Slither

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Ruth grabbed Slydes's beefy arm, her eyes wide in trepidation. "We're not going in there! Fuck that shit! I'm not going near that place!"

Slydes frowned as he sized up the old utility shed. "Keep your voice down," he gruffed. "And what's your damn problem now?"

"That's where I fell asleep the other night! Then the zombie dragged me out and dropped me in the woods, for the worms!"

The zombie again. What could Slydes do? It wasn't a zombie, he knew, but it was almost as bad: an infected human. "The zombie ain't here, Ruth. And there might be food in that shed. We ain't eaten anything in a couple of days."

"I ain't fuckin' hungry! Let's go!" she pouted.

"Plus, I'm dyin' of thirst, and don't tell me you ain't either." Slydes pointed through the trees. "There's a cooler right there. Maybe there's something in it we can drink."

"There's nothing in it!" she kept complaining. "And even if there is, it's hot by now. That thing's been there for days." She jerked around, pointing down. "Look, there's a stream. We can drink that water. Then we won't have to go into that fuckin' shed." Animated, she rushed to the narrow brook, got to her knees. She was about to cup some water into her hands, but-

"Fuck," she muttered.

Slydes smiled.

The stream was full of tiny pink worms.

"Yeah, you go ahead and drink that, Ruth. Go ahead."

She rushed back over, grossed out. "Let's just get out of here. You said all we had to do is find one of the other boats."

We will. In a minute." He grabbed her hair and shoved her toward the shed.

"Fucker!"

"Now come on," he ordered, "and quit being a pain in the ass." Jesus, this is too much work, he thought. Right now her pretty backside ain't nothing but a ball and chain… He followed her as she stumbled forward.

The heat was crushing them; Slydes felt like slowcooking meat in his jeans and boots, his shirt drenched. Ruth's pink T-shirt looked like wet tissue paper pasted to her bosom and belly. Pretty soon there won't be any water left in me to sweat out… He didn't know much about medical stuff, but he could imagine that in this heat, with no water, they wouldn't last much longer. In spite of his physical strength, each step reminded him how weak he was getting. Ruth looked like she'd keel over any second.

"Fuck! Look!" she yelled next.

Crawling very slowly down the shed's front wall were half -a dozen yellow ova.

Those fuckers! Slydes thought. He remembered them well. Some of 'em have baby worms in them, and some of 'em… What had Jonas told him? Stuff inside that changes you when they bite. "Just steer clear of them," he told Ruth. He flipped open the cooler sitting out front.

Aw, shit!

It was full of worms and ova. They seemed to be percolating in there, incubating. They must like heat, he considered.

He flipped the lid closed. "Nothing in there."

"Oh yeah!" Ruth seemed delighted. She bent over a portable Coleman grill next to the cooler. Dried-up burgers lay on the ground, but next to them lay a barbecue fork. Ruth wielded it like a sword. "Now we can defend ourselves!"

Slydes winced. "All that bong resin's clogged your brain. What are you gonna fight with a barbecue fork?"

"The worms! Next time one sneaks up on us, I'll jab it with this."

"You do that." Slydes dismissed her banter. "Let's just look inside."

Ruth stepped back from the door. "Slydes, I'm fuckin' serious. I don't wanna go in there. The zombie might be there."

"Ruth, if the zombie's in there, I'll shove his head up his ass, okay? Then I'll stick him with your barbecue fork, and that'll be that."

Her puffy lips pressed together. "You don't even believe thereis a.zombie, but -I don't give a shit."

"Fine. Now let's go in. I'll even go first." He opened the creaky door, then-

Oh, what the hell?

– grabbed Ruth by the hair and shoved her in first.

"You're a fuck, Slides! You're a lyin' piece of fuck!"

"Yeah, yeah." He stepped in after her, looked around. At least it was cooler in here, out of the sun; the little windows were open, letting in a bit of a cross breeze.

"See, pea brain? No zombies in here."

Ruth gusted out a relieving sign. 'And-shit!' Her dirty bare feet thunked to the corner. "Food!"

Some plastic bags lay on the floor, full of potato chips and cheese curls.

At least that's somethin, Slydes thought. It was the closest he'd come to thanking the Fates. "Any sodas in them bags, any bottled water?"

Ruth bumbled through the bags. "No. But at least we've got something to eat." She ripped open the cheese curls. A moment later, her cheeks looked stuffed as -a chipmunk's.

If we don't get some water soon, we're gonna die, Slydes thought point-blank. He didn't dare voice this to Ruth, though. He opened a bag of chips and began munching. But if I could get that little gas grill lit outside, I could boil some of the creek water. That would kill any worms or ova. "You got a lighter on you?"

"Fuck no," she said, crunching more curls. Her fingers and puffy lips were orange.

"You gotta be shitting me. You smoke pot like they're cigarettes and you don't have a lighter on you?"

Ruth glared. "Well, I had one, Slydes, but like I told you, before the zombie tried to rape me he tore off my shorts! And the lighter was in my shorts! Does it look like I got any pockets to carry a lighter in?" She faced him arrogantly in the drenched T-shirt, then flapped the damp hem up. "See any lighter, Slydes? Huh?"

"All I see is your dirty camel toe." He pointed to the other corner: some clothes and towels. "There's a pair of shorts there. Put 'em on."

Ruth made a face, as though the suggestion were outlandish. 'I'm not putting on some other girl's shorts! She might have crotch rot."

"I guarantee you, Ruth, your own crotch rot'll kill anything on them shorts." And then he grabbed her hair and shoved her forward. "Now put 'em on! Every time you bend over, I gotta look at your ass hair."

"I don't have ass hair, you fuck!"

Slydes stared her down. "Your lips are gonna be a lot fatter in about one second-"

Ruth smirked, and pulled on the shorts. She reached into one pocket. "Hey! Money!" She held up a small roll of cash. "And-" From the other pocket she extracted a cigarette lighter.

"All right." Slydes snatched the lighter away from her and headed for the door.

"What are you gonna do?"

"Boil some of that brook water, Einstein. Kill the worms."

"You're a genius!"

He went back outside. He'd hoped that eating something would make him feel better, but instead it made him feel worse. Yeah, shit, we're probably dyin' of dehydration and don't even know it yet… But maybe some luck had come his way.

He set the grill back upright and opened the small propane cannister to high, then snapped the lighter over the element.

The lighter worked fine, but the grill didn't catch.

Don't tell me.-.-. He put his ear to the element.

There was no hiss.

God is really kicking our asses today. He chucked the lighter into the woods, disgusted.

Some char marks seemed to sweep up the shed's wall. Must've been a fire here, he realized, but somebody managed to put it out. A logical deduction.

Yet who was the bigger "pea brain"? Slydes walked right back into the shed and never even noticed the water hose lying at the other end.

"Ain't no fuckin' gas in the tank," he said, back inside.

"Fuck." Ruth sat against the wall, an orange hand to her belly. "I feel like shit, Slydes. I feel like I could croak. Maybe those worms infected us."

Slydes wanted to throw up, in part from how he felt, and in part from remembering exactly what Jonas looked like the last time he saw him. if we got infected, we'd be turnin' yellow, like Jonas. We ain't infected, we just need water." Darker thoughts entered his head. He kept looking at Ruth… and the stark veins standing out in her sweaty neck. He knew this:

When hunters couldn't find water, they could drink the blood of any animals they killed. Blood was mostly water.

In which case, Ruth was a veritable bucket of water.

Am I that much of a scumbag? he asked himself. The question almost bothered him.

Almost.

He had his Buck knife right there on his belt. He'd skinned and gutted many a gator with it. And compared to gator skin, cutting Ruth's throat would be like putting his knife through mashed potatoes.

The question appeared to be answered.

But if he was going to kill her for the water in her blood, then-

I just gotta have it one more time, Slydes figured. His lack of reservations, perhaps, represented his human truth, so at least he was being honest. He was going to use her mouth for his own sexual pleasure and then drink her blood. Great guy.

He sat down and put an arm around her.

"What-are-you doing?"

"Cuddlin'," he said.

Ruth rolled her eyes. "Now?"

Now, or any time. You're always beautiful."

Ruth was stunned by the compliment, however phony. Slydes held her tighter, caressed a breast. "Come on, baby. I've been missin' you fierce."

Ruth's expression showed sheer befuddlement. Any other time, she'd be happy to oblige, but under these circumstances? Jonas dead along with God knew who else? Giant worms, and a zombie in the woods? Plus, she was feeling really lousy…

"Slydes…"She tried to push his hand away, but by now he'd already pulled her T-shirt up. "I feel like shit, like I'm gonna throw up." – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Slydes's beard tickled her when he kissed her neck. "Please, baby, don't leave me hanging. I'm needing you really bad."

"I'm not in the mood, Slydes!" she outright whined.

He had his jeans opened, and pushed her head down. "It'll only take a minute, sugar. See, Ruth, you're so beautiful, it just makes me hot for you all the time."

Ruth frowned and shrugged. It wasn't the first time she'd performed a sex act simply because there was nothing else to do. Slydes groaned once her expertise was upon him. He obviously wasn't the most considerate of men, and given that he'd been sweating and stinking on this island for the past three days only proved more of Ruth's resilience. Yeah, she's a trooper, all right, he thought, the sensations building already. In which case she'd be a dead trooper very shortly.

Just as Slydes would have his moment, she stopped and looked up at him. "Oh, fuck, what a couple of morons we are!"

"What!" he shouted, outraged. He pushed her head back down. "Come on, girl! You don't stop right before a guy's going to-"

"I just thought of where we can get water!"

"Huh!" The distraction spun in his head. Yeah! Your neck! Again, he tried to force her head back down.

"Would you wait a minute!' she managed to blurt.

"We can get all the water we want at the head shacks where Jonas grows his pot. The drip lines, from that old army filter or whatever the fuck it is!"

Slydes eyes widened. Holy shit, she's right! Unbeknownst to her, Ruth's perceptivity had just that second saved her life. "'That's good thinkin', baby!"

'Fuck-yeah!"-

"But finish the job." And then he shoved her head back down.

Ruth, indeed, finished the job, treating Slydes to a potent climax, the residue of which was displaced into her mouth.

"Aw, yeah, honey, that was great…"

But Ruth sat bolt upright, eyes pried open. Her lips puckered in distaste, as though she'd taken in a mouthful of turpentine.

"What's wrong with you?" Slydes asked, refastening his pants.

Ruth spat loudly on the floor, and when she looked at what she'd expectorated, she grimaced. "Oh, fuck! That's fuckin' gross!"

"What'choo talking about?" Slydes leaned over and looked.

Oh, fuck. That IS fuckin' gross, his thoughts heartily agreed. There were no other words.

Roiling amid his spat-out semen were hundreds of tiny yellow beads, smaller versions of the ones he'd plucked off his body the other night.

"You're infected with those worm things!" Ruth shrieked at him.

"Bullshit! I ain't infected. They came out of you! They came up out of your belly or somewhere!"

Ruth jumped up. "They didn't come out of my stomach, Slydes, and you know it! They came out of your pecker!"

Slydes stroked his beard. Had they? He looked at his arms, looked under his shirt. My skin ain't yellow, he saw. Jonas said you turned yellow if you were infected. But…

Ruth wasn't yellow, either.

And the ova came from somewhere. "They were on the floor already, like the ones outside," he tried to convince himself.

Ruth stomped around the shed, spitting incessantly. "I could feel 'em squirming in my mouth, Slydes!" Then glared as though he were a leper.

Slydes didn't much care for that look.

"You're infected! I'm getting out of here!"

The predicament irritated Slydes… so he decided to kill her anyway. I know it ain't me who's infected, he kept telling himself.

What else could he believe?

As he reached for his knife, though, he cast a glance at the semen again.

Those little yellow worm eggs…

Had they doubled in size in the last two minutes?

"I'm fuckin' sorry, Slydes, but I gotta get away from you," Ruth declared. "I don't wanna get infected with those fuckin' things."

I'm carving her up, Slydes resolved. It was a matter of pride. He'd done a lot for her, and now she was abandoning him.

Low-class.

Slydes shucked his knife just as Ruth opened the door to flee the shed.

But she didn't flee.

She screamed and just stood there.

Someone was blocking the door, and when she jerked backward, Slydes saw who it was… or, not really even who anymore, but what.

He would have no way of knowing Robb White by name, he only remembered Ruth's claim of a big yellow zombie lurking around, and then Jonas's dying revelation that the very first person to be infected by the worms continued to live through repeated mutations. He's a big guy, Jonas had related. Watch out for him. He's trompin' around here like a fuckin' zombie.

This person/thing was a "big guy," all right. He stood huge in the open doorway, hair all gone now, replaced by mottled yellow scalp, old swim trunks essentially rotting on his pelvis. The eyes looked more like wads of spit, but somehow they seemed to recognize Ruth.

Then the ruined, yellow face… smiled.

"He's come back for me!" Ruth shrieked. She dodged a swipe from a huge arm, then ducked behind Slydes. "Stick him with your knife, Slydes! He's gonna kill us! He wants to feed us to the worms!"

Moments of consternation such as this were difficult to reckon. Slydes was scared shitless and paralyzed as he stood there, Ruth hiding behind him. His first instinct, indeed, told him to fight. But when he took a closer look at the thing that was thunking into the shed with mutated arms outstretched, he knew there was no point. He wouldn't be fighting a man, he'd be fighting an organic monstrosity.

The face beamed back at him, yellow and runneled. A gray tongue emerged to lick segmented lips. Slydes noticed a chunk missing from the guy's cheek, revealing a sore crater in pus-rife flesh. Muscles and veins flexed beneath the shiny, runny skin, and worse than the inhuman sick-yellow hue were the blazing red spots.

And, yes, the thing was smiling.

It's smilin' at Ruth…

"Don't let him get us, Slydes!" she screamed.

"Us?" Slydes questioned.

This would be even better than cutting her throat.

Ruth's screams cartwheeled around the room when Slydes turned, grabbed her by the shoulders, and threw her into the waiting arms of the college jock formerly known as Robb White.

Was the thing giggling? Slydes thought so. It wrapped its arms around Ruth's slender physique, dragged her to the floor, then wrapped its stout legs around her too.

"You coward piece of fuck scumbag motherfucker, Slydes!" Ruth cut loose in her loudest scream yet.

Slydes stepped around them, and slipped out the doorway.

"Oh, fuck, no, no, n!"

Slydes took one last peek inside. Ruth's zombie had pulled down its rotten swim trunks, and was now yanking down her shorts. Slydes closed the door and jogged away.

(II)

"I've never been this far across the island," Loren said. He followed Nora through the thickening woods. Time and disuse had narrowed the trails this far in, to mere overgrown scratches; they could barely see them enough to follow them.

"I've explored a little," Nora confirmed, "but not quite this deep. According to Lieutenant Trent, the old control center is this way."

"You really think there's someone there?"

Nora tried to weigh the question in concrete terms. What they'd discovered thus far almost seemed unbelievable, but then she knew she believed it all because she'd seen it all. "Actually, Loren, I really do."

Loren gulped, and went silent.

"Seriously," she went on. "I can't deny what we've seen. A parasitic worm that displays features and traits of multiple species? Their hydroskeletons and ova growing exponentially? That sounds like laboratoryinduced mutation."

"I know, but-"

"And we have found surveillance cameras all over the island. I've seen them, you've seen them. Now, you and Trent just told me that Annabelle got hauled up into a tree by a twenty-foot worm. That's an unbelievable story-but I believe it because I just saw several worms almost as long back in the trench. You and I both know worms like these can't grow this large or this fast without some kind of artificial catalyst inducing it." She paused. "And I know I saw a submarine out in that trench. It wasn't oxygen deprivation, Loren, and it wasn't hallucinosis spurred by variances in water pressure."

"I believe you saw a sub or submersible," Loren admitted. "And I believe something really screwed up and unnatural is going on here. But aren't we asking for trouble now? Aren't we getting in too deep?"

"One of our party is already dead," Nora reminded him, "and we know other people have been killed on this island recently. We already are in too deep."

"I want to know what's going on, too. But if there really are people at this control center, what are we going to do? Ask them what they're doing? Invite them to lunch?"

"No. We're going to apprehend them, with that gun you have. We're going to get to the bottom of this."

Loren laughed hard-and nervously. "They're military, Nora! They have guns too, and the big difference is they know how to use theirs. I'm just a mildmannered polychaetologist, not Wyatt Earp."

Nora shoved away some branches and moved on. "Relax, Loren. We're just going to take a look. You're a scientist, too-aren't you curious about what's going on here?"

"Um-hmm, and Magellan was curious about what was going on in the Philippines… and he got butchered by a bunch of-pissed-off natives."

Nora shook her head. "Just come on."

"What's that there?"

Loren had noticed a small tin shed that seemed to be humming.

"It's the filtration and desalinator for the island's water supply." Then Nora pointed to the black power cable and metal box it branched off from. "And that's the voltage regulator."

Loren stared at it. "And the generator is… where?"

"It's over there some place," she said quickly. "Come on."

Loren followed the cable, finding its terminus at the large slab of concrete on the ground, and the accommodating sign: KEEP AWAY! RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL IN USE!

Loren frowned at her. "No wonder I've never heard a generator motor. There isn't one. That's an RTG, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Nora admitted. "I found it by accident the other day; we're not supposed to know about it. Trent said I'll actually have to be debriefed by army security people just for seeing the damn thing."

"I guess so. If terrorists knew this was here, they could use it to make a dirty bomb if they could get to the source material. Probably Cesium 137."

"Trent said the army's not worried about it. The source is buried in the middle of fifteen tons of steelreinforced concrete."

Loren chuckled. "Oh yeah, that makes me feel a lot more secure. Shit, Nora, maybe it's leaking. Maybe the RTG is causing the mutations."

"That's impossible, and you know it. It's only a couple of rads heating up a thermocoupler. We've seen these things in our own field. They're safe, and their power is exaggerated."

"We better hope so. Greenpeace would love to hear about this. Let's call Nader."

"Just come on!"

Another black cable paralleled another scratch of a trail. Nora and Loren followed it through a small clearing. "No anoles or iguanas," Nora said. "Have you noticed that?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Loren pointed down, a look of disgust on his face. "And check that out."

Another possum lay dead at the base of a tree. Bloated and quivering. Nora peered a little too closely and noticed newly hatched pink worms-not a half inch long-exiting the animal's ear and anus.

"And look there," Loren added. "But don't get too close."

A rusted sign stood before them on metal posts. It read U.S. ARMY MISSILE COMMAND-RESTRICTED AREA.

At first Nora thought the quarter-sized pocks were just spots of corrosion, but then they began to move.

"Those are the biggest ova yet," Loren noted.

"I know. They must grow selectively, like the Polychaetes myerus. It's all in the genes. While some ova hatch early, others hatch late, to evade predators or hostile climate."

At least ten fat, yellow ova crawled along the sign's metal face. With them this large, Nora could see that the red spots on their outer skins were oval-shaped: The spots seemed to move, too, as the outer skin very slowly throbbed.

Nora felt cruxed. "These things are all over the place. They're in the water and on land. They're infect ing everything… So why haven't they infected us?"

"That's a good question." Loren stepped closer to the sign, checking at his feet for ova that might be on the ground. "They probably sense carbon dioxide, sweat, and pheromones, like lots of worms and insects." Then he exhaled toward several of them. Just as the ova had done in their field lab, these immediately began to move in Loren's direction. "And we've been out here for most of a week, asleep in our tents, out in the woods sweating up a storm. That girl told me her entire party was killed by these things, and most of them were infected the first day they were here. How have we managed to not attract these things for all this time?"

"Maybe luck," Nora said. "Plus, we've been spraying ourselves constantly with insect repellent. We know that direct contact with the repellent kills them." She looked at her wrist. "Oh yeah, and we've got these things." She held up her wrist, showing the repellentlaced plastic bracelet. When she moved the bracelet closer to the ova, they began to back away.

"Well, that's good to know," Loren said. "At least it's a little protection."

"Sure, but let's be practical. Tiny worms and ova are one thing, but these little bracelets aren't going to stop a large, fully mature worm. The one that attacked me in the water wasn't the least bit affected by this bracelet."

"Yeah, and neither was the twenty-footer that got Annabelle. She had a bracelet too."

"We better put more spray on now that we're thinking of it," Nora said and withdrew the narrow can from her pocket. She aimed the can down at her legs and pressed the button. Nothing came out.

"It's all gone!"

"Terrific," Loren said. "We better hope that Trent has some more."

Nora tossed the empty can. "Come on, let's keep going anyway. just be careful."

They burgeoned forward through heavier brush, and after just a few more yards…

"See it?" Nora asked.

"Yeah…"

The old blockhouse building looked jammed into the woods, overrun with brush, Spanish moss, and vines that crawled down from the trees above.

"The control center for the old missile site," Nora said. "Just like Trent told us."

"Shit, that place looks like it hasn't been used for twenty years," Loren observed of the squat, bunkerlike structure.

"Maybe it's just supposed to look that way. So no one bothers with it." Nora kept her eyes on the station, imagining what might be inside. What did she suspect? A secret barracks, a camouflaged field lab or research outpost? I don't know WHAT I'm thinking…

They both crept up slowly.

"No windows," Loren noticed.

"Of course not… but there's the door."

A black, metal-framed door stared back at them, with a similar warning: RESTRICTED. Loren noticed it at once: "Look. The doorknob."

Nora saw what he meant. There actually wasn't a doorknob anymore, just a rust-rimmed hole. Loren hooked his finger in the hole and pulled, but the door didn't budge. "Maybe it was welded shut when they closed down the site."

"Then why do I see light inside?" Nora questioned when she leaned over and peeked into the hole.

"You're kidding me…" Something caught Loren's eye. "But check this out," he said and pointed down to a heavily cased air-conditioning unit. It sat midbuild- ing, bolted to a cement grounding. It was rusted through, its grate corroded. They could see the fan deeper down, caked with more corrosion.

"That thing hasn't turned in years," Nora said.

"So that means there can't be anyone inside. With no windows open? It's 110 in there."

Fine. But why's there a light on? Nora went back to the door. Head-level against the frame was a black plate of some kind. "What's that? A military dead bolt?"

"Feels almost like plastic or polycarb," Loren said after he brushed his fingers against it. "The temperature's cooler than the door metal. It's a tack weld or something. If it was a dead bolt, there'd be a keyhole."

Nora touched it too. "There is-at least I think so. See that?"

Loren squinted.

There was no sign of a key cylinder, but there was indeed a tiny slit in the black plate, perhaps an eighth of an inch long.

"You can barely see it," Loren said. "Must be some high-tech security lock."

Nora was unconscious of the impulse; she was reaching down into her pocket and before she even knew what she was doing, she'd withdrawn that pen- dantlike object she'd found in the woods: the strip of metal on a neck cord.

"Interesting," Loren said.

Nora put the end of the pendant into the slit. Out of reflex, she tried to turn it, as one would a key, but it began to bend.

"Don't turn it," Loren directed. "There's no cylinder like a regular lock. Just push it in as far as it'll go."

Nora did so, and-

Tick.

The door popped open an inch.

Both of them stiffened.

"I guess this is what we wanted," Loren said with no enthusiasm at all.

Nora was suddenly scared herself. This is a new lock on a very old door. That key she'd found on the trail the other day could only mean that military people were using this island, in secret. Not even Trent knew about it…

"Cool air," she whispered to herself. Another question mark. With no sound of an air conditioner running?

"Yeah, feels like seventy degrees in there," Loren said. "You tell me."

"There must be fans on or something," Nora replied. "But I'd say we've got bigger questions to answer."

"How's this for a question: Who's going to be the first to go in?"

Nora peered ahead into the murk. "How about you?"

"Why? Because I'm the man?" Loren frowned into the doorway. He didn't hear anything but he did see some dim lights on. A clean-floored hallway led straight down the middle of the building, with doors on either side.

"This was my idea," Nora owned up.

"Yeah. Plus, you get paid more than me."

Nora almost laughed. She stepped inside, and Loren followed.

"Shhh," she reminded him.

She took long, slow steps. The coolness inside sucked around her, which felt good after being in such dank, humid heat. When they'd first stepped in, the building seemed dead silent, yet after a few steps Nora heard something humming. Odd white lightbulbs that were small and circular dotted the wall up near the ceiling. They both stopped at the first door. There was no dead bolt on it like the outside door. A sign read PROCESSING UNrr, but it was peeling at the corners, obviously very old.

"Are we really going to do this?" Loren whispered. "What if there's somebody on the other side?"

Nora didn't want to think about it. They'd come here for information, and chickening out now seemed worse than pointless. "We'll run," she said and turned the knob.

Old hinges creaked as she pushed open the door.

"Wow," Loren said.

No one stood waiting for them, but they immediately saw old desks and tables pushed together to form a platform for some very fancy-looking security monitors.

'These are the highest-tech LCD flat screens I've ever seen," Nora said of the dozen one-foot-square panels. Each panel framed a different area of the island.

"We were right," Nora said. "All those little cameras are operational."

"They're monitoring the entire island." Loren leaned toward the glowing screens. "Look, there's the shower, our campsite, and-shit!" He pointed to a frame. "I was just there! That's where the girl killed herself, on that boat."

Nora saw the canopied Boston Whaler anchored in a small lagoon. "We never even knew that lagoon was here."

"Here's another lagoon," Loren said and pointed. "And another boat…"

This panel showed another lagoon hemmed in by trees and mangrove roots. Tied off to one of the roots was a small, unoccupied skiff.

"Jesus, there really have been a lot of people on this island," Nora guessed.

"Yeah, and they're probably all dead now, infected. The girl who shot herself said they were being used for a scientific test, and that these military people in the gas masks were monitoring them."

"Which means they've been monitoring us too," Nora reminded him.

They both chewed on the thought for a while. The silence began to unnerve Nora.

"Why monitor the north beach and not the others?" she said next, looking at the one frame that showed the shore.

"Well, for one, that's where the bristleworm nest " was.

"Yeah, and it's also where the trench is, where these guys parked their submersible." She'd almost forgotten about that. "They came here in it, in secret, to set up. But I'm sure there's a lot more than this," she said of the room itself. Security equipment was suspicious. But Nora needed more proof.

Proof of genetic experiments.

'Let's look in some more rooms."

"Or let's not," Loren posed. 'Ms is crazy coming here in the first place. We're going to get caught. We already know the navy or army or some military agency is engaged in a secret project. So let's just go."

'You go, then. Go back to the campsite and wait for Lieutenant Trent. I'll only be another few minutes."

Loren scowled. "Shit. Come on, I'll go with you."

They left the room and went into the next. More screens on more tables, and old shelves filled with cases almost like tackle boxes.

"More of that code," Loren said when he looked at a screen.

"It must be their research data after being encrypted."

The screen was filled the same dots and dashes they'd seen on the cameras and the key.

The first line on the screen read:

"I wish I could take a picture of this," Nora said. "Or print it out."

Loren looked around. "I don't see a printer hooked up to any of this gear."

She pointed. "Look and see what's on those shelves. I'll check this closet."

A rusted door narrower than the others stood in the corner. I was wrong it's not a closet, she thought when she opened it. It was another room, illumined by more of the small round lightbulbs. Hanging along the wall were several black rubberized suits with hoods, and widely visored gas masks. From pegs on the opposite wall dangled narrow black belts, and connected to the belts were fabric pockets containing tools.

The tools, too, were black. Nora slipped one out. What the hell is this? A ruler? The tool extended via a slide mechanism, but for the life of her she didn't know what it might be used for.

These narrow doors must connect all the rooms, she gathered when she opened another door like the one she'd used to enter here. She was looking into the first room they'd searched, with all the surveillance monitors.

"Nora," Loren whispered. "I think I hit pay dirt."

She went back out. Loren had taken down one of the cases and opened it. It reminded her of the bloodsample cases that doctors' offices sent to labs. When the case had been opened, racks popped up on either side. The racks contained what she could only guess were-

"Specimen tubes," Loren said, holding one up. "They're square instead of round, but it's obvious that's what these are. Check it out."

Nora took the tube. Floating in a fluid that looked like light mouthwash was a spotted ovum identical to those they'd seen all over the island.

"Here's another one."

The next tube contained a half-inch-long worm.

"There's your proof," Loren said, "so let's go."

Nora looked at more tubes, which all contained either pristine examples of ova or worms. Are they alive? she wondered. Preserved? Are they prototypes? Ultimately, it didn't matter.

And Loren was correct: Here was proof of what she'd come here to find out. A military test in the field. A worm that's obviously a cross-species, the product of either a mutation process or a genetic splice…

And humans are what they're testing it on.

Loren put the case back, then squeezed her arm. "How can I put it more eloquently, Nora? We have to get the fuck out of here."

"All right, all right…"

He practically dragged her out of the room. The door remained opened at the end of the hall, light pouring in. Nora peeked in the first room as they brushed by; then she tugged back at him.

"Wait a second-"

"Damn it, Nora!" he whispered. "We're going to get caught in here!"

"I don't think anyone's here right now," she said.

"Then where are they?"

"Outside. Look at that…"

She was pointing to the security monitors in the first room. Loren edged in behind her, seeing what she meant. "That's one of them," he said.

On one of the higher screens, a man was kneelinga man in a gas mask and decon suit. He was kneeling at a large slab of concrete.

'fhat's the RTG, isn't it?" Loren noticed.

"It sure is." A chill went up her back. "We were just there a few minutes ago."

"And look, there's two more of them-"

Yet another screen briefly showed two more masked and hooded men moving down a trail.

"Three of them total," Nora counted.

"Plus the one I shot…"

Both of them looked back at the RTG screen, and the mysterious figure kneeling before it. A gloved hand produced a small black box and rested it on the slab. Then he opened the box and withdrew a black disk that looked like a hockey puck.

"What the hell is he doing?" Loren asked.

"That disk," Nora said. "What's that rod he just pulled out of it?"

They both stared. The man extracted a short rod from the disk; from the end of the disk, he seemed to remove a cap.

Then he pushed the rod against the slab's cement face. A moment later, the disk had been mounted onto the concrete.

"The rod must be some kind of stand," Nora said. "And… shit. I've got a bad vibe about this."

Loren looked right at her. "Me too. Nora, why do I have a funny feeling that black thing is a bomb?"

"I… don't know…" She was thinking the exact same thing. "It's not big enough to be a bomb is it?"

"A piece of C-4 the size of a hockey puck? It could probably break that concrete slab in half."

"And then the pressure from the explosion might split the fuel-source casing."

"Instant dirty nuke. Shit, Nora. If that really is what he's doing…-…"

"It would look like a terrorist operation," she realized. "The radioactive dust from an explosion like that would contaminate the entire island."

"And anyone or anything on it would die from radiation sickness in a matter of days."

This is madness, she thought, still staring at the screen.

Then the man in the gas mask got up and walked away, leaving the disk propped up on the slab.

"We're out of here,' Loren insisted, but just when they would turn to leave, a security monitor in the corner began to blink.

"What's happening now!" Nora exclaimed.

It was the screen showing the north beach. The panel's frame was suddenly bordered by a blinking red line.

The camera showed the water beyond the beach…

"That's where the trench is," Loren murmured.

"And where their sub is…'

They stared fixedly at the screen.

Nora supposed she could guess what was about to happen even before it did. In a few moments the water beyond the beach began to stir.

"Holy shit," Nora muttered.

"Uh, yeah," Loren agreed with her, because they both saw it very clearly.

The sub was surfacing.