End of the Dream

by Wylie, Philip;

  SNIGGINS: And then?

  WILLIAMS: Gimme a little time. This is a girl, lady now, I know. One I like. One I often—used often—to—well—

  SNIGGINS: Take it easy, son. I know it’s hard—

  WILLIAMS: Hard? Hell. Then? Before a single person had died? I didn’t imagine Amy was in any real danger, more’n me. Just . . . I knew she was squeamish-like, on some things, and hated slimy critters, snails, like. She comes halfway down the lawn an’ I begin to get across to her there’s a whole flock of rat-eatin’ worms right ahead of her, a hunnert feet about, and she don’t see nothing so she keeps coming to us. Curious. Or think it’s some gag to get her to mah boat. The reason she sees nuthin’ is, old crumb Bentum has the yard work for Kipper and he is supposed to mow every week, but who’s to know, and what harm anyhow, if he skips every other week and just cuts higher grass? Good for lawns to grow some, he says. So the grass is right tall and the worms kinda—halt, anyhow.

  SNIGGINS: If you don’t want to talk about what followed—

  WILLIAMS: I don’t mind all that much. It’s real nasty. But I’m getting money for just flapping the jaw. Anyhow, the vibes get wise, somehow, to Amy. I can see ’em, here an’ there, o’ course. Know what to look for. White, slick, shiny, maybe slippery, spaghetti, like. One atop of another and so on, if they feel hurried. The grass finally starts to bend and wiggle with a grass bow wave, sort of, and I tell Amy to run. These damn vibes can go good and fast if they want. Land or water. Sprint a bit, anyhow. So the grass shows ’em sprinting at Amy. Maybe they got leaders, or extra-fast types, among others, like ants, bees; same varmint come in several styles. Whatever it is, a vibe gets Amy while she’s just ready to scram. She’s wearin’ sandals and she looks down in a sudden way an’, I guess, sees a worm’s borin’ into a toe. Up comes the leg and she stands there, staring at the thing, balancing on the other foot, and in a half second she gets a handkerchief out from between her boobs, excuse me, and wraps her hand in it—being chicken about slippery-type varmints—and she grabs the worm—vibe—pulls—and lets out a yell you could hear in Pompano.

  SNIGGINS: It hurt her, the sting, or whatever, very badly?

  WILLIAMS: It sure to hell did! She may be chinchy about slimy critters but Amy’s no sissy. I seen her old man beat her to beyond bloodshed an’ old Amy never even moaned. Now she’s whopping and shrieking. And some vibes get the foot in the grass. More. And she changes feet and tries to tear them off. And that does it. She panics! Kicks and stomps and runs in a circle and flails at her rump when she sees one there and then she starts racing for the house. But she only gets halfway back to the palms and goes all woozy. Topples. Jerks a few times. Then the follow-upper types arrive and you can’t see nothing, no dress, even, for the white wriggling mess is all over her.

  SNIGGINS: You believed she was dead?

  WILLIAMS: I plumb knew she was. Or else I’d have come up on the sea wall and lawn and tried to get her to my boat. I already figured by then, though if four–five vibes could sting a rat to death, fifty, a hundred, could kill a person. And by then she had a million on her. Well—thousands. How many would it take to cover a fair-sized woman, maybe a hundred-thirty pounds, worms all nose down and tails up straight and stiff? Each one size of an angleworm, say? Thicker’n quills on a porcupine, side to side, covering the whole girl’s body. Anyhow, it starts to stink a little, in no time, up there.

  SNIGGINS: Stink?

  WILLIAMS: Why, sure. What’re they doin’? Suckin her blood out, anything else liquid. Then eatin’ into the tissues. Skin they don’t like, vibes. Bone they can’t eat. Or hair! No nourishment, I suppose. Everything else—it goes and fast!

  SNIGGINS: You had observed that speed so soon?

  WILLIAMS: Did I say I had? No. I said I saw the worms start to sink down an’ I could smell they were eating her whole. But I didn’t know what they ate, what got left, till later. Tide came in and some rat corpses floated out and I poked ’em with a oar and see how there’s nothing left but hide and bones. No eyes, even. No faces, much. And caved in like Amy—guts gone. Right then, I’m sort of stunned, personally. Not panicked but worried. I see they will eat people. I see they can climb a cement wall, wet or dry, an’ rush across grass, so I wonder why haven’t they come aboard? They went right under me, in billions.

  SNIGGINS: You hadn’t realized you were in danger?

  WILLIAMS: Not till they got Amy.

  SNIGGINS: You pulled away?

  WILLIAMS: Like hell! I stayed right there, mister, in the middle of my leaky oil slick because I figure if they didn’t come for me that first pass, it must of been the kerosene an’ oil an’ gas around the boat. It’s a big oval, with that rainbow tinge oil on water has. I figure, when Amy’s smelling before my very eyes, they’re like mosquitoes. You don’t get that? Look. You put a little oil on a pond full of mosquito wigglers, and, bang—it spreads clear over the pond—and no wigglers keep wiggling. That’s what come to me at the time, see?

  SNIGGINS: Fortunate thing you made that guess.

  WILLIAMS: It ain’t guessin’, Doc, at all. Common sense. What have I got to protect me that Amy didn’t have? A oil slick, is what. So I figure to stay in that slick till kingdom come, till, I mean, I figure a way to get back to my own dock, or till somebody comes out for me with, maybe, a fast boat—too fast for them vibes.

  SNIGGINS: But no one came.

  WILLIAMS: Not that day, nobody did. Want more o’ this? Okay. Once I catch on it’s the slick saves me, I look into things. Got over four gallons of kerosene. Nearly one of white gas. Can of engine oil. Two peanut butter and Surinam cherry jam sandwiches. Pair of oars. Waterproof gloves. Boots, rubber and knee-high. Bailing can. Some old rags. An’ I’m about standing steady in the lee of Elysian Fields Island. Been standing up quite a time so I sit, amidships. Check the oil scum on the bay to be sure there’s no gaps in it. Later on, soak a rag in the engine oil an’ wipe the gunwales and sides to the waterline, near as I dared.

  SNIGGINS: You could see—vibes—in the water? Didn’t dare put in a hand?

  WILLIAMS: In the water around Lauderdale you couldn’t see a searchlight, two inches down. Well, hardly. Or, say, usually. Nope. I just ain’t takin’ chances. I want plenty of oil around the boat and more on the sides, in case they try climbin’ up for me. See? Right! By this time, maybe ten minutes after Amy got hit, the vibes have moved on and I also realize around then there must have been other schools—swarms—whatever—because I hear some yelling on the island. Not too many people there, o’ course. But there’s some men and women on jobs—and I get the word of where they are being hit, more or less, by where the screaming comes from. In a while the island’s quiet. It’s a offshore breeze, southeast when I shoved off, but it starts to die out. I felt hungry, or needed moral support, like, around then, and opened a sandwich. That’s when—I’m eating—I hear this other kind of noise, from the mainland. Like a jet flying low, sort of. But it doesn’t change the way it would with a jet—having to keep moving. I listen and listen and by Gawd! I’m that slow it is a half hour and the sound’s getting fainter before it pops into my noodle that what I’m a-hearin’ is, like, thousands of folks screamin’ together—men bellering—women, kids.

  SNIGGINS: Then what? You seem—suddenly embarrassed. No need.

  WILLIAMS: Then what, is right. Embarrassed too. Then what, is, I shit my pants.

  SNIGGINS: Oh. I see. Understandable.

  WILLIAMS: Maybe to you. Not to me. I been scared a lot of times, Doc, like when I stepped over a log onto a big rattler that didn’t strike but couldn’t move off easy. Did I shit myself? No. I waited till it tried to crawl, quit raising up to stare at my leg—and laid down flat—an’ I jumped clear. This time, though, in the boat, prooooooong! Out it came! Because if you know all of a sudden that worms are eating everybody else but you, all around, you figure who in hell will be left to rescue you? You wonder how long your oil will keep the worms off. What’ll happen when it’s dark? Such things, like.
And that scared me shitless, no mistake.

  SNIGGINS: And then?

  WILLIAMS: Hell of a question. Then I got my jeans off, stepped out of my boots, got out of my underpants, chucked the clothes overboard and started stirrin’ ’em with a oar to wash ’em, best I could. Bein’ careful to keep the oar handle greased. I see vibes tryin’ to eat the clothes, makin’ passes, but it’s no problem, till I get the stuff clean enough to haul aboard. Then—there’s vibes latched on my drawers and I have to be real careful, dunking and dunking till they drop off—from hatin’ the oil—and finally, shipping the laundry in and setting it to dry.

  SNIGGINS: From what notes I have here, you spent the rest of the day and the night and most of the day after in the row-boat, anchored by a rock on a line in a cove nearby.

  WILLIAMS: What else would anybody do? Start rowing for the dock, the shore, any land—and row right out of your slick? Go farther out on the bay on any course and the chop maybe washes your boat clean? Then up come the vibes! I anchor, sure, and sit tight in a cove where the tide’s slow. To hold my oil slick. Afternoon goes by. Twilight comes. I hear nobody. When it gets dark to where I should see house lights and cars with headlights on the roads, I see nothing. I can’t sleep—boat’s got inches of water so I have to bail her out regular. So I sit. Morning, and I see a few planes but they are high. I had me a jug of water to drink but that’s getting low. I decide that, before it’s dark again but when I can see enough still, I’ll grease up the oars and boat and head for open water. Maybe, out there, there won’t be vibes. Maybe they’re all busy inland—moving inland, that is. But just about when I am set for the trip, this helicopter makes a pass and spots me and lands on pontoons. See, they already know you oil up anything, pontoons, for instance, and you’re okay. They drift up and the copilot talks and it takes awhile for him to decide I can step from my skiff to a pontoon and then aboard, without bringing no vibes along. That’s what I done, and then we have to fly over the goddamn Everglades to Sarasota, believe it or not, because Miami’s gone, all Dade County and most of the east coast halfway to Jax. Jacksonville. But the vibes ain’t in the Glades, yet, and they ain’t showed on the Gulf side of Florida, so that’s where we set down. And once I get fed, a lot of big bugs come to the airport and start asking a zillion questions. Doctors, scientists in white coats, cops, state police, a mayor, reporters, TV people, the whole kaboodle. I tell them what I been telling you, but not as fully, and not so—well—start-to-finish like. Get things out of order. I’m tired, see, and I need to sleep, and I didn’t get my jeans clean so they stink, and I think folks’ll think I stink like that always, so I wasn’t about to pose and yak and so on, forever, and they finally took me to a hospital, for Christ’s sake, to sleep!

  SNIGGINS: A hospital, Oliver, because you’d been subjected to very intense trauma. To check you over. And then on here for more checking. I must say, your behavior was perceptive, fast, analytical, productive, controlled, deductive, inventive, experimental, in fact, exceedingly intelligent and under the most harrowing conditions. There are several things you did that not one grown man per thousand of whatever high grade intelligence would manage, I’m certain. Your school records have you down as a high-grade—never mind the technical term—

  WILLIAMS: High-grade moron. They told me when I had to get papers to work. So, what’s your big deal here, Doc? Can’t even us high-grade morons do a little common-sense figuring? You must realize I been charter-boat matin’ since sixteen? I like fishing, sports or for food, fresh water or Gulf Stream. School—they had nothing to like particularly since they didn’t like me. I’m too truancy-prone, when the weather’s good. What I mean, Doc, I am school dumb, no doubt about it, but not outdoors dumb, ’cause if I was I wouldn’t be here.

  SNIGGINS: What are your plans?

  WILLIAMS: Well, maybe I can get work, matin’ on some boat out of here. If things get steadied down so people will be willing to sports-fish again—

  A muffled scream tore out on the tape. Sniggins’ voice muttered “Miss Wissett?” or a name with that sound. Running feet were audible, followed by a female voice, tightly hysterical, apparently that of the “Miss Wissett” who’d cried out.

  MISS W.: Dr. Sniggins! Dr. Sniggins. Run for your life!

  They’ve just sighted vibes in the bay.

  Again, on the tape, faintly, a siren—air raid, perhaps.

  WILLIAMS: Before we run, Doc, we better stop by the room you people got me. Pick up my ten gallons of kerosene. Okay?

  SUMMARY OF EARLY DATA:

  Of course, not all the people in the first areas of attack were slaughtered. The vibes could not force themselves around well-fitted doors. But the sheer horror was bad enough! Their terrestrial-predatory period was from ten to fifteen days, when a return to water was mandatory, that or death. Their inability to survive with an oil film on their bodies became known in hours and was broadcast nationally in a few more hours.

  Their first waves moved into rivers or bays near to large population centers. Their numbers were reckoned in trillions. Using waterways or even moving on land for miles at a speed of a fast walk, they devoured all mammals they overtook.

  Their mouth parts and glands were perfectly adapted to their needs—and to produce the three effects young Oliver Williams had so quickly deduced. A fine proboscis-like instrument was entered into skin or hide with an accompanying minute droplet of anesthetic material, which swiftly deadened to all feeling an area of dermal, subdermal and deeper tissue ample to allow the outer mouth parts to bore ahead till blood was reached. Then, instantly, microscopic, stiff hairlike processes were extended in the tiny wound, to hold the creature fast. Any attempt to dislodge it, mash it or even scald, burn or otherwise destroy it resulted in the injection of a second substance by the same organ but from a second gland, venomous, and immensely painful to the victim. The third substance of the “sea leech”—its common name among those too snobbish to use “vibe”—is not understood entirely. Either it consisted of the venom and some additional toxin, or perhaps it was merely a full dose—the whole gland content—of the one venom. And, as again the keen young Oliver Williams so speedily and accurately observed, a sufficient amount of this third (or the second) substance acted as a neurotoxin, producing rapid debility, nerve-signal failure and resultant loss of muscular control, followed by “sleepiness”—a cerebral blacking out prior to death.

  It has been difficult, thus far (September 4, 1989), to capture and make laboratory or animal tests with the predator as their continuing viability (and the stability of their metabolic products) depends on an extremely unusual but doubtless sensory-governed neuromechanism. So long as a specimen seems to “believe” its mission is feasible it will proceed even through areas intensely hot, over ice, through many strong acids and alkalis and, indeed, until it is physically damaged beyond movement. Petrochemical products alone, so far, seem to be its nemesis. No pesticide disturbs it. Since it consumes mammalian flesh, blood, soft parts and fluids entirely it cannot easily be test-fed poisons. But its sense of selfless forging ahead while it seems to have a “hope” of success is extinguished the instant the animal “decides” it cannot reach its prey. Captured specimens died quickly. And, when dead, they seemed to go into a swift state of autodecomposition, of tissue disintegration, down to the molecular level.

  On the same summer as the Florida strike, two young lovers, both in medical school and residents of Leningrad, walked out on a bridge over the Neva and exchanged kisses. It was a bright night with full sun, though the hour was nearing eleven—on one of Leningrad’s famed “white nights.” The approach of a policeman on his bicycle led them to break their embrace and feign a very intense interest in the dirty water of the river below. A moment later they were shouting to the officer to return.

  Their reason was good. They had seen that rolling “bow wave” of a land-bent mass of vibes and knew from headlines in Pravda and Izvestia the curse that had descended on USA along its east coast some time before.
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  What they saw, and what all three watched with frozen terror as it moved up the concreted embankment, was not Negeedulatia Cornuta horribilis but its related species, N. C. boreas, a second “vibe” better adapted to much colder water and weather than horribilis. All three bridge-spotters escaped the invasion but they were among Leningrad’s most fortunate three per cent. About a month later N. C. boreas appeared at Vladivostok, the first evidence of either species in the Pacific.

  When, in late September, horribilis hit Los Angeles, considerable means for resisting the dreadful leech had been prepared. Wherever the white carpets came ashore, covering several acres even that first year, floods of crude oil blocked their paths as fast as men could manage. Fire departments sent out their pumpers, hoses fixed en route to tanks of crude oils diluted with lighter ones, and these engines effectively stopped the inland movement where terrain and buildings allowed.

  The following spring, Calcutta was first to be hit. Other coastal cities of India followed at the rate of from one to three a day. Without sufficient oil supplies and lacking sophisticated equipment deploying available stores, India suffered even more than China was to do, later in the season. Japan managed fairly well, its population already reduced to a tenth of its peak by the Rice Blast.

  That summer the vibes came up the Mississippi. Oily river surfaces did not stop the massive ascent of the writhing, “fish-belly-white” hordes till they had reached so far up small tributaries their shallows compelled oil contact. Some cities, such as Cincinnati, where it was believed the invasion could not occur, were hit at night and virtually depopulated before dawn, amidst scenes of incredible panic and rout.