“Please don’t move,” Misty begged. “Please. Just hold on. I’ll go get help.”
“No.” Slim coughed. “No. Don’t. There ain’t no point …”
A jackrabbit shot across the muddy expanse of the parking lot as if its tail were on fire and disappeared into the cornfield along the parking lot, the same one Slim had driven his own Cadillac into the day of the funeral.
Slim tried to push himself up using his rifle as a crutch, but his hands kept slipping in the mud. He coughed again. “Where’d … where’d you get that meat?”
Oh, shit, I thought.
“I went … went up to the pit and counted …” Slim spat.
I heard something out in the east cornfield, a vast, rushing sound, almost like a wave. I turned to the field and saw another jackrabbit come bounding out from the tall green stalks and race past the restaurant.
Misty said, “Don’t try to talk, okay? Save your strength. We’ll get you some help.” She looked at Fat Ernst and said, “We have to get him to a hospital.”
Fat Ernst ignored her. He stared back at Slim. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he declared.
The rushing sound got closer and as I looked out across the field, toward the northeastern foothills; it looked like wind or something was tearing into the corn, making the stalks shudder and shake.
The front door slammed and Junior and Bert worked their way down the steps. Junior looked a little more awake now. He shouted over to us in a thick voice, “You fucked up! You fucked up real bad this time! We’re gonna go home and tell Ma! Then you just wait and see what happens.”
Ordinarily, the idea of a grown man threatening to go home and tell his mommy that someone had hurt him would have been funny, but since this was Junior, and he was talking about his mother, Pearl, it didn’t seem funny at all.
Nobody else was paying much attention, not with Slim lying in the mud bleeding to death. He kept talking, forcing the words out through mouthfuls of blood. “I counted ’em … there’s one missing. Goddamn you …” Misty bent down, tried to get close, to help him somehow, but Slim waved her away. “Get out of here … leave … can’t you see—I’ve got ’em inside …”
“What?”
“I can feel ’em moving … moving inside of me …” Tiny bubbles of blood appeared at the corners of Slim’s mouth. It reminded me of Heck.
A sheet of brown water surged out of the east cornfield and washedover the parking lot. It foamed and splashed around Slim’s legs and the truck’s tires. Within seconds, the cold water was four or five inches deep.
“What the hell is this?” Ray asked. “Do you … ? Shit. You think the reservoir flooded?”
Junior started his truck with a roar. He gunned the engine a few times, popped the clutch, and rammed the back of Fat Ernst’s Cadillac. The bug-spattered, rusty grille smashed into the white car almost as if it wanted to eat the smaller vehicle. The truck’s engine groaned and the tires slipped in the mud as it shoved the Cadillac forward, crumpling the front end of the car under the restaurant.
“I’m gonna kill that prick,” Fat Ernst said.
Slim slapped at the water and started to gag, deep in his throat. A terrible, wet retching sound, it twisted my stomach into knots. He kept slapping at the water, his chest hitching and shivering.
Junior reversed the truck, leaving the Cadillac dead under the window, and pulled around so he faced the highway. He popped the clutch again, flinging buckets of mud at the restaurant, splattering the walls and shattered windows. The truck bounced past us, leaving two large wakes in the muddy water as it surged onto the road and tore off down the flooded highway, heading for the mountains.
“Misty,” Slim croaked. “You go on … get the hell of out here.”
“But—,” Misty said.
Slim kept talking. “I can feel ’em … I can feel ’em moving inside …”
“Feel what?” Fat Ernst shouted over the sound of the flood.
“These—,” Slim said, and pulled the rifle across his chest so the end of the barrel was under his chin.
He closed his eyes.
And pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 27
I didn’t even hear the report as the top of Slim’s head erupted in a chunky mist of blood, bone, and brains. Most of the blood and flesh hit the ceiling of his truck, sticking there for a second, then dripping down onto the seat and the dashboard. As the rest of his head bloomed into the air like a red mushroom cloud, bits and pieces started falling back into the water around us. Misty screamed and kept screaming, her shriek rising higher and higher into the falling rain.
Something landed in my hair, but I couldn’t move. Fat Ernst turned to us and mumbled, “Fuck me.” His face and chest were dripping with blood and flecks of flesh. He blinked rapidly several times, as if some of the blood had gotten into his eyes.
Misty stopped screaming suddenly, just clapped a hand over her open mouth, eyes huge, and froze like that. Tiny droplets of blood were scattered across her white face as if someone had playfully flicked a paintbrush in her direction.
My eyes snapped back to Slim’s corpse. The top half of his head, from the eyes up, was pretty much gone; his skull resembled the top half of a chipped coffee mug, jagged around the edges. The rifle slidout of Slim’s hands and I found myself focusing on it, afraid to look at his head. A Winchester, Model 70. Slim’s shoulders slumped forward onto his knees, his chin flopped forward, and what was left of his brain, looking like the ground meat inside of a charred bratwurst, came sliding slowly out of the ruined skull, dribbling slowly onto his jeans.
Five or six thin, short, gray worms squirmed out of his head, wriggled into the cold, muddy water washing around his legs, and disappeared.
I don’t know if anyone else saw them because Ray suddenly started slapping at his face. “Ow! Oh, fuck! Fuck!” He kept slapping at his head and face. It took a second, but I could see that parts of the blood and meat on his face were squirming around.
The thing in my hair started to move. I plucked at it, and my fingers found something soft and slimy in the midst of all of the sticky blood. A worm squirmed slowly between my thumb and forefinger. I dropped it with a cry of disgust, realizing too late I had just dropped it into the rising floodwater, setting it free.
Fat Ernst started grabbing at his face and chest as well and as I kept looking around, I could see the bloody worms all over the place. Falling from the ceiling of Slim’s truck. Probing around in Slim’s brain pan. Wriggling across the front of Fat Ernst’s shirt. Hanging off of Ray’s bottom lip. And curled up on Misty’s shoulder.
I jumped toward her, brushing the worm off her white blouse. Her eyes darted from my face to her shoulder and back up to my eyes. I realized we had to get out of the water, so I grabbed her hand and started pulling her back to the restaurant. Already I could see worms, some up to six, seven inches long, skimming along the surface of the water. And the water was getting higher.
Ray squealed at Fat Ernst, “Get ’em offa me! Get ’em off!” He yanked at the worm trying to chew into his bottom lip, pulling it away from his teeth. “Get it osh! Get it osh!” The worm popped free and he flung it into the water.
Fat Ernst ignored him and started backing away from Slim’s pickup, slapping at his arms and chest. His face had this hard, set look, like he had just seen the worst the world could throw at him and he’d lived through it. “Fuck this,” he said, turning and splashing back to the restaurant.
Ray kept standing in one place, turning in circles, trying to get a glimpse of his back, spinning like a dog chasing its tail. He finally moved away from the pickup when a worm appeared in the water and started crawling up the outside of his boot, following the bloodstains, heading toward the wound where Junior had taken a bite out of his leg. Ray uttered a short shriek and punched at his leg, smashing the worm.