As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  Randi felt her ragged breathing began to calm, her fear to quell. The press was warm and welcoming. His grip suddenly felt less like a grapple and more like an embrace. Why had she run? she wondered. What was she so scared of? It had something to do with . . . something . . .

  His breath was hot on her skin. He would take her here. He would take her from behind. He would thrust his length deep inside her and only come after she could take no more. And he’d do it right on the rasping gravel of this filthy parking lot.

  And Randi wanted nothing more.

  She felt a quick wet pinch at the base of her neck, and a rush like she could have never known exploded in her veins. It was unreal. Better than any drug, any sex, any thing she’d ever had. She began to weep, knowing that she’d never have the power to express it. Even if she could find the words, no amount of any kind of glue would ever make it stick to the page. And again, she just didn’t care anymore. The rush, the bliss, the elation, the euphoria—it consumed any other desire she might have once had and left nothing behind, not even their bones.

  And then, just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. A shrill scream like rending metal shattered Randi’s ears. Her chest seized as if she’d sucked in two lungs full of ice water. The rush was gone. Gone. Just ripped out of her, and in the crater that was left flooded a paralyzing agony.

  She suddenly remembered why she’d been so terrified. That man, he’d killed Nick. Not just killed him but bitten off his goddamn dick and left him to bleed out just a few yards away. And if she let him, the man would kill her, too. She had to get up. Had to get away.

  But when she tried to move, she found that every muscle in her body had gone saddle-leather stiff. Panic wrapped like a python around her and began to squeeze. She couldn’t move anything, not even her eyes. Both were stuck open, one pressed into the dusty gravel, the other fixed on the darkening edge of the parking lot. She was powerless to do anything other than watch.

  The man lurched into view. His body and limbs writhed like squid tentacles against another figure, this one all but shadow. They wrestled each other, jerking out of her field of vision again. Randi heard the whining crunch of crumpling steel, the lightning crack of glass shattering, and a heart-stopping thud that rattled the ground she kissed.

  Again they loomed close. The second figure lifted the man high in both hands. And for the barest instant, Randi saw that figure clearly. It was a woman. A line of light from the lot’s lone lamp traced her form, leaving in shadow all but the flank of her slim, naked torso, the curve of one bare breast, and a mane of lush red hair.

  Then they were out of sight. Randi heard a thick, wet sound, like meat being turned inside out. And the thought that had been gnawing at the back of her mind finally bit down and tore out a solid chunk. She was going to die. Not in an abstract we-all-go-someday kind of way. She was going to die here. Right fucking here! Paralyzed and facedown in the grubby parking lot of a shithole pub.

  She was going to die . . . right fucking here, right fucking now.

  Seven

  Beth weaved her way through the parking lot, heading toward the small blue-collar bar that occupied the far corner of the building. She passed a throng of beater cars. Most sported bubbling cankers of rust on wheel wells or undercarriages, and more than one sat canted on an emergency donut tire worn bald to the canvas.

  She kept her eyes moving, scouring every dark corner for trouble. She could handle herself in a pinch, and Jack was watching her from the truck, but a mugging out here would definitely stop her from getting the information they needed.

  At the sidewalk, she paused to check her reflection in the window. Except for a couple of neon signs advertising Yuengling Lager and udweiser—half the iconic red bow tie dark along with the B—everything had been blackened to pitch with automotive tint. The message was clear: If you don’t already know what to expect from a place like this, a peek inside isn’t going to change your mind much.

  Beth did know what to expect. Pleasantville, it seemed, wasn’t all that different from the part of New Harbor she’d grown up in, the wrong-side-of-the-tracks part. She yanked open the door and was immediately hit with a blast of miserly cool air that reeked of sweat and sour beer. No eyes turned to her as she walked in. No gum-snapping waitress dropped her tray of drinks. No jukebox needle scratched across its crackling forty-five. The regulars simply stared into their mugs of yellow beer or glanced at the baseball game blasting silently from the dusty tube TV. Beth fit in here. She knew it, and all assembled seemed to know it, too, even with their backs turned.

  Although smoking had been banned in New Jersey bars for almost a decade, the aroma of stale tobacco was so strong Beth felt as if she’d tumbled into an ashtray. She wondered if the smell had just permeated the wood over who knew how many years or was wafting from the regulars.

  “Can I get you?” the barkeep asked.

  “Draft,” she said, pulling up a stool. She didn’t have to specify which brand; the bar sported only one tap handle, dead center.

  The bartender filled a mug and slid it to her, the glass milky from countless trips through the washing machine. “Three bucks.”

  Beth slapped a five onto the bar. “That’s all set.” After the barkeep scooped it up, she laid a twenty spot in its place.

  He squinted at it. “You need something else . . . miss?” Maybe he thought she was a process server. She probably wouldn’t have been the first person to pull a stunt like that in a place like this. The question was, would he give her answers, or a quick trip to the curb?

  “I’m looking for a Jesse Brannigan.” That was their lead—their only lead. A paramedic who’d responded to the most recent attack. It had taken place in the parking lot behind a nearby restaurant, and there’d been a survivor—of sorts. A coked-up cocktail waitress who had lived almost long enough to make it to the ER. Word had it the EMTs liked to kick back a few at this bar.

  The bartender stretched up his chin and scratched his graying neck beard. Then he palmed the twenty and threw it into his chromed tip bucket. He cocked a finger gun at a group of people playing darts in the far corner and fired. Bang. Then he went back about his business. Beth knocked back half of her less-than-frosty beer and headed over.

  In the dim light, it was hard to tell exactly how many paramedics were clustered there. But there was no missing the one in the middle. He was the type who never met a ceiling fan he didn’t have to duck under. Six-foot-seven easy, with a thatch of rusty curls that age had thinned to a tonsure. The sleeves of his tartan flannel were rolled to the elbows, exposing a set of forearms the size of Easter hams. And when he threw his darts, Beth thought it a wonder they didn’t go straight through the board.

  She stepped up to the group, eyes on the one in the center. “Umm, Jesse? Jesse Brannigan?”

  No response. Just a solid thunk as another dart went deep into the board. He aimed again, dart in hand, arm reared back.

  “Excuse me?”

  The man swiveled his massive noggin in her direction. Two beady eyes, like raisins peeking from soda bread, pegged her. “Messing up my aim here, lady.”

  “Sorry.” Beth shrank a bit deeper into herself. “I’m looking for Jesse Brannigan.”

  “What for?” came a small voice from somewhere behind the red-headed mountain. Its owner stepped forward, a petite Latina with silky black hair and eyes to match. Those same eyes rippled a with suspicion that Beth hoped wasn’t that of a jealous girlfriend. Despite her short stature, she looked as if she could go toe to toe not just with her but with Jack to boot.

  “Umm, I just . . .” The woman’s suspicious frown deepened. “I was . . .”

  “Just spit it out. I’m Jesse Brannigan.”

  It took a moment for that to make its way from Beth’s eardrums to her brain. This was Jesse Brannigan? This was the paramedic she was after? This five-foot-nothing fireplug of a girl who looked a lot more like a Rodriguez than a Brannigan? Of course, she’d never asked the gender of this “Jesse.�
� She’d just made an assumption. A stupid, stupid assumption.

  “So?” Brannigan folded her arms. One short-nailed finger tapped impatiently against her flexed bicep. “What do you want?”

  “Umm, can I buy you a drink?”

  The question was met with dead silence.

  At least at first. Then, almost as one, the men flanking Brannigan burst out laughing. Pealing guffaws echoed in the narrow confines of the bar.

  “Oh, fuck you guys. Fuck you all sideways. Very funny.” She shoved the closest body. “Okay, which one of you was it? Which one of you put her up to it?”

  To a man, they all lifted their hands in a not me wave.

  Brannigan turned to Beth. “Look, lady. I don’t know what these knuckleheads told you. And I’m flattered and all, believe me, but”—she tossed eyes in both directions, then pitched her voice low—“I’m strictly dickly, if you catch my meaning.”

  “What?” The words sank deep with Beth. “No. I mean, yes . . . I mean, no. No. Not like that. I’m . . . umm . . . you know . . . the same. Not that it’s a bad thing. I don’t judge. I just . . . I just want to talk about a call you responded to. One from last night.”

  The laughter died. The men scraped the floor with lowered eyes. There was little doubt about which call she meant.

  “You a reporter?” Brannigan asked. “’Cause I don’t think we’re supposed to talk to reporters.”

  “Not a reporter,” Beth answered, wondering just what she was supposed to tell them—Don’t worry, I’m not looking for true love here. I’m just one half of a hallucinogenic bipedal-blood-fluke extermination squad following up on a lead. “I’m a private investigator” burst from her lips as if her mouth had a mind of its own. “I was hired by the family to find out what I can. They aren’t happy with the way the police are handling it.”

  “Not surprised.” Brannigan shook her head in world-weary sympathy. “Cops are stretched real thin out here. Governor Fatass’s budget cuts put half of ’em out of work.”

  “Us, too,” added Big Red.

  “Us, too.” Brannigan nodded. Her eyes resolved into a thousand-yard stare that Beth recognized all too well. “PI, huh? Thought you guys just did divorce work and insurance scams.”

  “We do, mostly.”

  “Which family? His or hers?”

  “His.”

  “Figures. Heard he came from money.” Brannigan stole glances to each side of her. “This all off the record?”

  “Just between us girls.”

  “Still want to buy me that drink?”

  Beth smiled, and a moment later, they’d bellied up to the bar. Beth went one better than the promised beer. She lined up shots for both of them, too.

  “I’ve seen a lot of things,” Brannigan said. “Tossed my lunch more than once as a rookie. But nothing like what I saw last night.” She downed her shot, then started in on her draft. “We got to the scene a beat or two before the five-o. It was just me and the ambulance driver.”

  “Would I be able to talk to him, too? Or her, too?”

  “Him. Doubt it. Decided today was a perfect time to take the wife and kids on a last-minute getaway. Can’t say I blame him. Hopped the first Carnival cruise ship out of Bayonne.” Brannigan tapped the bar for another shot. Beth signaled the barkeep to keep the tab open.

  “I hear there was a survivor. A cocktail waitress?”

  “Survivor? Yeah, sort of. We didn’t see her at first. Just the dead guy and the damage. Devastation is probably a better word for it. It was like someone decided to hold a surprise monster truck rally behind the Beefsteak Charlie’s. Five cars smashed to hell. One of them flipped right over.”

  “That wasn’t in the police report.”

  “Yeah, I know. Bet the owner of the pub paid them to keep it out of the press. Lot of payola goes on around here.”

  “Around everywhere,” Beth said, remembering back in her bartending days, how the manager of Axis would steadily line the pockets of the New Harbor PD. “Any witnesses?”

  Brannigan shook her head. “Not unless you count that cocktail girl, and she didn’t last long. By the time anyone else made it outside, it was all over. Brannigan eyed Beth over the foamy head of another draft. “Guess I don’t have to tell you the state we found your guy in.”

  “No,” Beth lied. “Hearing it firsthand wouldn’t be a bad idea, though. Every little detail helps. Especially any that might have gotten glossed over to spare the family’s feelings.”

  “Bet there was a lot of that.” Brannigan snorted. “Anyway, we found most of your guy slumped up against the fence. Died from blood loss. His whole lower half was drenched, looked like someone gave him a hand job with a chain saw. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Isn’t my family. I’m just a hired gun.”

  “Yeah, anyway, if I didn’t know better, I’d say his crotch had been chewed through.”

  Beth, who did know better, wasn’t surprised, but she suppressed a shudder at the thought nonetheless.

  “Never did find his . . . you know. Whoever tore it off must have wanted it as a souvenir.”

  Or swallowed it, Beth thought, even though she’d tried not to. Brannigan downed her beer. Beth did, too. The barkeep was ready with more. “And the girl? What happened to her?”

  “She was still awake when we found her. Her eyes were open, at any rate, but it was like they were staring out into nothing, pupils dilated right to black. And she was stiff. Like rigor mortis decided to have an early night. There was a lacerated ring on her neck that looked like a bite mark. ER doc said it must have been a dog that did it. Did it to her and to your guy. But I don’t buy it. Maybe him but not her.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “First off, I’ve seen a lot of dog attacks. They usually like to crush the windpipe and shake. This was different. No bruising. No tearing. Just that round ring of teeth marks right at the carotid.” To illustrate, Brannigan laid two fingers on the side of her own throat as if she were checking a pulse. “And dogs always scratch. Usually on the arms and chest where the victim tries to fight them off. On this girl, nothing. Not so much as a torn stocking. Just the bite. If that’s what it was.”

  “If that’s what it was,” Beth echoed. “You said ‘first off,’ so what’s second?”

  “What kind of dog can crush the shit out of, like, five cars?”

  “I don’t know.” And Beth began to wonder if even one of the creatures they hunted could have done anything like the damage Brannigan was describing. She had to tell Jack about this. “The girl. You said she made it to the hospital. Did she say anything to you on the way there?”

  “Just gibberish. Like she was speaking in tongues or something. Wish I could tell you more.”

  “You told me plenty.” Beth dropped a few bills onto the bar. More than enough to cover the drinks, a healthy tip, and another pitcher or two for Brannigan and her friends if they wanted it. “Thanks again.”

  Beth made it all the way to the door before Brannigan called to her. “Wait,” she said. “The girl, she did say something. I didn’t think it meant anything at the time, but she kept repeating this one phrase. It was the only thing I could understand, actually.”

  “Go on.”

  “ ‘It changed.’ That’s what she said. ‘It changed.’ ”

  “What changed?”

  Brannigan just shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. But that’s what she said. ‘It changed.’ Probably nonsense.”

  “Probably,” Beth lied.

  Eight

  NEW HARBOR, CONNECTICUT

  The shutters closed on Agent Thorne’s view with the swift finality of a guillotine blade.

  “What did you see?” Ross’s baritone touched her conscious mind like a hand breaching the surface of an algae-choked lake, rooting for something lost in silt.

  She tried to shake herself back to sense. What had she seen on the other side of that enormous Lexan window? A man? But not just a man, something more.

  Thorne
was not, as a rule, a woman led by her baser desires. But the instant her eyes landed on him, she knew she had to have him—would do anything, give anything, for him. The need was so strong it stripped all will from her, like skin from living flesh, and left her raw.

  “Agent Thorne? Do you know where you are?”

  Did she? Thorne took another look at the room’s sterile interior. It was a perfect cube, the enameled walls a near-uniform gleam of blue. Same with the floor and the ceiling. Other than the now-shuttered window, there appeared to be no portal besides an oval hatch that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a submarine. She remembered passing through that hatch in what might have been another life. “Where I am?”

  “Focus, please, Agent Thorne.” Ross’s tone was sharper now, cutting through the murk that isolated her. “Where are you?”

  She sat in the center of the room—that much she knew—in a chair built of medical steel. It was cold and stiff but not uncomfortable. Where was she? A special room, she knew that. A special room with a funny name. What was that funny name? It was a room that had been designed by Dr. Kander. She remembered that, too. Agent Lamb had told her so, and the name. The funny name. “The ’Clave,” she said finally. “I’m in the ’Clave.”

  She remembered now. Officially, the room was called the EDP K-4, for Extreme Decontamination Pod: Kander 4. But only officially. Lamb had told her that, too, and told her how one of the more imaginative Division drones saw a resemblance to the autoclaves that nail technicians and tattoo artists use to sterilize their tools—except this one was the size of a tractor-trailer. And that it relied on concentrated neutron pulses instead of compressed steam to do the job. Had Lamb told her that? No, it had been Ross. Ross had been the one to mention how when the magnetic hatch was sealed and the right sequence coded into the hardwired control panel just outside, any organic matter inside this room—or the one on the other side of the shutters—would be reduced to molecular ash.

  “Yes. The ’Clave.” Ross’s voice was fully present now. “And who are you here with?”