Edward Lee - Slither

Another possum lay dead at the base of a tree. Bloated and quivering. Nora peered a little too closely and noticed newly hatched pink worms-not a half inch long-exiting the animal's ear and anus.

"And look there," Loren added. "But don't get too close."

A rusted sign stood before them on metal posts. It read U.S. ARMY MISSILE COMMAND-RESTRICTED AREA.

At first Nora thought the quarter-sized pocks were just spots of corrosion, but then they began to move.

"Those are the biggest ova yet," Loren noted.

"I know. They must grow selectively, like the Polychaetes myerus. It's all in the genes. While some ova hatch early, others hatch late, to evade predators or hostile climate."

At least ten fat, yellow ova crawled along the sign's metal face. With them this large, Nora could see that the red spots on their outer skins were oval-shaped: The spots seemed to move, too, as the outer skin very slowly throbbed.

Nora felt cruxed. "These things are all over the place. They're in the water and on land. They're infect ing everything… So why haven't they infected us?"

"That's a good question." Loren stepped closer to the sign, checking at his feet for ova that might be on the ground. "They probably sense carbon dioxide, sweat, and pheromones, like lots of worms and insects." Then he exhaled toward several of them. Just as the ova had done in their field lab, these immediately began to move in Loren's direction. "And we've been out here for most of a week, asleep in our tents, out in the woods sweating up a storm. That girl told me her entire party was killed by these things, and most of them were infected the first day they were here. How have we managed to not attract these things for all this time?"

"Maybe luck," Nora said. "Plus, we've been spraying ourselves constantly with insect repellent. We know that direct contact with the repellent kills them." She looked at her wrist. "Oh yeah, and we've got these things." She held up her wrist, showing the repellentlaced plastic bracelet. When she moved the bracelet closer to the ova, they began to back away.

"Well, that's good to know," Loren said. "At least it's a little protection."

"Sure, but let's be practical. Tiny worms and ova are one thing, but these little bracelets aren't going to stop a large, fully mature worm. The one that attacked me in the water wasn't the least bit affected by this bracelet."

"Yeah, and neither was the twenty-footer that got Annabelle. She had a bracelet too."

"We better put more spray on now that we're thinking of it," Nora said and withdrew the narrow can from her pocket. She aimed the can down at her legs and pressed the button. Nothing came out.

"It's all gone!"

"Terrific," Loren said. "We better hope that Trent has some more."

Nora tossed the empty can. "Come on, let's keep going anyway. just be careful."

They burgeoned forward through heavier brush, and after just a few more yards…

"See it?" Nora asked.

"Yeah…"

The old blockhouse building looked jammed into the woods, overrun with brush, Spanish moss, and vines that crawled down from the trees above.

"The control center for the old missile site," Nora said. "Just like Trent told us."

"Shit, that place looks like it hasn't been used for twenty years," Loren observed of the squat, bunkerlike structure.

"Maybe it's just supposed to look that way. So no one bothers with it." Nora kept her eyes on the station, imagining what might be inside. What did she suspect? A secret barracks, a camouflaged field lab or research outpost? I don't know WHAT I'm thinking…

They both crept up slowly.

"No windows," Loren noticed.

"Of course not… but there's the door."

A black, metal-framed door stared back at them, with a similar warning: RESTRICTED. Loren noticed it at once: "Look. The doorknob."

Nora saw what he meant. There actually wasn't a doorknob anymore, just a rust-rimmed hole. Loren hooked his finger in the hole and pulled, but the door didn't budge. "Maybe it was welded shut when they closed down the site."

"Then why do I see light inside?" Nora questioned when she leaned over and peeked into the hole.

"You're kidding me…" Something caught Loren's eye. "But check this out," he said and pointed down to a heavily cased air-conditioning unit. It sat midbuild- ing, bolted to a cement grounding. It was rusted through, its grate corroded. They could see the fan deeper down, caked with more corrosion.

"That thing hasn't turned in years," Nora said.

"So that means there can't be anyone inside. With no windows open? It's 110 in there."

Fine. But why's there a light on? Nora went back to the door. Head-level against the frame was a black plate of some kind. "What's that? A military dead bolt?"

"Feels almost like plastic or polycarb," Loren said after he brushed his fingers against it. "The temperature's cooler than the door metal. It's a tack weld or something. If it was a dead bolt, there'd be a keyhole."

Nora touched it too. "There is-at least I think so. See that?"

Loren squinted.

There was no sign of a key cylinder, but there was indeed a tiny slit in the black plate, perhaps an eighth of an inch long.

"You can barely see it," Loren said. "Must be some high-tech security lock."

Nora was unconscious of the impulse; she was reaching down into her pocket and before she even knew what she was doing, she'd withdrawn that pen- dantlike object she'd found in the woods: the strip of metal on a neck cord.

"Interesting," Loren said.

Nora put the end of the pendant into the slit. Out of reflex, she tried to turn it, as one would a key, but it began to bend.

"Don't turn it," Loren directed. "There's no cylinder like a regular lock. Just push it in as far as it'll go."

Nora did so, and-

Tick.

The door popped open an inch.

Both of them stiffened.

"I guess this is what we wanted," Loren said with no enthusiasm at all.

Nora was suddenly scared herself. This is a new lock on a very old door. That key she'd found on the trail the other day could only mean that military people were using this island, in secret. Not even Trent knew about it…

"Cool air," she whispered to herself. Another question mark. With no sound of an air conditioner running?

"Yeah, feels like seventy degrees in there," Loren said. "You tell me."

"There must be fans on or something," Nora replied. "But I'd say we've got bigger questions to answer."

"How's this for a question: Who's going to be the first to go in?"

Nora peered ahead into the murk. "How about you?"

"Why? Because I'm the man?" Loren frowned into the doorway. He didn't hear anything but he did see some dim lights on. A clean-floored hallway led straight down the middle of the building, with doors on either side.

"This was my idea," Nora owned up.

"Yeah. Plus, you get paid more than me."

Nora almost laughed. She stepped inside, and Loren followed.

"Shhh," she reminded him.

She took long, slow steps. The coolness inside sucked around her, which felt good after being in such dank, humid heat. When they'd first stepped in, the building seemed dead silent, yet after a few steps Nora heard something humming. Odd white lightbulbs that were small and circular dotted the wall up near the ceiling. They both stopped at the first door. There was no dead bolt on it like the outside door. A sign read PROCESSING UNrr, but it was peeling at the corners, obviously very old.

"Are we really going to do this?" Loren whispered. "What if there's somebody on the other side?"

Nora didn't want to think about it. They'd come here for information, and chickening out now seemed worse than pointless. "We'll run," she said and turned the knob.

Old hinges creaked as she pushed open the door.