Brian Keene - The Conqueror Worms

She giggled. “I’ll watch through the window pointing out at your carport. How’s that?”

“Much better.”

I put on my rain gear and walked to the back door. The fog was thick and I couldn’t see more than a few feet away from the house. I listened, but the only sound was the rain. I checked the rifle and made sure a round was chambered.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind me. It wasn’t just black outside. It was obsidian. With no power or lights, and with the stars and the moon blocked out by the perpetual haze, the darkness was a solid thing—a living creature. It seemed to cling to me. Combined with the fog, it made sight almost impossible. I’d forgotten the flashlight on purpose, because I didn’t want Sarah to know what I was doing—and because I didn’t want to attract the attention of anything lurking out there in the night. Now I wished for the flashlight, for a lighter, for anything to push the darkness back.

“Teddy Garnett,” I said to myself under my breath, “you are a damned old fool, and you’re about to get yourself killed.”

I stepped off the porch and my boots sank into the mud with a squelching sound.

“Well, I’m tired of being old and I always was a fool.”

I started for the crash site.

“And I don’t have much of a life left anyway.”

The raindrops echoed in my ears.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I glanced back at the house to make sure that Sarah wasn’t watching me from the window, but I could barely see it, even from a few feet away. The heavy fog and the darkness had swallowed up the house as if it had never been there. I tried to breathe, but the lump in my throat was too big. I don’t know that I’ve ever been more scared in my life than I was at that moment, but it was too late now. The plan was already in motion.

Forcing myself to calm down, I crept through the mud and made a direct line for where I thought the tool shed should be. My plan was to duck behind it, hiding myself from view of the kitchen window (just in case Sarah could still see what I was up to, even through the mist). Then I would cut across the yard to the field.

I’d only gone maybe another twenty or thirty feet when I realized that I didn’t have a clue where I was or what direction I was heading. As impossible as it sounds, I was lost in my own backyard. I’d lived here for a good part of my adult life, built the house and shed with my own hands, mowed the lawn thousands of times—but now it was an alien landscape. I glanced around in confusion, looking for something familiar, some recognizable landmark. But there was nothing. The darkness and the rain had swallowed it all, and the ground was torn up from the worms.

Pressing on, I listened for some sign that the worms were nearby, but all I heard was the rain, beating against my hat and slamming into the ground. It seemed to grow stronger with every breath, as if feeding off my fear. I wandered in the darkness—wet, cold, and afraid.

The insistent craving for nicotine grew worse with each step I took, now that the possibility of actually getting some existed. The addiction had overridden every ounce of common sense and instinct for selfpreservation that I possessed, and the only thing that mattered now was getting to that helicopter wreckage and finding Salty’s leftover cigarettes. I wondered what I’d do if I got there and couldn’t find them, or worse, if they were destroyed in the crash. I briefly considered turning around and heading back to the house, but then I pushed the thought from my mind. I’d come too far already and my body was humming from the promise of the tobacco to come. If I had to, I’d hunt down the worm that ate Salty and cut it open and fish his last pack from its belly.

The worst part is that I knew just how unreasonable and stupid I was being, but I didn’t care. The cravings were controlling me now, and I was helpless—completely under their whim. I slopped through the mud, hoping that I was going in the right direction. The wet rifle was cold in my hands and my fingers grew numb.

Suddenly, I heard a noise to my left, the sound of something striking against metal. I froze and my body’s demand for nicotine vanished, replaced with a cold, paralyzing feeling of dread. I stood there waiting for the sound to be repeated again, waiting to hear that telltale worm hiss, but neither came. I tried to judge where I was and what the noise could have been. If my calculations were correct, then the carport was to my left. Maybe the metallic noise was something brushing up against the truck. But I couldn’t be sure. If it was, then I was heading in the right direction, but had placed myself between the shed and the house, rather than going behind the shed.

Could it have been one of those cow-sized worms, sneaking up on the house, or worse yet, creeping along behind me? I didn’t know.

Rather than standing there in the darkness trying to figure it out, I kept going. Soon enough, the ground beneath my feet changed from muddy yard to muddy field. It was rockier, more uneven, and I knew that I was going in the right direction. I paused, sniffing the air, and caught a faint hint of oil and burned metal. I smelled something else, too—that familiar fishy odor.

I was close to the crash site, but so were the creatures. Which meant they were also close to me.

There was no sound, no hint of movement, but I could feel them just the same.

I went even more carefully now, and each footstep seemed to take an eternity. The stench from the wreckage grew stronger as I got closer to it. My pulse quickened and a headache bloomed behind my eyes. I could taste phantom tobacco on my tongue, and the mixture of anticipation and fear threatened to overwhelm my senses.

Not that I had any sense left. I was convinced of that now. Common sense had been thrown right out the window the moment I’d decided upon this hare-brained scheme.

As I proceeded, I found myself wondering how the worms hunted. Was it sight or smell, or did they sense our vibrations through the earth? I thought back to the first one I’d seen, the one that had eaten the bird. It had leaped from the ground. The one in the shed had been concealed beneath the floor, but had it known we were there before Carl started stabbing it? The creatures that had come slithering out of the woods were above ground, so that seemed to indicate that they had seen Carl. But then the big one, the granddaddy of them all, had come straight up out of the earth, tunneling towards us from below. How had he known we were there? Maybe he heard the gunshots and the helicopter crash, or sensed us walking above him? Or, was it possible that the other worms communicated with him somehow, maybe through some kind of telepathy, and let him know that lunch was served?

And why did they eat us, anyway? Their smaller cousins ate dirt, if I remembered correctly. They drew their nourishment directly from the soil, absorbing the nutrients and minerals and expelling what they didn’t need. Why couldn’t these big ones do the same and just leave us alone? Lord knew there was plenty of dirt around, now that the floods were killing off all the vegetation. Why couldn’t they just eat that?

Once again, I found myself thinking that, while I may have been the smartest man in Punkin’ Center, West Virginia, I sure didn’t know a whole lot about worms.

My heel came down on a shard of metal, and then I stumbled over another piece. I’d found the crash site. More wreckage loomed out of the mist, twisted into sinister shapes by the darkness. The rain pelted it all, clanging softly off the steel and fiberglass. The feeling of being watched increased, and the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The ammonia stench grew stronger.

I heard a weird sound then, trickling water, like there was a stream nearby. But that didn’t make sense. The closest creek was down at the bottom of the hollow, almost a mile away—well past the place where I’d searched for teaberry leaves. Still, I looked down at the ground, and sure enough, there was a stream of running water at my feet. I wondered how that was possible, since I was standing in a relatively flat field.