"Jesus," Loren muttered. "Those guys really are aliens, aren't they?"

  "What else could they be?" Then she thought, Oh my God, at what they saw next.

  A hatch of some sort seemed to cant out of the bottom of the craft. One of the masked men had something in his gloved fist. When he raised his fist overhead ... he, too, began to levitate up to the craft, as if he'd been hauled up on a winch.

  But there was no winch.

  Then the second crewman rose into the craft the same way.

  "I've seen everything now," Loren said, eyes peeled.

  As the boat coursed farther away, they stared another few minutes at the spectacle they were certain no one would believe: the otherworldly vehicle hovering in midair.

  Then-

  "This is it!" Loren said.

  -the vehicle began to rise, very slowly at first, and then-

  It seemed that in the course of two or three seconds, the craft launched straight into the air so quickly it didn't even blur in their eyes. It was gone in a blink.

  There were no exhaust gasses, no shuttlelike roars of burning propellents, no expected blastoff.

  The ship simply darted upward and was gone.

  "At least we were right about one thing-they were getting ready to leave just about the same time we found out about them."

  "Yeah, but you know what that means ..."

  Nora did indeed. "Now that they're gone, the bombs will go off. And we know there are at least two."

  "TWO?"

  "Yeah, after you left the station, one of them came back and activated one of the disks in the room with all the monitors. But-shit!" She'd forgotten to tell him. "I hit the guy in the head and knocked him out, and when I went looking for you, I passed the RTG. And guess what?"

  "The bomb we saw the guy plant there was gone," Loren said smugly.

  Nora's jaw dropped. "How did you know?"

  "I'm the one who took it off the slab."

  "How?"

  Loren shrugged as though it were nothing. "I killed a thirty-foot worm and melted the connector with its digestive enzymes. The stuff turned the cement to butter, so all I had to do was pull the bomb out."

  "Loren! That's fantastic! That bomb would've ruptured the RTG's core and blown radioactive fallout halfway across Florida!"

  "Sure it would've. But I took care of it, no problem."

  Nora gave him a giant hug. "Loren, you're the world's first polychaetologist hero!"

  "It was nothing."

  "So what did you do with the bomb?"

  "I put it in my pocket, figured I'd try to find a safer place to ditch it."

  Nora's eyes widened. "Loren. Tell me that bomb's not still in your pocket?"

  Loren rolled his eyes. "Of course not. In fact-" He paused and snapped his gaze back toward the beach.

  "Look! There's the third guy! His buddies left without him!"

  Nora could see the frantic black-clad figure standing on the beach. He was looking to the sky.

  "That must be the one I knocked out in the control station. When he didn't get back to the ship in time, the other two left."

  Loren broke out into hysterical laughter. "Oh, shit! That guy's really screwed!"

  "Loren, what are you talking about? There's a live alien on the island now! Who knows what kind of weapons and technology he has! Jesus Christ, if he gets to the mainland-"

  Loren crossed his arms and shook his head. "Take my word for it. That asshole's not going anywhere."

  "What do you mean!"

  "After I got the bomb off the RTG slab, I stuck it in my pocket. Then I went to look for you. I went back to the control station, and that guy was lying on the floor, unconscious."

  "So?" Nora shouted.

  "Nora, I put the bomb in his pocket."

  Nora stared. "You mean-"

  "Then I ran back to the campsite."

  Just as the words left Loren's lips, the detonation took place.

  There was no sound, no cacophonic explosion as they might expect.

  Instead, just the sensation of a sudden monumental shift in air pressure.

  The entire island jolted, its trees swaying as if swept by a hurricane wind. The point on the beach where the figure had been standing was suddenly a throb of light that rose, then fell. A similar throb occurred deeper on the island, where the old control station had been.

  That fast.

  The light dispersed, forming a crude dome over the entire island, and a second after that-

  Nora was fingering her cross. "God in heaven ..."

  The diffuse dome flattened all at once.

  The concussion knocked Nora and Loren flat on their backs. No heat wave or scalding radioactive flash assailed them. No mushroom clouds emerged.

  When they got back up, they looked back at the island ...

  It was on fire, from one end to the other.

  They could feel the heat even this far out.

  "Incineration," Loren observed. "How convenient."

  "It'll kill everything on the island, every worm, every ovum."

  "And the third guy? He doesn't even exist anymore. You can bet everything they left in the control station will be ashes too."

  "No evidence," Nora whispered.

  "Look at that shit. Unbelievable ..."

  The fire raged for only seconds. Then it went out as quickly as it had bloomed. Even the smoke dissipated in a matter of moments.

  But the island was a blackened clot now. Every tree on it had been reduced to a charred stalk.

  "No evidence is right," Loren said. "But it doesn't make sense."

  "Maybe it does but we just don't get it."

  Loren stroked his chin, contemplating. "Why did these people come here, from God knows where, to create a hybrid bienvironmental parasite that grows exponentially and infects humans faster than any known virus ... only to destroy it all in one puff and leave?"

  "Just a field research exercise, I guess," Nora muttered. "A scientific test on their equivalent of laboratory animals."

  "Only in this case the rats were us."

  "Has to be. We do the same thing sending probes to Mars, and mice in space, and setting up research stations on the North Pole."

  Loren chuckled, wiping sweat off his brow. "No reason to even tell anyone what really happened."

  "Not unless we want everyone to think we're crazy," Nora added. "Our authorities will think the RTG melted down, that's all. It'll get pushed to the last page of the newspaper."

  Loren shrugged, eyes ahead to the sea. The boat bobbed as the current claimed it. They'd probably drift back to the mainland in an hour or so.

  Loren looked at her in subtle shock. "But something just occurred to me."

  "What?"

  "We're alive."

  Nora let the two words sink in. Yeah. How do you like that?

  "Oh, and I have to be honest enough to admit something," Loren remembered. "I lost the bet."

  .The bet?" Nora blinked, trying to remember. "Oh yeah. I bet you dinner that Annabelle would put the make on you. Did she?"

  Loren gulped. "Oh yeah. So where do you want your free dinner?"

  Nora gave the matter some serious consideration. I almost got killed by aliens today. I didn't but ... I'm still a virgin.

  "My place," she said.

  "I was hoping you'd say that," Loren replied.

  They slumped down next to each other, hips touching, and let the sea carry them away.

  EPILOGUE

  Bad luck had pursued Ruth for essentially every living minute of her life, so ...

  Why should it stop now?

  The small skiff she'd found lashed in a secluded lagoon had indeed seemed like a turn of her typical luck. She'd managed to get it out to the gulf in spite of the lower tide, and next thing she knew the current was gliding her back toward the mainland. I don't fuckin' believe it! she thought. After all she'd been through, she managed to escape. She could never be aware of the irony, though: that the selfsame skiff that saved her life had once belonged to a young man named Robb White ... before he'd turned into what Ruth continued to believe was a zombie.

  Her luck only lasted another half hour, however. That's when the skiff began to sink.

  What the fuck?

  She peered down in terror, only now noticing the tiny holes in the skiffs aluminum hull. Those fuckin' worms again! They ate holes in it, just like they ate holes in Slydes's engine!

  So much travail for poor Ruth. She'd survived giant worms, zombies, and two redneck psychopaths but fate still had not finished toying with her. The boat took water very slowly, which only worsened the truth: first to the tops of her feet, then to the tops of her ankles, inching coolly upward while Ruth just sat there jerking glances at the water which would eventually claim her. When the skiff was finally swallowed, Ruth bobbed like a buoy, gasping, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" as her feet paddled manically.

  She snorted salt water, her eyes stinging. She could see a stretch of beach on the mainland, less than a mile away. It seemed like a mirage, rising up and down with her vision, whispering to her: Swim! Swim! It's not that far!

  Ruth swam, as best she could given her clinical exhaustion, dehydration, and extreme malnourishment. One too many adrenaline dumps left her limbs enfeebled, her consciousness winking in and out.

  Would a shark get her first, or would she just drown?

  Ruth expected both to happen at once, with her luck. Dizziness swept a grainy veil over her eyes. Her heart was missing beats. How much farther?

  When she could move no more, she thought Fuck ... one last time, and sank into the sea's green depths-

  She tumbled beneath the surface, like clothes in a washer. Any energy left in her body seemed fit to burst along with her lungs.

  The grainy veil turned black ...

  And there was only stillness.

  Voices chattered above her: "Somebody go get help!"

  "Is-is she dead?"

  "Somebody get one of the seniors!"

  The chattering sounded like little girls. When Ruth's eyes opened, she eventually focused on a ring of little chipmunk faces peering down.

  "Who the fuck?" Ruth croaked through a parched throat.

  "She said the F word! She said the F word! I'm telling the Den Mother!"

  "Shut up," someone else said.

  They're little girls, Ruth finally realized. I washed up on the beach and these little girls found me ...

  The girls all seemed between ten and twelve. They wore tan shorts and tuniclike blouses with stark, colorful patches.

  "Look at her boobs," another one marveled. "Wow!"

  A hush.

  "1 think she's a bum who sleeps on the beach. You know. One of those homeless people."

  "Oh yeah, and we're supposed to help 'em."

  Homeless? A bum? Ruth finally leaned up on sore elbows. "What the fuck are you little shits talking about? I ain't no bum."

  The girls squealed. "Gosh! She said the F word and the S word!"

  "I want boobs like her."

  Ruth couldn't see well; the sun blared in her eyes. I didn't drown, she finally realized. And I didn't get eaten by a shark!

  "Hey, lady, are you all right?" one of the little girls asked.

  "Yeah, do you want us to get the Den Mother?"

  Ruth saw that one of the girls had a round canteen. She grabbed it-

  "Hey!

  -and emptied it down her throat. Oh God, that's good!

  "Did you fall off a boat?" one of the girls asked.

  "Something like that," Ruth replied, refreshed by the water. "Where am I?"

  "You're at Fort De Soto Park."

  Ruth had heard of it; it was near St. Petersburg, and she knew that St. Petersburg had a Greyhound station. She slipped a finger in the shorts she found at the shed. The cash was still there, over a hundred bucks-more than enough for a bus ticket back to Naples. "Who are you girls anyway?"

  "We're Girl Scouts-"

  Ruth looked beyond them, to the park. Holy fuck, look at them all ... Past the beach stretched a vast campground full of tents and barbecues.

  Hundreds of Girl Scouts milled about.

  "You're having a campout?" Ruth asked.

  "It's the National Jamboree," a girl said. "There's over a thousand of us here."

  Fuck, Ruth thought. A thousand annoying little girls all in the same place. She steadied herself, then stood up. "There must be some adults here," she presumed. "I need somebody to drive me to the bus station."

  "We'll take you to our Den Mother ... --- - - - -- - - - - - -- -

  "Hey, lady," another girl asked. "Are those boobs fake?"

  Ruth smirked. "Of course not!"

  "Wow!" several girls said in awe.

  Jesus ... Ruth took shaky steps off the beach, following the drove of girls. Only now was it truly sinking in: She'd survived.

  When they got closer to the woods, Ruth saw the sheer density of Girl Scouts populating the vast campsite. If anything, it looked like more than a thousand. Soon she was in the midst of them all, one little chipmunk face after another giving Ruth the eye.

  "What's Yuck Foo mean?" a girl asked, pointing to Ruth's pink shirt. "Is that Chinese food?"

  "Uh, yeah," Ruth said. "Come on, come on, take me to this Den Mother, will ya?"

  She followed them deeper into the veritable sea of Girl Scouts. Then another one asked, "Hey, lady?" She pointed to Ruth's belly. "When are you having your baby?"

  Ruth gave a hard scowl. What the fuck is this little pain in the ass talking about? "I ain't pregnant," she asserted.

  "You're not? Jeez, you must eat a lot."

  The little shit! Then Ruth looked down ...

  Her belly was bloated, indeed, like a woman close to term. Ruth's eyes widened, her hands feeling the distended stomach stretched pinprick tight.

  Holy fuck. I wasn't like this a few hours ago .. .

  Very slowly she raised her T-shirt up over her stomach-

  "Eww! Look! She's got cooties!"

  Several of the girls stared, while several others ran away.

  The skin of Ruth's swollen stomach was yellow as custard, with bright red spots.

  She looked around in the deepest dread, surrounded by a thousand Girl Scouts, and she had a funny feeling that her water would be breaking any minute now.

  0

  EDWARD LEE has had over twenty-five hooks published in the horror and suspense fields, including Flesh Gothic, Messenger and City Infernal. He is a Bram Stoker Award nominee, and his short stories have appeared in over a dozen mass market anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories of 2000, the Ilot Blood series, and the award-winning 999. His movie, Header, has been filmed and awaits release. Lee lives in Florida's St. Pete Beach. Visit his official website at www.edwardleeonline.coni.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTERTwo

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER Four

  CHAPTER FwE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER `I wENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER WENTYTWO

 

 

  Edward Lee, Slither

 

 

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