Jeff Jacobson - Wormfood

The telephone wires. A lone, thin wire stretched from the upper corner of the roof off to my right out to a telephone pole at the edge of the cornfield, halfway between the restaurant and the highway. If that wire could hold my weight, then I could swing hand over hand to the pole, where it joined several other heavier telephone wires. Those wires crossed right over Misty’s truck. It was a hell of a drop to the pickup.

“There,” I said, pointing at the wires.

“Do you think they’ll hold?” Misty asked.

“Shit, I hope so,” I said, more to myself than anybody else, as I scurried along the top of the smoking roof to the west end and tested the wire. I couldn’t see how it was attached to the building; it simply ran in through a little hole under the eave and disappeared. I stuck my foot over the edge and pushed down as hard as I could. The wire held, so I grabbed hold with both hands and swung out over the water. The wire bounced with a jerk but didn’t break.

I twisted around, locked my ankles over the wire, and worked my way over to the telephone pole like a skinny tree sloth on meth. It got a little tougher when I had to climb up the last ten feet going at a forty-five degree angle. When I got to the top, I reached out and grabbed one of the protruding steel bars that serves as rungs on wooden telephone poles.

I rested a moment and looked back to Misty. She held her wounded hand and watched me. Flames were now peeking out through blackened spots in the roof.

I edged out to the wires at the top of the telephone pole. Thoughtsof getting electrocuted by grabbing the wrong wire crossed my mind—and wouldn’t that have been a goddamned dumb way to die—but I didn’t worry about it, I just reached out and grabbed the nearest wire and moved out, hand over hand, feet dangling this time, until I was directly over Misty’s pickup, or as best as I could tell. It was hard to try and look directly down with my arms straight up. By then, my arms were screaming and my hands were threatening to let go whether I was in position above the pickup or not.

So I let go.

And almost landed in the pickup bed.

Instead, I hit the water next to the truck. The water was four, four and a half feet deep; it still felt like I was landing on concrete, boots hitting the water in a muddy splash, then falling forward, arms flailing, anything to keep my face out of the water. It didn’t work, and I hit the surface with an impact that drove the breath out of my lungs. My knees buckled as the rest of my weight came crashing down, and I slipped under the water. I jerked my head out and scrabbled up the side of the pickup and fell heavily into the plastic tray lining the bed.

After a couple of panicked seconds checking myself for worms, I stood and looked back to the restaurant. Flames licked at the roof overhang and thick black smoke rolled urgently out of the front windows. More smoke seeped out from under the shingles, and I hoped it wasn’t getting too hot up there. Misty crouched at the crest, half obscured by the swirling smoke.

I ripped the gloves and duct tape off, pulled Misty’s keys out of my pocket and leaned over the side, trying to fit them into the driver’s door. I didn’t want to get back into the water again unless I had to. I had just slipped the key into the slot when I looked up to check on Misty and saw Junior crouched in the back of his truck, watching me.

I flinched. The keys slipped out of the lock and disappeared into the water.

CHAPTER 34

Junior’s shirt had been burned off. The skin on his chest looked charred and loose. Most of his pompadour was gone, leaving nothing but a burnt scalp and a few scraggly strands around his black ears. He had Bert’s Rambo knife clenched between his teeth, like a pirate who had leapt from a burning ship. He watched Misty for a moment.

She hadn’t seen him yet through the thick smoke.

Junior whipped his bald, smoking head around and stared at me. When he took the knife from between his teeth, I could tell he was grinning. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t dead. His nose had been broken twice, Fat Ernst had kicked in him solidly in the head, and the last time I’d seen him, he’d been on fire. It didn’t make sense. Then I remembered those scars on his chest. And what Pearl had said. She claimed to have brought Junior back from the dead three times. Maybe that was true. Maybe he’d built up some kind of resistance, sort of immunity, to death itself. Smoke poured from the rent in the front wall, rolling down over the Cadillac, over the truck. Junior turned back to the truck’s cab and ducked down. I lost him in the smoke.

“Misty!” I screamed.

She stood at the top of the roof, waving the smoke away from her face. Flames were now breaking through all over the place, erupting out of the roof in pools of embers and flames surrounded by blackened shingles.

“Junior’s alive! He’s right there!” I screamed hoarsely, jabbing my finger at the Sawyers’ truck. Misty instantly dropped into a crouch, watching the front of the building. For a brief moment, nothing moved but the black smoke.

Junior eased his way onto the roof of the cab. With his chainsaw.

“Motherfuck—” I stepped back, preparing to jump and swim the fifteen or twenty feet to the restaurant. The keys were gone, and I didn’t know what else to do. But even as I grabbed a deep breath and held, I knew I wouldn’t make it in time. Junior was going to kill Misty and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Then I saw my rifle in the rack in the back window of her pickup.

I kicked at the glass as hard as I could and heard a teeth-rattling crack, but it didn’t break. I glanced up; Junior was leaping from the truck’s hood to the roof, his skin still smoking or steaming in the rain. I kicked at the back window again. And again. It finally cracked on the third try, and I spent another couple of precious seconds knocking the loose glass out of the way. I ignored Misty’s Anschütz and went for Grandpa’s Springfield instead.

I straightened, rifle in my hands.

Junior yanked on the cord and the saw started with a hungry roar. Misty backed slowly along the crest of the roof, still cradling her left hand with her right. Junior hit the trigger a couple of times and the sound of the revving engine echoed back across the floodwater.

Junior made his move and the rifle found my shoulder.

As he scrambled up the roof, chainsaw screaming, I settled, zeroing in on the saw, and fired. Junior was seven feet from Misty when his chainsaw exploded in a quick burst of fire and sparks. The bullet had found its way into the gas tank, just as I had hoped. I hadn’t wanted to take a chance on missing his head, and if I hit him in the upper body, Iwas scared that it might not even slow him down, not with Pearl’s symbols carved all over his chest. So I figured I’d take out his weapon first, give Misty a fighting chance.

The small explosion knocked Junior sideways into the roof. The chain broke loose, flipped up and over, and wrapped around Junior’s forearm, burying itself deep. He slammed into the smoking shingles, blood spraying from his arm, and slid headfirst down the roof. I thought he was just going to slip right over the edge, but he caught himself with his good arm, slid around, and started creeping back up the slope.

I found a nice sweet spot at the back of his head between the iron sights, whispered, “Fucking A plus you little cocksuckers,” and gently squeezed the trigger.

A dry click; the gun was empty. I had forgotten that there was only one bullet left after shooting at the squirrels yesterday.

Junior kept going, dragging himself up the roof toward Misty with his one arm. The other arm, the one that now looked as if it had suddenly grown a deep black tattoo, flopped helplessly next to him, leaving a trail of blood. Misty dropped to her haunches and kicked out, slamming her boot into the top of his head. All that did was piss off Junior even more. His good hand lashed out and grabbed Misty’s ankle.