Edward Lee - Slither

What else could he believe?

As he reached for his knife, though, he cast a glance at the semen again.

Those little yellow worm eggs…

Had they doubled in size in the last two minutes?

"I'm fuckin' sorry, Slydes, but I gotta get away from you," Ruth declared. "I don't wanna get infected with those fuckin' things."

I'm carving her up, Slydes resolved. It was a matter of pride. He'd done a lot for her, and now she was abandoning him.

Low-class.

Slydes shucked his knife just as Ruth opened the door to flee the shed.

But she didn't flee.

She screamed and just stood there.

Someone was blocking the door, and when she jerked backward, Slydes saw who it was… or, not really even who anymore, but what.

He would have no way of knowing Robb White by name, he only remembered Ruth's claim of a big yellow zombie lurking around, and then Jonas's dying revelation that the very first person to be infected by the worms continued to live through repeated mutations. He's a big guy, Jonas had related. Watch out for him. He's trompin' around here like a fuckin' zombie.

This person/thing was a "big guy," all right. He stood huge in the open doorway, hair all gone now, replaced by mottled yellow scalp, old swim trunks essentially rotting on his pelvis. The eyes looked more like wads of spit, but somehow they seemed to recognize Ruth.

Then the ruined, yellow face… smiled.

"He's come back for me!" Ruth shrieked. She dodged a swipe from a huge arm, then ducked behind Slydes. "Stick him with your knife, Slydes! He's gonna kill us! He wants to feed us to the worms!"

Moments of consternation such as this were difficult to reckon. Slydes was scared shitless and paralyzed as he stood there, Ruth hiding behind him. His first instinct, indeed, told him to fight. But when he took a closer look at the thing that was thunking into the shed with mutated arms outstretched, he knew there was no point. He wouldn't be fighting a man, he'd be fighting an organic monstrosity.

The face beamed back at him, yellow and runneled. A gray tongue emerged to lick segmented lips. Slydes noticed a chunk missing from the guy's cheek, revealing a sore crater in pus-rife flesh. Muscles and veins flexed beneath the shiny, runny skin, and worse than the inhuman sick-yellow hue were the blazing red spots.

And, yes, the thing was smiling.

It's smilin' at Ruth…

"Don't let him get us, Slydes!" she screamed.

"Us?" Slydes questioned.

This would be even better than cutting her throat.

Ruth's screams cartwheeled around the room when Slydes turned, grabbed her by the shoulders, and threw her into the waiting arms of the college jock formerly known as Robb White.

Was the thing giggling? Slydes thought so. It wrapped its arms around Ruth's slender physique, dragged her to the floor, then wrapped its stout legs around her too.

"You coward piece of fuck scumbag motherfucker, Slydes!" Ruth cut loose in her loudest scream yet.

Slydes stepped around them, and slipped out the doorway.

"Oh, fuck, no, no, n!"

Slydes took one last peek inside. Ruth's zombie had pulled down its rotten swim trunks, and was now yanking down her shorts. Slydes closed the door and jogged away.

(II)

"I've never been this far across the island," Loren said. He followed Nora through the thickening woods. Time and disuse had narrowed the trails this far in, to mere overgrown scratches; they could barely see them enough to follow them.

"I've explored a little," Nora confirmed, "but not quite this deep. According to Lieutenant Trent, the old control center is this way."

"You really think there's someone there?"

Nora tried to weigh the question in concrete terms. What they'd discovered thus far almost seemed unbelievable, but then she knew she believed it all because she'd seen it all. "Actually, Loren, I really do."

Loren gulped, and went silent.

"Seriously," she went on. "I can't deny what we've seen. A parasitic worm that displays features and traits of multiple species? Their hydroskeletons and ova growing exponentially? That sounds like laboratoryinduced mutation."

"I know, but-"

"And we have found surveillance cameras all over the island. I've seen them, you've seen them. Now, you and Trent just told me that Annabelle got hauled up into a tree by a twenty-foot worm. That's an unbelievable story-but I believe it because I just saw several worms almost as long back in the trench. You and I both know worms like these can't grow this large or this fast without some kind of artificial catalyst inducing it." She paused. "And I know I saw a submarine out in that trench. It wasn't oxygen deprivation, Loren, and it wasn't hallucinosis spurred by variances in water pressure."

"I believe you saw a sub or submersible," Loren admitted. "And I believe something really screwed up and unnatural is going on here. But aren't we asking for trouble now? Aren't we getting in too deep?"

"One of our party is already dead," Nora reminded him, "and we know other people have been killed on this island recently. We already are in too deep."

"I want to know what's going on, too. But if there really are people at this control center, what are we going to do? Ask them what they're doing? Invite them to lunch?"

"No. We're going to apprehend them, with that gun you have. We're going to get to the bottom of this."

Loren laughed hard-and nervously. "They're military, Nora! They have guns too, and the big difference is they know how to use theirs. I'm just a mildmannered polychaetologist, not Wyatt Earp."

Nora shoved away some branches and moved on. "Relax, Loren. We're just going to take a look. You're a scientist, too-aren't you curious about what's going on here?"

"Um-hmm, and Magellan was curious about what was going on in the Philippines… and he got butchered by a bunch of-pissed-off natives."

Nora shook her head. "Just come on."

"What's that there?"

Loren had noticed a small tin shed that seemed to be humming.

"It's the filtration and desalinator for the island's water supply." Then Nora pointed to the black power cable and metal box it branched off from. "And that's the voltage regulator."

Loren stared at it. "And the generator is… where?"

"It's over there some place," she said quickly. "Come on."

Loren followed the cable, finding its terminus at the large slab of concrete on the ground, and the accommodating sign: KEEP AWAY! RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL IN USE!

Loren frowned at her. "No wonder I've never heard a generator motor. There isn't one. That's an RTG, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Nora admitted. "I found it by accident the other day; we're not supposed to know about it. Trent said I'll actually have to be debriefed by army security people just for seeing the damn thing."

"I guess so. If terrorists knew this was here, they could use it to make a dirty bomb if they could get to the source material. Probably Cesium 137."

"Trent said the army's not worried about it. The source is buried in the middle of fifteen tons of steelreinforced concrete."

Loren chuckled. "Oh yeah, that makes me feel a lot more secure. Shit, Nora, maybe it's leaking. Maybe the RTG is causing the mutations."

"That's impossible, and you know it. It's only a couple of rads heating up a thermocoupler. We've seen these things in our own field. They're safe, and their power is exaggerated."

"We better hope so. Greenpeace would love to hear about this. Let's call Nader."

"Just come on!"

Another black cable paralleled another scratch of a trail. Nora and Loren followed it through a small clearing. "No anoles or iguanas," Nora said. "Have you noticed that?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Loren pointed down, a look of disgust on his face. "And check that out."