Awwwwww, SHIT!
The corpse of a young woman floated languidly just beyond the bow. The way her sable-hued hair fanned out over the water was almost pretty.
The rest of her wasn't so pretty.
She was probably naked, but that couldn't be totally discerned for what was wrapped around her like a pink garden hose: something that had to have been a snake. It coiled about her upper thighs, waist, and bosom, then her neck, and it glistened intricately. Sickening enough as it was, what sickened Howie more was the creature's color: pink, like the inside of someone's cheek. The woman's eyes no longer existed within their sockets but instead floated free, suspended by tendrils of optic nerves. The thing's tail roved listlessly between her wax-white legs, while its head…
Howie gaped.
The thing's head burrowed into the woman's mouth, and its elongated body seemed to pulse… as if pumping something down through her esophagus.
Howie had had enough. Gotta-get-OUT OF HERE! But as he leaped off the skiff, something snagged his vision on the other side of the quiet inlet.
His eyes flicked up-
A man was standing between some trees. He wore some sort of black jumpsuit with integrated mittens.
And a gas mask and hood.
Military, Howie thought.
When he blinked, the man was gone.
Howie ran back into the woods as if he were being chased by demons.
CHAPTER ONE
"Would somebody explain to me just exactly why this Pritchard's Key place is so special as far as scarlet bristleworms go?" the bikini'd blonde at the end asked. Her name was Annabelle Omart-noon-blue eyes, and a body like a game show hostess's. She hailed from New York, the National Geographic editorial offices. Her body suggested a dedicated regimen of exercisemost likely in upscale fitness salons. The only thing missing was a preeminent suntan. The woman sat demurely, seat-belted in to the helicopter's muster bench.
"It's because of something called a counterstropic rivulet," Nora answered with absolutely no interest. When she didn't elaborate further, Loren Fredrick, her associate, continued, "Which is actually just an uncharacteristic surge of runoff water from the mainland. Gravity and the terrain siphons this water to a single point and a gradient underwater current in the gulf pushes it outward. Pritchard's Key just happens to exist at the same point where the surge begins to disperse."
The army guide wasn't listening, and neither was the cabin master, a gruff warrant officer. They were both looking at the blonde. Every so often, even the pilots glanced back from the cockpit to ogle her.
Professor Nora Craig simply sat there and frowned.
She lapsed back against the cabin wall as Loren attempted to dazzle the others with information about the remarkable scarlet bristleworm. Nora herself let the helicopter's rotor noise lull her away from the creeping trickle of low self-esteem. Why am I letting that blond calendar girl posing as a photographer make me feel insecure? Perhaps it was just a case of raging hormones.
She let her eyes move across the cabin, trying to consider everyone in objective terms. Lieutenant Trent looked more like one of those guys who work in a department store appliance section. Pushing forty, smirking, not much going on behind the eyes except a lack of enthusiasm. Evidently he was assigned to the army's public relations unit, the "PR mouthpiece between the military and the civilian contingent," he'd explained. "Whenever civvies need to be shown around army property, I'm the guy they send." Trent's fatigues were crumpled, which might indicate how often this desk driver wore them. If it weren't for the distraction of the blond photographer's cleavage, he would probably be asleep.
Loren Fredrick was Nora's teaching assistant at the university. Totally unsocialized like many professional academics, he sat as gawkily as a textbook nerd. Tall beanpole physique, knobby knees, and a long neck that showcased what had to be one of the biggest Adam's apples in human evidence. Buckteeth, too, and a mop of wiry dark hair. He sat at the edge of his cabin seat, animatedly explaining the evolution of bristleworms in general and their unique "parapodic" means of loco motion more specifically. He's boring them silly, Nora thought, and he doesn't even realize it.
The army warrant officer was a typical Neanderthal with his green helmet and ham-hock-sized jaw, and the two pilots up front were little different. Somebody peed in the pool, Nora mused over their brute, caveman features. The gene pool, that is. They clearly bore no interest in this excursion, and if they were even listening to Loren's grueling dissertation, it was to look at the blonde sitting next to him. They're just here for the ride and the eye candy, Nora realized.
"Right, Nora?" Loren asked.
Nora blinked, reined her attention back in. "Oh… what?"
"I was telling Annabelle about the reproductive habits of some bristleworms, such as the Eunice didacta."
Annabelle, Nora thought through the bored daze. Oh, right. The blonde. He's calling her by her first name, like they're best buds. "The female didacta will actually ingest the entire posterium of the male."
'Posterium?" Annabelle pronounced.
"'The rearmost tip of the worm's body," Nora defined.
"Which, in the case of this species, also contains the spermatic reservoir-its penis, if you will," Loren finished, grinning. "That's how the Eunice didacta has sex."
Annabelle's eyes grew wide. "How fascinating!"
The huge-jawed warrant officer elbowed Trent. "Ain't that somethin', Luey? The chick worm eats the dude worm's works. That's how it gets knocked up!"
"Charming."
The warrant laughed along with the two pilots, while Trent simply frowned at the image.
"It sounds like such a specialized subject," Annabelle said. She perkily pointed to Loren's T-shirt, which read POLYCHAETOLOGISTS DO IT BETIER! "That word you keep using. Polych-"
"Polychaetes," Loren was happy to reply. "That's the class of worm that your employers have sent you all this way to photograph."
Nora felt negligent by not contributing to the conversation. "The scarlet bristleworm, for example. Scarlata is the genus, or type, Polychaete is the class, and it comes from the phylum known as annelida-which covers all segmented worms." -- – - – - – - – -
"Oh," the blonde said, then returned her attention to Loren. "So that word on your shirt-"
"Polychaetologist," Loren explained, "is a scientist, such as myself and Professor Craig, who- specifically studies this type of worm. That's our job."
"Great job," Trent said, dimly astonished.
The WO called to the pilot, chuckling, "Hey, Flappy, you hear that? These two here are worm scientists!"
"And the overall study of worms," Loren continued, "is called helminthology."
"Wow," Annabelle said.
Nora couldn't believe it. He just told her that he's a worm specialist… and she's impressed.
"I'm just a photographer," Annabelle chatted on. "But listening to a -real scientist-it makes me feel so dumb!"
You are, Nora agreed. She's got the high-paying job, and she's got the looks, but… at least I've got a better tan.
"What I'm looking forward to most of all," Annabelle prattled on, thrusting her bosom forward against the straps, "is getting a tan. I work out so hard in the gym to keep my body fit… I guess while I'm in Florida, I should take advantage of the sun, too. Look my absolute best."
Unbelievable ego, Nora thought. She winced out the window. Even if I DID look like her, I KNOW I wouldn't be an asshole about it.
As for the trip itself, the university had sent Nora and Loren on the excursion, since they were local and their credentials were unmatched. The whole affair had been chartered by National Geographic, no less. It sounded exotic.
It's a shitty little island with no beach and it's uninhabited, Nora's cynicism kicked in. And we might have to stay there for a week or more. I'll miss Desperate Housewives just so this bimbo can snap some pix of a Polychaete scarlata. Annabelle was one of the lauded magazine's professional underwater photographers. NG needed a new picture of the scarlata, one of the world's rarest marine worms. And it's a hell of a lot cheaper to go to Pritchard's Key than a threethousand-foot-deep trench in the Mediterranean. It was Nora's and Loren's job to locate the exceptional worm for Annabelle, for a pictorial on segmented marine bottom dwellers, and since Pritchard's Key technically remained a military reservation, however nonoperational, Trent was sent as the team's official escort.