Wormfood (23 page)

“What?”

“I can feel ’em moving … moving inside of me …” Tiny bubbles of blood appeared at the corners of Slim’s mouth. It reminded me of Heck.

A sheet of brown water surged out of the east cornfield and washedover the parking lot. It foamed and splashed around Slim’s legs and the truck’s tires. Within seconds, the cold water was four or five inches deep.

“What the hell is this?” Ray asked. “Do you … ? Shit. You think the reservoir flooded?”

Junior started his truck with a roar. He gunned the engine a few times, popped the clutch, and rammed the back of Fat Ernst’s Cadillac. The bug-spattered, rusty grille smashed into the white car almost as if it wanted to eat the smaller vehicle. The truck’s engine groaned and the tires slipped in the mud as it shoved the Cadillac forward, crumpling the front end of the car under the restaurant.

“I’m gonna kill that prick,” Fat Ernst said.

Slim slapped at the water and started to gag, deep in his throat. A terrible, wet retching sound, it twisted my stomach into knots. He kept slapping at the water, his chest hitching and shivering.

Junior reversed the truck, leaving the Cadillac dead under the window, and pulled around so he faced the highway. He popped the clutch again, flinging buckets of mud at the restaurant, splattering the walls and shattered windows. The truck bounced past us, leaving two large wakes in the muddy water as it surged onto the road and tore off down the flooded highway, heading for the mountains.

“Misty,” Slim croaked. “You go on … get the hell of out here.”

“But—,” Misty said.

Slim kept talking. “I can feel ’em … I can feel ’em moving inside …”

“Feel what?” Fat Ernst shouted over the sound of the flood.

“These—,” Slim said, and pulled the rifle across his chest so the end of the barrel was under his chin.

He closed his eyes.

And pulled the trigger.

I didn’t even hear the report as the top of Slim’s head erupted in a chunky mist of blood, bone, and brains. Most of the blood and flesh hit the ceiling of his truck, sticking there for a second, then dripping down onto the seat and the dashboard. As the rest of his head bloomed into the air like a red mushroom cloud, bits and pieces started falling back into the water around us. Misty screamed and kept screaming, her shriek rising higher and higher into the falling rain.

Something landed in my hair, but I couldn’t move. Fat Ernst turned to us and mumbled, “Fuck me.” His face and chest were dripping with blood and flecks of flesh. He blinked rapidly several times, as if some of the blood had gotten into his eyes.

Misty stopped screaming suddenly, just clapped a hand over her open mouth, eyes huge, and froze like that. Tiny droplets of blood were scattered across her white face as if someone had playfully flicked a paintbrush in her direction.

My eyes snapped back to Slim’s corpse. The top half of his head, from the eyes up, was pretty much gone; his skull resembled the top half of a chipped coffee mug, jagged around the edges. The rifle slidout of Slim’s hands and I found myself focusing on it, afraid to look at his head. A Winchester, Model 70. Slim’s shoulders slumped forward onto his knees, his chin flopped forward, and what was left of his brain, looking like the ground meat inside of a charred bratwurst, came sliding slowly out of the ruined skull, dribbling slowly onto his jeans.

Five or six thin, short, gray worms squirmed out of his head, wriggled into the cold, muddy water washing around his legs, and disappeared.

I don’t know if anyone else saw them because Ray suddenly started slapping at his face. “Ow! Oh, fuck! Fuck!” He kept slapping at his head and face. It took a second, but I could see that parts of the blood and meat on his face were squirming around.

The thing in my hair started to move. I plucked at it, and my fingers found something soft and slimy in the midst of all of the sticky blood. A worm squirmed slowly between my thumb and forefinger. I dropped it with a cry of disgust, realizing too late I had just dropped it into the rising floodwater, setting it free.

Fat Ernst started grabbing at his face and chest as well and as I kept looking around, I could see the bloody worms all over the place. Falling from the ceiling of Slim’s truck. Probing around in Slim’s brain pan. Wriggling across the front of Fat Ernst’s shirt. Hanging off of Ray’s bottom lip. And curled up on Misty’s shoulder.

I jumped toward her, brushing the worm off her white blouse. Her eyes darted from my face to her shoulder and back up to my eyes. I realized we had to get out of the water, so I grabbed her hand and started pulling her back to the restaurant. Already I could see worms, some up to six, seven inches long, skimming along the surface of the water. And the water was getting higher.

Ray squealed at Fat Ernst, “Get ’em offa me! Get ’em off!” He yanked at the worm trying to chew into his bottom lip, pulling it away from his teeth. “Get it osh! Get it osh!” The worm popped free and he flung it into the water.

Fat Ernst ignored him and started backing away from Slim’s pickup, slapping at his arms and chest. His face had this hard, set look, like he had just seen the worst the world could throw at him and he’d lived through it. “Fuck this,” he said, turning and splashing back to the restaurant.

Ray kept standing in one place, turning in circles, trying to get a glimpse of his back, spinning like a dog chasing its tail. He finally moved away from the pickup when a worm appeared in the water and started crawling up the outside of his boot, following the bloodstains, heading toward the wound where Junior had taken a bite out of his leg. Ray uttered a short shriek and punched at his leg, smashing the worm.

I held on tight to Misty and helped her as we made our way to the wooden stairs. The water was surging around our knees now, and combined with the sucking mud of the parking lot, it was getting harder and harder to keep my balance. Fat Ernst charged past us like an enraged bull and stormed up the stairs. He paused at the top to glance at his Cadillac, crumpled underneath the west window as if it had tried to crawl underneath the building. He shook his head and kicked the door open, then stomped inside.

I put Misty’s hand on the railing and gently pushed her up the steps. She didn’t say anything, and I got worried that shock might be settling in, creeping in around her brain like a comfortable, hazy fog. I hoped she was okay, because I wasn’t sure how I could get her to a hospital. Now that I was out of the floodwater, I wasn’t in any hurry to jump back into it.

At the top of the stairs, I turned back and surveyed the frothy brown ocean that used to be the parking lot. The landscape had suddenly become flat, unreal. The telephone poles and the couple of vehicles rising above the surface of the water were the only things that gave any proof there was solid ground under all that water. Ray stumbled to the bottom of the steps, fighting the floating cornstalks that were propelled by the current like ragged spears.

He looked up at me, eyes frantic. “I got any on me?” he asked hoarsely, jerking his legs out of the water. I gave him the once-over andshook my head. He didn’t seem to believe me and kept slapping at his shoulders, twitching his head. “You see that?” he asked. “I mean, did you fucking see that? Fucking worms, Jesus, man, they came right out of his fucking head.” Fresh blood trickled down Ray’s chin from the hole right under his lip. “I mean, they were fucking
inside
of him. Jesus.”

I nodded and stepped into the restaurant. The lights had gone out, and the gray light that spilled in through the open windows gave the whole room a dark, dead look. Fat Ernst leaned back against the bar, staring at the floor. Misty was standing by herself near the tables, looking out at her uncle’s pickup through the shattered window. Ray pushed past me and staggered over to the bar, still slapping at himself. “I got any on me?” he pleaded to Fat Ernst.

“Shut the fuck up, Ray. I gotta think here.”

“But … but … do I got any on me?”

Fat Ernst sucked at his teeth, finally looking up at Ray. “Turn around.”

Ray was more than happy to oblige. He spun around, pivoting on his boot heels, arms straight out as if he had been crucified.

Fat Ernst nodded. “Yep. There’s one by your ear there.”

Ray went nuts, clawing at both ears, crying, “Jesus, oh Jesus …”

I had watched when he turned around and knew there weren’t any worms by his ears. There might have been one somewhere else, but I could see there weren’t any on his head. At least you knew it when these things bit you; it hurt like hell, not like some mosquito or leech you didn’t notice at first. Still, it made me nervous enough that I forced myself to run a shaking hand over my own head and around the back of my neck. My hand came away smeared with bloody mud, but that was all.

I checked Misty, looking her over, but she was okay. She just stood there, face white, unblinking. I led her over to one of the booths and helped her into the seat. She clasped her shaking hands together on the table in front of her like she was praying. I sank into the seat across the table and put my head in my hands. Despite everything, I just hoped Grandma was okay. I hoped the dry creek bed hadn’t flooded and she had been calling about something else.

Ray finally calmed down, realizing that Fat Ernst was only fucking with him, and asked something we were all wondering. “What the fuck are we gonna do now?”

Fat Ernst waddled around the bar and sank onto his stool with a grunt. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly through his nose. “You got any ideas, I’d be glad to hear ’em,” he said, reaching under the bar and grabbing a bottle of tequila. He unscrewed the cap, tilted it to his lips and took one long gulp. “Sit down, Ray. Relax.”

Ray didn’t want to relax; he kept pacing up and down in front of the bar stools but eventually gave up after a few minutes. It was as if all the fight, all the energy, all of the adrenaline, had left him at the same time, like air escaping a balloon. He dropped onto a barstool in front of Fat Ernst and didn’t say anything.

In a rare gesture of generosity, Fat Ernst pushed the bottle of tequila across the bar to Ray. He took it without looking up and gulped from the bottle. I watched from the booth and hoped this was a sign that things might have changed. I should have known better.

Fat Ernst took another drink, sat up straight on his stool, and said, “Ray, go on out to your car and radio for help.”

Ray lifted his head, then slowly swiveled around on the barstool, looking at his squad car through the open window. He slowly shook his head, once, twice. “I … I can’t get there.”

I looked out the window. The squad car was at least thirty feet beyond the trunk of Fat Ernst’s Cadillac. Ray would have to wade through all that floodwater to get to his car. It looked like the water was at least two feet deep now. Too damn deep, too damn far, too many goddamn worms in the water. Ray swiveled back around to Fat Ernst and shook his head again, more decisive this time. “Nope. No fucking way. You go out there.”

Fat Ernst pulled the bottle off the bar and shook his head. “What a goddamn pussy.”

I glanced back out the window. Misty’s pickup, nearly halfway to Slim’s pickup, was too far as well. We were stuck.

Ray jumped off the bar stool, shouting, “I’m a pussy? I’m a pussy?” He gestured wildly toward the front door, his voice a taut, vibrating wire. “You’re so goddamn tough, you go on out there. Go ahead. Be my guest.”

“Settle down, Ray.” Fat Ernst looked over at me. “What about you, boy? You wanna be a man? Go get us some help?”

I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

Misty suddenly shoved the table toward me, got up, and stalked over to the bar. For a second, I thought she was going to ask Ray for the keys to the squad car. I don’t know what I would have done then. Instead, she snatched the tequila bottle out of Fat Ernst’s surprised hand and came back over to the table.

“You’re gonna pay for that,” Fat Ernst said.

“Put it on my tab.” Misty spit on the floor and slammed the bottle in front of me. “You. Drink.”

“I don’t really drink much.”

“I don’t care. Drink. Now.”

What else could I do? I gingerly grabbed the neck of the bottle, put the rim to my lips, and tilted it up. The tequila tasted like somebody pissed in a kettle full of bathwater, heated it up, and bottled it. If anything, I think I preferred the taste of Junior and Bert’s whiskey. I managed to swallow, fought the expected rising gorge. I didn’t think Misty would be too impressed if I puked all over the table.

“Take another one.”

I forced down another gulp. The second time tasted even worse. Then I noticed the worm, cold and dead at the bottom of the bottle like a carefully preserved little cat turd.

“Now. You’re going to tell me what the hell is going on around here.”

I shrugged, still holding onto the bottle. “I guess the reservoir flooded. I mean, we were just up there yesterday, so you saw how high the water was.”

Misty just looked at me. “You know what I mean. What happened to my uncle?”

I sensed Fat Ernst tensing up behind the bar, but he didn’t seem as important as he used to. “I, uh, I don’t know.”

“Take another drink.”

I didn’t know if I could handle another drink. But I took another sip, a small one. Misty grabbed the bottle, took a few swallows herself. Over at the bar, I could hear Fat Ernst mumble something as he produced another tequila bottle. He unscrewed it, took a long drink, and pushed it over to Ray.

Echoing Fat Ernst, Misty slid the bottle back to me. I took it and drank a solid gulp without being asked. It seared the inside of my throat as it went down, all desert heat and piss, exploding like a soft bomb when it hit my stomach, sending drops of liquid shrapnel into my blood. The room got warm all of a sudden.

“Now,” Misty said in a low voice, so Fat Ernst and Ray couldn’t hear her, “you tell me what happened.”

I started to say, “Well, Slim got these worms in him,” but realized that wouldn’t explain much of anything. I took another drink, and the room got hotter. But I felt okay. In fact, I felt better than okay. Not great, but certainly not as bad as I had been. I thought about it for a moment, then decided the best place to start was at the beginning. I pushed the bottle back to Misty. She drank, then pushed it right back to me. I took another deep swallow and started talking.