Worm

3

Sitting on his porch, Geno Desjardins watched the muck flowing in sluicing, gelid channels through the neighborhood. It was already lapping up to the third stair on the porch. The mess and the smell were bad enough, but the cleanup would be very expensive, astronomical even. It would drive everyone’s insurance rates right through the roof and the time it would take… not good.

He’d just gotten off his cell with his brother on the other side of Camberly and the muck was in the streets over there, too, filling them like a cup.

What a fucked-up mess.

Ivy came out and handed Geno a beer that he nearly emptied on the first swallow. She sat down, nervously puffing on a cigarette, a Benson & Hedges 120. It looked like a long, sleek white missile, afterburners blazing as she puffed on it.

“It’s getting worse,” she said.

“Yes, it is.”

“Should we try and drive out of it?”

“In that?”

Exasperated, scared, smoke fuming from her nostrils like foundry stacks, she said, “Well, anything would be better than drowning in it… don’t you think?”

“It won’t rise much more.”

“Says you.”

Geno ignored her. It was a hobby of his. He’d already been on the phone with Public Works and they were responding to similar incidents all over town. The mayor had contacted the governor and the National Guard was being mobilized to set up temporary structures outside of town for those forced from their homes. The Army Corps of Engineers was on its way.

All of which was great, Geno figured. He was glad to see his tax dollars at work. But none of it answered one very basic question: what in the hell was this stuff? It wasn’t sewage exactly or mud or gray water or seepage, but maybe some weird combination of all those things and a few others to boot.

Disgusting, that’s what.

“We’ll wait it out for the time being. If it gets too deep, we’ll make a run for it.”

But Ivy didn’t like that in the least.

She was far too hyper and far too neurotic to sit around waiting. She paced from one end of the porch to the other, mumbling under her breath and chain-smoking. She favored Virginia Slims 120s. They were as long as No. 2 pencils. She’d smoke one halfway down, frantically puffing at it, then toss it over the railing and fire up another one. In the fifteen minutes she’d been on the porch, she’d killed three of them.

Geno knew better than to mention the fact.

“Look,” she said.

He turned and peered across the street.

Mr. Green was backing out into the sludge, trying to make a break for it. His car dogged out almost instantly. Geno chuckled low under his breath as Green got out, slipped and went under, came up swearing and snorting.

“Aren’t you going to help him?” Ivy wanted to know.

“Let me think about it,” he said. Then: “No.”

Why the hell would he help Green? The guy was a prying, spying, nosey asshole who constantly called the police on his neighbors for everything from backyard bonfires to loud music to their garages not being up to code.

No, this was entertainment. He wasn’t about to help that tubby sonofabitch.

Green kept slipping and sliding, covered in black mud now.

Everyone in the neighborhood was watching, but nobody was helping. The comedy was too rich, like discovering Buster Keaton for the first time.

Ivy was mad, of course. She stalked into the house and slammed the screen door. She would go back into the kitchen now, Geno knew, and reorganize the cupboards for the fifth or sixth time, making sure all the spices were arranged alphabetically.

He finished his beer, giggling at Green.

Then Ivy screamed.