Edward Lee - Slither

Sunlight moved back across their faces as the macabre object in the sky hovered past.

"Looks like it's going to the control center," Nora figured. "To pick up its crew and their research. Then they'll leave and you can bet your ass those bombs'll go off."

Trent rubbed his face. "Holy shit, l don't know what to do."

"Kill this clown so we can go!" Nora shouted.

"He's my brother!"

"He's infected, Lieutenant. And if you don't kill him, he'll infect you."

Trent and Slydes stared at each other without blinking.

"You're one low-down slimy shit-house rat to even think about killin' your own brother," Slydes said, "I ain't infected, I peed 'em all out! And even if I didn't, once I get back to the mainland, I can go to a doctor and get an antidote or somethin'."

Nora laughed at the bombast. "It's an alien parasite, you asshole! Penicillin won't cut it."

"She's right, Slydes," Trent groaned.

"Our daddy'd be ashamed if he saw you right now, ho-1-din' a.gun on your own brother."

"Our daddy was a thieving cracker scumbag, Slydes," Trent intoned. "Just like you."

Slydes pointed a big finger. "Listen here, little brother. The only person you're gonna be killin' is this skinny smart-mouth bitch. Now quit pointing that gun at me 'foreI shove it up your ass."

Trent didn't lower the gun.

"Kill him," Nora implored. "He's infected. The longer you wait, the more he changes."

Trent's confusion made him cross-eyed. "Then how come we're not infected? We've been on the island longer than him."

"Mosquito repellent, suntan oil, these things on our wrists, who knows?" Nora said.

"And where are all these damn worms? You're making it sound like an epidemic. How come I've only seen a few of them?"

"These worms are obviously spawning," she answered. "And when worms spawn, particularly roundworms and similar species, they tend to nest."

"Where?" Trent demanded.

"Either out in shallower water where the temperature will be higher, or some place on the island's surface-any place that's moist and warm. There have got to be thousands of them on the island now, and the bulk of them are probably nesting. That's why we're not seeing a lot of them. But you've seen the ovathey're all over the place. At least half of those ova contain infantile worms."

"I don't know what to do!" Trent yelled, face reddening.

Nora looked right at him. "You better do something fast, because we probably only have a few more minutes to get out of here."

Trent just kept staring at Slydes, the gun still pointing.

"You always were the pussy of the family," Slydes challenged. "You ain't got the balls to drop that gun and go man to man with me."

"Shut up, Slydes."

"I kicked your pussy ass when you were a kid, and I'll kick it now. Daddy always knew you were the weakest of the boys."

Trent smirked. "I'm the only one who made anything for himself."

"Shit. You? The army? You ain't never had the balls for nothin', and you know somethin'? You ain't got the balls to pull that trigger."

Trent sighed. "I'm glad you said that, Slydes-"

Bam!

The round Trent squeezed off hit Slydes right in the nose and flipped him over backward. By the time he landed on his belly, he was dead. In only moments, ova could be seen exiting his mouth.

"Now let's get out of here," Nora said.

But Trent stood still through the veil of gun smoke. Now the pistol was trained on Nora.

"Oh, come on!" she yelled. "What? You're afraid I'm going to tell your superiors that you were letting your brothers grow pot out here? I don't care about it! I won't say anything! Let's just go!"

"I can't take the chance," he feebly replied. "It's my career."

"You're kidding me, right? Right now there's more crucial things going on than your little pothouse! Pardon me, but didn't you see the fucking spaceship that just flew over our heads?"

Trent was melting down from the pressure. He was standing right in front of the head shack on the end, which still had Slydes's key in the dead bolt. Just as he raised the gun's sights to Nora's face--

Something thunked on the head shack door.

Something inside.

Trent's eyes widened on her. "What… was that?"

"Who cares?" Nora shrieked, her face red as a cherry. "Let's go!"

"I'll bet it's Jonas," Trent murmured. "Slydes admitted he didn't actually see him die…"

Another thunk on the door. Trent reached out.

When he turned the knob, the bolt clicked, and-

"Holy fucking shit!"

– the door popped open as if hit by a battering ram. Nora saw at once what had been exerting such pressure against the door.-.. and so did Trent:

Hundreds of pink, shining, twenty-foot worms.

The scorching air that gusted from the head shack smacked Nora in the face with a smell like fresh manure. The worms existed as a shivering mass, covering the head shack floor to a depth of several feet until Trent had opened the door. It was a dam break, and Trent found himself instantly standing in the mass that poured out.

Shock and revulsion turned Trent's face white. When he tried to scream, only the most meager gasp escaped his throat. He all but uselessly emptied his magazine into the creatures that quickly coiled up his legs.

Nora moved backward, half paralyzed by the sight herself. She noted that she'd been wrong in her estima tion, as she saw now that some of the worms were stout as firehoses, and much longer than twenty feet. Several reared their eyeless heads above the mass as if to gloat over their catch, while Tent failed very quickly to escape. He was halfway to the knees in shivering worms.

Bugged eyes sought Nora: "Help me!" he begged.

Not a chance, Nora thought.

It was all Trent could do to stay on his feet. Worms coiled up his arms now, and his waist: Soon he was cloaked in them. He tried to wade out of the mass when one fatter worm spun round his neck and shot its head down his throat. The worm's body began to throb in waves as it began to empty its digestive enzymes into Trent's stomach. Two more thinner worms struggled down the back of Trent's shorts, seeking an alternate orifice. Trent's eyes looked on the verge of ejecting from their sockets.

More and more of the mass poured out, making a shivering pink carpet before the head shack. Nora kept stepping backward.

Eventually the largest worm of all emerged, raising above the mass cobralike. It was close to a foot in girth… and God knew how long.

Though its head had no eyes, it seemed to look right at Nora.

Nora ran.

(VIII)

If their vocalizing could be properly converted and heard by a human, it wouldn't sound like "words" at all, but something more like Morse code. They didn't communicate via sonics, in other words, but by fluctuations in ambient pressure transceived by the theta waves in an autonomic cerebral ventricle. When they were out of their own atmosphere, transponders in their masks trafficked their speech back and forth, through pulses of aneroid signals. They spoke in millibars and dynes, not-sounds-.-

But they had words, just like humans or any highly evolved.life form. They even had their own equivalent colloquialisms, profanities, and figures of speech.

"Where's the damn colonel?" the major asked.

The sergeant was wondering that himself as the manometer in his mask relayed his superior's query. "He said he'd meet us at the debark point, sir." He checked the grid readout on his task strip. It read: "And this is the debark point."

The major looked up. "I don't see the LRV. Maybe the regauge system didn't fire."

He's really worrying, isn't he? the sergeant thought, amused. "It's right there, sir."

The shadow roved over their faces. It took some squinting but eventually the major saw it, and sighed in relief. "That's incredible. The obfuscation systems work so well in this atmosphere."