“TRESPASSER” proclaimed the first, rendered in large black letters and slung around the man’s neck.
“THIEF” shouted another, this one in dark blue and worn by the man Rudy had shot with Larry’s rifle.
“TRANSGRESSOR” accused a third in green. There had been some debate about this appellation, as it sounded archaic, almost biblical to the modern ear.
“Good,” Rudy nodded, pleased with the connection. “Perhaps they’ll think back on their Sunday School lessons.”
The worst of the placards was saved for Tad Kemper. “MURDERER” it screamed in dripping red blocks, and since he had little in the way of a head to hang it from, they pinned it to his chest.
Bret Chastain, the trespasser, was bound with clothesline and thrown over the side of the Kennedy Street bridge, where he dangled and spun in the hollow of the arch like a feast for a giant spider.
Greg Mashburn, the thief Shane had shot from his rooftop vantage, hung on a bright orange extension cord from the arm of the streetlamp at the intersection of Kennedy and Quail.
Stan Lizotte, the fabled transgressor, was spread by the arms, Christlike, between two power lines directly over Kennedy Street.
And Tad Kemper, murderer, was tied to the crotch of an apple tree in the Navarro’s side yard, his ruined face grinning up through the blossoms at the sky, arms thrown back as if he’d been cast out of Heaven.
They grew more terrible to behold with each passing day, but they worked. They were the last outsiders to venture up Quail Street.
Not that it mattered much in the end.
Six days later, with the coming of Wormwood, the street found a way of spawning its own nightmares.
It started at the Navaro’s, in the house everyone thought abandoned…
Part Four:
The Navaros
1
Don Navaro had seen the news footage coming out of cities like New York and Philadelphia, and he thought Rudy Cheng was a pretty sharp guy, seeing how the wind was blowing. It made sense to Don to come up with a contingency plan in case Wormwood or Yellowseed or whatever they were calling it came knocking at their doors. Bud Iverson was no slouch in the brains department either, so when the two of them got together to call a neighborhood meeting, Don was glad to be invited.
They had sipped Mrs. Cheng’s lemonade and iced tea, watched an army base overrun on TV, then turned the set off to discuss practical methods and strategies for dealing with the problem.
Don himself had a few ideas, which he shared with the group, then when the meeting was over he walked back home, cracked a beer, lit another cigarette and turned on the television to the same news coverage (yes, he nodded, there was the same screaming soldier on the same flimsy utility shed) and asked his wife Irene where the boys were.
“In Zack’s room, playing ninja turtles,” she replied, the smell of ground beef and onions filling the house.
“How about the baby?” he wondered, looking about the living room for a bundle of blankets.
“He fell asleep after his bottle, so I put him down in his crib,” Irene answered, her voice muffled and distracted; turned away from him.
Don put his feet up and sighed. He drank his beer and frowned at the television.
A silhouette appeared in the kitchen arch, a shadow caught in the corner of his eye. “You could go wake him up if you want,” she suggested, pulling his attention away from the screen. “He shouldn’t sleep much longer or he’ll fuss all night.” She made a face at the television. “He doesn’t need to listen to that though. Neither do you,” she added, hands on her hips. “You know how you get.”
“I know,” Don admitted, stubbing out his cigarette. He pointed the remote at the set, ground his molars, and the army base went away, replaced by a milky gray eye that gazed resentfully back at him. Restless, Don put down the recliner and got up to check on the baby.
His two older boys were bickering behind the door to Zack’s room, fighting over some colored piece of plastic that would be meaningless in a week or less. The nursery, however, was cool and quiet; a softly-padded oasis that pulled him in and whispered how much nicer it would be if he closed the door and locked it behind him. Just for a few minutes, until the sick, feverish feeling left his head.
Out the window, the last of the day’s sunlight was creeping slowly up the backyard fence. Don stared at it for a while through the soft, blue window sheers, then looked down at his four-month-old sleeping soundly in his crib. His son’s breathing was clear and regular; his expression peaceful, serene.
Don envied him that: to sleep without worries, untouched by dreams.
You know how you get, his wife’s voice reminded.
Yes, he knew. That was why his stomach always ached, always seemed to tie itself in knots, as if tensing for a blow. Why he started having night terrors and panic attacks after the birth of his first son, why he still had them despite the increasing medications his doctor had prescribed. He was a born worrier, a condition he’d inherited from his mother and one that kept him on constant edge about his job, his marriage, his children, his health and every other ripple which rocked his boat on any given day, be it large or small. He worried about driving his car, about having a panic attack while standing in line at the supermarket. He worried about terrorists and smallpox, overpopulation and global warming. He worried about the fact that half a million uncharted asteroids were whizzing about the Earth’s path, flirting with extinction. In short, he worried about everything. Every bad break or doomsday scenario that came rolling down the turnpike, be it real or imagined.
Not even his imagination, however, had been fertile enough to spawn Wormwood, which had become his latest preoccupation. The mother of all worries.
And there was no question in his mind that it was coming, spreading like a shroud across the land, yet up until now he had been holding out some hope that it might be stopped, neutralized somehow, or quarantined. That hope had since died, shriveling like an orange blossom under the heat of a blowtorch. He could even pinpoint the exact time and location of its death: that same afternoon at Rudy Cheng’s house, as they watched the army base overrun with the crazed victims of the plague.
If the United States Army couldn’t stop it, what chance did regular folks like they have? Oh they’d made plans, plans concerning foodstuffs, bottled water and guns, but Don was fairly certain that the army base had those things as well, for all the good it had done them.
All it took was one infected person within the perimeter and the game was over. Finished.
Still gazing into the crib, he reached down and gathered up the soft, malleable bundle. “C’mon, little guy,” he whispered, planting a kiss on his son’s head as he started to kick and fuss, less than thrilled to be woken.
Don held him and looked out the window. The sun was gone, slipped over the fence and gone while he was busy worrying. All that was left were some torn snatches caught high in the branches of the neighboring elm, and soon these would be gone as well.
Leaving him nothing but darkness and despair.
2
He watched them eat, wishing he could join them, but knowing he had work to do later, a father’s grim responsibility in the face of the coming terror.
“What’s the matter with you?” his wife wondered, a look of concern crossing her features when she saw he wasn’t eating, merely pushing food around with the tines of his fork.
He shrugged doggedly, the weight of his decision crushing him. “Not hungry, I guess.”
“Well you have to eat something,” she insisted, frowning at her casserole dish, as if it had somehow betrayed her. “You know what the doctor said; you’ll get sick if you don’t eat.”
He nodded, taking a bite to please her, holding it in a lump on his tongue, putting the lump back on his fork the minute she looked away, then lowering the fork back to his plate.
It bought him some time.
When Irene looked at his plate again, Zack and Chase were already drowsy; falling asl
eep in their chairs. She felt it herself and her eyes widened, recalling the risk of unpredictable mood swings and suicide — “a very slight risk”, the doctor assured her — that went hand in hand with her husband’s medication.
“What have you done?” she cried, standing up from the table, staggering, overturning her chair. The boys looked up at her, surprised and mildly interested, but in a detached sort of way, as if they were already dreaming.
Don rose from his chair and caught two and a half-year-old Chase before he fell. He lifted him to his shoulder and carried him back to his bedroom. By the time he got back, Irene was kneeling on the floor beside Zack, patting his flushed cheeks, trying to get him to wake up. She heard Don’s footsteps, the slight dip of the floorboards under his weight, and looked up, her eyes glassy and dazed. Panicked. “What did you do to us?” she demanded, her words an angry slur, a greasy handprint sliding down the wall.
“I put sleeping pills in the casserole,” he told her calmly, kneeling down to take Zack, “and in the milk.”
“Why?” she wanted to know, swaying as if caught in an oncoming current, a slow wall of mud. “Why?”
He gathered up four-year-old Zack, now a loose-jointed bundle of limbs, and looked at her. “Let me put him to bed first,” he told her, “then I’ll come back and explain everything to you.”
When he returned, however, Irene was in the kitchen, pawing though the drawer beside the stove as if it were losing its focus or cohesion. She gasped when she saw him and snatched up a paring knife, obviously not the one she’d been looking for, but all she had now that time had run out.
“You stay right there!” she warned, holding the knife out in front of her, its tip wavering, scratching tiny holes in the air.
“Irene,” Don said, holding out his hands. “Let me explain.
“What did you do to them back there?” she pleaded, looking helplessly past his shoulder, growing more detached herself, the pills in her bloodstream knitting an insulating layer around her. “What did you do to my babies?”
“I haven’t done anything to them,” he told her, glancing away in the midst of this assertion as if it weren’t quite the truth; that there was, in fact, a great deal more to tell. More than he could possibly explain before the tranquillizers swept her away. “You’re just going to have to trust me,” he said.
“Trust you to do what?” The knife in her hand was getting heavier, drooping toward the floor.
“The right thing,” he assured her, taking a cautious step forward, wanting to catch her if she fell.
“Is this what you talked about…” she squinted, willing him back into focus, “is this what you decided at your meeting? To get us all out of the way?”
“No, I decided this on my own.” He took another step. “Irene, listen to me… try to understand. This disease that’s coming, it’s going to be a terrible thing. I’ve been watching it on TV and it’s the most awful thing imaginable.” His voice rose, struggling to contain the horror of it. “We can’t possibly fight it! It’s too big! It’s going to wash over us like a tidal wave, like a thousand nuclear warheads!” His hands had curled themselves into knotted fists; they trembled at his sides. “In a few days, a week, nothing’s going to be the same! Everything we know is going to be swept away!”
He took a deep breath and relaxed his hands.
“I just want us to be asleep when it gets here,” he told her gently, his voice an anguished whisper.
Irene lowered the knife, struggling to speak, to make her point before the pills closed around her.
“It’s your medication,” she told him. “The doctor said it might make you suicidal.” She started to sob and he caught her in his arms as she staggered forward. The knife clattered to the floor, sliding underneath the table where their last meal had been eaten.
“It’s not my medication,” he assured her, holding her tight as she went limp, kissing her softly as he lowered her to the floor.
He touched her cheek, stroked her hair.
“This thing is coming,” he whispered. “I saw it on television.”
3
Death came quietly to the house on Quail Street, with little noise or fanfare. It slipped into Don’s shoes and socks and walked from room to room with a pillow in its hands, thrusting out its arms and pressing itself insistently into their faces, starting with the baby and working its way down the hall toward Irene. Not knocking, but entering each room quietly.
The baby was hungry, its screams almost lost beneath the foam rubber. The boys tensed and moaned, as if struggling against quicksand. Irene waited in candlelight in her best nightgown, as beautiful as the day Don had married her.
One by one, he put them to sleep.
And when he’d finished, when they were all safe and secure, Don turned out the lights and locked the front door. He drew a glass of water from the kitchen tap and stopped by the bathroom to empty his bladder and brush his teeth. The remainder of the tranquillizers were in a prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet and he tipped them into his mouth, half a dozen at a time, chasing them with water and swallowing until the bottle was empty.
He looked at his face in the bathroom mirror.
His eyes gazed back at him: not the eyes of a murderer, but those of a father, bloodshot and tired.
He felt the weight of his responsibilities slipping from his shoulders, falling by the wayside.
He washed his hands and turned out the light, satisfied.
Death was calling from the next room, stretched out in bed…
It wouldn’t do to keep her waiting.
4
For ten days they slept, dreamless while the neighborhood tossed in nightmares around them.
Gunshots were fired, tears were shed, and changes were wrought…
But inside the house all was still. Muted sunlight gave way to night and then returned again, lighting the rooms in soft shadows and slowly settling dust, as if it would always be this way.
On the dawn of the tenth day, a hazy yellow wind came down from the northeast.
And the first thing it did was wake them up.
Part Five:
The Dead
1
Keith Sturling could see the dead man from the narrow slat of his bathroom window and each day he wondered how long until decay and the man’s own weight would drop him back to earth. By night, with the power gone, the TV and the radio worthless, he imagined he could hear him creaking out there, turning slowly on the arm of the streetlamp, whispering a single word over and over in the dark. By day, the placard became legible again and there was no need to whisper, except perhaps to the plump black crows that perched on his shoulders and tore away any semblance of a face.
Then, on the morning of May 1st, there came an abrupt chorus of squawks and the crows all flew away at once, as if startled at something the man had said after so many days of stoic silence.
Keith slid open the tiny window, surprisingly attuned to such things now that the electricity was gone and the house was quiet, and saw the “Thief” kicking limply at the end of his bright orange cord.
Walking outside in his bathrobe and bare feet, Keith stared up at the struggling scarecrow, his heart beating very rapidly in his chest.
My God, he realized, it’s happening. It’s really happening.
Though the man’s eyes were long gone, his nose and ears chipped down to ragged holes, he seemed to sense that someone was there; close by, though just out of reach. This fact seemed to infuriate him. His struggles, which had been listless and tepid until now, became suddenly frantic.
A terrible moan issued from its throat, the strangulated sound chilling Keith to the marrow. Its tortured head jerked within the noose, seeking out that thing it wanted. That thing it so desperately desired.
The awful cry was taken up by another, every bit as insistent, and Keith turned to see the “Transgressor” swinging back and forth over Kennedy Street, trying to free its arms from the knots fastened at its wrists.
Shoot them, a voice suggested, assessing the situation from calmer quarters. Go back inside and get your rifle and shoot them dead.
“But they’re already dead,” he argued, his lips moving in a numb whisper.
Then kill them again, the voice retorted. Keep doing it until you get it right.
Keith started to move, his bare feet backpedaling reluctantly against the asphalt, his eyes still staring upwards.
Mashburn, he reminded himself. The man’s name had been Greg Mashburn, though until this morning he had been doing his best to forget that.
A high scream tore his attention away. He turned toward the house and saw his wife framed in the doorway, her mouth a perfect “O”. Mike Dawley was running down the street with a shotgun cradled in his arms while Helen Iverson stood on her front doorstep, one hand clutching her throat, as motionless as a statue.
“Sweet Jesus,” Mike swore as he arrived at Keith’s side, fumbling with the safety on the shotgun. He looked up at Mashburn’s ruined face and all the color drained from him, just like that, as if the shock of seeing the man thrashing about overhead was one nightmare too many. He lifted the barrel of the gun, swallowed something that went down with difficulty, and fired.
Mashburn jerked, the placard around his neck flew up in the air, then both dropped back against their tethers. Spatters of something that looked like rust (but smelled infinitely worse) began to rain down, followed by a gentler mist, and Keith suggested they take a cautious step back.
The sound of the shotgun brought the rest of Quail Street out to their doorsteps and driveways. Rudy Cheng was hurrying toward them with his rifle, his wife Aimee still in her robe, holding back their young son.
Mike reloaded the shotgun and pointed it up at the still-struggling Mashburn.
“Aim for its head!” Keith advised, taking several steps back, his ears already ringing.
Wormwood Page 8
