Slither - Edward Lee [105]
"Maybe luck," Nora said. "Plus, we've been spraying ourselves constantly with insect repellent. We know that direct contact with the repellent kills them." She looked at her wrist. "Oh yeah, and we've got these things." She held up her wrist, showing the repellentlaced plastic bracelet. When she moved the bracelet closer to the ova, they began to back away.
"Well, that's good to know," Loren said. "At least it's a little protection."
"Sure, but let's be practical. Tiny worms and ova are one thing, but these little bracelets aren't going to stop a large, fully mature worm. The one that attacked me in the water wasn't the least bit affected by this bracelet."
"Yeah, and neither was the twenty-footer that got Annabelle. She had a bracelet too."
"We better put more spray on now that we're thinking of it," Nora said and withdrew the narrow can from her pocket. She aimed the can down at her legs and pressed the button. Nothing came out.
"It's all gone!"
"Terrific," Loren said. "We better hope that Trent has some more."
Nora tossed the empty can. "Come on, let's keep going anyway. just be careful."
They burgeoned forward through heavier brush, and after just a few more yards ...
"See it?" Nora asked.
"Yeah ..."
The old blockhouse building looked jammed into the woods, overrun with brush, Spanish moss, and vines that crawled down from the trees above.
"The control center for the old missile site," Nora said. "Just like Trent told us."
"Shit, that place looks like it hasn't been used for twenty years," Loren observed of the squat, bunkerlike structure.
"Maybe it's just supposed to look that way. So no one bothers with it." Nora kept her eyes on the station, imagining what might be inside. What did she suspect? A secret barracks, a camouflaged field lab or research outpost? I don't know WHAT I'm thinking ...
They both crept up slowly.
"No windows," Loren noticed.
"Of course not ... but there's the door."
A black, metal-framed door stared back at them, with a similar warning: RESTRICTED. Loren noticed it at once: "Look. The doorknob."
Nora saw what he meant. There actually wasn't a doorknob anymore, just a rust-rimmed hole. Loren hooked his finger in the hole and pulled, but the door didn't budge. "Maybe it was welded shut when they closed down the site."
"Then why do I see light inside?" Nora questioned when she leaned over and peeked into the hole.
"You're kidding me ..." Something caught Loren's eye. "But check this out," he said and pointed down to a heavily cased air-conditioning unit. It sat midbuild- ing, bolted to a cement grounding. It was rusted through, its grate corroded. They could see the fan deeper down, caked with more corrosion.
"That thing hasn't turned in years," Nora said.
"So that means there can't be anyone inside. With no windows open? It's 110 in there."
Fine. But why's there a light on? Nora went back to the door. Head-level against the frame was a black plate of some kind. "What's that? A military dead bolt?"
"Feels almost like plastic or polycarb," Loren said after he brushed his fingers against it. "The temperature's cooler than the door metal. It's a tack weld or something. If it was a dead bolt, there'd be a keyhole."
Nora touched it too. "There is-at least I think so. See that?"
Loren squinted.
There was no sign of a key cylinder, but there was indeed a tiny slit in the black plate, perhaps an eighth of an inch long.
"You can barely see it," Loren said. "Must be some high-tech security lock."
Nora was unconscious of the impulse; she was reaching down into her pocket and before she even knew what she was doing, she'd withdrawn that pen- dantlike object she'd found in the woods: the strip of metal on a neck cord.
"Interesting," Loren said.
Nora put the end of the pendant into the