Edward Lee - Slither

"Something I stepped on in the woods. Not sure what it is. Trent said he thinks it's a calibration tool for an old army radio."

"It's got some funny markings on it," Loren told her. "Okay, thanks. Lower the clip now."

Funny markings? She took the metal strip away and decided to look at it under the other microscope. "You're right," she said, focusing. "What are those markings?"

"They're raised, like Braille almost," Loren said back while still concentrating on the next incision. "Reminded me more of a bar code or something. Trent said it was a radio tool?"

"Yeah. But he wasn't certain."

"Looks more like a key to me."

"That's what I thought too," she murmured, and looked more closely at the object beneath the magnifier.

The markings looked like this:

"Forget about that thing," Loren said next. "I just found the stomach process and the enzymatic sac."

"Did you puncture it?"

"Yeah, and guess what? The fluid is sizzling. It's even smoking a little."

The chitin penetrator," Nora said.

Then Loren said, "Holy shit. It's not burning the glass slide, but the stuff melted the tip of my probe."

"Is the probe tip made of resin?"

"No. Stainless steel."

"Strong stuff," Nora commented. But this wasn't terribly surprising. There were a number of invertebrates that possessed highly corrosive stomach enzymes: to burn through the shells of animals they were attacking, and to even burn burrows into coral. "Remember that article we read about the Norwegian lugworm? It released its enzymes all at once and burned a hole through the aquarium's slate floor."

"Yeah, slate, but not steel. This is really tough stuff, Nora."

She could see threads of smoke rising up from Loren's microscope slide. "Can you drip some onto the floor?"

With larger forceps, he kept the dead worm crimped to the slide, then lifted it all off the stage. Careful not to dribble any on his fingers, he tipped the slide. Several drops of the brownish fluid plipped onto the concrete floor.

Threads of smoke began to rise.

"Jesus," Nora said. She grabbed another probe and ran it across the smoking drops. "This stuff is really tough. It's burned some small indentations into the cement."

"We'll have to be very careful getting some more of these things to take back to the college," Loren said.

"I wonder what the preferred habitat is. Water or land?"

"Probably water. Something that gets this big isn't going to settle for beetles and bugs to eat. It'll go after larger crustaceans, the bigger meal ticket."

Like the lobster, she recalled. "When you're out looking for more bristleworms with Annabelle, keep an eye out for more of these. It'd be great to get some live ones to take back."

"I'll find some." Loren felt sure. "And speaking of that, I better start getting ready. Annabelle will probably want to start the next shoot soon."

`See Spot run," Nora said. "And don't forget our bet."

"Oh, I won't. You'll drop big money when you lose that one," Loren said. Then he winked and left.

Poor fool, Nora thought. The ignorance of youth.

She continued dissecting the worm… and continued to find physical features that seemed to borrow from several different species: epidermal pores to draw in oxygen from the air-like an earthworm-but also gill filters for water breathing-around intercoelic channels that stored seawater-like free-ranging Polychaetes. Ovaries that produced independent motile ova were possessed of many roundworm species-like the Trichinella classes-while the worm's physical appearance, too, looked like some of the nonmarine orders of Trichinella and Trichina.

On its own, though, Nora knew that the specimen could not be any of those.

Almost like a genetic hybrid, her mind whispered.

When she'd dissected all she could, she jarred the worm in preservatives and spent the next hour inputting notes into her laptop. That's when Trent walked in.

"Going for a swim?" Nora asked, for the lieutenant was wearing trunks and an olive-drab army T-shirt.

"Yeah, I might as well," he replied. "I've been stationed in Florida for the last ten years, but I don't think I've even been to the beach more than a few times. I thought I'd tag along with Annabelle and Loren, while they're looking for their scarlet bristleworms."

"Have fun."

"But I wanted to show you this first." He approached the table and handed her something. "Is that like the thing you mentioned?"

Nora placed it in her palm and knew at once. "The little camera lens, yeah. The one I saw was stuck in a tree, almost like it had been nailed into the bark."

"Same thing here, but I pried this one out. Originally I thought it must've been an electric-eye sensor, or maybe an infrared perimeter alarm, but I don't see any terminals on it."

"I didn't see any on the one I saw either. No connection posts or anything to hook wires to. When the army was using these things, how did they establish a circuit?"

"Beats me. But there does seem to be glass in the head, like a lens."

"I know," she said next. "Let me take a closer look…"

She placed the cigarette-butt-sized object on the microscope stage, then focused down.

"Yes, it's definitely rounded, polished glass. A bulb, maybe, an indicator light?"

"Can't imagine that. In the woods? And what would the power source be? See any terminals on it, or anything like a hole for wires to go in?"

Nora studied the odd cylinder more closely. "Nothing on the sides or on the butt end."

"See if there's any markings on it. I'll bet there's a defense contractor's name on it somewhere, or an army property line," Trent said.

Nora slowly revolved the object on the stage with forceps. "Wait a minute." She paused. "There is something."

"What's it say?"

Nora rubbed her eyes and got up. She bid Trent to sit. "Tell me if you've ever seen that before."

Trent sat down and put his eye to the scope.

What Nora had seen was oddly familiar. Etched along the object's side were markings like this:

(I)

Annabelle stretched her bare legs to the sun. The tan was deepening, made more prominent by a blazing white thong bikini. She glanced down at herself and immediately thought, Lookin' good, Annabelle-as always.

She wanted to catch a few more rays before she and Loren went back in the water for the last of the bristleworm photos. He'll be here soon, she figured, so she took off her top, to let herself be "caught." The sudden sun seemed to lick her nipples, raising them in the heat. She wanted to keep Loren stoked: Sexual anxiety among the men in her range always kept things interesting. Poor little Loren. He'll have blue balls for years…

– Her bare breasts looked like fresh white fruit atop the nougat tan of her belly. She lounged back on her towel. The narrow beach extended off, gentle waves flapping over each other as seagulls glided silently overhead.

Her snorkeling and photo gear lay beside her. The sun was heating her up. Might as well make some calls while I'm just lying around. She couldn't wait to tell her friends about this little expedition. When she opened her cell phone she noticed that her fianck had left several messages. Better to let him wait, she decided. She liked to let him stew; it kept him wondering. He needs to appreciate me more…

She called her best girlfriend in New York and got to chatting. "The funniest thing of all is how dumb these people are," she was saying. "None of them know I'm a newbie; I've got them believing I'm the magazine's premier nature photographer-they don't know this is only my third assigrunent. The idiots think I've been all over the world!"