Slither (28 page)

"You're right," he muttered a minute later.

The dilemma trebled with each thought. Can't get off
the island-no boat. Can't call for help-the phones
and radios aren't working for some unknown reason.
There's a parasite on the island that might be able to
infect humans ... oh, and by the way, we've also got a
dead body in the water, and nobody knows who it
is...

"Wasn't Annabelle with you when you found this
dead body you think you saw?" Trent said.

Loren clearly didn't care for the structure of the sentence. "I saw a body. I don't think I saw one, I saw one."

Trent held up his hands. "Fine, but how do you
know the body isn't her?"

The question silenced them all.

"Couldn't be," Loren insisted. "You and Annabelle
went back to the beach when the three of us were looking for bristleworms. I stayed out. That's when I found
the corpse."

Nora tried to rein in some reason. "One thing at a
time. Forget about corpses and jammers and parasites
right this minute. Lieutenant, I think the best idea is for you to find Annabelle, while Loren and I do some
more tests on this worm."

Trent didn't seem overly pleased, but he agreed, "All
right," and left the head shack.

"So you were right-it can infect mammals," Loren
said when he noticed the dead possum. He looked into
the scope. "Jesus. Some of the ova are still growing,
while others have already hatched."

"You're kidding ..." Nora hadn't seen that. Another
fluke. "It looks like a Trichinella, and it's acting like a
number of species from the order, but-"

"Nora, this worm is acting like a whole bunch of different worms," he said, "and we both know that."

When Nora took another look herself, she saw that
some of the tiny ova had already hatched into worms
that were already a half inch long. "This is going to become a mess real fast. They're growing off the slide."

"Isolate one ovum and one worm, then-"

"Kill everything else," she finished his thought. She
placed a worm and an unhatched ovum in a petri dish,
then scraped everything else into a plastic container
and sprayed it with repellent. "I want to see what this
ovum's going to do."

"It might be an infertile mutagen carrier," Loren
speculated.

"That's what I was thinking." But it was also what
she was fearing. Once a species got this big, who knew
what effect it would have on humans? "And we're going to keep this worm alive-to see just how big it
gets." She left the ovum in the dish and forceped the
now inch-long worm into a glass beaker. "Why don't
you check out the mother possum?"

Loren slid the box over and pulled up the other microscope. "At least it doesn't stink yet. The only thing
grosser than a possum is a rotten possum."

"It had already given birth to the babies," Nora told
him. "It's obvious it hasn't been dead more than a few
hours."

"And just more proof of a parasite that can live on
land and in water."

"Um-hmm."

Loren wasted no time in making a transabdominal
incision on the adult possum. When he parted the rive
with dissection probes, he simply stared. "I don't even
have to put any tissue samples under the scope to see
that this possum is seriously fucked up."

"Huh?" Nora leaned over and looked.

"There's nothing inside. All internal organs are absent."

"That's impossible. It hasn't been dead long enough
to suffer that level of putrefaction."

"I'm not even smelling putrefaction, Nora, not a trace.
Somehow the entirety of its organ systems was removed
before any cellular deterioration could take place."

"Eviscerated by a predator?"

"The body was intact," he objected. "No cuts on it,
no bite marks. If a skunk or another possum ate this
thing's innards, there'd be bite marks on the abdomen."

Now Nora could see what he meant. "And it couldn't
be a bacterial infection or a corruptive stomach virus
because there'd still be signs of decomposition."

"And there isn't any," Loren finished, frustrated. He
pushed away from the table, arms crossed in thought.
"So you know what I'm thinking now?"

Nora nodded. "This is the same way that chitinpenetrating nematodes eat."

"Yeah, but they don't eat five-pound mammals, they
eat quarter-ounce crustaceans and mollusks." He
looked over at Nora's microscope. "What's your ovum
doing now?"

Nora eyed the scope. "Shit, it's about half the size of
a marble now. A half hour ago it was smaller than a
pencil point."

Trent came back in, looking just as flustered as Nora
and Loren. "What's wrong with you two? You looked
pissed."

.Not pissed," Loren offered. "More like aggravatedly
confounded."

Trent frowned. "I can't find Annabelle anywhere."

"That's not good," Loren said. "Especially if we've
got the kind of trouble we think we might have."

"What are you talking about?" Trent demanded, losing some patience.

"Well, Lieutenant," Nora began, "we seem to have a
tiny parasitic worm that lives on land and sea and may
be able to grow to unheard-of proportions. Big enough,
at least, to attack, and kill, that." And she pointed to
the possum on the table.

"Before you started cutting on it, it didn't look attacked," Trent said.

"Something sucked this thing's guts out for food,"
Loren specified.

Nora tacked on, "And then laid eggs in all its babies.
And the eggs were the same yellow things we saw in
the shower stall the other day."

"You can't be serious," Trent dismissed.

"Look familiar, Lieutenant?" Nora picked up the microscope slide and showed him what was on it: a yellow ovum with bloodred spots, the size of a pea.

"Holy shit ..."

"This thing's probably increased in size a hundredfold in less than an hour."

Trent rubbed his brows. "How is that possible?"

"We don't know," Loren said. "High infantile growth
rates among worms and other soft-bodied invertebrates aren't uncommon. But motile ova like this are another story. They always stay the same size before
they hatch."

Trent eyed the ticklike pod. It was moving about
very slightly via its cilia. "So that thing's going to hatch
into a worm."

"Maybe, maybe not," Nora said. "Certain types of
ova-like certain types of sperm cells-aren't always
fertile."

"That one's big enough to dissect now, Nora," Loren
reminded her.

"Good idea." She placed the slide back under the
scope, then carefully wielded forceps with one hand,
and one of the microscalpels with the other.

"Ten to one there's no embryo in it," Loren said.

"I'm not following any of this now," Trent admitted. "I thought an ovum and an egg were the same
thing."

.Not quite," Loren offered. "An egg always carries
an embryo, while ova sometimes have dual purposes."

"I still don't get it."

"Be patient ... Nora held the yellow bud down
with the tines of the forceps, then gingerly cut into the
rubbery outer hull. The ovum popped more than split,
and out issued a dollop of jellylike muck laced with
something like white threads.

"You were right," she said. "There's no worm larva
inside, just some white strands. Probably a mutagenic
protein." Next she plucked up several of the previously
killed ova and similarly cut them open. "Looks like half
of these have infantile worms in them-"

"And the other half contain the mutagen," Loren already knew. "Just like a lot of the Trichinellas."

Trent shook his head. "Would somebody please explain what you're talking about?"

Nora sat back and began, "Motile ova-in other
words, egg carriers that move about independently are part of this worm's reproductive system. Typically a
parasitic worm will lay its ova in a living host. The nonfertile ova release a mutagen that genetically alters the
host's own reproductive systems to make it a more
compatible natal environment. Later, the fertile ova
hatch. The mutagenesis has occurred in order to force
the host to bear the worm's young."

"Yuck," Trent remarked.

"Sure, but a perfect system that increased the odds of
positive reproduction. A similar thing happens in many
mammals including humans, believe it or not. Not with
ova but with sperm cells. Most people don't know that
only about half of a man's sperm exist to fertilize a female egg. The remaining sperm have alternate duties: to
kill sperm from other males, for instance, to run interference against bacteria that possess spermicidal traits.
Some sperm even release protein secretions that fool another male's sperm into believing it to be an egg, wasting
its potential. All for the sake of increasing the chances of
reproductive success."

"You're right," Trent admitted. "I didn't know that. I
thought all sperm was the same."

"Well, it's not, and neither are ova. This worm's ova
have multiple purposes, too: to genetically adapt a hostcrab, mollusk, shrimp, and in this case even a
possum-to become an unwilling reproductive vessel.
And that's exactly what alarmed Loren and me about
this worm. It looks a lot like an order of roundwormor nematode-called Trichinella and Trichina."

"That sounds familiar for some reason," Trent said
after a pause.

"Sure," Loren said. "Everyone's heard of trichinosis."

More recognition in Trent's eyes. "The stuff you get
from eating uncooked pork."

"Right. That worm-the Trichinella spiralis-and
others like it can mutagenically change a host to make it more habitable to its own young, too. But the difference is-"

Nora took it from there. "Those kinds of worms
never grow more than a few millimeters in length-but
look how big this one's gotten just in the last hour."

She held up the beaker.

"Christ!" Trent exclaimed.

The worm inside was now eight inches long and
squirming vigorously.

.The similarities are interesting," Nora continued,
"but so are the differences. The Trichinella spiralis is
an inborn worm-meaning it doesn't live on land or in
water. The species exists entirely in hosts, transferring
from one to another through food and excrement."

"Lovely," Trent said, making a nauseated smirk.

"But there are plenty of Trichinella-like nematodes
that live on land as free-ranging worms, and plenty
more that are marine and freshwater species. None of
them, however, can do both."

"But this one can," Loren said.

"The most alarming thing about this worm is that it
actually resembles several totally different types of
worm all in one."

Loren: "It's almost like this thing is part earthworm,
part leech, part clam worm, and part trichinosis
worm."

"A mutation?" Trent attempted. "From chemicals in
the water or something?"

"No mutation could cross-breed multiple species,"
Nora informed him. "We've seen evidence that it's a
chitin penetrator-like a clam worm."

"From the lobster," Trent remembered.

"Exactly. The worm initially infected the lobster by
burning a hole in its shell with its digestive enzymes
and then injecting its ova through the hole. These
kinds of worms also eat the same way."

"Eat?" Trent questioned.

Loren indicated the dead possum. "By filling a host's
abdominal cavity with the same corrosive enzymes.
The enzymes dissolve the internal organs, and then the
worm sucks it back out. A liquefied meal. Lots of
worms eat this way, and lots of insects too. Flies are
the best-known example."

Trent was staring at the possum. "Wouldn't it take,
like, a really big worm to eat all the organs in that
possum?"

"It sure would," Nora admitted. "And that's another
reason we're worried about this." She held up the
beaker again. The worm was now pushing ten inches.
"We've seen how big this thing has gotten in less than
an hour. How big will it be after a full day?"

"Or a full week?" Loren posed. He gulped at the
thought. "A worm that could successfully attack a possum this size and be able to consume probably a full
pound of internal organs ..."

Now it was Trent's turn to gulp. "How ... big ...
would a worm like that have to be?"

Nora took a guess after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. "Two or three inches in diameter, at
least. And at least ten feet long."

Priorities, Nora was thinking now. We've got a few.

"All this talk of worms," Trent remarked. He
brushed his arm as if there might be bugs on it. "It's
making me paranoid."

"I keep looking over my shoulder," Loren added,
"thinking there might be worms behind me, or ova."

They were back at the campsite now, sitting solemnly
at the old picnic table. There was nothing more they
could do in the lab.

Nora grabbed her snorkeling gear. "We have to identify some priorities. If it turns out this worm can infect humans, we could be in a heap of trouble, especially
since we can't seem to get off the island right now.*

"What should we do?" Trent asked. He was the
group's official leader, but now he seemed to be showing some insecurities. "We have to find Annabelle."

'Right," Nora agreed. "And that's what you and
Loren should do."

"You're going back in the water?" Loren asked.

"I have to. You said you saw a dead body out there
near the trench. I hate to say it, but are you absolutely
sure it wasn't Annabelle?"

"Impossible." Loren felt certain. it was too decomposed. She'd been with me and Lieutenant Trent less
than an hour before."

"And she came back ashore with me," Trent added.

Nora looked at him. "Where did she go then?"

"I ... don't know."

"The body did appear to be female," Loren admitted.
"There was still some blond hair hanging off the
scalp."

"Shit!" Trent said.

"But there was almost nothing left," Loren went on.
"The flesh was hanging off the bones. The body's probably been out there for days."