Edward Lee - Slither

"Exactly. The worm initially infected the lobster by burning a hole in its shell with its digestive enzymes and then injecting its ova through the hole. These kinds of worms also eat the same way."

"Eat?" Trent questioned.

Loren indicated the dead possum. "By filling a host's abdominal cavity with the same corrosive enzymes. The enzymes dissolve the internal organs, and then the worm sucks it back out. A liquefied meal. Lots of worms eat this way, and lots of insects too. Flies are the best-known example."

Trent was staring at the possum. "Wouldn't it take, like, a really big worm to eat all the organs in that possum?"

"It sure would," Nora admitted. "And that's another reason we're worried about this." She held up the beaker again. The worm was now pushing ten inches. "We've seen how big this thing has gotten in less than an hour. How big will it be after a full day?"

"Or a full week?" Loren posed. He gulped at the thought. "A worm that could successfully attack a possum this size and be able to consume probably a full pound of internal organs…"

Now it was Trent's turn to gulp. "How… big… would a worm like that have to be?"

Nora took a guess after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. "Two or three inches in diameter, at least. And at least ten feet long."

Priorities, Nora was thinking now. We've got a few.

"All this talk of worms," Trent remarked. He brushed his arm as if there might be bugs on it. "It's making me paranoid."

"I keep looking over my shoulder," Loren added, "thinking there might be worms behind me, or ova."

They were back at the campsite now, sitting solemnly at the old picnic table. There was nothing more they could do in the lab.

Nora grabbed her snorkeling gear. "We have to identify some priorities. If it turns out this worm can infect humans, we could be in a heap of trouble, especially since we can't seem to get off the island right now.*

"What should we do?" Trent asked. He was the group's official leader, but now he seemed to be showing some insecurities. "We have to find Annabelle."

'Right," Nora agreed. "And that's what you and Loren should do."

"You're going back in the water?" Loren asked.

"I have to. You said you saw a dead body out there near the trench. I hate to say it, but are you absolutely sure it wasn't Annabelle?"

"Impossible." Loren felt certain. it was too decomposed. She'd been with me and Lieutenant Trent less than an hour before."

"And she came back ashore with me," Trent added.

Nora looked at him. "Where did she go then?"

"I… don't know."

"The body did appear to be female," Loren admitted. "There was still some blond hair hanging off the scalp."

"Shit!" Trent said.

"But there was almost nothing left," Loren went on. "The flesh was hanging off the bones. The body's probably been out there for days."

"Sharks, eels, and a variety of bottom dwellers can reduce a human body to next to nothing real fast," Nora reminded. "I have to have a look, to make sure it's not her. And I also need to examine it as closely as possible. Whoever's body it is, I need to see if the worms could be responsible."

"We should go with you," Loren said.

"No, we need to maximize our time. You two look for Annabelle. Split up, check everywhere. And keep trying your cell phones-and your radio, Lieutenant."

Trent seemed unsure, even shaky. "What do we do if we can't find Annabelle?"

I don't know, Nora thought truthfully. I'm more worried about what we DO find. More worms. BIG ones. "You'll find her. Let's meet back here in two hours exactly. And good luck."

The two men branched off while Nora trudged down the trail toward the beach. Now she knew what Trent and Loren meant about being paranoid. With every step she looked to her sides, half expecting to see some very large pink nematodes squirming in wait. She couldn't pass a tree trunk without inspecting it for signs of the yellow motile ova. I just cannot BELIEVE what we've stumbled on, she thought.

On the beach she noticed the tide was coming up, with a rougher chop than usual. She took an uncomfortable glance at the sun. In another few hours there wouldn't be enough light to snorkel at all…

She pulled on her flippers, lowered her mask, and waded in.

Skimming along the bottom, she knew it was her imagination when she began to feel inhibited. The water wasn't really murkier, and there weren't really fewer fish about-she simply imagined it. Farther out, she snorkeled a deep breath and dove.

Several sea urchins lay upside down-dead. Next, she picked up an upside-down stone crab and looked at its hard-shelled underside. There was a hole in it.

She wended around a large boulder, then stopped. Another dozen crabs lay similarly upside down. They've all got holes in them! she saw.

Evidence of a chitin-penetrating parasite.

Another sea urchin quivered in a small crevice. Nora flipped it over and recoiled.

Fixed to the urchin's mouth was a six-inch-long pink worm.

Nora thrust away with her flippers, repulsed. The worms are killing everything…

The next outcropping of boulders was crawling with yellow ova…

I have to be real friggin' careful! she yelled at herself.

When she got to the magnificent coral deposits that flagged the trench, she saw nothing but a carpet of dead scarlet bristleworms. They lay curled up like red litter, tossing slightly in the current.

The entire nest has been routed…

The impulse to leave couldn't have been stronger, but there was still one more thing she had to do.

The corpse.

Maybe he imagined it, she wished. Maybe it was a dolphin skeleton or something… She skimmed by more clumps of coral, and there it was: the darkening decline that marked the tip of the trench. Deeper than I thought, she realized, flipping downward. And it was darker. She kicked out and glided another dozen feet.

Nora stared through the prism of her mask.

The arrangement of flesh and bones lay before her almost as if it expected her. Scraps of fabric around the hips indicated shorts too skimpy for a man, and another band of fabric about the rib cage was clearly a bikini top. It was orange.

Does Annabelle have an orange bikini? She couldn't recall.

Nora felt haunted as she hovered over the remnants of a living person. Eyeless sockets looked back at her, and something like a grin struggled through the waxen, swollen traces of flesh around the mouth. White teeth glimmered through. A flap of white skin floated off the chest, darkened by the circle of a nipple. Nora found herself fingering her own gold cross as she hovered closer. Bones were all that remained of the feet, and off the femurs and shins, more white flesh wobbled like jelly. White hipbones broke through the skin of the pelvis.

She heard her own teeth grinding when she peered again to the flesh-specked face. Loren was right; clumped tresses of hair floated tentacle-like off the scalp, too light to be brunet, but it seemed longer than Annabelle's hair.

I'm pretty sure this isn't her.

But if it wasn't Annabelle… who was it?

The intense grotesquerie of what she was looking at felt as palpable as a gust of current. She wanted to leave now, but…

She knew she'd have to look closer for another moment, for any evidence that the worms might have done this.

There were no ova on the body, but what about inside?

Aw, shit, I don't want to do this!

The cadaver's bare abdomen was stretched across the hips tight as a drum skin, and as white. The belly button was a concise pock against the bloodless flesh. The idea of pulling the corpse ashore for a makeshift autopsy was out of the question; it would fall apart at the joints from the turbulence.

I'll part the belly a little, take a look inside…