Jeff Jacobson - Wormfood

And then we had to go and pull one of the steers out for meat.

I shut the book with a snap. I’d read enough. I’d read more than I wanted to. I shook my head to clear out some of the images of those things, of hundreds, even thousands of hagfish inside of a dead whale; those things eating Earl’s guts; the colony of worms in the pit; the worms in the middle of the steer intestines; and the burning pain in Heck’s eyes as he died. I crawled into bed but I didn’t sleep much. And when I did finally drift off, I wished I hadn’t.

I blinked once, twice. I shook my head and looked around. I was sitting in the middle of a small rowboat as it floated out across endless ocean swells that melted into a dull sky. I couldn’t find any oars, so I just hung onto the bench tightly. The wood felt soft and wet, like an old sponge, and I was scared the seat would crumble into wet splinters under my fingers. Fishhooks and old fishing lines lay in a tangled heap at the bottom of the boat.

I sensed a pale sun somewhere behind me, floating just beyond the low clouds, giving the water and sky a flat, gray color. I risked turning my head to look behind me for any sign of land and the little boat tilted to one side with a sickening feeling. For one gut-wrenching moment, I felt the tiny craft lurch over and I thought I was going to fall in. So I whipped my head back, desperately trying to find the balance that had kept me safe this long. Naturally, the boat rolled over unsteadily the other way. I clutched the wooden sides and shifted slightly, and the boat’s rocking slowly subsided.

The wind died.

I felt something on my head and looked up, felt soft wetness splash my face. It was raining. The drops felt unnaturally warm, like a shower. I spread my arms, momentarily forgetting where I was, and let the rain gently wash my fear away. The water ran down my naked chest and back, cleansing and refreshing. It felt … wonderful. I opened my mouth, drinking in as much of the rain as I could. It tasted sweet, and I swallowed. But as it trickled down my throat, it left a foul aftertaste, like something had died long ago and had been soaking in the water ever since.

I closed my mouth suddenly and opened my eyes.

The raindrops were now a dark, unsettling color. I pulled my arms back in and tried to wipe off my face, my shoulders, my chest, but it was no use. I was covered in slimy, brackish water. It gave off a sick odor as well, like fish that had washed up on a cold, desolate beach and had taken a long time to decompose. The rowboat was rapidly filling up with rainwater.

And it was beginning to sink.

I spit off to the side, trying to clear my mouth of the ugly aftertaste, and breathed through clenched teeth. The gob of spit floated slowly away on water that was now flat as glass. I looked down; the discolored water was now up to my ankles. The hooks and lines floated around in it like a confused spiderweb. I pulled my bare feet quickly out and propped them in the bow of the boat.

A splash.

The floating ball of spit was gone, leaving nothing but expanding circles of ripples.

Despite the color of the rain, the ocean seemed clearer somehow, as if the lack of swells made the depths more visible. I could see speckled, constantly shifting bands of weak sunlight stabbing down into the gloom. Something dark was moving down there. It glided slowly, almost lazily, into the shafts of light, moving upward.

My heart began to beat a little faster and I felt a sudden sense of vertigo, as if I were floating above an immense sky, so I cautiously centered myself in the boat. The gut-churning vertigo made my hands shake. It felt as if I was about to fall from an immense cliff.

The rain continued, and the water in the bottom of the boat got deeper. I brought my hands together and cupped them, trying not to upset the balance while flinging water out of the boat. A crack appeared in the floorboards, growing silently until it disappeared beneath me. A tiny group of bubbles grew from within the narrow space of the crack and floated gently to the surface. They broke and fizzed quietly.

I tried to bail faster.

The dark shape got closer. It was big. Several other shapes joined the first. They swam in wide, slow circles, always creeping upward. I kept trying to hurl water from the sinking craft. One of the thing’s backs finally broke the surface, right under my hands. The skin was rotting. I could see the remains of scales, but these were peeling away, revealing spongy, infected flesh.

Another shape rolled through the water nearby. It rose up and sluggishly slid along the surface long enough for me to catch a quick glimpse of a huge, puckered mouth with many, many small teeth, then dove into the depths and vanished.

The rain came down even harder, driving the small boat deeper into the warm ocean. The horizon tilted drunkenly to the left, and I desperately tried to climb up onto the right side. For a second, this helped to balance the craft, until the entire rowboat cracked in half.

And just as I pitched headfirst into the dark, silent water, the alarm went off.

SUNDAY

CHAPTER 23

I was up and moving quickly despite my lack of sleep and the bruises that left me stiff and sore, slogging through wet fields in a straight path to Fat Ernst’s restaurant. I sure as hell didn’t want to be late, not on a morning when I was supposed to get my paycheck. But I had another reason for getting to work earlier, one that had nothing to do with getting paid. I didn’t want Fat Ernst around for what I had to do.

The wind screamed up out of the valley, driving rain into the foothills and whipping the drops past my face almost horizontally. One field to go. I just had to climb a fence, hike across a flooded pasture, then scoot down the highway a few hundred yards. I had put Grandpa’s boot on the bottom strand of barbed wire and slung my other leg over the top of the fence when I heard the sound of screeching, sliding tires behind me.

My first thought was that the Sawyer brothers had found me again, right in this precarious position with my balls suspended a few inches over angry barbed wire. I saw who really was behind me and almost wished it had been Junior and Bert.

A pickup slid to a stop next to me in a flurry of splattered mud. Slim stared out of the window with sunken eyes. His face was pale, drawn. He stared at me for a few quiet seconds, and from the expression on his face I wasn’t sure if he was going to drive away or shoot me on the spot.

Finally he spoke. “That’s private property, boy.” He sounded like he’d swallowed a fistful of dry fertilizer.

I didn’t know if I should climb off the fence or not, so I kind of froze there. “Um, just heading to work,” I said.

“Work.” He coughed and brought his ever-present handkerchief up to his mouth. He automatically checked the contents, stowed it safely back in the pocket of jeans. He swallowed, grimacing as he did so, and turned back to me. “What’s going on in that goddamn kitchen?”

“What? I don’t know …”

“I haven’t felt right since eating that cheeseburger yesterday. My guts are burnin’ up. Feel like I gotta shit, but nothin’s comin’ out.” With a quivering arm, he slid the gearshift into PARK. “So I want to know what the hell is going on. Where’d Ernst get that meat?”

I damn near slipped off the barbed wire fence but managed to grab the steel post just in time. “I, uh, don’t exactly know where he got it. Costco, maybe?”

Slim coughed again. “Bullshit.” He sniffed. “I know my meat, boy. Hell, I eat a steak, I can tell you how old the steer was, just how long ago it was killed, whether it had been frozen, what the animal had been eating, whether it was corn, or grain … Didn’t realize it at the time, not with Heck gettin’ sick and everything, but that cheeseburger wasn’t any”—he broke down in a fit of hacking coughs, gasping for breath between each cough that made his whole body shudder—“goddamn good.”