pinballing through in his mind was that if there was a God, maybe this wasn’t how he wanted the world to end. Either this was a modern day flood, a nastier way to cleanse the earth and start over, or this had nothing to do with God. Buckley chose to believe in the idea of intelligent design, opting for a supreme being over the Trekkie idea of alien forces, prime directives and intergalactic federations-as if the maggies were an earthly infestation of tribbles. And because of his belief, the single thing he kept wondering about was whether or not God would allow the devil to get the upper hand, for surely this was a thing of devilish doing.
All of a sudden an itch prickled his forearm, followed by tingling, burrowing, a searing pain and then a pop. A maggie squeezed free and began to wiggle, dancing in the air, reminding him of the governor singing
Jesus fucking Maggie fuck!
All Buckley needed was for the others to see him sitting there with a maggie in his hand like he was some sort of maggot wrangler, then he wouldn’t have a choice. They’d shove him out the door with a shotgun up his ass as sure as Grandma had a crack addiction.
He felt a twinge of pain as the maggie in his hand tried to bore through the tough skin of his palm. Slowly, so as not to make a noise or any sudden moves, he reached under the table with his other hand and pulled the maggie out. He grimaced, the corners of his mouth dipping to his jaw-line as he felt it come free like a night crawler reluctantly leaving the sanctity of the cool dark earth that was his skin.
Rashad stared at him, his eyes wide with concern. What was it Grandma Riggs had said?
Buckley stood, trudged over to the counter and grabbed an empty glass jar. Blocking the view of anyone who suddenly came into the room with his back, he dropped the maggie inside and watched as the creature tried to slide through the container, microscopic teeth no match for glass. He brought the jar to eye level. This was the closest he’d ever been to one-ever dared be.
Just as he thought, they were eyeless. Unlike a worm, however, which seemed to absorb food, both ends of this little creature had mouths, small oval orifices with tiny teeth disappearing within the creatures’ interior. Buckley imagined that if it needed to, the maggie could use it’s feeding as propulsion, like a tiny jet, shooting through the soft tissue of a human.
He shuddered, thinking of how many others there were cruising within his body as yet undetected. As if in response, he itched. His left hand immediately shot to the spot, but it was a false alarm-a real itch.
Buckley smiled grimly. Yep. He was totally fucked. He grabbed the jar and took it to the table. He set it down in front of Little Rashad whose eyes opened wide, then wider as he realized what had been placed before him. The boy stared hard at the creature. He seemed to be trying to decide whether to run or to smash it or to play with it. But genetics took over, and as all boys do after encountering a strange looking insect, he smiled, rested his chin on his folded arms on the table and watched it through the glass.
“Is it one of them?” Rashad couldn’t keep the wonder from his voice.
“Yep.”
“Where’d it come from?”
Buckley merely stared. He didn’t want to lie to the boy.
Little Rashad turned and examined Buckley with one cocked eye. “You? You got them inside you crawling around and messing you up? Are you going to end up like Sally?” His voice broke slightly at the last.
“Me? Hell no. You see, we have a secret weapon now and we can beat these things.”
“A secret weapon?”
“Hell yes, boy. You and your horn. I’m figuring if you can drive the maggies away from this place, you might be able to drive them from a person’s body too. Kind of like a musical surgery.”
“But I don’t know how to-”
“Hush about that. That’s why I’m here to help. I figure with my brains and good looks and your skill at the horn, we can maybe even save the world.”
Buckley felt more than a little guilty pouring it on thick intentionally. If the boy was to lose faith in him and tell the others, then Buckley was as good as dead. But there was hope now and as long as there was even an inkling of it, he needed to gain the boy’s trust.
He felt a throbbing at his temple, then a pop, followed a spark of pain. A maggie fell to the table. He and the boy stared at it for a second, then grimly went about the task of catching it.
CHAPTER 11
“I don’t want to die.”
“Me neither, boy. And I don’t intend on letting anything happen to you. Look at me. If it comes down to choosing who will live or die and the choice is me or you, I promise that you’ll live. So help me now. Where’s that horn of yours?”
“Right here.”
“Okay,” Buckley said, pinching the Maggie in two then sprinkling salt on the pieces. “Here’s the way I see it. That song you played scared them away. I seriously doubt they’re afraid of Rocky seeing how he’s not only fictional, but an actor of some questionable skill as well. So it must be one of the notes. I read somewhere that every piece of glass has a frequency that can shatter it. There used to be these commercials of a woman opera singer who would shatter a glass with her voice. Are you with me?”
Little Rashad nodded, but his eyes gave away confusion. His mouth was pressed into a firm line though as determination attempted to focus his young mind on the task at hand.
“What I’m saying, boy, is that it’s not the song that scared them. It’s one of the notes. So it seems plain to me that all we need to do is figure out which note is the right one then we’re home free. Are you with me now?”
Little Rashad wiped his nose and reached under the table. He opened up the box, pulled out a beat-up brass trumpet, put the mouthpiece in place, cleared the spit valve on the floor and began to play scales.
Buckley had a few ideas himself. Not only would he cauterize his wounds with salt, but he’d drink salt water until he puked. If he could somehow manage to raise the level of sodium in his body, he might even make it out of this alive. This was one case when ingesting too much salt might actually save him.
After only about thirty seconds there was a reaction with the maggie in the jar as it suddenly ceased its attempt to devour the glass and instead, began to race along the bottom trying desperately to escape. As Little Rashad continued up the scales, however, the nasty little beast eventually slowed then resumed its impossible feast.
“Wait a minute. You had it. You were going too fast, though. Let’s do this. Try a note then wait. Then try another one, then wait. See what I’m getting at?”
Little Rashad nodded and began again.
Suddenly, a gut-wrenching scream came from the other side of the apartment, followed by a gurgle of blood-bubbling death the likes Buckley had only heard at a Sergio Argento double-feature. Buckley grabbed the shotgun, rumbled through the living room and down the hall to the bathroom. Instead of a long drawn out scream, the whine of pain came in steam engine gasps. Skidding to a stop, Buckley took in the gory scene.
Samuel straightening up, a knife clenched in his hand dripping blood…Sissy standing beside him in the cramped quarters of the bathroom with an empty bucket in her own trembling hands…Bennie dead in the tub, his throat cut, salt upon his body, a thin trail of smoke drifting up from his open mouth, glassy eyes staring back at a past that fucked him over and a future that would never be.
“Holy Christ! What the hell did you two do to him?”
Samuel stared through Buckley, past him, to a place where murder was common and easy. “Bennie had the maggies in him. Had to kill him before he killed us. Wasn’t a thing I could’ve done for him. That's all there was. That’s all there was.” The large black youth pulled a towel down from the bar above the toilet and began to wipe
