Slither (26 page)

.No, I don't think so," Trent said. He still had his eye
pressed to the microscope, focusing down on the tiny
lens or element or whatever it was. They were trying to
figure out the ..-::markings. "They don't look like
they're worn or eroded at all. It must be some kind of a
microbar code. The military uses nomenclature codes
to mark security equipment. Same thing as a model
number, only coded."

"Security equipment," Nora said, "which makes
sense on a camera lens that small. So that other thing I
found on the cord-it must be a security key."

Trent looked back at her. "Thing on the cord?"

"The thing you said was a radio calibrator," Nora reminded him.

"It had the same markings?"

"See for yourself." She placed the object on the stage.

"The configuration is different but it's the same
style," Trent observed now.

"And you said you've seen them before?"

"I've seen the same sort of thing, but nothing exactly
like these. Usually they're numbers or letters."

"A newer system?"

"It's got to be. For certain kinds of specialized
equipment, the army needs to mark it in a way that
can't be deciphered by an enemy in the field. I'm sure
if you ran a scanner across these markings it would tell
you exactly what this thing is, when it was made,
model number, lot number, stuff like that. It would
also tell you what it's a key for." Trent paused, puzzled. "I'm going to call the S-3 officer at my post, see if
he knows anything about this island still being used
for anything."

"But you're the guy who checks the island every
month," Nora pointed out. "Wouldn't you be the first
to know?"

"Not necessarily," he said. "This thing's got me
thinking." He held it up. "A key, then a security lens,
and what you told me this morning."

'Huh?"

"About the lights being on in some of the head
shacks."

Oh yeah, Nora thought. And he said he didn't have
access to them. You didn't turn the lights on." She saw
the simple deduction. "So it must've been someone else."

"Someone I don't know about. So maybe the army is
using the island for something ... and I don't know
about that, either."

Trent snapped open his cell phone, hit a dial key,
then waited.

"Damn," he said.

"Busy?"

"No, just static. I'd say we were in a bad cell out here,
but my cell phone worked fine yesterday and the day before." He dialed another number and got the same effect.

Nora called the college, just to see if she'd get through.
"I'm getting static, too. Sort of a throbbing buzz."

"Have you made any other calls?"

"A couple times since we got here. The reception was fine. Maybe a tower went down, or a solar flare
broke up some satellite waves."

Trent kept his phone to his ear, listening. Then he
shook his head and closed the phone. "The way the
static rises and falls ..."

"Yeah?"

"It almost sounds like a military signal jammer."

Nora frowned. "That doesn't make sense."

Trent thought about it and shrugged. Then he agreed,
"You're right, that's ridiculous. I'm sure it's just a good
old case of technical difficulties. Why would anybody
jam us?"

"Loren? Do you mind if I snorkel without my top on?"
Annabelle asked. The large, tan-line-delineated breasts
stared back at him as if they themselves awaited the
answer.

Loren amused himself by imagining an array of responses. Of course I mind! What kind of an immoral
cad do you think 1 am? Or, I would find that unduly offensive, Annabelle. Better yet: That's sexual harassment! Expect to hear from my attorney!

"I-I-I ... don't mind at all," he said.

"Oh, that's good." The breasts rose in a perfect pose
when she adjusted her diving mask. "It feels so wonderfully natural underwater, you know?"

"Yeah," he droned.

The dark pink nipples-larger than poker chipsinfiltrated him like a hypnotist's totems. She was a
centerfold come to life, standing before him in utter
nonchalance. Nude now, save for the white thong's
tiny triangle, she was all glimmering skin and voluptuous lines. I'll bet the suntan oil on her body weighs
more than the thong, he thought.

When she leaned over to step into her flippers,
Loren could've collapsed.

This is going to be a realy V wt day ...

Mask propped up on his forehead, Trent appeared
from the trees. He almost dropped the flippers he was
carrying when he noticed Annabelle. He paused to
gulp. This is going to be a really great day ... the
weather, I mean."

'Yeah, not a cloud in the, uh, sky," Loren added.

Annabelle giggled. "'That's great. A threesome.'

"I figured you might need some army expertise finding these bristleworms," Trent added.

'Me more, the merrier." Annabelle leaned over one
more time to pick up her camera.

The beach really is the best place to appreciate natural beauty,' Loren remarked.

"I hear ya," Trent said.

"First time in my life I ever seen a woman wearing a
Dorito."

"Come on, boys!" Annabelle strode off, attributes
bobbing. Loren and Trent followed her like two puppies.

They waded in behind her. Mild surf lapped at their
thighs.

You two know where the bristleworms are?" Trent
asked. "Or is it just potluck?"

'Loren knows,' Annabelle called back. 'We'll follow him.'

Damn it! Loren thought. He wanted to be the one
following her, considering what he'd be looking at.
'You remember, Annabelle," he urged. "We'll just swim
out till we feel the cool-flow, then look down for the
trench. The end with the yellow coral banks is where
the nest is."

'Okay," she agreed. "'T'hen you guys can follow me."

"Smart move,' Trent said aside to Loren. There was
no need to hide their obvious sexism. "She'll be snap ping pictures for a long time once we get to the nest.
Which means plenty of eye time for us."

"Precisely."

Once they'd waded to chest-level, they all mouthed
their snorkels and dove ...

Loren thought of floating within a liquid prism. The
warm water seemed extra buoyant. He marveled at the
sea's schools of silver fish flowing en masse like splinters
of metal, clumps of coral, and squirming anemones,
large yellow-tailed snappers cruising lazily and bright
as neon. Some spine-balls that were urchins rolled below them like tumbleweeds, and when a hefty octopus
spotted them, it froze, tentacles extended, then shot
away before a wake of black ink.

The three of them saw the trench and then the
canary-yellow mass of crenelated coral. That's when
they surfaced, treading water.

"You all saw the coral right at the tip of the trench,"
Loren said. "That's where the bristleworms are. Just
start turning over rocks and you'll see them." He
finnicked more specimen tubes from the net bag that
floated off his belt.

"I'm ready," Annabelle said, hoisting her camera.

Both Trent and Loren were clearly diverted by the vision of Annabelle's floating breasts. "Are we going into
the trench?" Trent asked.

"It's not advisable," Loren said.

"Why?" Annabelle asked. "I could get some great
shots."

"What's in the trench?" it was Trent's turn to ask.

"Well, seafans, featherduster anemones, light-emitting
coral that flashes like Christmas lights," Loren began.

"That sounds pretty cool," Trent said.

"Oh, let's go," Annabelle urged.

"And probably moray eels that are big enough to bite
the limbs off humans ..."

"Oh, let's not go," the blonde corrected herself.

"Thank you. So we'll stick to the coral clusters, and
we should find some great scarlet bristleworms."

"No time like the present," Trent said.

The outcroppings of coral were about twenty feet below them. A group of shining pinfish followed them
down as if part of their group. Loren's eyes scanned
past the coral to the end of the trench, which looked
narrow and hundreds of feet long-a minor chasm that
had likely been formed thousands of years ago during
an underwater plate-shift. For a moment he actually
considered investigating, but then noticed some baby
hammerheads loitering at the trench's rim.

Naw, he thought.

His eyes invariably rose back to Annabelle, who hovered over the coral, looking down. Her legs would
slowly open and close to stabilize her position as she
fired off some test shots with the big camera. She
might as well have been nude in the water, all that immaculate flesh suspended before rising bubbles. The
image compelled unshakable fantasies ...

But it was all primordial, he knew. Eye candy, he
thought, inciting my male genetic propensities. He
knew now there was nothing really likable about
Annabelle. She was the stuck-up leader of the cheerleading squad, who'd only settle in the end for the
quarterback, the idea of social status raised to a personal priority. Shallow. Loren had encountered plenty
of shallow people in his life of nerdom, and he'd had
enough .. .

The only woman he really liked was Nora, but ...

She's my friggin' boss.

Such was life.

Trent was staring at Annabelle too, right at the tiny
triangle of fabric between her legs. He's a caveman, all
right, Loren thought, and wants to drag her back to the cave by the hair. It was clear they had something going
on; Annabelle had already made her selection. Survival
of the dumbest, Loren tried to rationalize. It was easier
than admitting he'd never be the kind of tough guy
most beautiful women were attracted to.

He moved in and started flipping over rocks alongside Annabelle. Beige sea dust rose in billows. But then
Annabelle upturned a large flat rock, and ...

Recoiled.

Loren and Trent immediately spotted her reaction,
and swam to her.

She jabbed her finger down violently toward a mass
of scarlet bristleworms.

They were all bloated up to the size of Ping-Pong
balls, some bursting before their eyes to release spews
of tiny pink worms and minuscule yellow ova.

And these things have lungs AND gills, he reminded himself. They could be moving all over the island by now.

Trent and Annabelle swam back ashore, leaving
Loren to tread the water in place.

He debated the idea for several more minutes. Then-

Got nothing better to do .. .

He dove back down, to collect more samples.

Slydes got back to the boat after noon. Was it his imagination or did he still feel sick?

Imagination, he hoped. He'd felt so lousy the past
day or so, but wishful thinking told him that maybe it
was just the flu or something. Trekking back to the
boat he quickly got lost-the island was a labyrinth of
vegetation-but for the entire time he kept glancing at
his arms ... to see if his skin was beginning to yellow.

Like Jonas.

Like a nightmare, he thought.

But he'd seen what had happened to his brotherthe most morbid infection-and he'd seen the worms
himself. He hadn't stayed around long enough for a detailed look. The simple glimpses of the long, pink,
hoselike things had been enough.

Ruth wasn't bullshitting .. .

The air was still, the heat beating down when he
climbed back aboard. He swatted at mosquitoes,
squinting through sweat.

Part of him still couldn't believe what he'd seen ...

Ruth lay sprawled across the dingy cot downstairs,
either sleeping off the oppressive heat or ...

The thought seized Slydes.

She ain't dead, is she?

He had to jostle her a full minute before she came
awake.

"Wake your ass up," he ordered. "It's time to leave."

Her face, arms, and legs looked tacky. Her eyes
puffed up ... almost as bad as her lips. When she
managed to reclaim some awareness, she said, "Did
you bring Jonas back?"

"No. Jonas is ... sick. We're leaving without him-"

"What!"

"And we'll bring back a doctor," he told her. How
could he tell he the truth? We're leaving without him
'cause he got infected by the worms, and he turned
yellow-with red spots-and he'll try to pass that shit
on to us.

Slydes wasn't prepared to say that.

Ruth didn't argue with the lie-her true face. She
didn't care anymore, and neither did Slydes. "I just
wanna go home," she half sobbed.

"We're gonna do that, right now." Slydes helped her
up the steps. The long pink T-shirt was pasted to her
flesh now, her blond hair darkened from so much sweat.
When he grabbed her arm, the skin felt slippery, but ...

It don't look like she's turnin' yellow, he observed,
and me neither. That's all Slydes could hope for.

Abovedecks, the hot air stood still, and the sun
glared off the water so harshly he could barely see.
"The tide ain't high enough, but we're going anyway."

"Good, good! Just start the motor and go!"

The shrill exclamation grated his nerves, only to be
answered by a sound even more shrill when he turned
the ignition key. The engine chugged as metal shimmied.

"What the fuck's wrong now?" Ruth wailed.

Slydes barked back-with more nervousness than
authority: "Sounds like there's no oil in the damn
crankcase!" and then he hauled open the engine compartment on the back deck.

Smoke rose.

When Slydes hunkered down and looked, his heart
fell into his belly like someone dropping a stone off a
high bridge.

"Whatever it is-fix it!" Ruth screamed.

But there'd be no fixing this.

"Someone fucked us good," he conceded to the
sight. "The engine's grenaded."

Ruth crawled forward on bare, scraped knees, the
dark circles under her eyes like charcoal smudges.
"What? What?"

"Someone drilled holes right through the valve covers into the cams ..."

Ruth didn't want to believe it. "Who would do that?
Why would someone do that?"