The Squirming Read online

  No, no, no! Not like this! Not goddamn well like this!

  The knife! He fumbled awkwardly underwater for the knife, finally locating it and getting it into his hand. He brought it up, stabbing it into the distended woman. He could feel her jerk with each plunge, but her grip did not weaken. With a final surge of strength, he stabbed up higher, sinking it into her throat. He cut and jabbed and sawed. Her head slumped to one shoulder, that yellow-filmed eye rolling in its socket like a juicy larva in an egg sac.

  Her mouth opened, foam gurgling free along with blood and nameless dribbling fluids. She pulled him up, his helmet breaking the water, squeezing his throat tightly…then her body contorted with agonal convulsions and vomit spouted from her mouth in a hot spray. She fell forward on top of him, her spongy face splattered over the face bubble.

  Then they sank together.

  Mooney fought with everything he had, but his suit was waterlogged, his helmet filling, and her massive dead weight smothered him. Crying out, he managed to lift them both out of the water for two or three seconds. As he did so, he gripped her hair with one gloved fist and it came free in a bunch, her skull rupturing open and releasing a flood of brain flukes that poured over his face bubble.

  Screaming, he sank again, the woman’s bulk pinning him. The helmet was working its way loose. He felt water flood over his throat and down his chest. But the worst thing, the very worst thing, was that the contaminated water was swimming with flukes—dozens and dozens of them. They were about the size of pollywogs, maybe two inches long, greenish-brown and undulant. They slithered over the face bubble.

  Then one squeezed through.

  Mooney felt it squirm over his chin. It was seeking the hot warmth of his mouth. As it tried to slide between his lips, he bit it in half, spitting out the fragments. The taste was disgusting. Like biting into raw liver. Its narcotic secretions made his tongue numb, his lips feel like rubber. It was like being shot up with Novocain.

  Others were in the helmet then.

  As his head thrashed from side to side, he felt one of them wriggle up his left nostril, cold and gelatinous. Another crawled into his ear. A third suctioned itself to his right eye.

  But as bad as that was, what was worse was that the woman’s slug was free and it was inching its way up his suit. It would find where the helmet was loose and creep in, fastening itself to him.

  Mooney screamed, but it did him no good.

  In his last moments before he became a drug-addicted zombie, he began to giggle as the flukes took control of his mind and the slug slid into his biosuit.

  24

  “Kid? Kid? Can you hear me? Are you there?”

  Oh, Kurta didn’t like this at all. His balls were doing the slow crawl and goosebumps were going right up his spine. As he waited there in the gloomy confines of Gamestop, surrounded by the detritus of a dead society, he wondered why he kept fighting to stay alive. Was it that important? The human race was on the way out and everyone knew it; they were just afraid to face the reality of it. He felt like one of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park or its many sequels ad nauseum: he was a creature in a world that no longer had a place for him. He was a relic, a living fossil.

  So throw aside your weapons and walk out there, he told himself. But that wasn’t feasible because he would be slugified, doomed to be less than he was even now—a draft horse, a beast of burden, a fucking pleasure vehicle to be driven by a slug. There was always the .357. Insert barrel into mouth and call it a day.

  So why don’t you? You’re miserable like everyone else. So do it.

  But he didn’t.

  And why was that? Because of West, because of the kid, because West looked up to him? Because West would find his body and see that he had taken the coward’s way out and lose respect for him?

  Sure, all of the above. And, worse, the kid will become cynical and angry and pessimistic. There’s something good in him, and I can’t bear the idea that I might taint it. That he might become like me.

  Kurta was getting nothing on the headset now save an occasional inaudible crackling. Could have been one of his boys or it could have been an exterminator from one of the other teams.

  The only thing to do, he figured, was to make one more sweep. If he found the kid or the others, he’d get them out of there. Otherwise, he’d make for the APC, radio the major and let him make the call.

  Reasonable. Logical.

  He loaded the .357 and the Ithaca 37 pump. He’d need all the firepower he could muster. He might just have to blast his way out like some fool in an old horseshit and gunpowder opera.

  Wait.

  A slughead stumbled by. He—or she, because it was hard to tell—was blackened from napalm, trailing smoke, charred bits dropping off as they went, almost casually, on their way.

  So stoned on slug juice they can’t even feel the pain.

  That made him think about not only his addiction (beaten down, but still dangerous) but the many addictions of the masses. Booze. Drugs. Sex. Always looking for the high that would make you feel better and take away the pain. Good God, the slugs with their vast array of pharmaceuticals were a natural. If there was a niche, nature filled it.

  Steeling himself, Kurta stepped out into the mall.

  It was showdown time.

  25

  In Lane Bryant—a place he had never heard of before his current predicament—The Pole could hear the sluggos picking their way towards him through the merchandise that was scattered in every direction. They were like berserk Black Friday shoppers, knocking over displays and tipping over racks, shoving and snarling at each other in their search of that one item they just had to have.

  And he was pretty sure what (and who) that was.

  The store was shadowy, lit only by the flickering fires of the mall itself. The smoky haze in the air was getting thicker, the temperature rising. Inside his biosuit, The Pole was sweating. His back was wet, his flesh greasy against the Tyvek material. He waited there, behind the counter, hoping the slugheads wouldn’t find him.

  He was pretty sure the others were dead.

  His only care right then was to evade the hordes long enough so he could slip out and reach the APC. It was the only thing that kept him going.

  Now and again, he heard gunfire from upstairs. That meant someone was still alive up there, still making contact. That boosted his confidence. The idea of being the last one in the mall with possibly hundreds of sluggos…oh Christ, that was just too much.

  They were getting closer.

  He could hear them grunting and growling, making positively repulsive breathing noises that made it sound as if their throats were full of wet leaves.

  The Pole didn’t know how much was left in the tanks of his flamethrower, but it couldn’t have been much the way he’d been splashing around the fire. He figured there was enough for one last spray. When the slugheads got close, he was going to barbecue their asses all at the same time.

  Come on then, you fucks, he thought at them. If you want it that bad, come and get it.

  He hated the idea of wasting juice cooking them, but he knew they weren’t going to give him much of a choice. They were real pricks that way—once they got on the trail of something tasty, nothing but death could stop them.

  They were about fifteen feet away now, snarling at one another, gnashing their teeth, and making the most dreadful slobbering sounds.

  Enough.

  He couldn’t take it anymore.

  He stood up from behind the counter and the slugheads saw him right away.

  “COME AND GET IT!” he taunted them.

  Baring their teeth, they knocked racks of clothing asunder and stormed in.

  The Pole pressed the trigger on the flamethrower gun and a spout of brilliant yellow-white fire shot out and engulfed them. He hosed them down and they danced about, screeching and melting inside their own skins. The flames blazed bright, cremating them down to crumbling scarecrows. They fell into a central heap, twitching and breaking apart,
the last of the moisture in them hissing out as steam. To all sides, merchandise was licked with fire, the front of the store building into a great bonfire.

  Better get out while you can.

  And then, behind him, he heard commotion.

  He turned and saw a man stumbling drunkenly in his direction. Another goddamn sluggo bearing down on him…except he wasn’t.

  In fact, The Pole wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing.

  He was a tall dude, naked and unpleasant to look upon, his body a map of purple-black contusions, pustulating red sores, and a weird yellowish vein networking that branched like lightning. His slug-sack was blown up like the belly of a woman in her 9th month.

  Mr. Sluggo was in a bad way.

  His eyes were like balls of oozing black taffy, green foam bubbling from his mouth and nostrils in great, gummy curds. He clawed out frantically in all directions, groaning and gurgling.

  The Pole made to toast him…then hesitated.

  What the hell was going on?

  He’d never seen anything like this before.

  What the fuck?

  The guy had no hair, his face split open with jagged cracks. His tongue lolled from his lips like a black, oily flap. He opened his mouth and screamed with a high shrieking sound like a screech owl at midnight. He shook. He jerked. His body whipsawed with rapid convulsions. His slug-sack pulsed faster and faster like a madly beating heart. There was a yolky, wet sound and his eyes blew from their sockets in snotty masses of optic jelly. Blood streamed from both nostrils, inky fluid splashing from his mouth.

  And then—he cracked open like an egg, everything inside him pushing out in a sluicing expulsion of tissue, organ, entrails, and steaming blood. He hit the floor, breaking apart into an oozing, jellied putrescence.

  As he did so, his slug-sack made a crackling sound, bursting like a placenta in a loathsome outpouring of slime and mucid rot.

  And then…then The Pole saw it.

  The one thing he figured no one else had ever seen.

  The birth of a creeper.

  It pushed out with a shearing, snapping sort of noise as it molted free of its birth case. He saw it emerge…a creeping pestilence that nearly destroyed his mind. It was probably two feet in length, segmented like a millipede, a brilliant, glistening scarlet. It was broad and fleshy in the front, big around as a man’s forearm, tapering to a wiggling vermiform shape at its posterior. It crawled free on legs that were not legs at all but slender tentacles, smooth and suckerless and coiling.

  It moved forward, then paused, watching him with black beady eyes—six of them. There were four tentacle-like feelers reaching from its head, but these were segmented. And it had a mouth, an oval puckering hole that expanded as wide as a coffee can with each breath it took, like a catfish gasping for air, its entire body inflating likewise.

  Each time it did, The Pole could see right down its throat into its gut. It had no teeth, only a tongue-like appendage that was hollow as a tube.

  This was it.

  This was fucking it.

  This is what the larval slugs became—worming, insect-like creatures with tentacle legs, creepers. Each was full of eggs, reproducing (Dr. Dewarvis said) by a form of parthenogenesis, literally born pregnant. It would lay eggs, possibly hundreds of them, and from each would be born a wiggler with an attendant brood of endoparasitic flukes (neither of which could survive without the other, forming a sort of mutualism). The wiggler would attach itself to a host, releasing immature flukes into the host’s body that would migrate to the brain and hijack its nervous system with a devastating chemical dependency. As the host gorged itself on any meat available, building up protein reserves, the slug would drain nutrients and the flukes would thrive in the human brain. The slug needed the flukes to subjugate the host. The flukes required the slug to find a host. Ectoparasite and endoparasite in symbiotic union. Once the host was reduced to a mindless servitor, the slug would mature and birth itself, molting to a creeper—by then the host was little more than walking carrion—and the entire ugly life cycle would begin again.

  The creeper studied The Pole.

  It recognized an enemy that would have to be vanquished. He could feel its black, penetrating eyes boring into him, not necessarily intelligent but certainly not stupid either. Cruel, The Pole decided. Arrogant. All warm-blooded life forms existed to be subjugated and exploited by it.

  It really was a fascinating, unique creature just as Doc Dewarvis had said.

  So, The Pole did what came natural to him: he burned it.

  It writhed and flopped in the consuming envelope of napalm. When it finally died, it went black as cinders. Liquid sizzled out of it, then it cracked open like a hot chestnut.

  “Goddamn,” The Pole said to himself. “Ain’t that just something?”

  26

  “KID! HEY, KID! HEY, FUCKING WEST, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

  Kurta’s voice echoed through the mall corridor. He got no response over the headset and picked up absolutely nothing on his external mic, save the shrill cries of the sluggos. The smoke was so thick now it was like fog. It hid him from the sluggos, but it also hid them from him.

  He ducked behind a dead potted tree as two dark and menacing forms swept past him.

  That’s it. Go on your merry way, assholes.

  He had left Gamestop and was making a final run through Ex-3’s sector of the mall. If he found anyone alive or injured, he’d drag them out with him. If they were dead, he’d log it.

  But not West.

  Jesus Christ, not the kid.

  Kurta had no idea what was going on, but he was getting attached to him. It was strange. He didn’t know if it was a fatherly thing or a brotherly thing, but he was feeling very protective of him.

  Like Stiv.

  Sure, he’d loved that sonofabitch down deep, too. But that had been different. He admired Stiv with his fuck-you attitude and his complete contempt for authority. His personal philosophy was even more cynical than Kurta’s. Stiv believed that human beings were basically greedy, self-indulgent pigs. Things like loyalty and honor were a pipe dream…oh, people could be both loyal and honorable when it served their ends, but not unless it did. People hated him at the bunker for his beliefs and how he’d laugh uncontrollably when they spoke of faith or a higher power.

  But for all that, for all his recklessness and pessimism, he had balls like Kurta had never seen before. He feared nothing and no one. Everything had been black-and-white for Stiv.

  But what about West?

  Kurta wondered if he’d been hurting over Stiv for so long that he’d just grabbed the next young guy who came along and made him a proxy.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  West had potential. He was basically good, dependable, and trustworthy. And naïve. Christ, was he was naïve. But you had to like him and something about him made you want to do right by him. Maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was that he reminded Kurta of himself before he totally fucked his life up with drugs and bad choices.

  Regardless, he wasn’t leaving West behind.

  He either brought the kid out alive and breathing or he confirmed his death. That was a given.

  I’ll find you, kid. See if I don’t.

  27

  Mooney came out of dormancy like a switch being thrown. Like a 100-kilowatt generator being cold-cranked to life. Light—a dirty, dingy, awful sort of light—flooded his chemically dependent brain and it only served to illuminate the skulking, grinning things hiding in the corners. He screamed in his head and the things came for him, slithering forward and sinking their red-stained teeth into the shivering meat of his mind.

  GET OUT! GET OUT! he cried. GET OUT OF ME! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

  But they weren’t leaving; he had friends for life.

  Part of him sank into the narcotic bliss of nonentity, nonexistence, and nothingness brought about by the flukes setting up house in his brain. Another part, struggling, winking out like a distant star, realiz
ed that it had not only lost the battle but lost the war. It rose up fierce and defiant one last time, then—

  Then it was gone.

  Crushed like an insect.

  Something took its place. He was rebooted. New software wrote over the old Mooney, depositing all that he had been directly into the trash bin.

  He suddenly felt at peace in a way he had never known before. He felt calm. He had a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging that was alien but wonderful. There were no more battles being fought inside him, no conflicting emotions, no unanswered questions, no moral and ethical ambiguity. Everything was beautifully black-and-white. He was what he was in a way that was meant to be.

  The waters were no longer muddied; they were clear.

  There was instinct.

  There was need.

  But there was very little else.

  Save the consuming desire to protect the thing that had spun a cocoon at his belly with his own flesh and fat. It was his center, his all, his reason for being. If was a gift that he must mother, feed, and protect.

  And it was hungry.

  And because it was hungry, he was hungry.

  As long as he kept it safe, warm, and fed, it would reward him with the ambrosia of dopamine spikes via the flukes. If he failed in his duty, the slug would cut him off and the deprivation would not only fill his guts with hot knife blades, it would turn his brain to sludge from the accumulated toxins and waste materials of the flukes who would run rampant and unchecked through his gray matter.

  These were things Mooney knew without consciously knowing them. They were now part of his natural rhythms.

  But for now…

  FOOD! He wanted FOOD! He craved FOOD! He had to find it, secure it, fill himself with it. It was the only thing that mattered.

  Even now his slug, which was small and pulsing in its womb beneath his ever-present hand, was directly uplinked with the flukes. Together, they had hijacked not only his biochemistry but his nervous system which they used to communicate in their own fashion.