

  They took a breather after a few minutes, the muck wearing them down. It was like wading through wet cement. They leaned against a light post, gripping it like they might get sucked away.

  “What are we going to do?” Tony finally asked, dragging off a cigarette.

  Marv sighed. “We’ll get back to my house. We’ll hole up there with Fern and the kids. We find anybody else, we bring ’em in with us. I’ve got some guns, camping equipment in the garage if we need it—lanterns, flashlights, a cookstove. We should be all right.”

  It seemed reasonable, Tony figured. As reasonable as anything he’d heard lately anyway. Together, they might have a fighting chance while they waited for the National Guard and emergency services. He was going to say just that when Marv grabbed his arm.

  “Somebody’s coming,” he said, listening to a slow, dragging splashing moving in their direction.

  24

  As Fern poured the bleach into the sink, the most amazing and shocking thing happened: something came worming its way out of the drain with a bubbling, foul-stinking black goo. And worming was the right word, she realized, because what came slithering out was indeed a worm.

  Not a snake, as she first thought.

  A fucking worm.

  She jumped back and nearly dropped her bottle of Hilex. As it was, she cried out low in her throat and if her lips hadn’t been sealed tight it would have been a scream. What in the hell is this? What the hell…

  The worm came up out of the drain with a convulsive, dying shudder, twisting and writhing. It was about as long as her forearm, but thick in body, fleshy and absolutely disgusting. It flexed with violent muscular contractions, a jellied ooze pouring out of it in a snotty tangle. How something that big around fit down the drain in the first place was beyond her.

  The only good thing was that it was not only in considerable pain, it looked like it was dying.

  “Mom,” Kassie called from the living room. “Are you all right?”

  “Mom?” Kalie echoed.

  Shaking, a fine dew of fear-sweat on her brow, Fern realized if she did not unglue her mouth and speak right now, the twins were going to come in and they were going to see what she was seeing and she simply could not have that.

  “Ah…yeah, I’m fine. Just cleaning the sink.”

  The sound of her own voice gave her a modicum of strength and she stepped a bit closer to the sink. The worm was barely moving by that point. What if I hadn’t poured the bleach down there? Would it have stayed in the drain or would it have come out after me? The questions jumped into her mind and she ignored them.

  She poured more bleach onto the worm.

  It moved sluggishly and spewed out something like several yellow and tangled, ropy tongues. But as revolting as that was, what was even worse was that it was steaming. The bleach was doing something to it. It was deflating and breaking apart, decompressing into a puddle of slime.

  Trying to keep her stomach down, Fern forced its remains down into the garbage disposal with a long wooden spoon and turned it on. She listened to it whir and chew at the remains while a bubble of bile slowly rose up the back of her throat.

  She shut the disposal off.

  Then she stood there, dazed and sickened, wondering if she had hallucinated it all.

  25

  Kathleen saw the two men out in the mud sea, but she was barely even aware of their existence. They might as well have been stumps. She was driven by one single overwhelming need and that was to get Jesse away somewhere safe.

  When she got close to them, one of them reached out and stopped her. “H
ey…Kathleen?”

  She pulled away, snarling at them. They were not going to get the baby. She would kill them if they tried.

  “Kathleen…easy now…it’s me, Marv. Marv O’Connor.”

  She tried to make sense of this, but her mind was like a blender on puree: a great, ever-spinning mix of emotions and impulses. It took her a minute. Finally, she cocked her head like a dog. “Marv?” she said in a broken voice.

  “Sure. Tony’s here with me. You know, Tony Albert.”

  “Hey,” Tony said.

  She just looked at them blankly. She could not connect the names with the faces, but slowly, slowly it started making sense to her. She swallowed, then swallowed again. “I can’t find Pat and my house is falling apart and I have to get Jesse somewhere safe.” She kissed what was in her arms. “Somewhere the worms can’t get us.”

  Marv and Tony looked at each other.

  “Well,” Marv said. “You better come with us. We’re going over to my house. It’s safe there.”

  Kathleen hugged her baby and nodded. Safe. She liked that word. That was the word she wanted to hear and a place she wanted to go. Making a low humming in her throat, she followed along behind them as the blood continued to drain from her wounds.

  26

  “One foot in front of the other,” Donna told Bertie. “That’s all we have to do. It’s only two doors down.”

  “Maybe that’s nothing to you,” Bertie said, “but when your my age, that’s a goddamn long way, missy.”

  Donna had to give her that one. The mud was deep and it was like trying to wade through oatmeal. The fact that she had gotten Bertie out of her house in the first place was a minor victory. All they had to do was make it down to the O’Connors’. On an ordinary day, it was a two-minute walk. In this muck with a frail, stubborn old woman with her, it was like the Bataan Death March: endless.

  Bertie almost fell again, but Donna caught her and held her up.

  “See no reason for any of this,” Bertie said. “Could have stayed at my house. I knew this was a bad idea. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you.”

  And your newfangled ideas, Donna thought. She was just waiting for Bertie to say that like some cantankerous curmudgeon in an old movie, Walter Brennan maybe. The idea made her smile.

  “We couldn’t stay there, Bertie. The place was falling apart.”

  “Like hell it was.”

  Donna decided she wouldn’t argue. They were over halfway to the O’Connors’ and they were not about to turn back. The fact of the matter was that the house was falling apart. The muck had made it shift. Things had fallen from the walls. A window in the kitchen had broken. And even Bertie couldn’t deny that cracking noise they heard coming from the foundation.

  “Just a little farther now.”

  Bertie snorted. “A little farther, my ass. We’re going to die out here. Well, I got one up on you: I already have my gravesite bought and paid for. I picked it out ten years ago. All they have to do is carve my death date onto it.”

  She seemed very proud of the fact and Donna could only sigh.

  What was that?

  Donna stopped them there in the muck. For a few seconds, she barely breathed.

  A great rippling passed through the mud just ahead of them as if something quite large had passed beneath it.

  “Well, what the hell now?” Bertie asked.

  “Just wait a minute.”

  “I don’t have a minute to wait. I’m near dead now.”

  Donna ignored her.

  She heard the rippling again.

  This time it was behind them. Now off to her right. It was like they were being circled by something under the mud. And as crazy as it seemed, the first thing that jumped into her mind was shark, even though that was perfectly ridiculous. Sharks didn’t swim in mud and they sure as hell didn’t live in fucking Wisconsin.

  Yet…that eerie sense that they were being circled did not lessen. It increased.

  Behind them, there was splashing…as if something had surfaced and then dove again.

  “C’mon, Bertie, we have to get over there. It’s not far.”

  “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”

  Donna tried to move faster in the mud, but that only got Bertie bitching at her all the more. They had to move fast. Donna couldn’t explain it—and she sure as hell did not have the time to—but something out there was closing in on them.

  Something very big.

  Above, the full moon came out.

  27

  Tony wanted to pull Marv aside and say, that’s not a baby she has, that’s not Jesse, it’s a fucking plastic baby doll. Kathleen’s carrying a fucking baby doll. Don’t you see that? But, of course, he didn’t because he couldn’t and he figured he really didn’t need to; Marv was fully aware that Kathleen was crazy. And like Tony himself, he did not want to know the details of what had sent her wandering through the sludge with a baby doll.

  Tony was thinking about Fern and the twins.

  Did they really want to bring this crazy woman back with them? But then, what choice was there? They couldn’t leave her wandering. Fern would know what to do. Women always did. Tony was almost beginning to wish Charise were there. Even Stevie.

  But he didn’t want to think about Stevie.

  Kathleen had stopped.

  By the time they became aware of it, she was fifteen feet behind them. She was just standing there, making a deep moaning sound that was nearly erotic in tone like she was quite near to getting off.

  “Oh…oh…oh,” she said in a voice filled with confusion and delight. “It’s so warm. It’s so very warm. Can’t you feel it? It’s almost hot. I can feel it all over my legs, all over my…my…”

  “Kathleen,” Marv said. “We have to go.”

  She just stood there, hip-deep in the muck that seemed to be rising by the hour, struck senseless like she was in some kind of religious rapture. Marv called out to her and she started moving again, very slowly, plodding along like she had been wound up with a key.

  She stopped again, went stiff as a pillar. She looked like a toy soldier in the moonlight. “Oh…oh…oh,” she said again. “It feels like it’s boiling, like it’s…it’s…” She never got farther than that. Her mindless rambling became a gasp of surprise, then one of pain.

  Her hand had been trailing in the mud.

  She jerked it free and there was a worm hanging onto it. It was a huge, bristled monster that looked to have the circumference of a wastepaper can. It had bitten into her hand and now it bit once again. Tony clearly heard the bones snapping under intense pressure. Kathleen whipped her head from side to side, screaming and flailing her arm, trying to rid herself of the thing, but it wasn’t working.

  “Shit!” Tony shouted out into the night. “It’s got her! One of those fucking things has got her!”

  He stumbled forward into the muck but Marv grabbed him, pulled him back. “No,” he said. “You can’t help her.”

  Tony was ready to swing at him.

  He could help her, but he goddamned well needed to get to her first…but then the worm rocketed up out of the muck and this time, it swallowed her entire arm right up to the shoulder blade. It retreated just as fast, its teeth peeling not only the sleeve of her raincoat free, but her skin as well. It peeled her arm right down to red meat and tendons.

  “KATHLEEN!” he cried out.

  She disappeared beneath the muck.

  By then, Marv was dragging him off and Tony just didn’t have the strength to fight him.

  Behind them, the muck roiled and sluiced and splashed upward in great foaming gouts. “Help me!” Kathleen cried out as she surfaced, her face black with mud. “Oh dear God somebody please help me! IT’S GOT ME! IT’S GOT MEEEE—”

  She thrashed in the bubbling sludge, but was beyond help. Absolutely beyond it. The worm kept biting at her, taking more of her with each strike. Its teeth gleaming like surgical knives, it scraped across her chest taking not only most of her coat aw
ay but her breasts, too. Great segmented loops of it wound her up, squeezing her until her screams became a choked, gurgling sound. Her bones were crushed with a sound not unlike dry autumn leaves under boots. Her head thrashed from shoulder to shoulder like some grisly puppet, a gout of dark arterial blood ejecting from her between her lips with incredible hydrostatic force.

  Then she went limp, her insides bulging from her mouth.

  One bloody hand still slapping at the gelid flesh of the worm, maybe out of reflex action, it towed her under the surface. Both Tony and Marv could clearly see a slow-cresting torpid wave moving down the street as the worm dragged her away to unknown depths to be fed on at its leisure.

  “C’mon, Tony,” Marv said. “We have to go…”

  But Tony just stood there, staring dejectedly back to where she had been in the muck. There was nothing there now, not so much as a ripple. No…there was something floating there and for one panicked moment he thought it might be one of her limbs.

  But it was nothing like that.

  Just the filthy baby doll floating on the surface of the muck.

  28

  Holed up in the O’Connor house were all the survivors of Pine Street: Fern and Marv O’Connor, the twins—Kassie and Kalie—and Tony Albert, Donna Peppek and Bertie Kalishek. As far as they knew, there was no one else. The mud sea outside was rising and soon it would be completely impassable. Marv figured if the goddamn National Guard didn’t arrive real soon, things were not only going to get desperate but downright ugly.

  But as Fern had said, they were together and they were alive.

  That was true, he figured. Unlike the other houses on Pine, he knew his was much older and had actually been a farmhouse back when there were no other houses on the street (which was then just a dirt drive). The point being, it was solid brick and it had weathered a lot of years. So far, it was weathering the mud sea, too, unlike a lot of the other prefabs that had nearly completely collapsed. He figured they were safe. And Fern, God bless her, kept a very well-stocked pantry, so nobody would go hungry.