A little house bordered the park and Cabot wondered if maybe the kid had gone in there, wondered if it could be that simple.
He stepped over the curb into the long yellow grass that climbed up above his calves. His breath would barely come. He could hear the truck idling, a stray breeze in the trees overhead. Shadows were crawling everywhere and death waited in each one. The house was sagging, weathered and gray. A lone monolith wreathed in darkness.
He moved further into the yard, the crackling of dry leaves under his step making something pull up tight inside him. He saw a birdbath in the yard. It was sprouting withered creepers. The front door of the house was hanging from its hinges, the darkness beyond sinister and pooling.
That’s when Cabot saw he was not alone.
From one dusty window above, a white face was staring down at him. Its eyes were black and glistening. He almost fell over backing away. The figure up there began slapping its hands against the window violently.
“Shit,” Cabot said and ran back to the truck.
He got inside and threw the locks, started breathing again.
He was shaking worse than the kid himself now, everything inside him gone loose and watery. He knew how things worked. He knew exactly how they worked. The kid was valuable to Hullville. They needed the young and the strong because they could still bring babies into the world and Hullville needed babies. They needed a next generation or they were done. He would be sixty himself come next birthday and his procreating days were long over. He was just as sterile as the rest. Not as valuable as the kid. He wasn’t old, but it was coming and when you no longer had a use in Hullville you went in the back of the truck.
That’s why the patrols went out.
They needed bodies. They found anyone they could and brought them in. Then the Council decided whether they were useful or not. Lots of them were. People with trades, doctors, carpenters, bricklayers, engineers. But others…alcoholics, drug users, the old, the lazy, criminals, the sick…they were culled off, went into the back of the truck for the trip to the ghost town. That kept the Wormboys happy.
And now Cabot had fucked up.
He had lost the kid.
The Council wouldn’t like that. He thought about calling it in, but he was afraid to. He could hear Chum now: You lost the kid? Well, that’s a real pisser, Cab. He was set to marry up with Leslie Rule next month. They’d a had some beautiful babies, I’ll bet. Oh well. Shit happens. Dump your load and head in. Council will want to talk to you.
Shit.
Council will want to talk to you.
“Like hell,” Cabot said under his breath.
He pulled a pump shotgun from the rack and filled his pockets with extra shells.
He was going out there.
Out into the graveyard of Mattawan.
He was going to find the kid.
*
Night and fog.
Cabot moved through the mist, having no idea where he was going. It was a fool’s errand and he knew it, but to go back empty-handed…well, that just wouldn’t do. He eased by picket fences spotted with black mold, crossed overgrown yards where children’s plastic toys bleached colorless by the grim roll of years were tangled in weeds. He slipped by rows of rotting houses with broken windows and rooflines fringed with mold.
So far, so good.
He scanned the darkness with a flashlight, the beam reflecting back off the rolling fog. Sometimes he saw shapes out there. Sometimes they were just trees or bushes and sometimes they were something else. He used the flashlight sparingly, turning it on and then clicking it off just as quick. The Wormboys were out there. Mattawan was dark, lit only by the mist and the pale moonlight filtering through it. Light of any sort would draw them right away like moths to a streetlamp. They didn’t like light much, but they knew it meant prey when they saw it.
Cabot tried to focus his mind, tried to come up with some sort of plan.
Where would the kid have gone? He had lived somewhere in this gutter, only he was never particular as to where that had been. And what had happened in the truck? Had he been planning this all along or had the sight of the place just unhinged him?
He couldn’t have known we were going to Mattawan. Nobody calls it that anymore. Ever since it died it’s just been the ghost town.
But there was no time for that.
Cabot decided right then and there that all he could do was sweep around the general area, be quiet about it, then make for the truck before he became lunch. If he couldn’t find the kid-and he was starting to feel pretty sure he wouldn’t-then he’d make up some story, anything to throw him in a good light and shade the kid in a bad one.
Sound thinking.
Cabot moved down a street that was crowded with rusting cars and trucks. Some were smashed up against trees, others had popped the curb and died on lawns. Many had bird-picked skeletons behind the wheels. The town was wild, hedges and bushes consuming lots, ivies engulfing garages, yards lost beneath uprisings of weeds and straw-yellow devil grass. Tree limbs had fallen everywhere.
He kept moving, keeping a wary eye out for anything alive…at least, anything moving. The mist distorted everything. Turned trees into stalking figures, shaped fire hydrants into crouching forms.
He stopped.
Behind him there were footsteps…slow, measured.
He whirled around, tucking the flashlight into his pocket, both hands on the shotgun now. He waited behind a hedgerow, ready, ready. A warm stench like spoiled pork wafted through the air and sweat ran down his face. He caught a momentary glimpse of a hobbling stick-like shadow melting into the fog.
The footsteps faded into the distance.
Cabot waited another few minutes, then he was moving again. Stealthy, alert, his muscles drawn taut like piano wires, his blood pulsing hot in his veins. He moved over grassy lawns, frost-heaved sidewalks yellow with rain-plastered leaves. The mist was damp and chill about him, moving, swirling, encompassing. His heart was pounding in his throat, his temples.
Off to the left, a branch snapped.
He froze, unsure whether to go forward or go back.
There was a scraping sound now…like something sharp dragged over the hood of a car.
He smelled a sweet and high odor like rotting hay. It grew stronger by the moment. He brushed sweat from his face, licked his paper-dry lips. The world around him was painted gray by the mist. Tree limbs creaked together in the breeze. He looked around, peering through blankets of fog, terrified at what he might see coming at him.
The stink was overpowering now.
He turned, ready to run, ready to give up his position by making a mad dash for the truck and then Someone was standing not ten feet away.
At first, Cabot was not even sure that he was looking at a man. Dressed in a black coat that was feathered with moss, his back twisted and body contorted, he looked like a dead, gnarled tree growing up from the weedy soil, his skeletal hands reaching twigs, his face corded like pine bark. “Please, friend,” he said in a rasping tone. “I am so hungry, so very hungry…”
Wormboy.
Cabot just waited there, the shotgun in his fists. “Get the fuck away from me,” he said.
The Wormboy dragged himself forward, grinning happily. His face split open with it, tissues tearing and tendons popping like dry roots. His eyes were blank and white, rimmed with red, his mouth hanging open to reveal pitted gums and black teeth. A dark slime oozed from his lips like running sap.
Cabot shot him.
He caught him in the belly and nearly tore him in half. But what was left, like stringy pink and gray meat, kept crawling in his direction.
Cabot ran.
Off into the shadows, trying to find that little park but what he found were shapes, long-armed shapes, dozens of them moving at him out of the mist. They were coming from every direction. He was in a nest of them. Grinning faces bloated with putrescence swam out of the fog. Spidery fingers clawed out for him. Gurgling voices called out. They were ringing him in, gliding forward like swarming insects.