by Tim Curran
“I’m gonna find you big fat flies for your eating,” Kitty promised her new friend who was extremely bored in the jelly jar, beneath the shade of an old termite-pitted gum tree.
Through the field and into the stand of woods that bordered it, Kitty and her jar went. If Mama caught her out of the yard there would be trouble, but Kitty would be quick. The first thing she saw was the clubhouse. It was where Logan Peets and the Chumbly brothers hung out. A BOYS ONLY sort of place and that ruffled Kitty’s feathers because she figured she could go anywhere she pleased, eight years old or not.
Funny, though. As she stood there, she couldn’t seem to remember the last time she’d seen Logan or the “Dumbly” brothers (as they were known to children far and wide).
Hmm. Curious.
A mischievous grin on her face, Kitty went down on all fours, stalking through the grass like a bobcat closing in on a quail. Quiet. Easy. The wings of cabbage moths in the heather made more noise than she. Within minutes, she had closed in on the shack. Because that’s what it was: a SHACK, not a clubhouse. Sort of place some boozer might live, Kitty’s dad once said. And it did look the part: tin roof, tar paper stapled to the bowing walls. Probably full of rattlesnakes and black widows, not to mention stinking, stupid boys.
Kitty paused at the door. “Ssshh!” she told Lady.
Usually, by now, the boys would come out and chase her off, call her a little runny-nosed shitcrawler or something. Shitcrawler was Logan’s favorite word for everything. Kitty knew it was a bad word, but boys were bad, so she was not surprised.
Wiping sweat from her brow because this was serious, dangerous business being in enemy territory, she took hold of the door and opened it a crack and the stink that came rolling out…whew! It was a fusty, noisome odor, dark and secret. She could hear flies buzzing in there. Something telling her she should run away as fast she could, Kitty threw the door open and stuck her head inside and—
And two hands that were moist and feverish took hold of her and yanked her inside. The three boys were in there and they threw her to the dirt floor and held her down while she fought and cried out. But it was dark, and she could not see as tears rolled down her cheeks and those shadowy, rot-smelling forms held her down and dropped something into her mouth…something small and squirming that she first thought was Lady as it looped thickly over her tongue and slid down her throat.
She smelled a sudden overpowering sweetness.
Gagging and crying, Kitty stumbled from the shack, feeling a greasy sickness in her belly. On her mad flight home she dropped the jelly jar and it shattered against a rock.
As it turned out, Lady was the only one who truly escaped that day for by the time Kitty got home, she didn’t have a care in the world.
MILWAUKEE, WI:
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, 1:33 P.M.
Just off West Keefe Avenue, Dicko the Ratman ducked into the alley where all the boys slept it off during the daytime. Brick walls to either side were painted up with gang graffiti, lots of spilled garage and rats in the shadows, blown leaves everywhere else. Dicko moved down there very carefully until he came to the L at the end and rounded it, finding all the old boys curled up beyond the dumpster where it was cool and shady. They had their cardboard boxes and newspapers.
They were all sleeping off a good one.
Perfect time.
Dicko had gotten real good at scavenging and that’s why they called him the Ratman. While the boys were off in la-la land, he’d grab anything they had found during the night. That was their way: find something good and pass out, leaving their wares unattended.
Now Dicko didn’t smell real good himself—his bed out back of the lard bins at Ruby’s Rib Shack didn’t scent a man too well—but even he could smell the stink coming off the boys which was pungent and ripe and just damn unnatural. None of them even moved as he crept about amongst them.
He saw the bottle right away: leave it to the Sterno King to find himself a taste of the old juice and forget to drink it.
Dicko smiled. Well, didn’t that beat all.
It was some of that fancy south-of-the-border swill with the worm in the bottom. Almost looked for one crazy moment like the worm was moving.
No matter.
Dicko brought the bottle to his lips and began to drink.
SPRINGFIELD, MO:
GRANT BEACH
6:58 P.M.
There was a time when Macie Godfrey made a good living turning tricks in the park. Sex to her was no big thrill being that she was raped by her stepfather when she was twelve. Just business. Nothing more. Economy could be up or down and still she was busy. Then those do-gooders over in Robberson and West Central brought the police into the whole thing and business dried up overnight.
Insult to injury.
Just like the time she’d been six months along and her pimp, Bobby Priest, had tossed her down the stairs and she’d lost the baby. Life had a way of insulting you like that, stretching the seams, pulling you in every direction to see just how much you could take before you snapped.
That was life.
And this was death…
For the past two weeks, Macie had been shut-up in her room. She had no friends. She had no lovers. And once her customers dried up, she didn’t even have them. The only one that came to see her was Diggs. Diggs always had money and when he drank he wanted a quick one, cash on delivery, thank-you-very-much.
But Diggs had given her something and she had it bad.
She lay on her bed which was a steaming miasmic lagoon of fevers and drainage, feeling movement within her that was far different than the kick of a baby. It was slow, thick, nearly gelatinous somehow. Sometimes in the mush of her brain, she thought it felt good, pleasurable even. Then other times…no, like scratching fingers in her bowels and sharp-toothed little mouths in her stomach.
It had been like that for many days now.
A rational thought, fleeting but there: He did something to you, Macie, that last time he came, he did something to you…holding you down, pressing your head against the mattress, forcing that throbbing thing between your lips that slid in deeper and deeper.
Her eyes snapped open, bleary and red-rimmed, unfocused. Her fingers slid over the trembling mound of her belly, the flesh white and soft, fever-hot and moist with a slime of scum almost like jelly.
“Diggs,” she said. “Oh God, Diggs…”
Where did he go? Was he still there, still grinning at her in the darkness, his blotched face dripping with sour-stinking sweat? No, she was alone. She had to remember that she was alone and Diggs had not come back. Did they send him back to Iraq or one of those places? No, no, no, Diggs wasn’t in the Army anymore.
Now inside her as her belly continued to expand as if it was slowly being inflated, she could hear…sounds. Sucking, slurping sounds, the noise of tiny hungry mouths leeching soft meat.
A wave of agony: spiking, knife-sharp.
Another.
Dear God, another.
Unbelievable pain broke loose inside her now in jagged, cutting pulsations that made her twist and flop on the bed. Fluids and bile ran from her in warm, yellow rivers, her head thrashing from side to side, teeth sinking into her tongue and drawing freshets of hot blood that filled her mouth and stained her teeth pink.
No, no, no oh Jesus oh Mary I can’t take it I can’t take it—
She uttered one last hysterical scream before her belly, that great shining mound, sheared open with a gushing necrotic flood of milky ooze and pink blood that was threaded with webby strings of glistening pearl-eggs. Clusters of them like roe and spider-spawn, more pushing out and out like she was bursting with bubbles, a thousand-million glossy bubbles that overflowed her and sank her in pulpous afterbirth and juicy ova. And amongst them, the slimed white looping worms, thick and undulant, raising hooked sucker-mouths in the air and making serous mewling sounds as they tended the eggs.
And Macie—a shuddering flesh-waste, a parasitized meat river—was gone, her mind st
ripped away like bark from a jack pine, nothing left but a smooth and soulless void. For she was only a host now, a hothouse incubator, the mother of worm generations.
And was content to be so.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA:
OAKHURST, 7:25 P.M.
The screams still ringing in his ears, Perry stumbled from the black Lexus at the intersection of Oakview and East Lake Avenue. He went down to his knees on the sidewalk and vomited while people stood and stared. He crawled forward on his hands and knees, pulling himself to his feet and all the shocked onlookers scattered when they saw the webwork of blood on his face, his torn shirt, and the bluesteel Beretta nine in his hand.
Perry wanted to tell them that his name wasn’t really Perry and that the team was dead, the neighborhood—not two blocks away—absolutely infested. But they ran, bumping into one another, crying out, scared little rabbits sensing the hawk circling overhead. He wanted to tell them about the Old Man and S5 and CBT and Project BioGen and how the team was dead and how he wished to God he was dead because the world was about to go belly up.
He wanted to tell them about the houses. Those trim neat houses. And in them…cannibal faces and fish-white eyes, little boys and girls and mommies and daddies with worms sliding out of them like maggots from green roadkill.
Shaking and gibbering, his mind gone to a cool gray sauce, he tried to tell them but they ran so he went into the first place he saw which was the Burrito Cantina and he saw, he saw—
People eating. Sitting at tables. But they were not people but worm zombies, all of them infested and rotting black inside. Hey, how’s the sour cream quesadilla and the black beans and the chipotle Maduro, you fucking monsters, YOU GODDAMN FUCKING MONSTERS…
He started shooting and they were screaming, but he was an exterminator and it was his job, didn’t they see that? Kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all. Make sure you pop them in the heads, that puts ‘em down, head-shots, brain ooze spilling onto the tables and the floors, blasted red-gray skullmeat spraying everywhere.
Oh Jesus, none of them were human, not anymore. Just worm gardens, smoke-glass eyes and shadow faces and reaching white fingers, nesting with worms, so many worms.
Then his weapon was empty and Perry knew it was done.
Because behind him they were shouting and shouting. “DROP THAT WEAPON! DROP THAT FUCKING WEAPON!” And he turned and saw badges and let loose with a demented braying as blood ran down his face from a scalp wound and tears squeezed from his eyes.
Then a volley of bullets slammed into him and he dropped, dying, going cold on the tile floor while inside him, something lived, burrowing deep and biding its time.
OMAHA, NEBRASKA:
THE CATHEDRAL DISTRICT, 10:44 P.M
Bella had fallen asleep again, sinking into her bed of fevers, and the only thing that brought her out of it was the perfectly hideous gobbling/shrieking voice that was the sound of pure insanity. It raged. It screamed. It echoed off the walls. It took her some time to realize that it was her own voice.
The fever, the fever…oh God, it’s tearing my mind apart.
As she thought this, a breeze blew in through the window and she began to shake uncontrollably. The shivers moved up and down her body in frigid waves.
Get that window closed! It’s bad for you and if it’s bad for you, it’s worse for the baby!
The baby.
The baby.
The baby.
Everything was for the baby. Everything she did and didn’t do was for the health of the baby. She placed her hands on her belly, feeling it moving in there with a slow, terrible rolling that made sweat run down her face.
Where? Where is Michael?
But she remembered. Michael had flown to Kansas City on business and she was alone. When was the last time she had talked to him? Was it yesterday? The day before? She couldn’t be sure. It was getting hard to differentiate between dream and reality these days. Pregnancy really took it out of you.
The last time Michael called, he hadn’t sounded good at all. “How’s the baby?” he asked, sounding breathless and tired.
“Good. The baby is good. And you?”
He sighed. “Getting those goddamned pains in my gut again…they’re—” And here he broke off, gasping. “God, that was a good one. I better get in and see someone.”
“You better. Baby needs you healthy.”
Bella couldn’t remember if there was more to the conversation or not. Things were so muddled these days. She wiped sweat off her face. Her memory was so bad. Nothing seemed to make sense. Often, the harder she tried to remember, the less she could.
She let out a cry as an awful pain ripped through her belly, making tears run from her eyes as she contorted with the agony of it.
Baby’s coming.
No! It couldn’t be. Not yet. Not for another month. Knives of agony cut through her, one after the other, filling her mind with blinding white flashes. She fell out of bed and crashed to the floor and by then she was twisting and writhing. It felt as if something inside her—the baby, the baby, it had to be the baby—was turning around and around, spiraling faster and faster, knotting up her guts and twisting her spine like a rubber band.
Somewhere during the process as her mind blanked and the pain punched holes in her consciousness, the baby came. Her water broke followed by a perfectly horrible gushing of blood and slime and glistening blobby matter. The fetus was expelled, tearing free of the amniotic sack.
It was alive.
Bloody and dripping with clots of birth jelly, it was alive. It crawled up her legs, dragging its umbilical after it, a grotesque, malformed monstrosity with glittering black eyes and a bulbous head threaded with black veins. It was hot against her bare legs.
Bleeding out, Bella slowly slipped into unconsciousness, but not before she saw a dozen coiling white worms slide out of the baby’s mouth.
AUGUST 25
CHICAGO, NORTH SHORE:
EVANSTON
1:51 P.M.
After several days of laying low, letting things cool off, Harry drove Shawna to the First Chicago branch on Skokie Boulevard in one of Gabe’s cars, a Chrysler LeBaron, since his own car was probably hot. If Shawna had to hide out for God knows how long, then the first thing was to at least empty her savings. She wasn’t about to spend days, weeks, or (God forbid) months sponging off Gabe Hebberman.
“We’ll look into this slowly, carefully,” Gabe told them. “If there’s real danger here, real trouble—and I’m not saying there isn’t—then we’ll err on the side of caution. Agreed?”
Everyone did.
While they hid out at his estate, he did the looking, the digging. It was much safer that way. If some faceless agency was really after Shawna and Harry, then they would be waiting for them to make a move. So they wouldn’t make it. They kept that promise while Gabe sent out feelers.
After four days of it, the two of them decided it would be safe enough to make a quick run to the bank. First Chicago had branches everywhere and if they found out she banked there, then they’d need quite a few men to stake it out. In essence, it was an acid test.
“Maybe we should slip down to Joliet or Calumet City or somewhere equally as distant to do this,” Harry suggested. “One of those banks in a strip mall. If they’re monitoring our accounts, at least they won’t be looking in Gabe’s neighborhood.”
“I doubt they’ll watch my savings account, Harry.”
“Oh really? And why is that?”
She shrugged. “It just seems...”
“What?” he interjected. “A little excessive?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Harry shook his head.
He liked the old paranoid Shawna better. This new Shawna was a little too dangerous, a little too reckless. Oh, he knew what it was. He knew what it felt like when you thought you were poised to pounce on the biggest story of the year. He hadn’t felt that special all-consuming buzz in years. It was addictive. Even after your big story and your juicy national by-
line dissolved into so much journalistic suet, you kept looking and digging and sifting. Certain there was another one out there just as big.
He didn’t think this one was going to fade away (it was big and he knew it, he could feel that in every fiber of his being), but the sheer intoxication of it was destructive. You got careless. You started taking crazy chances. Like maybe the story wasn’t quite big enough so you gave it the opportunity to swell a little more.
He knew that’s what Shawna was thinking.
Maybe not consciously, but deep down it was there, that manic drive.
“I think, Mister Grinch, that your balls have grown two sizes since yesterday,” he told her. “You’ve got it, don’t you?”
“What?”
“The fever. You’re different today and you know it. You’re like a lioness stalking a wildebeest,” he said. “You smell the blood. You smell that big, meaty story and damn anyone or anything that gets in your way.”
“Amusing analogy, Harry.”
“Is that all it is?” He waited for her reply and got none. He pulled into the asphalt lot of the bank in Gabe’s Chrysler. “Last chance, sweet thing.”
She crossed her legs, pretending to be smooth and unworried. “I told you it’s under consideration.”
He forced a laugh. “Believe it or not, getting you naked is not foremost on my mind right now, Miss Cheeky Von Glib.”
“Am I insulted?”
“You should be.”
She gave him a challenging look and stepped from the car. She waltzed right over to the ATM machine and pulled out her debit card. He went with her after a quick reconnaissance of the area. He didn’t see anyone that seemed to be watching. She moved the way he had instructed her: very casual. No looking around. No hurried movements or nervous mannerisms.
“Just like any other tourist,” he told her. “Like we belong.”