(I)
Ruth hadn't felt this awful… ever. She awoke in the woods, and after a minute of thinking through a catastrophic headache, she remembered: I fell asleep in the shed last night, didn't I?
Yes. She and Jonas had gotten high on some of his potent weed, and had made love in that little shed. He'd gone back to the boat but…
I stayed, she knew. I slept on the floor-I'm positive.
And if she'd slept on the floor…
How did she wind up in the woods?
When she leaned up, more shock hit her: she was still naked. She almost shrieked when she brushed some bugs off her thighs and stomach, then thought Fuck! and flicked a slimy tree frog out of her belly button. Dismay shot her head around; then she saw that she lay less than fifty feet from the shed. Sunlight struggled down through high branches. The door to the shed remained open.
My clothes must still be in there, she realized. She wiped sweat off her brow and smacked her lips. Yuck! Her mouth tasted dry and stale, and her stomach squirmed to remind her how hungry she was. Jonas's asskicking pot always leaves some ass-kicking munchies. She was probably dehydrated, too. In this heat? Even last night it didn't feel as though the temperature had dropped below eighty. And I slept in it. In the fuckin' woods?
She must've been so stoned, she'd tried to walk back to the boat, but then passed out. It was the only explanation. When she looked down more closely at herself, it almost seemed as if she'd been laid out deliberately: legs spread wide, arms out, flat on her back and nude. But when she tried to get up-
"Oww! Fuck!"
Her hands flew to her bare heels, which suddenly barked in pain when she'd dragged them across the ground.
Her heels were scuffed bloody, and her buttocks and bottoms of her thighs sparkled in pain, too.
What the fuck happened to me?
She helped herself up, blinking her confusion through the headache. Now her eyes scanned back toward the shed and she saw two lines coming from the doorway and ending-
Exactly where her heels had been.
"This is fucked up! I didn't pass out in the fuckin' woods! Somebody dragged me here! They dragged me out of the shed and left me!"
But who? And why?
Jonas? Slydes? Why would they do that? Or maybe one of those nature photographers, she thought, but that didn't make sense either.
Then she thought again of her position. Like she'd been deliberately laid out spread legged-in wait of something.
Like bait, came the next, odder thought. Somebody left me here on purpose…
The rustling chopped off her remaining thoughts. Just a few feet away, she noticed leaves moving on the ground. I don't need this fuckin' shit!
She ran back to the shed and slammed the rickety door.
"Fuck!" she exclaimed yet again.
Ruth's less than complex mind crapped out on further contemplations. Dread and terror left her winded. We just need to get the fuck off this fuck-hole shit-bird island, was about the most sophisticated assessment she could make of her situation.
And whatever had been outside rustling beneath the leaves…
Ruth didn't think about it.
The heat inside the shed wrung more sweat from her pores, which plipped like rain on the dry wood floor, leaving dots. Fuck! You could cook pizzas in here! Her marijuana hangover hindered her as she pulled her shorts and top back on. It was so hot she paused a moment and leaned against the wall.
And noticed that the spots her sweat had made on the floor-
Ruth stared.
– were moving.
She steadied herself, squinting.
Her vision shifted further: dehydration, fatigue, mental trauma, and now the oppressive heat all conglomerating. Was she seeing double?
More… spots seemed to be converging on the spots that her sweat had left. The more she stared, the more clear it became.
The spots were moving.
Fuckin' Jonas! He must've laced that pot with PCP or opium!
Ruth needed to know that; she needed an explanation that her mind could fathom. So she walked shakily to the middle of the floor, put her hands on her knees, and leaned over. She opened her eyes as wide as she could, and focused.
Some of the spots weren't drops of sweat. They were beetles or something-snot yellow with tiny red dots.
They encroached on the sweat drops, as if to drink. Then some of them began to inch toward Ruth's feet.
"Fuck this shit, man!" she declared and stumbled out of the shed.
The outside air revived her. Then, on her first stride toward the exit trail-
Flump!
Ruth fell flat on her face.
No profanity now could allay her frustration, no variations of her favorite transitive verb that began with the letter F. Instead, she sobbed loudly, pounding her small fists into the dirt. Dust from the ground stuck to her perspiry skin, smudged her cheeks, arms, and legs, while bits of leaves and other detritus hung in her blond hair. She looked like the Wild Woman of the Forest… save for the notion that the Wild Woman of the Forest probably wouldn't have breast implants or a cotton-candy-pink T-shirt that read YUCK FOO!
Ruth, in essence, was having perhaps the worst day of her life just now. For all she knew Jonas and Slydes had raped her in the woods last night and left the island without her. She felt nauseated, hungover, andcome to think of it-her… private regions hurt. She was hallucinating yellow bugs, and to top it all off, she'd just tripped and fallen flat on her face.
Finally, she cut loose and bellowed, "Fuck-fuck-fuckfuck-fuck-fuck-Fuck!" at the top of her lungs.
The forest fell silent; the emotional release putting her a little more at ease. But an added confusion slapped her in the face when she looked to see what she'd tripped over…
A portable camping grill.
The grill lay tipped over, and several overcooked hamburgers lay in the dirt, being feasted on by ants.
A portable grill?
And at the corner of the shed sat a cooler quite different from the one Slydes kept on the boat. Ruth kneed her way over, opened it, and discovered several bottles of beer and wine coolers.
This stuff hasn't been here that long…
The last thing Ruth needed was another mystery, but the identity of whoever owned the cooler became immaterial in the next second, when something that could only have been a hand slammed down on the back of her head and grabbed her hair.
She shrieked like a smoke alarm. The unseen figure shoved her face in the dirt and sat on her back, pinning her, and whoever he was seemed agitated by the noise she was making because each time she shrieked, he smacked her head into the ground.
Ruth only screamed a few times.
Dizzy now, and her vision dim, she felt herself being dragged yet again away from the shed. She was perhaps half conscious, her brain screaming to rebel, but any genuine attempts to fight back were enfeebled by her daze.
She was dragged into the leaves and flipped over. The shots to the head kept her from focusing. Her shorts were ripped open and yanked off, and then her top was hauled up, her breasts pawed by a hot, humid hand that seemed intent on milking out all the saline.
Something remotely similar to a human voice splat tered down into her face, uttering, "Shut up and lie still. It won't hurt much," or something like that.
When more of Ruth's vision cleared, she noticed that he'd dragged her back to where she'd been last night, her legs spread wide open to the deeper woods.
"Look," the voice gargled over her like someone with a rotten larynx. "There's more."
Before she could think, More what? Ruth looked down between her legs and saw-
The leaves… moving…
She remembered the rustling earlier, and she remembered seeing something moving beneath the leaves.
And whatever it had been began to come forth.
What Ruth saw vigorously wriggling forward was so revolting she nearly passed out altogether. Shock riveted her so completely that she was past screaming anymore.
Churning out of the leaves were several glistening, bright pink snakes, about the diameter of garden hose. No eyes could be discerned on the things, just that glaring, wet pinkness. The head of each one appeared to be tapered, even skull-less, with a small hole where the mouth should be.
They were shivering toward her, as if even in their blindness they sensed the presence of her body.
And they just kept coming, their tails never appearing from the underbrush.
Had she been less traumatized, she might have wondered how long they were, because right now they'd shivered out at least fifteen feet…
"Don't move," the phlegmatic voice ordered. it won't take long. Just lie there and keep your legs spread."
This was not the situation where Ruth would be favorable to such a command. But her daze began to fade, and more of her strength returned. She began to flail in the dirt, and shove her heels at the grotesque pink things, but each time she did, her captor tightened the grip on her hair and thumped her head back to the ground.
Don't let the fucker knock you out! she managed to order herself. Because if she were unconscious, she knew damn well where those snakes were going.
Instead of kicking out this time, Ruth lunged up, grabbed her attacker's own hair, and pulled. He was strong, though; he didn't come down, she went up, and-
Her attacker gargled out a splattering scream.
Ruth bit a sizable chunk of upper cheek right out of his face.
The hand released her hair, and Ruth got up and ran, just as the first of the snakes would've entered her vagina.
The roar of objection splattered behind her-a hideous, barely human sound-as Ruth's feet shot her away into the trees. She spat the chunk of cheek out of her mouth like a chunk of hot chewing tobacco.
Get out, get out, get out!
She stopped only for a split second, and looked around to see who the man was who'd tried to feed her to the shivering pink things.
She screamed again-louder than she ever had-for her attacker was barely a man at all but more like an erect cadaver, with eyes like raw oysters and enslimed yellow skin flecked with bright red spots.
Holy fucking shit! she thought, running. It's a fucking zombie…
(II)
Robb White's former mind was barely functioning by now, taken over by mutagens expelled by the aggressive ovum that were now well insinuated throughout the island. These microscopic pieces of viral proteins common among many species of invertebrates-had intricately mutated his instincts and motor responses by infecting his central nervous system. In other words, most of what existed between Robb's ears was now mutated porridge.
He could still talk a little, and still think a little less, but everything else was essentially overridden. He'd lived much longer than the friends he'd brought here, but then he was good strong stock, a jock, a college athlete, a health and physical education major. How could he have ever imagined that all his healthmindedness would only lengthen his life as a human carrier for mutated worm ovum? The few synapses that still fired dragged back the dimmest etchings of memories. Their weekend party on this little island hadn't lasted long before the others began to disappear-
And reappear later, but not in the best of shape.
By the time he knew he had no choice but to get back to his skiff-and abandon his friends-it was too late. He'd already been duly infected by those little yellow beetles or ticks or whatever. He would retain enough sentience, though, to figure that the disgusting little things probably had some direct connection to the ten-foot-long pink worms that had started showing up too. Before his own infection, he watched one coil about the voluptuous body of his latest girlfriend and burrow its head down her throat.
Robb trudged on back toward the shed, not even consciously aware of his mission. Neither was he aware of the fact that his skin had mutated to an ill shade of yellow highlighted by brilliant red specks.
Every now and then, though, some cognizance did flare in his mush-brain and register appropriate thoughts, like: Ugh! I'm royally fucked up! and My fucking father's gonna kill me if I don't get the skiff back in time! and Pretty decent set of tits on that trampy blonde. And as for that trampy blonde, he'd promptly dragged her out of the shed to leave her closer to one of the nests. He hadn't been consciously aware of this; he'd simply done it because an instinct told him to.
But when he'd returned, she'd been trying to escape. Hence, his altercation, and, yes, after roughing her up and popping her in the head a few times, those acts of violence did seem to trigger some long-lost sexual reaction. But that was all for nothing now.
Robb's penis had rotted off his body a few days ago.
His yellow hand felt at the gouge she'd bitten out of his cheek. Something like pain registered… along with something like defeat.
A woman had beaten him. Robb, an all-star athlete and muscle rack, didn't care to be beaten by a woman at anything.
He stood shakily between two palm trees, staring at the woman's escape route with gray, runny eyes. Then he looked down at the tiny pair of cutoff shorts he'd pulled off her. Shhhhhhhit! his infected brain thought.
"Gonna find the bitch and really fuck her up," his phlegmatic voice rattled aloud. "I'll stuff the worms up her snatch myself if I have to."
(III)
The brisk snorkeling session livened her up. I feel human again! I feel like a real, live polychaetologist in the field!
Nora had wound up snorkeling for hours, actually, marveling at the scenery beneath the tepid, crystalclear water. Flippers pumping, she glided through schools of pinfish, blue tang, and damsels. Fire sponge and fernlike sea rods branched up from clumps of orange and yellow coral. The languid water caressed her, cool and warm simultaneously, and the sunlight seemed to float above her like lightning-white lava. Sea horses frolicked among stalks of phallic club coral, and when Nora diverted her direction, a lustrous green and blue parrotfish turned briefly to show her teeth like a handful of nails, then returned to eating algae off a rock. The fish was the size of a bed pillow.
Being right back in the face of nature rejuvenated her, reasserting her love for marine habitats. Nothing up there is as beautiful as this, she thought. I'd probably enjoy life a lot more if 1 were a friggin' fish…
She let these underwater spectacles enrapture her; she got lost in all the variations of beauty. A sensation nearly erotic titillated her when a funnel of minnows shifted directly into her; it gave her the impression that she'd just swum into a cloud made of glitter. When she checked her watch, she couldn't believe so much time had passed. I came out here to catch lobsters, she reminded herself.
Within fifteen minutes, her catch bag was full.
Back on the beach, she realized it would be getting dark soon. She trudged ashore with difficulty, dragging the bag, and hooked the cumbersome flippers to her belt. Out of the water, the lobster bag revealed its true weight: over ten pounds; the creatures flapped and rustled. A trail of water dripped behind her as she marched up the beach and entered the woods.
The bag dragged at her arm. She huffed down the trail, but as she neared the campsite, she thought she heard a hissing sound.
She stopped, squinted.
A gaze through some branches showed her the field shower. Nora's squint transformed to a frown. It was Annabelle in there, and the shower's ugly tarplike curtain was only halfway closed.
Exhibitionist floozy, Nora thought. I'll bet a million bucks she left the curtain open on purpose. Of course: She was hoping Trent or Loren might catch a glimpse of her body in the raw. Wants to keep them whupped up. Earlier, Trent had sprayed the shower down with some bug repellent, which would likely deter any more of the bizarre yellow ovum from venturing in.
Though she only glimpsed the other woman for a moment, Nora couldn't deny the pang of jealousy. Annabelle stood angled in the cramped stall, showing the curve of her buttocks and the edge of a breast. She turned slowly, almost as if aware of being watched, then stretched as the shower water pushed suds down her breasts and abdomen.
Nora silenced her thoughts and moved off. However, she hadn't walked far before she heard-
Snap!
She stood still, listening. Then came a quick scuffle: someone obviously dashing off through the woods.
Nora followed the sound, peered through trees. The sound disappeared as quickly as she'd detected it. At first she felt alarmed, but then realized her earlier assumption must be right. Annabelle WANTED one of the men to see her body. The escaping footfalls could only have been from Trent or Loren.
Probably Loren. That blonde tease has got him ALL twisted up. She held her gaze on the woods awhile longer, but saw no one running off. Who cares? she thought.
The lobsters stirred. Better quit fooling around and get these in the cooler. She stepped up her stride, got back on the trail, then winced and fell to a knee.
Damn it! That HURTS!
She'd stepped on something; her bare foot blared pain. What the hell is that?
She awkwardly crooked her leg around. Something metal on a string stuck out of the bottom of her foot. "Bastard!" Grimacing, she yanked it out as a small amount of blood dribbled from the tiny wound.
Her first notion was that it reminded her of a key on a pendant, as someone would wear around the neck. A straight, flat piece of metal on a looped cord, three inches long and an eighth of an inch wide. She wiped the blood off it, took a closer look. Jewelry? she considered. Some party kid could've dropped it. But why the string cord instead of a chain? When she rubbed her fingers against the tip, she felt ridges of some kind. Then she thought of keys again, something to unlock a security cable on a laptop.
Shit on it, she thought and stood back up. The damn thing had just been lying there in the trail, and she'd stepped on it. It didn't even look like it had been there long-…
When she'd hobbled back to the campsite-bowed to one side by the lobster bag-she found Annabelle in a new bikini whose fabric was shockingly flesh-tonedsitting at one of the old picnic tables. Her hair was up in a towel now, and she was passively painting her fingernails. Trent sat across from her, scribbling in his army pad.
Nora huffed forward, her pierced foot throbbing. "Hey, Annabelle, could you give me a hand with this bag of lobsters?"
The blonde looked up and sighed. She displayed her shiny red nails. "Sorry, my nails are wet."
"Here," Trent offered. He took the bag and appraised it. "Wow, this is great. There must be two dozen lobsters in there."
"About that, and all still alive and kicking. But we've got to keep them cool before dinner."
Annabelle looked at the impressive bag but said nothing. She sat with her legs demurely crossed, and blew on her nails. "I'll stick them in the cooler I've got hooked up to the generator," Trent said and walked off.
"Ouch, ouch, ouch," Nora muttered when she hobbled the rest of the way to the table and sat down.
"Still aching from your sunburn?" Annabelle asked.
"No." Nora resisted the impulse to yell.
The blonde took a pleased glance at her own arms and legs. "I tanned great today. Not a trace of burn. Good genes, I suppose."
Which I guess means my genes are inferior. Nora couldn't believe the photographer hadn't burned while wearing only SPF 2. Must be my karma.
Annabelle beamed to herself. "I'll have the best tan when I get back to the Big Apple!"
Bully for you, you pompous bitch, Nora thought very calmly. She opened the waterproof first aid kit, extracting some antiseptic and a Band-Aid.
"Step on a thorn?"
"No. Some key or pendant or something." Nora put the stringed object on the table. "Somebody dropped it on the trail, and I stepped on it coming back from the beach."
Annabelle felt the ridges on the end. "Oh, this isn't a key and it certainly isn't a pendant. I'm pretty sure it's a jeweler's file. I used to date a jeweler, and he always had something like this around his neck, along with an eyepiece."
"A jeweler's file?" Trent asked, returning. He sat. down with a bottle of water.
"Nora stepped on it." Annabelle passed it to him.
"Hmm." Trent turned it around in his fingers. "And you say you stepped on it, Professor?"
"Yes." Nora applied the Band-Aid to her foot, knowing it would probably fall off within an hour. "On the trail back from the beach. Do you have any idea what it is? I was thinking it must be some kind of key someone was wearing around their neck. Annabelle says it's a file."
Trent raised a brow. "Looks more like an old calibration tool for army PCR radios. There's a slot on the side you stick this in, to change channels." He gave it back to her. You should get a tetanus shot when we get back to the mainland."
Nora got one every year, for her job. A calibration tool, she thought, looking at it. Another boring mystery solved.
'I'll bet some grunt with the missile team dropped that thing here twenty years ago," Trent said.
74,enty years ago? Nora wondered. The tool didn't even look tarnished.
She put it away and forgot about it. In truth, though, the object wasn't a calibration tool, nor was it a jeweler's file. Nora had been right in the first place. The object was-