Then the standoffish twelve year old turned everything upside down by becoming some kind of juvenile Christopher Columbus and exploring uncharted territory.
Fast-forward seventy-two hours. The steady job was still there — assuming he hadn’t gotten canned for skipping work today — but the sweet girlfriend and standoffish twelve year old had morphed into something out of a late-night horror movie.
The worst part of the whole shitty situation was that Matt had no idea what he was going to do. He had relegated himself to his own fucking couch while the thing that used to be Julie was ensconced in their bedroom doing who the hell knew what. Probably becoming more zombie-like by the minute.
Okay, so he would deal with the situation by sleeping on the couch tonight. But that really wasn’t dealing with it at all, was it? What about tomorrow and the next day and the day after that? Would the old Julie and Tim somehow magically return? It didn’t seem likely. In fact, with every passing hour it seemed more and more like a pipe dream.
And if they didn’t return to their old selves, what then? The situation as it currently stood could not continue. Matt didn’t really believe he had gotten fired for missing one day of work, but he certainly couldn’t stay home forever, and that presented a problem. Hanging around the house watching the two ghouls skulk around wasn’t accomplishing anything, but as frightened as he was to stay in the house with them, Matt was even more afraid to leave.
What if he went off to work and they went around town infecting others with whatever had infected them? Matt didn’t want to be responsible for other people becoming what his girlfriend and her son were becoming, and he also feared how many people might potentially become infected over an eight hour span.
He knew he needed to get both of them to a doctor, get them under an x-ray machine or some other type of body scanner, find out exactly what had taken up residence inside them. He no longer doubted what he had seen two nights ago, the fleshy, ropy-looking thing that had been protruding from Tim’s mouth and had been reeled back inside his body like some sick fishing line the moment Matt had awoken. He had questioned the sight at the time because it was just so damned… bizarre, but he no longer questioned it. No sir.
The infection, or the parasite, whatever it was, had survived by hiding deep inside the mine for at least a hundred years, and probably a lot longer, if the stories regarding the cursed place were true. It had hidden and festered and waited patiently for an opportunity to be released, then taken advantage of that opportunity when little Tim had knocked down the damned concrete slab.
Julie — the real Julie, not this horrible, shambling, blank-eyed version — wouldn’t have believed any of it if she had been rational enough to listen to Matt. She had never believed. But he didn’t care. She wasn’t from around here. Harrisburg was only fifty miles from Tonopah, but it may as well have been fifty thousand. Julie hadn’t grown up hearing the tales of disappearing miners and strange incidents occurring with regularity in those tunnels under the earth’s surface.
Matt believed the stories, though. He believed every last one. The evidence was right here inside his own house. And he could prove something horrifying was happening, too, if only he could get Julie and Tim to the hospital. But he also knew they would never allow that to happen. At least not willingly.
He reached under the couch and gripped his gun like an infant clutching a teddy bear, reassured by its solidity and deadly potential. He had come to a decision, and felt marginally better for it. Tomorrow he would take one more day off from work. He would drive his girlfriend and her son to the hospital, by force if necessary.
At gunpoint if it came to that.
At the hospital he would demand the doctors on duty take x-rays of both of them, again at gunpoint if necessary. The authorities would be called — of course they would, a lunatic waving a gun around a hospital would be all over CNN within fifteen minutes of their arrival — but that was okay, because if the X-rays revealed what he knew they would, Matt guessed every cop within a thirty mile radius of this tiny little dying hick town would be needed, and even that much firepower might not turn out to be enough.
His old life as he had known it would disappear, but what difference did that make? It was already long gone, anyway. Matt was going to do whatever it took to try and get his little family back, and although he knew tomorrow would likely be one of the worst days of his life — hell, maybe it would even be the last day of his life — he was glad to have at least decided on a plan of action.
Before he knew what was happening, Matt had slid into a troubled slumber.
It was on him.
Something was on his face.
Matt’s eyes opened and by the light of the TV screen flickering in the corner of the living room he could see Julie and Tim standing next to the couch, side by side, still as gargoyles, white as the ghosts they had become, their eyes dead and empty.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Those awful things he had seen two nights ago protruded from the mouths of his two family members, tenebrous and ropy and somehow alien. The segmented bodies pulsed and squirmed, they looked like gigantic earthworms, only they were much too big to be earthworms, and oh God they were coming out of Julie’s and Tim’s mouths, and they had clamped onto Matt’s face, one on each side of his head, holding it steady while they pushed and pulled at his lips, trying to force his mouth open so they could infect him, too.
Matt worked his jaws, clamping his mouth shut, choking off the scream that tried to explode out of him of its own accord. His panicked mind raced, threatening to shut down, but from somewhere came the thought, the knowledge, the certainty, that if he screamed he was dead, it was that simple.
So he forced his mouth shut and fought for his life, clawing at the disgusting mottled earthworm-things as they squirmed and pushed and pulled, working relentlessly to gain access to a new host. Instead of withdrawing as they had done two nights ago when he awoke and saw them, the things must have been emboldened by their success with Julie and Tim, because they clamped down harder on Matt’s face. They wriggled and squirmed, squeezing until he thought his cheekbones would shatter.
Matt kicked and clawed, fighting desperately but getting nowhere against the unrelenting brute force of the worm-like creatures. He was tiring rapidly, sickened by the slimy chunks of parasite skin collecting under his fingernails. At least there’ll be evidence for the cops to find, he thought to himself, and that was when he remembered the gun.
It was under the couch.
Inches away.
Waiting to be used.
And Matt knew it was his only chance.
Almost beyond rational thought, his head filled with the screams of terror his mouth could not open to unleash, Matt released his left hand from the creature stabbing out of Julie’s open mouth. It immediately redoubled its efforts to wedge its way inside Matt.
He grabbed for the gun in a panic and slapped it away instead. It skittered a couple of inches farther under the couch on the thick living room rug and stopped. Matt moaned in terror and as he reached for the Glock one more time, one last time, the parasite protruding from Tim seemed to get a flash of inspiration. It wriggled over Matt’s nose, bunching its horrible body up and sliding right over his nostrils, cutting off his air supply.
Matt pushed against the armrest with his feet, leaning off the couch, extending his hand and feeling for the gun as his grip on the monster began to weaken. He had been panting from exertion and knew he was down to his last few seconds of life. He would open his mouth reflexively to breathe and that would be the end of him. The parasite would thrust into his mouth, sliding into his body, and he would die or even worse he would wish he were dead, becoming just another empty-eyed zombie just like his girlfriend and her son and he would—