Slither (20 page)

"Raped?"

"Yeah, fucker! I was almost raped by a yellow zombie!"

The good hard laugh which followed helped Slydes
feel better. "Uh-huh. Yellow zombies and pink snakes."

"Twenty-foot-long snakes!" she added hysterically.
She dragged herself up, her unknotted T-shirt swaying.
Slydes eyed the large unbra'd breasts tossing beneath ...

She seemed desperate, searching the deck. "Holy
fuck, is there anything to drink on this tub?"

Slydes pointed a serious finger. "Watch what you call
my boat, girl."

"I'm dying of thirst!" she bawled some more. "I was
burning up in those fucking woods today."

"Why didn't you just come back to the boat?"

Her tense face glared at him. "I was hiding from the
zombie!"

Slydes could only nod through another smile. "There's
still a few beers downstairs-"

"I don't want beer, I want water!"

"Well, there ain't no water, unless you wanna drink
the Gulf of Mexico."

She thumped belowdecks, then resurfaced, chugging
half a beer in one pull. Her face blanched, she looked
cross-eyed; then she threw up over the side. "Fuck!"

Slydes was not too sick to object. "Don't you be puking up perfectly good beer! I got a mind to bitch-slap
you. What's wrong with you?"

"Shit, I'm sick ..." Less than ladylike, she spat more bile off the deck with a retching sound worthy of a
longshoreman.

Sick, Slydes thought. He scratched his beard. "Did
you find any bugs on you?"

Ruth snapped a glare. "Bugs?"

"Yeah, piss-yellow little things, with red spots. Like
ticks or beetles, but soft."

"No!" she barked back. "I told you I got attacked by
worms! Same color as that one that landed on my arm
last night-only fuckin' huge!"

When she bent over the stanchion again, Slydes
couldn't help but notice she wore nothing but the
fluorescent-pink T-shirt. 'Your bare ass is showin', girl.
Where's your shorts?"

That big guy ripped them off!"

"What big guy?"

She bellowed at the top of her lungs, "The zombie!
The zombie that almost raped me! And I think he
wanted the snakes to rape me too! He laid me out
naked in the woods last night when I was passed out-"

Sooner or later the drugs burn your brain, Slydes
thought. That's why he stuck to beer. Jonas must've
tricked up some of his reefer, he deduced. "I'm tired of
looking at your brown-eye. Go put some pants on."

She huddled back down. "I don't have any more!
The zombie took them!" Then she cradled her stomach
and began to rock.

A thought more serious snapped into Slydes's mind.
A big guy. A big zombie. Slydes didn't believe in such
tripe, but he did believe in drug-induced hallucinations.

What if this "zombie" of hers was a real person?

One of them photographers ...

His tone grated with import. "Hey, girl. When you
were out running around in the woods, did anyone see
you?"

"The zombie saw me!" she continued to shriek.

"Yeah, yeah-the zombie-I know. But I mean anyone else, like maybe one of those photographers?"

She groaned, shaking her head back and forth. "Holy
fuckin' shit-I feel bad ..."

"Go belowdecks and get some sleep," Slydes told
her. "You're all fucked up. Sleep it off. When Jonas gets
back, we'll be going home."

"Oh, good, good," she continued to sob. "I just want
to go fuckin' home ..."

Breasts swaying beneath the T-shirt, she dragged
herself up again, and thunked downstairs.

Crazier than a shit-house rat, Slydes thought. If she
didn't have that dandy mouth with the lips all puffed
up from that plastic surgeon she'd been shacked up
with, Slydes knew he wouldn't be quite so quick about
keeping her around.

He wondered if he was feeling a little better himself,
then convinced himself he was. But something else
nicked at the back of his mind, now that he thought of
it. Just before Ruth had gone downstairs ...

The chick was in good shape, he'd give her that.
Those big implants sticking out like grapefruits and
nary a trace of fat on her body.

Slydes scratched his beard again, perplexed as the
sound of peepers rose from the woods.

Had it been his imagination, or was Ruth's belly
starting to look a little swollen?

Campfire light shifted on their faces. Nora had dragged
the pot off the coals to serve directly, and by now the
four of them sat back in the sand, stuffed.

"That's the best lobster I've ever had in my life,"
Lieutenant Trent proclaimed. Empty shells formed a
pile of bright red debris in front of him. "To hell with
the C rations."

"Yeah, Nora, they really were good," Loren said, occluding a burp with his fist.

Nora felt stuffed herself. "Freshness is everything."

The only one not to compliment the night's cuisine
was Annabelle. Still in her bikini, she sat in a lotus position finicking with a plump tail. "How come these
lobsters don't have claws?" she seemed to complain.

"These are spiny lobsters," Nora answered. "Ah, let's
see-Panulirus ..."

"Panulirus argus, " Loren finished.

"Warm-watered species don't have claws. In fact,
most of the world's commercially harvested lobsters
are clawless. The meat's all in the tail."

Loren slipped a tube of white meat from his last lobster. "And that's what I call a piece of tail."

"Hilarious," Nora said. She'd also thrown some
stone crabs and sunray clams into the pot, all of which
were readily devoured.

"You think we could have this again tomorrow night,
Professor?" Trent asked.

Annabelle, as might be expected, frowned.

Nora sighed at the weary title. "Sure, and please stop
calling me Professor, okay?"

"Why? You earned it. Must've been a lot of hard
work."

"Yeah," she admitted, "but it's just the word that
bothers me. Professor. Every time I hear it, I think of
that guy on Gilligan's Island. Just call me Nora."

Trent and Loren laughed.

"There's still one more." Nora indicated the pot. She
tonged out the last of the crustaceans. "I'm too full to
even look at it."

Annabelle grabbed the lobster. "I don't usually make a
pig of myself, but . . ." She smiled, sitting erect in an obvious pose that highlighted her roll-free stomach. "I live
on Atkins. No crrbs, keeps me brimming with energy."

Keeps you brimming with pretentiousness, Nora interpreted. Why don't you eat my shorts, too? They're
low-carb.

Loren and Trent were doing a bad job concealing
their gaze at the blonde's body.

Jesus. Nora was just about to settle back in the sand
when Annabelle screamed.

Trent and Loren went bug-eyed, and Nora lurched
up as if stung. What the hell's she screaming about?

Annabelle had just broken the lobster open at the
carapace, then flung it away in disgust. "Oh my God,
that's so gross!"

"What?" Loren exclaimed, surging toward the blonde.

"Worms!" Annabelle shrieked.

Worms? Nora moved around the fire as Loren picked
up the opened shell. She could see in the firelight-the
lobster meat seemed pink and squirming.

Instead of disgust, Loren's face registered excitement. "Aha! Looks like we've got a decapod-targeting
parasitic marine annelid."

Annabelle was shaking, she was so repelled. She
looked like she was about to be sick in the fire. "It's a
bunch of fucking worms in my lobster! Oh, Jesusthey look like dog-shit worms!"

There was an image Nora didn't need. Closer examination showed her a pack of the tiny worms churning
within the red carapace.

"Most of them are dying," Loren noted.

"The cooking process," Nora said. But something
bothered her. "But the worms closer to the center are
still kicking. They don't look right for a nonsegmented
parasite, do they?"

Loren agreed. "The hydroskeletons are all wrong.
And they don't look like Polychaetes, either, or anything gastropoda."

Annabelle's beautifully suntanned face looked sapped
of all color. When the silence settled, she looked dismayed at Loren and Nora as they continued to examine
the nest of tiny parasites.

"I could've eaten those disgusting things," the
blonde complained. "Are they poisonous?"

"No, no," Loren assured her.

'Then why are you looking at them like you just
found the Holy Grail?"

Good question, Nora realized. 'Because we've never seen a parasitic marine worm like these, which is disturbing because ..."

Loren finished the statement for her. "Because we're
America's leading authorities on the subject. We've
never even seen a marine worm body configuration like
this-not a chitin-penetrating species."

"Chitin-penetrating?" Trent queried.

"The ability to penetrate a chitinous exoskeleton--,an
insect shell, or a lobster shell, in this case." Nora was
transfixed. "Chitin penetrators that live in seawater are
always segmented, yet these don't appear to be."

Loren continued with the late-night worm lesson.
"Certain types of marine worm parasites attack crustaceans by disgorging a corrosive digestive enzyme onto
the host's shell. The enzyme burns a hole through which
the worm can either consume the innards of the host or
inject eggs, or-" He and Nora looked at each other
with raised brows.

"Or what?" Trent asked.

"Or inject fertilized ovum," Nora said. Like the ova
we found in the shower .. .

"How can you even see them?" Annabelle asked
next. "They're tiny."

"You're right," Loren said. He stood up with the lobster, and Nora got up right next to him.

"Which is why we're going to go look at these under
the microscope." Transfixed now, she and Loren stalked
away to their field lab.

The fire crackled. Trent smiled and slipped his arm
around Annabelle. "How do you like that? All of a sudden you and I have this cozy campfire to ourselves."

The grotesquery of the parasites she'd nearly eaten
vanished. She grabbed Trent's hand and urged him up.
"I'm not interested in romance, Lieutenant. While
those too nerds are looking at their worms, you and I
are going to find a place to fuck."

Trent followed Annabelle-and the rest of his good
fortune-down another trail.

The fire crackled some more, painting the trees and
surrounding brush with lines of light that squirmed, almost like worms.

"They're resilient, that's for sure," Loren said, gunning
up his microscope. "The cooking process didn't kill
them all, and this lobster looks pretty well cooked."

The fact didn't impress Nora much. "There are
worms that live in underwater thermal vents that survive at hundreds of degrees. I just want to find out
what these damn things are."

Neither of them said anything at first. Nora adjusted
the comparator microscope, while Loren sat at the
table beside her, changing stages on a smaller scope.
Each had placed several of the tiny pink worms under
their lenses. "I'm seeing something else immersed in
the fluidity between each worm."

"Me too," Nora admitted. "Could it be mesenteric
debris from the lobster?"

"Lobsters don't have mesentery. They have semisolid
blood-processing organs that are green. This carrier
fluid's clear. And there are specks in the fluid. You got
those on yours or am I seeing things?"

"You're not seeing things," Nora said. "The specks
are off-yellow."

"Just like those ova we saw in the shower stall."

It was difficult for Nora to frame words, but she
knew Loren was thinking along the same lines. "The
shower ova were the size of jelly beans and these are so
small they're practically microscopic. You and I both
know the size differentiation means that these specks
came from a completely different species."

"A worm ovum this small couldn't grow to the size
of a jelly bean. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but
didn't the shower ova have red spots on their sheaths?"

"Yes," Nora grimly replied. "And I'm sure you just did
the same thing I did, Loren, and upped your magnification."

"There are red spots on these too."

"Which means that these and the shower ovum did
come from the same species of worm-"

"A conclusion that's zoologically impossible," Loren
finished.

Nora sighed at the table. One thing at a time. We've
gotsome chitin-penetrating worms that are fluxed with
some accessory debris that looks like motile ova. "Let's
focus on the worms," she ordered.

The microscope's light stage showed Nora another
world, a circular world of brilliant colors, vibrant details, and stunning light. She had several of the worms
on her slide; each one, if extended, might stretch a
quarter of the perimeter's border.

The worms shimmered, squirming with vigor. Their
fresh pink bodies glistened like squiggles of some
bizarre molten metal.

"No segmentation," Loren said.

"And no striations on the skin, either. No plating, so
we know it can't be a gastropod or anything from the
molluska line. It almost looks like a shipworm-"

"But shipworms are really clams in tubular casings,
and this ... ain't that," Loren added to her observations.

Nora sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes.
"Conclusions? Hypotheses?"

"Either we're not as smart as we thought," Loren
said, "or we've stumbled on an undiscovered species of
parasite."

"Um-hmm, and if this were a channel in Antarctica,
that would be a reasonable deduction. But in the Gulf of Mexico, North America's nucleus of warm-water
marine biology?"

"The chances of this particular research community
missing this is impossible."

Finally they'd both given voice to the gravity of the
dilemma. "I wish these worms were a little bigger. Then
we could dissect one even with these small scopes,"
Nora said.

"This will have to do." Loren cast his boss an odd
look. "Both of us should be really jazzed about this.
How come we're not?"