Brian Keene: The Conqueror Worms

Keep that in mind while you read this. Because you’ll probably think I’m stretching the truth just a bit.

But I’m not. This is what happened, and I swear it’s as true as I remember it to be.

You see, the rain was just the beginning.

Day Forty-one. I woke up that morning with a Roy Acuff song stuck in my head, and suffering again from nicotine withdrawal. It wasn’t as bad as on Day Thirty, when I tried to make it down to Renick, but I still felt horrible. I opened my eyes, wincing at the pain in the back of my head, right where my spine joined my skull. My jaw ached, and my mouth was dry and tasted like a baby bear cub had used it for a potty. As always, the first thing I heard was the rain drumming against the roof. It was also the last sound I’d heard before falling asleep.

My bedroom was part of that blue world that exists between night and dawn, eerie and quiet—except for the rain. I fumbled for my watch on the nightstand, knocking over a glass of water in the process. I grunted, put on my glasses, found the watch, and focused on the tiny numbers.

Five o’clock, as I’d known it would be.

I’d woken up at five in the morning every day since my retirement. A life spent in the Air Force will do that to you. You get used to a routine, and nothing, not even the end of the world, can vary it. Rose used to complain about it, but there was no curing me.

I reached for the can of tobacco out of habit, and cursed, grinding my gums when I realized it wasn’t there. I sat on the edge of the mattress, my feet on the cold floor, breath hitching in my sunken chest. I felt so helpless and alone. I looked back over my shoulder to the spot Rose had occupied next to me and I began to cry.

After a while, I stopped and blew my nose. Then I listened for my buddy outside the window. My special friend stopped by every morning. He would cheer me up, and even though the sun couldn’t be seen through the gray skies, it was near dawn, which meant he’d soon start singing.

I pulled back the shades and looked out upon the dreary world. My yard was nothing but muck. White mist obscured my clothesline and tool shed, and hid the trees marking where my yard ended and the miles of sprawling forest began. The only thing not concealed by the fog and drizzle was the big blue spruce outside my window and the robin’s nest cradled safe and dry within its broad needles. The robin was the only other living creature I’d seen in the last three weeks, except for a herd of deer I’d spied grazing down near the spring (and by that time, the spring was a small pond). They’d been wet and skinny and halfstarved, and I hadn’t seen them since. The same went for the horses, cows, sheep, and other livestock some of my neighbors kept. They’d been left behind when the National Guard evacuated Punkin’ Center, but I hadn’t seen any during my trip down the mountain and I hadn’t heard the cows mooing at night. Usually, their sound would have carried over the hills to me. Now there was nothing.

I know now what probably happened to them, but I didn’t know then.

The bird was a welcome sight. Each morning, he got me out of bed with his insistent—and very pissed off—song, crying the blues about the weather. The robin hated the rain as much as I did. He left the tree only to catch worms, and then just for a few minutes each morning. It probably sounds funny, but that bird was my only friend and contact since the power went out. Each morning, I looked forward to his visit. Silly, maybe, but then again, I was a silly old man. Rose would have no doubt had something to say about it, but Rose wasn’t there.

The bird didn’t disappoint me that morning. Like clockwork, I heard the familiar titter as he woke up. His song was hesitant at first, but then it got louder and stronger and angrier. I spied a flurry of wings within the branches of the tree and then he darted out, zipping to the ground as quick as he could, hoping to nab a worm or two and then buzz back to his nest, soaked and miserable.

“Howdy,” I croaked, my throat still dry from sleep. “Good to see you this morning. Want some coffee to go with your worms?”

He landed on the wet, spongy ground and began to peck through the mud. He glanced over at the window, and I swear he could hear me. Maybe he looked forward to seeing me as much as I did him. With a final tilt of his head, he got back to business. I smiled, watching in simple contentment as he hopped around, looking for breakfast. Furious chirps punctuated each tiny jump. I laughed out loud. He didn’t know how good he had it. At least he didn’t have to worry about nicotine withdrawal.

I stared closer at the bird. Something seemed wrong with his feathers. There were splotches of what looked like white fungus growing on his back and wings. I wondered what it was.

The pickings must have been slim that morning, because he strayed farther from the tree, almost halfway to the tool shed, looking for worms. The remaining grass in the yard and the thick, rolling mist almost obscured the robin. I pushed my glasses up on my nose and squinted, trying to track him. Suddenly, he gave a triumphant whistle and leaped at something I couldn’t see.

A moment later that chirp of victory turned into a frightened squawk, and the robin shot up into the air, his wings buzzing furiously. Something squirmed through the mud, and then burst upward after him.

I shouted from the window, wanting to warn the robin, even though he’d already seen it. The thing on the ground was hard to see amidst the rain and fog. I caught a glimpse of something long and brownishwhite. It was fast. It stretched toward the fleeing bird, and then there was empty air where the robin had been a second before.

The thing snapped back to the ground, like one of those Slinky toys my grandkids used to play with when they were little. A second later, it was gone as well, disappearing back down into the mud as if it had never been there at all.

Stunned, I closed the blinds and stood there, my hands and legs shaking in shock and disbelief. After a bit, I put my teeth in and made my way into the living room. Blue darkness had given way to the dim gray haze of dawn.

I stared at the cold and useless fireplace. I’d closed the chimney flue to keep the damp air out. It was built to keep the rain from coming in, but there was so much moisture in the air everything in the house ended up mildewed if I left it open. Above the fireplace was a mantle, made out of a wooden crossbeam taken from my daddy’s barn. It was old, like me. Also like me, it had survived numerous tornadoes and storms and hail and lightning and fires and droughts…and floods. Many, many floods.

On the mantle, my family stared back at me from their frames. I lost myself in them, trying not to contemplate what I’d just seen. Rose and I on our wedding day, and the portrait we’d gotten taken at the Wal-Mart in Lewisburg for our fiftieth wedding anniversary. She was even prettier in the second picture than in the first, taken a half-century before. Our kids: Tracy and Doug, when they were little. Next to that were snapshots of Tracy on her wedding day, her long, white veil spread out behind her on the grass, and another picture of her with her husband, Scott, taken on their honeymoon. Next to that was a photo of Doug taken in 1967, wearing his green beret, a First Cavalry patch emblazoned proudly upon his arm, just before he’d left for Vietnam.

There were no more pictures of Doug after that. That had been the last one, and I still remember the day Rose took it. I’d told Doug I loved him and that I was proud of him. He’d told me the same.

That was the last time we ever saw him. When he returned home, it was in a mostly empty coffin. The Viet Cong didn’t leave us much to bury.

There were more pictures of Tracy and Scott, Rose and myself, my best friend Carl Seaton and me with the sixteen-pound catfish we’d pulled out of the Greenbrier River eleven years ago, and the two of us standing next to the eighteen-point buck that Carl had shot one winter before old age stopped us from deer hunting altogether. Another showed me shaking the hand of our state senator while he gave me an award for being a World War Two veteran who’d lived long enough to tell about it. More numerous than any of these, though, were the pictures of my grandkids: Darla, Timothy, and Boyd.