The Conqueror Worms

THE CONQUEROR WORMS

BRIAN KEENE

A Living Nightmare

Out of breath and panicking, I ran around the side of the building and slid to a halt. The thing that had been underneath the shed was definitely not an oversized groundhog. It had crawled back outside, reopening the tunnel beside the woodpile. Half of it jutted from the hole, thrashing in pain. Stinking fluid sprayed from the knife wounds in its side.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

It was a worm. A giant earthworm, the size of a big dog—like a German Shepherd or Saint Bernard—but much longer. It undulated back and forth in the mud and grass, covering the ground with slime. Watery brown blood pulsed from the gash in its hide.

More of its length pushed out of the hole, and the creature whipped toward me like an out-of-control fire hose. The worm’s tip (what I guess must have been its head, though I couldn’t see any eyes) hung in the air in front of me, only an arm’s reach away. Then the flesh split, revealing a toothless maw. It convulsed again, and then that horrible, yawning mouth shot toward me. Shrieking, I stumbled backward to the shed door. The worm followed…

For my grandparents,

Ward and Anna Ruth Crowley,

because part of this is their story.

Author’s Note

Although Renick, Lewisburg, Baltimore, White Sulphur Springs, and many of the other places mentioned in this novel are real, I have taken certain fictional liberties with them. So if you live there, don’t look for your house. The forecast calls for rain.

PART I

THE EARLY WORM GETS THE BIRD

There were giants in the earth in those days…

—Genesis

Chapter 6, Verse 4

CHAPTER ONE

It was raining on the morning that the earthworms invaded my carport. The rain was something that I’d expected. The worms were a surprise, and what came after them was pure hell, plain and simple. But the rain— that was normal. It was just another rainy day.

Day Forty-one, in fact.

My name is Teddy Garnett, and I guess I should tell you right now, before we go any further, that I’m no writer. I’m educated, sure, and a lot more than most of the good old boys in this part of West Virginia. I never made it past grade school because my father needed my brothers and me to help him with the farm. But what I didn’t learn in grade school, I picked up during my thirty-five years as a radioman in the Air Force. That’s pretty easy to do when you’ve been stationed everywhere from Guam to Germany. Seeing the world gives you knowledge—the kind of knowledge you just can’t get in a classroom. During World War Two, and in the years that followed, I saw most of the world. And I always loved to read, so between my travels and my books, I’ve learned everything I ever needed to know.

I can read and write and multiply and discuss in German, French and even a little bit of Italian, the ramifications of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and the poetry of Stephen Crane. Not that there’s anybody around these parts to discuss Nietzsche or Crane with—even before the rain started. If you mentioned Nietzsche in Punkin’ Center, folks would think you’d sneezed and offer you a tissue. And poetry? Shoot. Poetry was just something they’d heard tell of, but had never actually experienced for themselves. Kind of like visiting Egypt or Iraq or some other faraway land. Not that most of our residents could have found either one of those places on a map. When it came to current events, if it hadn’t happened here in our county, or maybe over in towns like Beckley or White Sulphur Springs, then it didn’t matter. Most folks in these parts didn’t know about Vietnam or Iraq until their sons and daughters got sent there to die, and even then, they couldn’t find them on a map.

I’m not trying to sound smug, but I was smarter than most folks around here, probably because I’d seen the world beyond the mountains and hollows of this great state. But I never once let it go to my head, not even after my eightieth birthday, which is when a person is allowed to sound like a wise old man. I never bragged, never belittled someone less smart than me. Some nights, after my wife died and before the rain started, I’d go down to the Ponderosa in neighboring Renick, or the American Legion over in Frankford, and beat Otis Whitt’s boy Ernie at chess (Ernie Whitt was the only other one in Punkin’ Center or Renick that could play). Or I’d explain current events to my neighbors, or write letters to the paper and try to put things into perspective for folks.

But writing books and stories? No sir. I’d always left that up to Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Jack London, and Louis L’Amour—the four greatest writers of all time.

I’m not a writer, but I can tell you it must be a tough business. I’m doing this by hand, here in the dark— cramming words into this little spiral notebook, and my arthritis is acting up something fierce. I’ve been lying here on my side, gripping this pen for the past couple of hours and now my fingers have blisters on them and my hand is twisted up like some kind of deformed claw. I don’t know if it’s the dampness in the air or just the act of writing itself that’s doing it, but it hurts. It hurts really bad.

So why waste time writing about how much it hurts me to write? Because I’ve got to get this done. Because it’s important for you to know what happened. It might save your life, should you ever find this.

I’m just glad that everything below my waist has gone numb, so I don’t have to deal with that pain anymore. I looked down there once, at my legs.

And I haven’t looked since.

I am afraid. I can feel something sharp inside me, grating and rubbing up against a soft part. There’s no pain, but there is a strange, queasy sensation. I don’t know what it is, but I certainly don’t imagine it’s anything good. My stomach has a big purple and red splotch on it, and it’s spreading.

I’m still coughing up blood. I can feel it in the back of my throat, and my mouth tastes horrible.

For what’s easily the thousandth time since the rain started, I find myself wishing that the electricity were still on. Then I could go down into the basement and write this properly, on the old word processor my grandson and his wife gave me after they bought their computer. It sat down there on a little particleboard desk I got at the Wal-Mart in Lewisburg.

But the power isn’t on, and it’s never coming back. It went off the same day the chubby weatherman on the Today Show shot himself live on national television in the middle of a forecast. One minute, he was joking around with that pretty anchorwoman with the nice smile and vacant eyes who’s always after people to get their prostate checked, and a moment later his brains were splattered all over that big map of the United States behind him. Seems like years ago, but it really hasn’t been that long. Apparently, he’d been