Slither

by John Halkin

  The worms flung themselves at him, biting into his sleeves and the shoulders of his thick jacket, smacking against his helmet, across the visor, on the neck covering. Again and again they attacked, always from the same side as though trying to goad him into moving on.

  How long it would be before they succeeded in chewing through his new clothing he’d no idea, nor any intention of sticking around to find out.

  Once the dynamite was in place he stood up and began to pick the worms off one by one, fiercely squeezing the life out of them, crushing their skulls. As always, most of the others broke off their attack and slithered across the ground to feed on their dead comrades. It gave him a few seconds’ respite.

  He stooped to snatch up the leg wires. One insistent worm slashed at him but he dodged back, its teeth only inches from his eyes. It it hadn’t been for the helmet he’d have been blinded immediately.

  Fortunately the wires were quite long and he was able to stand back while he took off his gloves to remove the shunts. He attached the bared ends to the connecting wires, covering the join with a couple of makeshift twists of insulating tape.

  One of the worms bit through the motorcycling gear; he felt the scrape of its teeth against his left calf. A shock of panic tingled through his nerves. Looking down, he saw it lying between his feet, its body betraying that slight tautness he’d often noticed when they were feeding.

  He stamped down on it, hard; the vertebrae cracked beneath his boot.

  But the worm didn’t die immediately. It recoiled without opening its jaws, taking a piece of his skin with it. Then it lay jerking unpleasantly on the ground till he kicked it away from him.

  Now that they’d drawn blood he knew it was only a matter of – oh, perhaps no more than a few minutes till they overcame him. He was quite resigned to the thought. After all, he’d been living on borrowed time ever since he’d first met them in the sewers. But he would complete his job first. He swore that much.

  He began to unwind the connecting wire from the spool, following the pipeline for a few yards before heading away in the direction of a large outcrop of rock. The tufts of grass were uneasy underfoot as he crossed the mire and he was forced to make several detours.

  The worms went with him. He became aware that they were no longer biting, not as long as he kept moving. Experimentally he stopped a couple of times, only to be nipped again. It was a new behaviour pattern, something he’d never met before; it made him cold with apprehension.

  Then they left him, withdrawing to the edge of the mire, where they kept watch like guards drawn up in pre-arranged positions. He looked around, puzzled. Then, glancing down at his feet, he noticed the ground heaving beneath him.

  The thick coils of a queen worm rose above the surface of the mud and one great loop caught him behind the knees. The exploder and spool of connecting wire flew out of his hands as he slumped forward. Another loop embraced his hips as the queen’s head emerged, towering above him.

  Instinctively he drew the knife from his belt but there was no way he could use it. He thrashed about in the mud; only the bubble of air trapped inside his helmet kept him from suffocating.

  Had the queen chosen to tighten her grasp, as a python crushes its victims, he’d have died within seconds. Instead, she held him up and darted at him with her massive head, unable to understand why her teeth couldn’t penetrate the helmet.

  Then she dragged him down. Mud seeped into his clothing and began to fill the helmet. Another few seconds, and he would choke to death on it. But she hauled him up again and made another attempt to bite through the perspex visor.

  This time she suceeded in dislodging the helmet slightly. He slashed out with his knife, wildly, blindly, but hit nothing. Again he tried, kicking, struggling, feeling himself immersed in the mud, then raised up once more by the giant worm. He was weakening now. His efforts were feeble, though suddenly his helmet was off and he could at least breathe.

  He saw her eyes, hard and unmoved. He was helpless against the power he could feel rippling through her body as she tossed him this way and that, held him, then struck once more at his face. It was a slim chance, but he drove the knife upwards with all the force he could muster. She bellowed – a long wailing note – as the point of the blade went into her jaw from underneath and emerged through her eye.

  She writhed and coiled in agony, then straightened like a catapult and threw him off. He landed some distance away from her, with his legs and hips still in the mire. Immediately it began to suck him down. Desperately he clawed at the firmer ground. His fingers found a jutting piece of rock. He held on, then gradually managed to tug himself out.

  He spat out mud and gasped in deep lungfuls of air, trying to recover enough strength to stagger to his feet. The most he could manage was to crawl away on hands and knees.

  The mud covered his eyes too. Through it he could just see the queen worm as a vague form rising high into the air, then plunging down again into the mire, wailing plaintively in her death throes. Any second now, he knew, the other worms would get to him, thirsting for revenge.

  His hand hit against something small and hard – the exploder! He groped around and found the spool with a few turns of wire still on it. First attempting to clean his fingers on the moss, he took the two bared ends and fumblingly fixed them to the terminals, cursing at his own clumsiness.

  The exploder was a No. 10 twist-type which he could hold in his hand, with a strap around his wrist to keep it steady. He grasped the handle and twisted it firmly.

  He’d imagined a bigger explosion and looked up in despair, wondering what had gone wrong. Then he saw the pipeline was spewing out fire, a fierce sheet of flame which spread rapidly across the swampy moorland on each side. He struggled to his feet, holding on to a rock for support.

  ‘Christ!’ he breathed, awe-stricken.

  Rising in the midst of those flames were more queen worms than he could count, seeming to perform an exotic dance of death as the intense heat tortured them. Until now he’d assumed there would be half a dozen queens at most, never this number. He felt sick with terror.

  The scene was like some old, nightmarish painting come horribly to life. A medieval madman’s vision of hell. A Medusa’s head of convulsing snakes.

  They sang their death agonies in a ghastly, moaning chorus far worse than any coven of banshees; but gradually the sound became thinner as one after the other they succumbed to the fire. At last they fell silent.

  He watched the flames consume them. The air was thick with the stench of burning oil and roasting worm flesh. A black pall of smoke gathered above the fire which continued to burn steadily, fed by the pipeline. Through the apertures in the rocks the wind howled.

  22

  ‘As chairman of the committee Professor Jones is to receive a knighthood,’ Rhys explained blandly, his voice betraying no hint of sarcasm.

  They were sitting on the Old Rectory lawn some months later, drinking a weird mixture which Rhys called Plantation Punch. The recipe was his own, he boasted; the result of many years’ experimentation. A few yards away, Jenny was playing under the trees, watched over by the Alsatian who thumped his tail on the ground with pleasure whenever she spoke.

  ‘But I’m afraid you, Matt, narrowly missed being prosecuted for setting fire to the moor, causing wanton damage and destroying the pipeline.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for Matt, none of us would be here!’ Fran protested strongly.

  ‘Fortunately the managing director of the oil company agrees with you. His own son was attacked by worms, and badly mutilated.’

  ‘But isn’t Matt to get any recognition?’ she demanded.

  ‘As much as any other member of the committee. Collective recognition.’

  Matt laughed at him. What the hell did it matter anyway?

  They’d come out of it alive, that was the main thing. He and Jenny had moved back to Westport. Fran now lived at the cottage. It was a little awkward at first but Jenny had come to see it was the on
ly way. She even helped out in the shop on Saturdays.

  Helen lay buried in the Westport parish churchyard as she would have wanted. None of them felt comfortable using the bathroom at the cottage; they planned to have it stripped out and install a new one. One of the TV companies had offered Matt the position of lighting cameraman on a new film series.

  The money would pay for the alterations.

  ‘Of course, your hunch was right,’ Rhys was saying as he topped up the glasses. ‘The sewer worms’ social organization is not unlike that of ants or termites, with a queen who lays eggs and exercises a co-ordinating control over her offspring. Several features foxed me at the time.’

  ‘Including UFOs?’ Fran asked innocently.

  ‘Oh, I admit I may have been wrong!’ He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Yet who knows where they came from? And when? Remember all those ancient legends about monsters? Serpents. Dragons. St George, perhaps – was his dragon really a queen worm? Or Beowulf’s battle with Grendel? I could take you to a place locally known as Grendel’s Mire. Even the serpent that tempted Eve – was that the knowledge of good and evil?’

  ‘But we got rid of them,’ said Matt simply.

  ‘You got rid of the queens,’ Rhys acknowledged. ‘Most, at any rate. There were far fewer on the other sites where we found them. But I don’t suppose you heard the news at midday? It seems our worms have reached the United States. Two people seriously hurt in New York. The familiar pattern… Maybe they’ll call you in, Matt, for consultations.’

  ‘No, thanks! All I want now is to see Fran out of this wheelchair. Now let’s find out what Jenny’s up to, shall we?’

  A few minutes earlier she’d disappeared somewhere among the trees, and the dog with her. These days it always made him feel uneasy if she went off anywhere out of sight. He stood up, slipped off the brake, and began to wheel Fran across the lawn.

  Rhys followed.