Slither (11 page)

Loren stalled with the poised forceps. "All right.
Why do you say that?"

"The dorsal region. Look how they're moving. I'm
not seeing any parapodic structure. It almost looks like
cilia."

Loren maintained his stalled poise. Then he winked
at her. "Can't be. It's too big." Now he redirected his attention to the slowly moving things on the curtain.
"Come to Papa, you ugly little buggers." And then he
plucked several up with the forceps.

Nora didn't know what she was thinking. "Come on,
let's get them under the scope for a good look."

"Wait a minute," Trent said as they were about to go
back to the row of head shacks. "I was going to take a
shower."

"Go ahead," Nora told him.

"Just get a broom," Loren added, "and sweep the
things out. They won't bite."

Loren and Nora walked away with their specimens.

Trent looked back at the shower curtain and grimaced.
"Maybe I'll skip the shower for now," he muttered.

Banks of gray-black murk chased the sun behind the
horizon. Slydes nodded his approval as the weatherworn cabin cruiser churned ahead. The darker, the better, he thought at the wheel. Clear nights were so much
riskier.

Ruth sat hunched at the bow, her feet dangling off the
side as she watched for other boats. Not much traffic this
far off Clearwater, but they always had to sweat the local
police marine patrols and the Natural Resources boats.

Everything looked nice and clear.

Jonas could be heard clattering belowdecks, making
room for what they'd be bringing back: several pounds
of high-grade hydroponic marijuana.

They'd only started growing it at the island a few
years ago, and since then, Slydes was secretly jealous.
His brother's product dwarfed his gator poaching profits. But we're family, he reminded himself. Share and share alike. Jonas took care of the brainy horticulture
stuff, while Slydes took care of details, like getting
them on and off the island quickly, gauging the tides
and the weather. Ruth was just squeeze, but she helped
in her ways too-Mainly in bed, he thought, but she
had lots of street contacts and helped out immeasurably in their sideline jobs, like pawning stolen goods,
jacking ATMs with cards they ripped off, and helping
the brothers bury the occasional body.

It was a system that worked.

"Is it high tide yet?" Ruth called back from the
railed prow.

Slydes swigged more beer, burped, then nodded.
"And there's the island."

A mile ahead, the island's bulk began to form in the
murk.

It was a great gig. Before they'd found out about it,
Jonas truly was a pissant pot grower. They rented rooms
in some of the bum motels, and that's where Jonas set
up his hydroponic gear, but these days the narcs were
wise to everything, eyeballing erratic and nontypical
electricity bills. Fuckers think of everything, Slydes bemoaned. He didn't smoke weed himself (beer and
women were all he needed), but the market couldn't be
better. And the stuff Jonas was growing was so topdrawer he was getting a rep as the man with the best.
All the punks and college kids in these beach towns?
They couldn't buy enough of the stuff. Hydro was the
New Deal, and Jonas was cornering the market.

Because of the island.

The way it worked was like this: The bigger the
plants grew, the more potent the THC, but you needed
a place big enough to grow them past ten feet. Solution: the island. And you needed square footage, too.
The average dupe could grow a plant or two in his
apartment without anyone getting wise, which didn't amount to anything but small-time dealing. But what if
you had a place where you could grow hundreds of
plants? And keep twenty-four hours of light on them
without having to worry about the narcs getting wind
of your sky-high power bill?

Again, the solution was the island.

All the space we need, free electricity, free running
water, and twenty foot ceilings, Slydes thought. A pot
grower's dream.

"Got my stows all ready," Jonas said when he came
up from the cabin. They'd rigged some panels to pop
out just behind the head. "But look what I found."
Jonas giggled.

He held up a -severed foot.

Slydes stared with alarm, then remembered. "Oh
yeah, that ritzy business-looking chick we carjacked
last week." They'd pinched a chunk of change off her,
all right. Fancy laptop, big-ass wedding ring, not to
mention her Mercedes, which they'd sold to the chop
shop. They'd brought her back to the boat for a little
party, but as they'd been dragging her clothes off, she'd
kicked Slydes a swift one in the nuts. Hadn't planned to
kill the bitch, he thought, but, shit, she asked for it. He
figured the best way to teach her a lesson was to cut off
the foot that had kicked him. They'd had a good goround with her and then rolled her off the deck. In
these waters? The sharks took care of them quick.

"We gotta be more careful, brother. Can't be leaving
shit like that sittin' around in the boat."

Jonas laughed. "Hey, you're the one who cut off her
foot." He threw it over the side with a paltry splash.

"What was that?" Ruth asked, jerking around.

"Beer can. Shut up and watch for boats."

Jonas leaned over to whisper, "How long we keeping
her around?"

"I thought you liked her."

"Sure, for a hose bag, and she does the mouth thang
mighty fine, but you know, after a while they all get an
attitude. Start to think they have power 'cause they
know your whole operation."

Slydes knew this but ... She sucks a mean one ...
"Shit, let's keep her a bit longer. She's a good gofer, and
she don't mind jacking the ATMs and that shit." Slydes
chuckled under his breath. "Besides, she's crazy in love
with both of us, so let's ride that awhile. When some
better trim comes along, we'll put her in the drink like
we always do."

"Cool." Jonas peered out into the night. "There's the
island."

"Yep. Be there in a few. Just remember, no fuckin'
around. We're in and out."

Jonas pushed long strings of greasy hair out of his
face, which the gulf wind immediately replaced. "Photographers, you say."

"Underwater photographers or some shit, takin' pictures of fish or something for a big magazine. Won't be
here long. Just grab a couple pounds. We'll get more
when they're gone."

Jonas nodded. It would have to do. "Just so I can get
me something. Sure as shit don't want to depend on
what you make selling gator. I have college, brother.
I'm too smart for that rinky-dink stuff."

"Here's your gator," Slydes said, pointing to his
groin. He hated it when Jonas implied he was smarter,
even though he knew it was true.

Jonas laughed and slapped his brother on the back.
"Think I'll grab some quick tail off our hose bag. Have
fun steerin' the boat, Captain Tug."

"Oh, I got something for you to tug. Tell me the
truth. When you're laying peter on Ruth, you think
about all them big rednecks who corn-holed you in
county detent, huh? Go on, you can tell your brother."

"Fuck you, Slydes!" Jonas yelled and stepped out of
the cockpit. He stalked off down the manway and
shouted to Ruth. "Hey, Ruth! Downstairs!"

When Jonas and Ruth disappeared belowdecks, Slydes thought, Jesus. it was just a joke. Made him wonder a little, though.

Slydes checked the tide table again, then his watch.
Right on the mark. Out in the murk, the island's obscure shape grew larger.

Of course, he had no way of knowing that things
weren't going to go quite as smoothly as he thought.

Nora and Loren sat up late in the head shack, blearyeyed and hot in the harsh overhead light. Night had
come to the island like a fog bank. The head shack's
metal door stood open, letting in humid air. This late
the woods outside sounded like a jungle.

"You were right earlier," Nora said. "There's no sign
of a developing organ system." By now her eyes felt
welded to the microscope, whose lighting element reminded her of an optical exam. It was giving her a
headache.

Loren sat next to her at the table, wielding tiny forceps and wire-thin dissection probes. For several hours
now, they'd been examining several of the things they'd
found in the shower. "It's not even a complete animal."
He looked up a moment from the legged magnification
frame under which the specimen lay. "I've never dissected anything like this in my career. It's almost like
this thing is just a tumor or a multicelled cyst."

"A multicelled cyst that moves," Nora added.

"About the only thing we do know is it's not a damn
froghopper."

A motile cyst? she thought. A nodular cell cluster that has a system of locomotion? "I wasn't imagining it
when I saw these things moving was I?"

"No, they were moving pretty damn fast," Loren assured her. "And they had direction volition. When you
moved your foot on the shower floor, these things
shifted their direction. I'm positive. We all saw it."

Nora sat back in the fold-down army chair. She
rubbed fatigue out of her eyes, or was it confusion? It's
impossible. It's fucking impossible.

Loren yawned, a fist to his mouth. "Maybe we really
have stumbled on something. Maybe this is a previously unknown infantile mite or something."

"Come on, Loren," she objected. "This big? You and
I both know that it's impossible for something like that
to get this big. It's contrary to insectoid life."

Loren nodded dumbly.

It was the feeling in her gut that bothered her most.
She felt tacky in the gritty humidity. Patches of sweat
darkened her T-shirt like blotches. "It's able to move at
will," she almost droned, "which means it's functionally-motile. But-"

"No parapods, no legs, nothing even close to a
monotaxic foot," Loren finished for her. He looked
back a moment at the mag frame, then shook his head
at the evidence bright before his eyes.

"It looks like it moves on bristles or cilia."

Loren pointed errantly to the specimen. "Come on,
Nora. They are cilia, and we both know that. We're
looking right at it."

Nora let out a long sigh. "Which means we're looking at something that's impossible." I can't say it, she
fretted. Loren would think I was ridiculous. When she
looked back at him, he was staring right back at her.

But it was Loren who broke the ice that she was
afraid to, afraid because her peers would think she was
being absurd. "We were right earlier, weren't we?"

"The thing on Trent's shirt and the things in the
shower are the same, and they're not some undiscovered species of mite or sebaceous parasite. We both
know exactly what these things are, but neither of us is
saying it. It's a motile worm ovum."

Loren nodded, confusion lengthening his expression.
"A motile worm ovum the size of a coffee bean. Which
doesn't exist."

Indeed, they'd both seen the same thing before, but
under electron microscopes, not little 100x field
scopes.

Now Nora rubbed her face in the most bewildered
frustration. "There's no such thing as a motile ovum
this size. They're all microscopic, they're just simple
cell clusters with a cilia-based system of locomotion."

"Um-hmm." Loren held another plastic collection
vial up to the light, and shook the bean-sized thing inside around. "Well, this ain't microscopic, Nora. So
what do we do?"

Good question. "Collect more samples, look for the
annelid that these things come from, and report to the
college. That sounds like the best bet."

Loren stared grimly. "Sure, but that's ignoring the
consequences of something, isn't it?"

"I know. The annelid that these things come from
must be. . ."

"Really big," Loren said.

She gestured her microscope. "On one side of this
one, there are some apertures behind the cilia roots.
And I'm pretty sure I saw a stylet ring there."

"So did I, and now that we've decided what this really is, why should that be a surprise? Most other
forms of motile ova have them, it's the delivery system
to the host, and right now we're both wondering if one
of these things could infect a human."

Nora nodded wearily.

't'he infection constituents would be incompatible
in humans, wouldn't they? And of course the ova
themselves would be too. A human immune system
would destroy it immediately." Loren blinked. "Right?"

'I think so," she said very softly.

Loren seemed suddenly enlivened. "So let's not freak
out. This is actually exciting, it's a polychaetologist's
dream. It might be a new species."

'Yeah, that would be great, Loren." But she didn't
sound convinced. "But we're still ignoring the size."

Loren looked back down onto the radiant magnifying frame. "It's big, all right." He seemed to be chewing
the inside of his cheek. "And I mean really big."

They moored the beaten cabin cruiser at the usual stop
just when high tide hit; Jonas, hip-deep in the lagoon,
caught the rope Slydes tossed and tied it off to a sweetgum tree.

"It's creepy tonight," Ruth commented as she lowered herself off the back ledge.

"What are you talkin' about?" Slydes asked.

She looked up and around, wading clumsily. "It's
just ... different. Feels weird. It's my female intuition.
We have that, you know. I saw it on that Oprah show."

Slydes climbed off, frowning. Bitch is drunk again,
or fucked up on something. The water lay like black
glass. No moon roved overhead; more cloud banks
were rolling in. Ahead, the island's wall of trees looked
like an obscure, dark bulk. Slydes didn't feel quite right
himself, but he didn't admit it.

Once ashore, the three of them stood dripping. Ruth's T-shirt clung to her breasts. When she raised a
flashlight, Slydes snatched it away.