You are going to spend the next three days with Arch Stanton and a cast of wacky characters. Arch lives with his grandmother in a trailer owned by Fat Ernst, the owner of the town's restaurant. Arch suffered the death of his parents and his grandfather, and he and his grandmother need financial help. Arch works for Fat Ernst at the restaurant doing all the the menial work-- from cook to janitor to busboy to errand boy.
Fat Ernst has sent the town bad boys to pick him up for work. Bert & Junior Sawyer drive a huge truck with a bull symbol on the hood. Arch is fascinated and disgusted with the conversations he is listening to about self- satisfaction and such that occur between the Sawyer brothers. Along the way to the restaurant, the guys come upon the funeral procession of one of the town's richest farmers, Earl Johnson. All the Stetson-wearing, rich farmers make the Sawyer brothers angry, so they try to out-race the procession and, in the process, throw at the procession the dead animals that they are paid to pick up.
From this point forward, WORMFOOD becomes a "scream". The antics are high-wired and comical, aside from the horrors inherent in the story. The next two days are busy for Arch and everyone else in town. Arch has discovered flesh-eating worms and is hard pressed to figure out where they originate. Although this book is really rather humorous, there are some very horrible events, including one that made me, a huge Stephen King fan, cringe.
I enjoyed WORMFOOD. It has some strong visual aspects, but I felt that maybe the title didn't capture the nature of the story as worms didn't really have a major role in the story.
In the poor, isolated town of Whitewood, California,
16-year-old Arch Stanton has a bad job at the local bar and
grill that is about to get much worse and, despite his
skills with firearms, he may not survive the weekend.
Archβs boss, Fat Ernst, would do anything for a chance at
easy money, and when he forces Arch to do some truly dirty
work, all hell breaks loose. Suddenly, the
customersβinfected by vicious, wormlike parasitesβbegin
dying in agonizing pain. As events spiral out of control,
decades of bitter rivalries resurface and boil over into
three days of rapidly escalating carnage.
The truck bounced and swayed up the pitted gravel road that
led over the low foothills. We were headed down the back
end of Road E toward the Sawyer house. Iβd never been
there, but I knew where the house was. Everybody knew
where the house was. Everybody knew because it was a place
that you stayed away from. Even the mailman refused to
come all the way out here. Instead, he dumped the mail
into a bucket out on the highway.
Thunder rumbled softly to the west, but the
air was dry for the moment. A cool night wind had dried
the thick, scummy water on my skin, leaving a filmy, greasy
residue behind. The truck jerked violently to the left,
plowing through a deep puddle, and I rolled with it,
bracing my foot against the wet, matted hair of the carcass
for support. The steer lay stiffly on its side, legs
jutting straight out, and rocked slightly with the motion
of the truck. Then we were over the top of the foothill
and shuddering down the other side into the deep hollow
where the Sawyer brothers lived. I pulled my eyes away
from my bloody hand and twisted around so I could see
through the two-inch gap in the wooden slats.
The weak headlights splashed over a tangle
of old fig trees that had never been pruned. A quagmire of
rotten figs blanketed the ground beneath the trees. As we
got closer, I heard a low buzzing fade in and out. It took
me a moment, but when a wasp landed on the steer and
crawled around, I realized what was causing the buzzing. I
had never heard or seen wasps out at night before, and it
made my skin crawl.
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