As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  If only he could have kept them safe for another six months. The cancer would have claimed him by then. He would have taken what the Division wanted so badly into his unmarked grave. But if they captured him now, if they took him to one of their black sites, six months would be plenty of time for them to extract everything they’d come for.

  There were no options left. Every word he and Ross bandied back and forth put him—and Beth—that much closer to losing. He needed to end this here. Even if that meant leaving this world, and leaving Beth, without so much as a good-bye.

  But even as Jack felt his wrist unconsciously twisting the barrel of his pistol toward his skull, he knew it was no guarantee. He could judge the angle wrong and wake up two weeks from now, strapped to a hospital bed with whoever had taken over for Wilcox hovering over him, scalpel in hand.

  He could hear the creature stirring behind him. It knew there was blood waiting for it. Hot and ready, all it could drink. He could just waltz back into the waiting maw of that horror lurking behind him. He could go out with one last blast of that toxic rush he so craved, instead of coughing his last in Division custody. But if they could keep the creature from attacking at this close range, maybe they could keep it from attacking at all. No. That wouldn’t work, either. He had to be one hundred percent positive.

  There was always the auto-snare. That would be a sure bet. The moment he slipped it over his head and pulled the ring, there would be no going back. He’d designed it to decapitate the creatures, but it would be just as effective on a human. As his hand touched the death device, he knew what he had to do. And prayed for the strength to do it.

  Fourteen

  Beth heard the footfalls behind her growing fainter. What the two men chasing her might have had on her in bulk, she made up for in speed. And she had Jack to thank for that. His draconian training sessions had paid off, and paid off big.

  If only he’d been here for her to say thank you. She’d made it to the bank door a pace or two before he had. She didn’t even think to look back. But as she ran down the dark streets of Camden, she knew soon enough that she was running alone.

  She ducked down a narrow alley. Her lungs burned. Her body was one relentless stitch. Although she’d given her pursuers the slip, she knew it wouldn’t be for long. It was only a matter of time.

  Her eyes darted around the shadows of a brick alcove. She spotted a Dumpster and quickly lifted its rubber lid. A cloud of flies erupted from its mouth. The sour stench of garbage hit her nose like an uppercut, but at least it was empty.

  The silhouettes of two men appeared just as she hopped over the grease-slick side and slid down. The hatch dropped, sealing her in darkness. Beth crouched, hands and knees in the slime, and held her breath. She strained to hear what was happening on the other side of her steel crypt. A muffled clopping rose and then fell, and then there was only silence.

  She reached for the calm that never let her down and assessed the situation. She knew who the men were. Jack had described them enough times, shady men in dark suits like spooks straight out of a B movie. It was the Division.

  Had they already gotten Jack? Doubt gnawed at the back of her mind like a sewer rat. He was crafty. He’d evaded them for years. But even the hottest streak always came to an end, didn’t it?

  Beth raised the Dumpster lid just enough to let in a sliver of meager alley light. The way was clear. But for how long? She clambered out and flopped onto the pavement, skinning her palms as she landed.

  She could almost hear Jack’s voice chiding her. I can take care of myself. Get out of here while you still can. Live to fight them on your own. No, damnit! She’d saved him once, back in New Harbor—more than once. She could do it again. There was no way she was leaving him here stuck between the two things he feared most.

  A cluster of people ambled by. They were headed in the right direction. They were about her age. She’d fit right in. One of the many things Jack had taught her was that the best hiding spot was often in plain sight. She slipped into the group’s wake, sticking just close enough to look like she was with them but hanging back so as not to arouse their suspicion.

  She pulled within sight of the pickup truck. Two more agents flanked it, looking as if they were just waiting for her to show up. Jack hadn’t told her much about the Division, but one detail stuck. They worked in the shadows. They were not an official agency of any government. They had no authority to seize her in public. As intimidating as they might be, they had their weaknesses, and their secrecy was one of them. Without thinking, she ran back toward the street and headed for the only place that might offer haven. DAAZE. The nightclub.

  Déjà vu all over again.

  Beth stripped off her tac belt—pistol, stakes, auto-snares, and more dangling from it—rolled it up, and dropped it into a curbside trash bin. She knew that many urban clubs had metal detectors at the door, and the belt would light it up like a pinball machine. She’d be defenseless without it, but she had little choice. She hoped she’d be able to retrieve it later. But hope was a severely rationed commodity right now.

  A heavy thump rattled the walls of the club as she drew close. She kept her back to the street, only glancing over her shoulder every so often to check that the goons at the truck hadn’t seen her. She joined the line at the front door, doing her best to ignore the glances she drew. Unlike at the Pleasantville dive, she did not fit in here. She knew it, and so did everyone around her.

  • • •

  She might been waiting five minutes, but each one of those minutes lasted an ice age. And when she finally approached the bouncer, she recognized the look in his eye. It was a look she knew all too well, the why don’t you make this a Lifetime Original Movie marathon night? look. She’d seen the same look in the eyes of every doorman she’d worked with shot at someone he thought didn’t fit in.

  Still, she had to try. When she got closer, the bouncer took her decidedly non-club-worthy attire in at a glance. He laid one boxing-glove hand on the chain stand and blocked her.

  “Cover charge tonight?” she asked, aiming for a smoky casual tone and managing only a nervous squeak.

  “Nope.”

  “Okay, then.” Beth stepped up to the man’s massive arm, her belly touching it lightly.

  But he didn’t even seem to notice. “I’m not sure this is exactly your scene, you catch my drift.”

  At the end of the block, the two men who’d chased her had just rounded the corner. They split up, covering both sides of the street. They hadn’t spotted her yet, but it was only a matter of moments before they did.

  “Come on,” she said to the bouncer, “I’m into a lot of different kinds of scenes, okay? Don’t judge me.”

  “Uh-huh. Look, miss, I know you types like to mix it up downtown and all . . .”

  The bouncer might have said more to her, but what difference did it make what words he used? The message was loud and clear. He wasn’t going to let her through. Not unless she could find a way to convince him.

  During her tenure at Axis, she’d heard a million wheedling reasons why someone should be let inside. A lot of them involved dropping a name or two—some actual connections, some inflated, most pulled right out of their asses. It never worked.

  There were only two or three names that really caught a veteran doorman’s attention, and they were all those of dead old men who used to live in the White House. She thrust a hand into her pocket and pulled out all the money she had—sixty dollars—and tried her best to shove it into the bouncer’s enormous mitt. “Will this convince you that this is my kind of scene?”

  He arched a single eyebrow at the bills in Beth’s clutched fist. Then he began to laugh. Light chuckles at first, then great, pealing guffaws. “Convinces me you’re crazy, waving around a wad of cabbage like that.”

  Beth stared at him. “So? We got a deal?”

  The bouncer pulled back his arm. “Go on in.”

  “Don’t you want the money?”

  “Miss, I own thi
s club. You spend your money inside, and it’ll get back to me.”

  “You own it? But—”

  The man shook his head, still laughing. “Worked the door twenty years to be able to buy it. And wouldn’t you know it, I like hanging out in front better. Now, go on in. But don’t be starting any trouble, hear me? Somebody gives you the stink-eye, you just let that slide.”

  “Roger that,” Beth said, adding a clipped Cub Scout salute before slipping into the dark confines of the club. As she passed through the door, she could see the Division agents closing fast. The owner-bouncer might keep them out for a little while, but they were bound to have more bargaining power than a few twenties. Through either bribes or intimidation, they’d get inside. They might even persuade the man to just hand her over. Everyone had his price.

  The club was small. Just an L-shaped lounge, beyond which lay a small dance floor, where the pile-driver thud thud thud was deafening. There were a hundred people inside, maybe fewer. That might be a big enough crowd for a local to get lost in, but Beth knew how much she stuck out here. When those agents finally made their way in, they’d spot her in seconds. She mingled her way past the dancing crowd anyway and leaned low against the back bar.

  There was the fire exit. That might work, but if those agents were smart, they’d already have it covered. She’d bet the house that another pair of suit-wearing bruisers already hovered just outside. She needed to think.

  “Can I help you?”

  She turned to see a wiry young bartender in a black basketball tank leaning in. “Sorry?”

  “Said can I help you?”

  If only, she thought. “Sure.” Why not have one last drink before it was all over? She reached into her pocket for the money, and that was when she saw it. It was hanging on the wall, just where it was supposed to be, just like in any other club. She shrugged. It worked once before. Why not again?

  Déjà vu all over again.

  Fifteen

  There was only one way out. And it was going to be a bloody way. Jack squatted down, hitting the speaker button as he set the phone on the ground. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, Ross. But you aren’t taking me alive. This is game over.”

  “Jack?” Ross’s voice came out thin and distorted through the tiny speaker. It had the barest trace of a tremor in it.

  Jack slipped the auto-snare from his belt. The loop snapped open instantly.

  “Jack? What are you doing?”

  “What needs to be done.” He put his weight on his injured ankle. The pain was still there but had lessened. The adrenaline must have quelled it some. Or perhaps it was something more. Maybe it was destiny. He held up the auto-snare. Its industrial diamond-coated, woven titanium cable glistened in the scant light. “Can you see this, Ross? Can you see it from whatever hole you are hiding in?

  The agents looked on in confusion, exchanging worried glances and whispers.

  “What is that, Jack?”

  “The Division isn’t the only one who’s been refining their arsenal.” Jack commanded the space like a tent revivalist, his voice full of fire-and-brimstone certainty. “This is an auto-garrote. My own design. When I pull the trigger, the spring inside draws the line tight. It’ll cut through muscle. It’ll cut through bone. And it’ll do it in seconds.”

  “Jack . . . what are you doing?”

  “It’s for close-range combat with those creatures. It works exceptionally well, as clean a decapitation as you could ask for.” Jack raised the loop until he stared through it like a noose. “I’d love to show you the plans. But I don’t think that’s in the cards.”

  “Jack . . .”

  “You want what I’ve got, Ross? You want what’s in my head?” He slipped the loop around his neck and let it hang there, the wire cool on his skin. “Good luck getting that when it’s no longer attached to my body.”

  “Jack. This is a poor move.” Ross’s voice had risen in pitch and volume, distorting the phone’s small speaker. “I thought better of you.”

  Jack put his thumb through the trigger ring and held it up to show them all he meant business. “Good-bye, Ross. You’ll have to find someone else to play your game with.”

  “Put the device down, and we’ll talk.”

  Jack kicked the phone. It skittered across the bank floor, past the agents penning him in, and into darkness, into silence. Nothing Ross could say now would stop him from doing what needed to be done.

  The time had come. Jack turned his back to the agents. He kept his focus slack. The creature was close. Even through the hazy blur, he could feel its pull taking over. If, just for a moment, he let himself see it clearly, he’d be locked into the illusion. He’d succumb to whatever form it took. Be it Sarah or Beth, he’d submit just the same to that mesmeric undertow and die in its embrace, veins flooded with the euphoric rush of venom.

  Jack lunged through the portcullis door, crossing the distance between him and the creature, keeping his eyes fixed on the metal box on the thing’s back. He’d have only one shot at this. He collapsed his mind to nothing but the now as he drew within range.

  The creature leaped at him. Jack stepped to the side like a matador. His wounded ankle bayed in agony as the thing hurtled past. He flipped the snare loop off his own neck and let it sail. It hovered for one terrifying instant, then ringed the box like a horseshoe on a stake.

  Jack yanked the trigger ring. There was a whizzing whine as the loop cranked tight. The creature rent the air with screams, the cable digging a tight white line into its flesh.

  A tangle of Taser wires flew over Jack’s shoulder, fired from the archer slits above him. He snaked out his pistol and fired back. A volley of pellets flashed and sizzled against the wall, and he saw the Taser barrels pulling back.

  He heard a thudding clank and turned to see that the box had fallen off the creature and landed on the tiles. The thing turned to Jack. And for one bare instant, Jack saw it. He saw it just as he had seen the one under the house. He saw the creature’s true form, the walking nightmare it always was. And he saw it with his own unaided eyes.

  It rushed right for him. Jack took the hit full in the chest, and together he and the creature tumbled to the floor. As they rolled, Jack scrambled back. He put the soles of his boots against the thing and kicked, buying him just enough time to tug two road flares from his belt. He clacked them together. They sparked to life, painting the room a hellscape of searing red magnesium and thick black smoke.

  The creature scuttled back, regrouping for another attack. It had become just a shape again, a shadow in the flare light. It faked left, then right, trying to corner him. He thrust the flares forward, but only far enough to frighten the creature. He needed it alive if he had any hope of escape. Never, in the many years he’d fought these horrors, did he ever imagine a scenario where they would be allies, no matter how tenuous. But here it was.

  Jack pushed again, waving the flares and shepherding the creature toward the door and the bank lobby beyond it. “Go on,” he yelled at it, eyeing the agents blocking his only chance at escape. “There’s a buffet just waiting for you out there. All you can eat.”

  The creature stopped and turned. It was almost as if the thing were listening to him. Then it whipped around and bounded through the door. Jack drafted behind it as it headed full-tilt for the scattering agents.

  Sixteen

  All Jack had to do now was make it to the door. If he could just get outside, he’d have a chance. The creature was a good opening gambit. It had confused the agents. But he needed more than simple confusion—he needed chaos.

  He threw his flares down, one on each side of him. One skittered into a hole in the floor. The ancient timbers just beneath the tile lit up like kindling almost at once. Jack pulled two more flares and lit them against each other. Sparks spit from the ends in warning. Two of the agents were already scrambling through the door by the time the others spotted the blaze.

  Fire licked its way up the walls, hungry for the tattered bunting that h
ung waiting for it. By the time the other agents had made it out, half of the lobby was engulfed. The heat seared Jack’s back, and smoke billowed around him in a thick cloak. It was just him now. Him and the creature. He’d deal with it here, and if the Fates allowed, he’d escape into the night.

  He turned to face it. Again, for an instant, he saw it as itself—saw it as the worm it was—flickering into and out of shadow in the harsh red glow. And frozen in front of it he saw her, the smooth-talking blonde who’d first tried to get him to give himself up. She stood a few feet from the open door, totally transfixed and as still as a cemetery monument, as the creature inched closer and the flames swirled around them. Thorne, she’d said her name was, as if it mattered to Jack, or to the thing that now held her spellbound. As if it meant that horror would call her anything but food.

  Jack rushed forward, flare extended. There was the sick hiss of searing flesh as the business end of it grazed the thing’s skin. He shouldered it aside, drew his pistol, and put two pellets into the creature. White blood gushed in a double geyser from its chest as it fell back into the raging fire. Jack watched it happen. But this time, it was not the creature’s true form he saw. Before he could stop it, the illusion took hold, sinking deep into his mind. It was Beth there, not a creature. And she was engulfed in that hellfire, a sacrifice, a burnt offering.

  It was happening again. He was going to watch the only person on earth he loved die. And it was going to be his fault. He stepped toward the waiting arms of the inferno. Maybe he couldn’t save Beth, but he could join her. He took another step closer. The flames caressed his face and chest. It would burn it all away—all doubt, all fear, all guilt—and in the heart of it, waiting for him, was Beth. One more step; that’s all it would take.

  Jack felt a hand wrap around his ankle. He tried to shake it off, but it pulled with a gentle insistence. He looked down to see Agent Thorne cowering on the ground. Her blond hair was out of its bun, a singed rat’s nest. Her designer suit a charred mess. And her porcelain skin blackened by soot. In her eyes was a deep pleading look. “Don’t . . .” she said, her voice more cough than speech.