The Conqueror Worms

THE CONQUEROR WORMS

BRIAN KEENE

A Living Nightmare

Out of breath and panicking, I ran around the side of the building and slid to a halt. The thing that had been underneath the shed was definitely not an oversized groundhog. It had crawled back outside, reopening the tunnel beside the woodpile. Half of it jutted from the hole, thrashing in pain. Stinking fluid sprayed from the knife wounds in its side.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

It was a worm. A giant earthworm, the size of a big dog—like a German Shepherd or Saint Bernard—but much longer. It undulated back and forth in the mud and grass, covering the ground with slime. Watery brown blood pulsed from the gash in its hide.

More of its length pushed out of the hole, and the creature whipped toward me like an out-of-control fire hose. The worm’s tip (what I guess must have been its head, though I couldn’t see any eyes) hung in the air in front of me, only an arm’s reach away. Then the flesh split, revealing a toothless maw. It convulsed again, and then that horrible, yawning mouth shot toward me. Shrieking, I stumbled backward to the shed door. The worm followed…

For my grandparents,

Ward and Anna Ruth Crowley,

because part of this is their story.

Author’s Note

Although Renick, Lewisburg, Baltimore, White Sulphur Springs, and many of the other places mentioned in this novel are real, I have taken certain fictional liberties with them. So if you live there, don’t look for your house. The forecast calls for rain.

PART I

THE EARLY WORM GETS THE BIRD

There were giants in the earth in those days…

—Genesis

Chapter 6, Verse 4

CHAPTER ONE

It was raining on the morning that the earthworms invaded my carport. The rain was something that I’d expected. The worms were a surprise, and what came after them was pure hell, plain and simple. But the rain—that was normal. It was just another rainy day.

Day Forty-one, in fact.

My name is Teddy Garnett, and I guess I should tell you right now, before we go any further, that I’m no writer. I’m educated, sure, and a lot more than most of the good old boys in this part of West Virginia. I never made it past grade school because my father needed my brothers and me to help him with the farm. But what I didn’t learn in grade school, I picked up during my thirty-five years as a radioman in the Air Force. That’s pretty easy to do when you’ve been stationed everywhere from Guam to Germany. Seeing the world gives you knowledge—the kind of knowledge you just can’t get in a classroom. During World War Two, and in the years that followed, I saw most of the world. And I always loved to read, so between my travels and my books, I’ve learned everything I ever needed to know.

I can read and write and multiply and discuss in German, French and even a little bit of Italian, the ramifications of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and the poetry of Stephen Crane. Not that there’s anybody around these parts to discuss Nietzsche or Crane with—even before the rain started. If you mentioned Nietzsche in Punkin’ Center, folks would think you’d sneezed and offer you a tissue. And poetry? Shoot. Poetry was just something they’d heard tell of, but had never actually experienced for themselves. Kind of like visiting Egypt or Iraq or some other faraway land. Not that most of our residents could have found either one of those places on a map. When it came to current events, if it hadn’t happened here in our county, or maybe over in towns like Beckley or White Sulphur Springs, then it didn’t matter. Most folks in these parts didn’t know about Vietnam or Iraq until their sons and daughters got sent there to die, and even then, they couldn’t find them on a map.

I’m not trying to sound smug, but I was smarter than most folks around here, probably because I’d seen the world beyond the mountains and hollows of this great state. But I never once let it go to my head, not even after my eightieth birthday, which is when a person is allowed to sound like a wise old man. I never bragged, never belittled someone less smart than me. Some nights, after my wife died and before the rain started, I’d go down to the Ponderosa in neighboring Renick, or the American Legion over in Frankford, and beat Otis Whitt’s boy Ernie at chess (Ernie Whitt was the only other one in Punkin’ Center or Renick that could play). Or I’d explain current events to my neighbors, or write letters to the paper and try to put things into perspective for folks.

But writing books and stories? No sir. I’d always left that up to Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Jack London, and Louis L’Amour—the four greatest writers of all time.

I’m not a writer, but I can tell you it must be a tough business. I’m doing this by hand, here in the dark—cramming words into this little spiral notebook, and my arthritis is acting up something fierce. I’ve been lying here on my side, gripping this pen for the past couple of hours and now my fingers have blisters on them and my hand is twisted up like some kind of deformed claw. I don’t know if it’s the dampness in the air or just the act of writing itself that’s doing it, but it hurts. It hurts really bad.

So why waste time writing about how much it hurts me to write? Because I’ve got to get this done. Because it’s important for you to know what happened. It might save your life, should you ever find this.

I’m just glad that everything below my waist has gone numb, so I don’t have to deal with that pain anymore. I looked down there once, at my legs.

And I haven’t looked since.

I am afraid. I can feel something sharp inside me, grating and rubbing up against a soft part. There’s no pain, but there is a strange, queasy sensation. I don’t know what it is, but I certainly don’t imagine it’s anything good. My stomach has a big purple and red splotch on it, and it’s spreading.

I’m still coughing up blood. I can feel it in the back of my throat, and my mouth tastes horrible.

For what’s easily the thousandth time since the rain started, I find myself wishing that the electricity were still on. Then I could go down into the basement and write this properly, on the old word processor my grandson and his wife gave me after they bought their computer. It sat down there on a little particleboard desk I got at the Wal-Mart in Lewisburg.

But the power isn’t on, and it’s never coming back. It went off the same day the chubby weatherman on the Today Show shot himself live on national television in the middle of a forecast. One minute, he was joking around with that pretty anchorwoman with the nice smile and vacant eyes who’s always after people to get their prostate checked, and a moment later his brains were splattered all over that big map of the United States behind him. Seems like years ago, but it really hasn’t been that long. Apparently, he’d been getting death threats.

Death threats. All because of the damn weather…

He got off easy. Those poor folks at the Weather Channel never had a chance. Fellow drove a box truck loaded with explosives right up to the building and blew it all up. They never did catch the people behind it, but I guess that doesn’t really matter now. Maybe there wasn’t anybody masterminding it at all. Maybe the suicide bomber was just fed up with the weather reports. Today—a one hundred percent chance of rain. Tonight, rain continues. Tomorrow? More of the same.

Even if the power was still on, I couldn’t go down into the basement. Not now. Not after what happened. The desk and the word processor and everything else in the basement are gone now. The only things in the basement are bodies, floating around in the darkness, along with the remains of that—thing. Once in a while, I hear its carcass bumping into what’s left of the stairs. I’m sure the water level is getting higher, too. Pretty soon, it will start seeping under the door, and I don’t know what I’ll do then. I can’t go outside.

Who am I kidding? I can’t even move my legs, so why worry about going outside?

There’s an old generator out on the back porch, but I don’t think it works. I haven’t used it since the blizzard back in 2001. Even if it did still work, I’d have to go down into the basement to hook it up to the power box, and then go outside to start it. And like I just told you, I can’t do either of those things.

So I’m lying here in a puddle, wishing I had electricity, but what I really want is a dip. My last can of Skoal was empty on Day Thirty. I had to lick the shreds of tobacco off the lid just to get any at all. I’ve been sweating through nicotine withdrawal ever since. A chew would set things right. Wouldn’t matter what kind at this point: Skoal, Kodiak, Copenhagen, Hawken—maybe even a cigarette or a cigar (though I never much cared for smoking) or some leaf like Mail Pouch. Just a little bit of nicotine would be finer than my wife’s blueberry pie right about now. And her blueberry pie was mighty fine. Mighty fine indeed.

Maybe you’re wondering how an old man like me, an old man who’s injured, is finding the strength and energy to write something like this down. Well let me tell you—I’m doing it to take my mind off the nicotine cravings.

I’ve lived through a lot in my eighty-odd years. I survived a rattlesnake bite when I was seven, the smallpox when I was nine, and a thirty-foot tumble out of a big oak tree when I was twelve. I made it through the Great Depression with a half-full belly. I fought in World War Two. Lied about my age and went to boot camp when I was fourteen. A few months later, I was over in Europe, right after the invasion at Normandy. After that, I got sent to the Pacific as well. I couldn’t tell you the number of bombing runs I participated in. I killed other people’s sons in the war and never thought twice about it. I made it back home, only to have Vietnam claim a son of my own in return. I always figured that was God’s way of making things equal. I’ve watched the baby boomer politicians and the ex-hippie Wall Street tycoons destroy what my generation worked so hard to build. We gave them a nice country, and they destroyed it with their greed and their lobbyists and their Internet-capable cappuccino bars and their rap music. I’ve seen my good friends get old and die. Most of them are gone now, except for Carl. One by one, they’ve succumbed to Alzheimer’s, cancer, loneliness, and just plain old age. Like a Ford or a Chevy, eventually our parts wear out, no matter how well we’re built. A few years ago, I watched Washington’s World War Two Memorial dedication ceremony on television and was shocked by how few of us are actually left. Felt like a mule had kicked me in the stomach. On top of everything else, I’ve outlived my wife, Rose. Let me tell you, that’s something no husband should ever have to go through. It may sound selfish, but I wish that I’d gone before her. Rose’s death was just about more than I could bear.

But despite these trials and tribulations, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to suffer through was sitting here listening to the constant patter of big, fat raindrops beating against the windows and the roof, hearing it non-stop, all day and all night, without a pinch of tobacco between my false teeth and my gums for comfort.

My apologies. I’m an old man, and look here what I’ve done. I’ve gone and gotten off track. I started out writing about Day Forty-one, and then I went on a tangent, ranting about my life story and the damn weather.

Of course, I reckon this is the end of my life story. And I suppose that somewhere deep down inside, I’ve known that since my trip to Renick.

Renick. That was on Day Thirty. Maybe I should start there instead.

Oh Lord, do I need some nicotine! This must be how those heroin junkies feel. I never understood how these young people could get hooked on dope, but of course, I was hooked on a drug, too. Only difference is mine was legal. I miss it. Didn’t know how bad I’d come to rely on it until it was gone.

It was that same insistent craving that woke me up on Day Thirty. My body was pleading with me, promising that if I’d just give it a dip, it would make the headaches, insomnia, toothaches (because even when you wear false teeth, you can still get phantom toothaches), sore throat, chest pains, diarrhea, night sweats, and bad dreams go away. I knew that was a lie. Those things didn’t just come with nicotine withdrawal. They came with old age, as well.

I don’t know that a nicotine fix could have done much about the nightmares, anyway. I dreamed of Rose at least once a week after she was gone. It was also that way when my boy, Doug, died in Vietnam, though it passed with the years. As terrible as it sounds, there are times now when I have to stare at his picture just to remember what he really looked like. I can’t remember how his voice sounded anymore, either. I guess that’s all a result of old age. But it didn’t matter, anyhow. Even if the nicotine could have chased the dreams away, the closest place to buy a can of chew was at the Ponderosa gas station over in Renick.

Renick is the next town after Punkin’ Center. It was a forty-five minute drive down the side of the mountain on a wet and slippery road. I’d avoided making the trip ever since the rain started. But on Day Thirty, caught in the grip of some really nasty nicotine withdrawal symptoms, I walked out into the downpour. It took me a whole minute to reach my Ford pickup truck (I haven’t driven the Taurus since Rose died), and I was soaked to the bone by the time I got inside. I dried my glasses off with a napkin from the glove compartment. Then I fumbled with my keys, crossed my fingers, said a prayer, and started it. The truck came to life, sputtering and coughing and not at all happy about the situation, but running just the same. I checked the gauge and saw that I had three quarters of a tank left. That would get me to town and back.

Most of the stones in our gravel lane had been washed away by then, leaving only mud and ruts. Even after I put the transmission into four-wheel drive, the tires churned and spun. I didn’t think I’d make it out to the main road, but eventually I did.

Sighing with relief, I started down the mountain road to Renick. I experimented with the radio, hoping to hear another voice or even some music, but there was only static. I’d wondered for several weeks what was going on, ever since the power and the phone lines went out. It had been some time since I’d heard someone else speaking, and I was lonely. I’d taken to wandering around the house and talking to myself just to ease the emptiness, and I was sick of the sound of my own voice. Even one of the talk-show nuts that seemed to have taken over the radio these days would have been welcome. Instead, the only sounds keeping me company other than the radio’s static were the rain and the windshield wipers, both beating a steady rhythm as I drove.

I knew that if Rose were still alive, she’d tell me how bullheaded I was being. A stubborn old man, doing something stupid—all because he was addicted to tobacco. But here’s the thing about that. When you get to be old, when you’re what they call elderly, you lose control of everything. Everything around you isn’t yours anymore. Your world, your body, and sometimes even your mind. That makes you stubborn about the things you can still control.

Maybe it sounds cliché, but my heart was in my throat for most of the drive. In the years before the rain, when winter came to visit and the snow piled high, Rose and I didn’t go to Renick. For people our age, the winding one-lane road was treacherous even in the best conditions. But after thirty days of rain, it was a nightmare, worse than the harshest West Virginia blizzard.

One side of the mountain road used to be nothing but cornfields and pastures. The other side was a steep drop down a forested mountainside, with only a steel guardrail as a buffer. Now, the rain had flooded the fields and pastures, washing away not only the crops and grass but the topsoil as well. Streams of brown water gushed down the mountain and huge gray rocks jutted up from the mud like uncovered dinosaur bones. Uprooted trees lay scattered across the road, and I had to drive on the sides to get around them. The biggest, an old oak, completely blocked my way.

I spotted the tree as I rounded the corner. I slammed on the brakes, and the truck fishtailed, sliding towards the guardrail. Shouting, I gripped the wheel and did what Rose would have done—chastised myself for being a stubborn, stupid, bullheaded old man. The truck spun. The front bumper slammed into the tree, and the rear crumpled the guardrail. I closed my eyes, holding my breath and waiting for the truck to topple over the side. My heart pounded, and I felt a stab of pain in my chest. This was a stupid way to die, and I expected Rose would be waiting on the other side, shaking her head the way she used to when she thought I was doing something foolish. But I didn’t crash through the guardrail and roll down the mountainside. Instead, the truck stalled out on me. I opened my eyes to find myself looking back in the direction I came.

I clutched my chest, trying to get my breathing under control. My pills were back at the house. If I had a heart attack out here, nobody would be around to help me. I imagined I could hear Rose scolding me from on high.

“I know,” I said out loud. “You told me so, dear. I’m just being foolish.”

Eventually, the pains in my chest disappeared. I got out of the truck to check on the damage, praying I didn’t have a flat tire. The damage wasn’t bad; just some dents and scraped paint. If I’d been going any faster, it would have been a lot worse. I was pretty sure the truck would start again, and was actually glad it didn’t have airbags, since a deployed one would have made it impossible to drive back home. I was a realist. At my age, there was no way I’d be able to walk back up the mountain in the rain. I’d be dead before I made it two miles.

Death. At my age, I was used to the idea. It was imminent. Some mornings, I’d wake up and be surprised I was still here. But when I thought back on my life, I wondered what it was all about. Was it worth it, all the joys and heartaches? What was the point of it all, if it only led to this—an old man drowning alone in a flooded world?

Standing there in the downpour, I heard a flock of geese passing somewhere overhead. I craned my neck skyward, but I couldn’t see them. They were lost behind the permanent white haze that covered the earth. The fog bank started just above the treetops and continued into the heavens, blocking out the moon and stars. The disembodied honking sounded eerie and made me feel lonelier than ever. I wondered where they were going, and wished them luck on their journey.

Satisfied that the truck was still operational, I surveyed my surroundings. A few scraggly trees were still standing here and there on the slope, and I looked down on Renick through a break in the tops of them. Or maybe I should say I looked down at where Renick used to be, because the town was gone.

The Greenbrier River had swallowed up the entire valley. There was an ocean in the place where Renick had once been.

Renick had stood at the base of the mountain, nestled in the valley. Beyond it was the state road to Lewisburg (that was a real road, with two lanes and a yellow dividing line down the middle). If you traveled from Renick and back the way I’d come, you would have headed up the mountain, passing a few shacks and houses, each one complete with the regulation, rusted-out car propped up on cinder blocks, and a brand new satellite dish on the roof. West Virginia had one of the highest welfare populations in the nation, but everybody had a satellite dish.

You would have then entered Punkin’ Center, which consisted of nothing more than seven houses, the combination post office and feed store (run by my good friend Carl Seaton), and then several farms. Keep on going and you’d pass a few hunting cabins, Dave and Nancy Simmons’ place, crazy Earl Harper’s shanty, the lane that went back to my place, and then miles of West Virginia state forestland. At that point, the road narrowed to a dirt track leading up to Bald Knob. It ended at the lookout tower the rangers used to watch for forest fires in the summer, and their station underneath it.

All of this was deserted and washed out when I made my trek down the mountain. The National Guard had cleared everybody out of Punkin’ Center a few weeks before. I stayed behind, though, even when they insisted that I leave. Oh, I guess they could have made me leave if they’d tried hard enough. It isn’t too hard to force an old man out of his home. But they didn’t. Maybe it was something in my eyes or the tone of my voice, but those young troops backed down quick. This is where I’ve lived for the last thirty years and I wasn’t leaving on account of the weather.

I looked back down on Renick. The town was attainable from our side of the mountain only by means of a steel and concrete bridge that spanned the Greenbrier. On one side of the bridge was the road on which I was stranded. The town lay on the other side. That morning, on Day Thirty, the bridge was gone.

It wasn’t just destroyed, mind you. The bridge was gone. It had vanished along with the rest of the world, leaving our mountain standing in the midst of a new ocean. That’s what it looked like. Either the Greenbrier had gotten very big, or the Atlantic Ocean had gotten very lost and decided to come inland for a spell. Everything was submerged—all the homes and businesses and the school. Everything except for the Presbyterian Church steeple and old Fred Laudermilk’s grain silo, jutting up from the water like lone mountaintops.

That was when the full impact of what had happened hit me. There’d be no State Fair down in Lewisburg this year and no cornbread and bean suppers at the American Legion. The rickety yellow school bus wouldn’t be making its trip up the mountain to pick up the few kids in Punkin’ Center and old Fred Laudermilk wouldn’t be bringing in the hay this fall. Ditto for Daniel Ortel’s wacky weed crop (we all knew he grew it, but nobody said anything) and Clive Clendenon’s corn. My crazy neighbor, Earl Harper, wouldn’t have to concern himself anymore about the government conspiracy of the week, and I wouldn’t have to worry about poachers on my land this coming deer season.

They always said this would happen because of a hole in the ozone layer. They said that greenhouse gases would melt the polar ice caps, flooding the world. But that’s not what happened at all.

One day, a day like any other day, it just started raining and didn’t stop. It’s as simple as that. We certainly didn’t expect it. It was a rainy day, but tomorrow would bring sunshine again. But tomorrow never came. The next day, it was still raining. And the day after that. Every day brought the same forecast; rain, no matter where you lived. Except that there aren’t really days anymore—just differing shades of gray and black. I haven’t seen the sun or the moon for a long time. They’ve been reduced to silhouettes, hiding behind the clouds like muted silver dollars.

Everybody had theories. The meteorologists threw around a lot of techno-babble, and the politicians argued, and then the world leaders started pointing fingers at each other.

Here in the United States, the coastal areas went first, along with their cities. Places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Atlantic City, New York City, Miami, and Norfolk. Florida’s panhandle and the entire Gulf Coast were instantly wiped out as ten-story waves crashed over them, driven ashore by a massive storm swell and winds of over two hundred miles per hour. Towns like Grand Isle, New Orleans, Apalachicola, and Pensacola were gone in the blink of an eye, submerged along with the two million people living there who never got the chance to evacuate. Interstate Sixty-five, near the coast of Alabama, had been snarled in gridlock when it happened. All of those people died beneath the rushing waters, trapped inside their cars. Tornadoes ripped through the non-coastal areas, leveling trees and buildings, and then those places were flooded, too, relentlessly battered by the rains.

One time, I watched a television program about hurricanes. They said that weather researchers classified hurricanes into different categories, with a category one being just above a tropical storm and a category five being the absolute worst. Well, let me tell you, the super-storm that erupted across the planet was beyond categorization. It would have been a ten. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was unequipped to deal with the disaster, but I reckon no amount of preparation could have saved us even if they had anticipated it.

Within the space of seven days, all of the coastal cities in the United States were obliterated, and the rest of the country started flooding. And that was just the beginning. Then it got worse. The rain kept falling. Some nut in Indiana started building an ark, just like the one Noah had used, and there was a rumor that several governments had done the same, shifting their elite and powerful onto battleships and luxury liners, along with animals and plant life.

The National Guard started evacuating people before the rest of the cities farther inland disappeared beneath the waves, but there was really nowhere to go. The whole damn country was flooding. Then the waters rushed over the rest, as far as Arizona in the West, and up to the Ohio River Valley in the East. It may have gone even farther, but that was when the satellite television stopped working. Last thing I saw on the air was footage of a lake where the Mississippi River used to be. The Potomac flooded over its banks, too, and took out the nation’s capitol. The Rockies, the Appalachians, the Smokies, and a few other remote locations were supposedly still above water, just like my own mountain, but I can’t imagine life was too pleasant in those places. I wondered if there was another old man like me, trapped on his mountaintop in Colorado, waiting for the waters to rise up and swallow him.

The good old U.S. of A. was a disaster area of biblical proportions, and the rest of the world didn’t fare much better. Places like Easter Island, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Diego Garcia were gone. Not flooded, but gone. Cuba, Jamaica, and the rest of the Caribbean got wiped out in the same storm surge that destroyed the southern United States. Hawaii had been reduced to a few lonely volcano peaks. I remember watching Nova Scotia get erased live on CNN before the satellite stopped working. Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia—I don’t know what the final outcome was, but the television footage hadn’t been promising. The Himalayas and Mount Kilimanjaro were probably beachfront property by now.

And now Renick was gone. While I’d seen the damage on television, it took this to finally bring it home for me.

Because this was home.

Like everything else, Renick was gone, swallowed up by the Greenbrier River. And the river was gone, lost amid the floodwaters. Down in Lewisburg, Interstate Sixty-four was gone, and with it, the passage to my daughter’s home in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania was gone. New York City was gone. I’d seen that on TV, too, before the power went out. It was horrible; Manhattan buried under an impenetrable fog and water surging from sewer grates and manhole covers. Hundreds of homeless people drowned in the subway tunnels before the evacuation even started. When it was over, the National Guard and police had to patrol the streets of Manhattan by boat. I remember seeing footage of some jet skiers looting Saks Fifth Avenue, and an NYPD speedboat chasing them off. The water, black with filth and garbage, crept up to the third and fourth floors of just about every building in the city, covering everything under a layer of sludge. Worst of all were the rats. Everything that the camera flashed on swarmed with vermin. The rains had pushed them, streaming and angry, from their underground kingdom. They were hungry, and it wasn’t long before they started to eat the dead, bloated bodies floating in the streets. And when they ran out of those, they turned on the living.

The rains had forced the rats to the surface. I wondered what else the rains would force to the surface, and if these things would be hungry, too.

I took one last look at the steeple and the silo jutting up from the churning waters. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Rose and I’d had a lot of good times together in that little town, times that would never come to pass again—times that had faded, just like my memories were starting to do. I was suddenly glad Rose hadn’t lived to see this. My Rose had loved her Bible, and she would no doubt have had a scripture on hand for this occasion, just as she did for everything.

In the Bible, God sent Noah a dove. I’d done what the Lord had asked me to do for over eighty years, but I didn’t get a dove. All I got that day was another nicotine fit.

Dripping wet, I climbed back into the truck. My head hurt, and I shivered while holding my hands in front of the dashboard’s heater vent.

I needed a dip.

I put the transmission in drive and returned home, soaked, depressed, with no tobacco and a banged-up truck to show for my efforts. My world—my mountaintop home—was now an island jutting up out of a brand new ocean.

That was Day Thirty. Each day got worse after that. So did the nights. They were the absolute worst. Nights in the country can make a man feel very alone. There are no streetlights or cars, and if the moon isn’t out, all you’re left with is the chorus of insects. Once the rains started, the insects died, and the moon and stars were swallowed up by storm clouds. Now, nighttime wasn’t just lonely—it was downright frightening. With no starlight and no electricity, the darkness was a powerful thing, almost solid. I’d lie in bed craving a dip, unable to see my hand in front of my face, and listen to the rain.

Izaak Walton once said the Lord has two dwellings: one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart. Well, God must have been in heaven, because the way I felt, He couldn’t have lived inside of me.

Each night, I prayed to the Lord and asked Him to let me die. I asked to be reunited with my wife.

And each night, God ignored my prayer.

The sky wept with His tears. I cried, too, but my tears were very small things when compared to those falling from the sky.

CHAPTER TWO

So—let’s get back to Day Forty-one. It’s hard to believe it was only two days ago. It feels more like two years. Like I said earlier, that’s when the earthworms invaded my carport. But something else happened on that day. That was the morning the early worm got the bird.

I reckon that’s where we better start. Trust me, I’m fixing to tell you. Everything I’ve written up to this point was just me trying to avoid talking about what really happened. But that’s not going to do us any good. And I’m afraid I might be running out of time. I need to finish this. I’ll try to make it as factual as the amount of time and notebook pages allow. As Huck Finn said in the opening chapter of Huckleberry Finn, when discussing the previous book, Tom Sawyer, “Mr. Twain wrote a little bit about me in that book, and it was mostly true, or some of it was anyhow. The truth may have been stretched a mite, but mostly it was meant to be true.”

Keep that in mind while you read this. Because you’ll probably think I’m stretching the truth just a bit.

But I’m not. This is what happened, and I swear it’s as true as I remember it to be.

You see, the rain was just the beginning.

Day Forty-one. I woke up that morning with a Roy Acuff song stuck in my head, and suffering again from nicotine withdrawal. It wasn’t as bad as on Day Thirty, when I tried to make it down to Renick, but I still felt horrible. I opened my eyes, wincing at the pain in the back of my head, right where my spine joined my skull. My jaw ached, and my mouth was dry and tasted like a baby bear cub had used it for a potty. As always, the first thing I heard was the rain drumming against the roof. It was also the last sound I’d heard before falling asleep.

My bedroom was part of that blue world that exists between night and dawn, eerie and quiet—except for the rain. I fumbled for my watch on the nightstand, knocking over a glass of water in the process. I grunted, put on my glasses, found the watch, and focused on the tiny numbers.

Five o’clock, as I’d known it would be.

I’d woken up at five in the morning every day since my retirement. A life spent in the Air Force will do that to you. You get used to a routine, and nothing, not even the end of the world, can vary it. Rose used to complain about it, but there was no curing me.

I reached for the can of tobacco out of habit, and cursed, grinding my gums when I realized it wasn’t there. I sat on the edge of the mattress, my feet on the cold floor, breath hitching in my sunken chest. I felt so helpless and alone. I looked back over my shoulder to the spot Rose had occupied next to me and I began to cry.

After a while, I stopped and blew my nose. Then I listened for my buddy outside the window. My special friend stopped by every morning. He would cheer me up, and even though the sun couldn’t be seen through the gray skies, it was near dawn, which meant he’d soon start singing.

I pulled back the shades and looked out upon the dreary world. My yard was nothing but muck. White mist obscured my clothesline and tool shed, and hid the trees marking where my yard ended and the miles of sprawling forest began. The only thing not concealed by the fog and drizzle was the big blue spruce outside my window and the robin’s nest cradled safe and dry within its broad needles. The robin was the only other living creature I’d seen in the last three weeks, except for a herd of deer I’d spied grazing down near the spring (and by that time, the spring was a small pond). They’d been wet and skinny and halfstarved, and I hadn’t seen them since. The same went for the horses, cows, sheep, and other livestock some of my neighbors kept. They’d been left behind when the National Guard evacuated Punkin’ Center, but I hadn’t seen any during my trip down the mountain and I hadn’t heard the cows mooing at night. Usually, their sound would have carried over the hills to me. Now there was nothing.

I know now what probably happened to them, but I didn’t know then.

The bird was a welcome sight. Each morning, he got me out of bed with his insistent—and very pissed off—song, crying the blues about the weather. The robin hated the rain as much as I did. He left the tree only to catch worms, and then just for a few minutes each morning. It probably sounds funny, but that bird was my only friend and contact since the power went out. Each morning, I looked forward to his visit. Silly, maybe, but then again, I was a silly old man. Rose would have no doubt had something to say about it, but Rose wasn’t there.

The bird didn’t disappoint me that morning. Like clockwork, I heard the familiar titter as he woke up. His song was hesitant at first, but then it got louder and stronger and angrier. I spied a flurry of wings within the branches of the tree and then he darted out, zipping to the ground as quick as he could, hoping to nab a worm or two and then buzz back to his nest, soaked and miserable.

“Howdy,” I croaked, my throat still dry from sleep. “Good to see you this morning. Want some coffee to go with your worms?”

He landed on the wet, spongy ground and began to peck through the mud. He glanced over at the window, and I swear he could hear me. Maybe he looked forward to seeing me as much as I did him. With a final tilt of his head, he got back to business. I smiled, watching in simple contentment as he hopped around, looking for breakfast. Furious chirps punctuated each tiny jump. I laughed out loud. He didn’t know how good he had it. At least he didn’t have to worry about nicotine withdrawal.

I stared closer at the bird. Something seemed wrong with his feathers. There were splotches of what looked like white fungus growing on his back and wings. I wondered what it was.

The pickings must have been slim that morning, because he strayed farther from the tree, almost halfway to the tool shed, looking for worms. The remaining grass in the yard and the thick, rolling mist almost obscured the robin. I pushed my glasses up on my nose and squinted, trying to track him. Suddenly, he gave a triumphant whistle and leaped at something I couldn’t see.

A moment later that chirp of victory turned into a frightened squawk, and the robin shot up into the air, his wings buzzing furiously. Something squirmed through the mud, and then burst upward after him.

I shouted from the window, wanting to warn the robin, even though he’d already seen it. The thing on the ground was hard to see amidst the rain and fog. I caught a glimpse of something long and brownishwhite. It was fast. It stretched toward the fleeing bird, and then there was empty air where the robin had been a second before.

The thing snapped back to the ground, like one of those Slinky toys my grandkids used to play with when they were little. A second later, it was gone as well, disappearing back down into the mud as if it had never been there at all.

Stunned, I closed the blinds and stood there, my hands and legs shaking in shock and disbelief. After a bit, I put my teeth in and made my way into the living room. Blue darkness had given way to the dim gray haze of dawn.

I stared at the cold and useless fireplace. I’d closed the chimney flue to keep the damp air out. It was built to keep the rain from coming in, but there was so much moisture in the air everything in the house ended up mildewed if I left it open. Above the fireplace was a mantle, made out of a wooden crossbeam taken from my daddy’s barn. It was old, like me. Also like me, it had survived numerous tornadoes and storms and hail and lightning and fires and droughts…and floods. Many, many floods.

On the mantle, my family stared back at me from their frames. I lost myself in them, trying not to contemplate what I’d just seen. Rose and I on our wedding day, and the portrait we’d gotten taken at the Wal-Mart in Lewisburg for our fiftieth wedding anniversary. She was even prettier in the second picture than in the first, taken a half-century before. Our kids: Tracy and Doug, when they were little. Next to that were snapshots of Tracy on her wedding day, her long, white veil spread out behind her on the grass, and another picture of her with her husband, Scott, taken on their honeymoon. Next to that was a photo of Doug taken in 1967, wearing his green beret, a First Cavalry patch emblazoned proudly upon his arm, just before he’d left for Vietnam.

There were no more pictures of Doug after that. That had been the last one, and I still remember the day Rose took it. I’d told Doug I loved him and that I was proud of him. He’d told me the same.

That was the last time we ever saw him. When he returned home, it was in a mostly empty coffin. The Viet Cong didn’t leave us much to bury.

There were more pictures of Tracy and Scott, Rose and myself, my best friend Carl Seaton and me with the sixteen-pound catfish we’d pulled out of the Greenbrier River eleven years ago, and the two of us standing next to the eighteen-point buck that Carl had shot one winter before old age stopped us from deer hunting altogether. Another showed me shaking the hand of our state senator while he gave me an award for being a World War Two veteran who’d lived long enough to tell about it. More numerous than any of these, though, were the pictures of my grandkids: Darla, Timothy, and Boyd.

All of them were probably dead by now, which was something that I’d been trying hard to avoid thinking about. Now it was starting to creep back in, because thinking about their likely deaths was better than thinking about what I’d just seen outside.

I got out a box of wooden matches and lit the kerosene heater. Its soft glow filled the room. I cracked the window just a hair—enough to let out the fumes, but not to let in the rain. Then I put the tin kettle on top of the heater and set the water to boiling, so I could have my instant coffee, which also was running low. My hands were trembling, partly from the arthritis and partly from the craving for some Skoal, but mostly from fear.

Although I didn’t want to, I thought about what I’d just witnessed.

The bird. It—

Rose had died of pneumonia three winters ago, quietly fading away in her hospital room in Beckley while I was down in the commissary getting a cup of coffee. Although I’d loved her with all my heart, for some time after she died, I was angry with her. Angered that she hadn’t said good-bye. That she went before me, leaving me here to fend for myself without her by my side. Rose had always done the cooking and cleaning and laundry, not because I’m some kind of male chauvinist, but because she’d truly enjoyed it. I was clueless—helpless—after her death. I didn’t clean the house for over a month. Tried to fry up some bacon and set off every smoke alarm in the house. The first time I tried to do laundry, I poured in half a bottle of detergent and flooded the basement with bubbles. Then I leaned against the dryer and cried for a good twenty minutes while the bubbles disintegrated all around me.

After that, Tracy and Scott pleaded with me to move up to Pennsylvania and live with them. Their own kids had moved out by then, leaving enough room for an old man like me. Darla was going to Penn State, studying pharmaceuticals. Timothy had moved to Rochester, New York, and was working with computers. And Boyd—well, he had joined the Air Force, just like his grandpa.

Just like me. Boy, that made me proud. He wanted to fly.

The bird. It tried to fly, and then—

The teakettle whistled, startling me. I poured hot water into my mug and spooned in some coffee crystals. I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.

What in the world was that thing? It looked like a—

Instinctively, I knew my family was dead. I can’t explain it to you, other than to say that if you’ve ever felt that too, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. I just knew they were gone—a horrible, gutwrenching feeling. With Boyd, it was more than just intuition, though. Early on, before the storms hit America, I saw the coverage of the tidal waves that took out Japan. He was based there.

Now he was stationed at the bottom of the newly enlarged Pacific Ocean, and there’d be no more Japanese radios or cars or televisions or cartoon programs for a long while.

With the other members of my family, it was just a sense of knowing, a knot of tense certainty that settled in my stomach and refused to let go. It was like having a peach pit get stuck in your throat.

It’s a terrible thing to outlive your spouse. But it’s even more horrible to outlive your children and your grandchildren. A parent should never live longer than their child. The pain is indescribable. As I said earlier, I tried not to think about it. And yet, on the morning of Day Forty-one, I kept it fresh in my mind, picking off the scabs and letting the wounds bleed. I had to.

It was the only way I could stop thinking about what happened to the robin…

And the other thing. The thing that ate the bird. It had looked like a worm, except that no worm could ever grow that big. That was impossible.

Of course, so was the weather we were having. And I was too old not to suspend disbelief, especially when I’d seen it with my own eyes.

Could I trust those eyes? I wondered about that. What if the worm wasn’t real, that I’d hallucinated it? Maybe my mind was slipping. That scared me. For someone my age, dementia is much more terrifying than giant worms.

I sat there in the dim light, sipping instant coffee from a dirty mug and craving a dip. Cool air blew in through the slip of open window. Outside, the rain continued to fall. The fog rolled in and then lifted, then drifted back in again.

I stayed there all morning. Most of my days went like that, actually. There wasn’t much else to do. Occasionally, I tried the battery-operated radio, but the empty static always made me uneasy, so I’d snap it off again. Never had good radio reception back here in the mountains. The weather just made it worse, like in the truck on my ill-fated trip to Renick. The AM station in Roanoke had stayed on the air until about the fourth week. Mark Berlitz, the station’s resident conspiracy theorist and far-right talk radio host, had kept a lone vigil next to his microphone. I’ll admit that I listened in a sort of dreadful fascination as Berlitz’s sanity slowly crumbled from cabin fever. His final broadcast ended with a gunshot in the middle of “Big Balls In Cow-Town,” an old bluegrass song by the Texas Playboys (a shame, as I’d always enjoyed their music). The song ended two minutes later, then there was silence. As far as I knew, I was the only listener to hear the disc jockey’s suicide, except for maybe crazy Earl Harper, who listened to the show on a regular basis and called in to it about every night.

I’d considered suicide as an option myself after that, but soon ruled it out. Not only was it a sin, but I also doubted I’d actually have the courage to go through with it. Certainly, there was no way on earth I could put one of the deer rifles in my mouth and pull the trigger. And I was afraid if I tried to overdose on painkillers, I’d end up paralyzed or something—paralyzed but very much alive. The thought of lying there, unable to move, and just listening to the rain was enough to convince me not to try it. But I thought about it again that morning, before dismissing the idea once more.

The morning went on and the rain continued to fall. I fooled around with one of the crossword puzzle books the kids got me last Christmas. When you get to be my age, your kin are clueless as to what to buy you for Christmas and your birthday. Since I liked crossword puzzles, that’s what they decided on. I was fine with that. It sure beat another sweater or a pair of socks.

I gummed the eraser on my pencil for half an hour, then put my teeth back in and gnawed on it, all the while trying to think of a three-letter word for peccadillo. I knew from four across, that it had an “i” as the middle letter, but I was damned if I could figure out what it was.

The coffee was bitter, and I wished for some green tea instead. Then, I sat up so suddenly that the crossword puzzle book fell to the floor.

Tea. Teaberry leaves! I’d known folks who’d quit dipping by chewing on teaberry leaves instead. It grew all over West Virginia, and I’d often picked the red teaberries growing in the woods behind my home, down in the hollow.

Cursing myself for not thinking about it sooner, I got into my rain gear and stepped out onto the back porch. The kitchen had two doors—one that led outside to the carport, and the other, which went out to the back porch. Since the back porch was closer to the edge of the forest, I went out that way.

Maybe if I had chosen the other door, and seen what was on the carport, things might have turned out differently later. Maybe I wouldn’t be writing this.

But I doubt it. I’d forgotten all about the robin at that point. The only thing my mind was focused on was the thought of finding some teaberry leaves to chew on.

I slopped through the yard. My breath clouded the air in front of me, and within minutes, my fingers and ears were cold. The fog had decided to stick around for a while. It covered everything. I could see for maybe fifteen or twenty feet, but after that, everything was concealed by white mist.

It was slow going, partly because of the weather, mostly because of my age; but I reached the edge of the forest and stepped into the trees. Under the leafy canopy, the vegetation was in better shape; the trees protected it from the constantly battering downpour. The rain beat at the treetops and dripped down on me. Wet leaves and pine needles stuck to my boots, and I went extra slow so I wouldn’t slip. It wouldn’t do to lie out here in the woods with a broken hip.

A few of the trees had been uprooted, but most still stood firm, their roots desperately clinging to the spongy ground. I noticed several of them had a strange white fungus growing on their trunks like the stuff I’d seen growing on the robin earlier. It wasn’t moss, at least not any kind I had ever seen growing on a tree. It looked more like mold, hairy and fuzzy and somehow unhealthy, sinister even.

Sinister, I thought. How can a fungus be sinister, Teddy? This nicotine withdrawal is eating away at what’s left of your mind. You’re losing it, old man. First you imagine that you saw a worm eat a bird, and now you think the moss is an evil life form bent on taking over the planet, like in a science fiction movie.

There was more of it on the forest floor, clinging to rocks, fallen logs, vines, and even the dead leaves and needles covering the ground. I was careful not to step in any of it.

Despite the havoc the weather was playing with the vegetation, I found plenty of teaberry plants growing up through the leaves on the forest floor. I knelt down to pick some, avoiding any that had that same odd fungus growing on them. As I collected the leaves, a twig snapped. City folks would have noticed that right away, but when you’ve spent as much time in the woods as I have, you don’t pay attention to every little sound the forest makes. You’ve heard it all before and know how to separate something odd and out of place from the rest of the forest’s symphony.

It wasn’t until there was a succession of snaps behind me that I turned. And stared.

My breath caught in my throat and the bottom of my stomach fell away.

A deer stood watching me from about twenty feet away; a spike buck, probably two or three years old. Water dripped from his antlers. He showed no fear or hunger, only curiosity. He looked half-starved, and his ribs showed through his wet, slick hide. But that wasn’t why I gawked at him.

The buck’s legs were covered with the same white fuzz that was on the trees. The stuff was spreading in patches along his belly and up onto his chest. It looked like it had fused with the deer’s body, eating through fur and flesh.

Stunned, I rocked slightly backward on the balls of my feet, and like a rifle shot, the deer leaped over a log and sped away, churning up leaves and twigs. As he fled, I noticed that his hind end was covered with the mold as well. Revolted, I hacked up a wad of phlegm and spat it on the ground. Then I made sure that I didn’t have any of the fungus on my skin or clothes.

I dropped the teaberry leaves back onto the ground. Whatever the fungus was, if it could spread from plant to animal, then I could probably get it from chewing the leaves in place of tobacco. I couldn’t be sure they weren’t already infected, so I scrapped the entire idea and slowly started home.

Behind me, from somewhere inside the fog, I heard another twig break. I paid it no mind, figuring it was just the buck again. But then I heard something else that definitely wasn’t a deer. A hissing noise, like the wind whistling through a partially open car window. I wheeled around and peered into the swirling mist, but there was nothing there.

Just the wind, I thought. Just the wind, whistling through the trees.

Then the wind crashed through the underbrush, sounding like a herd of trampling elephants.

After that, I hurried back to the house. At first the noise hurtled after me, but then it failed again. The memory of what happened to the robin dogged my every step. Occasionally, I stopped and listened, trying to determine if whatever was making the noise was following me. It was hard to hear it above the drumming rainfall. Something stirred beyond my line of site, but I never saw what it was—just a brown flash. At one point, I thought I felt the ground move, but I chalked it up to my imagination.

If I only knew then what I know now…

Back inside the house, I took off my wet clothes and collapsed into my easy chair. Just walking down to the woods and back had tired me out. Used to be I walked those valleys and ridges from before dawn until sundown, hunting and fishing andjust enjoying the outdoors. But those days were gone, vanished with the sunlight.

Exhausted and lulled by the soft sound of the rain, I closed my eyes and fell asleep in the chair. I dreamed about Rose’s blueberry pie.

The rain never slowed. While I slept, the wind had increased, and I woke up to the sound of a strong gust battering the side of the house. It was like the raindrops were being shot from the barrel of a machine gun. Reminded me of the war, in a way. It sounded like a hailstorm outside. I got up, looked out the big picture window, and couldn’t see more than a foot away from the house. The rain was coming down so hard now that it was like looking through a granite wall.

The wind blew the rain away from the house for a brief moment. I stared into the downpour; then I jumped back from the window.

Movement.

Something had moved out there. Something big. Bigger than the thing I’d seen earlier. And it had been close to the house. Between the clothesline and the shed.

Cautiously, I peeked outside again. There was nothing there. I chalked it up to old man jitters. Probably just a deer or even a shadow from a cloud.

I reminded myself there couldn’t be a shadow since there wasn’t any sunlight, and then I promptly told myself to shut up. Myself agreed with me. Myself then told myself that I was just a little skittish over what I’d seen happen to the bird earlier, or what I thought I’d seen. Add to that the white fungus growing on the deer and the trees, and the fact that I still didn’t have any dip, and I was bound to be a mite jumpy.

I sat back down and returned to the crossword puzzle book.

Three letter word for peccadillo, with an “i” in the middle…Three letter word…“i”…

“Oh, the hell with it!”

Exasperated, I threw the crossword puzzle book down and picked up Rose’s Bible instead. It was worn and tattered and held together with yellowed scraps of Scotch tape. It had been her mother’s and her grand-mother’s before that. I read it each day, taking ten minutes for a devotional. Like waking up at five in the morning, it was another one of life’s habits I couldn’t change, not that I’d have dared. Even with Rose gone, I knew that if I skipped a Bible lesson, I’d feel her watching me reproachfully for the rest of the day. I had no doubt in my mind she checked up on me from her place in Heaven. I opened the Bible. Reading it was like being with her again. Rose’s handwriting filled the book, places where she’d marked passages with a highlighter and jotted notes for the Bible study group she’d led every Wednesday night at the church.

A pink construction paper bookmark proclaiming For Mr. Garnett in a child’s crayon scrawl (a gift from the Renick Presbyterian Sunday School class) marked where I left off the day before, the Book of Job, chapter fourteen, verse eleven.

I read aloud, seeking the comfort of my own voice, but it sounded frail and hollow.

“As the waters fall from the sea, and the flood decays and dries up, so man lies down and rises no more. The waters wear the stones—”

Something crashed outside, and I bolted upright in the chair, yelping in surprise. I waited for it to repeat, but there was only the sound of the rain. Eventually, I stood up, the last words of the section flashing by my eyes as I shut the Bible.

—the things which grow out of the dust of the earth and destroy the hope of man.

When I looked out the kitchen window, all thoughts of the good book vanished from my mind. I yelled, shaking now not with fear, but with rage.

The rain’s pace had slackened somewhat and visibility had returned. The woodpile, previously stacked in an orderly fashion next to the shed, had collapsed. Split logs were scattered throughout my swampy backyard. It had taken me a full day to stack it, and I’d nearly worn myself out doing so. Now, kindling spilled out from beneath the blue plastic tarp I used to keep the wood dry. The tarp flapped in the wind, threatening to blow away. The mist swirled.

The firewood was already soaked. That didn’t bother me much. I couldn’t use the fireplace as long as it was raining anyway. I was more worried about the kerosene. I’d had two fifty-five gallon drums of the stuff also underneath the tarp, sitting on a concrete slab between the shed and the woodpile. I hadn’t been able to get them into the shed by myself, and there was nobody to help me move them. The tarp had seemed to be the next best thing. Now, one drum lay on its side in the mud, almost swallowed up by the fog, and the other one leaned at a precarious angle.

From where I stood, I couldn’t make out the cause of the destruction. I assumed it was the wind. Even if the worm was real, it couldn’t have done this. Could it? It didn’t matter. I had to get out there and fix it. Winter was coming, and without the kerosene, I might as well prepare to face my maker or swallow a bullet like the disc jockey.

I opened the hall closet, shrugged into my raincoat, and, with more difficulty than I like to admit, laced up my boots. My fingers were swollen from arthritis that morning, and it was all I could do to wrap them around the doorknob and turn it.

Before I could walk out onto the carport, a sheet of rain blew in through the open door, pelting my face with cold, fat drops. The wind lashed at me. Careful not to slip, I stepped onto the front stoop, my foot hovering above the concrete.

Then the carport moved.

As my foot froze in a half step, it happened again.

The concrete slab quivered just inches beneath my boot heel.

Then I noticed the stench, an electric mixture of ozone, rotting fish, and mud. That earthy aroma hung thick in the air, congealing underneath the carport’s roof. It was the smell of a spring morning after a rain shower. The scent of earthworms on a wet sidewalk.

The carport writhed again and then I understood. It was covered with worms, the concrete hidden beneath a writhing, coiling mass of elongated bodies. Small brown fishing worms and plump, reddish night crawlers. They came in various lengths, the largest as thick as a man’s thumb. It gave me a jolt, for sure. I imagined trying to bait a trout or a catfish line with one of those things, and shuddered. I damn near slammed the door.

The worms were everywhere. Literally. The carport was attached to the side of the house, and the concrete slab was big enough for the truck and the Taurus, plus an old red picnic table with chipped paint that had seen better years. The Taurus was out in the yard, covered by a plastic sheet and buried to the bumpers in mud, but the table and my banged up truck looked like islands, lost amidst a churning sea of wriggling bodies. They lay three inches thick in places, twisting and sliding through one another. Groping, glistening, blinded, slithering…

Worms.

It was the rain, of course. The rain had driven them topside, just like it always did during a storm. Only this time, every earthworm in a two-mile radius seemed to have discovered that my carport was the only dry spot left in all of Pocahontas County.

My breath fogged the air in front of me and my fingers were already growing cold. I stood there, half in and half out of the house. I couldn’t take my eyes off the worms. I probably would have stood there all day, gaping at the night crawlers with one foot hovering in the air, if I hadn’t heard the motor in the distance. The tortured sputter of a knocking rod announced Carl Seaton’s beat-to-shit, piss-yellow ’79 Dodge pickup long before it crested the hill and appeared at the end of the lane, emerging from a cloud of mist.

He careened up the driveway, tires squelching in the sodden ground while the windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm. The truck slid to a stop. Carl’s homely, pasty face stared out of the rain-streaked windows.

I stood there in the doorway, and my heart sang. Not only was there somebody else left, it just happened to be my best friend.

The engine didn’t so much quit as choke to death. Blue smoke belched from the rusty tailpipe, vanishing into the damp air. Carl rolled down the driver’s side window and appraised the situation, staring at my carport in disgust. His nose was a red-veined bulb, and his eyes looked bloodshot.

“Howdy, Teddy,” he shouted over the patter of the rain.

“Morning, Carl.”

“Boy, am I glad to see you! Figured you’d moved on by now. Gone to dryer parts with them National Guard boys.”

“Nope, I’m still here. They wanted me to leave, but I told them I was staying.”

“Me, too.” He nodded at the worms. “Looks like you’re fixing to do some fishing.”

“Just tending to my herd. I’m getting too old to raise cattle. Thought maybe I’d give worms a try instead.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “it’s pretty odd.”

He couldn’t take his eyes from the wriggling mass between us. “You think it has something to do with the weather?”

“Reckon so. My theory is that the rain’s forcing them topside.”

Carl had always had a gift for stating the obvious. In mid-July, when the temperature soared to ninety-nine degrees and the fields turned brown, Carl greeted customers to his combination post office and feed store with, “Boy, it sure is hot out there, ain’t it?”

Now he said, “Boy, that sure is a lot of worms.”

I cleared my throat and changed the subject to something more pressing. “Don’t suppose you’d have a dip on you now, would you, Carl? Or maybe some Mail Pouch or a cigarette or cigar?”

His big moon face turned sympathetic. “I sure don’t, Teddy. You out of Skoal?”

Like I said, Carl had a knack for summing things up.

“Yep,” I answered. “Ran out a few weeks back. Got me a craving for some nicotine. I’d kill for a dip right now.”

“I heard that. Wish I could help you out, Teddy. Been hankering for some caffeine myself. I run out of coffee a few days back.”

“Well, come on in.” I held the screen door open. “I’ve still got plenty of coffee left. It’s the freeze-dried stuff, but you’re welcome to have some.”

His face lit up at the news of hot coffee. He climbed out of the cab and splashed through the puddles towards the carport. Water dripped from his nose and chin. Then he skidded to a stop, looking at the worms.

“I ain’t wading through that god-awful mess. Hang on a second.”

He ran around to the back of the truck and opened the tailgate. Carl had a camper topper, so the bed itself was dry. He reached inside and pulled out a broom, holding it up like a triumphant deer hunter would hold his rifle.

“I reckon this’ll work.”

“Carl Seaton, the mighty worm slayer,” I quipped. “See that really long one over there, by the picnic table? Maybe you could mount it on your wall, right next to the black bear and twenty-four-point buck.”

Ignoring my ribbing, he cleared a path toward the door. The sluggish worms were scooped more than they were swept. The straw bristles speared some and squashed even more. Half worms, severed in the middle but still alive, squirmed and thrashed in his wake. By the time Carl reached my door, he was a bit paler than normal. But his face had a broad grin as he shook my hand. His palms were wet and cold.

“By God, it’s good to see you, Teddy.” He shook water from his head. “I’ve been awful lonely. Thought maybe I was the last one left on the mountain.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” I smiled. “It’s good to see you too.”

And it was good to see him. Damn good. I’d figured Carl was dead or long gone with the National Guardsmen and the rest of Punkin’ Center.

Carl shook a few squished worms off his galoshes. Already, they were closing ranks in his wake, crawling back over the path he’d cleared. He came inside, and I hung up his coat and rain hat, and set his galoshes by the kerosene heater to dry. Then, as I’ve done more and more in recent years, I slapped my forehead in frustration at my fading memory.

“Damn it, I’d forget my own head if it weren’t attached. Carl, make yourself comfortable. I’ve got to go back outside.”

“What’s wrong? You’ll catch a cold if you stay out there for very long.”

“I need to check on something out back. My woodpile and my fuel barrels fell over.”

“Shoot.” He stood back up and put on his boots. “I’ll give you a hand with the barrels. Besides, that ain’t nothing. My whole damned place disappeared into the ground this morning!”

“What? I saw your house on my way home about a week ago. It looked all right to me then.”

“I swear it’s true. And by the way, I saw you that day. I was sitting in the house, eating some beef jerky and listening to the rain, when I heard a motor outside. I ran to the window and saw youdrive past. That’s how I knew youwere alive. What were youdoing out, anyway?”

“Trying to get to Renick—but it ain’t there no more.”

“Flooded?”

I nodded. “Yeah, you could say that. The church steeple and the top of Old Man Laudermilk’s silo are still above water, but that’s about it.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Any survivors?”

“Not that I saw. I reckon the National Guard evacuated everybody before the waters got too high.”

Carl shook his head sadly. “I hope so.”

“Me too. So why didn’t youflag me down that day?”

“I did,” Carl said, lacing up his boots. “But you must not have seen me on account of the rain and fog. I hollered as loud as I could. Thought I was going to pop a blood vessel. But I didn’t want to leave Macy and her pups alone for too long.”

Macy was Carl’s beagle, a mangy old rabbit dog that I swear he loved more than any human being on earth.

“That why you hadn’t come to see if I was around before now?”

He nodded. “I figured you’d gone with the National Guard until I saw you in the truck. Then after that, I was gonna come check, but I didn’t want to leave her alone. Macy and her litter are all I have left. It’d be a shame to just abandon them like that. What if something had happened while I was gone?”

I shrugged. “What could happen?”

Carl’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know, Teddy. But sometimes…sometimes I heard things at night. Outside, in the rain. Macy heard them as well, and it set her to growling and barking.”

For some reason, the Bible verse ran through my head.

The things which grow out of the dust of the earth and destroy the hope of man.

“What kind of things?” I asked.

“I don’t rightly know how to describe it. Like a sloshing sound, maybe.”

“That’s just the rain.” I put my hand on the doorknob.

Carl finished with his boots. “No sir, I don’t think it was. There was something else—a sort of whistling sound. Gave me the chills when I heard it.”

I stared at him. I’d seen Alzheimer’s and dementia take some of my closest friends, but Carl didn’t seem to be suffering from it. Nor did he seem to have cracked from the strain yet. He seemed like his normal self.

Plus, I’d heard something myself that very morning. Seen it, too.

Something that looked like a dog-sized version of the worms wriggling on my carport.

“All I can say,” he continued, “is that it weren’t natural.”

“Well, I reckon you’d know. Come on and give me a hand, if you’re gonna.”

We stepped out onto the carport again. As we waded through the worms and slogged through the swamp that had replaced my backyard, Carl told me what happened next.

He hadn’t wanted to leave the house because Macy had just given birth and the puppies’ eyes weren’t even opened yet. He didn’t want to leave them alone, not even for the few minutes it would have taken to come find me. Carl had a heart like a big old marshmallow when it came to that mutt.

Carl’s house, post office, and feed store were all part of one big, ramshackle building. By the end of the second week, the dirt cellar was flooded, and by Day Thirty, the foundations had begun to creak and groan. Still, he refused to leave, wanting to be there for his hound and her newborn litter.

He’d woken up this morning at dawn; probably around the same time as what happened to the bird.

“What got you up?” I asked as we walked across the muddy yard.

“Macy was barking and howling enough to wake the dead,” Carl said. “Nothing would quiet her. And the puppies were all whining too.”

“Well, what had them so stirred up?”

“The house started shaking. I didn’t notice it at first, but the dogs did. They said on the Discovery Channel that animals know about earthquakes before they happen. I reckon this was something like that.”

“An earthquake?”

“Well, I reckon it must have been. Sure felt like one. Knocked the dishes from the cupboard, and my entertainment center fell over. Busted that big TV I bought down at the Wal-Mart last year.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said, and I was. Carl had loved that television almost as much as he’d loved his dog.

He shrugged. “There wasn’t anything to watch anyway, what with the power being out and everything. I guess those satellites up yonder are still broadcasting signals and such, but there’s nobody left to watch the programs.”

“So what did you do?” I prodded, trying to get him back on track. “You said the house sank into the ground?”

Carl’s boot sank into the mud and he pulled it free with a squelching sound. “Everything kept shaking and rattling. I ran outside to start the truck. Figured I’d load the dogs and everything else I could carry into it and come find you. Not sure why. I was scared, you know? Wasn’t thinking clearly. Don’t know what I thought you could do to make things better, but you understand?”

I nodded.

“Anyway, I’d just turned around to go back inside and get the dogs, and then…”

His voice cracked.

“Go ahead, Carl.”

“Then the whole structure collapsed. It just sank into the ground. My house, the dogs, the store, the barn, the big old oak tree in the backyard that still had the tire swing dangling from it, even the lamppost. It all vanished in seconds, swallowed up by the ground. The dirt was so wet that there wasn’t even a cloud of dust or anything. It just all went down into the earth.”

“Gone?” I was stunned.

“Gone. The mud just swallowed it up. I reckon it was a sinkhole. Maybe the earthquake opened it up. Must have built my place right over one, and it’s been there all these years. Mike Rapp’s house down yonder is full of them, and I’m just a little ways up the hollow from him.”

I considered the possibility. West Virginia was notorious for sinkholes, especially in the southeast portion, where we were. They dotted every hill and pasture in the county, and the mountains were riddled with limestone caverns, quarries, and old mines.

“I heard Macy,” Carl whispered. “She was howling and whimpering down under the ground. The hole had collapsed in on itself. The walls had sealed it up. But I could still hear her, very faint, underneath the dirt. And then she was quiet. I started to dig with my hands, but the mud kept falling in. There wasn’t nothing else I could do, and I felt so…”

His face crumbled, and he started to cry. Big tears rolled down his weathered, leathery face. His shoulders trembled and his breath hitched in his chest.

“She’s dead, and there wasn’t anything I could do to help her.”

I wanted to comfort him, but I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. Carl and I weren’t the type to hug each other. We weren’t in touch with our feminine sides and I dare say we weren’t metrosexuals. Men of our generation hadn’t been raised that way.

I did the only thing I could. I put my hand on his shoulder.

He dried his eyes.

It was enough.

We walked to the woodpile, and I thought about sinkholes and wondered if my place could be built over one.

But what we found after sloshing to the woodpile was no sinkhole.

It was something much worse.

And it was just the beginning…

CHAPTER THREE

“My God,” Carl muttered. “That must have been one hell of a big groundhog.”

I didn’t reply. Grunting, I strained to lift the kerosene drum upright again. Carl came out of his stupor long enough to help me. Getting old is no fun, plain and simple. Fifteen years ago, it would have taken us a minute to lift that drum, but now it took several minutes and lots of puffing and straining between the two of us.

Exhausted, we both stared at the hole.

“You know something?” I panted.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t think this was a groundhog at all.”

“A fox?”

“No. Look at it, Carl. It’s too big for a critter.”

Something had dug a tunnel beneath the woodpile, as groundhogs and other burrowing animals are apt to do. But if an animal had made this, then it was at least the size of a large sheep.

I knelt down in the rain, my knees sliding in the mud, and stared at the yawning cavity. There were no piles of dirt, as if something had burrowed up to the surface, and there weren’t any claw marks or scratches in the mud to indicate that the hole had been dug from above ground. There was just a dark, round hole, easily five feet in diameter. The walls of the fissure glistened with a pale, almost clear slime.

“What do you figure it is, then? What did this?” Carl asked.

The things which grow out of the dust of the earth and destroy the hope of man.

“I don’t know.” Still kneeling, I reached out and touched the side of the hole. The odd slime clung to my fingers. Grimacing, I held my hand up and let the rain wash the milky substance off. I raised my fingers to my nose and was reminded of something I hadn’t thought of in years.

It smelled like sex. Youknow, that fishy almond odor that is always around in the bedroom afterward? That’s what this reminded me of. An otherwise sweet memory, dimmed with age and now twisted with this new significance. It’s the same smell youcan find drifting in the air on a rainy day after the worms have crawled out to claim the sidewalks. The same thing I’d smelled when I first discovered the worms on my carport.

Carl sniffed. “Something smells funny. Have you been eating sardines today?”

“It’s this stuff. Why don’t you try some? See what it tastes like.”

“No thanks. I think I’ll pass. What’s it feel like?”

“Snot, like a big old wad of mucous.”

Carl’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “I don’t reckon you’d better fool with it anymore. Might be some animal’s spunk for all we know.”

“But what kind of animal?”

Carl shrugged and started stacking the kindling back onto the pile. Then he wandered around the corner of the tool shed, informing me that he needed to take a piss.

Staying crouched over, I looked at the hole and remembered the robin and the thing I thought I saw. Had it eaten the bird or had I imagined it? I kept running over it in my mind. Maybe I was the one getting Alzheimer’s. You’re probably thinking that I’m obsessed with the disease, seeing as how I wondered if Carl had it too when he told me about what happened at his place. But I’m not obsessed. It didn’t run in my family, but when you’re my age, it scares you just the same. When your body goes, your memories are the only things that you have left. The only things you can truly call your own. Your memories are your life, and if you lose them—or worse yet, if you can’t trust them anymore—then I figure it’s time to lie down in a pine box and let them throw the dirt over you.

I thought about it some more and decided that I was pretty sure I saw the whole thing. And that scared me. Scared me even worse than the possibility that it was all a symptom of dementia. Because worms that big just didn’t exist. And they sure didn’t eat birds.

“We ought to be getting inside now,” I said, trying not to show the fear creeping over me.

“What’s that?” Carl hollered. He came back around the corner, shaking his limp, shriveled penis, and stuffed it back into his pants. The rain started to come down harder and thunder rolled out of the forest, obscuring what I’d said.

My knees popped as I rose to my feet. My joints were screaming, unused to the exertion I’d just put them through with the barrels. I cupped my hands over my mouth, shouting over the thunder and the drum of the raindrops pounding the leaves.

“I said that I think we should—”

Another blast of thunder boomed over the mountains, closer now. Hidden beneath it, I imagined I heard a muffled thump coming from inside the tool shed.

I hobbled over to Carl and said, “I reckon we should get inside. We’re gonna get pneumonia if we stay out here much longer.”

“I suppose you’re right. I’m soaked clean through to my skivvies.”

We slogged back to the house and got out of our wet clothes. I hung them up to dry, lent Carl some clean drawers and a pair of pants and a shirt, then fixed us each a cup of coffee. We sat in the living room, making small talk and letting the hot mugs warm our cold hands. Carl, still the master of stating the obvious, confirmed that it was indeed some weird weather we’d been having. The weather had always been one of his favorite topics, so I figured he was really in his element now.

He rubbed his arthritic knees and winced. “Boy, I hate being old.”

“Me too. You ever look at a photo of your younger self and wonder where he went to?”

“Shoot,” Carl snorted. “These days, I’m lucky if I can remember him at all.”

I rubbed my sore biceps. “Picking those barrels up wore me out. I don’t know what I’d have done if you weren’t here to help.”

Carl nodded. “I’m pretty tuckered out myself.”

“The coffee will wake you up. It’s strong stuff. You could strip paint with it.”

He glanced down at the coffee table, where my crossword puzzle book and a pencil were lying.

“Doing one of your crosswords, are you?”

“Yep. But I’m stuck. I don’t suppose you’d know a three-letter word for peccadillo?”

“Peccadillo—isn’t that the name of that young fella who wrote those Westerns? The ones with the pregnant gunslinger and the escaped slave and all that?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh. Well, then I’m stumped. Never much cared for those books either, to tell you the truth.”

He droned on while I wondered why God had seen fit to make Carl and myself the only survivors. I was dying for some good conversation, craving it almost as bad as the nicotine.

“So, have you heard from or seen anybody else?” I asked.

“Nope. No one. Punkin’ Center’s like a ghost town. I did hear an airplane about a week ago, though. Sounded like one of those little twin-engine jobs. I ran outside to have a look, but I couldn’t see anything by then, on account of the cloud cover. And one day, when the fog lifted for a bit, I spotted a helium balloon. I waved my arms and tried to get their attention, but it was a long way off. I don’t reckon they saw me.”

I blew on my coffee to cool it, and then drained the mug in one swallow. “Well, at least that means there’s still folks alive somewhere.”

“There’s got to be,” he agreed. “I stopped by Lloyd Hanson’s place a while back, because his dairy cows were mooing up a storm. He wasn’t there.”

I thought about the missing livestock I’d noticed. “But the cows were?”

“Not all of them. I reckon a bunch of the herd wandered off somewhere. But the ones inside the barn…it was awful, Teddy. Their udders had swollen up and busted since nobody was around to milk them. Most of them were dead, of course, or dying.”

I shuddered. “I haven’t seen any animals other than some deer and a robin. The pastures have all been empty.”

“Maybe they got loose? I’m sure the ground is wet enough in some places that the fence posts probably fell over.”

“Could be.” But I wasn’t sure if I believed that. Images of the robin flashed through my mind. I considered telling Carl, but didn’t. I was afraid he’d tell me I really was crazy. Same reason folks don’t tell their friends when they see weird lights in the sky.

Carl sat his coffee mug down on a coaster. “There was a hole in the middle of the pasture. Another sinkhole, I imagine. Maybe his herd fell through that.”

“One cow, maybe. But the entire herd? They’re cows, Carl, not lemmings.”

“Those little penguins that jump off cliffs together? I don’t think we have those in West Virginia, do we?”

I fixed another cup of coffee and bit my tongue.

“How about you?” Carl asked. “Have you seen or talked to anybody since the evacuation?”

“No one. Like I said earlier, until today, I thought I was alone. Nobody has stopped by. I wonder if there’s any other folks left on the mountain?”

“I’ll bet crazy old Earl Harper’s alive,” Carl said. “Ain’t no way those National Guard boys got him to leave.”

I snickered. “I reckon so. He was liable to put up a fight if they asked him to.”

“Think we ought to go check on folks? Drop by some houses and see if anybody’s still around?”

I hesitated, remembering my ill-fated trip down the mountainside. It was dangerous for men our age to drive these back roads, especially when the roads were slick with rain, washed out in places, and covered with downed trees and loosened boulders.

“I don’t think it’s too smart for us to go gallivanting around with conditions the way they are. But I guess maybe we should at least look in on Earl. Make sure he’s okay. His shack ain’t that far away.”

Carl’s eyes grew wide. “I don’t want to go messing around the Harper place, Teddy. We say howdy to Earl, and that lunatic is likely to shoot us for trespassing.”

“He might, but we should still make an attempt. It’s the Christian thing to do. What if he’s sick and needs help, or what if he’s out of food? He could be lying out there with a busted leg or something. If it were us, we’d want somebody to show up and help.”

“But he ain’t us.”

“All the more reason to show him a kindness.”

Carl sighed heavily. “I’m telling you, Earl Harper’s liable to shoot first and thank us for our kindness later. But I guess you’re right. He is the closest after all. Him and the Simmonses.”

“Dave and Nancy?” I asked. “Surely they’re long gone by now.”

Carl nodded. “Yeah, they probably are. Didn’t look like no one was home when I drove by.”

“Well, let’s get this over with.” I pushed my chair back and stood up.

Carl’s eyes got big. “Now?”

“Yeah. We’ll check on Earl, then come back and eat supper.”

We finished up our coffee, shrugged back into our rain gear, and slogged back out to Carl’s truck. It coughed to life, shot blue smoke from the tail pipe, and rattled and rumbled the whole way out the lane. Carl had a cassette player in the truck, and we listened to Johnny Cash sing about Sunday morning coming down. I always liked that song, but now the lyrics took on a sinister new meaning.

“Damn wiper blades need changing,” Carl muttered, squinting through the rain-streaked windshield.

I nodded, lost in thought. Goose bumps ran along my arms and neck, both from the dampness in the air and the sound of the Man in Black’s low baritone grumbling out of the speakers. He’d always had that effect on me, especially after his death.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Carl said. “What you thinking about, Teddy?”

“Death,” I told him. “I’m thinking about dying.”

“Dying ain’t much of a living, boy,” Carl said.

After a moment, I realized that he was quoting Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales, one of his favorite movies.

“Maybe not, but that’s what’s on my mind.” I wiped condensation off the window with my sleeve.

“Well, that’s not very cheerful. Why do you want to be thinking about something like that?”

“Because when you’re our age, what else is there to think about? Especially now?”

Carl was quiet for a moment, his brow furrowed in thought. Then he smiled and said, “The Andy Griffith Show.”

“What?”

“The Andy Griffith Show. You asked what else there was to think about. I like to think about The Andy Griffith Show and Hogan’s Heroes. And Barney Miller, too. They always make me laugh.”

I agreed that they were among television’s greatest comedic achievements, but thought Carl was missing the point.

“There aren’t going to be anymore reruns of Andy Griffith or Hogan’s Heroes, Carl.”

“They could always do another one of those reunion shows, couldn’t they?”

“Who would watch it? Who’s left to make the damn thing? It’s over. Everything is gone. The world’s gone! There’s not going to be any more television programs or movies or books or Johnny Cash tapes. Don’t you understand? Are you that stupid?”

His face darkened. “Ain’t no reason to call me stupid, Teddy.”

“I’m sorry. Really, I am.”

Carl took the next turn a little too sharply, and our shoulders bumped into each other.

“That’s okay,” he sighed. “I reckon we’re both stressed.”

“Maybe, but it still didn’t give me the right to call you that.”

He grinned. “Hell, we both know I’m dumber than a stump.”

I snickered.

Still laughing, Carl turned the defroster off and on, trying to make it work. “So this is the end of the world?”

“Well, something’s gone wrong. This rain surely ain’t natural.”

“But there’s got to be other survivors, don’t there? People like us?”

I shrugged. “Sure, sitting huddled together high on a mountaintop, watching the waters rise higher and higher all around them. They’re just biding their time, same as we are. We’re just biding our time until something else happens.”

“Like what? Things are pretty bad. I don’t see how they could get worse.”

“Death. Drowning. Heck, I don’t know. Forget about it. I’m sorry. It’s just the weather, is all. It’s getting me grumpy. Makes my arthritis act up.”

“Mine too. I always wanted to live to be old, and now that I’m here, I wonder why I ever wanted such a thing.”

I nodded in quiet agreement.

He drove around a big bale of wet hay that had rolled out into the road. “What do you think caused it, Teddy?”

I shrugged. “Global warming? Though I heard some scientists on TV saying the ice caps hadn’t melted. Maybe a magnetic shift at the poles? Or a comet…or something like that? I don’t rightly know. We’ve been messing with this planet for too many years now. Could be that old Mother Nature has finally decided to fight back.”

“Yeah, but the good book says that He promised not to do it again, and God would never go back on His word.”

Thunder crashed in the skies overhead and the rain pelted the roof of the cab like thrown stones. The wind hammered into the side of the truck, forcing Carl to swerve.

“Well,” I said, “maybe the Lord got tired of us breaking our promises to Him, so He decided to break one of his own.”

Carl whistled, a low and mournful sound. “Rose sure wouldn’t stand to hear you talk like that. She’d have a fit.”

“Rose isn’t here, and to be honest, I’m glad she’s not. Breaks my heart to say that, but it would break my heart even more to watch her suffer through this—this mess.”

“Can I ask you something, Teddy?”

“What?”

“Well, you and Rose always knew the Bible better than most, especially when it came to all that prophecy and end-of-the-world stuff. I never understood all that; what with the little horn and the big horn and the lake of fire and the trumpet. But the world wasn’t supposed to end in a flood, was it?”

“No.” I shook my head. “It wasn’t. We were supposed to get a great beast, and I haven’t seen one yet.”

“Well, maybe the beast will be along before this is all over.”

“That’s not even funny, Carl.”

We continued on down the road, and I saw something out of the corner of my eye—or rather, I didn’t see it. I told Carl to stop.

“What is it?” He put the truck in park.

“Steve Porter’s hunting cabin.”

Carl wiped condensation from the window. “I don’t see it.”

“That’s right.”

He tilted his head. “What’s right?”

“You don’t see it.”

“Teddy, are we doing an Abbott and Costello routine here, or what?”

“No.” I pointed to the empty, muddy field. “You don’t see Steve’s cabin because it’s not there any longer.”

Carl scratched his balding head. “But that’s the spot where it used to be. What are you saying, Teddy?”

I fought to keep the impatience out of my voice. “I’m saying it ain’t there no more. The cabin is missing.”

Carl’s jaw dropped. “Well, I’ll be…”

We both stared at the vacant field, not sure what to make of it. Steve Porter’s cabin had sat far in off the road, right next to the tree line. It was hard to tell through all the rain, but it looked like there might be a sinkhole there. There was a depression where the cabin had been.

Carl must have noticed the sinkhole, too, because he said, “I reckon it must have collapsed into the ground, same as my place.”

“Could be.” I nodded. “At least we know there was nobody inside. Steve doesn’t use that camp except during deer season. This time of year, he works in Norfolk.”

“They got flooded out pretty quick,” Carl noted. “Guess Steve won’t be coming around to use it this year.”

“No, I don’t reckon he will.”

We continued on our way. Carl didn’t say much, and I figured he was focused on staying on the road. I stared out at the rain and the mist because there was nothing else to look at.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” I finally said. “With all this rain, you’d think it would do something to the atmosphere.”

“How so?”

“Well, I’m not sure what exactly. But it would seem that a storm this prolonged would affect the oxygen balance or something. Course, I’m not a scientist.”

Carl pumped the brakes, bringing us to a slow, sliding halt in front of Dave and Nancy Simmons’s place. He stared out the driver’s side window.

“Why are we stopping again?” I asked. “Dave and Nancy’s house is still standing.”

“Yes, it is.” Carl squinted through the driver’s side window. “But that’s not what I’m looking at.”

“Well, what are you looking at?”

“I didn’t notice it before when I drove past earlier, but their door’s open.”

“What?”

I looked at the house, and sure enough, the front door was wide open. The screen door hung crooked, swinging back and forth on one hinge and banging into the aluminum siding. Every new gust of wind blew sheets of rain into the living room. Dave’s truck and Nancy’s Explorer both sat in the driveway, buried up to their bumpers in mud. Dave and Nancy were good folks. Dave worked as a corrections officer down at the prison in Roanoke, and Nancy worked part-time at the telemarketing place in White Sulphur Springs. They were a young couple, early thirties and married for about five years. No children. Both of them had been awfully good to Rose and me over the years, and secretly we’d thought of them as our adoptive kids. Dave had helped to shovel snow in the wintertime and Nancy had come over to socialize with Rose at least once a week before she’d died. She’d come to visit me, too, after Rose was gone. They both had.

Last I’d heard from them was when Dave called to check on me about two days before the National Guard showed up. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed them until now.

Carl put the truck in park and left the engine running. The wipers squeaked on the windshield. “You reckon they’re still at home?”

“I doubt it. They probably evacuated just like everybody else. More likely that a strong gust of wind just blew the door open.”

“Dave would have locked that deadbolt tight before they left. I can’t see the wind undoing the lock.”

I considered this. “Then maybe it was looters or someone looking for valuables that got left behind after everybody evacuated.”

Carl nodded. “Or maybe it was Earl.”

“Well, one thing’s for sure.” I reached for the door handle.

“What’s that?”

“We’re not gonna find out by sitting here.” I opened the passenger door and stepped out into the rain. Cold drops pelted my face, blinding me for a moment, until I wiped them away.

Carl grabbed his 30.06 from the rifle rack behind the seat, worked the bolt, made sure it was loaded, and then followed along behind me. I wished I’d brought a gun along, too. Even a handgun would have been comforting. A pistol is primarily a weapon that buys youtime to get back to the rifle you should have been carrying in the first place, but both of them will make a man dead. And both provided comfort in times like this.

Mud had replaced the grass in Dave and Nancy’s front yard. Our boots sunk into the muck, making loud squishing noises. Carl got stuck halfway to the house, and when he tried to pull free, his foot came out of his boot. His sock was dirty and soaked by the time he got his foot back inside.

I crept up the porch, carefully taking the wet steps one at a time so I wouldn’t slip and fall. Last thing I needed right then was a broken hip. I also didn’t want to give away our presence, just in case there actually was somebody still in the house.

Carl clomped along behind me seconds later, shattering the silence I’d worked so hard to maintain. I shot him a dirty look and then peeked inside the home.

My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. Goose bumps prickled my neck and arms and my fingers grew numb. There was an awful, empty feeling in my stomach.

“Good Lord…”

Carl pressed against me, craning his neck to see over my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

I walked into the living room and stepped aside. When I did, Carl gasped, and the rifle shook in his hands.

The house, or at least the parts we could see, had been destroyed. The sofa was tipped over, the cushions shredded and leaking their stuffing. The television stand and the bookshelves had collapsed and piles of movies and paperbacks lay in scattered heaps across the floor. All of it was drenched. The coat rack and the antique coffee table were in splinters.

Everything was covered in a thick coat of pale, white slime, and the air stank of that same peculiar fishy smell. Shuddering, I tried breathing through my mouth, but I could still taste it—the stench was that thick. It was like trying to breathe sardines.

“What happened in here?” Carl asked.

I shook my head, then called out for Dave and Nancy. The only answer was the hiss of the rain.

We walked across the living room, broken glass crunching beneath our boots. I entered the dining room. The table had fared even worse than the furniture in the living room, and the hutch had been knocked over, shattering the glassware and dinnerware inside. More slime covered everything. I gagged at the stench.

Carl prodded a pool of the stuff with the barrel of his rifle. It slowly dripped off the blue steel.

“What is this stuff, Teddy?”

“I don’t know. It looks and smells like the stuff we found in that hole back at the house. But that don’t tell us much.”

“Could it be some kind of toxic waste?”

I shrugged. “If so, where would it have come from? No, I reckon this is something else.”

He grabbed a dishrag from the sink and wiped the barrel. “You think Dave and Nancy are all right?”

I spotted something splattered across one kitchen wall.

“No.” I pointed. “I don’t think they are.”

A splash of red covered the eggshell-white plaster at waist level. I knew what it was, but my own morbid curiosity got the best of me, and I drew closer to make sure. Blood. My knees popped as I knelt down and examined the floor. Nancy’s wedding ring sparkled in the dim light. It too was covered in blood.

“That’s Nancy’s isn’t it?” Carl asked me, and for a moment I wasn’t sure if he was asking about the ring or the blood. But I guess they both were.

“Yeah,” I whispered, “I think it is.”

“What do we do now?”

I stood up. “Let’s get out of here. There’s really nothing we can do.”

“But they might be hurt. Nancy could still be around here somewhere. All that blood…”

“It’s dried. Been here for a while, by the looks of things. And see how wet the living room floor is, from all the rain blowing in? Mold is growing on the walls. The house has been wide open for some time.”

Carl frowned. “That still don’t tell us what happened here.”

“I don’t know. But it looks like they ignored the evacuation order and stayed behind.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Dave would have never left his truck behind. You know how much he loved that Chevy. So that tells me that they were here after the National Guard evacuated everybody, at least. But something’s happened since then. Whatever it was, it doesn’t look good.”

“Could Earl have done this? Or scavengers? Maybe those no good Perry kids?”

“I reckon anything’s possible.” But deep down, I didn’t believe any of those things had happened. A roving band of looters didn’t leave behind a trail of slime. Neither did the Perry kids, or even Earl Harper. The Perry kids did things like blow up mailboxes with M-80s and catch sunfish at the pond and then put them in your swimming pool. This was beyond them. And Earl…well, much as I disliked the man, I couldn’t see him doing this. The ransacking of the home was pointless and shocking. Not even Earl Harper would have gone that far.

We searched the rest of the house, but it was more of the same. Every room was destroyed and covered with trails of slime, like a herd of giant snails had slithered over it. There was no sign of Dave or Nancy, nor was there any more blood.

I thought about my dwindling supplies back at the house, found a cardboard box in the closet, and loaded it up with canned goods from Nancy’s pantry: applesauce, green beans, corn, peas, peaches, tomatoes, pickles, relish, squash, beets, and deer meat (I’d never much cared for the taste of canned venison, but at this point, beggars couldn’t be choosers). She’d canned them all herself, as most folks in these parts did. I also took some dried goods that hadn’t been opened, a couple boxes of wooden matches, a few dog-eared paperbacks, and a six-pack of bottled spring water. There was plenty of fresh water falling from the sky, but I didn’t relish the thought of drinking it just yet.

Carl found the key to Dave’s gun cabinet and took a box of 30.06 shells. I searched for some tobacco—cigarettes, cigars, chew—it didn’t matter what, or a pack of that gum for people who want to quit smoking, but the house was nicotine free, and I gave up in frustration, cursing a blue streak.

I fished out my wallet and left some crumpled bills on the kitchen counter, along with a note explaining what we’d taken, but I didn’t really expect that Dave or Nancy would ever return to find it.

My eyes kept coming back to that stark splash of blood.

We closed the door behind us as we left. Then we plodded back to the truck, climbed in, wiped the water from our faces, and continued on our way.

The dirt lane leading to Earl’s shanty was a river of mud. Carl decided not to chance it. Instead, we parked the truck and got out. Barbed wire indicated the property line. An old, weather-beaten fence post had a homemade sign nailed to it that said:THIS IS PRIVAT PROPTERYKEEP OUT!! THAT MEANS YOUTRESSPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SITE

Earl was never much for spelling or grammar. Wasn’t much for social skills, either. I remember about ten years ago, when he suddenly decided to get himself some religion. Rose used to teach Bible study every Thursday night at the church, and Earl started showing up, sitting in the back and glowering at everyone. Most of us just ignored him, but Rose was delighted. She viewed him as another one of God’s lost lambs coming in from the cold and made it her personal mission to tell Earl Harper the good news of Christ’s sacrifice.

One night, we were talking about love and how the Bible commands us to love everybody and offer each a chance to worship the Lord. Earl, who hadn’t said a word for weeks, stood up and declared, “I’ll tell you folks something. There’s three types of people in this world that I won’t love. The first is the queers. The second is the niggers. And the third is the Jews.” Then he sat back down again, having said his piece.

Apparently, he realized that his contribution to the dialogue might have ruffled some feathers, because the next week, he showed up again and clarified his statement. “I reckon I should explain myself a little better. I got to thinking about it this week, and I guess I don’t believe that we should forbid folks from coming to church. But maybe we could have a pink row of pews in the back, and the queers could sit there. Then we could have a row in front of that one, painted black, for the niggers. And one painted green for the Jews, since they love money. I reckon that would be okay, and that way, I wouldn’t have to sit with them if I didn’t want to.”

After that, we asked Earl not to come to Bible study anymore. He didn’t take that very well. See, while you might be chuckling at his ignorance, or shaking your head, Earl had been serious. He really thought his recommendations would be acceptable.

But now I’ve gone and started rambling again. I’m wearing this pencil down to a nub (I keep sharpening it with my pocketknife) and we’re not even halfway done yet. And the pain is getting worse.

Anyway, Carl and I stood there on Earl’s property, staring at that hand-lettered sign. Splotches of the white fungus I’d seen in the hollow grew on the trees along the lane. Carl reached out with his finger.

“Don’t touch that stuff,” I warned. “You don’t want to get it on your skin.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure, but I saw it growing on a deer this morning. Can’t imagine it’s too healthy.”

Carl shuddered. “No, I don’t reckon it is. Hope it’s not airborne.”

We turned away from the fungus and stared up at Earl’s shack.

“I still don’t think this is such a good idea,” Carl whispered.

I didn’t reply. I was thinking about that bloodstain on Dave and Nancy’s wall, and the weird slime that had covered everything.

And about missing houses and buildings swallowed up by the earth.

And about what I’d seen happen to the bird earlier in the morning.

I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold or dampness in the air.

We trudged through the mud towards Earl’s shack. The clearing was deathly still. Even the rain seemed to fall without sound. We were about halfway there when an explosion split the air. At first, I thought it was thunder. Then Earl Harper shouted, “Stop right there, you two, or I’ll blow your goddamn heads off!”

He emerged from the trees, dressed in combat fatigues and a floppy-brimmed rain hat and pointed a twelve-gauge shotgun at us. Smoke still drifted from the barrel. He was soaked, and I wondered how long he’d been outside.

“Howdy, Earl,” I tried. “Let’s just settle down now. We don’t mean you no harm.”

He glanced at the rifle in Carl’s shaking hands and motioned with the shotgun.

“If you don’t mean no harm, Teddy Garnett, then turn right around and head back the way you come.”

“We just wanted to see how you’re holding up,” Carl explained, carefully pointing his rifle away from Earl. “Ain’t no call to shoot at us, Earl.”

“And there ain’t no fucking call to be trespassing on my property, neither, Carl Seaton.” Earl’s eyes were wide, and his wet face seemed to shine. “You’ve seen me, and seen that I’m all right. Now get on out of here!”

“Listen now, Earl,” I said, fighting to keep my voice calm. “We’re fixing to leave in just a second. But I need to ask you something important first.”

“What?” He kept the weapon pointed at me, and his expression was suspicious.

I stared down the barrel of his gun, and felt my nuts tighten. “Have you seen or heard from Dave and Nancy Simmons within the past few days?”

“No. I ain’t seen them. Not that I’d want to anyway. Why?”

“We just stopped by their place. It looked like there might have been a struggle. I’m worried about them, and just wondered if you might have heard anything.”

His eyes narrowed and his grip tightened on the shotgun.

“You accusing me of something, Garnett?”

“Not at all. Just worried about them is all, and you’re their closest neighbor.”

“I ain’t seen nothing of them, but I’ll tell you this. Whatever happened to them will happen to you fellas too. You just wait and see.”

Carl frowned, and the rifle twitched in his hands. “What are you talking about?”

“There are things in the ground, turning under our feet, crawling through the maze beneath the earth. I hear them at night. They speak to me, and tell me things.”

I froze. Carl shot me a wary look.

“I—I think maybe I’ve seen them too,” I said. “What are they, Earl? Do you know?”

“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t.” He smiled. “But I ain’t interested in discussing it with you, Garnett. Reckon you’ll find out soon enough. Now you two get out of here. I mean it!” He jacked the shotgun.

Carl and I kept our eyes on him and slowly backed away. I stepped in a puddle and cold water soaked though my sock.

Earl began to laugh. “You look like a pair of drowned rats!”

“Nice seeing you again, Earl,” Carl muttered. “Take care now!”

“You boys think it will rain today?” Earl called.

Carl leaned towards me and whispered, “I told you so. He’s crazier than a copperhead in a mulberry bush on a hot day in July.”

I nodded. “I already said you were right. Let’s go.”

But Earl wasn’t finished. “Y’all thought I was senile. Crazy! Talking about me, whispering behind my back down at the Ponderosa and your precious church functions. But you’ll see. Here’s the proof! I warned you about the government’s HARP project. Weather control. Heard about it on the radio. Tried telling you, but you just fucking laughed, didn’t you? Well, I guess I’m the one laughing now, ain’t I?”

“You take care, Earl.” I waved. “We’ll be heading on home now.”

He fired another shot into the air and ejected the shell. It landed in a rain puddle. Wisps of lazy smoke curled from the barrel.

“I see either of you skulking around here again and I’ll blow your fucking heads clean off your damn shoulders. Ain’t nobody gonna take what’s mine, goddamn it!”

Carl pointed his rifle up into the air and held his free hand out, the palm facing Earl. “You don’t have to worry about that. Not that there’s anything here worth taking anyway.”

Earl scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean, Seaton?”

“Meditate on it for a bit, why don’t you. You’re a bright one. I reckon you’ll figure it out.”

“Carl,” I hissed. “Quit antagonizing him. Let’s just get out of here.”

“Don’t you come back, either,” Earl warned. He faded into the trees like a ghost, but we could feel his eyes on us, watching as we trudged down the lane.

We made it back to the truck in one piece and climbed inside. The heater warmed us while we got our pounding pulses under control. Then Carl pulled away as fast as he could, spinning the tires and spraying mud and gravel all over Earl’s homemade sign.

“Well, the rain certainly hasn’t helped his disposition, now has it?” I joked.

Carl shook his head. “No, I don’t reckon it has. I told you this was a bad idea.”

“I know you did. And you were right. How many times you gonna make me say it?”

“Sorry. But boy, he was fired up. What the hell was that all about, anyway? A maze underneath the earth and such?”

“I’m not sure. Earl was always a crazy son of a bitch, but now…”

Carl’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel harder. “You think he killed Dave and Nancy?”

I hesitated, considering the possibility. “I would, but you saw the house for yourself. Earl’s not as old as us, but he’s no spring chicken, either. I don’t think he’d have had the strength to do all that damage. Then there’s all that slime, and…”

Carl turned towards me. “And what?”

“I saw something earlier this morning, before you showed up. Something odd.”

“What was it?”

“Well…I—I think it was a worm.”

“Oh Lord, Teddy, that’s nothing. I saw them worms all over your carport too. Sure, that was peculiar, but it ain’t worth carrying on about.”

“I’m not talking about that. This was earlier, just after dawn. I couldn’t see it very well, on account of the rain and fog, but…”

“But what?”

“It looked like a worm, but it couldn’t have been. It was too big. There’s no worm on earth that big.”

“I saw a picture once, in an issue of National Geographic. One of those native Bushmen fellas was holding up an eight-foot-long night crawler. Gave me the willies something awful. Of course, that was in Africa or some such place, not in West Virginia.”

I didn’t reply. We drove on in silence, both of us lost in our own thoughts. Carl whipped around a fallen tree limb and turned into my lane. As we drove through the hollow, I looked out on the flooded pasture and froze.

“Carl, stop!”

He slammed the brake pedal and the truck fishtailed, skidding to a halt.

“Take a look at that.” I pointed out the window.

In the middle of the pasture, amidst the water puddles and mud, was a hole much bigger than the one in my backyard. A trenchlike track marked where something had slithered out of it and crawled away through the mud. It looked like the marks a snake would make—if the snake were as thick as a cow.

“Something weird is going on, Teddy. That ain’t a normal hole.”

“Anybody ever tell youthat you’re the master of understatement?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” I sighed. “Let’s just go have a look at that track. Best bring your rifle.”

We stepped out into the rain again and walked into the pasture. We hadn’t gone five steps before we sank into the mud up past our ankles.

Carl pulled his foot free with a loud sucking sound, and shook the mud off of it.

I chuckled. “At least you didn’t lose your shoe again.”

“This is no good, Teddy. We’re gonna get stuck out here.”

Reluctantly, I agreed with him. I took one last look at the hole and noticed the rainwater was running down inside it. Already, the walls of the hole were collapsing. I thought about Steve Porter’s missing hunting cabin again and what had happened to Carl’s house.

As long as it doesn’t get closer to mine, I thought.

“Let’s go on home and get dry,” I said, slogging back to the truck. “I’ll fix us some dinner. And I reckon you’d better sleep here, on account of your house caving in and all.”

Carl looked grateful. “That’d be good. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, and I was hoping you’d offer. I sure do appreciate it, Teddy.”

I waved my hand. “Don’t mention it. That’s what friends are for. Can’t very well let you sleep outside in the rain. Besides, it’ll be good to watch each other’s backs.”

“You mean from Earl? You think there’s gonna be trouble?”

I nodded. I did think Earl Harper was going to be trouble. But I was thinking about other things as well. I was thinking about that white fuzz I’d seen in the woods and what I’d heard crashing around after me. I was thinking about holes and bloodstains and trails of white, glistening slime that smelled like sex.

And worms. I was thinking about worms.

Worms big enough to eat a bird.

I was thinking about the things that grow up out of the dust of the earth and destroy the hope of man.

CHAPTER FOUR

For the second time that day (well, the third for me, and the second for Carl), we shrugged out of our wet clothes and put on some dry ones. Lucky for him we were about the same size and he could pull stuff out of my closet. Our boots were soaked clean through, and I cranked up the kerosene heater and sat them next to it to dry out. Then, while Carl propped his bare feet up and flipped through a four-month-old copy of American Sportsman, I fixed us dinner in a pot on top of the heater: a hodge-podge stew of canned deer meat, beans, carrots, tomatoes, and corn. The aroma filled the house, and both our stomachs grumbled in anticipation. My mouth was watering.

I brought the battery-operated tape player into the living room and put on some music, one of those compilation tapes you could buy at the Wal-Mart for a dollar, with bluegrass and country music for old folks like us. When the stew was ready, we ate in silence, listening to Porter Wagoner’s “Misery Loves Company,” Marty Robbins’s “El Paso City” (the version from the 70s, rather than his 50s song “El Paso”), Claude King’s “Wolverton Mountain,” the Texas Playboys’s “Rose of San Antoine,” and Henson Cargill’s “Skip A Rope.” Carl joined in with Waylon Jennings for a trip to “Luckenbach, Texas” and wailed about getting back to the basics of love while I suffered and wished for some cotton to put in my ears. He sounded like a cat in a burlap sack that had just been tossed into a pond after being dragged across a hot tin roof. For an encore, Carl sang along with Jack Green on “There Goes My Everything,” and I finally told him to be quiet and eat his supper. He did, accompanied by burps and slurping noises.

Despite his terrible singing voice and even worse table manners, it felt good to have him there. I hadn’t realized just how lonely I’d been until his arrival. I was surprised that we didn’t talk more during that dinner. For the last few weeks, Carl only had his dog to talk to and I’d been conversing with myself. You’d think we would have been a pair of Chatty Sarah dolls, but we weren’t. The only sounds we made were the grunts and sighs of contentment when we’d finished. I guess we didn’t need to talk. It felt good just to have somebody there with me. To know that there was somebody else still alive.

Carl pushed his empty paper plate away and let out a window-rattling belch.

“Liked it, did you?” I asked.

“My compliments to the chef. So, what do you think happened to all the folks that got evacuated? All of our friends, I mean? Where did they go?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they took them to White Sulphur Springs.”

White Sulphur Springs had once been the site of the underground Pentagon. I don’t know if that’s what it really was, but that’s what the locals called it. It was a government base carved into the limestone beneath the mountains; an impregnable, indestructible concrete and steel bunker that supposedly would be used to house our elected officials in case of a nuclear war. Vice President Cheney had gone there on September 11^th, when the country came under attack. They had bunkers like that all over the country back in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, before Ronald Reagan won the Cold War; back when Iraq was still our friend and George Bush, Sr. was attending cocktail parties with Saddam Hussein. I knew of one near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and another in Hellertown, Pennsylvania, and a third in Gardner, Illinois. And then there was the NORAD base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. But the one in White Sulphur Springs was ours, and we had a strange pride about it, even after it was decommissioned and opened up to tourists. Of course, Earl Harper said it wasn’t really decommissioned and was now being used as an advance staging area for United Nations security force invaders. But then again, Earl said the same thing about Fred Laudermilk’s grain silo down in Renick.

Carl undid the top button of his pants and patted his stomach. He sighed with contentment. “That was a fine meal, Teddy. Best I’ve had in quite awhile. I’m fit to burst.”

“Glad you liked it. If we ever run into Nancy again, we’ll have to compliment her on her canning abilities. Most of that was food I took from her cupboard.”

“I reckon so.”

“We’ll have the leftovers for breakfast. And I won’t even make you do the dishes.”

Carl looked around the kitchen. “What have you been doing with the paper plates, anyway?”

“Throwing them outside.”

“But Teddy, that’s littering!”

I pointed to the window. “Do you think it really matters at this point?”

“I guess not. Don’t suppose Smoky the Bear will be showing up anytime soon.”

He was right about one thing, though. It had been a good meal. Damn good. And now I was craving some tobacco again. I think the nicotine desire is at its very worst after you’ve eaten.

To distract myself, I cleared the paper plates and Styrofoam bowls from the table and put them in the trash. I’d been carrying the garbage bags down to the tree line once a week, and tossing them into the forest. Broke my heart to do so because, like Carl had said, it was littering. But I couldn’t just let it pile up inside the house, and burning it outside like I used to do just wasn’t possible anymore.

Carl rubbed his arthritic knee. “So, if the National Guard took all those folks to White Sulphur Springs, you reckon we should make our way there too?”

“You still got that old bass boat we used to take down the Greenbrier?”

He shook his head. “No, I sold it to Billy Anderson for fifty bucks and few rolls of hay.”

“Sounds like you ripped Billy off.”

“He didn’t have no complaints.”

“Well, without the boat, I don’t know how we’d make it. Truthfully, I doubt there’s much left in White Sulphur Springs, anyway. Remember, it’s in a valley.”

“You reckon that it’s underwater then?”

“Not one hundred percent sure, mind you, but yeah, I would guess so. I’m pretty sure everything else is flooded, except up here on top of the mountain.”

“So it’s just us. And the waters are rising.” His voice sounded very small and quiet. And afraid. It echoed the same hopelessness I felt deep down in my heart.

“No.” I tried to smile. “It’s not just us. We’ve still got Earl to keep us company. Reckon he’ll come over and apologize for his rude behavior?”

Carl made a face like he’d just bit into a lemon, while Skeeter Davis sang to us from my little stereo. She was singing about the end of the world.

Time passed. It was a good night—the first good night either of us had enjoyed in a long time. I lent Carl a pair of my pajamas and hauled out the deck of cards. We stayed up late playing poker and blackjack and war and hearts, and switched back and forth between the country music tape and the radio dial, hoping against hope to hear something other than static.

But we didn’t. Just the white noise of dead air and the rain coming down outside.

Always the rain.

We talked a lot—about our missing friends and cars and politics and football, and how there probably wouldn’t be any of those things anymore. I think that was what really brought it all home to Carl; how he wouldn’t be able to watch another West Virginia Mountaineers game next season. We talked about hunting and fishing victories of the past, of our glory days before we got married, of our wives and women we’d known before our wives, and eventually the war.

We both grew pretty maudlin after that, and when Carl farted, it broke the tension like a sledgehammer through glass. I laughed till I thought I’d have a heart attack, and Carl laughed, too, and it felt good. It felt real.

We talked late into the night, bathed in the soft glow of the kerosene lamp. I whooped Carl’s butt at cards.

The two things we didn’t talk about were what we’d seen earlier at Dave and Nancy’s house and the holes that we’d found. The wormholes, as I’d taken to thinking of them, even though God had never made worms that big.

We went to sleep long after midnight. I fixed up the bed in the spare room, and gave Carl an extra flashlight so he could see his way around. Then I went out on the back porch and pissed. The rain had backed up the seepage bed, making the toilet useless, and I didn’t feel like making the hike to the outhouse.

It was pitch black outside, and I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I thought I heard a wet, squelching sound from somewhere in the darkness. I froze. My breath caught in my throat and my penis shriveled in my hand like a frightened turtle. But when I cocked my head and listened again, all I heard was the rain.

Shivering, I shook myself off and hurried back inside. I made sure the door was locked, and then I double checked it.

On my way down the hall to my bedroom I stopped at Carl’s door to make sure he didn’t need anything else. I raised my fist to knock, then paused. His voice was muffled, and at first, I thought he was talking to somebody. Then I realized Carl was singing Skeeter Davis’s “The End of the World.”

“Don’t they know it’s the end of the world? It ended when you said good-bye.”

His crooning still hadn’t improved. Carl sounded like a cat with its tail plugged into an electrical socket, but it was the most beautiful and sad thing I’d heard in some time. A lump swelled in my throat. Instead of knocking on the door, I shuffled off to bed. I climbed under the blankets and lay there in the darkness, craving nicotine and missing my wife.

It was a long time before I slept.

When I finally did, Rose came to visit me.

In the dream, I woke up to find that the house had flooded. Everything was underwater and my bed floated on the surface, gently rocking back and forth. The water level grew higher, and my bed rose with it. I had to duck my head to keep from hitting it on the ceiling. The bed swayed. I hollered for Carl, but he didn’t answer. I shifted on the mattress, and the sudden movement caused the bed to tilt, spilling me into the water. I plunged downward to the carpet and opened my eyes.

Rose stared back at me, as beautiful and lovely as the first time we’d met. Her nightgown floated around her, the same one she’d been wearing when she died.

She opened her mouth and sang. Each word was crystal clear, even though we were underwater. That’s just the way it is in dreams.

“I can’t understand, no, I can’t understand how life goes on the way it does.”

Skeeter Davis. She was singing the same song that Carl had been singing before bed.

“I miss you, Rosie,” I said, and bubbles came out of my mouth. But despite that, I wasn’t drowning.

“I miss you, too, Teddy. It’s been hard to watch what you’re going through.”

“What? An old man, fooling with crossword puzzles and trying to figure out a three-letter word for peccadillo? Afraid to go out into the rain because he might catch pneumonia? Yeah, I reckon that would be hard to watch. Must be pretty boring.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. Don’t you know it’s the end of the world?”

“No, it’s not,” I told her. “It ended when you said good-bye, Rosie. Just like in the song.”

“It’s going to get worse. The rain is just the beginning. They’re coming, Teddy.”

“Who is coming? What do you mean? The worms? I thought maybe I was going crazy.”

If she heard me, she didn’t give any indication. Instead of answering, she swam forward and kissed my forehead. Her lips were cool, soft, and wet. I’d missed them, and I wanted that kiss to last forever.

“They’re coming,” she repeated, drifting away. “You and Carl need to get ready. It’s going to be bad.”

“Who’s coming, Rosie? Tell me. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“The people from the sky.”

“What?”

She suddenly bent over, clutching her stomach.

“Rosie? Rose! What’s wrong?”

Convulsions racked her body, and her abdomen swelled as if she’d suddenly become nine months pregnant. I swam to her, but it was too late. She looked up at me, her eyes wide with panic, and vomited earthworms into the water. They exploded from her mouth, swimming around us. More of them slithered out of her nose and erupted from her ears and the corners of her eyes. Beneath her nightgown, in that magical place that only I had known, the place that had given birth to our children, something squirmed.

“They’re coming, Teddy. They’re coming soon!”

The earthworms wriggled through the water towards me.

I opened my mouth to scream, and this time, the water rushed in, choking me. With it, the worms slid down my throat.

I woke up clutching the sheets and still trying to scream. My mouth was open wide, but no sound came out. It felt like I was drowning, just like in the dream. My heart thundered in my chest and my lungs exploded with pain. I fumbled on the nightstand for my medicine, popped a pill, and waited for my pulse to stop racing. I was glad for the pills, but they were almost gone, and I wasn’t sure how I’d get more.

My pajamas were drenched with sweat, and both the mattress and the sheets were damp. At first I thought I’d wet myself, but it was just perspiration. I shook my head, trying to clear it.

The last few wisps of the nightmare ran through my mind. I wondered what it all meant and decided that it was just my subconscious getting rid of the trash from the day; thoughts of Rose and Carl’s rendition of the Skeeter Davis song and the worms from the carport. But knowing that didn’t ease my fears. Even then, I refused to consider the other things I’d seen. My brain just didn’t want to accept the weirdness of it. Probably a defense mechanism of some kind.

After a bit, I sat up and lit the kerosene lamp. Rose’s picture stared at me from the nightstand. I picked it up and cradled it in my arms, thinking about how we’d met.

In 1943, my sister, Evelyn, and her husband, Darius, owned a five-and-dime store down in Waynesboro, Virginia. Rose and Evelyn were good friends, and she was staying with them and working at the store. Meanwhile, I had been stationed in Panama and Gal—pagos for ten months, and I came home that April for a seven-day leave. My visit was unannounced. I figured I’d just show up and surprise everybody. I took the train from Norfolk to Waynesboro and got there just after sundown. Darius, Evelyn, and Rose were sitting down for supper when I knocked on the door, looking pretty sharp in my dress uniform, if I do say so myself.

Darius and Evelyn were happy to see me and they made a big fuss. Rose kind of sat there quietly in the background until things settled down, but I saw her right away. The first thing I noticed when we were finally introduced was her smile, and the second thing was her eyes. That was all it took. Just one look into those eyes and I fell in love. Folks these days (what’s left of them) may scoff at the notion of love at first sight, but I’m here to tell you that it really happens. It happened to Rose and me.

We communicated with each other that evening through stolen glances, but that was all. There was no real opportunity for us to talk. The next day, Darius and Evelyn gave me a ride to Greenbank, where my parents lived. I told Rose good-bye and that I was glad to have met her. As she shook my hand, I thought that I saw a special look, a message just for me (and later on, I found out that I was right). We piled into Darius’s truck. As we drove away, I was surprised to find myself feeling lonesome and sad because I didn’t expect to see Rose again. My plans were to catch the train in Greenbank after my leave was up and then head on to Tucson, where I was supposed to be stationed next.

After a short visit with our folks, Darius and Evelyn returned to Waynesboro. I spent the night in my old bedroom, but I couldn’t sleep a wink. All I did was lay there in my familiar bed and think of Rose. I couldn’t get her out of my head. By dawn, I knew what I needed to do. The next morning, during breakfast, I told my parents all about her and what I’d made up my mind to do. They understood, and I spent the day hitchhiking back to Waynesboro. Once again, I arrived after sundown, and when I knocked on the door and saw Rose, my heart sang. I’d been worried she might not be there.

I asked her out to a movie that night and she said yes. Neither of us had any idea what film we saw. To this day, I couldn’t tell you what it was. We sat in the back row and pretty much had the place to ourselves. We never looked at the screen. Instead, we talked the whole time. After the movie was over and the lights came up, we walked home very slowly under the full moon and talked some more. We were awake until one in the morning, but before I said good night I kissed her good-bye.

Holding her picture, I thought about that kiss, and of the next day—the first time I told her that I loved her, and how she’d whispered it back to me, her breath soft and sweet in my face.

I love you…

One week later, I wrote her a letter and asked her to marry me. She said yes. The rest, as they say, is history.

In the darkness, the rain splattered against the roof and windows. Lying back down, I stared at the ceiling, listening to the rain until I finally drifted off again.

I dreamt of Rose again, but this time we were walking down that lane under the same full moon. We stood there and we kissed—one long, lingering moment that lasted until the dawn.

“I love you,” she whispered, and the sun was shining bright and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.

CHAPTER FIVE

The next day—yesterday—was Day Forty-two. That’s when the people from Baltimore fell out of the sky.

I woke up the same time as always, still tired and groggy from the dreams about Rose. The bedroom was hot and sticky, and my pajamas clung to me. The weather had sent the humidity climbing. The extremes in temperature were just another weird effect of the constant rain. One moment it was sweltering and the next you needed a sweater to keep warm.

As usual, I reached for my dip out of habit and grumbled when it wasn’t there. But I cheered up when I heard Carl moving about in his room. I’d forgotten he was here; his presence was a comfort.

My body creaked and groaned as I climbed out of bed. I rubbed the stiffness from my joints and slipped into my old faded bathrobe. It was ripe enough to stand up on its own, so I reminded myself that I would have to do laundry in the washtub pretty soon. The washtub was an antique; it had belonged to my mother. I’d taken it after she died—sentimentality. But now that the power was out, it came in handy.

Other than the sounds drifting from Carl’s room and the endless droning of the rain, the house was quiet. I listened for the bird and then I remembered what had happened the day before. After that, my good mood soured again.

Carl must have heard me moving about. He came out of his room and we greeted each other sleepily. He looked tired, and I wondered if he’d had bad dreams, too. If so, he didn’t mention it and I didn’t ask. But there were dark circles under Carl’s eyes, circles that hadn’t been there yesterday, and his face looked drawn and haggard.

I went outside to pee, and while I stood there yawning, I noticed the earthworms were still on my carport—now at least a foot deep. The image of the worms in my dream came to me then and I shivered, forcing it from my mind.

I closed my eyes and listened to the rain. Then I went back inside.

We had leftover stew and instant coffee for breakfast, and when we were done, I fooled with the crossword puzzle book a little more, still trying to think of a three-letter word for peccadillo.

“It has to stop sometime,” Carl mused, watching the rain from the living room’s big picture window. “I mean, it can’t rain all the time, can it? The Lord wouldn’t allow something like that.”

I gummed my pencil and tried to concentrate.

“Teddy?”

“Hmm?”

“What if it don’t stop? You ever think about that? What if the rain just keeps falling?”

“Then it’s going to be a mighty rough winter. Can you imagine what will happen once the temperature drops below freezing and all this water turns into snow and ice?”

“No, I hadn’t thought of that. As bad as things are right now, I reckon that would be worse.”

“Probably best not to think about it.”

But now he had me considering the possibility. I tried to imagine all the moisture in the air turning to snow. It would be a blizzard, the type of which hadn’t been seen since the Ice Age. The house would be covered within days, and after that…

There lay madness. Rather than thinking about it, I returned to the crossword puzzle. Carl picked up an old issue of Field & Stream and thumbed through it.

It occurred to me that another Ice Age might occur anyway. Yes, there was still sunlight somewhere above the cloud cover. I knew this because there was a silver disc where the sun would normally be. But would the clouds and fog continue to block the sunlight? What would happen then?

I shivered.

“I’m guessing that the toilet don’t work?” Carl asked.

“Yep,” I nodded. “If you’ve got to take a dump, you’ll have to use the outhouse. Just don’t sit in the spider webs.”

Carl frowned. He hated spiders.

“Okay. I’m going to go sit on the throne for a spell.”

“Have fun. Don’t let anything bite you on the behind.”

“That’s not funny, Teddy.”

Carl put on his raincoat and boots, grabbed an umbrella and slogged outside with the magazine rolled up and tucked under his arm. I got up, wiped condensation from the kitchen window, and watched him make his way across the swampy yard. He was hurrying, so I figured he had to go bad.

But five minutes later, he was moving even faster when he burst through the kitchen door, dripping water onto my linoleum.

“Teddy!” he gasped. “You better come quick. There’s something in the outhouse!”

“I told you there were spiders.”

He shook his head, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

“Groundhog?” I’d had a problem last summer with them burrowing beneath the outhouse and shed.

Carl swallowed hard. “No, it’s not a varmint. I’m not sure what it is, but it sounds big. Just come look, damn it!”

I shrugged into my rain gear and followed him outside in annoyed resignation. The humidity had dropped again. The air was chilly, and the mist seemed to cling to my face. Even still, the fog wasn’t as heavy as the previous day, and I could see a little better. I noticed that my apple tree was leaning at a forty-five degree angle, the soil around it too wet for the roots to keep their purchase. Rose and I had planted that tree together when it was just a little sapling, and the sight made me sad.

We reached the outhouse, and Carl suddenly stopped.

“I don’t see anything,” I said.

“Open the door and have a look inside.”

I approached it cautiously, but didn’t hear or see anything unusual. I steeled myself and flung the door open. The hinges creaked. I stuck my head inside. There was that faint odor common to all outhouses, and I thought I caught a hint of that strange smell from the day before—the fishy stench. But it was muted. Other than that, everything seemed normal; two holes, three rolls of toilet paper, a bucket of lime to dump down in the hole, a can of aerosol disinfectant, and a lonely spider web hanging in the upper corner.

I stepped back outside. “Yep, that spider sure is scary. Big, hairy sucker. I’m glad you called me out here, Carl. Give me the magazine and I’ll kill it for you. Then you can get about your business and I can go dry off.”

“There’s no need to make fun of me, Teddy. I’m telling you, I heard something inside. It sounded big.”

“Well, there’s nothing in there now. Take a look for yourself.”

He didn’t move. “It was down underneath—you know, beneath the outhouse.”

“In the pit?”

Carl nodded.

I stepped back inside and stared down into the holes. And then I saw it.

Well, actually, I didn’t see it.

If you’ve never been in an outhouse, I reckon I should explain how they work. When you build an outhouse, you start by digging a pit. You make it as deep as you can—usually at least ten or fifteen feet. Then you construct your outhouse over the hole. The toilet itself goes right over the pit, so that when you do your business, your waste has somewhere to go. You sprinkle a bit of lime down the hole to aid in the waste’s eventual breakdown and to cut down on the smell. But every time you look down that hole, you’ll see an indicator of your previous visit: a congealed pile of urine and feces and toilet paper.

That’s what I wasn’t seeing. It wasn’t there anymore. The waste pit was gone. There was nothing—just a black, seemingly bottomless hole, certainly deeper than the original pit I’d dug. Something had tunneled up beneath the outhouse, and decades worth of foulness had drained down into the trench and vanished from sight.

“Well, I’ll be,” I whispered.

“What is it?” Carl asked. “What do you see?”

“I’m not sure. Remember the holes from yesterday?

Out by the woodpile and in the field?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve got another one.” I stepped back outside. “Something dug a hole underneath the outhouse and took a really nasty bath.”

“Where does the hole go?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure not gonna crawl down inside and see. No thank you, sir.”

We stared at each other while the rain soaked through our clothes.

“Teddy, what the hell is going on? What kind of a critter makes a hole like that?”

“I don’t—”

A blast of thunder cut me off, and we both jumped. A second later, another blast followed. There was no lightning in the sky.

That’s not thunder, I thought. Somebody was shooting. Heavy caliber, by the sound. Another blast rolled across the hills.

“Did you hear that?” Carl asked me, still a master of asking the obvious.

I put my finger to my lips. “Listen.”

There was something else, over the gunshots—a thrumming sound, growing louder and closer.

Carl stiffened. “It sounds like—”

A helicopter exploded through the treetops, seesawing wildly as it roared overhead of us and swooped towards the empty field.

“Maybe it’s the National Guard!” Carl shouted above the noise. “They finally came to get us!”

My spirits lifted. It looked like we were saved.

We waved our arms and shouted at the top of our lungs, but the helicopter continued away from us. It looked like it was in trouble. Black smoke billowed from its engine.

Another gunshot rang out, and then a figure emerged from the forest. It was Earl Harper, still dressed in his combat fatigues and looking like a crazy, drowned rat. Just as mean, too.

He hollered something unintelligible, raised the rifle, sighted through the scope, and squeezed the trigger. There was a flash of light and smoke, followed by another blast. Then he lowered the gun and ran towards us.

“Good Lord,” Carl grunted. “What’s he gone and done now?”

I couldn’t answer him. I felt numb, and my feet were rooted in the mud.

Carl picked up a length of dead wood—a thick fallen tree branch—and held it at his side like a club. I just watched the helicopter in stunned disbelief.

It veered to the left and then to the right, as if the pilot were flying drunk. It pitched back toward a grove of pine trees and away from of the field, then shot upward again. The engine whined.

“I hit it,” Earl cackled as he ran up to us. “I got the bastards! Didn’t I tell you? A black fucking helicopter! It’s just like they talked about on the Coast-to-Coast AM show. I warned you all. God damned U.N. invasion troops!”

The helicopter swerved back over the field again. Smoke now poured from the engine in a thick cloud. Earl sighted through the scope again and squeezed off another shot. The gun bucked against his shoulder. Visibility was poor because of the rain and I wondered how he could hit anything, but he did. The fleeing chopper plummeted from the sky like a stone. There was no explosion or big orange fireball like in the movies. Never is. There was just a sickening crunch as metal collapsed and shredded and the whirring blades tore into the earth. The engine sputtered.

Then there was silence, followed seconds later by the sound of people screaming.

Then silence again, except for my harsh breathing, Carl’s asthmatic wheezing, and the quiet click of Earl reloading the gun.

And the rain in the background, of course. Always the rain.

None of us moved. We just stared at each other. Earl pulled more ammo from his pocket and slid them into the gun.

Carl gripped his club tightly. “What the hell is going on, Earl?”

“I got them,” Earl whispered, a grin splitting his grizzled face wide open. He worked the rifle bolt and trudged toward the twisted, smoking wreckage. So intent was his approach that he didn’t see Carl sneak up behind him with the length of wood. Earl didn’t suspect a thing until Carl cracked him in the back of the head.

Earl dropped to the ground with a groan, his face sinking into the soggy mud.

Carl looked up at me, his face shocked. “You don’t suppose I killed him, do you?”

“Not with that hard head of his. But pull his face out of the mud so he doesn’t drown.”

While Carl did that and checked Earl’s pulse, I grabbed the rifle from where it fell. Then we loped toward the crash site. I clutched the gun so hard that my knuckles turned white. Carl picked up another fallen branch and held it out in front of him like a sword.

“Oh, those poor people,” he murmured. “You reckon anybody is alive in there?”

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

The stench of scorched metal hung thick in the air.

Carl bent over, coughing. “Good Lord…”

“You gonna be okay?” I asked him. “Because I need you here with me right now.”

“I’m all right. Just been a while since I saw something like this. Since the war. I’d forgotten how the adrenaline rush can make a man sick. I’m fighting it off.”

“Me too,” I said, even as the bile rose in my throat.

Black, oily smoke twisted from the crash site, but there was no fire. The weather had taken care of that. It certainly didn’t look like a helicopter anymore. Bits of wreckage lay scattered across the field. The cockpit rested at the end of a deep trench gouged into the mud. It was this piece we approached. It had split in half. One section contained something unrecognizable—wet and red, with steam rising off of it. It wasn’t until Carl began to retch behind me that I realized what it was.

The pilot. Or what was left of him. I’d seen the worst acts of human butchery during the war; seen living, breathing men reduced to nothing more than piles of shredded, smoking meat, seen the black stuff bubble out from deep inside their bodies—but it had been a long time.

This brought it all back. Carl knelt on the ground, mud squirting through his clenched fists, and threw up his breakfast.

The pilot must have been wearing his seatbelt, and that was what killed him. He was cut into sections, horizontally from his left shoulder and down across his chest to his right hip, and then severed in half again at the waist. His legs and groin remained in a sitting position on the gory seat, along with a steaming loop of gray intestines and splattered feces. His other two pieces had fallen to either side. His innards were spread across everything. As we watched, one length of intestine slithered off the seat like a snake, and plopped into the mud.

It reminded me of a worm.

Carl wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a brown smear of mud across his face. He rose unsteadily. His face was stark white.

I found the pilot’s head lying in the mud. His lower jaw had been sheared off, and rainwater pooled in his vacant eyes. I bent down and closed them.

“You okay?” I asked Carl.

He spat onto the ground. “Yeah. I’ll be fine. Like I said, it’s just been a long time since I’ve seen something this bad. Tell the truth, I’d hoped never to see it again.”

“I know what you mean. I thought things like this were behind us now, in our old age.”

Carl gagged, and then covered his nose with his hand.

“You sure you’re okay?” I asked again.

“I—I’d forgotten what it smells like. Blood and people’s insides.”

The stench had gotten into my lungs as well and it was making me sick. I fought it off, trying to keep my head. My body ached, reminding me that I was no superhero, just an old man who’d been out in the rain too long.

I turned around to check on Earl. He was still lying in the mud, unconscious.

“We’re gonna have to deal with him,” Carl said.

I nodded.

There was a groan behind us. We turned and found an old man, probably about our age, lying on the ground and bleeding in a puddle. Carl knelt to examine him and the man moaned, sputtering as the cold rain showered him. His shirt sleeve had ridden up and I caught a glimpse of a black, faded tattoo on his bicep—a pair of anchors and a U.S.N. logo. He’d served in the Navy, whoever he was.

“Who—” he began and then broke off, seized by a great, racking cough. He sprayed blood and spittle all over Carl’s raincoat.

“You just lay back and rest, mister,” Carl assured him. He glanced up at me and then down at the man again. I followed his gaze to the man’s leg. Just below the knee, a jagged piece of bone, covered with pink bits, sprouted from his khaki pants. Arterial blood jetted from the wound, turning the rain puddle beneath him a rusty color. The man didn’t seem to notice. He lay back as Carl had told him to. Then he began to shake, his eyes rolling and teeth clenching.

“K-Kevin,” he hissed. “S-Sarah? G-got t-t-to get…it’s in… in the water. Th-the Kraken!”

“What’s he saying?” Carl asked me.

“He’s in shock,” I said. “Get your belt around his leg, or he’s gonna bleed to death right here in the field.”

Someone else cried out from the other half of the wreckage. I noticed a petite, bloodstained hand adorned with long, peach-colored fingernails. I stared at them in fascination, marveling that only one nail had broken.

I realized that I was going into shock myself, and I jumped when Carl called out to me.

“Get them out of there, Teddy.” Now he was okay and I was the one starting to lose it.

I shoved a piece of steel out of the way and clambered over the frame to where the hand was. I cleared the wreckage and found it was attached to a pretty young woman with long blond hair, sprawled beside a bloodied young man. Both of them were probably in their mid to late twenties, and they seemed unharmed, except for deep cuts in his forehead and shoulder, and the woman’s broken nail.

They both blinked at me with big, round, horrified eyes.

“Howdy.” I tried to smile.

“We—Are we alive?” the man asked, bewildered.

“You are, indeed,” I said. “Must be lucky, I guess. Are you hurt?”

“Th-there was a man,” the woman stammered.

“Some son of a bitch was shooting at us,” the man said, then noticed Earl’s rifle in my hands. “You! It was you!”

The woman whimpered, throwing her hands up in front of her face.

“Now hang on there,” I said softly. “Just hang on a minute. It wasn’t me. The fellow that was shooting at you is my neighbor, Earl Harper. He’s a crazy cuss, and I apologize for that. But the important thing now is to get you folks out of this weather and into safety. Are either of you hurt?”

The young man shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“My head hurts,” the girl complained. “But I’m okay.”

I gave them both a cursory check, and looked at her pupils for signs of a concussion, but they both seemed all right. When I turned to check on Carl, I caught a hint of movement out of the corner of my eye. It was just at the edge of the forest, where the field grass met pine trees and the gray light met darkness.

Carl didn’t seem to notice.

“What are we going to do about this one, Teddy?” he asked.

The man on the ground grabbed Carl’s shoulder. Carl jumped in alarm.

“I c-can’t f-feel my l-legs,” the older man gasped. “What’s ha-happened? I can’t f-feel my damn legs.”

“Salty,” the woman cried out. “Are you okay?”

“S-Sarah,” the old man answered. “Is that you, girl?”

I was surprised that he was still conscious. He’d been gushing blood, going into shock, and having a seizure, yet despite this, he remained awake. Hardy stock, I guess. That’s why they call us the greatest generation.

The young man and woman climbed out of the wreckage and I helped them hobble over to Carl and their friend.

When the woman, Sarah, saw the bone poking through his torn flesh, she screamed, burying her face in the young man’s chest. The one on the ground, Salty, looked at her in puzzlement, and then glanced down at his leg. When he saw what had happened, he began to scream, too.

“My leg! The damn bone’s come out!”

I motioned to the younger man. “What’s your name, son?”

He eyed the rifle suspiciously and then met my stare.

“Kevin. Kevin Jensen, out of Baltimore.”

He sounded tired—and old. Were I to have guessed, I’d say he felt as old as me. I wondered what he’d seen in the past few weeks (other than this helicopter crash) to make him sound that way.

“Nice to meet you, Kevin. Let’s start over, okay? My name is Teddy Garnett, and my friend over there is Carl Seaton. We’re the Punkin’ Center, West Virginia, welcoming committee. We don’t mean you any harm. You folks have been shaken up, that’s for sure, but we’re here to help you.”

Salty’s screams of pain had turned to whimpers again. He was fading in and out of consciousness.

“Somebody shot at us,” Sarah said. Her expression was one of disbelief.

“Like I said, that was my neighbor, Earl Harper. I’m real sorry about that. He figured you folks were the United Nations occupying force or some such nonsense. Earl wasn’t wrapped real tight before any of this happened”—I waved my hand at the sky above us—“and I’m sure it hasn’t helped his mind at all. In fact, the weather probably made him worse.”

Kevin glanced around in a daze. “Where’s Cornwell?”

“Who?” I asked.

“Cornwell. Our pilot. Did he survive?”

“I’m afraid not.”

I glanced at the wreckage of the cockpit and Kevin started toward it, but Carl pulled him back.

“You don’t want to see that, son.”

I stared at the ground as Sarah began to sob, her tears indistinguishable from the raindrops on her cheeks.

Carl broke the silence. “Let’s get—”

Something cracked in the woods—loud, like another gunshot. I think we all jumped, and Kevin screamed. The noise was followed by the sounds of wood snapping and splintering as a tree crashed to the ground. The echoes rang through the air. I thought about my apple tree and how it was slowly being uprooted. Then I thought about the strange holes we’d found.

“Look.” I grabbed Kevin’s arm. “We need to make sure Earl can’t cause us any more trouble, and then we need to get your friend…” I snapped my fingers, trying to remember his name.

“Salty,” Sarah said. “His name is Salty.”

“Salty,” I nodded. “We need to get him inside and check you folks over. You’re probably in shock right now. Carl and I are going to go take care of Earl and fix up something to safely move Salty with. Carl’s stopped the blood flow, but if we don’t sew him up soon he’ll be dead for sure. You folks stay here with him until we get back. Make sure that belt around his leg stays tight.”

More snapping and popping came from the forest. That’s when I really started to get scared.

“What’s that in the woods?” Sarah asked.

“Probably just some deer,” I assured her, “scared from the crash and all the shooting.”

Carl gave me an odd look but said nothing.

I handed Earl’s rifle to Kevin. “You know how to use this?”

His face darkened for a moment and he got a strange look in his eyes. “I had a crash course on guns not too long ago.”

“Good. Take this one.”

I think he saw in my eyes that something was wrong, because he said, “You’ve seen them, haven’t you?”

“Seen what, son?”

“The things from below. You’ve got them here on dry land too, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Kevin, but yeah—I think I heard something out there. We all did. Don’t know what it is, but I don’t like the sound of it.”

He glanced back at the tree line and then, without a word, escorted Sarah over to Salty.

I checked the injured man’s makeshift tourniquet, and then Carl and I waded toward the shed.

“Teddy, do you really think we ought to be moving that old fellow? He’s hurt pretty bad.”

“Actually, I don’t.” I answered him in short gasps, winded from the last few minutes of exertion. “But I don’t see how we’ve got a choice. If we move him, there’s a chance we may hurt him even worse than he is now. I don’t reckon there are any doctors around these parts to treat him, and I’m not sure what we can do, other than sew him up with a needle and thread. But if we leave him out here, he’s going to die for certain of pneumonia.”

“So what do we do? What’s the plan?”

“Well, I reckon we’ll get some duct tape from the shed and some kindling from the woodpile and make a splint. Then we’ll get the wheelbarrow and haul him right up to the house, after we pop that bone back into place.”

Carl looked queasy at the prospect of setting the splintered bone. “You know how to do that?”

“Not really.”

“But we’re gonna try anyway?”

I sighed. “Let’s be honest here. No matter what we do, this Salty fellow is probably going to die. He’s lost a lot of blood, and even if we do manage to reset the bone and sew his leg up, we don’t have anything here to fight the infection. He could get gangrene. But we still have to try.”

“We could amputate,” Carl suggested. “Cut it off and cauterize the wound, like they do on television.”

“Do you honestly think you could do that, Carl?”

“No. I don’t reckon I could.”

“Me neither.”

“What about Earl?” he asked. “He ain’t going to be happy when he finally wakes up. I knocked him a good one. Not to mention we helped these folks from the United Nations.”

I stopped in my tracks. “Carl, do you really think those poor people back there are U.N. invasion troops? For God’s sake, the helicopter wasn’t even black.”

Carl’s wet ears turned red. “No, I guess not.”

“Let’s just lock Earl up in the shed, till we figure out what to do with him.”

“He ain’t gonna be happy about that, either. He’s liable to be madder than a porcupine in a pickle barrel.”

I smiled. “At least he’ll be dry.”

Earl lay where we’d left him, unmoving. He’d thrown up muddy water all over himself. I checked his pulse and felt it beating beneath his cold, wet, liverspotted skin. Carl grabbed his legs and I tugged his arms, and we dragged him through the mud to the shed door. As we did so, I noticed the hole next to the woodpile that we’d discovered the day before had caved in. All that was left was a big depression in the earth.

Carl fumbled with the rusty top latch on the door. It clicked open, and he bent to undo the bottom one. Suddenly, I recalled the muffled noise I’d heard yesterday, from inside the shed, when Carl and I were messing with the drum of kerosene.

“Carl, maybe we’d better—”

The wind ripped the door from Carl’s grip before I could finish. The door slammed back and forth on its hinges, allowing us to see inside.

The shed stood empty. Well, not empty, mind you. Just not what I’d imagined might be in there. My riding mower and seeder and wheelbarrow, and my drum full of shelled corn for the deer and squirrel feeders, and my fishing equipment, garden tools, shovels, picks, hoes, and axes, and my workbench…but nothing else. Nothing that could dig a tunnel beneath the ground. The oak plank floor was empty of monster worms or giant groundhogs.

We hefted Earl inside.

I noticed that strange smell again; wet, earthy—like codfish oil. I wondered if the whole world was beginning to smell like that. Grunting with effort, I let go of Earl’s legs and his boots thudded on the floor.

My breathing came in short, winded gasps. I wanted a dip. My body cried out for one. That old television slogan, from the commercial with Charlie Daniels, ran through my mind. Just a pinch between the cheek and gum…

There was a roll of duct tape on the workbench. I tossed it to Carl, and he began binding Earl’s wrists behind his back. I grabbed some bailing twine and went to work on his feet.

“Boy,” Carl whispered, “I sure do hope he don’t wake up yet.”

“He’s not going to. You must have really knocked him a good one.”

Carl tore off a length of gray duct tape. “I reckon so. Been wanting to for the better part of two decades. He had it coming ever since that time he shot at my dog when she was running rabbits out behind his place. I should have kicked his butt back then and saved us all some trouble.”

Earl’s chest rose and fell. His breathing was quiet and shallow.

“We’ll want to be careful not to jab that piece of bone sticking out of Salty’s leg,” I said as I unknotted the bundle of bailing twine. “We’ll pad the splint with some of those shop rags over there.”

Carl nodded and finished binding Earl’s wrists.

That was when the floor moved. It wasn’t sudden. There was no explosion or jolt. But the wooden planks we were kneeling on slowly began to rise, almost unnoticeably at first. Three inches. Then six. Then back down. Then up again, like the floor was breathing. We froze. There was no sound, save the creaking wood and our own terrified heartbeats, throbbing in our ears.

Carl stared at me with wide eyes, and I stared back at him, probably looking the same.

Then there was a wet sort of rustling; a rubbery sound, like what crinkling paper might sound like under water. I reckon rubbery doesn’t go with crinkly, but I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. Maybe it shouldn’t be described. Maybe it shouldn’t be at all. Like I said earlier, I’m not a writer. All I know is I’d never heard a sound like that in my entire life and it was the most unpleasant thing I’ve ever experienced. Combined with the rolling motion of the floor, which had begun to resemble the deck of a ship at sea, and that same fishy smell that had come creeping back, I suddenly grew nauseous.

It must have shown on my face, because Carl’s expression changed from alarm to concern. I opened my mouth to speak, and then I threw up my breakfast all over Earl’s chest and stomach. Gagging, Carl turned away.

The floor continued to move. Somewhere in the corner, the planks began to snap. Carl shouted something, but the dizziness had my ears ringing, and I couldn’t understand him.

Nausea is never pleasant, and let me tell you, it doesn’t get any easier after you pass eighty. I couldn’t do anything except lie there, hands clutching the pitching and groaning boards, while my own body betrayed me. That fishy stench was overpowering now, and I think I must have passed out for a brief second.

The next thing I knew, Carl was screaming. I looked up and stared into a nightmare. Then I started screaming, too.

Carl had grabbed my twelve-inch lock-blade hunting knife from the workbench, and he was on the floor, stabbing the knife down again and again between the cracks in the planks. Something jerked beneath the boards as the blade disappeared through the cracks again. I only saw it for a second, but what I saw made me lose control of my bladder.

It looked like a quivering lump of grayish-white jelly, buried beneath the floorboards. The blade sank into the rubbery mass like it was margarine. Brownish ichor spilled from the wound, gushing up from between the cracks in the floor. The boards heaved again, splintering, and then were still.

The thing hadn’t made a sound the entire time, not even when Carl stabbed it.

He turned to me. His face was pale and covered with sweat. “Let’s get the hell out of here, Teddy!”

“What was that thing?” I stammered, still weak from my dizzy spell.

“I don’t know. Oh Lord, I don’t know. Let’s just go! Please? Let’s just lock Earl inside the shed and leave.”

I stumbled to my feet and grabbed the rags and the duct tape. Carl kept the knife. We left Earl lying on the floor and dashed back out into the yard. The wind rocked the shed door back and forth, and I fumbled to shut it. Then I realized we’d forgotten the wheelbarrow to haul Salty in.

Carl disappeared around the corner.

“Wait for me,” I called out. “Carl!”

Then he screamed again.

Out of breath and panicking, I ran around the side of the building and slid to a halt. The thing that had been underneath the shed was definitely not an oversized groundhog. It had crawled back outside, reopening the tunnel beside the woodpile. Half of it jutted from the hole, thrashing in pain. Stinking fluid sprayed from the knife wounds in its side.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

It was a worm. A giant earthworm, the size of a big dog, like a German shepherd or a Saint Bernard, but much longer. It undulated back and forth in the mud and grass, covering the ground with slime. Watery, brown blood pulsed from the gash in its hide.

More of its length pushed out of the hole and the creature whipped towards me like an out of control fire hose. The worm’s tip (what I guess must have been its head, though I couldn’t see any eyes) hung in the air in front of me, only an arm’s reach away. Then the flesh split, revealing a toothless maw. It convulsed again, and then that horrible, yawning mouth shot towards me. Shrieking, I stumbled backward to the shed door. The worm followed.

Now, as it chased after me, the worm finally made a sound. It wasn’t a cry or a scream or a roar or even a grunt. In fact, as far as I could tell, it wasn’t composed from vocal chords at all.

A high-pitched blast of air rushed from its gaping mouth, a vibrating noise that sounded like—well, to be honest, it sounded like somebody pretending to fart. You know that sound you make when you put your mouth against your arm and blow? That’s the same noise the creature was making. We used to call that a raspberry.

But it wasn’t funny. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard. And it sounded angry.

The worm heaved its bulk forward and emerged all the way from the hole. I jumped back inside the shed, slipped in the worm’s blood, and fell. My teeth clacked together on my tongue, and pain shot up my spine. The worm crawled after me, dripping slime and more of that brown blood in its wake. Outside, I heard Carl shouting for help. I crab-walked backwards, scuttling along the wooden planks. Dozens of splinters punctured my hands and my fingers slipped through a pool of my own warm vomit.

The monster snuffled doglike along the floor, as if smelling me out, but I didn’t see any kind of nose or other organs—just that slathering mouth. Maybe it could sense my movements—my vibrations. It occurred to me that while I may have been the smartest man in Punkin’ Center, I sure didn’t know much about worms other than that birds and fish liked to eat them and that your dog might contract them if you didn’t take care of him.

I backed myself into the corner, directly across from Earl, who was still sprawled unconscious on the floor while the world ended around him. More of my vomit was drying on his clothes.

The creature’s weight shook the walls, and the rake fell down, hitting me in the head. My vision went blurry for a second. The gray, pallid thing rushed forward, then stopped an arm’s length away from me. The tip swayed between Earl’s pant leg and me, as if deciding which one of us to eat first.

It wriggled towards Earl. His combat boot vanished into its maw with a sucking sound. The worm’s muscles rippled along its length as it swallowed his leg.

Shaking off the panic, I grabbed the pickax from the wall and swung it with all of my remaining strength. The point pierced the monster’s pulsating flesh and bit into the hardwood floor beneath it.

The creature coiled and thrashed, twisting its length wildly around the shed. Brown blood gushed around the pickax, and the stench was horrible. The worm knocked a barrel over. Shelled corn spilled out of the barrel, scattering onto the floor. Boxes and tools crashed from the work-bench and the hooks on the wall above it. But the pickax kept the worm pinned to the floor.

I yanked Earl free. His leg and foot slid out of the thing’s mouth with a wet, sickening pop. Slime covered his leg from the knee down. Earl groaned and his eyelids fluttered.

“G-Garnett?” he moaned.

“Shit.” I limped to the door, looked outside, and then turned back to him. “Why’d you have to wake up now?”

I half wished the thing had eaten him. We wouldn’t have been in this mess if not for him.

Earl sniffed the air and looked down at his chest. “Is—is that puke? Who fucking puked on me?”

Kevin and Carl rounded the corner and skidded to a halt on the wet grass, staring at the worm through the open door.

“The fuck is that thing?” Kevin shouted.

“It’s a worm,” I said, realizing that I’d picked up Carl’s gift for stating the obvious.

“Garnett,” Earl hollered from behind me. “Get me out of here, goddamn you!”

“You okay, Teddy?” Carl asked.

“I’m all right.” Wheezing, I leaned against the door frame. The rain felt cool on my face, and for once, I welcomed it. I wasn’t just tired; I was bone weary. My lungs burned, and my chest hurt. It felt like a big fist was squeezing my heart.

I turned back to Earl and the worm. The creature continued thrashing, trying to free itself. Kevin and Carl gaped at it, shaking their heads in either disgust or disbelief, or maybe both. Earl screamed, pushing himself against the wall.

“Shoot it,” I told Kevin. “Carl, go get us some pieces of kindling so we can make a splint for Salty.”

Carl’s eyes never left the worm. “You sure you’re okay, Teddy?”

“I’ll live. Just got the wind knocked out of me. Now go!”

Carl dashed over to the woodpile, keeping a wide berth around the newly reopened hole.

Kevin set Earl’s rifle stock firmly into his shoulder and sighted, going from Earl to the worm. I stepped outside so that he’d have a clear shot.

“That’s the guy who shot us down?” Kevin asked.

“Yeah, he’s the one.”

“I ought to shoot them both.”

“Go ahead,” I answered calmly, and in that second, I meant it, Christian thing to do or not. There wasn’t just one monster inside that shed. There were two of them.

Earl stared out at us, shrinking back against the wall as the worm whipped towards him again.

“Go ahead, you cocksucker! Shoot me!”

Kevin turned the rifle on the worm and squeezed the trigger. There was an empty click, barely audible over the downpour and the creature’s crazed throes.

Earl grinned. “It’s empty, you dumb fuck.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.” I slapped my thigh, fear and fatigue giving way to anger and a fresh burst of adrenaline. I marched forward, deftly sidestepping the flailing worm, and grabbed the firewood ax from the wall. Making sure I had a firm grip on the handle, I positioned myself near the creature’s midsection and swung the ax down hard.

The ax easily parted the flesh, cutting deep and clean. The worm’s gyrations grew frenzied and it began making that hissing squeal again. Wrinkling my nose, I swung the ax again. Pulpy, stinking goo splattered my wet clothes as I chopped it in half. The worm shrieked. Someone else was screaming above the din, and after a moment, I realized that it was me.

The worm was now severed in half. The portion pinned to the floor by the pickax quivered, still leaking fluids. The freed portion flopped around like a fish out of water or a chicken with its head cut off, snaking back and forth across the planks. It tumbled out into the yard. Kevin clubbed it with the rifle, pulping what was left.

Carl returned with the kindling. “I think it’s dead now.”

Earl sat up and groaned again, struggling with his bound hands.

“Garnett,” he snarled through tobacco-stained teeth. “What the hell are you doing, you son of a bitch? Didn’t you see the black chopper that came up from the hollow? Why are my hands tied? And who’s that fucker with my rifle?”

“He works for the U.N.,” I whispered, kneeling to stare into his eyes. “He’s here to take over Punkin’ Center and Carl and I are helping him.”

Earl’s eyes grew wide as saucers. “What?”

“It’s true. He says that if we help him, he’ll give me the deed to your property when we’re done, and make Carl the mayor of Renick.”

“And then,” Carl added, “we’re gonna paint the town pink and invite in all the liberals. Maybe even get Clinton reelected for a third term.”

I grinned. “Or his wife.”

Earl screamed in furious indignation.

“Carl,” I said, stepping back into the shed. “Go get us some more kindling. That’s not gonna be enough.”

“Garnett,” Earl snarled, “I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

“Not today, you won’t.”

I tore off another piece of duct tape and placed it over Earl’s mouth. He shook with rage and the veins in his forehead and neck stood out. Snot bubbled from his nose. He kicked his heels against the floor. I grabbed his ankles and hauled him outside into the mud, where I left him. Earl shut his eyes against the rain beating at his face.

“Watch him closely,” I told Kevin, and ducked back inside the shed for the wheelbarrow. The worm had knocked it over onto its side. I heard Earl grunt, and when I came back outside Kevin was prodding him with his foot.

There was a noise behind us, from inside the shed. We turned to look and both of us took a step back. Even Earl got quiet.

The two severed halves of the worm were now moving independently of each other. One piece slithered slowly across the wooden planks, leaking blood and slime from its wounded end. The other segment wriggled helplessly, the pickax still holding it in place.

Kevin backed away. I slammed the door shut and threw the bolt.

“Will that hold them?” Kevin asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. Doubt it.”

As if to prove the point, the entire shed shook as the worm heaved its weight against the door.

Kevin glanced towards the wreckage in the field. “We’d better get back to the others.”

“Carl,” I shouted, “how are we looking for kindling? Do we have enough?”

“He’s not here, Mr. Garnett,” Kevin answered.

“Where did he go?”

“I saw him run down to the woods.”

Cursing, I dragged the wheelbarrow out into the rain and glanced about. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I assumed that in his confused, panicky state, Carl had ignored the kindling from the woodpile. Instead, he had gone down to the forest to collect sticks and branches to use for the splint instead.

I loved him dearly, but sometimes Carl could be as dumb as a stump. This was one of those times.

“Get Earl up to the house where we can keep an eye on him,” I told Kevin. “Tie him to the picnic table or something. Then take the wheelbarrow over to your friends, so we can move Salty in it.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find my friend.”

“But what about us? What about Sarah?”

“I’m not letting Carl go down into those woods by himself. Not now.”

Hefting the ax, I ran after Carl. My breath got shorter and my lungs began to burn again as I pressed onward. I was definitely too old for this type of thing. I wasn’t some action movie hero—I was a senior citizen suffering from all the maladies of old age. Several times I skidded, the wet grass giving way beneath me, the sod nothing more than mush after forty-two days of constant battering from the rain.

I passed the little apple tree Rose and I had planted six years ago. It lay uprooted and on its side now, withering and dying as the soil around it turned into quicksand.

I reached the edge of my yard. The woods loomed before me, dark and ominous. A hush fell over the world, and even the rain seemed to fall silently.

“Carl?” My voice echoed through the mist and took on a peculiar quality. Wet branches brushed my face as I took a few hesitant steps into the tree line. I’d walked through those woods a million times, but they looked different now, and I didn’t recognize anything. The trees were bent, gnarled shadows. More of that strange white fungus spiraled up the trunks. It hadn’t been there the day before, when I was looking for teaberry leaves. That meant it was spreading fast, whatever it was. I wondered how the spores were transported; then I remembered the deer.

Still hovering at the edge of the forest, I glanced back at the crash site. Kevin had managed to get the wheelbarrow over to Sarah and Salty. Rather than dumping Earl at the house, he’d taken him along with him. Earl was now tied to a hunk of twisted metal from the helicopter. From where I stood, it didn’t look like Salty was moving. Then the mist thickened and I lost sight of them all.

That’s when something exploded from the brush in front of me.

“Oh Lord, Oh Lord Oh Lord Oh Lord…”

Carl crashed through the thorns and brambles and sped by me as fast as his old legs would carry him. That now all-too-familiar hissing sound followed in his wake.

“Run, Teddy!” Carl shouted. “Run like hell!”

Four worms emerged from the trees. All of them were bigger than the creature from the shed—about the size of a milk cow, but much longer. Their fat, bulbous bodies undulated, whipping towards us. Rather than crawling, they moved via a series of repeated convulsions, beginning at the back end and rushing through their length like a wave. The motion propelled them forward much quicker than I would have imagined. In the time it took Carl to run past, they were upon me.

I swung at one of the worms with the ax, cleaving its rubbery hide. The fishy reek immediately assaulted my senses and I gagged from the stench. The ground gave way beneath my feet and I struggled for balance in the mud. I let go of the ax handle, leaving the weapon buried in the head of the closest worm.

Carl ran back to help me. As he pulled me to my feet, the ground began to shake. We both lost our footing and fell sprawling in the mud. My knee struck a rock, and agony shot through my leg. The mud sucked at me, trying to drag me down.

The worms had stopped moving as well. They held their heads up high, weaving back and forth like snakes, as if anticipating something. I didn’t know what they were waiting for and I didn’t care. I tried to free myself, but the mud was like glue.

Somewhere in the woods, another tree crashed to the ground. The worms howled in answer. I sank farther into the slop.

“It’s an earthquake!” Carl cried, stumbling to his feet. He was covered in mud from head to toe.

“Help me up,” I called. “I’m stu—”

The tremors increased, making speech impossible. Then the yard split open as a huge form rocketed up from below. It surged out of the ground. Mud, water, and saplings tumbled into the hole left in the creature’s wake. The worm was easily the size of a school bus, and its hiss was so deep that I felt the vibrations in my chest.

Carl pulled me to my feet and we ran. The worm reared above us, then plummeted downward. Its shadow killed what little light there was, and its pulsating bulk blocked out even the rain. The ground literally jumped as the worm crashed into the mud. It began to give chase.

Hysterical, Carl urged me onward. “Run! Run run run!”

The monster squalled behind us.

I caught up with Carl and he tugged at my arm, babbling incoherently. We loped along together, throwing glances over our shoulders. The thing plowed onward, leaving a slime-filled furrow in its wake. The four smaller worms had disappeared back into the forest. Apparently, they were just as terrified as we were. Either that or they didn’t want to get in their big brother’s way.

Kevin stood still as stone, staring, drop-jawed as we neared the helicopter wreckage. Sarah, on the other hand, kept her wits about her. She pulled a jagged, spearlike shard of metal from the wreckage. She stood ready, like a javelin thrower at the Olympics. Earl struggled against his bonds, straining the duct tape and bailing twine as he rocked backward and forward in an attempt to break free.

“Run!” I gasped. My chest was in agony, and my knee was starting to swell up from my fall.

Carl slammed into Kevin with his shoulder. “Don’t just stand there!”

Dazed, the young man looked at him in confusion. “I didn’t know there were worms, too. I thought it was just the things in the ocean.”

We didn’t have time to wonder what he was talking about.

Carl shoved him forward. “Get a move on, boy, unless you want to end up as that thing’s supper!”

Sarah stepped past them and flung the makeshift spear. It soared through the air, cleaving through the rain as it arced downward. It sank into the worm’s rubbery flesh,jutting from the creature’s midsection. Stinking fluids bubbled up from deep inside the creature.

The worm turned.

Frenzied from the wound, it careened through the helicopter wreckage, heedless of the further damage it was doing to itself. Metal shards sliced deep gashes into its pale hide, and that same brownish blood spurted from the wounds.

Earl gnawed at the bailing twine binding him to the wreckage. The duct tape had slipped from his mouth and was dangling from his chin. His eyes were round and frightened. I watched in alarm as the duct tape around his wrists began to rip.

On the ground, Salty finally regained consciousness, took one look at the monster, and screamed. The worm immediately whipped towards him. It emitted another blast of air, and the sound reminded me of Rose’s teakettle and the old steam engine railroad up on Cass Mountain.

Shouting, Sarah ran for Salty, but I grabbed her arm and shoved her toward the house instead. Pain shot down my side.

“Garnett,” Earl hollered, “you chickenshit son of a bitch! Get back here and untie me, right now!”

Sarah struggled with me. “Salty! We can’t leave him behind!”

“It’s too late for them. Just run!”

Then it was upon us, and we fled.

I only looked back once. The beast towered over Salty, its slavering mouth open wide, covering him with dripping slime. Then the head stretched forward and swallowed him whole. I made out the faint outline of his body beneath the creature’s skin as he slid down its throat.

I turned away and the pain increased. It grew worse with each step I took.

When I looked back again, Earl had succeeded in chewing his way free. He spat the frayed strands of duct tape from his mouth and glared at us as he sliced the bailing twine around his ankles with a sharp piece of metal.

“Ready or not, here I come, you bastards!”

He snatched up another shard of metal and jabbed it into the creature’s side. Grunting, he pushed the spear until it sank completely into the hide. The worm’s agonized shriek hammered our eardrums. Then Earl ran after us.

The fog started to thicken again, as if the clouds were suddenly dropping from the sky.

“Come on,” Sarah screamed.

I turned back to the house, took a few more steps, and then doubled over in agony. Pain shot through my kidneys, my stomach, my chest, and my lungs. The giant fist was back, squeezing my entire body.

I collapsed to my knees, which brought a fresh burst of pain.

Sarah knelt beside me. “Mr. Garnett, what’s wrong?”

“M-my…heart…”

“Oh God—are we having a heart attack?”

I tried to answer and found that I couldn’t. My lips felt cold. Numb.

“Just hang on,” Sarah said. “Stay with me.”

“Rose…,” I whispered, and blinked the rain out of my eyes.

Cackling, Earl closed the distance between us. The wounded worm slid along behind him, its body shuddering with each undulation.

Sarah helped me to my feet and we pressed on towards the house. We had to wade through the little earthworms on the carport, which was like walking through a foot-deep pile of spaghetti.

Carl and Kevin held the door open for us. Kevin still clutched the empty rifle.

“Hurry,” Carl yelled. “They’re coming!”

I heard Earl and the worm both bearing down on us. Sarah dragged me through the doorway. We collapsed onto the kitchen floor and Carl slammed the door shut and locked it.

We stared at one another in silence; the only sound was our harsh, ragged breathing.

Stifling a sneeze, Carl glanced out the window.

“Are they coming?” I croaked, as another jolt of pain shot through my chest.

“I can’t tell. That fog out there is like pea soup. It’s like it came out of nowhere! I don’t hear them, though.”

“Maybe that thing ate your neighbor,” Kevin said, smoothing his wet hair with his hand.

Carl smiled. “If it did, then it’s gonna have some really bad indigestion.”

I grabbed my chest and closed my eyes.

“You want your pills, Teddy?” Carl asked.

Swallowing, I nodded. “Th-they’re on my nightstand.”

He hurried off in search of them.

Sarah brought me a bottle of water from the refrigerator (even though there was no power, I still stored them inside the appliance to conserve space). She twisted the cap off and brought the bottle to my lips. I sipped gratefully, choking on the coldness.

Outside, Earl screamed—one long, drawn out wail. Rather than fading, it was cut off abruptly.

Then, everything was still again.

Carl returned with my pills, and the pain in my chest faded after I swallowed a few. I drank some more water, letting it soothe my scratchy throat.

The rain continued falling.

CHAPTER SIX

Twenty minutes later, we were still crouched there on the kitchen floor, sitting in puddles from our wet clothes, huddled together for comfort. We’d have probably been more comfortable in a safer room, but the others didn’t want to move me until my chest pains subsided. Kevin peeked outside several times, but there were no signs of the giant worms or of Earl Harper. I bade them both good riddance. The big one had probably eaten Earl, and then, having had its fill, burrowed back into the earth.

“Well,” I told Carl, “I guess now we know what happened to your house.”

He nodded. “And Steve Porter’s hunting cabin, too.”

Kevin looked puzzled. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Homes have been disappearing down into the ground,” I said. “Only thing left behind is a hole—about the same size as that thing out there.”

“Shit.”

Carl fetched some towels and spare clothes so everybody could dry off, and we cranked up the kerosene heater to its highest setting. Sarah put on one of Rose’s old sweaters and it fit her real nice. It was the first time I’d seen it out of her dresser since she died. Gave me a lump in my throat just looking at it. We didn’t say much to each other—just sat there with our teeth chattering and waited to get warm.

When the pills kicked in and I felt better, I went to the spare bedroom and unlocked the gun cabinet. Kevin still had Earl’s rifle, and I found some ammunition for it. I gave Carl the Winchester 30-30, and I took the Remington 4.10, loaded with punkinballs. Then I pulled out Rose’s old Ruger .22 semi-automatic pistol (I’d bought it for her one birthday long ago, and Rose had become an excellent shot—even better than me). I handed it to Sarah. I considered asking her if she knew how to use it, but something told me she did.

She eyed it skeptically. “That’s all? Don’t you have anything bigger?”

“Afraid not. But that there pistol will surely kill a man if you aim right.”

“It’s not a man I’m worried about. I was just thinking about stopping power. And as for killing, I don’t need a gun to do that.”

Carl and I both shuffled our feet, not sure how to respond. After a moment, we realized that she was smiling.

“You’re a regular spitfire,” Carl said, chuckling.

Kevin positioned himself at the kitchen door and continued staring out the window. “There’s no sign of them. Those things, I mean. We might be okay. Maybe they won’t come back.”

“Even still,” I replied, “I reckon one of us ought to stand guard at all times.”

“What were those things?” Carl asked.

I shrugged. “Worms.”

“Teddy Garnett,” he scolded, “don’t you ever make fun of me for stating the obvious again!”

Sarah and Kevin were silent.

“Have either of you seen anything like them before?” I asked.

Sarah shook her head, but she seemed hesitant.

Kevin was quiet for a moment and then said, “No, not like them. But we have seen some weird things. Not worms, but similar creatures, in a way.”

“Like what?”

“I’d rather not talk about it right now, if that’s okay?”

“Sure.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Let’s rest up first. You can fill us in later. I imagine we all have a tale to tell.”

I looked at Sarah standing there in Rose’s sweater, and I suddenly missed my wife real bad. My eyes welled up. I excused myself, rushed down the hall, and locked myself in the bathroom.

I put the commode lid down and sat on it, and that’s when it hit me. All of it. The horror I’d just experienced and the despair of the last two months and the sheer loss. It crashed down on me like a lead balloon. I sat there for twenty minutes, and I shook and I cried. But I did it quietly, without uttering a sound. I didn’t want the others to hear me. And to be honest, I was afraid I’d start screaming and not be able to stop.

When I came out, they were all sitting around the kitchen table, drinking instant coffee while Carl told them about Old One-Eye, the legendary catfish that was supposed to inhabit a part of the Greenbrier River we locals called the Cat-Hole.

“So then Hap Logan took his little bass boat out one night, about two weeks after Ernie Whitt’s dog vanished while swimming across the Cat-Hole. It was a quiet night, and Hap had just about nodded off, when all of a sudden his boat started rocking. He sat up and looked around, but he didn’t see anything. But the boat started swaying more, like it was bumping against a rock or something. So he grabbed his flashlight and pointed it at the river’s surface, and guess what he saw?”

“What?” Kevin asked.

“Old One-Eye. He’d come up under Hap’s boat. There was one good eye on the left side of the boat, and a blind, milky eye on the other. Scared him something awful, he said. A lot of folks thought he was making it up, but I’ll tell you one thing—Hap Logan never went fishing in the Cat-Hole again.”

Sarah grinned. “Sounds like those worms aren’t the only big things around here.”

As implausible as it sounded, the thought of sitting in a boat on the river at night and seeing one unblinking fish eye staring at you from one side, and a white, sightless orb from the other, had always made me shudder.

I heated up what was left of the stew and served everyone a bowl, along with some crackers from the pantry. But nobody seemed to have much of an appetite.

“The bathroom’s available if anybody wants it,” I announced. “You can’t use the toilet, but I’ve got a wash basin in there and a five-gallon bucket of spring water to clean up with.”