By Ross Fisher-Davis
Seth Bullock took a long look into the cloudy sky above and exhaled slowly. There was an ugly knot of anxiety in his gut that’d been growing since they lit out from Deadwood. As they’d hit dirt and carried on towards the canyon, he’d been trying to listen in as the prairie scrub of the high plains gave way to the pine and spruce trees of the Black Hills ahead. Try as he might, all he heard was the clattering of hooves and the rhythmic creaking saddles of his assembled posse. Finally, he gave a tug on his reins and raised his leather-gloved left hand above his head.
“Alright, hitch ‘em up. We go on foot from here on in. Nice and tight, we’ll pick the horses up on the way back.”
There was a grumble of muddled discontent, excitement, and concern from the mixed group around him, before he shut it down with a hiss for silence.
“Remember why we’re here, yeah? Keep it quiet, keep it clean.”
Kassandra Nilsson was closest to Seth, pulling up her little piebald mare and adroitly hopping down from it. She had a LeMat Revolver that looked too big for her tiny frame strapped in a shoulder holster, and two more for luck on her hips.
“Think they’ll talk about us after though, huh Marshal? ‘The ones who rode out to Worm Canyon?’ Saved the day?” she said, her stage whisper lit with excitement.
Seth gave a shrug, swallowing again around the feeling of sickness that kept threatening to derail his nerves.
“’The Deadwood Nine,’ I can see it on one of Walter’s headlines now,” Roger Wilcox beamed. The farmhand carried a decrepit matchlock rifle that looked older than the looming hills. He’d volunteered to serve as the posse’s pack horse; his shoulders weighed down with a pick, coils of rope, bags of unidentifiable clutter, and something that looked worryingly like a stick of dynamite protruding from one of many old satchels.
“This ain’t gonna be the OK Corral, we got people counting on us in there,” Seth grunted to the group. He slipped out his peacemaker and checked the chambers for maybe the third time. It did nothing to ease the dread that just kept crawling its way through him.
Slipping from his saddle in silence, Sifting Squirrel gave his mount a whisper of comfort to still it before he reached up to give a hand to the older man that had ridden behind him. Dakota Kadzeek may have looked far beyond his ranging years, but his rheumy eyes scanned the area and, in moments, gestured past Seth into the canyon.
“Not far Marshal,” he said. His whispery rasp belied a strength hidden in his weak old frame. He nodded to Sifting Squirrel, and the younger warrior unlatched a well-worn walking stick from his saddle-pack, handing it to the old man before taking up his own tomahawk and chipped machete.
“I appreciate you coming out here, Deadwood ain’t gonna forget it,” Seth said, nodding to the old shaman. Dakota gave a harsh bark, a noise that may have been a laugh, and said something in his own language to Sifting Squirrel. The warrior looked over his shoulder at Seth, at the group as a whole, and spoke in return.
There came a chirp of laughter from SuAnne Bettelyuon where she kneeled as she tightened her boots. Her long raven-black hair was tied in leather cord, a battered cavalry coat concealing both a pistol and knife strapped to her chest beneath. Danny London grunted and wheezed as he came down off his large roan and sidled over to stand alongside her. He lifted his heavy shotgun, letting it rest on his shoulder. The deputy aimed an elbow at Squirrel.
“He’s a real cut-up huh? You always laughing about something with him, what’s he say?” Danny said, face already red from the ride, his great chest rising and falling as he regained his breath.
SuAnne looked up at Danny and grinned a toothy grin, before shaking her head.
“Trust me Danny, you wouldn’t get it.”
Danny rubbed at his chin with the back of his hand and tilted his weapon towards the two native men.
“You folks from out here anyway ain’t you? How many of you out here?”
SuAnne stood, taking a moment to look down the length of her knife before slotting it into its sheath on her hip.
“It’s our land, Danny, and there’s a lot of us out here. Hell of a lot more’n you folks, that’s for damn sure.”
Danny raised his hands in mock surrender, shotgun waving as it threatened the heavens.
“Just curious is all Sue, ain’t mean nothing by it.”
Coming up the road at the back, as they had been the whole journey, rode the stooped form of Amity Hopkins, reins in one hand. Her other hand clasped a faded white covered copy of the Good Book against the chest area of her pale blue cotton dress. At Amity’s side, the slight frame of Seamus O’Toole precariously wobbled in his saddle as his struggling mare stopped beside the townswoman.
The clatter of various books, satchels, and contraptions that hung from Seamus’s saddlebags gave a staccato beat to the quiet debate that had been ongoing between the two as they rode.
In their ongoing bickering, the pair missed Bullock’s repeated signals to dismount and tether their horses. “Innovation is all well and good, Mr. O’Toole. Heaven knows Deadwood was much the worse for wear before they brought in the irrigation system, but this constant need for progress, more and more and more, it’s an obsession! Those who look forever to the skies often forget to look at the ground they are standing on,” Amity wrapped her bony fingers upon her Bible, producing a practiced thump, “‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.’ True things to stand by.”
“But those who only look behind will stumble over what lies ahead, good sister,” Seamus responded eagerly, thumbing his spectacles further up his nose as he rode, “Innovation is the foundation of culture and society, it is how we develop, how we move on, become great. Each new invention is a step towards humanity perfected. Does not the very same passage say ‘By testing you shall determine what is the will of God, good and perfect?’”
Seamus gave a self satisfied smirk as the two began hitching up. Amity dismounted politely to step up beside the scientist once more.
“That it does indeed, Mr O’Toole, you’re a learned man.”
“Then those assembled riders are lucky to have us here to guide them, isn’t that right sister? I’m sure there’s something in your book about that.” Seamus smirked, he patted a gloved hand upon a great wrapped bundle set across his thighs, and finally got a smile out of Amity in return. She nudged back the hem of her riding coat to show the hilt of a fine pearl handled revolver, etched with a cross.
“’If anyone knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is a mighty sin for them.’”Amity nodded as Seamus dismounted, carrying his package down with him cradled like a child.
“Amen to that. You and I should get some time to talk, Miss Hopkins.”
“Cut the chatter,” snapped Seth. He was kneeling, looking over the canyon ahead where Dakota had indicated. There was little to see. Green shrubs, cracked rocks, the rotten stumps of old prickly pear, interspersed with some scraggly pine and spruce trees.
“You feel it don’t you?” Dakota said, his cane tapping the dirt as he stepped up beside the Marshal.
Seth frowned, and tentatively put his hand to the ground. He strained to feel anything.
Dakota gave another bark of laughter.
“No. Here, you feel it.” The old man prodded Seth in the gut with his walking stick, “I know you feel it. I feel it too. Down in your guts. Like in the guts of the land.”
Seth gave a grunt and rose to his feet, and after a bemused pause, spoke with a measured quiet.
“They say there’s crawlers down there. Thousands of them.”
The old man nodded, a bemused smile on his wrinkled face.
“Of course there are. More than thousands. Too many to know.”
“Your people knew this the whole time, knew they were down there and you never did anything? Never warned us?”
Dakota’s expression hardened, for just a moment, and he seemed to take measure of Seth Bullock for the first time. When he spoke again, his voice remained quiet, but all trace of former mirth had fled.
“Down there is their place, that’s where they’ve always been. We would have no more issue with it than we would with the birds’ place in the sky, with the fish in the rivers. It is when you intrude upon something’s place that trouble arises. When you pull a fish from the water. When you chase a man from his home.”
Seth stared down the old man pensively whilst the rest of the posse readied themselves for war. One by one they were grabbing up guns, checking sights, strapping blades to their hips. Amity Hopkins petted the flank of her now-tethered horse and murmured, bible in her hand. Seamus, proud smile on his face, had neatly fixed his horse with a shiny looking set of bespoke hobbles, and was hefting over his shoulder a wrapped package. Seth frowned suspiciously at the mysterious heavy looking item.
“Seamus, what is that, because if you’ve brought me up something that shoots fire or explodes in an extremely small enclosed tunnel…”
Seamus raised a calloused and oil stained finger, waving it around in front of his face with barely contained excitement. He loosened the leather straps that bound the contraption and began unwrapping, revealing something that resembled a great handheld auger with a massive curved metal protuberance on one end.
“That’s where you’re wrong Marshal, this here ain’t no common variety high-destructive weapon we’re dealing with,” he patted the device lovingly, its chrome front angling downward, appearing to Seth’s eyes like some vast mechanical pickaxe.
“My colleagues and I, we were working with a focus on automation of physical tasks, Marshal. You get it, the big stuff, the stuff that takes time, takes manpower, money!” He gave the device a slap on the side, the robust metal singing back a resounding clang, “Not long now, we’ll give a man something like this and set him to work, he’ll clear a whole field in one day, alone. He could dredge a whole lake, possibilities are endless Marshal, you’ll see it.”
“We’re dealing with worms big as boxcars. How does agricultural equipment help me Mr. O’Toole?”
“That’s the thing! This here was part of our advanced mining concept. Digging, Marshal! Excavating, into the ground! After they took Arthur, them in the robes, I read about these worms. They hunt them in Deseret, you know – huge ones that live under the salt flats. I dug out a study on their behavior, the way they move,” Seamus struck himself in the forehead, knocking his own glasses askew and making his already wide-eyed stare twist positively freakishly, “That’s when it hit me. They don’t see or hear like you or me, these ain’t no normal manner of being, they feel the vibrations, that’s how they know! This little beaut, I call it Elander’s Remedy, after an old friend of mine, this sends vibrations like nothing you ever heard, them worms down there will think the devil himself is riding into town, rattle ‘em so bad, scare the Hell out of ‘em and no mistake.”
Seth stared down Seamus, who looked back with a fearless enthusiasm in his bloodshot eyes.
“I’m gonna trust you on this one Seamus, don’t make me regret it.”
Seamus tugged down his work goggles, blackened and cracked beyond all apparent use. He began to turn a stiff looking hand crank on the side of his device, stopping to apply a little oil as he went.
“Just gotta prime ‘er, takes a few rotations for the rock to start to get into the grinder, but once that starts burnin’, whoo! Trust in science, Marshal, it’s never let me down so far!”
Seth hissed through his teeth as Seamus attended to his device with elbow grease and a gleeful smile.
Danny was counting bullets, slipping spares into his trouser pockets and snapping shut his revolver. He sighted down a few times, practiced a couple draws. Seth knew Danny would rather avoid any actual work, let alone fighting, whenever he could; but the deputy shot straight enough when he wanted or needed to.
One by one, they seemed to feel Seth’s gaze upon them, and looked back.
Seth Bullock hadn’t chosen the whole gang, the eight souls who stood looking back at him and the still canyon beyond.
Some of them, Seth trusted and had called upon them personally, like SuAnne and Kassandra, women who shot straight as an arrow both literally and figuratively. Some had joined up to help their friends, like Seamus and Roger, proudly riding out with gusto to find the kidnapped Arthur Dingler. Others had just appeared along the way as word traveled, that Seth Bullock was riding out to save Deadwood from the cult of the worm.
Seth nodded back at the assorted souls who stood there at the edge of the canyon. Some wanted to save the townsfolk, some wanted to fight monsters. Amity, like most of the church, could always be counted on to stick her nose into other peoples business. Danny probably eagerly anticipated the favors he’d call in from everyone involved when all was said and done.
Had it been a perfect world, it wasn’t the group that Seth would have chosen to ride out here with him.
“Alright. Let’s go hook us up some bait.”
Hands on pistols, rifles, knives, axes, bibles, and cobbled together experimental machinery, the nine riders from Deadwood took the first steps down into the shadows of Worm Canyon.
* * *
Walter Jameson fussed with the edge of the jagged piece of rock he was using to write in his notebook. It had lost the edge that had made it convenient for the purpose before, and he was worried he’d soon be back with his nose to the ground looking for another to replace it.
His thumb and forefinger was bloody from gripping sharp shards of rock, while feverishly scratching away in his notebook. Everything he saw, he wrote, words spoken around him, voices and names overheard in the other shadowy cages, faces of the cultists as they scurried around like ants back and forth in the cavernous rooms, the last words of those thrown below, to what awaited them all beneath.
He’d been trying, for hours now, to put into words the sound of them. It was a constant, unending throb now, the worms beneath the earth. An organic gnashing, a grinding of bone and teeth and gristle. Every time he scratched out the words he had written and started over, determined to put it to paper, but every time coming up short at finding a way to describe the horror that boiled perpetually below him.
Across the cell from him, there was only dirt. Upon awakening in the dark a few nights ago, Walter had found Bill Wylan to be gone. He’d cried out for his companion, hoping the drifter had been taken to another cell, divided up by the cultists like a fully stocked pantry.
There were three pages of his notebook where Walter had tried to sketch Bill’s face, but he was no artist.Trying to speak into the next cell over had elicited screams or horror, and more recently, only silence. Eventually someone had been jammed into the cell behind, and Walter occasionally heard mutterings from a man called Arthur.
Walter had been wondering if Arthur was all the way there. Sometimes the man rambled with a lot of four dollar words, but sometimes Walter found the man’s whispering quite enlightening.
“When you’re up there… it’s like everything else falls away. And you can just… exist,” Arthur mused to himself. His voice was cracked and tired, it had looked like he’d been beaten badly when the cultists dragged him in and threw him back there. Walter perked up, and leaned close to the wall to speak.
“Up where? Where you at?”
Walter heard Arthur chuckle in response.
“In the skies, lad. The skies. My life’s work, getting up there. Where you can breathe, and it’s blue, and all the violence of the world below just… falls away.”
Walter scribbled in his notebook, and Arthur knocked a hand on the bars of his cage.
“Always writing something down aren’t you? What was it you said you were?”
“A journalist, Mister,” Walter said, proudly. He heard Arthur cluck appreciatively.
“Honorable profession. Writing the truth. Chronicling information, recording progress. When they feed us to those things… all that’ll be left is what you write.”
Walter fumbled for words, again finding them failing him, he smudged his sentence in frustration and fought for a sharp edge to begin another.
“They’ll remember you from your words, my friend. Me…” Arthur began again, his voice growing quieter, “Spent my life seeking to explore the clouds. To die underground seems most unfair.”
Walter was shocked to his senses when movement stirred at his side, and for a baffling moment he thought Arthur had sprung from his cell to stand before him.
But no such luck. The powerful form that knelt down now before Walter had cowed Arthur into immediate silence, and great dark eyes looked down at Walter. In the absence of his mistress, it was this one who chose who went into the pit each day. The other cultists turned their faces to the floor in his passing. Walter had heard Ursula screech his name when she called for him, Alonzo.
Alonzo looked between Walter and Arthur. As he turned, the multitude of tattoos inked across his face and bare chest made his flesh look malleable in the gloomy light, and Walter had the briefest impression of the big man’s flesh squirming.
“You’re both wrong,” Alonzo said. There was no malice in his voice, deep and rumbling though it was. He gestured at Walter with a big calloused finger.
“You. Writing, always writing. No one will read. No one cares. No one above cares about anything. No thoughts. No purpose,” then, he tilted his hand towards Arthur, “You. Tinkerer. Forever obsessed, physical things. Fixated, repairing the toys you already broke. You seek something you can never find. Arrogance. You will find no purpose in life.”
Alonzo stood then, his form towering, and gestured behind him, to the cave, the cultists within it.
“Here we build. Here we progress. Here, we become part of something greater than ourselves. There is only one goal, and that is to return to the great whole. To become one with each other, to become one with those below.”
Alonzo did not smile, there was no satisfaction in his proclamations, just a cold and dignified clarity.
“You will never understand how lucky you are to have been given the gift of joining us. You should be rejoicing. Not long now. We will be one in her embrace.”
Alonzo strode from them, towards the center of the room, and looked down into the great hole in the ground.
Walter returned to his notebook with frantic determination.
The noise was growing.
* * *
“Why’s there no one on guard?” Seth grunted.
They were watching from behind a curve in the rocks from a few meters away, Danny, SuAnne, and he. The cave looked like most others along this neck of the ridge, yawning into the Black Hills heat, but SuAnne had pointed out the markings. You could have mistaken them for old prickly pear stains if you weren’t really looking, but the dark purple lines were purposeful, a coiling symbol, just about knee height in the yellow rock.
“We ain’t too late are we?” Seth hissed nervously. A hand tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to look into SuAnne’s eyes. There was worry there, and she had her hand to the rock at her side. She motioned for Seth to do the same. At her back, Danny and Sifting Squirrel lurked, weapons in hand.
Seth did as indicated, and immediately felt it. A grinding vibration, coming up through the rocks around them from the earth below. He was taken back to being a kid in Amherstburg, East Canada, sitting at the tracks, eagerly waiting for the rumbling that would signal the arrivals from Detroit. It was getting louder, closer.
“Alright, here’s what we’re gonna do. SuAnne, you and yours keep watch out here, take Kassandra, she’s got her range rifle, she’ll see anyone comin’ a mile off.”
SuAnne bristled immediately.
“What you mean ‘keep watch’ Seth? Stuck out here picking my damn nose? Why me?”
Danny gave a shrug,
“Maybe we should stick together Seth, you know?”
“Shut up Danny. It’s because I trust you, SuAnne. I trust you to be smart, and make sure nothin’ sneaks up and bites us in the ass,” he gestured to the cave mouth, “If we need to make a quick exit, I wanna know someone’s up here who can clear the way.”
SuAnne still curled a lip in a snarl, but nodded in agreement.
“Fine. We’ll stay out here, but anything happens down there you let us know and we’ll bring down Hell.”
“I know you will.” Seth said.
Pointing to the others, he nodded his head towards the cave.
“Danny, Seamus, you’re with me. Roger, you bring up the back.”
“You sure you don’t want me watching your back Seth? I got good eyes in the dark.” Danny asked,
Seth shook his head.
“No offense Danny but you’re a big bastard and I don’t need us trying to squeeze past you if we need to leave in a hurry. Amity, you…”
The little woman looked up, fire in her eyes. She had a white fingered grip on her pistol, bible still clutched to her chest with her other hand.
“I’ll do what I need to do, Marshal, don’t you worry about me.”
* * *
Fred Ayres was eyeing the edge of his fish knife carefully, wondering if he should pull out his sharpening kit when Landon Grimes cleared his throat again, the inevitable signal that the man was about to try and communicate. Fred sighed.
“What is it this time?”
Landon gave a theatrical shrug, as if he hadn’t been trying to get the older man’s attention, but launched into conversation anyway.
“What did you ask her for, Fred? What she gonna give you?”
Fred eyed him briefly over the top of his spectacles,
“That’s a private matter, really. I think a man shouldn’t share that sort of…”
“I want a saloon. Biggest on the street, the Gem ain’t gonna have nothing on it. Gonna be music and dancing girls, fine liquor.”
Fred put away his knife, staring down at the other man, mystified.
“You want to put up shop in Deadwood, after what Ursula is gonna do to it, and think you’re gonna have customers just swingin’ on by?”
“Is ‘Landon’s’ better? Or… or ‘Grimes’s? For the name. D’ya think?”
“I wish you all the luck in the world, Landon, I really do.”
Something seemed to come over Landon. His usually vacant gaze steeled, and he nodded with determination at Fred.
“That’s it though Fred, we don’t need luck. You heard Ursula. It’s gonna be a new world. We’re a part of it. She said no other God, no other law but hers. We can have whatever we want, we just gotta reach out and take it.”
Fred stared back at him warily. He liked working with Landon, there was a dependable simplicity to the man he could always count on. He didn’t like this new self-assuredness that was manifesting.
Landon rose from his spot, and stood staring into the nearest cage.
“It’s been quiet for too long, ain’t thrown no-one in the pit. You hear ‘em down there, they’re louder than ever! They’re hungry right? Hell I ain’t even seen Ursula in days, no-one has!”
“Ursula does as she wants Landon, she wants to rest, or take a goddamn weekend off in Atlantic City, that’s her choice and I ain’t gonna question it and neither should you.”
Landon smiled, and began making his way toward the cell where Walter and Arthur sat.
“No Fred, this is a test. It’s a test to see who’s gonna step up, who’s gonna put the work in! It’s gonna be me.”
Walter was once more scratching in his notebook when Landon slammed open the latch on the bars and hauled open the rusted gate to the cell.
“What did Alonzo say to you, little man?”
Walter fumbled for words. There was something more in the usually benign toady’s face than usual, something frightening. Landon gave an energetic whoop.
“Don’t matter. I know what he wants. You’re the test, little man, they want you!”
Landon hauled Walter to his feet, dragging him from the cell and across the dirt floor. Yelling for Fred to close up the gate. Grinning, he began to drag Walter through the cave, towards the pit.
Fred watched, a creeping feeling of distaste in his throat. If he was wrong, Landon could get them both fed to the rattlers. Even worse, if Landon was right, the idiot might rise in status over him. Fred might have to do something about Landon one of these days.
He turned towards the cell, then heard a sudden noise and felt his body lurch backwards. There was a moment of vague confusion where he wondered if he’d slipped, before his back hit the cavern wall and a pistol was shoved in his face, and he realized he was staring into the eyes of Marshal Seth Bullock.
The barrel of Seth’s revolver was jammed to Fred’s lip, and the Marshal shushed him firmly. With a gesture of his pistol, figures emerged from behind Seth into the cave.
“Get as many out as you can, keep it quiet.” Seth grunted.
Fred recognized faces from town, people he’d known, people he’d hated. Self righteous fools all of them. They were rushing to the cages, sliding open the latches. Fred’s eyes darted, seeking escape, until his gaze met the man who strolled up behind Seth, and Fred gave a snort of humor.
“What you got to laugh about Ayres? You gonna hang for this,” Seth snarled.
“No other law but hers,” Fred giggled, and Danny London’s shotgun stock slammed into the back of Seth’s head.
Seth wasn’t sure if he truly lost consciousness. For a moment he could only watch as mayhem exploded into the cavern. He felt the rush of bodies, the yells of the cultists, saw the looks on his friend’s faces as they raised guns, unsheathed knives.
Somewhere, above the noise and the ever present grinding of the worms, he could hear Danny yelling. Weapons were being pointed, and while a rare shot rang out deafeningly around the cavern, far more faces were twisted in fear and confusion as weapons failed to operate, guns clicked uselessly, shotguns misfired with a pathetic thunk, and rifles burst into their owners faces. The battle turned feral then, rocks were lifted from the ground, heavy hunks of wood, metal bars. Seth saw Fred Ayres wade into the fight, hefting a heavy work hammer.
A cry somewhere in the cavern brought Seth around, and he looked to see the miserable form of Walter, being dragged bodily across the ground by Landon Grimes. Seth pulled at the knife in his boot as he regained his footing, and clocked a running cultist in the face with his elbow as he yelled for his posse to follow.
* * *
The noise above the sacrificial pit was deafening. Landon had sat in train stations that rattled less, and the grinding of the hungry ones below felt no less inevitable than the arrival of some great churning locomotive.
Dragging Walter along, Landon grinned to himself. He was the one who would gain Ursula’s favor. Not that self important Fred. Not that Alonzo. No one but him.
The sacrificial pit dominated the room ahead. The cultists that maintained the ever growing pit were kneeling in quiet supplication, focusing on the noise rising from below, barely cognizant of the riot around them.
Walter struggling feebly in his grip, Landon stood before the pit and raised a hand high.
“Ursula!! Ursula show yourself! I’m here! I’m the one!”
He dragged Walter up, the little man’s bare feet fighting for purchase on the rock floor as Landon lifted him. From behind came the clatter of noise as Seth and his posse thundered into the room, Fred Ayres and a bundle of cultists on their tail. Those around the pit began peering up from their robes, hands lifting heavy stones and crude spears to bear.
With a swipe of his arm, Landon sent a lit brazier tumbling, knocking it down into the pit, and once more roared for Ursula.
Seth sighted down Landon with his revolver, and prayed that at least one went off straight today. He breathed, waiting for Walter’s struggling body to give him a clear shot.
In the space of Seth’s exhalation, the room became silent. The sudden absence of sound was so massive it felt like a physical strike, the ever-present rumble so much a part of the cave that at first it was hard to even realize what had happened.
Then, from the sacrificial pit, movement.
Great coils of fleshy loops began to appear, roiling and twisting, bubbling up from within the dark below. Among the blood-colored loops, gaping lamprey-like mouths snapped blindly, questing for sustenance.
At first it seemed they moved of their own accord, a senseless knot of oily roping creatures twisting around one another, but soon a figure could be seen, nestled fetally within the great mass of worms.
So drenched in the slick effluent was it that it was hard to tell where the worms ended and the figure began, but soon the worms parted, blossoming like a repulsive orchid to reveal the naked figure of Ursula, her arms spreading with her children, borne aloft upon the cords of muscular worms as she ascended from the pit.
Ursula’s eyes opened onto her new existence, black orbs staring down with glee upon all amassed beneath her, a preacher upon her writhing pulpit.
Cultists fell, dropping to their knees in supplication. Some screamed out, rending at their robes, some burst into tears of joy, wailing, their arms extended towards the Worm Queen in adoration.
Fred Ayres was the first to break from the group, letting out a cry of abject horror, he dropped his hammer to the ground and ran, his hands clawing, his feet pounding in a desperate rush to escape the actualized abomination before him.
Some of the cultists made brief attempts to claw at him as he scrambled past them, but their attention was diverted to their Queen, all else could wait. Danny London saw what was coming, he jammed his bulk down into the gap between the wall and a crate. With his hand over his mouth, he shut his eyes to the atrocity that spilled into the room.
Between the cultists fallen to their knees, a figure strode proudly to stand before the Worm Queen. Her plain white robes splattered with blood and hanging in tatters, Amity Hopkins raised her bible and thrust it out before her.
“In the name of God almighty, I rebuke thee,” her frail voice rising, whites of her eyes showing, “‘They shall look upon thee who has rebelled against Him. They are the worm, they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.’”
Ursula’s shoulders rolled in a languid, writhing motion, her face twisted into a rictus grin of anticipation.
When she opened her mouth, so did dozens of tiny lip-less orifices up and down the length of the worms, and what emanated from them was a choir, a perfect harmony of voices speaking as one.
“I was once like you. In the dirt I was trapped. I chewed until I was set free.”
Amity Hopkins showed no fear as the worms lurched forward with teeth and gaping jaws. In the space of a heartbeat, Amity was consumed, the worms bulging as they hungrily swallowed their fill. Ursula’s throat moved in swallows, as if the holy flesh had passed her own lips.
“Body and blood.”
The closest cultists to their Queen were the next to give themselves to the hunger, worms lashing out to greedily gulp them down chunk by massive chunk.
Landon looked on in confusion and horror. He was meant to be the favored one. Him!
The worms coiled out for him. Walter struggled from his grip, the little man scrambling in the dirt for escape. Landon screeched a denial at his offering’s escape, but as he turned, Walter was lost in a rumble of faces and dust from above.
When Landon turned back, the Worm Queen was upon him too. Coils covered him, dozens of hungry grinding mouths filling his world. He let out a sob, begging to his queen before he was crushed beneath the onslaught of twisting, churning worms.
Seth was raising his pistol but his hand was clumsy, like trying to run in a nightmare, and he felt his training betraying him instant by instant in slow motion. He could only yell for the others to run, for everyone to run, as the gigantic form of Ursula crashed down around him, her worms coiling around his waist, and he was dragged upwards to meet her face to face.
The Worm Queen smiled, a slow and skin-crawling expression, and looked across Seth’s body like a starving wolf watching a bleeding lamb.
“You have no power here.”
Slowly, she extended a hand, it was slick on his face, and her nails left lines of oily fluid down his cheek as she dragged them down. Finally, they came to rest on his Marshal’s badge.
Ursula tugged it loose from Seth’s shirt, and slowly placed it to her own breast. Piercing the flesh, she latched the tin star to herself, and a cacophony of voices fluttered in ugly guttural mirth. The star shone silver against her pale skin.
“The law is as I speak it now. Welcome Marshal, to a new world.”
Seth’s vision clouded as he felt the heat coming from Ursula’s gigantic form, the coils tightening around his limbs. The frustration of helplessness increased, and when it felt like his teeth gritted hard enough to shatter, there came a rush of movement.
Arrows sprouted from Ursula’s coils, knives blazing with hot bursts of energy slicing into the toothless mouths along her body. The head of a tomahawk, white hot with the power of the ancients, came down into Ursula’s shoulder, and the Worm Queen roared in rage.
Seth looked to his right to see Sifting Squirrel there at his side, pulling back his tomahawk for another strike, mouth open in a warrior’s cry. At his other side, a shape flew in, SuAnne’s coat flopping as she landed on Ursula’s coils, clambering up them to reach Seth, her bow strapped across her back.
There was the sound of gunfire, and a grinding, vibrating roll that Seth couldn’t even identify. He heard SuAnne’s cry, beckoning him to escape.
Seth pushed. The strength of Ursula’s coils was immense. It felt like struggling against a train leaving the station. SuAnne was striking over and over at Ursula’s worms, the muscular coils shuddering around her blows as they thundered down. Slicing off the head off a worm that thrashed in his face, Sifting Squirrel brought his tomahawk down once more into Ursula, and her worms tightened around her to guard her body.
Her grip loosened for a moment, and Seth dropped from the coils. Immediately, SuAnne’s arms were around him, dragging him from the roiling embrace. Sifting Squirrel pushed off from the worms, narrowly avoiding the lash of a great coil that smashed down to batter the rock below him.
Ursula began to roar, a massive guttural vibration that filled the cave, chasing the fleeing figures through the darkness.
Blood thumping in his ears, ribs aching from Ursula’s coils, Seth stumbled on, dragged along by SuAnne, Sifting Squirrel sprinting at his side. For every empty cage Seth passed, two more stood unopened, the victims of the worm cult staring out as the Marshal and his posse fled for their lives.
Looking behind him, Seth caught a glimpse of Arthur Dingler, eyes bulging in fear. Roger was pulling the man along, a simple rock hefted in one hand where once he’d carried a rifle. Other freed captives ran, stumbled or crawled as best they could away from the monstrosity that now dominated the cave. As they ran, Seth saw one such man lose his footing, hit the ground hard, and in moments he was gone, dragged off into the darkness by Ursula’s reaching worms.
All around them was panic and fear and pumping limbs. Just as the mouth of the cavern loomed, light spilling through, Walter stopped.
Roger yelled at the man to hurry, but Walter frantically patted his filthy shirt, turned out his empty pockets, and looked about himself in utter panic.
“I…I have to go back,” he uttered. Roger stared at him like he’d sprouted a second head.
“You go back you’re gonna die down there, Walter. Everyone’s gonna die down there!”
“No…The town, they gotta read it, they gotta hear about it!” Walter wailed, before turning and running back the way they had come, into the oncoming rush of cultists and the deep approaching roar of Ursula’s worms.
Seamus O’Toole waited at the cave mouth, mechanism spinning as Kassandra stood guard. A smile lit the scientist’s face when he saw Arthur.
“Fly, my friends, I’ll take it from here!” Seamus said, and placed the point of his gadget to the dirt floor of the cavern.
As they sped past, Seamus’s device sped up. Turning with increasing speed, the gadget practically shook from Seamus’s arms as he drove it down into the ground.
The first of the Worm Queen’s pursuers rounded the corner and sped towards Seamus. The juddering of the device began to shake the cavern, the grinding reaching a crescendo. All around, piles of dirt bulged, from ground wall to ceiling, spilling dust and rock as they came loose.
Seamus smiled forlornly, glancing over his shoulder at the shadows of his receding friends.
“I see what you were doin’ now Elander…got to think bigger,” Seamus thumbed up the power beyond his safety levels, and as the device screamed in protest, he began reaching into its guts to tug loose fail-safes and tear out inhibitors.
Worms began emerging from the cavern walls on all sides, driven to mad wriggling by the digging of Seamus’s infernal machine. With a whoop of glee, Seamus jammed his entire weight behind the device, and with a sound like thunder across the plains, the cave came down around him.
* * *
The broken remains of the nine that rode out returned across the high plains, riding two or three to a horse with weak and cheerless captives, nursing bruised limbs, staunching bleeding wounds, groaning and bleeding into the dirt.
Seth didn’t remember the frantic dash through the Black Hills and then across the plains, as a handful of frail souls rushed to the city to cry out a warning. He remembered the faces of those left behind. He remembered the noise.
The Worm Queen had come.