“Unless the worms do first.”
“Well, I don’t think much else will happen tonight, but just in case, you ought to get some sleep.”
“You need it more than I do,” she said. “Why don’t you go to bed? Let me take over?”
“No. If I go to bed now, I’ll just lay there having a nicotine fit.”
She laughed softly. “I thought Salty had been bad when it came to needing a cigarette.”
I stopped breathing. During his story, Kevin had mentioned that Salty was a smoker, but I’d forgotten all about it.
Could there be cigarettes outside?
“I reckon he ran out of them, too.” I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for her response.
“Salty? Oh no. We raided a gas station in Woodstock that was still above water, and he hauled out as many cartons as he could carry.”
“Huh. Good for him. He thought ahead. Wish I’d done that.” I kept up the small talk and tried not to give myself away, to reveal what I was thinking. Because what I was thinking wasn’t just crazy. It was downright suicidal.
And I was going to attempt it anyway.
I waited a few minutes and then I said, “Begging your pardon, Sarah, but I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”
“Out there?”
“Well, just out onto the back porch. Don’t want to use the carport, on account of all those worms on it. But the back porch is close enough to the house. It should be safe.”
“Couldn’t you just pee in the sink or something?”
“At my age? Shoot, I’d be lucky if I could aim it that high. Besides, that’s just downright unsanitary.”
“Well,” she said reluctantly, “just be careful. I’ll wait here and stand guard.”
“Okay. Be back in a bit. This might take me a few minutes. And no peeking. It doesn’t always work as quick as it did when I was younger. I think he gets stage fright sometimes. Especially if there’s a pretty young woman staring at him from the window.”
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.