Chapter 11: World-Weary Worms

Giant leech

Read Chapter 11 of Lord Trump the Undead about Ba’al’s mission to collect all three of the biopower brain worms: Kerryanne Conway (The Earthworm), Sean Spicer (The Intestinal Flatworm), and Sarah Huckabee Sanders (The Leech).

Lord Ba’al the Bull God gallops through the night. Alcott Herbster dozes on his broad back, sometimes sleeping without fear of tumbling off.

Toward morning, as the eastern horizon is beginning to send up pink and orange shoots, Ba’al turns into a large cemetery on the outskirts of Liberal, Kansas, and stops before a ramshackle caretaker’s hut. Alcott rouses himself, rubs his eyes.

“Is this our destination?” he asks.

“A way-station,” Ba’al replies. “I need something from a guy I know.”

“Do you need me?”

“No. But you’re welcome to come in if you like.”

So they walk into the hut. The caretaker is just making coffee. He glances over his left shoulder at his visitors.

“Oh, Ba’al, it’s you. Huh. Not a card, not a phone call, for centuries he just gallops on by, and now here he is in the flesh. Well, sort of.”

“Nice to see you, Tom,” Ba’al smiles. “It’s been too long, yes. Apologies.”

“Whatever,” Tom grumbles. He’s an elderly man of Indeterminate age, rather squat and square — built rather like a gravestone. “You want coffee?”

Ba’al eyes Alcott. Alcott nods.

“Sure.”

“Sit,” the caretaker says.

“This is my old friend Tom Maweth,” Ba’al says to Alcott. “Canaanite god of death.”

“Nice to meet you,” Alcott says. “Does that mean god of the underworld, like Hades?”

“Sort of,” Ba’al says. “He’s actually the personification of death.”

“I see.”

“So,” Maweth says to Ba’al, “you’re hanging out with humans now?”

“Always have, when it’s served my purposes,” Ba’al says evenly. “This is Alcott Herbster. He’s helping me with something.”

“It’s always ‘something,’ isn’t it,” Maweth says grumpily. “I’m guessing you need something from me.”

“A cart full of dirt,” Ba’al says.

“Sure,” Maweth says. “Top-quality dirt, I’m guessing?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ba’al says. “Whatever you’ve got out back.”

“Come have a look,” Maweth says.

So they go out back, where Maweth climbs into a forklift, loads a cart full of dirt, then rigs a harness for Ba’al’s chest and withers. Alcott climbs up onto the cart and jumps over onto Ba’al’s back. Tom Maweth shrugs off Ba’al’s thanks and Alcott’s “nice to meet you,” and they’re off.

“Where to next?” Alcott asks.

“Hope, Arkansas.”

“Isn’t that where — former President Bill Clinton was from?” Alcott remembers.

“Close,” Ba’al says. “But not quite.”

They ride through the day and stop just before dark at a large horse ranch. Ba’al is presumably still invisible to humans, but so, Alcott surmises, is he, and so is the cart Ba’al is pulling. People walk by them without challenging them, or seeming to notice them at all.

They head for the stables.

“Let’s see,” Ba’al says. “I think it’s that big bay over there.”

He shrugs off the harness and leaves the cart in the middle aisle. He transforms into a bull-headed human, unlatches the big bay’s stable door, and beckons Alcott inside.

“What are we looking for?” Alcott wonders.

“Something in here,” Ba’al says, and reaches one hand into the horse’s rectum, right up to his shoulder.

“Oh,” Alcott says.

“Here we go,” Ba’al says, and starts pulling his arm out.

When his fist emerges from the horse’s ass, it has a large intestinal parasite worm wrapped around it. He keeps pulling until the full five-meter worm is out.

“I’m guessing,” Alcott says, “that’s not just any old intestinal tapeworm.”

“Right you are,” Ba’al says. “This is Donald Trump’s former press secretary and former governor of Tennessee, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.”

“Huh,” Alcott says. “Good disguise.”

“Yeah.”

“Why’d she take this form?”

“The usual,” Ba’al says. “Hiding from her enemies.”

“Hm.”

He carries Sanders over to the cart and lets her slide into the dirt.

“Wouldn’t she rather be in an intestinal tract?” Alcott wonders.

Ba’al arches one eyebrow. “Are you offering yours?”

“Um, no,” Alcott stammers. “I was thinking …”

“What, mine? I may be crazy, but not that crazy.”

“Okay.” Ba’al straps on the harness again and Alcott climbs up.

“Where to next?”

“Fairfax, Virginia.”

“What’s there?”

“An earthworm,” Ba’al says.

“Not just any earthworm, probably?” Alcott says.

“Right.”

They ride through the day and half the next night, and soon have gathered up the earthworm formerly known as Kellyanne Conway and gotten her situated in the dirt.

Next they head north to Barrington, Rhode Island. There Ba’al circles around Brickyard Pond to the far side across from Veterans Memorial Park, and parks the cart.

He wades into the water. Alcott stands on the shore and watches. After about a half hour Ba’al emerges from the water with four leeches attached to his humanoid legs. He detaches them one at a time, looks each one in the eyes, and throws them back into the water — until the last one.

“Got you,” he says.

“Who’s that?” Alcott asks.

“Sean Spicer,” Ba’al says. “Trump’s first press secretary.”

“Wow,” Alcott says. “I never would have thought.”

“Most humans wouldn’t,” Ba’al says.

He tries to insinuate Spicer into the dirt. Spicer resists. Ba’al tries again. Spicer resists.

“Look, you,” Ba’al says. “Lord Trump needs you, god knows why. I didn’t come up with this plan. If you don’t want any part of it, I’ll just rip your head off and toss your broken body back into the lake. Your choice.”

Now Spicer is suddenly compliant. He practically lunges toward the dirt.

They gear up and head out.

“Now which way?” Alcott asks.

“Florida,” Ba’al says. “Trumpland.”

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