by Jeff Strand
Seconds later, he was engulfed by a crawling, slithering mass of pincers and claws.
•
The plastic ladle was not an optimal weapon at all. Gordy whacked the giant larva over the head three or four times, but it just bounced off the rubbery flesh like a spoon bouncing off of a Jell-O mold. The greasy foot-long grub let out a few clicks and hisses, but it wouldn’t release its grip. By then, his left leg had the worst case of pins and needles he had ever experienced, rendering it thoroughly numb and useless.
He reversed the ladle and tried to pry the thing off him by inserting the handle between the pincers and levering it out of his leg, but the handle was too flimsy. It snapped in half and all that remained of the handle was a jagged six-inch stump.
“Goddamnit!” Cursing, Gordy desperately stabbed it over and over until he finally cut through the rubbery skin and it popped like an old blister. A cloudy foul-smelling sludge slopped from the wound onto the ground as the larva froze in death and slid off his leg. Scooting backwards a few feet, he began to sob in great heaving gasps.
Everything from the past few days was now fresh in his mind as if it had just happened within the hour. The wounds on his ankle matched the two swollen holes in his armpit, only smaller and closer together. He rolled over onto his stomach and began to drag himself around the side of his house toward the garage. He still had to get to a hospital, but before he could think of that, he had to take care of this and other nests. These creatures could not be allowed to live.
•
A tide of twisting mouths and slime poured from the breach in the cave wall, swarming over Seth and flowing into the cave. The sounds resembling bubbles popping and thousands of claws scraping against the stone deafened them. The wormy mass was so heavy that the ones on the bottom were crushed; their vile innards coated the cave floor with a slick layer of viscous sludge.
Ross was the next to be overwhelmed. Holding his burnt face in his hands, he never had time to recognize the threat coming for him. The worms flowed up his legs and torso, biting and stinging their way into his nose and mouth. He fell to the floor choking on them and soon was lost from sight.
Gordy was closest to the entrance. He screamed at Hector, exhorting him to get out of the cave. Hector was in a panic, trying to pull his way out of his sleeping bag, screaming for help when the zipper became stuck.
“Gordy! I can’t get out,” he begged. “Please!”
Without thinking, Gordy ran forward and yanked on the zipper tab. It was thoroughly jammed; a folded bit of nylon was caught between the slider and the teeth. There was no time to work it loose.
“Fuck the zipper,” he yelled. “Rip it open. Pull yourself out!”
Hector’s eyes widened. Looking back into the recesses of the cave, he wailed, “GORDY!”
Gordy turned around. The crawling sea of grubs was nearly to them, but the monstrosity beyond them was what caught his eye. A massive specimen was pulling itself out of the shaft through the hole in the wall. The grubs flowing across the floor ranged in size from half an inch to three inches long. This one was the size of a full-grown man.
Anyone who had watched as many Animal Planet documentaries as Gordy had could identify it as the Queen.
Pushing the last of her bulk out of the gap, she flopped to the floor, crushing hundreds of her spawn as she landed. A flurry of wet squelches sounded as each of her two dozen legs emerged from muculent cavities in her sides, unfolding to gain purchase on the slippery floor. She rose up and faced the two remaining friends across the cave, snapping her blood-red clapperclaws together like a chef sharpening her knives. Scarlet venom leaked from the tips. Though Gordy couldn’t see any eyes along her flanks, it was dreadfully apparent that she was looking directly at him. She began to drag her immense bulk in his direction.
With a hoarse desperate cry, he dropped Hector’s sleeping bag, turned toward the narrow entrance of the cave, and ran blindly for his life. Behind him, Hector’s screams of terror were quickly muffled as the worms reached him and filled his mouth.
•
Gordy pulled himself up on his good leg and dragged himself around the corner of his house by leaning against the vinyl siding for support. His other leg was completely useless from the paralyzing venom that the grub had injected, but he still managed to shuffle along with his three good limbs.
I let my friends get slaughtered by those things. It’s my fault we were even in that goddamned cave. The horror of what had happened repeated itself in his mind over and over again. He saw his friends’ dying faces again and was overwhelmed with nearly crippling guilt. Even if their actions may have slightly contributed to the situation, ultimately Gordy knew that he was at fault.
He turned the corner and, as he had expected, found the garage wide open. At the back, covered by an oil-stained tarpaulin, his old riding mower sat in the corner. He hadn’t used it in nearly two years, ever since he had begun paying an entrepreneurial neighborhood teen to mow it twice a month. He crossed his fingers that it would start. Otherwise, he was out of options.
Ten minutes later, after an effort so draining that he had vomited on the garage floor, he sat on the mower and managed to start the ignition on only the third try. At his feet, on the mower deck, sat a 5 gallon jug of gasoline. It was only about half full, but he didn’t have anything else that was flammable, so that would have to be enough for the job he was about to do.
Driving with his left hand, Gordy held a propane grill lighter in his right ready to ignite the gasoline and fry those vermin. He exited the garage, leg limply splayed out to the side, and turned the corner into his back yard where the churning holes remained. The sound of the mower drowned out the noise coming from the original hole, but he could still see the frothing, churning soup of grubs ahead of him. He drove the mower to the open hole and poured a few splashes onto the surface. Immediately, the grubs began writhing and jumping out of the gory sludge. One flick of the lighter and the hole was filled with dancing flames. Gordy smiled to himself as the grubs sizzled and popped. He continued around his yard, soaking the five other mounds where he had left a deposit with gasoline. Once all six holes were burning, he sat there to make certain that the contents were thoroughly burnt to cinders.
As he watched the six plumes of black smoke rise in the sky, he felt some discomfort and nausea as the burning shit stench filled the air and blew back in his face. Disgusted, he retched on the opposite side so violently that his upper abdomen spasmed and he doubled over the steering wheel as more violent convulsions rippled through him. He fell off the mower holding his gut as another sharp pain hit him. It felt as if someone was stabbing him … from the inside.
Gordy rolled onto his back screaming. He pulled up his t-shirt and confirmed what he had feared. A large bulge in his abdomen had pushed his navel inside out, and a two inch long pincer covered in blood and gore was slowing digging its way out of the umbilical cavity.
•
Freedom was less than ten feet away when the Queen caught Gordy and slammed him to the cave floor. He wailed as she climbed his back and pinned him beneath her mass clamping her pincers on his right flank. The jagged barbs pierced the flesh directly beneath his armpit and the paralytic venom pumped into his body. Within a minute, he was unable to move more than with the slightest of tremors.
Circulation and breathing slowed as he was dragged back into the dark cave. He was still conscious but his perception was altered to the point where sounds echoed and everything he saw faded in and out in a slow-motion strobe effect.
Thankfully he was numb, feeling no pain and only the slightest of pressure.
Once the Queen had pulled him back into the main cavern, she left him on his side on a layer of bodies of her crushed and scorched spawn. He could see now that she had been injured by the roman candle. A foot-long burn mark like molten glass scarred her upper flank and a pungent ooze leaked from the wound.
Hours passed.
Thousands upon thousands of her children craw
led along the floor and flowed up the wall in the dim glow of the flashlight that still cast its beam from where it had fallen. A few even walked along the ceiling, sometimes dropping to the floor and bursting with a wet impact. Many of them climbed his frozen body as if he were only an outcropping of stone around which they needed to maneuver. Across his arms, legs, mouth and eyes, he felt their sharp feet scratch along his skin. None of them, however, attempted to crawl inside his mouth or other orifices, nor did they feed upon him.
His friends were not so lucky.
Little remained of Seth. He had been consumed down to his bloody bones. Even his clothes had been eaten, except for his wristwatch, the eyelets of his boots and his beloved Captain America belt buckle that he wore when he could be certain that no one of the opposite sex was likely to see him.
From his vantage point, Gordy could only see the upper half of Ross, but what he saw would have made him scream in terror if he was able to make a sound. The grubs had crawled inside his body like the carcass of a wild animal left to decompose on an African veldt. Gases had bloated his face and torso to twice their size and the constant motion of the creatures feeding on his interior caused his skin to ripple like the ocean tide. Hector seemed to have suffered the same fate as Ross, but since he was still stuck inside the sleeping bag, all Gordy could see was the seething flow of grubs entering his body through the eye sockets.
More time passed. Despite his paralysis, Gordy became quite hungry and desperately thirsty. The Queen had been out of sight since he had been tossed aside, but he could hear her massive bulk slide around the cave from time to time.
Suddenly, the grubs began flowing in his direction and surrounding him. A subsonic humming vibrated the cave and tingled the surface of his skin. The cave seemed to get warmer and a smell like horse piss tainted the air.
Something was obviously different about her as she slithered into Gordy’s view. She seemed larger and her skin was awash with a pinkish mucus. She circled him three times in an ever-tightening spiral. As she rolled by on the final pass, the heat radiating off her body was palpable.
It was at that point that he saw the ovipositor.
Gordy knew what that horrible thing was the second he saw it (Yet another benefit of watching too many Animal Planet documentaries). He understood that an ovipositor is an egg-laying organ generally located on the tail end of an insect’s abdomen. In this case, it was a foot long with a fleshy sheath surrounding a black segmented organ that protruded from the butt end of the Queen.
All signs pointed to the unequivocal fact that the Queen was going to stick a Humongous Monster Insect Dick inside of him and plant a few hundred thousand eggs. Technically “dick” was not the correct term since she was a female, but for all intents and purposes, it performed the same basic function as a penis did. It penetrated.
Gordy gibbered and screamed in his mind as the reality of what was going to happen crystallized in his mind. Covered in warm, glutinous, reproductive mucus, the Queen slid on top of his frozen body like a nightmare lover. As she rolled him over, some of the mucus filled his mouth and nose. For a few long seconds, he couldn’t breathe. His sight began to blur, his ears began to ring, and he was momentarily thankful that this mouthful of bug sludge was going to kill him before the Queen could consummate their union. Unfortunately, however, his involuntary survival instinct was in full effect. His gag reflex was triggered and he vomited out the sludge just as the Queen spread his legs and struck.
The pain of the impalement was so great that he immediately passed out.
•
Another pincer tore through the flesh of his belly and a grub equal in size to the one he had already stabbed to death emerged through the wound wrapped in the shredded remnants of Gordy’s intestines.
This was it.
This was the end
This was how he would finally die.
After all he had survived in the cave, with the ghosts of his friends haunting him, now he was going to perish wallowing in a pool of his own blood and shit in his own backyard. Somehow it didn’t seem fair at all.
Another grub poked its head through the bloody gash and he felt more of them—dozens more—writhing inside him.
•
FRIDAY, JUST BEFORE DAWN—Gordy woke to the smell of his friends’ rotting bodies. It was darker inside the cave, with only the fading light of the flashlight, which had been kicked to the opposite wall and now cast a meager glow on the surrounding rocks. Silence hung over the stone chamber like a bloody shroud. Shadowy mounds littered the floor around him, unrecognizable in the blackness. A vile, feculent taste filled his mouth; he spat several times and gingerly lifted his head off the floor. Gummy residue on his cheeks stuck his skin to the stone until he peeled it away.
Gordy tried to move his arms and legs and cried out, shattering the stillness. He tried again and slowly managed to pull himself to his knees, biting his lip to keep from screaming out. Running his hands up and down his body, he noted that he only wore tattered remnants of his pajamas. Other than that, his entire body felt as if it were throbbing in time with his heart. Every spot was tender. He must look like one giant bruise.
Gradually, as his eyes adjusted to the low light, flashes of memory came back in fractured shadowy images … the storm … the explosion … the Queen … the death of his friends … NO! The rest was lost to him in a blur of remembered pain and terror. He knew now what the mounds most likely were and he began to sob again. He cried for a number of minutes, then realized something astonishing. He was alone.
The cave was silent, except for his own voice, and he realized that the Queen and her brood must have left, returning to their lair down the shaft in the wall.
Only one thing was on his mind. He staggered over and grabbed the failing flashlight. Nearly dead, it had enough of a light to find his backpack lying in a dried pool of grub slime. In the outer pocket, amazingly, he found his car keys. Gordy did not look back. He hobbled out the entrance, forgetting everything in his fugue state. All he wanted to do was escape.
•
After Gordy fell sideways off the riding mower, it lurched left and the gas can toppled off. It landed upside down next to him, soaking the grass and ground around him with the last few pints of gasoline. Rolling for a few more feet, it stopped when a wheel fell into one of the burning holes and sat there with the blades spinning through the flaming worm shit stew. Sparks and burning crap sprayed through the air.
Gordy saw none of this. He was too busy screaming, blinded by the pure agony of his abdomen being torn open. He was on his way out to a much better place. There was no way he could come back from these injuries, and he only hoped it would be quick. The grubs writhed in the open wound, covered in blood, shit, and a number of other body fluids. Arcs of arterial blood spouted past them onto the ground. The reek of gasoline filled the air. Gordy tried to grab the larger of the two grubs, but it just wriggled through his fingers and started crawling out of his gut-hole. It slithered up his chest toward his mouth, aiming to burrow back into him from the opposite end. Gordy shrieked and prayed to die before it reached him.
Ten feet away, the mower’s front wheel sank lower in the fiery trench, pulling the spinning blade deeper into the blazing waste and changing the trajectory of the splatter. Left and right, burning clumps landed around Gordy from head to toe. One especially large flaming shit patty fell smack dab in the center of the gasoline-soaked grass and instantly ignited the entire area. The flames jumped to Gordy just as the grub reared back, and engulfed him and the grubs in a cleansing inferno. As he died, his screams sounded a lot like laughter.
•
Sergei Tumasov stood on his back porch drinking his evening tea and staring through the wall of smoke hanging in the air above the trees. A host of flashing red and blue lights lit the evening sky. He finished the last sip, grumbled, and went inside his house.
“What is it?” asked his wife Sofia. “Did you see anything?”
“That boy has finall
y gotten into trouble, Sofi,” he answered. “I knew he was a problem waiting to happen. There are firemen, at least five or six policemen and an ambulance.”
“Stop it,” she admonished him. “You say that about all of our neighbors. How are we to make friends if you think that all of them are criminals?”
“I was right about him. I’ll bet he blew up a meth lab”
“You have been watching that show about that science teacher too much. Not everyone makes drugs in their basement. Maybe there’s a medical emergency.”
“You are too trusting, dear. Most Americans are selfish assholes.”
Sofia laughed, “Should I remind you that we are now citizens? Do I fit that category now?” she said, giving him a warning glance.
“Of course not, my kroshka,” he said, using her pet name to hopefully mollify her. He looked around absentmindedly. “Where are the boys?”
“In the den. All of them. I think Yuri got into a fight. He has a cut on his nose and he smelled horrible when he came home. I cleaned him up a bit and put some salve on it, but we may need to take him to the vet to check it out.”
“Hmmm … I’ll check on him and see how he looks.” He left her in the kitchen and walked down to the basement. A flurry of barks greeted him when he entered. Their boys, ten dogs they had rescued over the past few years, were as happy as always to see him. Mischa, the terrier mix, greeted him by racing in circles around his feet and peeing a bit in excitement. The others, varying in size and age, were content to mill around and nuzzle his hands. All except for one.
Yuri, the largest dog by far, was lying on his chosen pile of blankets in the corner looking miserable. Immediately, Sergei was concerned. Yuri had been with them the longest—over six years—and, though he wouldn’t have admitted it out loud, the giant mutt was his favorite, even if he had the disgusting habit of eating his own week-old turds.