Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “That’s sound enough reasoning,” Charlotte said, smiling a little.

  She left the laptop to visit the bathroom, calling through the door. “Five minutes, then out!”

  She could hear another grumble from Kathy.

  They’d do better if left to their own devices. Kathy would be happier with something to do, even if it was washing the hair of the younger girls and ensuring they brushed their teeth.

  She returned to the kitchen, collecting the plates and glasses and putting them in the dishwasher.

  A car horn outside caught her attention. It wasn’t easy to get cars in and out of the area, with the streets still under repair, and the vehicles that were around were construction vehicles, which didn’t work this late at night.

  The horn sounded again, and there were shouts in response.

  She was still staring at the door, straining to make out something telling, when Ethan approached her.

  “Do you need me to run an errand?”

  “No, Ethan. Now might not be a good time.” There was more noise outside. Voices.

  “Okay,” he said. He looked disappointed.

  “If you want some fresh air, I can let you upstairs. You can sit on the balcony.”

  Ethan frowned. “No. No thanks.”

  “Just give me five minutes,” she said. “Ben? Lock the shutter after me. I’ll come through the door downstairs when I return. Let Kathy and the girls know I’ll be back.”

  Ben nodded.

  She didn’t raise the shutter all the way, stooping beneath and holding it partially closed. Ben wasn’t strong enough to lower it on his own, and the outside didn’t have any real handholds.

  With Ben’s help, she still managed to press her hands against the broad strip of metal and push it to ground level. There was a sound of the chain rattling through the gaps.

  People were active, gathering in clusters and crowds. The focus of attention? A news van.

  The news crew was surrounded.

  “…word out,” the reporter was saying. “People are going to make a lot of ugly assumptions.”

  “Just go!” someone shouted.

  “Turn the camera off and leave!”

  The reporter, a tall, blond man with a broad jaw, only smiled. “I’d almost think you guys had something to hide.”

  “We want to be left alone,” Charlotte said.

  “Not going to happen,” the reporter said. “This is blowing up. People are going to want to investigate every last scrap of dirt. Even if I left, others would come.”

  “We’ll tell them the same thing we told you,” she said. She saw Forrest approaching, making his way through the crowd. “That we had school and work all day, that everyone here is working on rebuilding, and we’re tired, we’re not interested in the scandal of the moment.”

  “Working hard?” the reporter asked. “What if I offered, say, two hundred bucks, to whoever gave me the most information?”

  “We’d tell you to fuck off,” Forrest cut in, before anyone could take the deal.

  “World wants to know. What is she really like?” The reporter asked. “Two hundred dollars, your face on camera. If you love her, don’t you want people across America to hear something good? Best support you can give. If you hated her, well, the opposite’s true, isn’t it?”

  “You’d twist our words around,” Forrest said. “Edit it to take the choicest bits.”

  “That’d be dishonest. It’s not the way we work at channel twelve.”

  “No,” Forrest said. “I think that you’re primarily interested in what gets viewers and ratings. Maybe you’d stick around for two hours, interview everyone you could, and then take the most controversial and extreme statements. Only way we don’t play into your hands is if nobody opens their mouth.”

  He raised his voice a little at that final statement.

  “That so?” the reporter asked. “Three hundred dollars. That’s, what, two or three days’ pay, with the kind of wage you earn here?”

  Forrest didn’t respond.

  “Okay,” the reporter said. “Well, there’s nothing stopping us from sitting around, is there? And if someone decides that they’d like to earn a little cash…”

  “They’d have to be pretty stupid,” Forrest said. “Property values are set to soar here, and the way things are organized, just about everyone here is slated to earn a property or a share of a property somewhere down the road.”

  “And you’re saying that has nothing to do with the fact that you all worked for a supervillain.”

  “I’m not saying anything one way or the other,” Forrest said. “Except that the numbers don’t add up. Three hundred dollars now, or get a share of a place that could be worth millions, a few years down the road?”

  “People are enterprising,” the reporter said. He smiled. “And I can be discreet. The public needs to know who’s protecting them.”

  He turned, returning to the passenger side door of the van, then paused. “We’ll be parked on the beach. We can blur out your faces if we need to.”

  It took them a minute to get their camera packed away and leave. Sure enough, they made their way to the beach. Charlotte could see the headlights illuminating the sand. Then they went out, and the van was effectively invisible.

  “Guards,” Forrest said. “Take shifts. We’re not giving them anything.”

  “You’re wanting to protect Skitter?” someone asked, from the crowd.

  “I worked for her,” Forrest said. “Most of you know that. In a way, I still think I work for her, even if she isn’t here anymore. A lot of us owe her.”

  “She brought us as much trouble as she stopped,” the person said. Charlotte could see it was a tall man who’d hidden a receding hairline and bald spot by shaving his head. There was only stubble, now.

  “She made it possible to rebuild, Scott.”

  “Everyone’s rebuilding. We got a head start, that’s all. You’re saying that’s worth it? Mannequin came here because of her. Burnscar came here because of her. Or didn’t you hear?”

  Forrest folded his arms.

  Scott said, “My sister-in-law works for the PRT. Wears a uniform. She said the Slaughterhouse Nine were here because they were recruiting. They picked a bunch of people across the city, trying to recruit them, and Skitter was one. Obviously. So it’s her fault the people died here. The help she gave? She was probably guilty.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Forrest said.

  “Bullshit. You were there, that first time, when Mannequin was in the warehouse on Shell. He was wagging his finger at her. Why? He was there for her.”

  “I was there,” Forrest said. “Remember? I stepped up. I dragged that bastard to where we could tie his head up. I smashed his head with a concrete block.”

  “And I won’t deny that,” Scott answered. “I would’ve been right there with you if I didn’t have my wife and kid to protect. We both saw how it played out. Going by what my sister-in-law said, you wouldn’t have had to do that if Skitter had been somewhere else.”

  “I would have,” Forrest said. “I know Skitter. Taylor. Weaver. Whatever you call her. We’ve talked, talked a lot. I’ve heard her side of things, and I know you’re off base.”

  “You’re saying my family’s lying?” Scott asked, raising his voice a touch. “Or maybe you’re blind. Can’t see what’s going on because of your own basic, underlying bias.”

  Scott approached, moving through the crowd. He was clearly irritated, a big guy, undoubtedly a dock worker, breathing just a little harder than normal. Charlotte found herself biting her lip and backing away as he drew closer. Her stomach twisted as he passed her, as though it were a towel someone was wringing out. Not an unfamiliar sensation.

  For a moment, she could imagine him in her face, hooting, hollering, a vein standing out on his bald head.

  The wrenching got worse at the idea, until it felt like everything below her shoulders was being crushed.

  The crowd around her was
too much, now. Too evocative.

  She fled, pushing her way through the crowd. For every part of her that wanted to follow the discussion, there was another part that could hear the discordant music blaring, could hear the yelling, smell the sweat, the smoke and incense.

  She’d seen what people were like when everything else was stripped away. Not everyone, not always, but often enough. It was easy to descend to that level. Taylor had offered security. Strength, and the ruthlessness necessary to cut out the cancer.

  It wasn’t rational to think this way. Charlotte knew, generally speaking, that the people here were good. The bad ones had been scared off, or cut out of the deals that kept everyone else loyal.

  On a less rational level? She hated the idea that this place could devolve into that. Into what the Merchants had become.

  She was upset, she wasn’t thinking straight, and she couldn’t afford to return to the kids like this. Ben and Kathy would look after the littlest ones for five more minutes. She could keep walking, burn off this nervous energy and get in a better headsp-

  “Miss?”

  She jumped, swiftly backing away.

  It was a man. Thin, with glasses, reaching out-

  Groping, greedy for a handful of flesh.

  No. To get her attention. Nothing more. His hand dropped to his side.

  “Are you a reporter?”

  “I- do I look like a reporter?” he looked anxious, and the expression was unrelated to his question.

  “No,” she said.

  “I was asking around, for someone who knew Taylor. Someone told me to look for a girl about your height, with long, dark hair, like yours, with kids around her. I was going to ask some more, but then the crowd came, and I decided to hang back.”

  So he is here to ask questions. But he said Taylor instead of Skitter. “You really aren’t a reporter?”

  “If you know who they were talking about, maybe you could point me in the right direction?”

  Charlotte frowned. “They were talking about me. What do you want?”

  “I’m her father. Danny.”

  Oh. She could see the resemblance, now that she knew to look for it. Both he and Taylor were above average height, both were narrow. She must have gotten her hair and mouth from her mom, though.

  “Okay,” she said. She forced herself to relax a touch. He’s safe. Mostly. “O-” She exhaled as she spoke, and her breath caught. She was still a little out of sorts.

  “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head. “Yes.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “A lot to deal with, all at once.”

  “Yes.”

  She glanced up at him, saw how troubled he looked. “Do you drink tea?”

  “Coffee.”

  “We can do coffee,” she said. She reached into her back pocket for her phone. “Stand still.”

  He looked confused as she turned the phone his way. The flash went off.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Protocols,” she said.

  “Protocols?”

  She typed out a text and sent the text, picture included, to Tattletale.

  “I worked for her.”

  “Oh. Oh.“

  “Come on. We’ll, um, we’ll hear soon, if you’re okay to come inside. But I have to head back that way anyways.”

  He nodded.

  “Why aren’t you with her?” She asked, as they started walking.

  “Things turned ugly.”

  “Oh. Alexandria?”

  “I only just found out about Alexandria. Maybe I shouldn’t say, but things don’t seem to add up. What people were saying before, what happened, and what seems to have happened after.”

  “Yeah,” she said, though she didn’t quite understand.

  “All the way through this, I told myself I’d trust her. That she was the same child my wife and I raised for the last sixteen years. That things were muddled, but she was the same person deep down inside.”

  “Isn’t she?”

  “I’m not so sure anymore.”

  The phone vibrated. Charlotte checked.

  Tt:

  A-ok. Treat him well.

  “You’re clear to come inside,” Charlotte said. She used her hand to indicate a change of direction, leading him towards the beach.

  “All this secrecy? It’s necessary? I thought she left.”

  “We still have enemies. People who’d hurt her by hurting us. We have to stay safe.”

  He fell silent.

  “What?”

  “I haven’t really been thinking along those lines. About the greater scale of things, my life being at risk because I’m connected to her.”

  “You learn,” Charlotte said. “You learn to think that way.”

  “Why? I mean. I don’t have a choice, but you- you could walk away from this, and you haven’t.”

  “I can’t walk away from this,” Charlotte said. “I’m probably more tied up in this than you are.”

  “How’s that?”

  She glanced down the beach. The people who were watching out for those who might talk to the reporter were far enough away. Still, it would be a bad idea to use her flashlight. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a glove, pulling it on. “You’ll see in a minute. Hold my hand and don’t let go. Neither of us want you to get turned around in here. Not much room to get lost, but yeah.”

  She could barely see him in the gloom. There were no lights on the beach. Still, when she reached out for his hand, he took it, holding tight.

  Carefully, Charlotte led Taylor’s father into the storm drain. Her gloved hand traced the wall. First right. Skip the next right, with a few seconds of nerve-wracking isolation in the darkness, then follow the wall… one right, turn left at the t-junction.

  They ascended to the cellar, first, and then up to the living room.

  “It’s a house?” he asked. He looked even more bewildered than before as he took in the particulars, the living room, with young girls clustered on one couch, boys on the other couch and the floor, the appliances, the stacks of boxed-up food that had yet to be unpacked. “Children?”

  “Orphans,” Charlotte said, keeping her voice low. Both Mai and Ephraim could break down in tears at the slightest reminder of their departed parents. “I’ve been looking after them.”

  “You can’t do that. Not like this, without certification, others checking in.”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s only for a little while longer.”

  “This is why you can’t leave?”

  “Part of it. There’s more.”

  “This is what she was doing, all that time? Taking care of these children?”

  “That was only a small part of it. She mostly paid me to look after them and make sure people got the food they needed. She looked after everyone. When they were all in the worst situations they’d ever faced, struggling for food, worrying every hour if they would be attacked or preyed on, she stepped up.”

  “You’re trying to defend her. To justify what she did.”

  “Only a little.”

  Ethan approached. He gave Taylor’s dad a curious look.

  “It’s Taylor’s daddy,” Charlotte explained.

  “Danny,” Danny said.

  “Oh,” Ethan said. He looked down at the floor.

  “Do you want to run an errand for me?” Charlotte asked.

  Ethan nodded, still not making eye contact. Charlotte could see how he’d set his jaw, so stern for a little man.

  “Go tell Forrest that Skitter’s daddy is here. And if anyone approaches you to ask you questions, you don’t answer, okay? No matter how nice they seem, don’t say a word, and blow your whistle. There are reporters out there we don’t want to talk to.”

  Ethan nodded.

  “Don’t take too long,” she warned.

  The little boy, no older than eight, ran off, opening the front door and unchaining the shutter. A moment later, he was gone into the night.

  “
Is that okay?” Danny asked. “A little boy going out alone after dark?”

  “The area’s safe, the people know each other. It’s a community, and the community will look after the kids. Besides, he’s got a whistle in case he gets in trouble.”

  “It almost looked like he was asking for an errand.”

  “He was.”

  Danny gave her a curious look.

  Charlotte walked around the kitchen counter to get into the kitchen, starting the water boiling for the coffee. She still had a habit of keeping the kettle full for Taylor. “Ethan’s bottling up a lot of hurt, but he’s convinced himself that big boys shouldn’t cry, and nothing will convince him otherwise. For now, I’ll let him take five to twenty minutes longer than he should when I tell him to go do something, and I won’t say a word if he comes back with red eyes and a runny nose. If he needs to find a quiet place to cry on his own, that’s okay.”

  “There has to be a better way to handle it,” Danny said. His eyes were still roving, as if trying to find and identify Taylor’s signature touches on the surroundings.

  “There probably is. But for now, it works for him and it works for me. The other kids-” she lowered her voice a fraction, “They all have their individual needs. Some get aggressive. Some internalize it, have nightmares or wet the bed. Others withdraw.”

  Danny sighed. “Kids are hard, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Charlotte said. Then she changed her mind. “No.”

  “No?”

  “People are hard to deal with.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  “You should really be with her.”

  “I was there,” Danny said. “I told myself I’d stand by her, and then… all at once, it wasn’t her. I’ve seen her in a crisis, after her mom died. She was one of the people who withdrew. When she was bullied at school, she withdrew. But there? At the PRT headquarters? That wasn’t her.”

  “It was,” Charlotte said. “Maybe you lost sight of who she was becoming, somewhere down the line. I don’t think anyone would fault you, with the secrets she was keeping.”

  “No,” Danny said. “I don’t think it was her, not really. For just a minute, she became a monster.”

  “We all have a monster somewhere inside us,” Charlotte said. “Like I was saying about the kids. Sometimes it’s aggressive, sometimes it finds other forms of attack, and other times it’s a cowardly one.”