(I)
There he is, Trent thought.
The clearing.
Then another thought: What if he's not dead?
The man whom Loren had shot lay utterly still, gloved hands outstretched, legs and booted feet sprawled. The visor of his gas mask was tinted; Trent couldn't see through it.
Probably the latest generation decon gear, he thought of the flat-black finish. He knelt and touched it-the material felt like sheer polyester. Trent tried to pull off a glove but then saw that it was fastened somehow, perhaps snaps on the inside.
He was about to pull off the mask but something dark caught his eye.
A dark gray patch over the left breast. In the U.S. Army, that's where a troop's name tag would be sewn.
But this tag bore no name, only this, in black marks against the gray:
That shit again…
Trent fished around in the man's pockets, eventually pulled out a plasticized card.
The card read:
He felt creeped out. How could that stuff be a code? he wondered.
Next, he tried to pull down the hood. He needed to get inside the suit, for the ID tags that would, by regulation, have to be around his neck.
Damn it!
The hood wouldn't detach from the mask. Was the entire suit integrated, a step-in?
Trent stood up, grabbed the lip under the mask's chin, then yanked upward.
The mask pulled off after several tugs.
Trent stared.
He doubted what his eyes were showing him at first. Was it a disease? Something from the worm?
The open-eyed face stared up at him.
Trent could see red arteries and blue veins webbed across the man's face. And he could see the skull beneath the flesh, because…
The flesh was transparent as glass.
Hands shaking-and his mentality breaking upTrent yanked open the jumpsuit's front, popping unseen snaps down the middle.
More clear, jellylike flesh, embedded with blood vessels, nerves, and the rib cage.
A lower glance to the abdomen showed more transparent flesh encasing obvious digestive organs.
Trent simply stood there looking down, a reasonable response. He tried to conceive the inconceivable, and eventually he acknowledged what lay before his eyes:
This guy's not in the navy. He's a fucking alien-
A final squint showed him what he'd been looking for all along. A small, rectangular plate on a cord around the figure's neck.
Trent leaned over and looked.
– :, the plate read.
His mind churned as he continued to stare. Then the next thing he knew, an impulse caused him to dash out of the clearing and hide.
Why?
He'd heard footsteps thrashing through the woods.
Trent prayed it was Nora and Loren… but he knew that would not be the case.
Two more figures in the same black gear entered the clearing and stopped at the corpse.
Trent held his breath, gun in sweaty hand.
The figures seemed to be communicating, yet no words could be heard. Radio gear inside their hoods? It didn't matter. They looked back and forth at each other, glancing alternately at the body of their comrade.
Then one of them produced something that looked like a pen. When he aimed it at the corpse, something issued from the "pen's" tip. Trent absurdly thought of Silly String, but this stuff was black.
The man sprayed the pen back and forth, eventually covering the corpse in a bizarre black web.
Then the two figures walked away.
Trent kept his eyes on the webbed corpse. He heard a definite hissing sound, then saw bluish, sooty smoke rising.
By the time a full minute had ticked by, the web had completely disintegrated the corpse, and itself.
Trent walked back out to look more closely.
The area where the corpse had lain was clear. It was as though the corpse had never been there at all.
(II)
Nora's and Loren's mouths hung open as they kept their eyes nailed to the monitor.
The hundred-foot-long submarine had fully surfaced now, and sat there in the frame, floating on the calm water. It shone black in the sun. Modest fins could be seen forward and aft of the perfectly cylindrical hull, yet the ends weren't rounded or pointed like typical subs. There was no conning tower. There were no windows.
And there was no propeller.
"I've never seen a submersible like that," Loren said. "No prop? Must be impeller-driven but… I don't see any intakes for the impellers."
"Loren, I don't see any anything on that. It looks like a giant black Pringles can sitting in the water."
The monitor frame continued to flash.
Then the vessel began to rise.
More slack-jawed silence as Nora and Loren tried to comprehend what their eyes were seeing on the screen.
The vessel was levitating ten feet above the water now, and a moment later it began to move forward, toward the island. As it did so it began to change color, the stark black giving over to the green blue of the water. Eventually it moved out of the confines of the frames.
Nora finally broke the silence. "You're thinking what I'm thinking, right?"
Loren's Adam's apple bobbed when he gulped. "Yeah. It's not a submarine or submersible-it's a spaceship. And it ain't one of NASA's."
"I don't believe in that kind of stuff."
"Neither do I, so what are we seeing?"
"Hallucination," Nora suggested. "Side effects of sunstroke, maybe. Maybe we have been infected by these worms, and one component of the infection is psychosis. There are many roundworms as well as ova of roundworms that can corrupt a host's DNA with a mutagenic virus. Maybe that virus is now in our brains and we don't even know it."
Loren smirked at her. "Do you believe that? That we've been having shared hallucinations because of a roundworm infection?"
Nora shook her head. She knew that she had no confidence in a single word that had just issued from her mouth.
"Aliens, then," she said.
"What else could it be?" Loren stalked around the room. "We know that the box full of worms in the other room and the ones that have overrun this island can only be the result of a gene-splicing and DNAmanipulating process that is beyond the technological capabilities of the modern scientific community." He reached up and took down one of the strange round lights on the wall. "How do you like that? A light that doesn't give off heat, doesn't have batteries, and isn't connected to a power source."
"Just like the cameras in the woods, too," Nora said.
"Sure. No power source, no electrical connections of any kind, not even an antenna, but-" He pointed to the bank of monitors. "They work better than any surveillance cameras we've ever seen." Loren was starting to get a little giddy with his acknowledgments. "Not to mention these monitors, which aren't connected to a power source either." He fiddled with the corner of one of the monitors… and eventually peeled it away from the others.
Nora brought a hand to her mouth in shock.
The monitor was nothing but a clear sheet-like a plastic cover sheet for a term paper, and just as thin. Loren held it up, flapped it around, then rolled it into a tight tube. When he unrolled it again, it still held the perfect image of the sea where the vessel had just lifted off.
"How do you like that?" Loren said cockily. "Boy, that's a really cool monitor, isn't it? I'm sure you could go to Circuit City right now and buy one just like it."
Next, he pointed to the screen rolling the strange markings:
"That ain't no military code," Loren balked. "It's not an encryption. It's fucking Microsoft Word from another planet."
Nora felt tiny looking at the screen and all of its ramifications. An alien language, she thought.
"And to top it all off, we've got these guys in gas masks-who are obviously the crew to that thing we just saw levitate out of the fucking Gulf of Mexico, and they've been running around this island the whole time, instigating what can only be a field test of a genetically created parasite. And we just saw one of those guys put a fucking bomb on a live RTG. What's that tell you, Nora?"
"It tells me that their field test is over," she said with surprising calm, "and now they're getting ready to leave. They know enough about the modem human species to know that if they blow up an RTG, the radiological dispersion will contaminate the island so effectively that our own authorities won't be able to investigate the perimeter closely enough to ever realize that an advanced race from another planet was here doing tests on us in the first place."
"Exactly."
More silence. It was too much to contemplate, and too much to believe even after all they'd seen with their own eyes.
"There's got to be a way we can defuse that bomb," she finally said.
Loren laughed out loud, bug-eyed. "You're kidding me, right? We don't even know what it'll do. Just because it's only the size of a hockey puck doesn't mean much when you consider the technology base of the people who put it there. Nora, it could a millionmegaton bomb."
"Yeah, but it probably isn't," she reasoned. "It's not logical. What's logical is what we just said. They don't want our authorities to know they were even here. So they're going to rupture the RTG core with a small nonnuclear device because they know the U.S. military will simply quarantine the island and believe it was some terrorist cell trying to make a point. I guarantee you, our side will believe that a lot more readily that they'll believe an alien entity came here to do a genetic field test, and then left without a trace."
"Whatever," Loren said in haste. "But there's nothing more we can do except leave right now before all this shit happens and we get turned into dust."
Nora's mind raced. Her eyes were all over the room, along with her thoughts. "Trent wanted to inspect the dead body, but we already know what he found, so I want you to go back to the campsite, and-"
Loren's look of incredulity couldn't have been more glaring. "No, Nora, we go back to the campsite, get Trent, then go to that girl's boat, and get off this powderkeg island."
"You go," she said. "It'll only take a few extra minutes. Get Trent and come back here. Then we'll all go to the boat together."
"Bullshit!" Loren yelled.
"I want to look around here a few more minutes," she insisted. "There might be some way to deactivate that bomb. There might be some tool here or something."
"Some tool! You're crazy! Come on!"
Nora shoved him for the door. "Just go!" she yelled back. "I'm still your boss, remember."
Loren honked laughter. "Big deal! What, you're going to drop my T.A. credits back at Worm School because I refused to help you defuse an alien bomb?"
"1 don't care!" she yelled. She was determined. "Leave without me, if you want. I'll swim back."
"Yeah, Nora, the bull sharks will love that."
"Just get out! I've made up my mind!" She shoved him hard for the door.
"All right, already. Annabelle was right. You've got serious PMS."
"Blow me!"
"I'll go get Trent and come back," he agreed. if I get eaten by the alien worms or abducted by the spacemen, then it'll be on your conscience."
Loren jogged away, shaking his head.
Now Nora could think. She knew her decision was unsafe and stupid, but there was just too much here for a scientist to walk away from. She edged back out into the hall, then quickly walked down to a far room. More of the weird white light bathed her face when she entered.
She froze.
There was no smell, but there was also no mistake that what she now faced was a rotting human corpse, half eaten by a multitude of infant worms. The white male victim lay bloated, as if the slew of dead worms and ova around him had initially been inside his body and then burst out. There must've been thousands of worms and ova composing the morbid pile.
This guy was a test subject, she thought through a wave of revulsion. They abducted him, infected him, and put him in this room to record the results… He must've been dead for several days; she knew just by looking that the corpse had entered the stage of decomposition known as karyolysis, where the molecular lipids that form body fat begin to liquefy, and now the corpse and dead worms alike all lay suspended in that liquefaction: a congealed mass of organic rot. It was repulsive to look at but…
I should be gagging right now, she knew.
Why was there no death stench in the room?
Very slowly, Nora reached forward into the air, then-
What the hell is that?
Her finger came into contact with something, a barrier. She opened her hand against it, could feel it as surely as she'd ever felt anything in her life. It felt like her hand was pressing against a pane of glass.
But she couldn't see it. No streaks, no shine, no reflection of herself.
A quarantine barrier, she thought, mystified. When she tapped it with her fingernail, the sound ticked exactly like glass. It's solid, and obviously nonpermeableThen she rapped it with her knuckles.
Clunk, clunk, clunk.
– and totally invisible.
She left the room, numb now from all of the impossibilities she'd witnessed. Of course, their technologies would vastly surpass that of her own race. It's not so impossible when you think about it… The realization summoned worse thoughts, though.
What other technologies might be waiting?
She was about to enter another room when she heard…
Rattling?
Loren had closed the door at the end of the hall when he'd left, but now-
Shit!
The door was opening.
Nora ducked back into the first room just as a wedge of sunlight widened on the floor. It must be that guy we saw at the RTG! Nora's heart revved; her gaze tore back and forth for a place to hide, but just when she realized there was nothing, the knob on the door began to turn.
She ducked back into the uniform room during the same second that the door opened.
She held her breath, watching through the crack…
The figure entered, a stark shadow in the black suit and hood. No facial features could be detected beneath the mask's tinted visor. He turned, his back now to Nora, and he seemed to be inspecting the items on the shelf.
Nora glanced to one of the belts hanging on the wall next to her; without thinking, she pulled out a strange flanged tool. She couldn't imagine what purpose it served but it did feel like metal…
If 1 could only hit that bastard in the head…
But her chance was gone before she'd finished thinking the thought. If she jumped out now with the tool, he'd scarcely even be surprised.
He'd taken something off the shelf, something Nora had already seen. The small square box-
Another bomb, she realized. Just like the one he put on the RTG.
He opened the lid and removed the hockey-puck-size disk. Again, he retracted some sort of rod from the disk's side, removed a small cap, and stood the disk upright on the desk. Either the rod had a base she couldn't see, or it had some sort of glue that enabled the disk to stand on end.
Next, the figure's gloved fingers produced a small black cube. He merely touched the disk with the cube, and-
Oh, shit, this is really bad…
A circular line of green light-thin as threadinstantly circumscribed the edge of the disk.
And the line began to blink.
Nora didn't need to see a clock to know that he'd just set the timer on the bomb.
At least it meant he and the rest of the crew intended to leave soon. But HOW soon? she wondered. With no clock hands or numbers, she had no way of knowing how long the timer had been set for.
I screwed up huge, she realized. I 'should've left with Loren. Shit-I should never have come here! We could be on the boat by now, leaving this place. Instead, I'm stuck in an alien coat closet, and I just watched one of the aliens activate a bomb!
She caught a breath in her chest when the door opened and two more men in black suits and masks walked in.
It was clear-by the way they moved and looked at each other-they were communicating, yet Nora heard no words spoken, alien or otherwise. It seemed that the first figure was giving orders to the others, because a moment later they were taking things off the shelves and carrying-them-out.
They're taking their gear back to their ship.
But would they take it all? How potent was the bomb? Would it destroy anything they left behind?
Too many questions that had no answers.
Then the scariest question:
This room… The uniforms…
Nora watched through the crack as the first figure turned and made for the narrow door that led to the room she was hiding in.
She wanted to scream but her fear sealed her throat shut. Oh, please, God, get me out of here!
She could hear the doorknob being turned, could hear the hinge keening, when by another stroke of luck she found another narrow door in the corner. She was through it just as the figure had walked into the room.
She remembered now, how the rooms all seemed to be connected by the narrow inner doors, probably alternate fire routes for the old missile station.
Thank you, God, she thought.
But what room was this? One she'd been in previously?
Her next glance around told her no.
The image that glared back rooted Nora to the floor. It was too vivid… and impossible. It was…
A woman.
She was naked, and she hung from the back wall as if suspended in midair in a cruciform position. Strange black bands girded her upper arms and wrists, yet there were no cables attached to them.
What was holding her up?
It didn't matter. Nora's frozen stare ranged the wom an's features, most notable of which was a swollen belly like that of a woman eight months pregnant. Her head was arched backward as though she were staring at the ceiling, a mane of long black hair hanging in line with her spine. When Nora stepped closer and to the side she discerned the next most shocking feature: The woman's left eye was opened and appeared normal, but the right eye was an empty socket. A black tube or wire looped into that socket, having been threaded through the optical canal to reach the brain. A second black wire had been fed into her mouth and down her throat.
A young college girl, Nora managed to guess through her horror. There were bikini lines, plus a generic vine tattoo around one ankle. Piercings that had been removed left telltale holes above the navel and through the nipples.
She simply hung there.
Nora detected respiration; then the left eye blinked. Still alive… Obviously another test subject they were monitoring directly. The bands around her wrists and upper arms were the only things she could be held aloft by…
Some sort of gravity-reversing technology…
How could Nora possibly get her down?
The answer lost all significance when Nora reached forward and encountered the same invisible pane she'd discovered in the other room. If felt identical to glass but lacked any frame, any point of foundation. A containment barrier, she realized. A giant test tube.
Her cognizance snapped back.
The doorknob again.
Shit!
She ducked into the leg well of a desk against the other wall.
They'll put ME in that thing if they catch me!
The black-garbed figure entered and looked up at the naked girl. He extracted something from his belt, touched it, and-
Nora couldn't contemplate the next thing she saw. Haven't I seen enough today!
Via some arcane command from the tool on his belt, the entire transparent barrier she hung behind immediately changed tint. The room darkened while the screen itself began to glow…
Like a big MRI machine, Nora guessed. But an ALIEN one…
Now the image of the girl was being displayed like a living X-ray. The ventricles of the heart expanded and compressed, the aorta throbbed, internal organs expanded and contracted. But if that weren't enough, her next revelation surely would be.
Another command from the implement threw a square border of light right over the girl's belly. Then the image within the square increased in magnification times three.
The image alone nearly caused Nora to scream. But how could she, with this otherworldly technician in the same room?
The magnified image now displayed the girl's grievously expanded womb.
The womb contained a quivering, coiled-up worm. It looked like a -roll of hose packed into her belly.
Just then Nora only knew one single thing in the world: When that guy turns around, there's no way in hell he won't see me sitting under here…
It was either sit there and die, or…
The figure remained examining the uterine image, his back to Nora. Nora stood behind him. When she raised the flanged tool high, the floating girl's head moved forward, her left eye watching-.-..
The black figure had only turned halfway when Nora brought the tool down on the back of his skull.
He collapsed… and Nora reached for the door to the hall.
The split-second thought told her she had no choice but to take the chance. Had the other two figures returned to their vessel?
Or were they standing right outside in the hall, no doubt with weapons beyond her imagination?
She flung the door open.
The hall stood empty.
Nora jogged for the exit door. It was closed but she whipped out the object she now knew was a key. Her fingers felt around the face of the bizarre dead bolt, found the tiny slot, then she put the key in and instinctively turned it-
Snap!
The end of the key-broke- off in the keyhole.
Nora shuddered. She hadn't pushed it in far enough, and she'd forgotten to not turn the key itself.
I just broke the key off in the fucking lock!
She banged her hands against the door.
Of course, it didn't budge.
Oh my God, I just locked myself in an alien lab, and one of the aliens is still here!
Even if she'd killed the one in the room with the girl, the other two would certainly be back for him, if they weren't already.
Nora knew the door wasn't opening unless she found a way to push the broken tip all the way into the keyhole.
But with what?
She felt imbecilic trying to blow on it. Then she banged it with her fist. Nothing happened. The one she'd knocked out would probably have a key, but that would mean searching this body…
And with her luck, that's when he'd wake up.
She didn't know if it were a prayer or just a figure of desperate speech when she pleaded: Holy shit, God, please help me find a way!
The idea snapped in her mind.
Her cross…
She broke the fragile chain off her neck, felt the body of the gold cross between her fingers. The post of the cross felt just about the same width as the key…
Nora-stuck-it in the slot, closed her eyes, and pushed.
The door clicked open.
Thank you, God, she thought and ran off into the woods.
(III)
Loren jogged the trail back toward the campsite. Lieutenant Trent better be there, he thought. And Nora better not be too far behind…
Nora.
Shit.
Suddenly, he was grimly aware of the pistol in his waistband. I should've left the gun with her…
The bulk of the desalinator and purification machines caught his eye, then slowed him to a stop. The RTG, he remembered. It was just a few yards away from all that. He turned and followed the power cable, where it ended at the concrete slab.
And there it is, he thought. At once came a sensation like ice water in his belly.
He was looking at the bomb…
The small black disk sat propped up on the rod, just as he'd seen on the surveillance screen back at the station. Is that thing really a bomb? he questioned. How do we really know?
Then his certainties returned the instant he recalled everything else they'd seen, particularly the hundred foot-long vessel levitating out of the sea and moving toward the island, changing color to match the terrain. Perfect camouflage.
A fucking spaceship. Shit.
Then a glance back down to the puck-sized disk. A border of light was flashing on it, as if counting off seconds. Like a timer, he realized.
Loren dropped to one knee, took a breath, then grabbed the disk with both hands. He pulled with all his might but the disk didn't move.
Christ! What did he do? Drill the damn rod into solid concrete? Loren had watched the entire process on the screen, and there'd been no sign of a drill or any other kind of impacting tool that would be able to drive the rod through the cement.
What if I…
He put the barrel of the pistol against the rod…
On second thought that's a really BAD idea.
Loren couldn't figure a way to remove the disk. It's not my problem, he tried to rationalize. It's beyond my control.
The easy way out.
Maybe I can pry it off, he considered, then sprinted into the woods. If he could find a branch sturdy enough to wedge between the slab and the disk…
"Holy Mother!" he yelled when the worm-in the space of a blink-shot out from under the thicket and began to coil about his legs.
Loren tried to kick but the worm's hoselike body encircled his thighs tight as a metal clamp. Loren collapsed.
His heart squirmed as more glistening pink coils raveled up his body. The worm had hooked his ankles with its tail end and was working upward, now past the waist. Its efforts were turning him into a mummy of pink coils. The musculature of its coelum made Loren feel like he was being swallowed by a pulsing mouth…
His left arm flailed free, but the right had been caught under the coils. How much sooner till it got to his neck?
Loren couldn't think. His adrenaline pumped uselessly through his body; the harder he tried to move, the more he couldn't.
Then the worm's head loomed.
Loren nearly lost consciousness at the sight: the eyeless pink cone. A tiny, meaty hole at the end suddenly expanded, revealing a pulsating throat. Stylets like transparent fishhooks emerged. Loren knew that the hooks would seek his mouth so that the worm could secure a grasp before it would start pumping its acidlike digestive enzymes down his esophagus, whereupon his innards would be liquefied and then sucked back into the worm's body, for nourishment. After the hearty meal the creature would fill Loren's emptied body cavity with ova, to incubate. -- – - – - – - -- – -
His right hand had managed to slither to the pistol in his waistband, but the coils were too tight to drag it out. Even in this revolted paralysis, his subconscious knew that there was nothing to lose in firing anyway-
Bam!
Did the worm actually squeal? Loren felt the gun kick beneath the mummifying coils, felt a bullet blow through the side of his swim trunks.
It also blew a hole in the worm, midbody.
The gun barrel burned against Loren's thigh, but he didn't feel it. He'd managed to squeeze off the shot just as the worm's head was lowering to his face. Worm blood and stored seawater flooded Loren's legs; then the coils began to loosen, shuddering in their own pain.
Gotcha, you fucker! he thought when he grabbed the head with his left hand, pressed it to the dirt. Only now was he able to drag his gun hand out.
He pressed the barrel to the worm's skull-less head, and-
Bam!
Chunks of pink meat speckled Loren's face. In the other direction, more seawater, white blood, and a teacolored ichor flew. The plume hit a tree and-
Shit!
Loren began to frantically wipe his face off, remembering that the worm's enzyme duct was in the head. He could see spatters on the tree smoking, sizzling, those same fluids burning through the bark. It was Loren's very good fortune that none had gotten on his face.
The worm limpened in death after a few reflexive spasms. Loren shrugged out of the coils.
He got up and looked closer at the tree. The enzymes became impotent after a minute, but not before eating a crater into the hard tropical wood.
As the sizzling from the acid died down, a thought began to sizzle in his head.
He grabbed the worm's neck, clamping hard with the ring of his thumb and forefinger, leaving eight inches of exploded head hanging off. Loren dragged the-dead-thing back toward the RTG.
Can't hurt to try…
It was like dragging a great length of hose. When he arrived at the slab, he carefully held the worm's ruptured head right against the black rod on which the disk had been mounted.
Loren squeezed a few feet of worm…
More fluids evacuated, mostly the tea-tinged slime.
The cement around the rod-
It's working.-..
– began to sizzle and smoke.
Loren jiggled the disk as the acids worked deeper. Moments later, he yanked it out of the cement slab, like dragging the stick out of a thawing Popsicle.
The enzymes liquefied the cement!
He'd gotten the bomb off the RTG but-
Holy shit…
Now Loren found himself in the most bizarre predicament of his life. I'm standing here in the middle of the woods, holding a bomb from another planet…
He looked at the blinking border of light around the disk.
With each blink-he noticed now-that border got infinitesimally smaller.
Loren shook his head.
Question of the day, he thought. How the HELL do you get rid of an alien bomb?
No answers were forthcoming. He at least knew that he had till the border ran out to think of something. – - – - – - – - -
With nothing else to do, he put the bomb in his pocket and headed back to the campsite to find Trent…
(IV)
Robb was strong, all right. His mottled yellow hands turned Ruth upside down, and hauled her shorts off. The terror merged with the stifling heat, and of course, the "zombie's" stench of rot and metamorphosis. The fetor in the room could be likened to fresh-ground beef, sperm, and a restaurant Dumpster in the sun. Ruth landed on her head when Robb shucked her out of the shorts, which dangled off one ankle. She saw proverbial stars as Robb's hands began to wring her implants like dishwashing sponges.
When she was able to see through gaps in some of the stars, her scream ground down to a disgusted gag. Robb had shed his own shorts previously, to reveal a groin that looked more like an open wound. There was no penis, for instance, just a rot-gnarled nub with a hole in it, and a bloated yellow scrotum. Were small things moving in the scrotum?
Ruth was too racked with horror to ponder the ques tion very deeply, but given the circumstances, a passerby might beg another question: With no penis, what did Robb intend to rape her with?
Muscles flexed beneath yellow, red-spotted skin. In Robb's infection and sequent decomposition, aspects of his college-athlete physique remained: pillars for thighs, bulging biceps, pectorals, and lats. Ordinarily, Ruth might even have been turned on by the flexing washboard abdominals.
But not when they were covered by red-spotted yellow monster skin.
All 110 pounds of Ruth put up a formidable fight, hands slapping at the mindless, wedgelike face, fingers poking at the eyes, which looked so watery they might somehow have aspirated their inner humors. The big chunk she'd bitten out of his cheek was now covered by something that looked more like a wart than a scab.
One big wet hand pinned her chest to the floor, while the other, now, wriggled for her groin. Ruth's legs moved like fifty miles an hour on a stationary bike; she was going nowhere, but her body was trying anyway.
Her senses disconnected. None of her brain bothered to curse Slydes-that big hairy redneck coward-for leaving her here. None of her brain wasted any synaptic energy on the useless regret that if she'd stayed in school, never done drugs, and never gotten involved with creeps like Jonas and Slydes, then maybe she wouldn't be pinned to the floor in this infernal toolshed by a sex-crazed zombie with no penis. Maybe, just maybe, if she'd kept going to church instead of opting out for strip joints and coke at age eighteen, and pennyante tricks in between sugar daddies…
It seemed likely that she would never have had occasion to meet her noxious death on an island full of giant pink worms.
Ruth didn't bother thinking about any of that.
Instead, she thought this: The fuckin' barbecue fork!
She'd brought it in from outside, hadn't she? More senses shut down as stout fingers began to play inside her womanly orifice. Her auditory faculties didn't register Robb White's ruined efforts to speak:
"Bluckin' blig-tit butch! Gublunna pull bloor gluts out frew bloor plussy!"
Whatever.
Ruth's eye had already caught sight of the barbecue fork, lying not three feet beyond her reach. If I can get this big zombie fucker's hand off me just for ONE SECOND, she realized, I could get that fork!
Something unexpected happened then, almost in synchronicity with the thought. The yellow lids on Robb's glop-for-eyes shot open. His body stiffened as if seized by a sudden pain, and his gestures of molestation… stopped.
He pulled away. When he pulled his hand out from Ruth's spread legs, it didn't all come out.
The yellow, red-spotted skin peeled off like a rubber glove.
Robb held up the hand in mute, zombie astonishment. His hand was now a raving, shining pink.
He stood up in haste, shaking through a confusion. Then he began to take his skin off like someone taking off clothes.
The "shirt" of yellow skin crinkled wetly as it was removed from Robb's back. The sleeves turned inside out; then the entire mess was tossed away. What existed beneath was more of the same brand-new, clean, raving pink.
The same color as the worms.
The new pink arms, in fact, looked more like fat, sturdy worms themselves. No nipples or navel adorned the chest, just a remnant human musculature covered by fresh-pink- skin.
Even in this utter madness, Ruth was able to think: What the fuckin' FUCK is happening?
A transformation was happening, not that she could've been technically aware of that. After all, she still thought Robb was a zombie. He was actually now a late-cycle mutant. His robust health had allowed him to survive a full mutagenic conversion, his altered genes bidding this successful wedding of human DNA with genetically transfected worm DNA.
Next, Robb pulled off what was left of his scalp, revealing a glistening pink head with an aperture at the top. His head seemed to collapse, the skull cracking heartily, and then that aperture expanded and expelled the chunks of Robb's cranium. Without the support of bones now, the mass of pink flesh on Robb's shoulders distended and looked a lot like one of the eyeless conical heads of the worms.
Two species were merging into one before Ruth's eyes. But there was still the yellow skin from the waist down…
Robb stepped out of it, like stepping out of a pair of pants.
Gleaming pink legs stood V'd over Ruth. What covered Robb now, clearly, was worm skin. Even his toes looked more like the ends of worms than human toes.
But Ruth couldn't have cared less about the toes.
Her eyes shot to Robb's crotch.
What hung there was purely and simply a fat, teninch worm.
Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, Ruth thought.
Now Robb had something to rape her with, and worse still was the fact that the worm… was erecting.
That's when Ruth grabbed the barbecue fork and hooked it right into the pulsing column.
Blood that was white shot out on hot jets, painting Ruth's determined face. The sound that Robb made in objection bore no semblance to anything human now. More like stabbing a barbecue fork into a rhino's penis.
The shed shuddered around the concussive sound.
Ruth became a blond maniac dynamo. The fork blurred as she jammed it in and out of Robb's abdomen. Then more jabs in the neck, then a few more in the boneless sack that used to be his head.
Dust rose from the wood floor's seams when the fully mutated Robb White collapsed. Ruth jabbed the now-flaccid penis-thing one more time, then ran like a banshee out the door.
Her brain still registered very little. All she knew was that she was no longer in that Shed from Hell, and she was breathing fresh air, not monster-stink.
Her shorts still rung her foot. She pulled them on and sprinted off down the first trail she saw. She only knew that she was going to run straight to the beach and start swimming.
It was worth the chance, even with the sharks.
(V)
First Nora checked the camp. They're not here, she thought in the biggest disappointment. That meant she'd have to go looking, and there was precious little time for that. She found another can of repellent in Trent's tent, then sprayed herself down liberally. For all the good it'll do against those things, she told herself, remembering just how big the worms could get.
Frustration overwhelmed her now. She jogged down the trail. That was stupid! Her heart still hadn't let up. Maybe God really had saved her. But for what? she wondered.
Did she really deserve to be saved? How different would her life be if she survived this mess? Even amid the chaos and all the impossibilities, some recess of her mind seemed to dwell on that.
Try to do some good, she told herself.
She veered off back toward the RTG.
I'll find a way to disarm it…
But when she got there…
"How the hell?" she muttered.
It was gone.
She squinted down at the cement slab. The area where the black disk had been seemed blemished, even corroded somehow. Well, that's sure some shit…
Then it occurred to her, One of the guys in the masks must've moved it. They must know we're onto them…
So what now?
When she turned she almost shrieked.
A dead worm lay like limp rope across the clearing. End to end, it must've been thirty feet long.
She felt caught in a cross fire of confusion. Back to the campsite, was the only recourse she could think of. She took back off running…
An unseen impact slammed her chest and plowed all the air from her lungs. It happened too fast for her to think. Had she run into a branch?
Her back slammed the ground.
Consciousness began to fizzle, her peripheral vision going from gray to black.
Nora had been clotheslined, but not by a branch.
By a girthy arm.
A bearded face hovered over her.
Echoic words floated from slow-motion lips. "Hey, baby. My name's Slydes. What's yours?"
Then a knuckly fist to the forehead knocked her out cold.
(VI)
Loren stood dumbfounded at the campsite. Yeah, I need this headache! Trent was not to be found.
He foolishly checked all the tents, if only because he could think of nothing else to do. Right, he thought. Like the lieutenant's going to be taking a nap… He was about to start calling out, but thought better of it. Trent's out there somewhere… but so are those guys. Loren had no choice but to think of them as that: those guys. Those men in the masks and black hooded suits. He simply didn't have it in him to use the more specified label:
Alien research technicians.
But it was true and he knew that. And he knew they were still on the island. He'd seen a total of three of them on the surveillance screens.
What should I do? a voice unlike his own demanded. Perhaps the voice belonged to his more courageous alter ego. He walked anxious circles around the site, glancing incessantly at his watch.
Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen…
Nora said she'd be right behind me, he thought. She should be here by now, and so should Trent.
He stood still and listened. Just then the island utterly lacked any sound at all. Not even a parrot squawked. Not even a lizard scurried up a tree…
Where is everybody?
Loren, of course, already knew what he should do: Got to look for them! he thought. Find Nora, find Trent, and then we can get to the boat and leave! Unless…
Unless those guys in the masks and black suits-the ALIENS, he forced himself-had already killed Nora and Trent.
Or maybe something worse…
Maybe the worms or their ova had gotten them by now. He'd seen how fast Annabelle had been lost. It could just as easily have happened to them on their way back here, and come to think of it… It could happen to me, too.
Of course it could.
And he still had the bomb in his pocket. He removed the puck and saw with some unease that about twenty percent of the blinking border was gone. How much more time before this thing goes or. And what the FUCK am I going to do with it?
Loren didn't care for pressure or stress, and he wasn't much of a decision maker.
But providence was changing that today. He could either stay here, or he could bone up and go search for Nora and Trent.
Do it, the other voice demanded. Don't be a coward…
Loren took the gun out of his waistband. Three bullets left, he knew. Then he pocketed the disk and decided he'd cut through to the other side of the island and throw it as far out into the water as he could.
He jogged off down one of the trails. Trent said he was going to check the body, so it made sense to look there first, then ditch the bomb, then track back to the control station. He could think of no other tactic.
Immediately the trail seemed more dense, hemming him against the paranoia that pressed from either side, below, and above.
The worms could be anywhere, he knew.
He moved very slowly, examining his field of vision. Gun in lead, he felt foolish. He knew a bullet would kill a worm with a head shot, but he only had three bullets. There are a hell of a lot more than three worms on this island. Worse, he was squinting through each forward step, peeling his eyes for signs of ova that, by now, probably existed by the hundreds of thousands.
One further question haunted him: If I don't find Nora or Trent, what am I going to do?
He'd have to go to the boat and leave without them.
"Loren," a peep of a voice seemed to seep through trees.
"Nora!" he replied. He wasn't sure which direction.
'Oh God, I think I broke my leg…"
Not Nora's voice-
He stepped a few yards off the trail and saw her, lying sprawled in the thicket.
Annabelle.
Loren stared down, gun poised.
She lay naked, inclined on her elbows. When she tried to lean up farther, she groaned. But what Loren noticed first and foremost was this: She looks… normal.
She winced through obvious discomfort when she looked more closely at him. "What's wrong with you? Why are you pointing that gun at me?"
"I-" He didn't lower it. He saw no ova on her, and no-yellowed-skin like the girl in the boat.
No sign of infection.
But… that worm…
"Put that gun away and help me!"
"You-you must be infected," he finally choked out. "You have to be."
"Don't be an idiot, Loren!" she snapped. "Do I look infected?"
Loren eyed the robust breasts and healthy, tan belly. Actually, he considered, you don't. "But that wormTrent and I saw it. It was dozens of feet long, Annabelle, and it lifted you up into the trees."
"Tell me about it!" she griped in her normal voice. "That goddamned thing was trying to go down my throat, but once it got a whiff of this"-she held up her wrist, showing her plastic repellent bracelet-"it gagged and dropped me. I must've fallen twenty feet!"
Loren's brain ticked. He had no choice but to doubt what she claimed; it didn't jibe with the science. Those bracelets, as well as the bug repellent they'd been using, were only strong enough to discourage small insects with microscopic sensory pores that would easily be overloaded by the small traces of chlordane and diethylbased irritants. But a twenty- or thirty-foot worm? It would be like killing a wild boar with a mousetrap.
Then again… bug spray killed the ova and smaller worms, he remembered. And as a matter of fact, I haven't been infected, and neither has Nora or Trentand we all used bug repellent and the bracelets.
"Loren! Just when I was really starting to like you, and now you're really pissing me off! Would you stop being a chicken and come over here and help me!"
He knew what Nora would do; she'd help her. Plus, if anything, Annabelle looked one hundred percent as healthy as she had earlier. The trickle of remnant attraction assailed him as well, even under these conditions. Any real man would feel the same thing. Her raw beauty lay before him, and she was in pain: the ultimate damsel in distress…
Loren put the gun away and went to her. "You said you broke your leg?"
She ground her teeth. "I think so, when I fell out of the tree-my right leg. It hurts so much."
Loren placed his hands on the warm leg, felt for signs of fracture. "I think you lucked out," he said, trying very hard not to steal a glance at her breasts. "There's no swelling, and I don't feel any bone fragments under the skin. You probably jolted the cartilage in the knee and hip, though, and that's going to hurt fora while. Let me help you up, see if you can walk."
She groaned again, head arched back, as he got her to her feet.
"Can you put any weight on your leg?"
She clung to him with one arm, and gingerly stepped forward. "Yes-damn! It hurts, but I think I can walk."
"Good. Let's take it slow."
At least Loren had some direction now, but… Jesus, I've got to move fast. Got to get Annabelle to the boat, then find Nora and Trent and get THEM to the boat. And then get out of here… AFTER I get rid of this bomb in my pocket!
They limped along down the trail. This was going to take a while. The bomb ticking away in his pocket only reminded him further of how little time he had to get everything done. And…
How powerful IS this bomb? the worst dread kept forcing him to think. Loren didn't need that question distracting him, and a distraction he needed even less was Annabelle's warm, curvaceous body pressing right against him. One big breast kept rubbing his side, and every time he cast a tiny glance down…
Oh, man…
During one such glance, he could swear her nipples were erecting, which hardly made sense given the situation. Stop looking at her, you pervert! he yelled at himself.
He didn't see the kudzu vine crooked out from the base of a palm tree. His foot hooked it, and-
Flump!
They both fell.
"Shit! I'm sorry," Loren bumbled. "Are you all right?"
Annabelle lay atop him, her luscious, hot weight pressing him down. He expected that the fall had hurt her leg, but she made no protest. Her face opposed his, strands of blond hair falling to either side of his neck. It looked like she was about to say something, but then her eyes bloomed… and her lips lowered to his.
The shock stiffened every muscle in Loren's body. He felt agog at what was happening. Her tongue traced his lips, delved into his mouth, then slipped down to his ear where she whispered, "I've been hot for you since the day we got here…"
More shock on Loren's part, and more stiffening, especially about the groin. I can't believe it, came the thought through so much hot fog. I'm finally making out with her…
At last he relaxed and slipped his arms around the small of her back. Her bare legs spread wider, her groin grinding down. Her breathing issued as a series of wanton pants and gasps. She raised herself on her hands then, and hitched herself up.
To a guy like Loren, the mother lode had arrived.
The two perfect orbs of her breasts were now level with his face. Then she positioned herself more precisely, and a swollen nipple began to brush across his lips.
"Suck it," she whispered. "Hard. Real hard…"
The instant Loren obliged, Annabelle moaned.
The way her bare hips were grinding down, Loren wouldn't last long. Her warm body encompassed him: She was a cocoon of his most erotic dreams. She traded her nipples back and forth, "Harder." And then one hand slid down, caged his crotch through the meager swim trunks, and squeezed.
"Take these off and fuck me," came the next desperate whisper. "I can't stand it anymore. I've got to have you in me…"
Just hearing her say that almost spent him. This would be tough. Even if he got that far, how long would he last?
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-..
"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.
(VIII)
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.
(IX)
"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.
Nora could see them, too. Two of the men-or whatever they were-in the black suits and masks. They were both standing immediately below the almost invisible craft. Something bulky stood next to them-a cart full of boxes?
Then the cart levitated upward and disappeared into the ship.
"Jesus," Loren muttered. "Those guys really are aliens, aren't they?"
"What else could they be?" Then she thought, Oh my God, at what they saw next.
A hatch of some sort seemed to cant out of the bottom of the craft. One of the masked men had something in his gloved fist. When he raised his fist overhead… he, too, began to levitate up to the craft, as if he'd been hauled up on a winch.
But there was no winch.
Then the second crewman rose into the craft the same way.
"I've seen everything now," Loren said, eyes peeled.
As the boat coursed farther away, they stared another few minutes at the spectacle they were certain no one would believe: the otherworldly vehicle hovering in midair.
Then-
"This is it!" Loren said.
– the vehicle began to rise, very slowly at first, and then-
It seemed that in the course of two or three seconds, the craft launched straight into the air so quickly it didn't even blur in their eyes. It was gone in a blink.
There were no exhaust gasses, no shuttlelike roars of burning propellents, no expected blastoff.
The ship simply darted upward and was gone.
"At least we were right about one thing-they were getting ready to leave just about the same time we found out about them."
"Yeah, but you know what that means…"
Nora did indeed. "Now that they're gone, the bombs will go off. And we know there are at least two."
"TWO?"
"Yeah, after you left the station, one of them came back and activated one of the disks in the room with all the monitors. But-shit!" She'd forgotten to tell him. "I hit the guy in the head and knocked him out, and when I went looking for you, I passed the RTG. And guess what?"
"The bomb we saw the guy plant there was gone," Loren said smugly.
Nora's jaw dropped. "How did you know?"
"I'm the one who took it off the slab."
"How?"
Loren shrugged as though it were nothing. "I killed a thirty-foot worm and melted the connector with its digestive enzymes. The stuff turned the cement to butter, so all I had to do was pull the bomb out."
"Loren! That's fantastic! That bomb would've ruptured the RTG's core and blown radioactive fallout halfway across Florida!"
"Sure it would've. But I took care of it, no problem."
Nora gave him a giant hug. "Loren, you're the world's first polychaetologist hero!"
"It was nothing."
"So what did you do with the bomb?"
"I put it in my pocket, figured I'd try to find a safer place to ditch it."
Nora's eyes widened. "Loren. Tell me that bomb's not still in your pocket?"
Loren rolled his eyes. "Of course not. In fact-" He paused and snapped his gaze back toward the beach.
"Look! There's the third guy! His buddies left without him!"
Nora could see the frantic black-clad figure standing on the beach. He was looking to the sky.
"That must be the one I knocked out in the control station. When he didn't get back to the ship in time, the other two left."
Loren broke out into hysterical laughter. "Oh, shit! That guy's really screwed!"
"Loren, what are you talking about? There's a live alien on the island now! Who knows what kind of weapons and technology he has! Jesus Christ, if he gets to the mainland-"
Loren crossed his arms and shook his head. "Take my word for it. That asshole's not going anywhere."
"What do you mean!"
"After I got the bomb off the RTG slab, I stuck it in my pocket. Then I went to look for you. I went back to the control station, and that guy was lying on the floor, unconscious."
"So?" Nora shouted.
"Nora, I put the bomb in his pocket."
Nora stared. "You mean-"
"Then I ran back to the campsite."
Just as the words left Loren's lips, the detonation took place.
There was no sound, no cacophonic explosion as they might expect.
Instead, just the sensation of a sudden monumental shift in air pressure.
The entire island jolted, its trees swaying as if swept by a hurricane wind. The point on the beach where the figure had been standing was suddenly a throb of light that rose, then fell. A similar throb occurred deeper on the island, where the old control station had been.
That fast.
The light dispersed, forming a crude dome over the entire island, and a second after that-
Nora was fingering her cross. "God in heaven…"
The diffuse dome flattened all at once.
The concussion knocked Nora and Loren flat on their backs. No heat wave or scalding radioactive flash assailed them. No mushroom clouds emerged.
When they got back up, they looked back at the island…
It was on fire, from one end to the other.
They could feel the heat even this far out.
"Incineration," Loren observed. "How convenient."
"It'll kill everything on the island, every worm, every ovum."
"And the third guy? He doesn't even exist anymore. You can bet everything they left in the control station will be ashes too."
"No evidence," Nora whispered.
"Look at that shit. Unbelievable…"
The fire raged for only seconds. Then it went out as quickly as it had bloomed. Even the smoke dissipated in a matter of moments.
But the island was a blackened clot now. Every tree on it had been reduced to a charred stalk.
"No evidence is right," Loren said. "But it doesn't make sense."
"Maybe it does but we just don't get it."
Loren stroked his chin, contemplating. "Why did these people come here, from God knows where, to create a hybrid bienvironmental parasite that grows exponentially and infects humans faster than any known virus… only to destroy it all in one puff and leave?"
"Just a field research exercise, I guess," Nora muttered. "A scientific test on their equivalent of laboratory animals."
"Only in this case the rats were us."
"Has to be. We do the same thing sending probes to Mars, and mice in space, and setting up research stations on the North Pole."
Loren chuckled, wiping sweat off his brow. "No reason to even tell anyone what really happened."
"Not unless we want everyone to think we're crazy," Nora added. "Our authorities will think the RTG melted down, that's all. It'll get pushed to the last page of the newspaper."
Loren shrugged, eyes ahead to the sea. The boat bobbed as the current claimed it. They'd probably drift back to the mainland in an hour or so.
Loren looked at her in subtle shock. "But something just occurred to me."
"What?"
"We're alive."
Nora let the two words sink in. Yeah. How do you like that?
"Oh, and I have to be honest enough to admit something," Loren remembered. "I lost the bet."
.The bet?" Nora blinked, trying to remember. "Oh yeah. I bet you dinner that Annabelle would put the make on you. Did she?"
Loren gulped. "Oh yeah. So where do you want your free dinner?"
Nora gave the matter some serious consideration. I almost got killed by aliens today. I didn't but… I'm still a virgin.
"My place," she said.
"I was hoping you'd say that," Loren replied.
They slumped down next to each other, hips touching, and let the sea carry them away.