Slither (19 page)

Probably Loren. That blonde tease has got him ALL
twisted up. She held her gaze on the woods awhile
longer, but saw no one running off. Who cares? she
thought.

The lobsters stirred. Better quit fooling around and
get these in the cooler. She stepped up her stride, got
back on the trail, then winced and fell to a knee.

Damn it! That HURTS!

She'd stepped on something; her bare foot blared
pain. What the hell is that?

She awkwardly crooked her leg around. Something
metal on a string stuck out of the bottom of her foot.
"Bastard!" Grimacing, she yanked it out as a small
amount of blood dribbled from the tiny wound.

Her first notion was that it reminded her of a key on
a pendant, as someone would wear around the neck. A
straight, flat piece of metal on a looped cord, three
inches long and an eighth of an inch wide. She wiped
the blood off it, took a closer look. Jewelry? she considered. Some party kid could've dropped it. But why
the string cord instead of a chain? When she rubbed
her fingers against the tip, she felt ridges of some kind.
Then she thought of keys again, something to unlock a
security cable on a laptop.

Shit on it, she thought and stood back up. The damn
thing had just been lying there in the trail, and she'd
stepped on it. It didn't even look like it had been there
long-...

When she'd hobbled back to the campsite-bowed
to one side by the lobster bag-she found Annabelle in
a new bikini whose fabric was shockingly flesh-tonedsitting at one of the old picnic tables. Her hair was up
in a towel now, and she was passively painting her fingernails. Trent sat across from her, scribbling in his
army pad.

Nora huffed forward, her pierced foot throbbing.
"Hey, Annabelle, could you give me a hand with this
bag of lobsters?"

The blonde looked up and sighed. She displayed her
shiny red nails. "Sorry, my nails are wet."

"Here," Trent offered. He took the bag and appraised it. "Wow, this is great. There must be two
dozen lobsters in there."

"About that, and all still alive and kicking. But we've
got to keep them cool before dinner."

Annabelle looked at the impressive bag but said
nothing. She sat with her legs demurely crossed, and
blew on her nails. "I'll stick them in the cooler I've got
hooked up to the generator," Trent said and walked
off.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch," Nora muttered when she hobbled the rest of the way to the table and sat down.

"Still aching from your sunburn?" Annabelle asked.

"No." Nora resisted the impulse to yell.

The blonde took a pleased glance at her own arms
and legs. "I tanned great today. Not a trace of burn.
Good genes, I suppose."

Which I guess means my genes are inferior. Nora
couldn't believe the photographer hadn't burned while
wearing only SPF 2. Must be my karma.

Annabelle beamed to herself. "I'll have the best tan
when I get back to the Big Apple!"

Bully for you, you pompous bitch, Nora thought very
calmly. She opened the waterproof first aid kit, extracting some antiseptic and a Band-Aid.

"Step on a thorn?"

"No. Some key or pendant or something." Nora put
the stringed object on the table. "Somebody dropped it
on the trail, and I stepped on it coming back from the
beach."

Annabelle felt the ridges on the end. "Oh, this isn't a
key and it certainly isn't a pendant. I'm pretty sure it's a
jeweler's file. I used to date a jeweler, and he always
had something like this around his neck, along with an
eyepiece."

"A jeweler's file?" Trent asked, returning. He sat.
down with a bottle of water.

"Nora stepped on it." Annabelle passed it to him.

"Hmm." Trent turned it around in his fingers. "And
you say you stepped on it, Professor?"

"Yes." Nora applied the Band-Aid to her foot, knowing it would probably fall off within an hour. "On the
trail back from the beach. Do you have any idea what it
is? I was thinking it must be some kind of key someone
was wearing around their neck. Annabelle says it's a
file."

Trent raised a brow. "Looks more like an old calibration tool for army PCR radios. There's a slot on the side
you stick this in, to change channels." He gave it back
to her. You should get a tetanus shot when we get
back to the mainland."

Nora got one every year, for her job. A calibration
tool, she thought, looking at it. Another boring mystery
solved.

'I'll bet some grunt with the missile team dropped
that thing here twenty years ago," Trent said.

74,enty years ago? Nora wondered. The tool didn't
even look tarnished.

She put it away and forgot about it. In truth, though,
the object wasn't a calibration tool, nor was it a jeweler's file. Nora had been right in the first place. The object was-

My key! the corporal thought in the worst kind of
alarm. When he'd returned to the control center, he
reached to his belt where the key's lanyard had been attached but-

It was gone.

I must've tied the damn thing on wrong! he realized.

This was not good. Especially considering the classified nature of this assignment, the key was considered a
sensitive access device. The corporal sweated beneath
his protective mask. If one of those civilians gets hold of
that key, they could get into the command center! The
corporal's career would be over. He'd be busted, written up, fined, and probably thrown in the stockade. The
entire mission could be compromised ...

He stood a minute to compose himself, and think.
Maybe ... maybe no one will find out, he thought. I
won't tell anyone I lost it until the assignment's over. The sarge is coming out on rounds in a minute anyway; I won't even need my key ...

It was the only plan he could think of.

A minute later, the door did indeed open, and the
sergeant emerged. "Why didn't you come inside?"

"I was just taking a last look around before shift
change."

The sergeant didn't question the lie. "Well, come in
here. I want you to see something."

The corporal entered and followed the sergeant to
one of the old power rooms that they'd converted for
their own use. They used several of the rooms to monitor growth rates on some of the hosts.

The one named Howie, the corporal saw behind the
quarantine enclosure's protective screen. The kid's
body was so bloated that he'd busted out of his shirt
and shorts. He shuddered, pouring sweat.

"He's still alive, isn't he?"

The sergeant nodded, and pointed to the vital signs
meter. "Yep. Hope the poor bastard isn't feeling anything, but ..."

"But he probably is," the corporal said.

"Yeah."

The corporal didn't care.

"Looks like he's about to blow," said the major, coming in behind them.

The sergeant and the corporal both snapped to attention.

"Yes, sir," the sergeant said.

"At ease." The major peered through the glass, intent on the spectacle. "So far the transfections have
been close to perfect. And the infection rates from the
worms and ova alike are occurring in less than twentyfour hours." The major looked more pointedly at the
subject. "Is this a single-ovum infection?"

"No, sir," the sergeant answered. "A multiple gesta tion. He was infected by several ova and three or four
live worms."

"Are the recorders on?"

"Yes, sir."

"Should be any minute-"

As if on cue, Howie's body began to buck, his wet
skin slapping on the floor. His arms and legs seemed to
vibrate, and it looked like his eyes were going to jettison. Then-

His back arched upward; the convulsions trebled.
Soon the bloated body began to deflate as Howie's
mouth poured forth a slew of live, inch-long worms.
More worms-hundreds of them-began to evacuate
the colon ...

"Beautiful," the major whispered. His eyes glimmered on the scene.

The sergeant and the corporal traded glances. I'm
about to puke, the corporal thought, and this guy
thinks it's beautiful?

Moments later, Howie lay dead in a pool of shivering
pink worms. The worms were peppered with hundreds
more immature yellow ova.

The major grinned. "Gentlemen, that's what I call
positive reproductive success of a genetically hybridized species. I can't wait for the colonel to see this
replay." He pressed his hand to the glass, musing.
"Look at all of them, will you? All of that just from one
single human host ..."

The sergeant winked at the corporal.

"Decon the room," the major finally said. "I want all
the worms dead."

"Yes, sir. Should we clean the room for another
host?" the sergeant asked.

"Not necessary. With a success rate like this? We'll
be leaving very soon."

"What about the one in the next room, sir? The female from the first group."

"Oh yes, the in vitro. Leave her to hang awhile, we'll
take readings on her till the very last minute."

"Yes, sir."

"As you were," the major said and left the room.

"He's so happy, you'd think he just got laid," the corporal said when it was safe.

"That's an officer for you." The sergeant took a last
look through the glass. Now the worms were massing
over the host, to eat.

The sergeant pulled a lever and then the specimen
room filled with orange-hued gas, a combination
dehydrant-bacticide aerosol. "All in a day's work," he
said.

Whatever you say, Sarge, the corporal thought.

"Christ, I feel like I just got run down by a semi rig,"
Jonas groaned. He dragged himself to the deck, a hand
to his head. He squinted past the bow in disbelief.
"You're shitting me! It's almost dark."

"No, shit, Sherlock," Slydes remarked from the captain's chair. "We both slept the whole day away."

Jonas scratched his straggly head. "Ain't that the
damnedest thing ... You sick?"

Slydes made a face. The old cabin cruiser creaked as
it pitched slightly in the water. "I feel sicker than a shit-
eatin' dog. Don't know what it could be."

"Me neither." Jonas steadied himself on a stanchion
cable. His face was pale as cream. "I thought maybe the
dope was too strong ... but you didn't smoke none.
And I've never been seasick in my life. Shit, man."

"How's Ruth? Is she sick, too?"

Jonas mouthed Ruth's name, then jerked his gaze
around the deck. "Ain't she up here?"

"Hell no. I thought she been belowdecks with you
all day."

.We ... fuck! I can't remember! We smoked some
of my weed last night at that old shack and got pretty
fucked up. Then ..." Jonas worked what little brainpower he had. "I came back to the boat but she passed
out in the shack."

Slydes grimaced when he leaned up and looked at
his watch. "Well, go find her and bring her back 'cause
the tide's gonna start coming in soon."

Jonas looked to the darkening island and moaned.
"Aw, man, I don't want to go lookin' for her. I feel like
shit. Let's just say if she don't show up by high tide, we
leave her."

Slydes spat over the side, grimacing at a taste in his
mouth like when he was ten and his daddy made him
eat some dirty cat litter for talking back to him. "You
must've passed those college smarts out your ass the
last time you took a shit, Jonas. If we leave her here,
she'll get really pissed and turn our whole pot operation over to the cops once she finds her way back to the
mainland. We can't leave her, you moron."

Jonas waved a bored hand. "No, but we can kill her.
Maybe I'm just getting old, brother, but chicks are just
too much hassle. She'll come back on her own before
long. Then we'll take off, and when we're out to deep
water,-we'll-just toss her over the side."

Slydes felt too lousy to do much calculating. "If we
kill her, who's gonna clean the bathroom back at the
house?"

Jonas rubbed his face, nodding. "Good point."

"So get off your skinny, pot-smokin' butt and go
bring her back."

Jonas wearily climbed off the boat and staggered into
the woods.

Slydes knew they would undoubtedly kill Ruth one
of these days-probably on a gator troll: no evidencebut not just yet. Not till I tag her a few more times, he
resolved. As the sky darkened, the island's noises rose.
Slydes felt like throwing up again-the boat was rocking more now as the tide began to draw in-but he
knew there was nothing left to upchuck. Don't even
feel like drinkin' beer, he realized, and that meant he
was really sick.

What'd I come down with?

Then he thought of those things.

Those squishy yellow bugs he'd found on himself
last night. Slydes ground his teeth at the image. Had
one of them bitten him, and passed him some germs?

Well, shit, goddamn ...

A mild fever seemed to be seeping into him now; he
was just nodding back off in the captain's chair when
he heard ...

Sobbing?

That's what it sounded like-like a woman coughing
and crying at the same time. Slydes smirked.

Ruth's back, he knew.

Sure enough, just as the realization kindled, a sobbing and very distraught Ruth pulled herself up the
side ladder.

"Where the hell you been, girl?" Slydes asked with
feigned authority. You been out in the woods all last
night and all day?"

Her face looked drained, her hair a mess-that is,
more of a mess than it usually was. She collapsed to the
deck, then drew her knees up like a scared child. "It
was awful, it was awful!" she hacked.

Slydes had no concern whatsoever as to what had traumatized her. "You see Jonas? He just went out a
few minutes ago lookin' for your sorry ass."

"I was almost raped, you asshole! And I was almost
attacked by these big pink snakes!"

"Big pink elephants is more like it."

"Fuck you!" she belted out, tears streaming. "Didn't
you hear me! I was almost raped!"