Slither (36 page)

"That ain't no military code," Loren balked. "It's not
an encryption. It's fucking Microsoft Word from another planet."

Nora felt tiny looking at the screen and all of its ramifications. An alien language, she thought.

"And to top it all off, we've got these guys in gas
masks-who are obviously the crew to that thing we just saw levitate out of the fucking Gulf of Mexico, and
they've been running around this island the whole
time, instigating what can only be a field test of a genetically created parasite. And we just saw one of those
guys put a fucking bomb on a live RTG. What's that
tell you, Nora?"

"It tells me that their field test is over," she said with
surprising calm, "and now they're getting ready to leave.
They know enough about the modem human species to
know that if they blow up an RTG, the radiological dispersion will contaminate the island so effectively that
our own authorities won't be able to investigate the
perimeter closely enough to ever realize that an advanced race from another planet was here doing tests on
us in the first place."

"Exactly."

More silence. It was too much to contemplate, and
too much to believe even after all they'd seen with their
own eyes.

"There's got to be a way we can defuse that bomb,"
she finally said.

Loren laughed out loud, bug-eyed. "You're kidding
me, right? We don't even know what it'll do. Just because it's only the size of a hockey puck doesn't mean
much when you consider the technology base of the
people who put it there. Nora, it could a millionmegaton bomb."

"Yeah, but it probably isn't," she reasoned. "It's not
logical. What's logical is what we just said. They don't
want our authorities to know they were even here. So
they're going to rupture the RTG core with a small
nonnuclear device because they know the U.S. military
will simply quarantine the island and believe it was
some terrorist cell trying to make a point. I guarantee
you, our side will believe that a lot more readily that they'll believe an alien entity came here to do a genetic
field test, and then left without a trace."

"Whatever," Loren said in haste. "But there's nothing more we can do except leave right now before all
this shit happens and we get turned into dust."

Nora's mind raced. Her eyes were all over the room,
along with her thoughts. "Trent wanted to inspect the
dead body, but we already know what he found, so I
want you to go back to the campsite, and-"

Loren's look of incredulity couldn't have been more
glaring. "No, Nora, we go back to the campsite, get
Trent, then go to that girl's boat, and get off this powderkeg island."

"You go," she said. "It'll only take a few extra minutes. Get Trent and come back here. Then we'll all go
to the boat together."

"Bullshit!" Loren yelled.

"I want to look around here a few more minutes," she
insisted. "There might be some way to deactivate that
bomb. There might be some tool here or something."

"Some tool! You're crazy! Come on!"

Nora shoved him for the door. "Just go!" she yelled
back. "I'm still your boss, remember."

Loren honked laughter. "Big deal! What, you're going to drop my T.A. credits back at Worm School because I refused to help you defuse an alien bomb?"

"1 don't care!" she yelled. She was determined.
"Leave without me, if you want. I'll swim back."

"Yeah, Nora, the bull sharks will love that."

"Just get out! I've made up my mind!" She shoved
him hard for the door.

"All right, already. Annabelle was right. You've got
serious PMS."

"Blow me!"

"I'll go get Trent and come back," he agreed. if I get eaten by the alien worms or abducted by the spacemen,
then it'll be on your conscience."

Loren jogged away, shaking his head.

Now Nora could think. She knew her decision was unsafe and stupid, but there was just too much here for a
scientist to walk away from. She edged back out into the
hall, then quickly walked down to a far room. More of
the weird white light bathed her face when she entered.

She froze.

There was no smell, but there was also no mistake
that what she now faced was a rotting human corpse,
half eaten by a multitude of infant worms. The white
male victim lay bloated, as if the slew of dead worms
and ova around him had initially been inside his body
and then burst out. There must've been thousands of
worms and ova composing the morbid pile.

This guy was a test subject, she thought through a
wave of revulsion. They abducted him, infected him,
and put him in this room to record the results ... He
must've been dead for several days; she knew just by
looking that the corpse had entered the stage of decomposition known as karyolysis, where the molecular
lipids that form body fat begin to liquefy, and now the
corpse and dead worms alike all lay suspended in that
liquefaction: a congealed mass of organic rot. It was repulsive to look at but .. .

I should be gagging right now, she knew.

Why was there no death stench in the room?

Very slowly, Nora reached forward into the air, then-

What the hell is that?

Her finger came into contact with something, a barrier. She opened her hand against it, could feel it as
surely as she'd ever felt anything in her life. It felt like
her hand was pressing against a pane of glass.

But she couldn't see it. No streaks, no shine, no reflection of herself.

A quarantine barrier, she thought, mystified. When
she tapped it with her fingernail, the sound ticked exactly like glass. It's solid, and obviously nonpermeableThen she rapped it with her knuckles.

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

-and totally invisible.

She left the room, numb now from all of the impossibilities she'd witnessed. Of course, their technologies
would vastly surpass that of her own race. It's not so
impossible when you think about it ... The realization
summoned worse thoughts, though.

What other technologies might be waiting?

She was about to enter another room when she
heard ...

Rattling?

Loren had closed the door at the end of the hall
when he'd left, but now-

Shit!

The door was opening.

Nora ducked back into the first room just as a wedge
of sunlight widened on the floor. It must be that guy we
saw at the RTG! Nora's heart revved; her gaze tore
back and forth for a place to hide, but just when she realized there was nothing, the knob on the door began
to turn.

She ducked back into the uniform room during the
same second that the door opened.

She held her breath, watching through the crack .. .

The figure entered, a stark shadow in the black suit
and hood. No facial features could be detected beneath
the mask's tinted visor. He turned, his back now to Nora,
and he seemed to be inspecting the items on the shelf.

Nora glanced to one of the belts hanging on the wall
next to her; without thinking, she pulled out a strange
flanged tool. She couldn't imagine what purpose it
served but it did feel like metal ...

If 1 could only hit that bastard in the head .. .

But her chance was gone before she'd finished thinking the thought. If she jumped out now with the tool,
he'd scarcely even be surprised.

He'd taken something off the shelf, something Nora
had already seen. The small square box-

Another bomb, she realized. Just like the one he put
on the RTG.

He opened the lid and removed the hockey-puck-size
disk. Again, he retracted some sort of rod from the
disk's side, removed a small cap, and stood the disk upright on the desk. Either the rod had a base she couldn't
see, or it had some sort of glue that enabled the disk to
stand on end.

Next, the figure's gloved fingers produced a small
black cube. He merely touched the disk with the cube,
and-

Oh, shit, this is really bad ...

A circular line of green light-thin as threadinstantly circumscribed the edge of the disk.

And the line began to blink.

Nora didn't need to see a clock to know that he'd
just set the timer on the bomb.

At least it meant he and the rest of the crew intended
to leave soon. But HOW soon? she wondered. With no
clock hands or numbers, she had no way of knowing
how long the timer had been set for.

I screwed up huge, she realized. I 'should've left with
Loren. Shit-I should never have come here! We could
be on the boat by now, leaving this place. Instead, I'm
stuck in an alien coat closet, and I just watched one of
the aliens activate a bomb!

She caught a breath in her chest when the door
opened and two more men in black suits and masks
walked in.

It was clear-by the way they moved and looked at each other-they were communicating, yet Nora heard
no words spoken, alien or otherwise. It seemed that the
first figure was giving orders to the others, because a
moment later they were taking things off the shelves
and carrying-them-out.

They're taking their gear back to their ship.

But would they take it all? How potent was the
bomb? Would it destroy anything they left behind?

Too many questions that had no answers.

Then the scariest question:

This room ... The uniforms ...

Nora watched through the crack as the first figure
turned and made for the narrow door that led to the
room she was hiding in.

She wanted to scream but her fear sealed her throat
shut. Oh, please, God, get me out of here!

She could hear the doorknob being turned, could
hear the hinge keening, when by another stroke of luck
she found another narrow door in the corner. She was
through it just as the figure had walked into the room.

She remembered now, how the rooms all seemed to
be connected by the narrow inner doors, probably alternate fire routes for the old missile station.

Thank you, God, she thought.

But what room was this? One she'd been in previously?

Her next glance around told her no.

The image that glared back rooted Nora to the floor.
It was too vivid ... and impossible. It was ...

A woman.

She was naked, and she hung from the back wall as
if suspended in midair in a cruciform position. Strange
black bands girded her upper arms and wrists, yet
there were no cables attached to them.

What was holding her up?

It didn't matter. Nora's frozen stare ranged the wom an's features, most notable of which was a swollen
belly like that of a woman eight months pregnant. Her
head was arched backward as though she were staring
at the ceiling, a mane of long black hair hanging in line
with her spine. When Nora stepped closer and to the
side she discerned the next most shocking feature: The
woman's left eye was opened and appeared normal, but
the right eye was an empty socket. A black tube or wire
looped into that socket, having been threaded through
the optical canal to reach the brain. A second black
wire had been fed into her mouth and down her throat.

A young college girl, Nora managed to guess through
her horror. There were bikini lines, plus a generic vine
tattoo around one ankle. Piercings that had been removed left telltale holes above the navel and through
the nipples.

She simply hung there.

Nora detected respiration; then the left eye blinked.
Still alive ... Obviously another test subject they were
monitoring directly. The bands around her wrists and
upper arms were the only things she could be held aloft
by...

Some sort of gravity-reversing technology ...

How could Nora possibly get her down?

The answer lost all significance when Nora reached
forward and encountered the same invisible pane she'd
discovered in the other room. If felt identical to glass
but lacked any frame, any point of foundation. A containment barrier, she realized. A giant test tube.

Her cognizance snapped back.

The doorknob again.

Shit!

She ducked into the leg well of a desk against the
other wall.

They'll put ME in that thing if they catch me!

The black-garbed figure entered and looked up at the naked girl. He extracted something from his belt,
touched it, and-

Nora couldn't contemplate the next thing she saw.
Haven't I seen enough today!

Via some arcane command from the tool on his belt,
the entire transparent barrier she hung behind immediately changed tint. The room darkened while the screen
itself began to glow .. .

Like a big MRI machine, Nora guessed. But an
ALIEN one .. .

Now the image of the girl was being displayed like a
living X-ray. The ventricles of the heart expanded and
compressed, the aorta throbbed, internal organs expanded and contracted. But if that weren't enough, her
next revelation surely would be.

Another command from the implement threw a
square border of light right over the girl's belly. Then
the image within the square increased in magnification
times three.

The image alone nearly caused Nora to scream. But
how could she, with this otherworldly technician in the
same room?

The magnified image now displayed the girl's grievously expanded womb.

The womb contained a quivering, coiled-up worm. It
looked like a -roll of hose packed into her belly.

Just then Nora only knew one single thing in the
world: When that guy turns around, there's no way in
hell he won't see me sitting under here ...

It was either sit there and die, or ...

The figure remained examining the uterine image,
his back to Nora. Nora stood behind him. When she
raised the flanged tool high, the floating girl's head
moved forward, her left eye watching-.-. .

The black figure had only turned halfway when Nora
brought the tool down on the back of his skull.

He collapsed ... and Nora reached for the door to
the hall.

The split-second thought told her she had no choice
but to take the chance. Had the other two figures returned to their vessel?