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."

  "Sharks, eels, and a variety of bottom dwellers can reduce a human body to next to nothing real fast," Nora reminded. "I have to have a look, to make sure it's not her. And I also need to examine it as closely as possible. Whoever's body it is, I need to see if the worms could be responsible."

  "We should go with you," Loren said.

  "No, we need to maximize our time. You two look for Annabelle. Split up, check everywhere. And keep trying your cell phones-and your radio, Lieutenant."

  Trent seemed unsure, even shaky. "What do we do if we can't find Annabelle?"

  I don't know, Nora thought truthfully. I'm more worried about what we DO find. More worms. BIG ones. "You'll find her. Let's meet back here in two hours exactly. And good luck."

  The two men branched off while Nora trudged down the trail toward the beach. Now she knew what Trent and Loren meant about being paranoid. With every step she looked to her sides, half expecting to see some very large pink nematodes squirming in wait. She couldn't pass a tree trunk without inspecting it for signs of the yellow motile ova. I just cannot BELIEVE what we've stumbled on, she thought.

  On the beach she noticed the tide was coming up, with a rougher chop than usual. She took an uncomfortable glance at the sun. In another few hours there wouldn't be enough light to snorkel at all... .

  She pulled on her flippers, lowered her mask, and waded in.

  Skimming along the bottom, she knew it was her imagination when she began to feel inhibited. The water wasn't really murkier, and there weren't really fewer fish about-she simply imagined it. Farther out, she snorkeled a deep breath and dove.

  Several sea urchins lay upside down-dead. Next, she picked up an upside-down stone crab and looked at its hard-shelled underside. There was a hole in it.

  She wended around a large boulder, then stopped. Another dozen crabs lay similarly upside down. They've all got holes in them! she saw.

  Evidence of a chitin-penetrating parasite.

  Another sea urchin quivered in a small crevice. Nora flipped it over and recoiled.

  Fixed to the urchin's mouth was a six-inch-long pink worm.

  Nora thrust away with her flippers, repulsed. The worms are killing everything ...

  The next outcropping of boulders was crawling with yellow ova .. .

  I have to be real friggin' careful! she yelled at herself.

  When she got to the magnificent coral deposits that flagged the trench, she saw nothing but a carpet of dead scarlet bristleworms. They lay curled up like red litter, tossing slightly in the current.

  The entire nest has been routed ...

  The impulse to leave couldn't have been stronger, but there was still one more thing she had to do.

  The corpse.

  Maybe he imagined it, she wished. Maybe it was a dolphin skeleton or something ... She skimmed by more clumps of coral, and there it was: the darkening decline that marked the tip of the trench. Deeper than I thought, she realized, flipping downward. And it was darker. She kicked out and glided another dozen feet.

  Nora stared through the prism of her mask.

  The arrangement of flesh and bones lay before her almost as if it expected her. Scraps of fabric around the hips indicated shorts too skimpy for a man, and another band of fabric about the rib cage was clearly a bikini top. It was orange.

  Does Annabelle have an orange bikini? She couldn't recall.

  Nora felt haunted as she hovered over the remnants of a living person. Eyeless sockets looked back at her, and something like a grin struggled through the waxen, swollen traces of flesh around the mouth. White teeth glimmered through. A flap of white skin floated off the chest, darkened by the circle of a nipple. Nora found herself fingering her own gold cross as she hovered closer. Bones were all that remained of the feet, and off the femurs and shins, more white flesh wobbled like jelly. White hipbones broke through the skin of the pelvis.

  She heard her own teeth grinding when she peered again to the flesh-specked face. Loren was right; clumped tresses of hair floated tentacle-like off the scalp, too light to be brunet, but it seemed longer than Annabelle's hair.

  I'm pretty sure this isn't her.

  But if it wasn't Annabelle ... who was it?

  The intense grotesquerie of what she was looking at felt as palpable as a gust of current. She wanted to leave now, but ...

  She knew she'd have to look closer for another moment, for any evidence that the worms might have done this.

  There were no ova on the body, but what about inside?

  Aw, shit, I don't want to do this!

  The cadaver's bare abdomen was stretched across the hips tight as a drum skin, and as white. The belly button was a concise pock against the bloodless flesh. The idea of pulling the corpse ashore for a makeshift autopsy was out of the question; it would fall apart at the joints from the turbulence.

  I'll part the belly a little, take a look inside ...

  She shone down her flashlight, while her other hand unsheathed her utility knife. She thought of grave robbing when she brought the tip of the blade to the corpse's abdomen.

  The sharp steel tip hadn't penetrated more than an inch before three long pink ropes flew out of the cadaver's mouth.

  Nora's heart felt stabbed. For a moment, she blacked out from the shock of what she'd witnessed, dozens of feet under water, in dead silence.

  But there was her evidence.

  The worms were a yard long each. They cork screwed away from her, their grotesque bright pink skin shimmering.

  Holy, holy, holy SHIT! she thought.

  Then she froze in the water when a fourth, longer worm shot out of the knife hole and wrapped around her waist so quickly it was on her before she even saw it-

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  (I)

  But when Slydes noticed the dead worms floating in the bilge, he also noted that the bilge line seemed a little high.

  This is turning into one FUCK of a shitty day, he thought. My brother's dead, a bunch of fuckin' worms somehow ate HOLES in my engine block, and now I guess they ate holes in the hull, too!

  Yes, the bilge line was very slowly rising. He leaned back out of the engine compartment, veins thumping at his temples.

  "The boat's sinking!" he snapped to Ruth.

  "The fuck it is!" she bellowed back.

  "Come on!"

  "Come on where, for shit's sake?"

  Slydes was beginning to see the limits of his patience. He lowered his voice, his eyes hard on her. "Ruth. I just got done telling your dumb ass that the boat's sinking. That means we need to be off the boat."

  Too much stress and confusion had taken too great a toll on poor Ruth. Things just weren't working right upstairs. "I don't wane go back on the island!"

  "We ain't got much of a choice, do we?"

  "The snakes! The zombie!"

  Those worms are so damn big she thinks they're snakes, he reminded himself. And Jonas had mentioned some big guy out there, who was all fucked up from the worms, and something about military people in gas masks. But it gave him an idea ...

  "There's gotta be another boat somewhere on this island," he said.

  "The photographer people!"

  "Naw, they came by helicopter, but there's some other people here. Jonas told me about 'em. We'll rip off their boat."

  "Fuck yeah!"

  There wasn't much to salvage. Slydes grabbed the flashlight, a knife, and some tools. "We'll hide out at the head shack till dark, then find us a boat. Let's go."

  Ruth, still dressed in nothing but the long pink T-shirt, stood hesitantly on the side ladder, peering down. "Slydes? There might be more worms in the water."

  Slydes took a handful of her hair and-

  Splash!

  -heaved her over the side, then stepped down after her.

  The tide was up now, the water up to their chins. When they struggled ashore, Slydes looked back at his former pride and joy.

  The boat sank before his eyes.

  (II)

  "Annabelle!"

  Loren was winding himself by the constant calling out. He'd searched the entire north point of the islandAnnabelle hadn't been found at the campsite, shower, or head shack area, and there was no sign of her on the beach. Her camera and snorkeling gear were stowed in her tent.

  Where the hell is she! he thought in an uncharacteristic flare of anger. We might have a serious parasitic threat going on here, and she's out lollygagging. He stomped through more brush, whacking branches out of the way. Every so often he'd see an ovum or two on the trail, which he gladly stepped on. They popped like bubble wrap.

  The farther trails were so unpronounced they barely existed. Pretty clear no one's walked here in years. There was no reason to, even when the missile site was up and running.

  A cigarette butt on the ground looked relatively new. None of us smoke, he reminded himself. The knowledge gave him a creepy feeling in his gut. Then he noticed something shiny. A quarter? he guessed.

  Loren picked it up.

  It was a cap from a beer bottle.

  This wasn't terribly surprising: Trent said that college kids sneak on the island sometimes. But like the cigarette butt, the cap looked brand-new.

  Just as he thought the trail would diminish to nonexistence, it fanned outward. Loren followed it another hundred yards and-

  How do you like that?

  -found himself standing at the edge of a wellenclosed lagoon. Anchored right off the rocky shore was a long-and very new-looking-boat. A Boston Whaler, he knew at once. .A nice, pricey little pleasure boat.

  So we're not alone here after all.

  Loren didn't hesitate climbing aboard. The boat was obviously unoccupied. Storage bins lining the deck were filled with life jackets, towels, and assorted boating gear.

  Damn...

  No radio. But the boat hadn't been here long. At least we can get off the island now, he realized. All we have to do first is find the owner of this thing.

  But then another thought drummed in his head.

  That is, if the owner's still alive.

  For all Loren knew, the owner of this Boston Whaler and the rot-riddled corpse he'd found in the trench were one in the same.

  He needed to think. He sat down on a rolled-up tarp in the aft area, but-

  What the SHIT!

  The tarp thrashed when he sat down on it.

  "Get away, get away, get away!" a muffled voice was suddenly shrieking.

  Loren stumbled back at the shock.

  There's someone under the tarp!

  When the tarp came unraveled, a dark-haired young woman emerged, just as terrified as Loren. She wore bikini bottoms, a sweat-drenched T-shirt, and sneakers. And the nearly insane look in her eyes didn't set Loren at ease when he noticed what was in her shaking hand:

  A big revolver.

  "Don't shoot," Loren's voice cracked.

  "Who are you?" she wailed.

  Loren hoped he hadn't had an accident in his trunks. "Loren Fredrick," he answered in a voice as shaky as this woman's gun hand. "I'm an associate professor at the University of Southern Florida. I'm here as part of an escort group for a nature photographer-it's all spon sored by the college." Sweat was dripping into his eyes. "Now, could you please put the gun down? I'm not going to hurt you-I'm just looking for a way off the island."

  The pistol jiggled as she stared back at him, weighing his words. Finally, her gun hand lowered.

  Thank you Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! "Now that you know who I am, who are you? And whose boat is this?"

  She sat at the aft rail, her hair disheveled, stringy from the humidity. "My name's Leona Long," she said. Her terror finally wound down. "I came here with some friends-Carol, Howie, and Alan-this is Alan's boat."

  "Came here to party?"

  She nodded, and forearmed sweat off her brow.

  "We need you and your friends to take us off this island," Loren told her. "Where are they now, and ... Why were you under that tarp? It must be hot as hell under all that thing."

  Her eyes looked dull and lost when she gazed back at him. "My friends are all dead. I was hiding here."

  "Hiding from what?"

  She spared a sardonic chuckle. "You have no idea what's going on here, do you?"

  The remark seized Loren. "Well, I think I do-at little, at least. Were you hiding from the worms?"

  "Yes!" she cried. "You know about them? And those little yellow bug things?"

  "They're called motile ova," Loren explained. `They're the worm's eggs. The worm itself is a kind of parasite that we've never encountered before. We think that these worms as well as their ova can infect humans."

  "You think right," Leona asserted.

  "So your friends were killed by-"

  "Yes-Jesus-yes. The worms were actually growing inside them. And I saw other bodies too; there was a group of students who came out here several weeks ago. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one left alive. The only thing I could think to do was hide here; I was hoping someone would just ... find me, eventually." She looked around groggily. "I hid under the tarp-I didn't want those other guys to see me."

  Loren's brow shot up. "What other guys?"

  "There's military people on this island, too. I think they put those worms here to see what they'd do to humans. They've got these little cameras all over the place-they're monitoring us, for God's sake. It's like we're part of some scientific test."

  Now, here was some news. Military, Loren thought. Cameras ... one of the things Nora found ... "And you've seen these military men yourself?"

  "Yes, a couple of times," she murmured. "They never confronted any of us-they just kept back in the woods. We'd catch glimpses of them. I even saw one of them taking pictures of one of the bodies-after it had been infected by the worms. They're in gas masks and black suits with hoods."

  "Well, how did they get on the island themselves? Do they have a boat too?"

  "I don't know," she said. Her shoulders drooped. "And I don't care." She began to choke back sobs. "I just want to go home."

  "Don't worry, we'll get you home..." Then Loren looked down at the boat, and blinked at the incongruence of what she'd just said. "How come you're still here? If you knew your friends were all dead, why didn't you just take the boat out of here yourself?"

  "No keys. Alan's got them, and he's long gone."

  A hope glimmered. "Where's his body? We can still get the keys."

  "He's out rotting in the woods somewhere!" she whined. "I don't know! You want to go digging through a dead man's pockets when he's full of those things?"

  She's right about that, he realized. "We don't even need the keys. We can push the boat out of the cove if we have to, let the current take us-one way or another, we're getting out of here. Come on, I'll take you to where my friends are."

  Leona stiffened. "I-I don't think I want to do that. I'd rather stay here."

  "You'll be perfectly safe," Loren assured her.

  "How do you know your friends aren't infected by now?"