They were small at first, and mostly harmless. I think the largest that we saw the first week were about the size of your index finger. Uncomfortably swollen for an earthworm, but not dangerous to anything bigger than a mouse. Soon after that, however, we started hearing reports on the news about other worms all over the world coming out of the ground when it rained.

Pets in our neighborhood began disappearing. Not long after that…children. They were fast, the worms, far faster than they had any right to be. I saw one about the size of a German Shepherd take down Mr. Dean from down the street. It was like a bridge cable made out of pale, wet flesh. All muscle. The worm chased Mr. Dean down the road, caught him easily, then wrapped him up. I went to the truck for my twelve gauge but knew I was already too late to save the old man. There was something caustic about the worms, a secretion that burned little trails wherever they crawled. When they fed, they released the chemical. It beaded on their soft bodies like sweat and dissolved anything it touched.

I used my first shot to stop Mr. Dean’s screaming. The second, third, and fourth shells were for the worm. They were not easy to kill. Even after blasting it to pieces, I needed to take a chainsaw to the sections that were still twitching. Then everything went into the fire pit out back.

Part of me always knew that the world would end in some awful way. I didn’t expect the worms but at least we were prepared. The last news we saw of the world outside our mountain cabin was a report from New York. A worm had gotten around the Statue of Liberty, one so big it could wrap around her twice. Copper melted off the poor girl in a green river as the worm juices did their work.

We stopped watching TV once we got to the cabin. It’s quiet here most days. Yesterday, though, I had to kill one of the bastards the size of a Cadillac in the backyard. The weather’s turned on us and it looks like more rain is on the way. We’ve got plenty of supplies and ammo but it won’t matter if enough of them show up, or if one of the massive ones comes slipping down the mountain like a flesh avalanche.

I think we’ll try for the coast if things get hairy. Find a boat, hope there’s nothing in the water. We’ve got the cellar here, of course, and it’s fortified…but it’s also underground. If you go down there and listen carefully, sometimes you can hear something moving in the dirt.