“Hey,” he said.
Marv clicked on a flashlight and aimed the beam directly in his face.
“Jesus,” Tony said, covering his eyes.
“Who… Tony?” Marv breathed. “What’re you trying to do? Give me a heart attack?”
“Sorry.”
“I guess we’re all on edge tonight.”
“Yeah.” Tony swallowed. “Ain’t that the truth?”
“I’m glad you’re still kicking.”
“Neither of us’ll be kicking long if we don’t get out of this slop.”
They trudged side by side. After a time, Marv said, “The worms?”
“Yeah.”
They exchanged stories quickly. There was no beating around the bush. They’d both seen them and there was no doubting the reality of the things. The hows and whys would have to be hashed out later.
“Have you checked out any other houses?” Marv asked.
“Yeah. They’re either empty or… well, they’re not empty and nothing’s alive in them.”
They took a breather after a few minutes, the muck wearing them down. It was like wading through wet cement. They leaned against a light post, gripping it like they might get sucked away.
“What are we going to do?” Tony finally asked, dragging off a cigarette.
Marv sighed. “We’ll get back to my house. We’ll hole up there with Fern and the kids. We find anybody else, we bring ’em in with us. I’ve got some guns, camping equipment in the garage if we need it—lanterns, flashlights, a cookstove. We should be all right.”
It seemed reasonable, Tony figured. As reasonable as anything he’d heard lately anyway. Together, they might have a fighting chance while they waited for the National Guard and emergency services. He was going to say just that when Marv grabbed his arm.
“Somebody’s coming,” he said, listening to a slow, dragging splashing moving in their direction.
24
As Fern poured the bleach into the sink, the most amazing and shocking thing happened: something came worming its way out of the drain with a bubbling, foul-stinking black goo. And worming was the right word, she realized, because what came slithering out was indeed a worm.
Not a snake, as she first thought.
A fucking worm.
She jumped back and nearly dropped her bottle of Hilex. As it was, she cried out low in her throat and if her lips hadn’t been sealed tight it would have been a scream. What in the hell is this? What the hell…
The worm came up out of the drain with a convulsive, dying shudder, twisting and writhing. It was about as long as her forearm, but thick in body, fleshy and absolutely disgusting. It flexed with violent muscular contractions, a jellied ooze pouring out of it in a snotty tangle. How something that big around fit down the drain in the first place was beyond her.
The only good thing was that it was not only in considerable pain, it looked like it was dying.
“Mom,” Kassie called from the living room. “Are you all right?”
“Mom?” Kalie echoed.
Shaking, a fine dew of fear-sweat on her brow, Fern realized if she did not unglue her mouth and speak right now, the twins were going to come in and they were going to see what she was seeing and she simply could not have that.
“Ah… yeah, I’m fine. Just cleaning the sink.”
The sound of her own voice gave her a modicum of strength and she stepped a bit closer to the sink. The worm was barely moving by that point. What if I hadn’t poured the bleach down there? Would it have stayed in the drain or would it have come out after me? The questions jumped into her mind and she ignored them.
She poured more bleach onto the worm.
It moved sluggishly and spewed out something like several yellow and tangled, ropy tongues. But as revolting as that was, what was even worse was that it was steaming. The bleach was doing something to it. It was deflating and breaking apart, decompressing into a puddle of slime.
Trying to keep her stomach down, Fern forced its remains down into the garbage disposal with a long wooden spoon and turned it on. She listened to it whir and chew at the remains while a bubble of bile slowly rose up the back of her throat.
She shut the disposal off.
Then she stood there, dazed and sickened, wondering if she had hallucinated it all.
25
Kathleen saw the two men out in the mud sea, but she was barely even aware of their existence. They might as well have been stumps. She was driven by one single overwhelming need and that was to get Jesse away somewhere safe.
When she got close to them, one of them reached out and stopped her. “Hey… Kathleen?”
She pulled away, snarling at them. They were not going to get the baby. She would kill them if they tried.
“Kathleen… easy now… it’s me, Marv. Marv O’Connor.”
She tried to make sense of this, but her mind was like a blender on puree: a great, ever-spinning mix of emotions and impulses. It took her a minute. Finally, she cocked her head like a dog. “Marv?” she said in a broken voice.
“Sure. Tony’s here with me. You know, Tony Albert.”
“Hey,” Tony said.
She just looked at them blankly. She could not connect the names with the faces, but slowly, slowly it started making sense to her. She swallowed, then swallowed again. “I can’t find Pat and my house is falling apart and I have to get Jesse somewhere safe.” She kissed what was in her arms. “Somewhere the worms can’t get us.”
Marv and Tony looked at each other.
“Well,” Marv said. “You better come with us. We’re going over to my house. It’s safe there.”
Kathleen hugged her baby and nodded. Safe. She liked that word. That was the word she wanted to hear and a place she wanted to go. Making a low humming in her throat, she followed along behind them as the blood continued to drain from her wounds.
26
“One foot in front of the other,” Donna told Bertie. “That’s all we have to do. It’s only two doors down.”
“Maybe that’s nothing to you,” Bertie said, “but when your my age, that’s a goddamn long way, missy.”
Donna had to give her that one. The mud was deep and it was like trying to wade through oatmeal. The fact that she had gotten Bertie out of her house in the first place was a minor victory. All they had to do was make it down to the O’Connors’. On an ordinary day, it was a two-minute walk. In this muck with a frail, stubborn old woman with her, it was like the Bataan Death March: endless.
Bertie almost fell again, but Donna caught her and held her up.
“See no reason for any of this,” Bertie said. “Could have stayed at my house. I knew this was a bad idea. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you.”
And your newfangled ideas, Donna thought. She was just waiting for Bertie to say that like some cantankerous curmudgeon in an old movie, Walter Brennan maybe. The idea made her smile.
“We couldn’t stay there, Bertie. The place was falling apart.”
“Like hell it was.”
Donna decided she wouldn’t argue. They were over halfway to the O’Connors’ and they were not about to turn back. The fact of the matter was that the house was falling apart. The muck had made it shift. Things had fallen from the walls. A window in the kitchen had broken. And even Bertie couldn’t deny that cracking noise they heard coming from the foundation.
“Just a little farther now.”
Bertie snorted. “A little farther, my ass. We’re going to die out here. Well, I got one up on you: I already have my gravesite bought and paid for. I picked it out ten years ago. All they have to do is carve my death date onto it.”