Slither (10 page)

He sniggied her neck, the big hands still roving her
skin. "Aw, baby, I really missed you."

"You did?"

"Aw, shit yeah. I just got a serious need to have my
hands all over your beautiful body."

"Slydes! How sweet!"

"Tell her why, Slydes," Jonas bid.

"'Cause, ya see, baby, I'm all out of towels and I
sure as shit need something to wipe all this gator slime
off on."

Ruth couldn't have been more offended. "Fuck you!"

Slydes and Jonas heehawed like a couple of donkeys.

.Now be a good girl and drag them jugs back to the
shed."

"And on your way back," Jonas added, "bring us a
couple more beers. If you're lucky"-a cocky grin"I'll lay some on ya later," and then he spread his legs
in the chair and squeezed his crotch.

Yeah, she thought. If I'M lucky. That skinny slob! At
least the blockheads bought her jive about the watch
being fake. That was five big ones in her little pocket,
and-damn it-she deserved it. For all the shit work
she did for those two?

Ruth's back creaked when she picked up the jugs.
She weighed a hundred pounds on a "fat" day, and
each of those three-gallon jugs must've weighed twentyfive pounds apiece. PROWASH: REPTILE HIDE DEGREASER,
one read. The other: TRU-TAN SKIN PREP. It was the stuff
Slydes used on the gator skin, and it stank. To herself,
she admitted, Slydes was a great lover-the big, rough
type, which she went for most of the time. But everything, his hair, his skin, his clothes-Even his jism! she
thought with a knot in her gut-stank of these chemicals, all mixed, of course, with the fishy malodor of alligator.

The brothers swigged beer as they watched her lug
the jugs-true gentlemen. "Oh, Ruth?" Slydes called
out. "One other thing."

"Huh?" she replied, aggravated.

Slydes lifted his leg, twitched a hip, and farted.

The brothers laughed uproariously.

What a pair of perfect assholes, she thought, humping the jugs out the back door. Too bad I'm in love with
the both of them ...

The major looked up at the sergeant. "This is impressive, Sergeant."

The microscopic scans flashed on the viewing
screen, displaying the rate of success before their eyes.
A live birth through a test host, the sergeant realized.
The sergeant wasn't a technician-he'd been trained in
surveillance and covert security procedures-but he
knew this was what the brass wanted. Previous births
using people and higher mammals hadn't worked out;
after the ova had matured, the-juvenile-had been dead.

As the sergeant understood it, the human element
had been an accident. There weren't supposed to be
any people on the island, he knew. Until now they'd
been testing on birds, for their migratory assets. This
made perfect sense, of course: The transfections could
be used more effectively against a potential enemy. Yeah, the brass'll be shitting their pants over this.
There's a big difference between the lab and the field.

"This is better than we could have ever hoped for."
The major typed some notes into his operating report.
"Try to find some other bodies," he said. "If the nodic
dispersals are as successful as these, we've hit some serious paydirt. We'll all get promoted, even the field
contingent such as yourself and the corporal."

"That's good to know, sir." But all the while the sergeant was thinking, I won't count on that. The brass
will hog it all, like they always do.

It didn't matter, though. The sergeant liked being in
the field. It was the only thing that made him feel real.

"So you were saying." The major kept typing, never
looking up. "Four more people have come onto the island?"

"Yes, sir."

"And one of them is military?"

"Yes, sir. I think it's just some sort of escort assignment. He's showing some civilians around."

"A field trip." The major almost laughed. Almost.
"That's amusing. And the other two groups of four?"

"Four are dead and have already been infected-the
first group from several weeks ago. The second group's
half gone."

"But this third group ... you're not worried about
them?"

"Not at this point, sir. Nobody knows anything yet.
I'm sure we'll have a positive infection rate in all of
them soon. And by the time anyone from the mainland
knows-" The sergeant shrugged. "We'll be gone."

"Good. Keep me posted. And I want you and the
corporal to plant more cameras. Keep a close eye on
this latest group."

"Yes, sir."

The major turned off the sampling screen. "Mean while, I'm going to go tell the news to the colonel.
Good work, Sergeant." And then he left the lab.

The sergeant frowned. He was glad he'd never wanted
to be an officer.

Bam, bam, bam! He slammed the metal locker in
one of the rear utility rooms that they were using for
their barracks.

"Come on, Sarge!" the corporal complained, leaning
up in his bunk. "I thought I was going to get to sleep
today."

.You thought wrong, so roust it. Four more people
came onto the island today, three civilians ... and one
officer."

"Damn it ..."

"You're telling me. And the major says you and me
have to mount more cameras out in the woods, so get
up and get the night-vision gear ready."

The corporal rubbed his eyes, muttering. "Why can't
you get the gear?"

"Because I'm the sergeant."

The corporal dragged himself up.

"We'll wait till it's dark. Then we go out." The sergeant left and went down the hall, to the old office he'd
set up as an ops room. His surveillance screens glowed.

"That's one." The sergeant indicated the screen. The
colonel wants me to keep a close eye on this latest
group. He switched around the various camera zones.

This latest group looked like it might be very interesting.

On the screen, the blonde was taking off her clothes.

Annabelle wasn't terribly inhibited about taking her
clothes off in the woods. (She'd done that any number
of times in high school.) Nor was she terribly con- cemed about the prospect of someone catching a
glimpse. It would be a visionary thrill for Trent and the
college boy-and by the looks of them, they could
both use it-and she admitted to herself that she'd actually love for that envious bitch Nora Craig to see her
body. Why?

To show her who's got it and who doesn't.

Annabelle had had a few sexual experiences with
women in the past, and though it wasn't anything
she'd ever really sought out, she didn't object when
the prospect came up. But, no, she had no physical
attraction for Nora at all-a short, reedy, and barely
bosomed bookworm-however, Annabelle had no
problem flaunting her body to keep other women in
their place. It's not ego, she reminded herself as she
took off the bikini top. It's honest self-awareness. It's
confidence. I can't worry about other girls being jealous just because I'm more beautiful than them .. .

She frowned at the off-the-wall shower: an olivedrab curtain hanging from an elevated steel ring. Stenciled letters read FAIR-WEATHER FIELD HYGIENE UNIT.

She thumbed off her bottoms and stepped through
the ugly green curtain. Inside, she glanced down at her
body and smiled. Sorry, girls. I can't help it that I am
All That. Her only displeasure was the absence of a
suntan, but she'd be working on that here. She gritted
her teeth reaching for the steel knob-I'll bet the water's going to be ice-cold!-then squealed when she
found out she was right. It was hot today, yes, and humid too, but even with that, the spray made her shiver,
made her lustrous white skin go tense. This was a bit
more than refreshing. When she turned her breasts into
the spray, she squealed again as her nipples shot up.

A moment later, though, the water turned warm,
then hot enough that she had to adjust the knobs. I'm impressed, she thought. Why go to all that trouble to
provide hot water? But then she thought about it ...

Of course they did. They're pulling out all the stops
because they know I'm a nationally known nature
photographer with a famous magazine ...

Or at least she liked to think so.

Suddenly her nerves felt charged as she sudsed herself. Of all the places to get horny-an army field
shower! Annabelle believed in honest acknowledgment
with regard to sexual desire. There was sex, and there
was love, and there was sex with love, and then sex
without love. Sport fucking, she remembered her
roommate in college calling it. Annabelle was very
open sexually; if she was attracted to a man, she'd let
him know and never felt slutty about it. I'm just being
honest. What's wrong with that? When a guy sleeps
around, that's okay, but when a woman does, she's
promiscuous.

Annabelle didn't care. She knew that most women
envied her looks, so naturally they'd throw any available stone.

But the pickings here were slim. Loren was a cross
between Revenge of the Nerds and that Alfred guy on
Mad Magazine. He'd be good for some signals-she always needed someone to carry her bags-but that's as
far as that would go. Lieutenant Trent was no prize, either. Over the hill, she thought. But she supposed he'd
do in a pinch. He seemed very serious, so maybe he'd
be that way in bed .. .

Annabelle adjusted the knobs to make the water
cool. Perfect ... Shampoo turned her hair to a pile of
fragrant foam. I should've recolored my hair before
coming, she worried. I hope my roots aren't showing.
Parrots cawed over the hiss. When she tipped her
head, the shampoo's foam sluiced between her breasts to her pubis, which she lathered lingeringly. Without
thinking, she slid her hands up over her belly; her skin
seemed hypersensitive. Next, her fingertips were playing over the already firm nipples, and then the most
lusty sensations roved through her body. No, there was
nothing sexy about this assignment-bristleworms!-
and nothing sexy about the people with her. But-

The only thing Annabelle needed ... was herself ...

Her feet parted. Her fingers slipped overtly between
her legs, through bubbly hair to the folds of her sex.
She found she didn't need men, nor images-she was
enough, her robust body, nerves squirming like electric
current as the cool spray stimulated her skin. She murmured a chuckle to herself-God, what if someone IS
peeking? She could almost envision Trent, the army
stick-in-the-mud, or Loren the Nerd, huffing with an
eye to the curtain gap. Just to satisfy her curiosity then,
she opened her eyes to check the gap ...

Of course, there was no one there.

Common sense returned. I didn't come here to play
with myself in a portable shower! And then she rinsed
all the soap -off,-reached- to turn off the water-

Her shriek whistled through the air. She tore out of
the shower, dripping and never more naked. Her bare
feet crunched over dried brush and palm leaves, and
when she remembered exactly what she'd seen in the
shower, she shrieked again.

Annabelle manically patted her hands over every
square inch of her body that she could reach, feeling
for the things. She had only enough time to wrap a
towel around herself before Trent, Loren, and Nora
bolted into the cove.

"What's wrong!" Trent exclaimed.

Annabelle stood huddled, shivering but not from
cold. "Those things! They were in the shower!"

"What things, Annabelle?" Loren asked.

"Like that thing on Lieutenant Trent's back earlier!
That yellow thing with the red spots! But there's a
bunch of them!"

Nora flung open the green shower curtain. The others shouldered in behind her.

"More spumarius," Nora observed. "Froghopper
larvae."

On the inside of the shower curtain, a drove of the
bizarre off-yellow buds seemed adhered. A few more
dotted the water pipe that led to the showerhead.

"Wow," Loren said.

"Get some collection vials," Nora told Loren. Then
she leaned to peer more closely at the things. They
crawled along on the plastic sheet, perhaps moving an
inch every two or three seconds. "I can't believe the
rate of locomotion," she said. "Didn't think they moved
that fast."

"You're damn right they move fast," Annabelle
blurted, her fist clutching the towel to her wet bosom.
"They were almost at my feet!" She pointed down.

More of the yellow things bumbled around in the
sopped ground. One was almost at the tip of Nora's
sneaker. When she stepped away to the right, the viscid buds shifted right. Nora frowned, then stepped to
the left.

The things on the ground shifted to the left.

"That's really strange for froghopper larvae," Nora
informed them. "They're not predatory at all, and they
don't have the necessary sensory organs to detect other
living things in proximity."

"They're sensing something now," Trent said, still
irked by his own experience. "When you move, they
move."

Nora stepped out, confused. "Right, and another
strange thing is the size. Froghopper larvae are about
the size of BBs, but this genus is significantly larger."

Annabelle fingered wet hair off her brow. "Who gives
a shit? Would somebody please kill those things?"

Nora pursed her lips. "Annabelle, we already told
you, they're harmless."

"How do you know?" Annabelle challenged with a
scowl. She turned in a huff and stalked back toward
the camp.

Nora was leaning farther; several of the things
weren't but a few inches from her face as she inspected
them. "Maybe I ..."

"Maybe what?" Trent said. He seemed aggravated.

"Maybe I was wrong about this-"

Before Trent could respond, Loren reappeared with
some collection tubes and forceps. "A spumaria this
size? You know what I'm thinking, right?"

"That it's-"

"That we've discovered a new species."

Nora shook her head. "Loren, what I'm thinking is
that maybe these things aren't froghopper larvae at all."