As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  “Have you ever stared at the ocean?”

  The ocean? This guy was seconds away from putting him to bed under a concrete blanket, and now he was waxing poetic about the ocean? What is this? Some sick game? It wasn’t enough that that machine got into my head, now this guy has to, too? Jarrod nodded slightly. “Sure. As a kid. My great-uncle lives in Maine. Casco Bay.”

  “Believe me when I tell you this, Jarrod. You can stare at the ocean until you go blind. And as much as you think you see, as vast a view as you think you have, you see nothing but the surface.” Ross turned to him. “That’s what the world is like for most people. They see the pretty waves and not the monsters lurking in the deep.”

  Jarrod wished Ross would just get it over with. Send him to the black. “What’s your point?”

  “My point is this. There are two ways of dealing with hazardous material. It can be disposed of.” Ross nodded to the pit. “Or it can be neutralized.”

  Jarrod looked down. In Ross’s outstretched hand, he saw an envelope. “What’s that?”

  “It’s five thousand dollars in cash and a bus ticket that will take you to any destination in the lower forty-eight that you care to go to.” Ross pushed the envelope closer to Jarrod. “Provided you disappear. No contact with friends, family, anyone from your old life.”

  “No one?”

  “No one. As far as the world knows, you died tonight, Jarrod. It’s up to you to decide if that’s true or not. We need to be certain that you are neutralized.”

  Neutralized or disposed of. “My parents . . .”

  “As far as they’ll know, you took your own life. In your jail cell, just as Shaw did. It will be the same cover story either way.”

  Jarrod took one last thought about that and snatched Ross’s envelope. “Good,” he said. Let his parents think that. “I’m already gone.”

  “Outstanding.” Ross offered Jarrod a warm but firm handshake to seal the deal. “You’ll have to walk to the bus station. It’s a little over a mile. Make sure you’re on the road by sunrise. In the trunk of the car, you’ll find a duffel bag. Don’t worry. I’ll radio Agent Diamond and tell him not to shoot you. Inside the bag, you’ll find new identity papers—birth certificate, diploma, social security card, and so on. There’s also a prepaid cell phone filled up for the next year and a few changes of clothes. No cigarettes, though.”

  Jarrod could have laughed. He could have cried. What he did do was say, “Thank you, Agent Ross.”

  “Don’t thank me, Jarrod. Just do the job, and do it well.” And with that, Ross turned his back to stare once again into the open pit.

  Jarrod left, taking the first steps into his new life. He didn’t know where the journey would take him, but he knew one thing. Wherever his feet touched down, this time, he would not settle.

  Division Internal Memo

  TO: Sector Leader Morgan Bishop

  FROM: Agent-in-Charge Basil Ross

  RE: Polybius Project/Jarrod Foster

  DATE: Dec. 1

  Subject (Jarrod Hanlon Foster) has been fully reconditioned using mobile optical interface running Polybius software (V. 12.4). Reconditioning was administered by AIC and has been deemed optimally successful. Initial conditioning by the original unit (Polybius V. 1) appears to have been thorough, if admittedly flawed.

  In addition, subject has been issued a new identity and fitted with a tracking chip while sedated. Along with his personal effects, we have included a touch-screen cell phone running subliminal Polybius mobile adjustment software (V. 3.4), remotely updatable.

  It is the opinion of the AIC that under proper supervision and with occasional Division intervention, Foster will prove an ideal test candidate as the Polybius Project moves into its final phase of operation and that he offers the best hope for developing actionable defenses until the fugitive Jackson is apprehended.

  Recommend periodic observation over the next year, culminating with a thorough examination to be administered by project supervisor Dr. Kander in conjunction with his work on the specimen recently acquired in New Harbor.

  For the Forgotten

  The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HENRY VI

  Through their mouths I hear them praying for pain,

  But it’s only a game.

  —CHUCK MOSLEY/FAITH NO MORE, “AS THE WORM TURNS”

  Prologue

  SEASIDE SELF-STORAGE, OCEAN CITY, NEW JERSEY

  OCTOBER 25, 2012

  Final auction, ladies and gents. Walk this way, and step lively.”

  Cy followed the auctioneer down a locker-lined gully. The air was sharp with salt spray. Crashing waves echoed hollowly off endless rows of steel shutters. Cy sized up the remaining bidders. Suckers and rubes, every last one of them.

  “There she is.” The auctioneer, whose name was Toby, rapped the galvanized door with one pudgy, freckle-frosted hand. Wiry bronze hair sprouted between a brace of rings that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Liberace. “Going blind. Only the winning bidder gets to peek inside.”

  Toby was good people, Cy had to admit. But sweet Jesus, did he love him some bling. Cy peered at the door. Its mottled surface was a jigsaw puzzle of flaking oxidation. He scratched the back of his hand. He was getting the itch. The itch. The one that almost never let him down.

  “Lots of bids from you today,” came a sultry rasp from just behind Cy.

  Terry Robbins. So much for suckers and rubes. How’d he miss her? Had she been lying low all day? Taking cover behind a scrim of chumps and looky-loos? This was bad. Terry wasn’t some housewife with extra cash to burn. She was an ex-croupier who knew a poker face when she saw one.

  “Big bids but no buys, C.C. Wonder why that is?”

  C.C. God, how he hated it when she called him that. Like it was some secret pet name only the oh-so-goddamn-clever Terry Robbins got to use. Cy plastered on his fakest Colgate grin. “Ehh, you know how it goes. Just waiting on the right song ’fore I hit the dance floor.”

  Terry winked. “Better buck up soon, C.C. Dance is almost over, and you’re just standing by the punch bowl looking all sweaty.”

  Cy was sweating. His shirt was damp at the pits, and he’d caught more than one strong whiff of his own funk today. Almost Halloween, and still the air was balmy as July. Shit, Terry was sporting a tank top—no bra, of course, no fucking bra—and cropped cargo shorts that showed off those long, tanned legs of hers practically to the cooch. He wiped a wet line from his brow. Don’t let her get in your head, boyo. Focus on the auction.

  Toby launched into his standard shtick. “Start the bidding at one thousand? Do I have one thousand?”

  No hands went up.

  “One thousand? One thousand? Yes or no? Got to go. Got to get it gone.”

  Still no hands. Cy wondered if this locker might be his for a song. Maybe just the chorus. Just hold on. Just play it cool.

  “One thousand? No? One thousand? No? Can I get nine—”

  “One thousand,” Terry said, flashing Cy a bear-trap smile.

  So much for a song. This bitch was going to make him sing the goddamn “Star-Spangled Banner.”

  “Can’t leave you dancing all by your lonesome, C.C.” She nudged him, leaning just close enough for one soft breast to squash against his upper arm, the nipple stiff through the thin fabric of her top.

  “One thousand. Got one thousand opening bid. Bid up on one thousand. Can I get one-five?”

  Cy gave Toby a two-fingered salute. “One-five.”

  “One-five to Cy Conrad. Bid up on one-five?”

  Terry lifted a well-manicured hand. “Two-five.”

  “Five.”

  “Fifty-one hundred.”

  And so it went. Cy would bid high, and Terry would nudge it up. They were dancing, all right. Dancing as if they were the only two there. None of the other buyers so much as tapped a foot to the beat. They just watched their paso
doble like it was some rube reality show. Toby passed the ten-thousand mark in a blink. Twenty thousand came and went. Same with thirty and forty. And forty-five. And fifty.

  “What do you know that I don’t know, C.C.?”

  “I know a lot that you don’t know. And I plan to keep it that way. Fifty-five.”

  “Fifty-five thousand. Got fifty-five. Can I get fifty-six? Fifty-six?”

  Terry chomped her lower lip. Cy knew that if she lifted the bid again, it was over. Fifty-five was his ceiling, and he’d hit it so hard chirping birds ringed his noggin.

  “Fifty-five going once. Fifty-five going twice. Going a third time.”

  Terry shot Cy a glance but kept her hand glued to her thigh.

  “Sold for fifty-five! Auction’s over, folks. See you all next time.”

  • • •

  Ten minutes later, after he’d exchanged his fifty-five large for a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters, Cy stood looking at his prize. Toby’d had had the good sense to cut out. All the other bidders had wandered away, too. Only he remained. He and Terry.

  “You heard Toby,” Cy said. His hands were itching so hard he could have sworn they’d been stung by bees. “Auction’s over.”

  She pulled a Virginia Slim from a silver and turquoise cigarette case. Snake tampons, Cy’s old man used to call them. “Yeah, I heard Toby.”

  “Then why are you still standing there?”

  Terry stepped close enough for Cy to smell her perfume—grapefruit and sandalwood. “Because I want to see what’s inside.” She clicked the cigarette to life. A cloud of blue smoke billowed from her lips—half pout, half pucker.

  “Want to see what’s inside, you should have bid higher.”

  She flicked off a column of ash. “Oh, come on, C.C. Don’t be such a pill. Fifty-five grand is a lot to pay for what might be an empty locker.”

  “I can afford it.”

  “Tell you what . . .” Terry laid one hand on him. Her skin was warm and dry, and the small hairs on Cy’s bare forearm rose at her touch. “How about a little wager? After you cut that padlock, what say we head out for drinks and maybe a bite to eat?”

  “Sounds more like a date.”

  “Let me finish. If whatever’s in that locker is worth the green you laid out, then the night’s on you. If not, it’ll be my treat.” Terry gave him a slight squeeze. Cy felt himself stiffen against his fly. “What do you say?”

  Cy weighed his options. If he saw what he hoped he would inside that locker, the last things he needed were any witnesses. But then again, he was fairly positive Terry’d keep what she saw to herself. She might have been a shark, but she wasn’t a narc. The code buyers lived by was loose enough, but there was one rule none of them dared break: all was fair while the auction was live, but you never fucked someone over after the auctioneer called it sold.

  “All right,” Cy said. “It’s a bet.” Then he sheared through the lock’s steel shank. He reached down. The handle was cold, don’t-lick-the-flagpole cold. He yanked, and the shutter rolled up with a screech. Cy’s chest tightened as if a blast of arctic fog had hit them.

  “Fucking brr!” Terry wrapped both arms around herself. Gooseflesh flared from wrists to shoulders. “I didn’t know any of these lockers were refrigerated.”

  “They aren’t,” Cy said. “They aren’t even wired for electricity.”

  “Weird.”

  It was weird. But Cy had already known that this locker, alone among the rest, was powered. Even if that was all he’d known about it when he hit the auction this morning. Cy had a talent when it came to what to buy and when. But talent alone didn’t exactly get you a long life in this business. It got you exactly fucked; that’s what it got you. You had to come prepared. And when he’d heard that 27B was going to be auctioned blind, he got to work.

  He’d made a few inquiries. Best he could tell, the locker was rented to no one. Nothing but decades of anonymous payments, which had stopped some six months ago. Last night, he’d snuck in for a quick peek, just to see if that itch would come. And it did. He’d cupped his ear to the door and picked up the low, steady hum of electricity. It was strange that no one else seemed to notice it. Then again, this close to the shore, the soft buzz could easily be lost among the echoing surf. But Cy had heard it—the unmistakable zzzzz of electric current powering something. Something someone wanted to keep secret.

  Years ago he’d been at an auction, and watched them open one locker to find a hydroponic marijuana farm with enough weed inside it to keep all the college dropouts in town stoned for a fucking year. It must have been worth millions. It too had been secretly wired for electricity to throw off the cops. Cy’d been looking for a score like it ever since.

  But it seemed he wasn’t going to get it. Not this time.

  The mist dissipated into the warm South Jersey air like skim milk stirred into strong coffee. Cy Conrad got the first look at what he’d bet the house on, and he felt that patented itch of his leak right out of his hands. Fuck fuck fuck . . .

  No hydroponics. No grow lamps. No racks of sticky bud. Nothing. Not so much as a single leafy plant in sight. Just a giant gray box that hovered in the retreating fog like the prow of a lost ocean liner.

  “What the fuck is that thing?” Terry asked, rubbing the chill from her bare arms.

  “Fuck if I know.”

  The box stood eight feet easy, a yard across, the same deep. It was the color of soiled bathwater. Both sides sported louvered fins, and a thick bundle of umbilical-like cables snaked out from the back to meet a flange embedded in the concrete floor.

  “Looks like a time machine. Like on that Dr. Who show.”

  Yeah, that’s probably what it is, Cy thought. Just a plain old TARDIS. Find those all the time stuffed into abandoned lockers, two for a quarter. Cy was about to take a step inside the locker when the box shuddered, belching a gelid blast that stained the air white.

  Terry grabbed him by the wrist. “Cy, I’m scared.”

  Oh, it was Cy now, not C.C. Not now that they’d been dropped into the Twilight Zone. He packed his courage snowball-tight and took a step inside. “Come on,” he said. “It’s just a box.”

  “So’s a coffin.”

  Cy ignored her. Eventually Terry followed, hanging a few steps behind.

  The thing was cold. It smelled cold. Cold and empty as an ice floe. The front was a single glass plate fastened to the chassis by a heavy riveted frame, and covered by a hoary growth of frost. Without thinking, Cy swiped a hand across it, and the frost came away in hinged folds.

  And Terry screamed.

  From the other side, a pair of eyes stared out at them.

  “Is that . . .” Terry whispered, trembling. “Is that a body?”

  “I don’t know.” Cy swiped away more frost. Behind the glass was a woman’s face. Late teens, early twenties at most. Delecite, elfin, and perfectly preserved in a solid slab of ice. A mane of copper hair fanned out behind her. Ribbons of milky oxidation slithered through the ice around her, and from her open mouth trailed the bubbles of a scream.

  God, was she beautiful. The type of beautiful that got guys stabbed in bars. And those eyes—liquid jade that seemed alive. He traced the lines of her face lightly with his pinkie and ring fingers as if he were caressing a lost love.

  He pushed away more of the frost, enough to expose her to her bare shoulders. Cold and damp bit his skin. His nails were starting to go blue, but he couldn’t stop. He wanted to see more. Had to see more. By the time the girl’s entire torso was exposed, they could see that she was naked. Another undulating band of white rippled across her small breasts in a rough diagonal.

  Cy stepped back, shaking chunks of biting frost from his hand. One arm trailed behind her into the murk. The other stretched toward them, palm against the glass as if she were raking it. The agony on her face was so fresh, so immediate. Jesus Christ! She was alive when this happened.

  Terry’s hand clamped down on Cy’s shoulder, shaking so hard it rattled
his bones. “Cy, look.”

  He did. And he saw it. Below the girl’s waist, where there should have been a pair of skinny legs, was a tail. It was ringed and segmented and stretched from her abdomen in a long taper before disappearing in the cloudy ice.

  Terry’s cigarette dropped from her lips, falling to the floor, forgotten.

  One

  WEATHERFORD, KENTUCKY

  PRESENT DAY

  Beth shifted in her seat. The ancient truck had no air-conditioning, and her short-sleeved gingham top was sweat-soaked. She leaned forward; the skin on the back of her bare arms peeled from the vinyl with a sticking pinch. “You’re sure you’ve found it?” she asked Jack. “The den?”

  Jack simply shot her a look that all but screamed, Do you really have to ask me that?

  Beth tucked a lock of black hair behind her ear. It was much longer now than the pixie cut she’d sported when they’d first fled New Harbor. When she’d left behind the only life she knew—one of drinks and dancing and ignorance—and traded it for this. For a two-person war against things the world called vampires.

  Vampires. That’s what those things were, even if Jack hated the word. Even if they were far from the doomed and romantic figures Hollywood would have them be. Back in New Harbor, a man Beth had met only once dubbed them Night Angels. But Jack had said they didn’t deserve a name. The only words he ever used to describe them were the creatures or, more often, simply them.

  They looked like people. But Beth had seen the truth of what they were. She’d seen it with Jack’s snap-vial gas, just as she’d seen it in the mirror that first night, when one of them had come to her wearing the face of her dead boyfriend. She’d seen what they were and would never forget, no matter how strong their illusions were.

  It wasn’t magic that did it; it was a viral recoding of every one of the senses coupled with what Jack suspected were hallucinogenic pheromones. The mind would see them as whatever it desired most—a lost love, an object of sexual desire, a hero, a damsel, whatever it took to get a victim to submit. But in reality, they were far from human. At the heart of it all, they were nothing but worms, no matter how big. Highly evolved blood flukes, really, boneless nightmares with endless teeth and a hunger that would only die when they did.