Deluge: The Conqueror Worms II

CHAPTER 4

Henry Garrett knew that he was dreaming.

Lucid dreaming, people called it. He’d seen them talk about it on television, back when the televisions still worked.

The last time he’d had this dream, Henry had floated deep beneath the mountains—not through a subterranean network of tunnels and caves, but through the very ground itself. Ethereal, he’d slipped through rocks and roots and soil. Henry didn’t know how far he’d descended. There was no way to tell for sure in a dream. He reckoned it was a long distance. Eventually, he stopped. And there, far below the earth, he’d seen a door open up. As he watched, a worm the size of a school bus had crawled out of it and immediately started to give birth. Slime dripped from its body and coalesced into smaller worms. As Henry gaped, the creatures began to burrow upward, chewing through the planet’s core like Japanese beetles through an apple tree. They left slime in their wake.

Henry had screamed himself awake.

This time, the dream was different. Oh, there were some similarities, but the location wasn’t the same. He wasn’t floating down through the ground. Instead, he was sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The other big difference in this dream was that when he saw a similar door opening on the ocean floor, it wasn’t a big old worm that came crawling out, but a host of different creatures.

First, dozens of tentacles thrust through the doorway, grasping and wriggling in the current. The tendrils varied in size, but all of them were covered with rows of suckers, and each sucker had a puckered, greedy mouth lined with needle-like teeth.

Schools of silver fish darted through the doorway, swimming around the flailing tentacles. They were about eight inches in length, and reminded Henry of a cross between piranhas and flying fish. Their broad pectoral fins were curved like wings. As he watched, they devoured every living thing in their path. The water turned red.

Next came a group of creatures that looked like a mix of human beings and great white sharks. They had the legs, arms, and partial torso of a person, but the tail, head, dorsal fin and upper body of a shark. Their mouths were the creatures’ most striking feature—rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth. Over ten-feet in length, they swam by using both their powerful tails and their lithe legs—propelling themselves through the water with great speed.

There were quivering jellyfish that shot black, corrosive acid through the water. Spiny starfish that glared at him malevolently with human eyes. Blind, aquatic worms that burrowed into whatever they could find and began boring. Beautiful mermaids with long, flowing hair and breasts that made him hard—even in his dream.

One of the mermaids noticed him watching. Smiling, she swam closer.

Henry’s erection swelled.

She opened her mouth and began to sing. He could hear her clearly, even though they were underwater. He strained, trying to make out the words.

And then, the creature that the tentacles were attached to thrust itself from the doorway and emerged onto the ocean floor. Huge clouds of silt and muck were stirred by its entrance. When they cleared, Henry glimpsed the beast.

Just like before, Henry woke up screaming. He shrieked for a long time, lying there in the loft at the top of Fred Laudermilk’s grain silo. Eventually, his gasps became sobs, then moans. His cat, Moxey, rubbed against him, purring. Henry patted her absentmindedly, feeling her ribs beneath the skin.

She was losing weight. They both were.

Unable to sleep anymore, Henry sat up in the gloom and listened to the rain.

Was it his imagination, or was the rain coming down faster now?