As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  Thorne had cowered in the shadows of the fun house’s mouth entrance, petrified, watching as the creature picked agents from the tower and tore their limbs off like so many he loves me not petals. Others she crushed to pulp, still screaming, in the coils of her tail. And all the while, the castle above burned.

  Ross had yet to appear behind her. For all she knew, he was still up there trying to snuff out the blaze. Thorne had known her only chance was to sprint back to the mirror maze before that thing spotted her. If she could just get outside, she could circle back with the support team and call for reinforcements—or extraction.

  The silver entranceway had beckoned to her. She’d dashed for it flat out. She ignored the din of screams, the boom of gunfire, the wet tearing of rending flesh, the rain of carnage, and focused on that archway. Two seconds after she’d made it inside, she’d smacked right into the mirror.

  Thorne’s nose felt as if it had been spiked into her brain, swiftly turning into a solid plug of coagulating blood and snot. She hazarded a touch and almost blacked out from the pain. She was about to test it again when she heard a rough slithering that was growing louder.

  Her chest erupted in a fission of hysteria. Every atom of her being wanted to flee, each in a different direction. She had to get out. Get out now, before that horror show did to her what it had done to the rest.

  The exit couldn’t be far now, could it? It had to be just around the next corner. Besides, the creature would be as confused by the maze as Thorne was. That thing would have to take the same winding path she had, in the same darkness. Wouldn’t it?

  Thorne heard a hard crash—shattered glass and breaking timbers. Then another. And another. Each one louder and closer than the last. She turned. In the circular spot of her flashlight appeared the creature, just now sidewinding into the next chamber.

  The thing lingered there, only a few yards away. Her naked torso was streaked with so much blood it looked like war paint. Thorne watched as both the creature’s bare arms morphed into tendrils. Reaching and reaching, they undulated bonelessly, slithering along the walls, searching.

  In the thing’s face, Thorne saw a rage so pure it was as if it had been distilled and molded into something approaching the divine. And it proclaimed to all the world that she would bring a retribution so absolute nothing would be left behind, not even memory.

  Twenty-Nine

  Beth scrambled for the drainpipe. “Did you see what that thing—”

  “Yes.” Jack cut her off, already swinging down. Beth rubbed life back into her numb arm. The vertical drop sent nauseating vertigo corkscrewing through her belly. She shot a glance at Jack. He was already halfway down by the time her hand wrapped around the rust-slick metal.

  “Hurry!”

  “I am!” Beth loosened her grip and slid down faster, her palms burning with forge fire. Her boot soles smacked the sidewalk so hard she’d feel it for days—if she was lucky.

  The street was deserted. No Division agents, no passing cars, nothing. She felt dizzy. Her feet stung. Her throat ached, and her mind was reeling. But she was alive. She was alive, and so was Jack. And for that, she said a small prayer of thanks to any God who smiled on people who only prayed when things got hard, really hard.

  They were in the clear—for now. They couldn’t risk going back to the car. She knew that. If the Division found them here in Asbury Park, they’d no doubt made that car, too. They couldn’t hide anywhere nearby, either. Sooner or later, they’d be discovered. They needed another way out, another way to get far from her. But the street was empty. Not a single vehicle in sight.

  Smoke billowed from the roof hole, a black claw scratching the sky. “Come on,” she said, almost dragging Jack around to the other side of the blazing inferno that had been Castle Amusements. There she spotted a row of cars, the glass of their headlights glinting in the growing firelight. She started for them.

  Only to get yanked back by the wrist. Jack pulled her out of sight, back around the brick corner. “Those are Division vehicles,” he whispered.

  They were trapped—no wheels to hotwire, Castle Amusements in flames, that monster inside about to burst free any moment, and nowhere to run except into the waiting arms of the Division . . . or the Atlantic Ocean.

  Beth gazed out at the water, knowing that those same currents flowed from here to the place she used to call home. A long pier jutted into the waves like a middle finger, mocking them. A thought bubbled to the surface. “Jack?” she asked, not quite believing her own voice. “Is hotwiring a car the same as hotwiring a boat?”

  He turned. And for the first time, Beth saw him smile. Not a sly grin, not a wry smirk, not even the tolerant half-curl his lips would allow when they shared the odd inside joke. No, this was a toothy, unqualified smile, so complete it stretched not just from ear to ear but from eyes to toes. “I think so,” he said. And they scampered down the pier, ringing the planks like marimba tines.

  They came upon an open-hulled fishing boat. It sat low on the ebbing tide. The massive outboard perched on the stern looked almost big enough to swamp the craft but powerful enough to take them very far from here, very fast. They pressed harder, their footfalls echoing in loopy syncopation.

  Until they didn’t.

  Until Beth heard only her own feet clomping. She looked back to see that Jack had stopped. His back was to her, and he was staring at the burning building.

  “Jack, we have to get out of here.”

  He said nothing.

  She padded to him. “Jack. We—”

  He said only one word, and he said it so softly it was all but swallowed by the waves that lapped against the pilings. “Blood.”

  The bottom fell out of Beth’s world. They’d left Blood to stand guard and hadn’t seen one hair of him since they’d escaped. In the adrenaline-soaked rush, Beth had forgotten that most of the world existed, Blood included.

  “We have to find him.”

  She knew they did. But if they went looking for him now, all they would find was death—or worse. Jack had long ago taught her that the hard choice was usually the right choice. But goddamn if it didn’t hurt. Goddamn if it didn’t hurt like being gutshot. And goddamn if the pain wasn’t a thousand times worse when you knew you were the one who had to pull the trigger.

  “We have to find him,” he echoed.

  “We will,” she said, taking him lightly by the wrist. “But not now.”

  “But—”

  “He’s a smart dog, Jack. He can take care of himself.” She tugged more insistently, but it was as if he’d grown roots.

  “But—”

  Beth gripped him by both shoulders and wrenched him around to face her. Fear glistened in his eyes. Of all the terrors Jack had faced, Beth knew that this was the only one that scared him to the core—that he would again be responsible for the death of someone who loved him. And no one on this earth, not even Beth, loved Jack Jackson as unconditionally as that dog.

  “Look.” She clasped him tighter, feeling his muscles tighten like ship ropes. “We found him after New Harbor. We’ll find him after this. We will. Trust me.”

  Jack nodded. The smile was gone, long gone. In his eye, she saw one tear hanging frozen like an icicle. Beth knew it would never fall.

  She let go. Time was running out. If they didn’t get out of here right now, all their words would be like smoke on the wind. “Come on.” As she rushed to the boat, she could hear Jack give in to another long, hacking cough.

  She clambered over the gunwale. The boat rocked beneath her as her feet hit the deck. All she had to do now was get the engine started. She’d manhandle Jack inside if that was what it took. They’d deal will all the rest later. And that included finding Blood.

  As she worked her way aft, a thought grazed her mind. She pictured Blood wandering the streets of South Jersey until a girl like Audrey found him and took him with her. Took him to a home that had no terrors lurking in its basement, no monsters in the attic. She imagined him dozing off in
front of the family couch, a living ottoman, adored and spared this hell. If that ended up being his fate, he’d certainly earned it.

  Hotwiring the outboard turned out to be unnecessary. The engine started with the push of a button. Oddly trusting owner for a neighborhood like this, Beth thought. But maybe boat people were different.

  The boat rocked as Jack tumbled over the side. She slashed the bowline at the cleat and did the same for the stern, leaving both to trail in the water. Beth dropped the prop and gave the throttle a hard push straight to the red. The engine whined, and they sped off into the tenebrous ocean, a rooster tail of water spraying behind them.

  Jack all but collapsed onto the bench beside her, slumped inward like a Halloween leaf man.

  “We’ll find him,” she said, eyes on the open horizon.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise,” she answered. She’d never heard him sound so hollowed out. The plea—Promise?—rang in her ears like the last request of a dying child.

  They were almost out of sight of shore—the only thing visible the glowing orange glob of the burning amusement park—when Jack began to cough again. Huge, rattling hacks that shook not only his body but the entire boat.

  Beth turned. He was still on the bench. But his head was thrown back, his eyes rolled to white. His shirtfront was drenched with blood so dark it was almost black, and it gushed from his open mouth like a park fountain.

  Thirty

  Those fierce green eyes locked on Thorne. The thing was only yards away. And nothing stood between the two of them but a few empty arches.

  The creature let loose another scream. Amplified a hundredfold in the narrow confines of the maze, it lanced through Thorne’s eardrums, plunged deep into her brain, and began to twist. The mirror walls vibrated, turning the Crystal Palace into an echoing carillon. Thorne collapsed into a ball, hands clamped over her ears, wishing that it would stop, that it all would all just go away.

  The creature reared back on her coils, ready to strike. Thorne closed her eyes tight and waited for the end, wishing it would be quick and knowing it would be anything but. Then there came another crash, so much louder than all the rest. Shattering glass, splintering boards, screaming metal. And then the almost musical tumble of bricks.

  But that was all. No pain. No arms torn from sockets. No entrails spilling from her belly. No head rolling around, catching brief glimpses of its severed reflection in the seconds before the blackness claimed her. Nothing. At first, Thorne wondered if she were dead. If it was that quick after all—her spirit ripped from her flesh and hovering to watch the action like that cat in those old cartoons.

  But no. She was breathing. She could taste the air going into and out of her lungs. Feel her legs needling beneath her. She forced her eyes open. But instead of the mirror maze, instead of the creature, she saw only the street, framed by a gaping hole in the wall. Broken bricks jutted from the edges, herky-jerky, like a hobo’s smile.

  How? Why? What the— And then, in a Tesla-coil flash, she realized what had happened. The mirrors! That thing hadn’t been slithering toward her. The thing had been headed for one of Thorne’s reflections, and was fooled by it. She’d hit the mirror full force—the mirror and the wall behind it.

  Thorne stumbled past the pile of bricks, jagged mirror shards, and broken boards that littered the pavement. She was out. If she could just find the support team. She looked left—an empty street. She looked right—

  And there was the thing, maybe thirty feet away, slithering around in the street in a stunned daze. Thorne watched as she whipped her body this way and that, trying to shake herself back to sense. The thing dived for the pavement face-first, tail following in looping whorls. Around and around she went, rolling herself ball-tight. And then her body—the human part of her body—rose from the churning coils.

  Thorne was struck, just for an instant, by her beauty. She could have been carved by a Renaissance master in homage to the myths of ancient Greece. One part lissome nymph, with cream-white skin, wine-red hair, and curves a man would slay an army for a single caress of. One part abomination from the starless depths of the abyss, with raging green eyes that beamed to all that she’d come to cleanse this world tabula rasa.

  Eyes that now turned toward Thorne.

  She couldn’t move, her feet riveted to the macadam. And she knew that even if she could run, she’d hardly make it to her second stride before that thing caught her, before she was torn apart and tossed to the wind. Better to face her fate with dignity. It was the one—the only—lesson of her father’s that she’d ever taken to heart. “When the end comes,” Pritchard Thorne had said to her late one afternoon a million lifetimes ago. “When the end comes—and you’ll know it—you don’t want to meet your maker as a coward.”

  She didn’t. She locked eyes with the monster, keeping them open wide, refusing to enter the next world in darkness. The creature reared back, about to strike.

  A thrum filled the air. A blinding light flooded the street, and a gale hit Thorne hard, driving her back. The creature retreated, snaking away in a wide figure eight. Thorne stumbled, the hurricane wind almost flattening her as a black Division helicopter hovered into view. It swiveled around, then held steady, forward spotlights pinning the creature.

  The bay door slid open. Inside was Ross. His suit was charred, his skin soot-streaked. His hair looked as if it might have been smoldering. But those eyes were as cold as ever.

  “I’d suggest you get inside, Agent Thorne,” Ross said, as if this were simply another day at the office. “We’ll handle that once we’re airborne,” he added with a quick nod to the creature.

  The thing screamed again. Her wail cut through the deafening whir of the helicopter blades as she gathered herself, coils bunched. She started for Thorne, arms stretching out impossibly fast.

  Thorne bolted for the chopper, almost feeling the touch of those long tendrils reaching for her. She aimed for the open helicopter door and leaped. Ross pulled her toward the far side of the chopper. Agent Diamond was there, too. He wrenched the door shut. It slid along the rollers with a hollow metallic grind, closing them in just as the creature hit the window headlong. The bulletproof window caved in.

  “Pull up,” Ross commanded.

  “Wait,” said Thorne, unable to tear her eyes from what she saw. “Look!” She pointed to the edge of the door, not quite shut. Caught in the jamb was one of the creature’s grasping pseudopods. It wriggled, inching its way in, reaching for them.

  “Pull up!”

  “We can’t!” yelled the pilot, her hand tight on the stick. “That thing’s holding us down.”

  The creature lashed with the caught tentacle, sending the chopper reeling.

  “Open the door!” the pilot howled.

  “No!” called Thorne. “She’ll pull us out like candy from a box!”

  Ross shot a stern look at Agent Diamond. Fix it, that look said. Diamond nodded and shouldered the door handle with a loud grunt. Another shrill scream came from the thing outside.

  The tentacle writhed furiously, undulating along the inside, grasping for Diamond, almost reaching his wrist. He reared back and plowed into the door with every ounce of his bulk.

  A two-foot length of it dropped, severed. Almost instantly the pilot banked up, leaving the tentacle still squirming, slithering across the steel floor. Thorne scrambled farther up on the vinyl bench, swearing it was crawling toward her.

  “I want that bagged for analysis!” Ross barked.

  Diamond whipped off his suit jacket and pounced on the writhing tentacle. The thing fought back, jerking around like a drowning victim. Diamond held it tight, wrapping it up as Ross yanked a rubberized sack from under one of the seats. Together they wrestled it into the bag and sealed it tight.

  The pilot swiveled the helicopter around. The floodlights nailed the creature. She reared up, weaving almost fifteen feet in the air. Thorne caught a glimpse of the stump where the limb had been chopped short. There was already th
e beginning of a new hand sprouting from it.

  “Open fire!”

  The forward turret gun erupted, sending a volley of tracer rounds directly into the creature’s chest. The thing’s skin instantly flicked to brilliant milky white. Every shot ricocheted harmlessly.

  “Again!”

  Another round. And another. The sheer press drove the creature back. She gathered her coils in a tight bunch, readying another attack.

  “On my mark,” commanded Ross.

  The thing rose high. Three yards higher than before. Then, with one last scream, she arched back, looping into herself. And with a flick of her tail, she was gone, winding into the shadows.

  “Follow her!”

  The chopper banked. Thorne caught one last glimpse of squirming tail as the creature slipped under the boardwalk and out of sight.

  Ross scrambled toward the front window, hands clamped on the back of the pilot’s seat. “Where did she go?”

  “Down,” answered the pilot. “Don’t know which direction after that. Could pop out anywhere.”

  “Can we track her?”

  “Negative, Agent Ross. This bird isn’t equipped for it.”

  “What about Jackson?”

  The pilot shook her head. “Also negative. Beta reports they lost track of the fugitives.”

  Ross pounded one balled fist into his knee. “Tell Beta to keep all eyes out for that thing. I want to know the minute they spot it.”

  “What about us? Local FD should—”

  “I’m aware of the FD!” Ross shook his head. This was twice now he’d been defeated. And in the little time she’d known him, Thorne had learned one thing: Ross did not take defeat lightly.

  “Take us back to New Harbor,” he said, back straight against the bench. He flicked a glance to the rubber sack and its still-twitching contents. “Let’s see if our pet doctor has any theories about that thing that might be useful.”