As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  Beth hefted the steel tanks onto her back. Even though both were empty, the thin nylon webbing dug hard into her shoulders as she pumped the spray nozzle. She went through the motions, a pretend exterminator dealing death to imaginary creatures. Blood pawed her leg once, looking up at her, then scampered off down the hallway. It didn’t look as if he expected her to follow or would even welcome her company.

  She went back to her pantomime of work and tried to keep her mind from wandering to what was happening across the street. Jack had said he hoped to get in and out quickly, dispatching whatever might be lurking beneath Axis. Maybe it would be that simple. And afterward, she could just go back to her life—the one with no job. The one where Zoë and Ryan were both dead.

  Maybe she and Ryan hadn’t been right for each other, maybe it had been over between them, but they’d parted angrily, and now she’d never have the chance to tell him how sorry she was about that. Tears began to well in her eyes. She realized then that they were the first she’d shed for him.

  The moment was shattered by a harsh scuttling that came from the opposite end of the hall. At first she’d assumed it was just Blood, back from whatever pressing urge drove dogs to wander. But when she turned to face the sound, she was just in time to catch a glimpse of something as it vanished around the corner. Something that was not a dog.

  Thirty-six

  Jack stalked his way from the close-set shelves of the file-storage room to the nightclub’s office. He hung low, keeping far enough back from the windows not to draw stares from anyone at street level.

  He took quick stock. There were a few empty cans of beer on the green-trimmed pinewood desk. They lay strewn about a heap of disordered paperwork. Next to a money counter sat a few banded stacks of twenty-dollar bills. Jack picked them up. Three thousand dollars, destined for the next bank drop, perhaps, or payola for the local PD. It didn’t matter; he pocketed all of it. He’d mastered the fine art of hacking ATMs long ago, but cash was perpetually in short supply. The mission came with no paycheck, no expense account, and he had to scrounge funding wherever and whenever he could.

  He slipped out of the office, shining his small LED flashlight down the winding wrought-iron steps that led to the club’s main level. He paused quickly to survey where Beth had fought them off two nights ago. All traces of a struggle had been swept into memory. With any luck, when he finally emerged, it would be so with all of them.

  He made his way into the basement, hands crossed at the wrist, light in one, gun in the other. The air inside tasted warm and wet, choked with rusty grit. He felt the tingly silk of cobwebs breaking across his eyes as he ducked under low-hanging pipes on his way toward the liquor cage.

  There he found the hole. It was exactly as she’d described, loose bricks facing out as they always did, and in the compacted dirt floor were more than a few furrowed gouges. They led both in and out. He could almost smell them down there, that uncanny scent of rain and corroded copper that was theirs alone.

  Jack steadied himself. He shined his light into the hole, hoping to find a shallow alcove. Perhaps, if he was fortunate, the creatures would just be there sleeping. What he found instead was a long tunnel that sloped down into pitch blackness. He would have no choice but to go in, head first.

  Jack tugged a neoprene-mounted caving lamp onto his forehead and clicked it on. A wide beam spread out before him. He gripped the crumbling brick and began his descent. He entered the hole, propped on his elbows, relying on the friction of his boots to slow his descent as he wormed his way in, gun leading the way. Halfway in, the smooth dirt tube angled sharply down. It was a struggle to keep from slipping.

  His headlamp flickered off something silvery at the bottom of the shaft. He cocked his ear, barely able to make out the faint rush of an underground stream. He’d reached the water table.

  This sortie had to work. He was running out of options, running out of time. If he could dispatch them now, in one go, he could be on the road by the following nightfall. He could go back to his life—what there was of it—and the girl could go back to hers. It wouldn’t be too late for her to get out, he reasoned. Beth hadn’t learned the basest truth yet, and with any luck, she would never have to. She might prove herself a strong ally in this battle, but the war was ultimately his, and would always be his, alone.

  Jack finally reached the bottom of the shaft. He stood up, finding himself in a straight-walled sluice. It was about ten feet across and sixteen high, composed of rough-hewn stone blocks. Man-made for sure. The water was only ankle-deep. It flowed at a slow but steady pace, sloshing over his boots. He reached out to feel the wall with one palm. It was dry just above waist level; below that, the stone had been made slick by at least a century of rushing water. This would be the highest it went. Or so he hoped; there could be no guarantee.

  Upstream, the beam from his headlamp rebounded off nothing except more water, more stone. There was no sound other than the bubble of the stream and echoing silence. From one pouch on his belt, Jack pulled a copy of the building’s blueprints. He’d cribbed them from the local zoning board’s online archives. He saw no mention of a sluice, a sewer system of this magnitude, an abandoned aqueduct, an old bootlegger’s tunnel, nothing. This was just another one of the maddening secrets held by so many cities. Another one exploited by them.

  Jack tapped the compass bubble strapped to his wrist. The needle swung wildly, dragged this way and that by a network of countless steel girders supporting the city above him. With a sigh, he flipped the blueprint over to the blank side and made a quick note of his relative position. The only map he’d have now would be one he forged himself.

  Thirty-seven

  Beth crept toward the sound. She moved as quietly as she could, trying to keep her boot soles from squeaking against the too-new tile and praying that whatever might be around the corner wasn’t one of them. She flicked a glance over her shoulder. No sign of the dog or anyone else. She calmed her breathing and strained to catch that sound again over the rapid thudding of her heart, the rush of blood in her head.

  Swallowing hard, she forced herself to relax for the tenth time. Jack had said he’d never seen one of the creatures in the daytime. But he’d also said not to count on anything. “Blood,” she whispered harshly in the direction the dog had padded off. “Blood. Come on back, boy.” She waited for a response that never came. Some lifeline he was turning out to be.

  Beth bent low, cautiously slipping through the swinging doors at the end of the hall. Inside, she found a small alcove that stood empty. On the opposite side was a steel door bearing a plastic placard: Employees Only. She could hear the repetitive clank of an industrial washing machine coming from the other side. She breathed out a trailing sigh. Had she become so spooked that she was jumping at shadows now? She turned back toward the hallway.

  And heard a slight creak from behind her. She whipped around. The door to the laundry room was slightly ajar. But she could swear it had been sealed tight just an instant before. She reached forward. Just as her fingertips brushed against the brass knob, it slipped from her grasp, pulled shut from the inside.

  Beth shoved one hand into her pocket, clutching a fistful of salt. Instantly, it went sticky, wet from the sweat soaking her palm. She gripped the knob again and reared back with the salt, ready to hurl it at anything that might stand on the other side of that door. She threw the door open wide.

  Nothing.

  Nothing scarier than a well-used mop sticking, handle up, from a scuffed yellow wringer bucket. One wall of the room was lined with chrome wire shelving. On it sat a battery of cleaning solutions, shrink-wrapped stacks of toilet paper, fresh towels, folded linens, and the like. The opposite wall was dominated by a bank of washers and dryers. Between them stood heaps of dirty laundry. The scents of sweat-soiled sheets and chlorine bleach raced each other to see which could give Beth a migraine first.

  The muscles in her back began to
unknot. Yet another false alarm. What was she doing in here? She was supposed to be watching out the window to see if anyone had spotted Jack, not chasing phantoms in a laundry room. She took one last look at the heaped canvas sacks.

  And one of them started to move.

  She crushed the salt in her hand so tightly that it compacted into a ball. Running wasn’t an option, no matter what Jack had told her. She’d killed one of those things already, and she’d do the same here—if that’s what was wriggling under those dirty sheets. It moved again, shifting closer. She reared back and pelted the lump with a handful of salt.

  “Why are you doing that?” came a soft, lisp-riddled voice from beneath the linens. The shape pulled itself out. A little girl, no more than five or six, shaking Beth’s salt out of her cornsilk hair.

  “I—I’m . . .” Beth stammered, quickly stuffing the salt back into her pocket as the adrenaline rush cratered under her. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t you know that’th bad luck?” The girl scraped up some of the salt with her tiny fingers and threw it over her shoulder. “Nema told me.” The girl squinted at Beth, scouring her with a look that was worthy of Blood. “Are you the Ghotht-buthters?”

  “What?” Beth suddenly remembered that she was wearing Jack’s jumpsuit and had a set of his steel tanks strapped to her back. Ghostbusters. She could almost laugh. It was probably the same assumption she would have made at that age, and one not too far from reality—as crazy as that seemed to her even now. “No, sweetie. I’m just an exterminator.”

  “Exthterminator?”

  “Yeah. I’m here to take care of the critters.”

  “Ewwww!” The girl scrunched up her face, drawing both of her little fists beneath her chin in the terror that only children possess. “Why would you want to take care of the critterth? You should kill them, not take care of them. They’re groth. They come into your bed and thuck your blood. Ewwww!”

  “More than you know, kid. Anyway. That’s what ‘take care of’ means sometimes.” She drew out the tank’s hose nozzle, pointing it like a gun. “Pow pow . . . no more critters.”

  “Oh, good!” The girl sighed, splaying out both of her feet. Dirty Keds poked out from under the laundry.

  Beth looked her over. This was an odd place to find a kid, but Beth knew the drill. Money was getting tight in New Harbor. People cut corners where they could. Dollar-store sardines and rice for dinner three times a week. Just-over-the-line expired baby formula. A bag of microwave popcorn and cartoons instead of a babysitter.

  She’d been a latchkey kid herself, left on her own as her ma picked up extra shifts at the diner or went out on yet another date with yet another lowlife. She remembered how she’d spend hour after hour pretending that the nooks and crannies of her own low-income housing projects were undiscovered worlds to be explored. The spot behind the garbage hampers, a secret fort. The basement storage pens, ancient catacombs. The attic crawl space, a pals-only clubhouse for her and Zoë. Why not a laundry room?

  Because it wasn’t safe, that’s why. The steel shelving could easily topple had this girl gotten it into her head to climb it. The jugs of purple cleaning solvents looked an awful lot like grape Kool-Aid. And Beth could easily see a precocious tot like this one imagining that the industrial washer’s round hatch was a submarine door and climbing inside for a ride that would lead only to senseless tragedy. “Why don’t you come on out of there, sweetie?”

  The girl shook her head, burrowing deeper into the sacks of dirty laundry. Beth inched forward, squatting down to the girl’s level.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Her eyes were wide as she stared at the door and what might lie beyond it. “The critterth.”

  “No, see, I got the critters already.” Beth once again made the gun motion. “Pow pow, remember?”

  The girl thought about it for a moment. Beth could almost see the gears of her child mind grinding away. Finally, she shook her head wildly from side to side as she pulled the dirty sheets halfway up her face.

  Beth sighed. “What’s your name?”

  “Gabby.” The way she said it made it sound as if Beth should have known that already. That her name was common knowledge.

  Beth slipped out of the tank harness and set it on the ground with a clank, then flopped onto one of the laundry bags. Dirty linens spilled from its loosely cinched opening. “I’m Beth.” She stuck out her hand. Gabby took it by the tips and shook. “Woo, stinky.” Beth fanned the air with a flat palm, waving off the stench of stale sweat, the rank aroma of ammonia.

  “Yeah,” the girl said, laughing. “Well, you thmell like thpaghetti.”

  Beth nodded, remembering the garlic-based repellent Jack had smeared on her. She’d almost forgotten about it. Strange, she thought. How quickly you can get used to things. How quickly you could get used to anything. “Does your mommy know that you come in here to play?”

  Gabby once again shook her head. But by the blush spreading across her cheeks, Beth could tell that not only did her mommy, in fact, know that she came in here but also that Gabby wasn’t allowed to.

  “Come on. You don’t want to get in trouble, do you? What if your mommy finds you here?”

  “Mommy’th at work.”

  “And you’re all alone?”

  Gabby nodded.

  “Well, you’re in luck, because if you come out now, we can get you back home, and no one will ever know you were being naughty.”

  Gabby frowned, crossing her stick-thin arms in a huff. “I’m not being naughty.”

  “You sure are,” Beth teased, giving Gabby a gentle poke to the ribs. “Playing in the laundry room when you aren’t supposed to.”

  “I’m not playing,” Gabby said, her face red with frustration. “I’m hiding.”

  “Gabby.” Beth tried to be as soothing as possible, but the clock was ticking. Jack would be coming out soon and would need her to keep watch as he made his way back. “I told you. I already got rid of the critters.”

  “I’m not hiding from the critterth,” she said, her voice pitched in a you outta know tone. She pointed to the hall. “I’m hiding from the boogeyman. I thee him through the windowth. In that building there.”

  That’s when Beth heard a scratching coming from just the other side of the door.

  Thirty-eight

  Jack took note of the water level. Since he’d started, it had risen almost a foot and now submerged him up to the knees. The stream’s current was weak, barely a tug, really, but it was bitter cold. Like a hail of icicles continually nailing his numbed shins. Already, he could feel his strength floating off behind him in a trailing stream as hypothermia began to sink in.

  He checked his watch. Could it really have been only fifteen minutes? It felt more like an hour. It seemed that even his unshakable internal clock had become useless in this dank and lightless place. By calculating his paces, he judged the distance traveled. Almost half a mile. He’d snaked back on himself so many times he felt as if he was trapped in a prayer maze. Each step just led him closer to the center of something. But what? He wondered how deep these tunnels went. How far they spread out under the city.

  He trudged forward and rounded a dogleg. The beam from his headlamp bounced off the edges of a circular stone aperture. He sloshed over to it. The opening was a little more than a yard in diameter, but it was blocked by a portcullis of inch-thick iron bars sunk deep into the ancient brickwork.

  Jack approached the bars tentatively. He checked the surface with the back of his hand. Dry—nothing had passed through them. At least, not recently. He pressed his face close and found himself peering up a steeply rising slope, sixty degrees or more. It continued well past the reach of his headlamp. A blast of air hit him. It smelled richly of chalk and silt, just like everything else around him.

  He tugged the bars. Solid. One of them shifted the barest fraction of an inch, a f
ew flakes of mortar crumbling down to his hand, but that was all. He estimated the space between the bars at eight inches. Enough for them to get through, but not him. Not without a couple of sticks of dynamite or at least a Sawzall. This was a dead end.

  Jack stamped his feet, no longer able to feel his toes against the front of his soaked-through boots. It wouldn’t be long before the water, rolling back in, trapped him here. That is if it didn’t drown him first. He gave the bars one last gut-busting, tendon-tearing pull. And still nothing. Time to move on; there were countless other tunnels to investigate.

  As he turned, he spotted something strange about the far wall. Just past his eye line there was a rough rectangular shadow, perhaps a depression. As he got closer, his toe hit a pile of crumbled masonry. It must have fallen from an opening in the wall, and sure enough, there was just such an opening, and the stones at the edge were all angled out.

  Jack readied himself. He clicked off his headlamp, drew his pistol and flashlight. He mounted the pile of broken rocks and mortar, letting them settle beneath him before taking aim. He leveled his breathing, his finger ready on the trigger, then clicked on the beam.

  It was just another empty chamber. Jack holstered his pistol and clicked the headlamp back on with a huff. He peered into the fissure. His light disappeared ten feet into the darkened void. They’d come this way, of that he had no doubt. They were lurking somewhere in that blackness. He judged the size of the hole. It would be a tight fit, but he could make it. He unclipped his belt, tossing it into the gap ahead of him. Then he kicked himself off the mound, feeling some of the stone and mortar give way around him as he squirmed inside.

  A creaking moan came from above. Jack rolled over gingerly. His light beam hit the ceiling, exposing a rickety lattice of ancient, waterlogged timbers propping up buckling stonework. On either side were sawn lumber posts bearing the weight. He felt something hard and heavy land just inches from his cheek, engulfing him in a rolling cloud of mortar dust. He turned to spot a jagged chunk of granite. It must have fallen from the ceiling. Half a foot to the right, and it would have been lights out. Permanently.