Tim Curran - Worm

They’re going to keep coming until they get the twins. What are you going to do about that? Are you going to let these fucking horrors destroy your children or are you going to take action, real action?

There had to be something, something.

And then she remembered the bleach.

Marv got Tony behind him and slammed the dining room door shut. It was solid oak. He didn’t see how the worms could possibly get through it; then again he couldn’t conceive of how any of this had happened in the first place. As he slammed it shut, he severed three worms that were most anxious to join him in the dining room. Another slid over his boot and Tony stomped it.

They were hitting the door now.

At first, it was just a few soft plopping sounds as they struck it almost playfully, but now they were going at it in numbers. Thump, thump, thump-thump-thump. The door was holding, but it was trembling in its frame. The worms were not just striking it, they were trying to chew their way through. They were tearing at it and punching into it like whirring drill bits.

Marv had always been a guy who’d prided himself on knowing what to do in a pinch.

But that failed him now.

What was there to do?

The worms wanted in and they were going to get in. He thought of Fern and the twins and the horrible way they were going to die and it all weakened him, confused him. He did not know what to do. He couldn’t think of a single thing. If they got in, he knew he would fight. He’d use up the last few rounds in his rifle and then he’d go at them with his bare hands. He’d rip dozens to pieces… and then…

That was what he didn’t want to think about.

“We need something to drive ’em back with,” Tony said at his side. “Fire. We need fire.”

Yes, of course. It was one of the oldest of man’s defenses against the onslaught of the unknown and nearly always effective.

And that was when Fern screamed.

It came from the kitchen.

Another door at the back of the dining room led in there and it was open.

Bertie got there before either Tony or Marv or even the twins. In fact, she charged in there like a barbarian diving into battle. Fern was pressed up against the dishwasher with a jug of Hilex bleach in each hand. An immense worm was bearing down on her. It was a massive, stout thing, inching forward with muscular contractions of its segments, which bulged like inner tubes, flexing and relaxing, flexing and relaxing. The spiny bristles growing from it scraped over the floor with a scree-scree sort of sound.

About four feet from Fern, it hesitated.

Maybe it saw it was outnumbered and maybe it saw its own death in the hating faces of the people gathered there. It looked confused. Its head—or the forward end, at any rate—moved from side to side like it was listening to some unheard melody. Its segments slid back and its mouth opened. For one moment before the teeth unsheathed themselves like the claws of a cat, Fern found herself staring down a pink throat that looked wide enough to swallow her entire leg. Then the worm’s orifice made a wet, smacking sound and its gums, soft and mottled, pushed from the mouth and the teeth slid from them like daggers. She saw there was not a single ring of them, but two or three rings, perhaps thirty or more individual teeth glistening like fishhooks.

She knew she didn’t have a chance.

Bertie knew she didn’t have a chance.

So did Marv and Tony, who didn’t dare shoot because from their angle in the doorway, the worm was just too damn close to fern.

Marv heard the twins whimpering behind him.

He was afraid to move. Afraid he would startle the worm and it would sink its teeth right into Fern’s throat.

But something had to be done and Bertie did it.

As the worm showed its teeth, its head at eye level with Fern, she swore under her breath and threw the cleaver. She hadn’t so much as thrown a ball since the 1960s, but she put everything behind it and struck quickly. The worm flinched about a split second before the cleaver sheared right into, slicing neatly through two or three segments. The worm hit the floor, flopping and twisting, its teeth tearing ruts in the kitchen tiles. It pissed a brown ichor from its gaping wound and made a shrill mewling sort of sound as it bunched and contracted, expanding its mass and putting out a river of slime that looked like clear floor wax.

It was Tony who finished it off.

His last two rounds from the Mossberg made an unsightly, liquid mess of the worm. But even rent and splattered and pulverized, shining pieces of it still wriggled in the slime, refusing death.

The Hilex bleach worked as good as fire, it turned out. They poured it under both of the doors. The one leading into the living room was the real danger spot. It was weakening, beginning to split in places from the relentless hammering of the very determined worms. Once the bleach was poured under it, there was a flurry of motion from the other side—the sound of soft bodies sliding over one another in a desperate attempt to escape.

Within five minutes, the house was silent.

Completely silent.

The dining room, of course, didn’t smell too pretty. The bleach smell reamed out noses and made heads spin, but it was still much better than the alternative.

The survivors waited in the dining room for something else to happen, but nothing did. The only weird thing was that the house trembled once, its timbers creaking as if it was being constricted. In Tony’s mind, he thought a very large elephant had just leaned against it. But whatever it was, it never came again.

An hour later, Bertie said, “Must be gone. Quiet out there.”

To be on the safe side, they waited another thirty minutes and it was then that they heard what sounded like a helicopter in the distance. It didn’t come too close, but close enough to cue everyone in that it was searching for survivors.

“We’re going to have to chance it,” Marv said.

Tony didn’t like the idea, but what he liked even less was the idea of being left behind by a search party and having to spend an entire night waiting for the worms to come.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Be careful,” Fern told them.

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Bertie said.

Tony felt a need to be heroic and tell her she was too damned old to be facing danger like this, but from what he’d already seen of her, she was more than capable. Probably a lot more capable than he himself was.

Marv unlocked the door and they all tensed, just waiting for a tidal wave of worms to come flooding into the room. But that didn’t happen. He swung the door open and other than the sewer stink and the muck itself, there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

He looked over at Tony and shrugged.

With Bertie trailing behind them, they stepped into the living room. There were no worms anywhere, just a few odd remains. Just to be on the safe side, Marv kept his rifle raised and Tony held a bottle of bleach for quick splashing if it came to that.

“Listen,” Bertie said.

Tony expected the very worst, but what he heard was a helicopter. In fact, from his position over near the shattered picture window as he stared out into the muck-drowned neighborhood, he could see a searchlight in the distance scanning above the trees.

“Open that door,” Bertie said.

“What?”

“Open it, I said.”

She grabbed the lantern as Tony and Marv forced the door open against the muck. She stepped out onto the porch and waved the lantern back and forth. “OVER HERE!” she shouted. “OVER HERE, GODDAMMIT!”

She was making a good effort of it, that was for sure.