Jeff Jacobson - Wormfood

Since Slim was busy reloading, I stuck my head up a little more, searching the highway. It was empty. No help there. I took another quick glance around the parking lot and found that Ray had, in fact, managed to hit something. A splintered hole about the size of an apple was now in the middle of the windshield of Fat Ernst’s Cadillac. I got pissed. “Nice shooting, Ray.”

Fat Ernst crawled over to Ray’s window. He stuck his head up and said, “You’re gonna pay for that, you stupid fuck.” He grabbed Ray’s pistol and lifted himself heavily to his feet, facing the window. Squeezing the pistol tightly in both fists, he raised it with straight arms and yelled at Slim, “Stand still, dammit!”

He fired and put a fist-sized hole in the pickup’s front fender, almost three feet from Slim, who was bringing his rifle back up and didn’t seem to know or care where Fat Ernst’s bullet had gone.

Before Slim got the rifle barrel back through the pickup’s door, Fat Ernst fired again. The bullet punched through the driver’s door and hit Slim in the stomach, slamming him back against the cab as if a horse had just kicked him in the balls. The rifle landed in the mud next to him.

Ray stuck his head up, saw Slim go down, and whispered, “Shit-fire. Damn!”

“That’s how it’s fucking done.” Fat Ernst dropped the pistol in Ray’s lap, yanked the door open, and stomped down the stairs.

Ray twisted the pistol around his lap until the barrel pointed at his chest and fiddled with the cylinder. He finally popped it out, dumped all of the shells, both empty casings and loaded cartridges, and started reloading from scratch. I thought about mentioning that he was loading a gun aimed at his head but said to hell with it. The dumbshit would have to figure it out for himself.

“Oh, shit,” Misty whispered. Her face looked drained, eyes wide and unblinking. She pushed herself away from me, found her feet, and was out the door before I could stop her. I followed her out into the rain.

Fat Ernst waddled furiously through the mud over to his fallen sign and Slim’s pickup. Misty was right behind him, splashing straight through the puddles. Behind me, Ray came slowly down the wooden steps. “Is he dead?” he called out to Fat Ernst.

Fat Ernst stopped at Slim’s feet and put his hands on his hips. “Close enough,” he called back over his shoulder. Misty and I stopped behind Fat Ernst, neither of us saying anything. Ray stood nervously off to our right. He kept checking to make sure his pistol was back in the holster.

Slim, sitting with his back to the pickup, coughed weakly and blood splattered into the mud. There was a small hole in his stomach, a few inches above the waistband of his jeans. Blood had bloomed across his white shirt, encircled the pearl buttons, seeped down across his leather belt, and run down his jeans. It hurt just looking at him. He stared at his lap, apparently unable to lift his head. “I should …” Slim mumbled under his John Deere cap. “You sonofabitch …”

“Me? Fuck you. You’re the stupid sonofabitch who tried to shoot me . You can’t just go around shooting at people.”

“… Gonna put a bullet … right in your goddamn head …” Slim’s right arm fumbled for the rifle at his side, but he couldn’t move very well and his hand just slapped at the muddy stock.

“Don’t move, you fucking moron. You’ve been gut shot.”

“Please don’t move,” Misty begged. “Please. Just hold on. I’ll go get help.”

“No.” Slim coughed. “No. Don’t. There ain’t no point …”

A jackrabbit shot across the muddy expanse of the parking lot as if its tail were on fire and disappeared into the cornfield along the parking lot, the same one Slim had driven his own Cadillac into the day of the funeral.

Slim tried to push himself up using his rifle as a crutch, but his hands kept slipping in the mud. He coughed again. “Where’d … where’d you get that meat?”

Oh, shit , I thought.

“I went … went up to the pit and counted …” Slim spat.

I heard something out in the east cornfield, a vast, rushing sound, almost like a wave. I turned to the field and saw another jackrabbit come bounding out from the tall green stalks and race past the restaurant.

Misty said, “Don’t try to talk, okay? Save your strength. We’ll get you some help.” She looked at Fat Ernst and said, “We have to get him to a hospital.”

Fat Ernst ignored her. He stared back at Slim. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he declared.

The rushing sound got closer and as I looked out across the field, toward the northeastern foothills; it looked like wind or something was tearing into the corn, making the stalks shudder and shake.

The front door slammed and Junior and Bert worked their way down the steps. Junior looked a little more awake now. He shouted over to us in a thick voice, “You fucked up! You fucked up real bad this time! We’re gonna go home and tell Ma! Then you just wait and see what happens.”

Ordinarily, the idea of a grown man threatening to go home and tell his mommy that someone had hurt him would have been funny, but since this was Junior, and he was talking about his mother, Pearl, it didn’t seem funny at all.

Nobody else was paying much attention, not with Slim lying in the mud bleeding to death. He kept talking, forcing the words out through mouthfuls of blood. “I counted ’em … there’s one missing. Goddamn you …” Misty bent down, tried to get close, to help him somehow, but Slim waved her away. “Get out of here … leave … can’t you see—I’ve got ’em inside …”

“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.

CHAPTER 27

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.