Slither (40 page)

"It's an alien spacecraft," Nora put it bluntly. "And
those guys in the black suits and masks are its pilots.
We think they created a new species of parasite by genetic manipulation."

"What
the
fuck
for?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe to decimate the human
race. The worm grows hundreds of times faster than
any other parasite, and it can live on land and sea, and
anyone it infects becomes a concealed carrier. They're
not doing it just for shits and giggles."

Sunlight moved back across their faces as the
macabre object in the sky hovered past.

"Looks like it's going to the control center," Nora
figured. "To pick up its crew and their research. Then
they'll leave and you can bet your ass those bombs'll
go off."

Trent rubbed his face. "Holy shit, l don't know what
to do."

"Kill this clown so we can go!" Nora shouted.

"He's my brother!"

"He's infected, Lieutenant. And if you don't kill him,
he'll infect you."

Trent and Slydes stared at each other without blinking.

"You're one low-down slimy shit-house rat to even
think about killin' your own brother," Slydes said, "I
ain't infected, I peed 'em all out! And even if I didn't,
once I get back to the mainland, I can go to a doctor
and get an antidote or somethin'."

Nora laughed at the bombast. "It's an alien parasite,
you asshole! Penicillin won't cut it."

"She's right, Slydes," Trent groaned.

"Our daddy'd be ashamed if he saw you right now,
ho-1-din' a .gun on your own brother."

"Our daddy was a thieving cracker scumbag, Slydes," Trent intoned. "Just like you."

Slydes pointed a big finger. "Listen here, little
brother. The only person you're gonna be killin' is this
skinny smart-mouth bitch. Now quit pointing that gun
at me 'foreI shove it up your ass."

Trent didn't lower the gun.

"Kill him," Nora implored. "He's infected. The longer
you wait, the more he changes."

Trent's confusion made him cross-eyed. "Then how
come we're not infected? We've been on the island
longer than him."

"Mosquito repellent, suntan oil, these things on our
wrists, who knows?" Nora said.

"And where are all these damn worms? You're making it sound like an epidemic. How come I've only seen
a few of them?"

"These worms are obviously spawning," she answered. "And when worms spawn, particularly roundworms and similar species, they tend to nest."

"Where?" Trent demanded.

"Either out in shallower water where the temperature will be higher, or some place on the island's
surface-any place that's moist and warm. There have
got to be thousands of them on the island now, and the
bulk of them are probably nesting. That's why we're not seeing a lot of them. But you've seen the ovathey're all over the place. At least half of those ova contain infantile worms."

"I don't know what to do!" Trent yelled, face reddening.

Nora looked right at him. "You better do something
fast, because we probably only have a few more minutes to get out of here."

Trent just kept staring at Slydes, the gun still pointing.

"You always were the pussy of the family," Slydes
challenged. "You ain't got the balls to drop that gun
and go man to man with me."

"Shut up, Slydes."

"I kicked your pussy ass when you were a kid, and
I'll kick it now. Daddy always knew you were the weakest of the boys."

Trent smirked. "I'm the only one who made anything
for himself."

"Shit. You? The army? You ain't never had the balls
for nothin', and you know somethin'? You ain't got the
balls to pull that trigger."

Trent sighed. "I'm glad you said that, Slydes-"

Bam!

The round Trent squeezed off hit Slydes right in the
nose and flipped him over backward. By the time he
landed on his belly, he was dead. In only moments, ova
could be seen exiting his mouth.

"Now let's get out of here," Nora said.

But Trent stood still through the veil of gun smoke.
Now the pistol was trained on Nora.

"Oh, come on!" she yelled. "What? You're afraid I'm
going to tell your superiors that you were letting your
brothers grow pot out here? I don't care about it! I
won't say anything! Let's just go!"

"I can't take the chance," he feebly replied. "It's my
career."

"You're kidding me, right? Right now there's more
crucial things going on than your little pothouse! Pardon me, but didn't you see the fucking spaceship that
just flew over our heads?"

Trent was melting down from the pressure. He was
standing right in front of the head shack on the end,
which still had Slydes's key in the dead bolt. Just as he
raised the gun's sights to Nora's face---

Something thunked on the head shack door.

Something inside.

Trent's eyes widened on her. "What ... was that?"

"Who cares?" Nora shrieked, her face red as a
cherry. "Let's go!"

"I'll bet it's Jonas," Trent murmured. "Slydes admitted he didn't actually see him die ..."

Another thunk on the door. Trent reached out.

When he turned the knob, the bolt clicked, and-

"Holy fucking shit!"

-the door popped open as if hit by a battering ram.
Nora saw at once what had been exerting such pressure against the door.-. . and so did Trent:

Hundreds of pink, shining, twenty-foot worms.

The scorching air that gusted from the head shack
smacked Nora in the face with a smell like fresh manure. The worms existed as a shivering mass, covering
the head shack floor to a depth of several feet until
Trent had opened the door. It was a dam break, and
Trent found himself instantly standing in the mass that
poured out.

Shock and revulsion turned Trent's face white. When
he tried to scream, only the most meager gasp escaped
his throat. He all but uselessly emptied his magazine
into the creatures that quickly coiled up his legs.

Nora moved backward, half paralyzed by the sight
herself. She noted that she'd been wrong in her estima tion, as she saw now that some of the worms were
stout as firehoses, and much longer than twenty feet.
Several reared their eyeless heads above the mass as if
to gloat over their catch, while Tent failed very quickly
to escape. He was halfway to the knees in shivering
worms.

Bugged eyes sought Nora: "Help me!" he begged.

Not a chance, Nora thought.

It was all Trent could do to stay on his feet. Worms
coiled up his arms now, and his waist: Soon he was
cloaked in them. He tried to wade out of the mass
when one fatter worm spun round his neck and shot its
head down his throat. The worm's body began to throb
in waves as it began to empty its digestive enzymes into
Trent's stomach. Two more thinner worms struggled
down the back of Trent's shorts, seeking an alternate
orifice. Trent's eyes looked on the verge of ejecting
from their sockets.

More and more of the mass poured out, making a
shivering pink carpet before the head shack. Nora kept
stepping backward.

Eventually the largest worm of all emerged, raising
above the mass cobralike. It was close to a foot in
girth ... and God knew how long.

Though its head had no eyes, it seemed to look right
at Nora.

Nora ran.

If their vocalizing could be properly converted and
heard by a human, it wouldn't sound like "words" at
all, but something more like Morse code. They didn't
communicate via sonics, in other words, but by fluctuations in ambient pressure transceived by the theta waves in an autonomic cerebral ventricle. When they
were out of their own atmosphere, transponders in
their masks trafficked their speech back and forth,
through pulses of aneroid signals. They spoke in millibars and dynes, not-sounds-.--

But they had words, just like humans or any highly
evolved .life form. They even had their own equivalent
colloquialisms, profanities, and figures of speech.

"Where's the damn colonel?" the major asked.

The sergeant was wondering that himself as the
manometer in his mask relayed his superior's query.
"He said he'd meet us at the debark point, sir." He
checked the grid readout on his task strip. It read:
"And this is the debark point."

The major looked up. "I don't see the LRV. Maybe
the regauge system didn't fire."

He's really worrying, isn't he? the sergeant thought,
amused. "It's right there, sir."

The shadow roved over their faces. It took some
squinting but eventually the major saw it, and sighed in
relief. "That's incredible. The obfuscation systems work
so well in this atmosphere."

"It's the nitrogen, sir."

The line of the particle synchrotron element glowed
faintly above them, extending from one end of the
ship to the other. The ship was called a lenticular
reentry vehicle, which counterrotated gravity by manipulating nucleons and forcing them to divide and
permute their para-atomic particles within a controlled field. It was simple.

Not so simple was the dilemma of the colonel.

"Maybe he was killed," the major said.

"By the humans?"

"Why not? They killed the corporal."

.The corporal wasn't very smart. And our reflexivity
is twice as fast as the humans'."

"Do you think one of the specimens in the field got
him?"

"Not unless the methoxychlor dispersors in his utility dress malfunctioned. I wouldn't worry about it, sir.
The colonel probably wanted to double-check the control station one last time before debarkation."

The major didn't respond. It was clear he was concerned. One troop was already dead.

They remained in the small clearing as the LRV hung
silently above them. To the sergeant's side hovered a
Class I antigravity pallet, loaded with the specimen
samples and prototypes, plus all their data-storage
pins. Everything else had been left at the control station and would be destroyed by the blast.

The major was rubbing his gloved hands together.
Nervous. He checked his own task strip and shook his
head.

He doesn't know what to do, the sergeant realized.
They should send field officers on these missions, not
science administrators.

The major tried to maintain his acumen of authority,
but wasn't doing a good job. "Sergeant ... what exactly are the emergency operating instructions for a ...
situation like this?"

"We must be fully debarked and out of this planet's
stratosphere at least ten points before count-off, with
or without all personnel."

"When is count-off?"

"Fifteen points from now, sir."

The major stared off.

"Sir, if the colonel doesn't get back here in time, we
have to leave him. The data from the mission is far
more important than one officer."

"Right," the major said. He sighed again. "Open the
egression port, Sergeant. Let's man our stations and
prepare to debark."

The sergeant smiled behind his protective mask. It's
about time. "Yes, sir," he said and pressed the proper
sequence on his task strip. I've had just about enough
of this planet.

"Push! Push!" Loren yelled.

"What's it look like I'm doing! Playing fucking
polo?" Nora pushed for all her adrenaline was worth,
her hands pressed up against the aft of the Boston
Whaler. When she'd stumbled into Loren back on the
trails, she'd followed him to the lagoon he'd promised
was there ... and the boat.

"It's only midtide!" he fretted. "I don't think we can
get it over those rocks!"

"Don't think negative, damn it!" But Nora could easily see the large boulders pocking the shallow water.
It's this ... or swim, she knew.

The water rose up to Nora's chin as she pushed. The
side of the hull scraped some rocks. Water churned
around her body, the current at her knees almost
strong enough to push her off her feet.

"I don't think it's going to go, Nora!" Loren shrieked.

Nora could see up ahead: two outcroppings of rock
sticking out of the water. The grim fact whispered in
her ear ...

We're going to have to thread this boat between
those rocks. Otherwise, we'll have to swim andwouldn't you know it? It's hammerhead season ...

"Push! Hard!" Loren wailed.

The hull grated against the rocks. Just as their forward motion would stop, a high swell came in, lifted
the hull, and then the boat glided through.

"We did it!"

Loren was taller, but Nora had already submerged. Bubbles erupted from her mouth as her feet were no
longer touching bottom. Shit! she thought. I'm too low
to grab the rail .. .

Water splashed; Nora was jerked by one hand out of
the water. She flopped over on the deck, dripping.

"Can you believe that shit? We did it! We're clear!"

Nora leaned up and looked ahead. The current was
sucking the boat out of the lagoon now, and sending it
straight into the seemingly limitless Gulf of Mexico.

We made it, Nora thought, a tear in her eye.

"Looks like something's finally going our way,"
Loren said, flopping down on the deck. The current
was taking them fast. "In ten minutes we'll be a mile or
two out."

Safe from the bombs, she hoped.

The sun blazed overhead, welcome sea breezes drying their faces. Loren stood back up and grabbed the
wheel at the console. They didn't have power, but he
could rudder with the current to get them out faster.
He held the wheel with one hand but was looking back.

"What are you looking for?" Nora asked. She helped
herself to her feet by a gin-pole. "The ship?"

Loren squinted hard. "There it is. See it?"

Nora shielded her eyes to cut the glare. It looked like
a slightly darker piece of the skyline but, yes, after a
few moments she could make out its long cylindrical
configuration. It was hovering about thirty feet up,
near the beach at the far end of the island.

"Those guys," Loren said next, in a lower tone.