Edward Lee - Slither

He didn't see the kudzu vine crooked out from the base of a palm tree. His foot hooked it, and-

Flump!

They both fell.

"Shit! I'm sorry," Loren bumbled. "Are you all right?"

Annabelle lay atop him, her luscious, hot weight pressing him down. He expected that the fall had hurt her leg, but she made no protest. Her face opposed his, strands of blond hair falling to either side of his neck. It looked like she was about to say something, but then her eyes bloomed… and her lips lowered to his.

The shock stiffened every muscle in Loren's body. He felt agog at what was happening. Her tongue traced his lips, delved into his mouth, then slipped down to his ear where she whispered, "I've been hot for you since the day we got here…"

More shock on Loren's part, and more stiffening, especially about the groin. I can't believe it, came the thought through so much hot fog. I'm finally making out with her…

At last he relaxed and slipped his arms around the small of her back. Her bare legs spread wider, her groin grinding down. Her breathing issued as a series of wanton pants and gasps. She raised herself on her hands then, and hitched herself up.

To a guy like Loren, the mother lode had arrived.

The two perfect orbs of her breasts were now level with his face. Then she positioned herself more precisely, and a swollen nipple began to brush across his lips.

"Suck it," she whispered. "Hard. Real hard…"

The instant Loren obliged, Annabelle moaned.

The way her bare hips were grinding down, Loren wouldn't last long. Her warm body encompassed him: She was a cocoon of his most erotic dreams. She traded her nipples back and forth, "Harder." And then one hand slid down, caged his crotch through the meager swim trunks, and squeezed.

"Take these off and fuck me," came the next desperate whisper. "I can't stand it anymore. I've got to have you in me…"

Just hearing her say that almost spent him. This would be tough. Even if he got that far, how long would he last?

Only a few of his closest friends knew his secret: that he was indeed a virgin. He'd told Nora some contrary jive because-well, it seemed the right thing to do, not to mention that he had the hots for her, and not to mention that she was his boss.

But… this?

No one would believe him, and he didn't care.

Cringing, he was about to pull the gun out of his waistband and push his trunks down when the situation's true gravity slapped him in the face:

Wait a minute! I've got an alien bomb I've got to get rid of, two people to find, and a boat to get on…

I don't have time to have sex!

"Annabelle… we can't do this now. There's some stuff you don't know…"

The wanton desperation on her face… changed.

Suddenly her face turned blank, like a sleepwalker's…

She sat upright, still straddling his groin. When he looked now, it seemed that her belly was swollen, and…

Ooooooooooh no…

Her skin seemed to be tinged with the faintest offyellow streaks overlain by tiny red spots…

"Get off me!" he shouted, shoving up at her.

Very softly, she said, "I'm going to sit on your face and feed you my worms…"

Her fists were suddenly in his hair, holding him down. She kneed herself higher, trying to position her groin over his mouth…

Loren almost fainted when he glimpsed several narrow wormheads peeking out of the folds of her sex.

He tried to lever her off his body, couldn't, but found enough room to grab the pistol and swipe it upward.

When the gun's blue-steel top strap clacked the back of her head, she fell over.

Loren's heart was a squirming lump. He crawled away backward, stood up against a tree, and aimed-

Several pink worms-pencil-thin and a foot longsquirmed farther out of Annabelle's sex. Her strangely pushed-out stomach seemed to be churning.

She was getting up-

Bam!

He squeezed a shot off into her belly.

Loren managed to not pass out when he witnessed the results of the shot.

The bullet gave her a second navel. Upon impact, a half dozen foot-long worms darted from her vagina, along with a slew of crawling ova. More ova foamed out of the bullet hole.

Then a ten-foot worm snaked out of her mouth, and began to sidewind very quickly toward Loren.

Loren ran faster than he ever had, not at all sure that it would be faster than the worm.

(VII)

Slydes dragged the skinny dark-haired woman by the crotch of her one-piece swimsuit-a convenient handle. He wasn't quite sure why he didn't just kill her right there, but he supposed it was curiosity more than anything.

She might know something.

And Slydes definitely wanted to know what these worms were all about, and those little yellow things, and the shit that had happened to Jonas. The skinny woman might have a clue.

It didn't take him long to get to the farthest head shack, where Jonas grew the bulk of his pot. He dropped the woman, made for the door, but stopped short.

Shit, I gotta piss like a racehorse, it occurred to him.

What didn't occur to him, however, was this: Why the sudden need to urinate when he was so severely dehydrated?

Slydes immodestly opened his pants, then began to go… or tried to. Jesus, he thought. His bladder felt bloated, but only a trickle popped out. I ain't got all day! He pushed, pushed harder, then-

"Ahhh, there she goes."

Suddenly Slydes was voiding his bladder like a floodgate just opened. A few seconds later, though, something struck him as…

Not right.

Slydes looked down-and blanched.

He expected to see a golden arc of urine. But urine wasn't what his bladder was voiding.

It was an arc of BB-sized ova.

Oh, my fuckin' shit!

He couldn't very well stop now; he had to get them all out. Slydes pushed and pushed, thrusting his pelvis ludicrously forward. The clotted stream just kept pouring, and another thing: The more he urinated, the more discomfort he felt.

It was supposed to be the other way around, wasn't it?

He saw now that the ova shooting out of his urethra had gradually gone from the size of BBs to the size of peas. He was literally peeing a pile of ova.

He felt even sicker when he looked at his penis.

It was yellow. With red spots.

"Oh, my fuckin' shit," he groaned.

"Looks like you're infected in a big way," the skinny woman said. She was up on one elbow, watching the grotesque spectacle.

"I ain't infected!" he bellowed. "And who the hell are you anyway? What do you know about this shit?"

"A lot," she said. "My name's Nora Craig, Professor Nora Craig. I'm a marine biologist with the college. You've been infected with what appears to be a genetically hybridized parasite that's part trichinosis worm, part ribbon worm, and part pinworm."

"I ain't infected!" he repeated. "It's-it's-it's… just a few of 'em. Once I piss all of 'em out, I'll be okay."

"You're dreaming, Paul Bunyon. Once you piss all of them out, you'll still have the worms. A lot of those little yellow things already hatched-in you."

Finally, Slydes was done. One last ovum-the size of a gumball-squirmed out.

His face looked understandably sick. He pulled up his shirt, looked with more nausea at his red-spotted beer belly.

What am I gonna do now? he wondered.

When the pile of ova began to move toward Nora, she withdrew a small can of something, and sprayed them.

"What's that?" Slydes demanded.

"Bug repellent. It kills the ova, and the younger worms."

"Give it to me!"

Nora laughed. "It's not going to do you any good, pal. You've got those things all through your body. By now they're insinuated throughout your major organ systems. And some of the ova have already released a virus that's going into your brain. It'll change your behavior too, it'll change your DNA, to make you a more adaptable host. You're a breeding ground for the worms, buddy."