Driving through the country was the last thing I wanted to do that night, but my dog had managed to break out of my backyard and take off again. Considering how close together I’d moved the boards of the fence after her first excursion, this was both impressive and especially frustrating. At least my friend Jane had elected to come along on the search, and now sat in the passenger’s seat, her eyes fixed on the passing forests while we sped down the road.
It had been about midnight when I saw that Ruby was missing, and we’d already been looking for over an hour, so the world was encased in the relentless darkness of the very early morning. I couldn’t see a thing beyond the range of the high beams. Everything they illuminated was cast in an unnerving grayscale. The trees looked like pipes thrust into the earth and then left to rust, with black moss dribbling out from their joints like contaminated water. The road was remote and poorly paved, and as I saw a rusted stop sign flash in the night, I soared through the intersection without slowing. There would be nobody else driving here at this hour.
“She was down this way last time,” I said.
“This far out?” Jane asked, turning to look at me. By the dim interior lights of the vehicle, I could make out only her silhouette, slightly misshapen due to her mop of unkempt hair.
“No,” I responded. “But last time she was just walking alongside the road. She’s not used to the woods. If we keep looking along this way, we’ll run into her eventually.”
“Run into her?”
“Shut up,” I grumbled. “You know what I mean.”
“Still, a dog is a dog, and they usually travel at less than forty-five miles an hour. You’ve definitely overshot her. Turn back around and we’ll check the other direction.”
I considered it for a moment, then looked down at my gas tank to find the meter hovering at the quarter-tank mark. We really couldn’t afford to go much further out than this.
“Fine.”
I brought the car to a stop, performed a terrible three-point turn, and we started heading back towards the city. Jane flicked on the radio and started scrolling through the stations, but the only thing she was able to pick up was blaring static.
We reached the intersection again and this time I stopped the car abruptly. It wasn’t a four-way, as I had thought the first time, but a five-way: two roads now loomed in front, one turning slightly to the left and the other slightly to the right.
“Well,” I said, “That’s great.”
“I didn’t see another road on my side when we were passing through it,” Jane said.
“I didn’t either. Guess it just blended in.”
“Well, I don’t have a signal,” she commented, the light of her phone flickering from beside me. “No signs out there.”
“Thanks, I can see that just as well as you can.”
“More like can’t see that just as well as I can’t.”
We stared out at the intersection for a moment. I could have sworn that it hadn’t been like this when we first passed through, but of course that was ridiculous. Still, it was unsettling. And wouldn’t this sort of junction need a proper light instead of a couple of rusted signs?
There hadn’t been anything but forest for miles beforehand, so we didn’t have any nearby landmarks that would tell us if we were heading the right way or not. With a sigh, I muttered, “Lucky number left,” an ongoing inside joke, and we started off that way.
A heavy raindrop splattered over the windshield, followed by several others. The overcast skies didn’t release themselves into a full downpour as much as slowly flick droplets down at us. I could hear each strike against the roof separately from the others, like a slow knocking. The road dampened ahead of us as irregular patches of water formed and coalesced.
The static from the radio continued to blare over everything else. “Will you turn that off?”
“Give it a moment,” Jane responded. “If we’re headed back into town, the signal should pick up.”
“Well, until then - “
“There!” she cried, pointing out of the passenger window. I slowed slightly and watched a decrepit shell of an old barn sweep past. It looked ancient, with rotten doors that hung at a wild angle on their hinges, and a roof that was more rot than shingles. “That definitely wasn’t there before.”
“Alright,” I said, relieved that everything was cleared up so quickly, until Jane stiffened and grabbed my shoulder.
“Look in the doorway.”
I squinted through the blur of halfhearted rain and made out an ochre clump standing in a gap between the doors. It was just about Ruby’s size. I pulled over for a closer look, but it took to its legs and sprinted further down the road.
“Could that be her? How far out are we?”
“Let’s check at least!” Jane hissed. “What else did we come out here for?”
I steered in the direction of the animal, my heart pounding with a mixture of excitement and fear. It could really be Ruby, if she had decided to break her old habits and cut through the forest, or it could be a feral dog that I really shouldn’t approach in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to call out and see if it would respond, but something about the night stopped me. It had a stifling pressure to it: as absurd as it sounded, I felt like calling out would bring attention to us.
The rain sounded strangely synchronized in quick beats of two. We approached an old stone bridge above the road, the sort that usually connected to biking routes, and as we were about to cross below it, a voice emerged from the static.
“Worm-”
It was difficult to tell exactly why it caused my heart to stumble. The voice of the announcer wasn’t one from any of the local stations, and there hadn’t been any intonation that even allowed me to tell its age or gender. The way they said it sounded wrong, like the voice on Google Translate reading the word - worm - and ending abruptly. It was like the announcer had been cut off in the middle of a statement.
I saw it immediately past the bridge and slammed on the brakes.
There was a glistening gray line extended across the entire length of the road. If we weren’t so far out, I could have thought it was a downed power line. With something hard rising in my throat, I tried to trace either end to the source, but the line only descended into the forest until it was out of the range of the high beams.
On the other side of the line, the dog sat and cocked its head.
“What the fuck,” Jane whispered.
I stammered something, then hissed, “It’s Ruby.” There could be no mistaking her custom red collar with the silver medallion, or the way she started scratching behind her ear with a muddied paw. “Do we -”
“You know what that is?” Jane said after a moment, trying to sound calm. “Environmental groups take samples of road runoff with those tubes. I’ve seen some in the city before.”
“And that?”
“That,” she said, “Was a - a signal - burst - or something. Coincidence. I mean, for the love of god, you don’t actually think there’s a giant -”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “No.”
Jane opened her side door, sending a rush of cold air into the car. I blamed it for the goosebumps running along every inch of my arms. She called out, “Here, Ruby!” and the dog clasped her paws and wagged her tail. Jane reached into her bag, rummaged out a dog treat, and started to get out of the car.
“I’ll get her,” I said, suddenly ashamed of my cowardice. I slid open my door and stepped carefully out into the darkness. As Jane continued to wave the treat, I walked toward Ruby, hesitating only when my right foot was raised above the line.
I had to look down so I wouldn’t step on it, but as soon as I did, I wished that I hadn’t. The thing wasn’t a runoff tube.
Instead, I saw black veins streaking through a mass of grey flesh about the diameter of a soda can. It left oozing residue on the pavement as it oscillated slightly from side to side. Deeper within the tube, there was a current of blurred motion. A dark liquid was flowing through its length at an incredible rate, leaving the rubbery casing stiffened under high pressure like a garden hose operating at full force.
I tasted gravel and realized I had bitten down on my tongue. Hands shaking furiously, I scampered over the appalling entity and latched my arms around Ruby. She whined under this sudden imprisonment, but I held tight and rushed back toward the car.
I was just in time to hear the radio emit another voiceless word.
“Bridge-”
My gaze flickered up to the structure and I watched breathlessly as a second worm slowly wrapped itself around the stonework. As it wound tightly around the structure, a bit of its rubbery flesh caught on a jagged edge and it tore open. A torrent of the dark substance spewed out of the gash, rushing with impossible force toward the ground. It cracked through the pavement the moment it contacted it and started fountaining into the air like a hellish fountain. I could barely fathom the rate of flow I was seeing; in the blink of an eye the road was covered in inches of the foul substance, pooling outward like tar, as it rushed furiously from both ends of the broken worm. The thing continued to make its way along the stones undisturbed by this loss of bodily fluids, slowly coating them with its grey flesh until there was nothing else left visible.
I screamed and sprinted back into the car as Jane turned around. I shoved Ruby into the backseat and slammed on the gas without even closing my door. There was absolutely no way I was driving back through that bridge. The tires squealed over the damp pavement and we thudded over the worm up ahead, the front and back tires thumping over it with a sound identical to a heartbeat. The speedometer rose rapidly until the trees blurred into a single charcoal mass and the rushing of the wind chilled me to the bone.
Jane slapped me across the face, hard, and I fumbled to regain control of the vehicle. I slowed enough to close the door and then returned to forty-five miles an hour.
“What was that?” we asked, nearly simultaneously.
“Worm-” the radio announced, and Jane twisted the dial furiously, but the static refused to dissipate.
“Fuck,” she said. “You’ve got to turn around! We can’t go farther this way!”
“The bridge -” I stammered. “Tar - stuck -”
“Alright,” Jane snapped, “You’re out, I’m driving.”
“No!” I said, and slammed my hand down to lock the car doors. “Never out - that thing -”
“Breathe.”
I tried to calm down, tried to eliminate the picture of the gushing worm from my mind, but then I spotted the wriggling mass on one of the trees ahead. I pointed with a trembling hand and Jane followed it. As with the bridge, the worm was winding around the tree and completely encompassing it in its flesh, winding tighter and tighter like a boa constrictor trying to crush its prey. The worm wound around a pointed branch and tore a small hole in its side, sending a rushing stream of black tar soaring out in a disgusting arc.
“How is that possible?” Jane breathed, one of her hands digging into my shoulder. “How does it have that much inside of it?”
“Stop,” I said, “Just stop.”
From the back seat, Ruby whined loudly, but neither of us had the time to comfort her.
The car passed the tree-worm and we continued onward. I was driving more slowly now, mostly because I didn’t trust my nerves enough to operate at high speeds. There were more worms lying along the road as well, and I gritted my teeth each time the tires bumped over them with a terrible thump, thump. None of these were bursting as we drove over, but they were definitely getting larger and larger as we went on. I felt powerless, drawn further into this horror, but knowing that I couldn’t very well turn around. The meter on the tank inched closer and closer to zero.
“Another farm,” Jane hissed, pointing toward a light shining from a clearing up ahead. “They might know something.”
But as we approached the homestead, it became clear that we wouldn’t be traveling inside. The fields had been replaced with a mashing infestation of the worms, acres and acres of sprawling, quivering grey flesh, and a mass of their ruptured internal fluids flowing over the rock wall. The house itself was mostly free of the disgusting entities, but a couple had twisted themselves along the walls and pivoted into the windows, leaking from the gashes left by shattered glass.
There were a couple of worms tracing in a bunch across the road, and although I hoped I was wrong, their contents appeared to be a reddish-brown.
“Six-” the radio announced.
Staring at the reddish worms, neither Jane nor I felt the need to ask six of what.
“I can’t drive over that.” I was beginning to hyperventilate. “Dear god - I can’t -”
“Look behind us and try again,” Jane muttered, her voice empty and dry.
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a fleshy grey line extending itself out from a tree and reaching through the air toward us. This was the first time I saw the head of the worm. It had a gaping mouth that peeled back like a squid shark to reveal lines and lines of sucking proboscises.
I was driving before I knew it, slamming over those horrible reddened worms, and the car lurched upward this time as the tires rose over them. The road ahead was clustered with lines now, and nearly every tree was encompassed in a mixture of fleshy grey and spurting fluid. Glancing in the rearview, I saw the heads of countless worms pivoting as we passed and turning to follow our car, keeping a fairly steady pace.
“End-” the radio said.
With a sputter, the engine coughed, and the gas meter blared empty before my eyes. The car slid and jumped over the clogged road as its momentum carried it onward. I couldn’t hear anything but our screams and the ringing in my ears. The speedometer slowly ticked down toward zero and the worms in the rearview accelerated closer from every direction, their mouths flapping wildly. The headlights flickered once, then again -
But as I squinted through a wall of tears, I saw the rough outline of a steel bridge ahead. It had been coated like the rest of our surroundings, but the water below was untouched. Maybe - just maybe - saltwater was toxic to them. With the last of our momentum, I steered the car off the road and down the encampment to the river. The car smashed over rocks and twisted around like an orb in a pinball machine, sending everything into a dizzying array of swirling colors.
Then I felt the impact as we hit the water, shocking me out of nausea, and fighting against an ache in every muscle of my body, I found and released the latch of my seatbelt. Jane was slumped unconscious in her seat, her head bleeding against the airbags that I hadn’t even noticed deploying. Ruby whined in the back, pawing at the door, and I struggled to catch my breath.
I had expected us to start sinking immediately, but the waves outside were staying at a consistent height. I twisted around, discovering that at least some of my ribs were broken, and through a reddened haze I saw a worm wrapping around the car and trying to drag us back to shore. Spitting blood out of my mouth, I pushed against my door, but the collisions had warped it shut. The back of the car began to buckle as the worm tightened its grip around us. Panicking, I lurched harder against my door and felt it give way.
I squeezed out into the water, clinging with one hand onto the frame of the car so that the current wouldn’t wash me away. I had to help Jane and Ruby, but as I fought to hold myself in place, I knew I wouldn’t be able to reach them.
I screamed Jane’s name instead, sputtering against mouthfuls of seawater, feeling its sharp sting as it entered the cuts all over me, my arms aching from the effort of holding against the rushing current. The worm continued to crush the vehicle, but the head turned to look at me, and it shot forward with its proboscises wiggling excitedly. I let go of the car with one hand and slapped the surface as hard as I could, sending a spray of salty water up into the gaping mouth. The worm let out a noise like an industrial jet engine roaring to life and backed off for a moment, holes starting to appear in the insides of its jaw. Spurts of the black tar shot forward around me, staining the water with the foul scent of rot, and a single stream shot through my index finger, nearly severing it.
I heard a shuffling from inside the vehicle and saw Jane’s body rushing down the river, followed closely by Ruby. With a final gasp of air, I released my grip on the car and let the current carry me down into the salty void. My vision spasmed with white spots as I rose to the surface.
A hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me into a slimy mass. I reached out and latched onto the surface of the log, my damaged finger dangling uselessly. Jane stared at me from across the log, her other hand latched around Ruby, and I slumped forward into unconsciousness.
She would tell me later on how she had clung to that rotting log through the night, supporting both Ruby and myself, as the countryside slowly returned back to normal. We had eventually reached the open sea, and she too fell unconscious from exhaustion, leaving us adrift in the waters.
They found us on a beach near our hometown. The official report was miraculous survival of a driving accident, even if the doctor was perplexed by the pressure-drilled hole in my finger.
Later that day, they announced a forest fire, and looking at the reports, Jane and I saw that it would devastate the entire region we had been trapped in.
I think it was containment.