Slither (39 page)

Only a few of his closest friends knew his secret: that
he was indeed a virgin. He'd told Nora some contrary
jive because-well, it seemed the right thing to do, not
to mention that he had the hots for her, and not to
mention that she was his boss.

But ... this?

No one would believe him, and he didn't care.

Cringing, he was about to pull the gun out of his
waistband and push his trunks down when the situation's true gravity slapped him in the face:

Wait a minute! I've got an alien bomb I've got to get
rid of, two people to find, and a boat to get on ...

I don't have time to have sex!

"Annabelle ... we can't do this now. There's some
stuff you don't know ..."

The wanton desperation on her face ... changed.

Suddenly her face turned blank, like a sleepwalker's ...

She sat upright, still straddling his groin. When he
looked now, it seemed that her belly was swollen,
and...

Ooooooooooh no...

Her skin seemed to be tinged with the faintest offyellow streaks overlain by tiny red spots ...

"Get off me!" he shouted, shoving up at her.

Very softly, she said, "I'm going to sit on your face
and feed you my worms ..."

Her fists were suddenly in his hair, holding him
down. She kneed herself higher, trying to position her
groin over his mouth....

Loren almost fainted when he glimpsed several narrow wormheads peeking out of the folds of her sex.

He tried to lever her off his body, couldn't, but found
enough room to grab the pistol and swipe it upward.

When the gun's blue-steel top strap clacked the back
of her head, she fell over.

Loren's heart was a squirming lump. He crawled
away backward, stood up against a tree, and aimed-

Several pink worms-pencil-thin and a foot longsquirmed farther out of Annabelle's sex. Her strangely
pushed-out stomach seemed to be churning.

She was getting up-

Bam!

He squeezed a shot off into her belly.

Loren managed to not pass out when he witnessed
the results of the shot.

The bullet gave her a second navel. Upon impact, a
half dozen foot-long worms darted from her vagina,
along with a slew of crawling ova. More ova foamed
out of the bullet hole.

Then a ten-foot worm snaked out of her mouth, and
began to sidewind very quickly toward Loren.

Loren ran faster than he ever had, not at all sure that
it would be faster than the worm.

(VII)

Slydes dragged the skinny dark-haired woman by the
crotch of her one-piece swimsuit-a convenient handle. He wasn't quite sure why he didn't just kill her
right there, but he supposed it was curiosity more than
anything.

She might know something.

And Slydes definitely wanted to know what these
worms were all about, and those little yellow things,
and the shit that had happened to Jonas. The skinny
woman might have a clue.

It didn't take him long to get to the farthest head
shack, where Jonas grew the bulk of his pot. He dropped
the woman, made for the door, but stopped short.

Shit, I gotta piss like a racehorse, it occurred to him.

What didn't occur to him, however, was this: Why
the sudden need to urinate when he was so severely
dehydrated?

Slydes immodestly opened his pants, then began to
go ... or tried to. Jesus, he thought. His bladder felt
bloated, but only a trickle popped out. I ain't got all
day! He pushed, pushed harder, then-

"Ahhh, there she goes."

Suddenly Slydes was voiding his bladder like a floodgate just opened. A few seconds later, though, something struck him as ...

Not right.

Slydes looked down-and blanched.

He expected to see a golden arc of urine. But urine
wasn't what his bladder was voiding.

It was an arc of BB-sized ova.

Oh, my fuckin' shit!

He couldn't very well stop now; he had to get them
all out. Slydes pushed and pushed, thrusting his pelvis
ludicrously forward. The clotted stream just kept pouring, and another thing: The more he urinated, the more
discomfort he felt.

It was supposed to be the other way around, wasn't it?

He saw now that the ova shooting out of his urethra
had gradually gone from the size of BBs to the size of
peas. He was literally peeing a pile of ova.

He felt even sicker when he looked at his penis.

It was yellow. With red spots.

"Oh, my fuckin' shit," he groaned.

"Looks like you're infected in a big way," the skinny
woman said. She was up on one elbow, watching the
grotesque spectacle.

"I ain't infected!" he bellowed. "And who the hell
are you anyway? What do you know about this shit?"

"A lot," she said. "My name's Nora Craig, Professor
Nora Craig. I'm a marine biologist with the college.
You've been infected with what appears to be a genetically hybridized parasite that's part trichinosis worm,
part ribbon worm, and part pinworm."

"I ain't infected!" he repeated. "It's-it's-it's ... just
a few of 'em. Once I piss all of 'em out, I'll be okay."

"You're dreaming, Paul Bunyon. Once you piss all of
them out, you'll still have the worms. A lot of those little yellow things already hatched-in you."

Finally, Slydes was done. One last ovum-the size of
a gumball-squirmed out.

His face looked understandably sick. He pulled up
his shirt, looked with more nausea at his red-spotted
beer belly.

What am I gonna do now? he wondered.

When the pile of ova began to move toward Nora, she
withdrew a small can of something, and sprayed them.

"What's that?" Slydes demanded.

"Bug repellent. It kills the ova, and the younger
worms."

"Give it to me!"

Nora laughed. "It's not going to do you any good, pal.
You've got those things all through your body. By now
they're insinuated throughout your major organ systems.
And some of the ova have already released a virus that's
going into your brain. It'll change your behavior too, it'll
change your DNA, to make you a more adaptable host.
You're a breeding ground for the worms, buddy."

Slydes saw that the pile of yellow things had stopped
moving. She ain't lying. It killed 'em. "Gimme that can,
bitch! I'll drink it, and it'll kill any of 'em left."

She laughed even more boisterously, holding up the
can. "This is poison, asshole. It'll kill you in a few minutes. But you know? I'd rather die from poison than
die from those things." She threw him the can. "So go
ahead. Drink up."

Slydes looked at the can. He wasn't much of a
reader, but he could indeed read the words WARNING:
POISON! and the universal skull and crossbones under
it. Slydes swore and threw the can away. Three long
strides took him over to Nora. He grabbed her hair and
dragged her toward the head shack.

Nora shrieked. Slydes liked that. Sassy, smart-ass
bitch. If you think THAT hurts ... He'd cut on her
good, but first ...

He needed some water.

That's the ticket. I'll be all right. I'll get me a good
long drink of water, and that'll be that. This bitch is
just tryin' to scare me. I'm sure I've done peed all them
things out .. .

Wishful thinking for a desperate man ... but a desperate man who was also a sociopath. "You're gonna
be a of of fun, baby. I saw ya the other day-wanted to
do a job on ya right then, lemme tell ya."

"You're a busted redneck no-account loser," Nora
said, and yelped louder when he twisted her hair some
more. "You're a fucking walking worm farm and
you're gonna die."

"Keep talkin'. I'm a gator poacher. Did you know
that?"

She responded through grit teeth, "Sounds like the
perfect job for a big redneck moron like you."

Slydes whipped out his Buck knife. "But gator ain't
the only thing I know how to skin." Then his big
bearded face broadened in a grin. "I'll be nice'n slow,
too. Might even pop ya a few times while I'm doin' it."

But first, the water. He dug the key from his pocket,
and unlocked the dead bolt.

Even in her distress, Nora had to ask: "How do you
have a key to that?"

"Damn it!" another voice barked out.

Slydes and Nora turned in startlement.

Trent stood behind them, his face stamped with
anger. "Let her go, Slydes."

With a smirk, Slydes released Nora. "Lieutenant
Trent!" she almost squealed in delight. "Thank God
you're here!"

But 'Dent glared at Slydes. "I told you to never come
here without my permission! I told you I was escorting
a photo shoot! I specifically instructed you to stay away
until it was over!"

"Jonas got more buyers," Slydes said, "and ran out.
We needed to come out here to get more product. We'd
planned to be in and out real quick but ... things
didn't work out."

"You're not kidding they didn't work out!" Trent
yelled.

Nora looked mystified. "You know this guy?" she
asked Trent.

"Yeah, I know him all right. The dumb son of a bitch
is my brother, and so is Jonas. I gave them the key to
these two head shacks."

"What for?"

Trent frowned. "For hydroponic marijuana. Jonas,
my other brother, is a pot grower, and Slydes brings
him back and forth in his boat. I've been letting them
use these facilities for the past two years."

Nora looked deflated by the information. "I've read
all about it," she said. "Hydroponic pot is twice as potent, and has double the street value. The only problem
is the need for constant electric light and fresh waterbut that's not a problem out here, is it?"

"No," Trent said. "It's all unmonitored and it's all
free."

"And you get .a cut of the profits ..."

"Of course I do. It's just pot, for Christ's sake, it's not
like it's heroin," he tried to justify. "I didn't see any real
harm. The RTG'll be producing electricity for the next
fifty years. And since I'm the only one who checks the
island ..."

"What the army doesn't know won't hurt them,
huh?" Nora goaded.

"Something like that." Trent shook his head. "Shit."

"The army'll know now," Slydes spoke up, "'cause
this bitch'll tell 'em." He whipped out his Buck again.
"Lemme just kill her right now."

Trent drew his gun. "You're not killing anyone, Slydes."

"Can't believe you're pointing a gun at your own
brother!" Slydes growled.

"Speaking of brothers, where's Jonas?"

"He's dead," Slydes said.

Trent looked astonished. "Dead? Are you sure?"

"He was sure as shit dying when I left him. Them yellow things got him. They're, like, eggs. He was coughing them up, and turnin' yellow. He told me to split
before his mind went and he tried to infect me."

"Same thing'll happen to you," Nora interrupted.
"Soon."

"Bullshit! I'll cut your skinny throat!"

"Just shut up!" Trent yelled. "I've got to think!"

"There's nothing to think about," Nora said. "One
brother's dead and this one's dying of the same thing."

"Don't listen to the bitch! She's lyin', tryin' to turn
you against me!"

Nora's face lit up in a cynical grin. "Lieutenant, he
just passed a pound of ova out his bladder." She
quickly pointed to the mound of dead ova.

Trent stared at it, then at Slydes. "You fucked everything up, Slydes. You should never have come here. I
don't know what I'm going to do now."

"First thing you can do is let me turn this bitch into
cold cuts. Then we can get out of here."

"Where's that girl with the funny lips you always got
with you?"

"Dead, too," Slydes told him.

"No big loss there."

"Some big guy got her. He was all yellow, looked like
he was rotting. Even looked like he was changing underneath his skin."

"Mutagenesis," Nora cut in. "It's not an uncommon trait among certain nematodes. Their ova will attack a
potential host with a DNA-changing virus, to make the
host's living body more habitable for the worms." She
pointed to Slydes again. "That'll be happening to you
real soon. It's already happening."

Slydes stepped toward her with the big knife. "I'm
skinnin' her right now, so help me!"

"Back off, Slydes." Trent cocked his pistol. "I'm not
thinking too clearly right now, so just ... back ... off."

Slydes stepped back, grinding his teeth.

"Did you examine the body of the man that Loren
shot?" Nora asked.

Trent looked grim. "Yeah....."

"And it was no man from this planet, was it?"

"You know?"

"Loren and I got into the old control station. It was
full of all kinds of alien shit," she said. "They turned
the place into a field lab and were implanting worms
into humans. And that thing in the trench we thought
was a submersible ... it's hovering over the island
right now."

Just as Nora had said it, a dark spot drew over them,
like a cloud moving in front of the sun.

They all looked up.

What they saw appeared inexplicable: a long rectangular dark spot whose covering had turned sky-blue. "It
can camouflage itself," Nora said. But running underneath the object was a bright glowing white line. "And
that line of light can only be its propulsion system."

Trent and Slydes just stared, dumbfounded.

"It means they're getting ready to leave," Nora added.

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" Trent said.

"No, Lieutenant, that's bad, real bad. They've planted
some bombs on the island-"

"Bombs? You're shitting me."

"Wish I was. And God knows how powerful they are."

Trent was chewing his lip in confusion. "Where's
Loren?"

"He's probably waiting for us at the campsite, to take
us to the boat," she told him.

Slydes finally snapped out of his daze. He looked at
them both and said very slowly, "What the fuck is going on here?"

"Some really fucked-up shit, Slydes."

The bearded brother looked upward again. "And
that thing is-. .