Slither (34 page)

"Unfortunately, yes." Loren pointed down, a look of
disgust on his face. "And check that out."

Another possum lay dead at the base of a tree.
Bloated and quivering. Nora peered a little too closely
and noticed newly hatched pink worms-not a half
inch long-exiting the animal's ear and anus.

"And look there," Loren added. "But don't get too
close."

A rusted sign stood before them on metal posts. It
read U.S. ARMY MISSILE COMMAND-RESTRICTED AREA.

At first Nora thought the quarter-sized pocks were
just spots of corrosion, but then they began to move.

"Those are the biggest ova yet," Loren noted.

"I know. They must grow selectively, like the Polychaetes myerus. It's all in the genes. While some ova
hatch early, others hatch late, to evade predators or
hostile climate."

At least ten fat, yellow ova crawled along the sign's
metal face. With them this large, Nora could see that
the red spots on their outer skins were oval-shaped:
The spots seemed to move, too, as the outer skin very
slowly throbbed.

Nora felt cruxed. "These things are all over the
place. They're in the water and on land. They're infect ing everything ... So why haven't they infected us?"

"That's a good question." Loren stepped closer to the
sign, checking at his feet for ova that might be on the
ground. "They probably sense carbon dioxide, sweat,
and pheromones, like lots of worms and insects." Then
he exhaled toward several of them. Just as the ova had
done in their field lab, these immediately began to move
in Loren's direction. "And we've been out here for most
of a week, asleep in our tents, out in the woods sweating up a storm. That girl told me her entire party was
killed by these things, and most of them were infected
the first day they were here. How have we managed to
not attract these things for all this time?"

"Maybe luck," Nora said. "Plus, we've been spraying
ourselves constantly with insect repellent. We know
that direct contact with the repellent kills them." She
looked at her wrist. "Oh yeah, and we've got these
things." She held up her wrist, showing the repellentlaced plastic bracelet. When she moved the bracelet
closer to the ova, they began to back away.

"Well, that's good to know," Loren said. "At least it's
a little protection."

"Sure, but let's be practical. Tiny worms and ova are
one thing, but these little bracelets aren't going to stop
a large, fully mature worm. The one that attacked me in
the water wasn't the least bit affected by this bracelet."

"Yeah, and neither was the twenty-footer that got
Annabelle. She had a bracelet too."

"We better put more spray on now that we're thinking of it," Nora said and withdrew the narrow can from
her pocket. She aimed the can down at her legs and
pressed the button. Nothing came out.

"It's all gone!"

"Terrific," Loren said. "We better hope that Trent
has some more."

Nora tossed the empty can. "Come on, let's keep going anyway. just be careful."

They burgeoned forward through heavier brush, and
after just a few more yards ...

"See it?" Nora asked.

"Yeah ..."

The old blockhouse building looked jammed into the
woods, overrun with brush, Spanish moss, and vines
that crawled down from the trees above.

"The control center for the old missile site," Nora
said. "Just like Trent told us."

"Shit, that place looks like it hasn't been used for
twenty years," Loren observed of the squat, bunkerlike
structure.

"Maybe it's just supposed to look that way. So no one
bothers with it." Nora kept her eyes on the station,
imagining what might be inside. What did she suspect?
A secret barracks, a camouflaged field lab or research
outpost? I don't know WHAT I'm thinking ...

They both crept up slowly.

"No windows," Loren noticed.

"Of course not ... but there's the door."

A black, metal-framed door stared back at them,
with a similar warning: RESTRICTED. Loren noticed it at
once: "Look. The doorknob."

Nora saw what he meant. There actually wasn't a
doorknob anymore, just a rust-rimmed hole. Loren
hooked his finger in the hole and pulled, but the door
didn't budge. "Maybe it was welded shut when they
closed down the site."

"Then why do I see light inside?" Nora questioned
when she leaned over and peeked into the hole.

"You're kidding me ..." Something caught Loren's
eye. "But check this out," he said and pointed down to
a heavily cased air-conditioning unit. It sat midbuild- ing, bolted to a cement grounding. It was rusted
through, its grate corroded. They could see the fan
deeper down, caked with more corrosion.

"That thing hasn't turned in years," Nora said.

"So that means there can't be anyone inside. With no
windows open? It's 110 in there."

Fine. But why's there a light on? Nora went back to
the door. Head-level against the frame was a black plate
of some kind. "What's that? A military dead bolt?"

"Feels almost like plastic or polycarb," Loren said after he brushed his fingers against it. "The temperature's
cooler than the door metal. It's a tack weld or something. If it was a dead bolt, there'd be a keyhole."

Nora touched it too. "There is-at least I think so.
See that?"

Loren squinted.

There was no sign of a key cylinder, but there was indeed a tiny slit in the black plate, perhaps an eighth of
an inch long.

"You can barely see it," Loren said. "Must be some
high-tech security lock."

Nora was unconscious of the impulse; she was
reaching down into her pocket and before she even
knew what she was doing, she'd withdrawn that pen-
dantlike object she'd found in the woods: the strip of
metal on a neck cord.

"Interesting," Loren said.

Nora put the end of the pendant into the slit. Out of
reflex, she tried to turn it, as one would a key, but it began to bend.

"Don't turn it," Loren directed. "There's no cylinder
like a regular lock. Just push it in as far as it'll go."

Nora did so, and-

Tick.

The door popped open an inch.

Both of them stiffened.

"I guess this is what we wanted," Loren said with no
enthusiasm at all.

Nora was suddenly scared herself. This is a new lock
on a very old door. That key she'd found on the trail
the other day could only mean that military people
were using this island, in secret. Not even Trent knew
about it ...

"Cool air," she whispered to herself. Another question
mark. With no sound of an air conditioner running?

"Yeah, feels like seventy degrees in there," Loren
said. "You tell me."

"There must be fans on or something," Nora replied.
"But I'd say we've got bigger questions to answer."

"How's this for a question: Who's going to be the
first to go in?"

Nora peered ahead into the murk. "How about you?"

"Why? Because I'm the man?" Loren frowned into
the doorway. He didn't hear anything but he did see
some dim lights on. A clean-floored hallway led
straight down the middle of the building, with doors
on either side.

"This was my idea," Nora owned up.

"Yeah. Plus, you get paid more than me."

Nora almost laughed. She stepped inside, and Loren
followed.

"Shhh," she reminded him.

She took long, slow steps. The coolness inside
sucked around her, which felt good after being in such
dank, humid heat. When they'd first stepped in, the
building seemed dead silent, yet after a few steps Nora
heard something humming. Odd white lightbulbs that
were small and circular dotted the wall up near the
ceiling. They both stopped at the first door. There was
no dead bolt on it like the outside door. A sign read
PROCESSING UNrr, but it was peeling at the corners, obviously very old.

"Are we really going to do this?" Loren whispered.
"What if there's somebody on the other side?"

Nora didn't want to think about it. They'd come here
for information, and chickening out now seemed
worse than pointless. "We'll run," she said and turned
the knob.

Old hinges creaked as she pushed open the door.

"Wow," Loren said.

No one stood waiting for them, but they immediately
saw old desks and tables pushed together to form a platform for some very fancy-looking security monitors.

'These are the highest-tech LCD flat screens I've
ever seen," Nora said of the dozen one-foot-square panels. Each panel framed a different area of the island.

"We were right," Nora said. "All those little cameras
are operational."

"They're monitoring the entire island." Loren leaned
toward the glowing screens. "Look, there's the shower,
our campsite, and-shit!" He pointed to a frame. "I
was just there! That's where the girl killed herself, on
that boat."

Nora saw the canopied Boston Whaler anchored in a
small lagoon. "We never even knew that lagoon was
here."

"Here's another lagoon," Loren said and pointed.
"And another boat ..."

This panel showed another lagoon hemmed in by
trees and mangrove roots. Tied off to one of the roots
was a small, unoccupied skiff.

"Jesus, there really have been a lot of people on this
island," Nora guessed.

"Yeah, and they're probably all dead now, infected.
The girl who shot herself said they were being used for
a scientific test, and that these military people in the
gas masks were monitoring them."

"Which means they've been monitoring us too,"
Nora reminded him.

They both chewed on the thought for a while. The silence began to unnerve Nora.

"Why monitor the north beach and not the others?"
she said next, looking at the one frame that showed the
shore.

"Well, for one, that's where the bristleworm nest
"
was.

"Yeah, and it's also where the trench is, where these
guys parked their submersible." She'd almost forgotten
about that. "They came here in it, in secret, to set up.
But I'm sure there's a lot more than this," she said of
the room itself. Security equipment was suspicious.
But Nora needed more proof.

Proof of genetic experiments.

'Let's look in some more rooms."

"Or let's not," Loren posed. 'Ms is crazy coming
here in the first place. We're going to get caught. We already know the navy or army or some military agency
is engaged in a secret project. So let's just go."

'You go, then. Go back to the campsite and wait for
Lieutenant Trent. I'll only be another few minutes."

Loren scowled. "Shit. Come on, I'll go with you."

They left the room and went into the next. More
screens on more tables, and old shelves filled with
cases almost like tackle boxes.

"More of that code," Loren said when he looked at a
screen.

"It must be their research data after being encrypted."

The screen was filled the same dots and dashes
they'd seen on the cameras and the key.

The first line on the screen read:

"I wish I could take a picture of this," Nora said. "Or
print it out."

Loren looked around. "I don't see a printer hooked
up to any of this gear."

She pointed. "Look and see what's on those shelves.
I'll check this closet."

A rusted door narrower than the others stood in the
corner. I was wrong it's not a closet, she thought when
she opened it. It was another room, illumined by more
of the small round lightbulbs. Hanging along the wall
were several black rubberized suits with hoods, and
widely visored gas masks. From pegs on the opposite
wall dangled narrow black belts, and connected to the
belts were fabric pockets containing tools.

The tools, too, were black. Nora slipped one out.
What the hell is this? A ruler? The tool extended via a
slide mechanism, but for the life of her she didn't know
what it might be used for.

These narrow doors must connect all the rooms, she
gathered when she opened another door like the one
she'd used to enter here. She was looking into the first
room they'd searched, with all the surveillance monitors.

"Nora," Loren whispered. "I think I hit pay dirt."

She went back out. Loren had taken down one of the
cases and opened it. It reminded her of the bloodsample cases that doctors' offices sent to labs. When
the case had been opened, racks popped up on either
side. The racks contained what she could only guess
were-

"Specimen tubes," Loren said, holding one up.
"They're square instead of round, but it's obvious that's
what these are. Check it out."

Nora took the tube. Floating in a fluid that looked
like light mouthwash was a spotted ovum identical to
those they'd seen all over the island.

"Here's another one."

The next tube contained a half-inch-long worm.

"There's your proof," Loren said, "so let's go."

Nora looked at more tubes, which all contained either pristine examples of ova or worms. Are they alive?
she wondered. Preserved? Are they prototypes? Ultimately, it didn't matter.