Slither (13 page)

"Good work."

"What did the major say about the new ones?"

"He didn't like it, and neither do I. All of a sudden
this deserted island is getting crowded. And if any of
them see us, we're supposed to kill them."

"No problem," the corporal remarked, looking
around.

They already knew that the transfected species was
perfectly compatible with the environment. He suspected that Research Command had a lot to do with it
now. They want to know what it's doing to the civilians
. .
we've infected-.

They moved back to the head shack area; the door
was still open at the first unit, the lights on.

What is she doing in there? the sergeant thought.

"How come you went on the boat that docked earlier?" the corporal asked.

"Just a quick check for weapons, and I disabled their
emergency radio."

Then the lights went off at the first head shack.

The corporal pressed up against a tree. "Look. There
she is again ..."

They could just see her in the moonlight. The
woman with the frizzy short dark hair came back out
and closed the door.

"She's finally going back to the campsite. Now we can
get a look in there and see what she was doing all this
time."

The corporal's face shield turned. "Hey, Sarge, she
doesn't look too bad, you know?"

What is WRONG with him? "None of that."

"Why? The major just said we can kill them."

"With discretion, and only if we're seen. You'd fuck
an animal if you had to. You know what happens if you
get written up."

"You'd write me up for that?"

The sergeant just looked at him.

No sense of duty, he thought.

When the woman disappeared down the trail, he
was about to proceed toward the head shack, but the
corporal grabbed his arm.

"Wait, Sarge. Look. They're back again."

They pulled back behind the trees. It was the three
that had arrived tonight. They'd staked this area out
earlier but then left. What are they up to?

They were loitering at the farthest head shack,
then ...

They opened the door and light bloomed.

The lights were already on in there. The sergeant
mulled the fact over, and couldn't imagine why.

Then the three civilians went inside and closed the
door behind them.

"This is getting pretty interesting," the sergeant
commented.

"I really like the girl-"

*Shut up."

I'd really like to know what they're doing in there,
the sergeant wondered. He had a feeling this was going
to be a long night.

"There's my babies," Jonas said. There was pride in his
voice. They all looked up at the twenty-foot-tall marijuana plants growing out of their urns.

All three of them squinted in the long room's strange,
silverish glow. Sheets of aluminum foil lined all four
walls. Stranger was the incessant drone, like a bubbling hum, from the airstones and their small aerator
pumps connected to each.

"I love these rooms," Ruth said, stepping forward toward the erect, green-spiky rows. "The sound, and the
silver light. It's like mellow acid."

Slydes rolled his eyes. "Our little hippie."

"Look at 'em." Jonas grinned upward. "They're busting twenty feet, I'll bet. They don't even get that big in
nature, under the best circumstances."

Forty such plants filled the former missile silo, and
they had forty more in the next head shack, too. "I'm
getting nine, ten ounces of the highest THC content
pot per plant, every three months. Average asshole
only pulls two to four."

"Look at the flowers!" Ruth celebrated. "They're
beautiful!"

"Yeah, baby, they sure are. And they're big. The bigger,
the better. There's more THC in my pot than anyone's.'

"Quit bragging and let's get on with it," Slydes complained. He was tired, and they'd missed high tide going out. Which means we gotta stay on this island till
tomorrow night ... The skinny bitch in the first head
shack had stayed there for another fucking hour. They hadn't counted on that. Shit, it's past one o'clock
now...

Hydroponic homegrowers had several methods to
choose from. Jonas used the "wick system," with ebb
and flow urns; this was the best system because it grew
the biggest plants, but the least popular because it consumed the most water and electricity. Water and electricity weren't a problem here, of course, because Jonas
simply tapped into the army's unmonitored supply;
hence the brightest lights round the clock, and unlimited fresh water. His only expenses were airstones and
aerator pumps, Perlite, Pro-Mix, coconut planting
fiber, and a lot of aluminum foil, which doubled the
photosynthesis effect by bouncing back the light.
That's why Jonas's plants were bigger and more concentrated. The average grower was limited to closets
and basements, but with ceilings this high-and all this
free light-Jonas was giving the plants more than even
nature could provide. Charging a little more for superior pot was only good business. His customers just
wanted more.

They checked the next head shack where, if anything, the plants grew even hardier. Then they moved
to the third head shack.

"A damn good thing you have some ready to go,"
Slydes grumbled.

This was where they did the cutting, drying, and
weighing. Jonas had tables and chairs set up for the
various tasks, plus cartons of plastic baggies.

"That's because I always think ahead," Jonas bragged.
"You always have your next delivery ready in advance.
You know, Slydes, if you ran your poaching business
like I run my pot business? You might actually make
some money."

"Bend over real hard and blow yourself, brother."

Ruth giggled. "That I'd like to see." But then her eyes opened wide when she looked at the cement floor,
and she shrieked, "Fuck!"

The men walked over.

"What the hell's that?" Jonas queried.

On the floor a small, bright pink worm squiggled
across the cement. It was about three inches long.

"Ain't no earthworm, that's for sure," Slydes noted.
"Not movin' that fast."

The worm made more tracks, leaving tinseled slime.
It had traversed half the width of the head shack in the
time they were looking at it.

"Well, ain't that just the shit?" Jonas said. "There
better not be any of these things on my plants."

"It just looks ... disgusting," Ruth said and glared.
"Somebody kill it."

Jonas seemed very concerned. "What the fuck is
that? A corn worm?"

Slydes stepped on it. "Nope. It's a dead worm. Now
let's quit fuckin' around with worms and get the fuck
out of here."

When Slydes lifted his shoe, all that remained of the
worm was pink slime.

Jonas grabbed a plastic bag full of a pound of
trimmed marijuana, then snapped off the lights.

Before they left, none of them happened to notice
that the squashed remains of the worm were sizzling.

Why did she feel so unsettled? Weird night, Nora dismissed. She'd expected the sounds emanating from the
woods to help lull her to sleep; instead, they'd annoyed
her. She supposed they'd all need to be up early tomorrow, for Annabelle's shoot, but now, going on two
o'clock, it would be impossible to get in a decent
night's sleep.

The little polyester tent pressed in like a coffin. She'd
tossed and turned in the summer-weight sleeping bag.
Each time she tried to clear her head of the day's aggravations, her temples began to rage in a headache.
She'd drifted off once but was then bolted awake by, of
all things, a sexual dream.

You've got to be kidding me ...

She never had sexual dreams ... an odd fact for a
virgin. The little bit of dating she'd done in college and
grad school had always wound up getting torpedoed by a term paper, a stwly session, or a test. The academician in her always wound up walking on her womanhood, asserting the priority. Whenever a potential
relationship would fail, or she'd miss out on a perfectly
normal fling, she'd always be satisfied to tell herself:
You're not in school to make whoopie. You're in school
to get your doctorate. Objectively this was all true, but
by now it left little to console her womanhood. Her
sexuality felt like something moldering. Her desires
were fruit whose seeds would never touch the earth to
give root.

The dream:

The man's face reminded her of the door knocker at
her grandmother's house. It had been mounted on the
ornate door's center stile, an oval of tarnished bronze
depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no
mouth, no other features. The peculiar knocker was
one of Nora's earliest childhood memories, for whatever reason. Her parents took her to Grandma's house
every Thanksgiving; she remembered the knocker but
not the rest. Why would that be?

One sleepless night, at age four or five, she'd gotten
out of bed to go to the bathroom. The darkness of the
musty hall had confused her; she'd opened the wrong
door. This isn't the bathroom, she realized. It's the
room Mommy and Daddy are sleeping in. But-

Her big eyes stared out. Mommy and Daddy weren't
sleeping. She didn't know what they were doing-just
that they had their clothes off and Daddy was doing
something weird on top of Mommy. Nora shuffled
away, bewildered.

The day after Thanksgiving, they'd driven away, and
Nora could see that scary door knocker shrinking in
the distance. Grandma died the next day.

And now her dream. The man's face was just like
the knocker: half formed, just two blank eyes. He didn't need any more facial features than that, for he
was just a body to suit her needs. His arms felt hot beneath her; he was carrying her through teeming
woods-these woods?-deliberate footsteps crackling
over twigs. He laid her down naked on the forest bed,
and stood between her spread legs, looking down. The
moon glowed behind him, blocking out the unnecessary details of his face. A face would give him a persona, a humanity, but her desires had taken her so
completely, she didn't care who he was, or even how
he might feel about the real her. He was only a
symbol-of deliverance-just as her body, in this hot,
compressed dreamscape, was a symbol-of her own
unbridled lust.

When he turned a moment, the moon cut him into a
silhouette of raven black, the outlines sharp as newly
cut glass-including a stout, erect penis. Nora whined,
cringing atop fallen leaves. Her belly sucked in and out
as she stared up at him almost teary-eyed. The sweat
on her skin felt slippery as glycerin when she smoothed
her hands up her stomach to her breasts and plied her
nipples as if twisting screws out of a wall. The pain
drilled the most delicious sensations through her belly
to her groin, where they all settled like an overcharged
battery waiting to be tapped.

The silhouette seemed content to watch for now.
Was the faceless figure touching himself, so incited by
her body? Nora hoped so because, next, those electric
sensations summoned her hand back down the slick
abdomen. She gruelingly held herself back, her fingers
never quite being allowed to hit the final triggers that
would flatten her right there in the leaves. More and
more of those sensations mounted, and soon she was
moaning to let them out, but ...

Not .. yet .. .

She wanted him to see it all, to bear witness, and then to spend himself on her from where he stood. The
live-wire sensations mounted; the moon bathed her
glistening skin. Then her guest began to lower himself.

Yes...

Callused hands began to massage her. The compounded sensations were driving her mad; the stars
blurred in her eyes. As the rough hands kneaded her
breasts, her nipples burned hot as embers embedded in
her flesh. But just as she thought he'd lie atop her, he
pulled back-. . .

The hands pushed her knees back to her face, and
his mouth found her sex. His tongue did things she
didn't think possible-she'd never known that the web
of her sexual nerves was capable of feeling such things.
She closed her eyes and let the frenzy take over. First,
one finger entered her, then two, then three; she was
biting marks into her knees. The ministrations went on
and on. Was her tongue hanging out? Was she shrieking her pent-up bliss?

Now! her mind screamed. Now!

The coal-black shadow moved upward, arms like
struts that kept her knees pinned back. She could feel
his hot, muscled flesh slide against the backs of her legs,
and then he positioned himself. The penis nudged the
entry of her sex, teased her as it threatened to enter-

Now...

-but that's when Nora woke up.

Her first sexy dream in ages, and look what happened. I don't believe it, she thought in the deepest
frustration. I can't even get laid in a dream! The hot
night was compressing her within the cocoon of the
sleeping bag. She'd been sweating so profusely, it felt
as though someone had dumped a bucket of hot water
on her.

She'd been sleeping in her swimsuit. The cooler air caressed her when she finally got out of the bag. This was maddening; it was the middle of the night and she
couldn't sleep. Worse was the dream's aftereffects, which
left her skin prickly, her nipples aching as if plucked.
Gotta get out of here, go for a walk or something ...

She grabbed a lantern and unzipped the tent,
crawled out as if fleeing a hornets' nest. Once outside,
she stood in moon-tinted darkness, caught her breath,
and let the frustration beat down.

She kept the lantern dim. Loren's tent remained
zipped up; she could hear him snoring. Sounds like a
busted chain saw-jeez! But the other two tents .. .

The strangest curiosity seized her. She wanted to
look into the other tents-she didn't, of course, but she
wanted to. They both stood unzipped.

Are they ... in there?

Trent and Annabelle would be foolish to sleep with
their tents unzipped. Their exhalations would summon droves of mosquitoes. But where would they be
at this hour?