Edward Lee - Slither

The idea snapped in her mind.

Her cross…

She broke the fragile chain off her neck, felt the body of the gold cross between her fingers. The post of the cross felt just about the same width as the key…

Nora-stuck-it in the slot, closed her eyes, and pushed.

The door clicked open.

Thank you, God, she thought and ran off into the woods.

(III)

Loren jogged the trail back toward the campsite. Lieutenant Trent better be there, he thought. And Nora better not be too far behind…

Nora.

Shit.

Suddenly, he was grimly aware of the pistol in his waistband. I should've left the gun with her…

The bulk of the desalinator and purification machines caught his eye, then slowed him to a stop. The RTG, he remembered. It was just a few yards away from all that. He turned and followed the power cable, where it ended at the concrete slab.

And there it is, he thought. At once came a sensation like ice water in his belly.

He was looking at the bomb…

The small black disk sat propped up on the rod, just as he'd seen on the surveillance screen back at the station. Is that thing really a bomb? he questioned. How do we really know?

Then his certainties returned the instant he recalled everything else they'd seen, particularly the hundred foot-long vessel levitating out of the sea and moving toward the island, changing color to match the terrain. Perfect camouflage.

A fucking spaceship. Shit.

Then a glance back down to the puck-sized disk. A border of light was flashing on it, as if counting off seconds. Like a timer, he realized.

Loren dropped to one knee, took a breath, then grabbed the disk with both hands. He pulled with all his might but the disk didn't move.

Christ! What did he do? Drill the damn rod into solid concrete? Loren had watched the entire process on the screen, and there'd been no sign of a drill or any other kind of impacting tool that would be able to drive the rod through the cement.

What if I…

He put the barrel of the pistol against the rod…

On second thought that's a really BAD idea.

Loren couldn't figure a way to remove the disk. It's not my problem, he tried to rationalize. It's beyond my control.

The easy way out.

Maybe I can pry it off, he considered, then sprinted into the woods. If he could find a branch sturdy enough to wedge between the slab and the disk…

"Holy Mother!" he yelled when the worm-in the space of a blink-shot out from under the thicket and began to coil about his legs.

Loren tried to kick but the worm's hoselike body encircled his thighs tight as a metal clamp. Loren collapsed.

His heart squirmed as more glistening pink coils raveled up his body. The worm had hooked his ankles with its tail end and was working upward, now past the waist. Its efforts were turning him into a mummy of pink coils. The musculature of its coelum made Loren feel like he was being swallowed by a pulsing mouth…

His left arm flailed free, but the right had been caught under the coils. How much sooner till it got to his neck?

Loren couldn't think. His adrenaline pumped uselessly through his body; the harder he tried to move, the more he couldn't.

Then the worm's head loomed.

Loren nearly lost consciousness at the sight: the eyeless pink cone. A tiny, meaty hole at the end suddenly expanded, revealing a pulsating throat. Stylets like transparent fishhooks emerged. Loren knew that the hooks would seek his mouth so that the worm could secure a grasp before it would start pumping its acidlike digestive enzymes down his esophagus, whereupon his innards would be liquefied and then sucked back into the worm's body, for nourishment. After the hearty meal the creature would fill Loren's emptied body cavity with ova, to incubate. -- – - – - – - -- – -

His right hand had managed to slither to the pistol in his waistband, but the coils were too tight to drag it out. Even in this revolted paralysis, his subconscious knew that there was nothing to lose in firing anyway-

Bam!

Did the worm actually squeal? Loren felt the gun kick beneath the mummifying coils, felt a bullet blow through the side of his swim trunks.

It also blew a hole in the worm, midbody.

The gun barrel burned against Loren's thigh, but he didn't feel it. He'd managed to squeeze off the shot just as the worm's head was lowering to his face. Worm blood and stored seawater flooded Loren's legs; then the coils began to loosen, shuddering in their own pain.

Gotcha, you fucker! he thought when he grabbed the head with his left hand, pressed it to the dirt. Only now was he able to drag his gun hand out.

He pressed the barrel to the worm's skull-less head, and-

Bam!

Chunks of pink meat speckled Loren's face. In the other direction, more seawater, white blood, and a teacolored ichor flew. The plume hit a tree and-

Shit!

Loren began to frantically wipe his face off, remembering that the worm's enzyme duct was in the head. He could see spatters on the tree smoking, sizzling, those same fluids burning through the bark. It was Loren's very good fortune that none had gotten on his face.

The worm limpened in death after a few reflexive spasms. Loren shrugged out of the coils.

He got up and looked closer at the tree. The enzymes became impotent after a minute, but not before eating a crater into the hard tropical wood.

As the sizzling from the acid died down, a thought began to sizzle in his head.

He grabbed the worm's neck, clamping hard with the ring of his thumb and forefinger, leaving eight inches of exploded head hanging off. Loren dragged the-dead-thing back toward the RTG.

Can't hurt to try…

It was like dragging a great length of hose. When he arrived at the slab, he carefully held the worm's ruptured head right against the black rod on which the disk had been mounted.

Loren squeezed a few feet of worm…

More fluids evacuated, mostly the tea-tinged slime.

The cement around the rod-

It's working.-..

– began to sizzle and smoke.

Loren jiggled the disk as the acids worked deeper. Moments later, he yanked it out of the cement slab, like dragging the stick out of a thawing Popsicle.

The enzymes liquefied the cement!

He'd gotten the bomb off the RTG but-

Holy shit…

Now Loren found himself in the most bizarre predicament of his life. I'm standing here in the middle of the woods, holding a bomb from another planet…

He looked at the blinking border of light around the disk.

With each blink-he noticed now-that border got infinitesimally smaller.

Loren shook his head.

Question of the day, he thought. How the HELL do you get rid of an alien bomb?

No answers were forthcoming. He at least knew that he had till the border ran out to think of something. – - – - – - – - -

With nothing else to do, he put the bomb in his pocket and headed back to the campsite to find Trent…

(IV)

Robb was strong, all right. His mottled yellow hands turned Ruth upside down, and hauled her shorts off. The terror merged with the stifling heat, and of course, the "zombie's" stench of rot and metamorphosis. The fetor in the room could be likened to fresh-ground beef, sperm, and a restaurant Dumpster in the sun. Ruth landed on her head when Robb shucked her out of the shorts, which dangled off one ankle. She saw proverbial stars as Robb's hands began to wring her implants like dishwashing sponges.

When she was able to see through gaps in some of the stars, her scream ground down to a disgusted gag. Robb had shed his own shorts previously, to reveal a groin that looked more like an open wound. There was no penis, for instance, just a rot-gnarled nub with a hole in it, and a bloated yellow scrotum. Were small things moving in the scrotum?