Slither - Edward Lee [104]
"I want to know what's going on, too. But if there really are people at this control center, what are we going to do? Ask them what they're doing? Invite them to lunch?"
"No. We're going to apprehend them, with that gun you have. We're going to get to the bottom of this."
Loren laughed hard-and nervously. "They're military, Nora! They have guns too, and the big difference is they know how to use theirs. I'm just a mildmannered polychaetologist, not Wyatt Earp."
Nora shoved away some branches and moved on. "Relax, Loren. We're just going to take a look. You're a scientist, too-aren't you curious about what's going on here?"
"Um-hmm, and Magellan was curious about what was going on in the Philippines ... and he got butchered by a bunch of-pissed-off natives."
Nora shook her head. "Just come on."
"What's that there?"
Loren had noticed a small tin shed that seemed to be humming.
"It's the filtration and desalinator for the island's water supply." Then Nora pointed to the black power cable and metal box it branched off from. "And that's the voltage regulator."
Loren stared at it. "And the generator is ... where?"
"It's over there some place," she said quickly. "Come on."
Loren followed the cable, finding its terminus at the large slab of concrete on the ground, and the accommodating sign: KEEP AWAY! RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL IN USE!
Loren frowned at her. "No wonder I've never heard a generator motor. There isn't one. That's an RTG, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Nora admitted. "I found it by accident the other day; we're not supposed to know about it. Trent said I'll actually have to be debriefed by army security people just for seeing the damn thing."
"I guess so. If terrorists knew this was here, they could use it to make a dirty bomb if they could get to the source material. Probably Cesium 137."
"Trent said the army's not worried about it. The source is buried in the middle of fifteen tons of steelreinforced concrete."
Loren chuckled. "Oh yeah, that makes me feel a lot more secure. Shit, Nora, maybe it's leaking. Maybe the RTG is causing the mutations."
"That's impossible, and you know it. It's only a couple of rads heating up a thermocoupler. We've seen these things in our own field. They're safe, and their power is exaggerated."
"We better hope so. Greenpeace would love to hear about this. Let's call Nader."
"Just come on!"
Another black cable paralleled another scratch of a trail. Nora and Loren followed it through a small clearing. "No anoles or iguanas," Nora said. "Have you noticed that?"
"Unfortunately, yes." Loren pointed down, a look of disgust on his face. "And check that out."
Another possum lay dead at the base of a tree. Bloated and quivering. Nora peered a little too closely and noticed newly hatched pink worms-not a half inch long-exiting the animal's ear and anus.
"And look there," Loren added. "But don't get too close."
A rusted sign stood before them on metal posts. It read U.S. ARMY MISSILE COMMAND-RESTRICTED AREA.
At first Nora thought the quarter-sized pocks were just spots of corrosion, but then they began to move.
"Those are the biggest ova yet," Loren noted.
"I know. They must grow selectively, like the Polychaetes myerus. It's all in the genes. While some ova hatch early, others hatch late, to evade predators or hostile climate."
At least ten fat, yellow ova crawled along the sign's metal face. With them this large, Nora could see that the red spots on their outer skins were oval-shaped: The spots seemed to move, too, as the outer skin very slowly throbbed.
Nora felt cruxed. "These things are all over the place. They're in the water and on land. They're infect ing everything ... So why haven't they infected us?"
"That's a good question." Loren stepped closer to the sign, checking at his feet for ova that might be on the ground. "They probably sense carbon dioxide, sweat, and pheromones, like lots of worms and insects." Then he exhaled toward several of them. Just as the ova had done in their field lab, these immediately began to move in Loren's direction.