As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  The puddle of ooze spreading steadily from the still-quaking thing that had once been her boyfriend told a different story. She clutched the salt carton close to her chest as she backed away. She’d made it halfway to the door when she caught the sound of scraping coming from the shadows.

  Beth peered into the blackness. In it, she saw a shade moving closer. Maybe one of the policemen had returned. He’d have to believe her now. The evidence was right there, squirming in a melting mass under the table. She watched as the figure emerged, but it wasn’t one of the cops. It was Ryan.

  Another Ryan.

  No. No. No. She looked over to the broken table. The Ryan-thing was still there, one hand faintly slapping the floor as the stiffness of death claimed it. All the while, this new Ryan drew closer. He wore the same clothing. His hair had been styled the same way it was years ago. Impossible. But there he was just the same, boxing her in, drawing ever closer. She heard another sound, another scraping. She turned to see a second shape emerge behind the first.

  It was yet another Ryan. And behind that, still another, with more shadows gathering behind them. Her scream stuck in her throat, refusing to come out. Her feet were rooted to the spot. She felt like a fly caught in pinesap. And she found herself being drawn to them. To all of them. She knew, in some deep, unspeakable place, that they would give her the safety she so craved. So many Ryans for her to reconcile with, so many to make love to her, so many to build a life with, far, far away from here.

  No! She willed herself to run but only managed to back up the barest of steps. The box crumpled in her grip. Her nails punched holes through the cardboard, and salt began to sift from them like hourglass sand.

  Salt! It took all the will she had left, but Beth tore the box in two. Flakes flew out in a billowing cloud. Again came the screeching, so shrill it almost deafened her. The Ryan-things backed away, waiting for the salt to settle, biding their time. She took another step back. Something hard, cold, and round hit her lower back.

  The door handle. In an instant, Beth was out in the street, running, the sound of the slamming door far behind her by the time it latched against the jamb. She could see the lights of the squad car flashing blue and red just around the corner. She sprinted for it, flat out, trying not to think about what she’d say to the cops, except Let’s get the hell out of here.

  What she saw in front of the police cruiser stopped her as cold as what she’d seen inside Axis. The car’s back window had been broken. Shattered glass lay scattered on the ground and over the bodies of two policemen. Next to them was another melting mass, too far gone now to tell if it had been another Ryan or something else.

  She bit down on her fist, stifling a scream. A hand came from behind her, clamping over her mouth, and a wet chemical smell filled her lungs. It stifled any further screams she might have had, and blackness took over.

  Thirty

  Beth’s head rang with the pain of a thousand hangovers, as a hot chemical rush coursed through her. Her heart beat like the wings of a hummingbird. Her eyes flew open. Jack stood in front of her, holding a small vial under her nose.

  Harsh fluorescent light rained down from the ceiling of his van. She tried to speak, tried to scream, but her mouth was held fast with tape. So, too, were her wrists, bound behind her. She’d been propped up in a hard metal chair, and her hands had swollen numb. The dog sat at attention. Its eyes were wide with suspicion. She realized then that it was the same mongrel she’d saved from those punk kids. It was almost funny.

  The man set the vial down next to a rack of solutions. From the same counter, he picked up an olive-drab trifold trench shovel. Its head was crusted over with fresh dirt. “I told you never to speak of what you saw. I told you to forget my face.” In two strides, he was behind her. Her shoulder sockets winced as he lifted her from the chair. He manhandled her to the door, toed it open, and shoved her out into the gloom.

  She stumbled, scraping one knee against the hard-packed gravel. A grim industrial wasteland surrounded her. Rusting hulks of abandoned factory equipment littered the ground like discarded carapaces. She was back in the Docklands. The place she’d spent her whole life trying to escape was now the place where she’d breathe her last. She could almost laugh at the cruel irony. She knew that there was nowhere she could run. There was nothing here but desolation hemmed in by cyclone fence and razor wire.

  Jack hauled her back up roughly. They walked away from the van. The head of his spade poked into the periphery of her vision with every stride. The dog kept pace on the other side—shovel, dog, shovel, dog—as they went she knew not where. Soon they reached a mound of freshly overturned earth and past that a shallow pit. At the bottom lay the bodies of the two police officers.

  “You will not scream,” Jack commanded as he ripped the tape from her mouth. It hung from one cheek, flapping in the breeze. “You see those men down there?” Jack pointed with the shovel.

  She nodded.

  “They might have had families.” Jack stabbed the mound. He lifted a clod of black earth and pitched it over the bodies. “If you’d believed me, if you’d listened, if you’d done as you were told, they might have gotten to kiss their children good night. Now . . .” Another shovelful.

  “Please . . . my boyfriend . . . what happened to him? What did he turn into? Why did he—”

  “What you saw in there was not your boyfriend.” Clod. “If your boyfriend came up against one of those things, he’s dead.” Clod. “What you saw was nothing but an eating machine.” Clod. “One wearing your boyfriend’s face.” Clod. “A nightmare that feeds, and feeds, and feeds, and breeds, and then feeds again.” Clod. “Feeds until nothing remains.” Clod. “Count yourself blessed.” Clod. “You are one of only two people known to have been attacked unprepared who survived to talk about it.”

  Beth wondered how much longer she would be able to talk about what she’d seen, how much longer before her fate was the same as that of the two policemen. She watched their faces disappear under the dirt. Soon nothing would mark their final resting place but a smooth patch of earth in an abandoned lot. “Only two?” Her voice trembled as it hadn’t since she was in third grade. She turned to face him. “What happened to the other one?”

  “You’re looking at him.” Jack pushed the rest of the dirt over the men and patted it down with the flat of the shovel. “And I work alone.” He speared the ground with the shovel, leaving it upright like a grave marker. Then he pulled a jackknife from his belt and flicked it open with his thumb. The knife’s serrated edge glowed wickedly in the night as he walked behind her.

  Beth braced herself for what would come next. She wondered if she’d see that spiral tunnel, the one with the bright, all-encompassing light that they always talked about, or if she’d be greeted by nothing more than the blackness she so feared. She wondered if she’d meet Zoë on the other side, or Ryan. She felt the cold steel blade against the small of her back. The needle-sharp point pricked her spine. One quick jerk, and it was over. There was no pain.

  She collapsed into the dirt. Her hands were free. She looked at her fingers, flexing them, feeling the blood rush back in a hail of needles. The severed tape fluttered from her wrists like streamers. He’d cut that and nothing else.

  “You will not speak of what you have seen,” His faded blue eyes were sharper than any blade could ever be. “You will forget my face.” He calmly folded the jackknife and tucked it away. “Repeat that back to me.”

  The first hints of green dawn shimmered on the horizon. The air was filled with the damp of morning. Beth felt alive in a way she never had. Not just alive—she felt reborn. She opened her mouth to speak, but the word that came out was not one she’d planned on. “No.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No.” She crossed her arms. “I will not repeat that back to you.” She looked at him squarely, feeling her liquid black eyes were almost a match for his steely blue, even
from two yards away. “You drug me. You take me out to the middle of nowhere.” She took a step toward him. “You tell me my boyfriend wasn’t my boyfriend. That he was some kind of eating machine. One that can wear someone’s face!” Another step. “You show me the shallow graves you dug for those cops and all but promise the next one is for me. And then you tell me to forget it? You tell me to walk away?”

  She took her last step. The top of her head came level with his chin. She was close enough now to see the fine network of scars creeping up his neck like vines. “I will not forget your face. I will speak of what I’ve seen here, and I will speak of it to anybody who might possibly have some answers,” she spat. “Repeat that back to me, you fucking lunatic!” The tears she’d been holding back for so long finally broke like water over a levee as she hammered his chest with the heels of her palms. “You fucking lunatic!”

  Jack let the first few volleys land. Then he took her gently by the wrists. “Things are about to get messy here. Leaving town is your best option.”

  “Best option? Is that the one you took? Leave town? Is that what you did?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said that you were the only other person to survive an attack by . . . by whatever the hell that was in there.” She felt the tears beginning to dry. A new purpose burned them away and continued to burn along every fiber of her being like fire in a coal seam. “Is that what you did? Did you forget about it? Did you move on because things were about to get messy? Did you forget about the people you loved? Those who—”

  Jack held up a hand. A look of shame and pain deeper than she could fathom blushed across his stone façade for a moment. Just a moment, and then it was gone.

  “I need to know,” she pleaded. “I need answers.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s all I’ve got left.” She planted both feet. If this would end up being her last stand, so be it. “And if you really want me to forget what I’ve seen, if you really want me to forget you and what you’ve told me, then you’d better kill me now. Because that’s the only way you’ll get me to do that.”

  Jack rested his palm on the knife still clipped to his belt. “Is that really what you want?”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  Jack’s mien seemed to soften. Suddenly, he looked less like the angel of death and more like a man who’d been lost at sea for so long he’d forgotten how to walk on land. He nodded softly, then turned and plodded toward the van, head hanging. When he finally got there, he stopped, hand resting on the door latch. “Well, are you coming or what?”

  Thirty-one

  Jack reached for his percolator. The handle was hot against his callused hand as he poured out a mug of steaming coffee. The aroma was as sharp as broken glass, just the way he liked it. He handed it to the girl. He wished he could have a cup himself, but he only owned the one mug. He’d never needed a second. “What’s your name?”

  “Beth,” she answered. “Beth Becker.”

  “I’m Jack.”

  “I know.” She sipped lightly at the bitter coffee. “It’s on your shirt.” Her hand lifted weakly, one limp finger pointing to the name stitched over his breast pocket. The girl couldn’t have been much older than twenty-three, twenty-four—right around the same age he had been when those things ripped him from his daylight life and dropped him into this never-ending nightmare.

  “Besides those two policemen, have you told anyone about me?”

  She shook her head.

  That was good. The last thing he needed to worry about right now was keeping an eye out for those black Division helicopters circling the New Harbor airspace or finally getting corralled by the black SUVs he’d given the slip to for almost a decade. “Anyone at all? This is important.”

  “No,” she insisted. “Not like anybody would have believed me, anyway. People haven’t been exactly receptive to what I’ve been saying lately.”

  Jack grunted; he wanted to tell her to start getting used to that. He eyed her as she sat hunched over in the metal chair that he’d duct-taped her to less than half an hour before. This made two people who had been inside his van now. And this one had knocked him unconscious. The still-throbbing lump at the base of his skull could attest to that. Maybe it had knocked all the sense out of him, too. Why else would he be having this conversation?

  Beth took another sip, then peeled one hand from the hot ceramic. She eyed the cabinets below his chemical equipment. “You got anything stronger?”

  “You don’t need anything stronger.” He leaned back against the blinking locator console, arms folded. “You need to stay focused.”

  “Look. It’s a lot to process right now—”

  “You can start helping,” Jack said, more brusquely than he wanted to. “Or you can leave.” He shook his head. It had been some time since Jack Jackson had felt the need to demonstrate anything approaching finesse in the social niceties.

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  Jack held up a hand. “No. I’m . . . I’m sorry.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d uttered those words to anyone other than Sarah’s ghost. “That club—”

  “Axis?”

  He nodded. “You work there?”

  “I did. Until a couple of days ago, anyway.” She took a healthy gulp of the scalding coffee, swallowing hard. “Yum. Tastes like you roasted the beans with napalm.”

  Jack kept his tongue. He wondered how she could remain so flippant after all she’d been through. Wondered, too, if that would prove an asset or a deadly liability. He’d have to lay down a few ground rules. He opened the side hatch and slapped Blood on his haunches. “Go on, boy, get some air.” He spotted her eyeing the contents of his van—the equipment, the maps and schematics, the stakes and other weapons. He’d hidden the photo of Sarah and the travel brochure. Those were for his eyes and none other.

  “What is all this stuff?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  “When?”

  “When I can trust you,” Jack snapped. “Until then, I set the curriculum, agreed?” She nodded, fear flickering in her eyes. “Let’s start with some questions. Why were you following me?”

  “My friend Zoë—that’s her over there.” Beth pointed to one of the missing-person fliers tacked up next to his map of New Harbor. A profound sense of discontent radiated from the photograph, a sadness made all the more keen by his knowledge of what had most likely happened to her. “I saw that . . .” She shook her head. “That prophet guy take one of those fliers and spray-paint something on the wall in its place.”

  “‘Beware the Night Angel.’”

  She nodded. “I followed him to Fort Red Rock. I was hoping he could tell me something about them. And that’s where . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Jack nodded. She’d already proved herself to be not only determined and clever but also dauntless. “Go on. Focus on what happened in the club. After you hit me with that bottle.”

  “Yeah. Sorry again about that.”

  He flashed her a look to let her know that they were well past perfunctory apologies.

  “My boyfriend. My ex-boyfriend, actually. Or almost, anyway.” For an instant, tears glimmered in her eyes. She quickly wiped them away, drained the last of the coffee, and set the mug aside. “I thought he’d gone missing, too. And then I saw him. I know you said it wasn’t him. But I know it was.”

  “Forget what I said. Just tell your story. Use whatever words you want.” It would be easier that way. At least, for now it would.

  “He didn’t talk,” she said slowly, her eyes flickering around the van interior as if she was reliving it all. “He just . . . attacked me. It was like he wanted to kill me . . . worse, he was trying to bite me. But it was so strange. It was like I didn’t mind it. Like I wanted it. Like I wanted him to take me. To make me be like him.”

  Jack nodded. He
had been in that same position—held at their cruel mercy—so many times it was beyond tallying.

  “And I saw him in the mirror,” she continued. “Behind the bar. It was like he’d changed somehow, become a monster.”

  A mirror flash. Those were rare. “How did you stop him? How did you get away?”

  “I remembered the salt. How you used it on that other body.”

  “Quick thinking. And then you ran?”

  “No. I was going to, but then . . .” Beth shuddered a bit, trying to come to terms with something beyond all understanding. “Then another one came out of the shadows. Another Ryan.”

  “Another that was just like him? Identical?”

  “Yes. And there were more behind him.”

  Jack leaned in, his voice low and slow as he asked, “How many?”

  “Too many to count.”

  Jack set his jaw. This revelation all but confirmed his worst suspicions. Not only were there multiples lurking in the drain culverts of New Harbor, but they were getting more brazen in their attacks. Not just going after the weak and forgotten but also the strong and vital now. He’d only seen something like that happen once before. When they’d come for him.

  “Tell me,” he asked. “Right before you saw your ex-boyfriend, were you thinking about him? Was he on your mind for some reason?”

  “I guess. I was just looking at an old photo of us in my wallet.”

  “Did he look the same as in the picture? Same clothing?”

  “Yes,” she said, a look of astonishment on her face. “They all were. How did you know?” Her eyes pleaded for an answer, any answer. “Are you saying I had something to do with this?”

  “This is important. Your ex-boyfriend and your friend—where was the last place you saw either of them before they went missing?”