Edward Lee - Slither

Annabelle threw her snorkeling gear down in the sand. "That was really gross. Did you see that?"

"Sure did," Trent said. He sat down to rest, trying very hard not to overtly stare at Annabelle's almost totally naked body. "Looks like those little pink parasites made mincemeat out of your bristleworm nest. Chalk one up for the good old order of nature."

Wet now, Annabelle's bare skin shone in the high sunlight. "Those little worms looked just like the ones in my lobster, and you know what? I think they're just baby versions of that really big worm I found in the shower. -I think they'rethe same type of worm."

Trent's eyes followed the line of her legs. "Could be, I don't know from worms."

"It's just gross," Annabelle emphasized. "That shower worm was over a foot long. They're probably all over the island but we just don't know it… along with those yellow ticks-or whatever she said they were."

"Nora said they were worm eggs, I think. Ova. I don't know what you're all bent out of shape over. They're just worms, Annabelle. You see a worm, you step on it."

Annabelle made a sour face at the recollection.

Now Trent was staring at her fat-free abdomen as she bent over to get something from her bag. The way her breasts hung down in that pose…

Trent was grinding his teeth. Those things should hang in the National Gallery of Art…

Annabelle pulled out her flask and took a long hit.

Trent swatted at a few mosquitoes, then withdrew some repellent from his own bag. "What are we going to do now?"

Annabelle frowned toward the gulf. "I don't know about you, but I think I'll get drunk."

Now you're talking, Trent thought. She was a prize, all right, and more so when she had a few in her. He rubbed the repellent on his arms and neck. "That sounds like a plan, but I need to do a radio check with my post first. I've been doing it with my cell phone, but there hasn't been any reception all day."

"Mine-crapped- out earlier, too."

"So did Nora's. You can't trust technology these days, but one thing you can trust is an army radio. I've got a portable in my tent."

They meandered back to the campsite, trading hits on the flask. Annabelle's anxiety over seeing all those worms seemed to recede as the rum worked into her. Aw, Christ, Trent thought. I am one lucky son of a bitch… She had her arm around him as they made their way down the trail, her damp body bumping against his. She sure as shit makes it easy getting into her pants, he thought. She never wears any… When they got back to the camp, though, she pulled on a tube top.

Damn.

– – - – - – - – Trent quickly came back from his tent, bearing the weighty handheld radio. He switched on the service frequency.-

Annabelle sat idly on the picnic table, wagging her legs.

"Jay One, this is Area November calling for radio check," he said into the unit. "Do you copy?"

When he released the transmission key, all that came back was throbbing static.

"I'm going to go take a nap," Annabelle decided and got up.

Trent was pissed. "I thought we were going to get drunk."

"I changed my mind." Moments later, she was getting-into her tent.

Moody bitch, Trent thought. Always jerking guys around. Frustrated, he rekeyed the radio. "Jay One, this is Area November. Do you copy?"

Just more throbbing static.

This is really fucked up, he thought. Cell phones were one thing, but this was a secure military radio band.

He frowned, and still couldn't shake the inexplicable notion: I'll be damned if that doesn't sound just like a jammer…

(III)

Loren snorkeled concentric circles around the largest body of coral. Any evidence of bristleworms was just as disconcerting as before. They were all either bloated… or emptied out and dead. His flippers languished, then stopped when he happened upon a thorny starfish. The creature didn't move when he picked it up. Is it dead? he wondered.

When he flipped it around, he saw a stream of tiny pink worms exiting the aperture that was the starfish's mouth. With his finger then, he flipped over a common urchin, and found its underside pocked with tiny yellow ovum.

Jesus! The parasites are all over the place!

He came up for air a few more times, finding more and more evidence of infection. The worms attack any invertebrate in their path…

He floated around more incrustations of coral, and found himself looking straight down the slope of the trench.

In the water, it looked like a long black gouge in the sea floor. Can't hurt to go in just a little, he told himself. He knew his earlier warnings of moray eels and sharks were exaggeration; both creatures rarely attacked humans. Loren wanted to see if their odd pink parasite had ventured into the trench, too.

He entered slowly and turned on his flashlight.

A one-second glance was all it took.

Bubbles erupted from his lips. He shot to the surface and immediately began to swim to shore.

What he'd seen lying in the mouth of the trench was a human corpse with slabs of dough-white flesh hanging off its bones.

(I)

Nora tried to make calls on her cell phone for the rest of the day-to no avail. I've never heard interference like that before… The odd, throbbing static over the line. When she went out toward the very end of the beach, hoping fora clearer track to the mainland…

The same throbbing buzz.

Trent said it sounded like a jammer, she recalled, but she knew he wasn't serious. Jammers were used by the military, and this site was of no importance to the army anymore. The lieutenant's later suspicions were something else altogether, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized how ludicrous the idea was.

"No phone calls today," she muttered to herself and snapped her phone off. She headed back. Where is everyone? She hadn't seen any of the others for hours. If they're still out in the water looking for bristleworms, that's one long swim. Actually she was more interested in their newest discovery as far as worms went…-.

Nora couldn't deny her first impressions. Both the newborn hatchlings from the tanks as well as their foot-and-a-half long specimen looked like trichinosis worms.

And there's no trichinosis worm like that… unless Loren's right about us discovering an entirely new species…

More exciting things had happened in her field, just not to her. She posed questions to herself as she walked back to the camp, a number of what-ifs.

What if this worm really could infect higher mammals?

The most famous of the Trichinella species did exactly that: the Trichinella spiralis, notorious by its ability to infect all carnivores and omnivores. But that's an inborn worm, she reminded herself, almost microscopic. And it's NOT a marine parasite.

That's when Nora spotted the nest of possums at the foot of an old pine tree.

Possums were common in Florida, a clumsy rodentlike marsupial mostly known for waddling into the middle of highly trafficked roadways, but they actually flourished in tropical woodlands. Nora leaned over to look at the nest of animals.

They're all dead…

It was a mother, with a half dozen young. The adult lay askew, mouth and eyes opened, little legs stiff. It appeared to have died recently-no sign of flies, maggots, or other parasites. Nora got down on one knee to look closer…

The infant possums weren't moving either, but they seemed…

Bloated, she saw.

So young they remained hairless, the newborns all possessed bellies that looked distended.

Nora quickly retrieved a box from the head shack, returned, and transferred the adult possum and one baby back to her lab.

It didn't take her long to get one of the infants under the microscope. Oh no, she thought the instant she sectioned the hairless abdominal wall.