Slither - Edward Lee [114]
Thank you, God, she thought and ran off into the woods.
(III)
Loren jogged the trail back toward the campsite. Lieutenant Trent better be there, he thought. And Nora better not be too far behind .. .
Nora.
Shit.
Suddenly, he was grimly aware of the pistol in his waistband. I should've left the gun with her ...
The bulk of the desalinator and purification machines caught his eye, then slowed him to a stop. The RTG, he remembered. It was just a few yards away from all that. He turned and followed the power cable, where it ended at the concrete slab.
And there it is, he thought. At once came a sensation like ice water in his belly.
He was looking at the bomb ...
The small black disk sat propped up on the rod, just as he'd seen on the surveillance screen back at the station. Is that thing really a bomb? he questioned. How do we really know?
Then his certainties returned the instant he recalled everything else they'd seen, particularly the hundred foot-long vessel levitating out of the sea and moving toward the island, changing color to match the terrain. Perfect camouflage.
A fucking spaceship. Shit.
Then a glance back down to the puck-sized disk. A border of light was flashing on it, as if counting off seconds. Like a timer, he realized.
Loren dropped to one knee, took a breath, then grabbed the disk with both hands. He pulled with all his might but the disk didn't move.
Christ! What did he do? Drill the damn rod into solid concrete? Loren had watched the entire process on the screen, and there'd been no sign of a drill or any other kind of impacting tool that would be able to drive the rod through the cement.
What if I. ..
He put the barrel of the pistol against the rod ...
On second thought that's a really BAD idea.
Loren couldn't figure a way to remove the disk. It's not my problem, he tried to rationalize. It's beyond my control.
The easy way out.
Maybe I can pry it off, he considered, then sprinted into the woods. If he could find a branch sturdy enough to wedge between the slab and the disk ...
"Holy Mother!" he yelled when the worm-in the space of a blink-shot out from under the thicket and began to coil about his legs.
Loren tried to kick but the worm's hoselike body encircled his thighs tight as a metal clamp. Loren collapsed.
His heart squirmed as more glistening pink coils raveled up his body. The worm had hooked his ankles with its tail end and was working upward, now past the waist. Its efforts were turning him into a mummy of pink coils. The musculature of its coelum made Loren feel like he was being swallowed by a pulsing mouth ...
His left arm flailed free, but the right had been caught under the coils. How much sooner till it got to his neck?
Loren couldn't think. His adrenaline pumped uselessly through his body; the harder he tried to move, the more he couldn't.
Then the worm's head loomed.
Loren nearly lost consciousness at the sight: the eyeless pink cone. A tiny, meaty hole at the end suddenly expanded, revealing a pulsating throat. Stylets like transparent fishhooks emerged. Loren knew that the hooks would seek his mouth so that the worm could secure a grasp before it would start pumping its acidlike digestive enzymes down his esophagus, whereupon his innards would be liquefied and then sucked back into the worm's body, for nourishment. After the hearty meal the creature would fill Loren's emptied body cavity with ova, to incubate. --- - - - -- - - --- - -
His right hand had managed to slither to the pistol in his waistband, but the coils were too tight to drag it out. Even in this revolted paralysis, his subconscious knew that there was nothing to lose in firing anyway-
Bam!
Did the worm actually squeal? Loren felt the gun kick beneath the mummifying coils, felt a bullet blow through the side of his swim trunks.
It also blew a hole in the worm, midbody.
The gun barrel burned against Loren's thigh, but he didn't feel it. He'd managed to squeeze off the shot just as the worm's head was lowering to his face. Worm blood and stored seawater flooded Loren's legs; then the coils