Tim Curran - Worm

The effect was instantaneous.

The Mother Worm writhed and twisted and coiled. She snapped back and forth like a bullwhip, shattering houses across the street, turning garages into kindling and flattening cars like beer cans. And the more she struggled, the more she ensnared herself in the power line, which fed over 13,000 volts directly into her hide. The muck around her was bubbling and steaming, her young popping like ticks from the heat. She boiled from the inside out, throwing out plumes of churning steam. As she whipped and looped with spasms, huge rents split open her segments and spewed burning tissue and blazing slime until she burst into flame, rising up one last time like a blackened Fourth of July snake before crashing into the muck and breaking apart.

Then there was silence.

Silence for five or ten seconds.

Then Tony said, “I think I fucking pissed myself.”

Marv stumbled into the dining room where his wife and children were waiting for him. He pulled them close to him in a huge bear hug. He could hear the choppers coming. The remains of the Mother Worm were still smoldering and burning in the street. A few houses had lit up with her, flickering like candles.

“Are… are they gone?” Kassie asked. “Are the worms gone?”

“Yes,” Marv told her. “They’re gone.”

And though it was still dark out, night had ended on Pine Street.

Tim Curran hails from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A full-time wage zombie in a factory, he collects vintage punk rock, metal, and rockabilly records in his spare time.

He is the author of the novels Skin Medicine , Hive , Dead Sea , Resurrection , Skull Moon , The Devil Next Door , Hive 2: The Spawning , Graveworm , and Biohazard . His short stories have been collected in Bone Marrow Stew and Zombie Pulp . His novellas include Fear Me , The Underdwelling , The Corpse King , and Puppet Graveyard . His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab , Flesh&Blood , Book of Dark Wisdom , and Inhuman , as well as anthologies such as Flesh Feast , Shivers IV , High Seas Cthulhu , and, Vile Things . His latest book is a new novel from DarkFuse, Long Black Coffin . Upcoming projects include the novels Hag Night and Witch Born , and a second short story collection, Cemetery Wine . Find him on the web at: www.corpseking.com.

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First Edition

Worm © 2013 by Tim Curran

All Rights Reserved.

A DarkFuse Release

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.