Slither (23 page)

"I was going for a nature walk," Nora said, and she
didn't feel the need to apologize.

"Great. Now you'll have to be debriefed when we
leave-big-pain in the ass."

"Debriefed?"

"The location of the RTG is classified. You'll have to
be interviewed in Jacksonville by the Army Security
Agency and sign a National Secrets Act nondisclosure
form."

Nora felt outraged. "'That's ridiculous!"

"Hey, you're the one who had to go on a nature walk."

My God, she thought, frowning. "So that thing was
installed for the missile site?"

"Right. It provided all the needed electricity for the
control station and the launch circuitry."

"How come it wasn't removed when the missiles
were dismantled?"

Trent smiled and shook his head. "The RTG itself is
only the size of a lunch box ... but it's seated in a
thousand-pound shielding box, and then they embedded the box in fifteen tons of steel-reinforced concrete."

"Too big to move."

"Yeah, but if no one knows it's there, it's not a security risk." He rubbed his eyes again, aggravated. "Now
someone does know where it is. You."

"Well, I'm certainly not going to tell anyone about it."

"Good, because if you do, you can get five years in
jail and a quarter-million-dollar fine. In this day and
age, can you imagine the uproar if the public found out
there was an RTG on an island two miles off the coast
of Florida? Every nut job and wannabe terrorist would
come out here trying to dig it up. You know, the psychological element. Theoretically, if you took the uranium out of that RTG core--someone could make a
dirty nuke. So mum's the word here. If Annabelle mentions in her bristleworm article that there's a friggin'
nuclear battery on Pritchard's Key, I turn into a buck
private real fast. My whole career will be in the toilet."

Now Nora got the gist. RTGs were safe alternate
power sources whose fuel was inaccessible, but in
today's climate of terrorism, dirty bombs, and overall
radiological paranoia, public knowledge of their
whereabouts provided a huge security breech.

"All right, now I get it," she said. "And of course I
won't tell anyone. So we can skip the debriefing part,
okay?"

"Not okay. I'd lose my job."

Nora grimaced. "You really are by the book, aren't
you?"

"Pretty much. That's the way it's got to be. Next time
you go on a nature walk-don't go. Most of this island's unexcavated. There's quicksand, sinkholes, all
kinds of trouble. Please. Stick to the safe areas. And I
couldn't repeat it enough: Don't tell Annabelle or
Loren about the RTG. And once you're back on the
mainland, don't tell anyone else. Ever. The military's really paranoid about this stuff. You'll have your phones
tapped, your mail swiped, all your data sucked out of
your computers, oh, and the IRS. And all because you
know about a little piece of radioactive material that's
smaller than a BB."

Nora looked bug-eyed at him. "Lieutenant, trust me,
I'll sew my mouth shut."

"Good, 'cause this is no joke."

Damn. The riot act, Nora thought. Can I help it I decided to go for a friggin' walk? There were better ways
to start a day.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Trent said next, the sour
topic finally closed. "Remember when you mentioned
you found something like a tiny camera in the woods?"

"Yeah, it was stuck into a tree, almost like a nail."

"I found one too, last night. I'll show it to you later.
It's in my tent somewhere."

.You said it might be an electric eye, right?"

"Yeah, and I still think that's what the things are."

Old electric eyes from an old missile installation, she
thought. What could be duller? But the RTG? That and
last night's surprise discovery: the tiny pink worms and
ova that seemed to grow at an extraordinary rate.
She'd love to get a look at one of the worms under a
lab-grade microscope. The ones we found in the lobster
were too small for these little field scopes.

At least it would give her something to do while
Annabelle and Loren continued to search for more
scarlet bristleworms.

She was just then reminded of something that had
slipped her mind. "Damn, I forgot. You left the lights
on in the last two head shacks."

He looked at her funny. "You mean the one you and
Loren are using?"

"No, the buildings on the other end. I saw light leaking out from the roofs the other night." She chuckled
to herself when she realized how little it mattered now.
"On the other hand, I guess the army's not worried
about wasting electricity. The power from the RTG is
unlimited and free."

"That's true, but there still shouldn't be any lights
on. In fact, no one could have turned them on. I only
have the key for the head shack you're using. The
other head shacks are locked up and I couldn't get in
them if I wanted to. The rest of the keys are back at my
post's property room. I better check it out anyway. I
can't see the army sending anyone else out here, not
without me knowing. I'm the only one who ever
checks this island."

"The only one that you know of,' Nora posed.

"Well, yeah, but it wouldn't make sense. As far as the
army's concerned, this is dead property."

Not quite, Nora elected not to say. Not with a nuclear battery buried in the ground.

In an instant, Trent's eyes lit up as he looked past
Nora. "There she is," he announced. "You're up early."

"So are you," Annabelle replied. Wrapped only in a
towel, she frowned at Nora. "What are you two doing
sitting there?"

Discussing the mini nuclear reactor that's hidden in
the woods, Nora thought. Why don't you go sit on it
for a few days?

"Nora was just telling me about scarlet bristleworms," Trent lied. "They're remarkable creatures."

"Um-hmm. Remarkable." Annabelle strode for the
field shower. "If you're that interested, you could snorkel
with Loren and me later, when Igo out to do the rest of
the shoot."

"I just might do that," Trent said.

Annabelle was clearly perturbed by Nora's presence
with Trent. Nora loved it. What a drama queen. "I'll be
on my way," she said and rose from the table.
- - -- -- - - - - - - - -

Annabelle pulled back the shower curtain, brazenly
hung up her towel so that both could see, then
stepped in.

Another deliberate move. That self-absorbed bitch
just can't stop showing everyone that her body's better
than mine. By now, Nora couldn't care in the least.

"Oh, shit!" Annabelle bellowed. "Not again!" And
then she leaped back out of the shower and flung the
towel back on. "What is wrong with this freak-show
gross-out island? I'm sick of it!"

What's she shrieking about now? Nora followed
Trent over and looked in the shower.

"Looks like a piece of pink yarn," Trent said.

"Last night I had those disgusting worms in my lobster," Annabelle railed, "and now there's a snake in the
shower."

That's no snake, Nora knew at once. The thing was a
foot and a half long, glistening, and pink as bubblegum. I can't be this lucky, she thought. She dropped
to one knee. The ground that served as the shower's
basin was wet from the water that had accumulated;
there was a half inch of muddy water topped by floating bits of leaves.

Nora leaned closer.

"Don't touch it!" Annabelle exclaimed. "It'll bite."

"It's just kind of floating there," Trent said. "Looks
dead to me."

"It is dead," Nora affirmed. She looked up at Trent.
"The insecticide you sprayed in here the other day saturated the ground." Then she looked at Annabelle, explaining, "And this isn't a snake. It's the same species
of worm that infected the lobster, just older and more
mature."

"Great, a worm. That's even more disgusting.'

But Nora wasn't disgusted at all; she was intrigued.
The bands of the coelum matched those they'd examined last night with the microscopes.

Again, her observations were verified: This was not a
species of annelid that she recognized.

Nora got her wish: a bigger specimen to examine.

"What's that stuff coming out of its mouth?" Trent
asked. From the tip of the worm's eyeless head floated
a plume of something nearly granulated and yellow.

"Ova," Nora said. "Motile ova. They're underdeveloped versions of those yellow things that were in here
two days ago."

.You mean the worm's eggs?" Annabelle asked.

"Carriers of the worm's eggs," Nora corrected. "Once
mature, they can move about independently. Some invertebrates don't lay eggs that hatch from a stationary
nest, they disperse the eggs. Moving hairs called cilia or
rings of muscle called parapods enable the ova to find
its own hatching place. In the case of a parasitic ovum,
the hatching place is another living thing, like a lobster,
for example."

"Or a human?" Trent asked.

"With this type of worm, I don't think so," Nora felt
confident in saying. "Not mammals of any kind. Once a
worm or an ovum like this entered the bloodstream of a
mammal, the macrophages in our immune system would
kill it immediately. I don't think we have to worry about
infections ourselves. The main thing I'm worrying about is getting in a thorough examination of this before it decomposes."

Nora looped the dead worm over her pen and lifted
it up. Now I have something to do today!

Slydes barely slipped back into the woods in time; he'd
just finished checking the head shacks where Jonas
grew his pot, when-Goddamn! Not her again!-the
skinny woman in the black one-piece turned the corner. Slydes ducked behind the trees. If he'd been a second slower, the woman would have seen him.

What the fuck is she doing in there?

She seemed intent on something, a half smile on her
face as she bopped up to the first door. She's spending
an awful lot of time in there ...

Slydes noticed that she was holding something. It
looked like a piece of pink string draped over her pen.

"Come on, worm," she absently remarked. "Let's see
what you're all about." And then she went into the
building.

Worm? Slydes thought. Is that what she said? So the
pink string was a worm, obviously a dead one. But now that Slydes thought about it, the worm was the same
color of the thing that had landed on Ruth two nights
ago, and the same color of the worm they'd stepped on
in Jonas's dope shack, but a lot longer.

And...

Ruth said something about snakes, too, didn't she?
Giant snakes that were ... pink .. .

Giant pink snakes? Or maybe giant pink worms .. .

He caught himself. Don't be an ass. There'd be all
kinds of worms on an island like this. Not to mention
that Ruth was fried crispy from drugs. The dumb-ass
girl had hallucinations all the time.

He couldn't ignore the coincidence, though. Ruth
harped about pink snakes, and now here was this
skinny chick with the frizzed-out hair walking into the
head shack with a pink worm ...

Longest fucking worm I've ever seen .. .

He felt too lousy to dwell on it, though. He had a
doozy of a fever now; his nose was running and
stuffed up, and the headache throbbed constantly. He
was out here trying to find Jonas so they could get out
of here, but there'd been no sign of him yet. Fuckin'
low-life pothead brother, fuckin' everything up. We
wouldn't be out here now if it weren't for him and his
damn souped-up dope. He slipped away from the old
missile buildings. If we'd never come to this damn island, I wouldn't be sick ...

But he knew he couldn't go anywhere until he'd
found his brother.

Slydes searched for another hour, branches swiping
at his face, vines threatening to trip him. Toward noon,
the humidity was soup-thick; Slydes poured sweat. Just
when he thought he'd keel over from the heat, he
found a narrow freshwater stream. He thunked to his
knees, then cupped cool water into his mouth and over
his face. That's the ticket!

Then he looked down into the water and saw some
inch-long worms crawling about.

The worms were pink.

If he'd had anything in his stomach, he would've
vomited. Instead, he trudged away, revolted.

This island's a pile of shit .. .

Slydes's heart almost burst when a hand grabbed his
wrist.

"Aw, brother, we are seriously fucked," the low, guttural voice told him. Slydes jerked away from the
clammy hand.

It was Jonas.

Jesus...

Jonas stood leaning against a tree, his skin yellow like
a bruised banana, but dotted with brilliant red spots.

"What-" Slydes gulped back some nausea. "What
happened to you?"

"Them things, you know? Them little yellow buggers. Some of them, when they bite you, they change
your insides. And some of 'em are just ... eggs."

"Eggs? What the hell are you talking about, Jonas?
You're talking crazy." Slyde's power of cognition was
on a rough track. "Where you been? You left the boat a
night and a half ago, and we haven't seen you since."

Jonas kept on the subject. "They're eggs for the
worms."

Worms, Slydes thought in the back of his head.
Worms...

"You've seen 'em."

Slydes's eyes widened in thought. The skinny chick,
with the pink worm ...

"One fell on Ruth the other night, and then we saw
that smaller one near my plants." Jonas's watery eyes
looked like wads of phlegm. "They're using us, Slydes.
We're the subjects for their experiment."

"You're not talkin' sense!" Slydes yelled hard. "Experiments? Subjects? Man, we gotta get off this island!
It's all fucked up, brother!"

"There were two parties of college kids who got here
before us." Jonas scratched at the red dots on his arms.
"They're all toast now-except for the big one. Usually
a host'll kick the bucket after a couple of days, a week,
maybe. But that big one's still walkin' around here. So
just remember that, Slydes. The big one."