Without waiting to determine just how much damage I’d done, I set the rifle stock against my shoulder and fired again. Convulsing and enraged, the worm spat at me. A wad of warm phlegm landed on my shoulder, and the stench made me gag. I worked the bolt and got off a third round. Its back end lashed towards me, showering me with mud. I dodged around the convulsing monster and continued running.
My boots churned through the mud. Sweat broke out on my forehead and my breathing hitched as pain radiated throughout my chest. Behind me, I could hear more worms giving chase. I coughed and tasted warm, salty blood in the back of my throat.
I realized then that I wasn’t going to make it. The knowledge settled over me with a strange, almost calm sense of certainty. Either the worms would catch me or I’d drop dead of a heart attack—or just plain old-aged fatigue. I halted again, pointed the rifle barrel behind me, aiming blind in the darkness, and squeezed the trigger. Then I dashed away again.
I stumbled and my foot came down hard, sinking into the ground. Ice cold, muddy water flooded my boot. I tried to move, but I was stuck. It felt like my boot was embedded in a slab of freshly poured concrete.
Something barreled down on me from behind. I cast a frightened look over my shoulder and screamed. Three more bus-sized worms were slithering towards me. I wrenched my foot free and began running with one boot and one muddy sock.
Then, like a beacon in the night, a flashlight beam speared through the darkness.
“Drop!” Sarah shouted, and I did.
Flashlight in one hand and her pistol in the other, Sarah opened fire, pausing only long enough to draw a bead after the weapon pulled to the side with each shot. Brass jackets rained into the mud at her feet. The worms squealed behind me, but I didn’t turn to look.
“Now run,” she called. “This way!”
Pushing myself to my feet, I loped towards her. Sarah put an arm around my waist and I tossed mine over her shoulder. She half guided, half dragged me back to the yard. I felt the wet sidewalk beneath my foot.
“Wh-what about the worms?” I gasped.
“They’re gone,” she said. “Damn things squirmed away as soon as I started shooting. I don’t know if I killed them or not, but I bet they think twice before trying to have us as a midnight snack again.”
“Not those,” I wheezed. “The—the ones on the carport.”
“We’ll have to wade through them.”
“No.” I stood up on my own and held a finger to my lips. “I heard something there when I came outside. Something banged against the truck. It could be another of the big kind. Let’s go around back instead.”
She nodded and we cut through the yard to the back porch. Once we were safely inside and verified that the worms were indeed not giving chase, Sarah wheeled on me.
“What the fuck were you doing, Teddy? You could have been killed. You almost were!”
“Sshhh,” I cautioned her. “No need to wake up Carl and Kevin.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe they slept through the shooting.”
As if in confirmation, Kevin grunted in his sleep, called out for Lori, and then turned over on the couch.
“What were you doing out there?” she asked again, lowering her voice this time. “Why were you so far from the house?”
“I told you, I had to pee. I guess I just got turned around in the dark.”
“Bullshit, Teddy. You were in the field.”
My shoulders slumped. “I was looking for Salty’s cigarettes. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“I’ll say. Jesus Christ…”
We both slipped out of our wet coats, and I took my muddy sock off as well. Then I sat down next to the heater and warmed myself. Sarah stood over me, scowling.
“You really scared me out there. That was an incredibly stupid thing to do.”
“I know,” I admitted. “But at least we learned something tonight.”
“What? That you’re literally willing to die for a cigarette? I didn’t need to know that.”
“No, I’m not talking about that.”
“Well, what else did we learn, professor?”
“That bullets are effective against those things.”
“I don’t know.” Sarah peeked in on Kevin and then sat down next to me. “I hit them, yes, but I don’t think I hurt them very much. If I remember correctly, worms have segmented bodies. You can cut part of them off and the severed portions will still function. If anything, we just scared them off.”
“Well, that’s better than nothing. Hopefully they’re gone for the night and things won’t get worse.”
“I don’t—”
Sarah was interrupted by a dull thump from out on the carport, something bumping against metal. The same sound I’d heard earlier. Then it was repeated.
We both froze. She stared at me, her eyes wide. She reached for the pistol.
“My truck,” I whispered, and grabbed the shotgun. “I parked it at the edge of the carport when Carl and I came back yesterday. When I checked it earlier, the worms were up over the tires.”
“So?”
“That sound was something striking metal, and the truck is the only metal thing out there. That’s the sound I was telling you about.”
We kept listening. Silence, followed by another thud, and then a harsh, raspy voice.
“And God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh is before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and I will destroy them with the earth.’ ”
We gaped at one another.
It was Earl Harper. The crazy bastard was alive, and having an old-fashioned revival meeting right outside my house.
“That’s in the Bible!” he shouted. “Genesis six, verses thirteen to seventeen. That cunt of a wife of yours wasn’t the only one around here who knew her scripture, Garnett! Bet you didn’t think I was paying attention at Bible study, did you?”
“Is that who I think it is?” Sarah asked.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “It’s Earl.”
“What are we going to do?” Sarah whispered.
Silencing her, I got up and crept across the floor, gripping the rifle as tightly as I could.
“Garnett! You awake in there? Answer me, you son of a bitch!”
Carefully, I peeked out through the window in the door. There was no sign of Earl, and the carport was deserted. The worms were still there, two feet thick in most spots. The old picnic table and my truck were islands in a sea of wiggling, churning, elongated bodies. But there was no Earl.
“And behold,” he continued preaching, “I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth and everything that is in the earth shall die! That’s from the good book too. Old Earl Harper knows his Bible!”
It sounded like he was standing right outside. I pressed my face against the cold, damp glass and stared, but I still couldn’t see him. Earl’s voice was muffled, like he was underground, but close by. Something thumped against the truck again and I froze.
Then, the worms around the truck began to move, slowly rising like there was a helium balloon trapped beneath them. They swelled upward and then started to fall off, sliding back down to the pile of their brethren. As they slid away, they revealed Earl.
He had hidden underneath them. He’d concealed himself beneath their bodies.
When the big worm was chasing us all, he must have made it as far as the carport and burrowed underneath the night crawlers, lying beneath them and waiting until he was sure it was gone or that our guard was down.