Jonas had left the door open, which permitted a trace breeze. The moon came in like an accidental guest, and the sounds of the forest began to pulse along with her buzz. She lolled in the dark, decided not to even put any clothes back on, and in her sleepy mind she saw her dreams with Slydes and Jonas come true. One great big happy family. More and more money coming in each month. A new washer and dryer, and one of those big fancy flat-screen TVs where she could sit between her two lovers every night and watch wrestling…
Warm semen trickled between her bare legs, but she felt too tranquilized to even move, much less wipe herself. Her eyes closed, and her unusually large lips turned up into a contented smile. Sleep carried her away oh so deeply…
She never even felt the thin, foot-long pink worm that slithered into her body through her vaginal canal.
CHAPTER NINE
(I)
The sergeant and the corporal watched the longhaired man leave the shed. He's leaving the woman, he realized, which seemed odd. But that was better for the field analysis. The woman would be much more vulnerable sleeping alone in the shed.
"How long till you think one of them gets her?" the corporal's voice issued through the earphone.
"Could be hours, could be minutes. No way to tell. The worms' sensory organs are supersensitive, and the ovum too. They'll seek out the largest heat signature as well as the most profound pheromonic emanations."
"Pheromonic?"
The sergeant couldn't believe the deficient level of tech training the younger NCOs were getting these days. "Airborne glandular emissions of bombykol molecule groups that come out of the skin, particularly the skin of genitalic regions. They're picked up by ol factory VMO receptors and stimulate pleasure centers in the brain. Chemical triggers, you know, from the tech classes you passed to get this duty assignment. They trigger innate reproductive responses."
The corporal clearly remembered nothing of these classes. "Fine, but since you just said it might take hours for one of the specimens to get her, I think we should go in there right now and have some fun. We'll get her pheromones going, all right."
The sergeant glared at him through the visor of his protective mask. "Any more comments like that, I'll write you up."
"You're not serious, Sarge."
"Try me." The sergeant would not have that sort of thing going on while he was ranking NCO in the field. It didn't matter that all the subjects would eventually die, it was protocol. That sort of thing could get out of hand. "She's probably got all kinds of diseases. I don't want to have to be quarantined when we get back to the post."
The corporal grumbled.
I really don't trust these new kids at all, the sergeant thought. "We're done for now," he said. "Let's get back."
"What about the two men on the boat that came in tonight?"
"They'll be infected by morning, if they're not already."
They slipped away from the shed, then turned on their low-light lenses to refind the trail back to the field HQ. They passed one corpse along the way, one of the women infected by the ovum. She hadn't released the brood yet, but the dead belly quivered from all the immature larva that bloated it.
"She hasn't been dead long," the corporal said after lancing a dead arm with the portable chromatograph. It had been calibrated to read serum levels of putrefactive gases. "A few hours maybe."
"A 'few' hours isn't good enough." The sergeant passed his troop the lance thermometer. "Check the drop-fall time against the mean-to-zero brain temperature."
The corporal looked lost. `I've never done that."
Damn. The sergeant snapped the gauge away and uncapped the lance. "I can't believe they're graduating you kids through this occupational specialty. This is supposed to be one of the first things you learn." He turned the unit on, input the readout of the air temperature, then-
Crunch.
– jammed the lance into the corpse's nostril. The breasts seemed to quiver a moment, but that was just reflexive. When the thermometer beeped, the sergeant slid the lance back out. "Hour and eleven minutes," he read.
`How's it work?"
By comparing the brain's temp against the air temp and calculating the drop time."
"Oh."
Yeah. Oh. The sergeant snapped some digital pictures for the file. The mutation element is incredible. Look at her skin."
"Yeah. Neat," the corporal remarked.
The woman's skin had fully turned now, to the same translucent yellow, peppered by bright red spots. But the sergeant couldn't help but notice how his underling's eyes were fixed on the cadaver's swollen breasts. "You're an animal. You're gaping at a dead woman's breasts. If I weren't here, you'd probably be having sex with it."
The corporal shrugged.
What can you do? The sergeant guessed he was just getting old. It wasn't the victim's former beauty that captivated him, it was the level of mutagen-transmission.
The Transfection Unit that made these specimens really knew what it was doing.
"Take a tissue sample so we can get out of here," he ordered. "I think the colonel's going to be really pleased about this."
(II)
"I slept great last night," Loren enthused, picking out his Sigma flippers and snorkel. The clean, fresh air of the great outdoors, I guess."
"Me too." Annabelle appeared just as lively, blond hair shining in the morning sun. Today she wore a bright parrot-green bikini that seemed to cover even less of her body than yesterday's apparel. "I got to sleep pretty late," she said, inadvertently looking around for Trent, "but slept very well. I'm surprised how quiet the forest is at night."
"Quiet?"
"Oh, sure. You should hear the racket the woods make in Brazil and Southeast Asia. Ten times louder than this."
"Wow, you've been all-over the place."
"Indeed I have. My job's sent me on shoots all over the world, from the Sahara to the Arctic Circle."
"What about the Arctic Circle?" Trent asked. He looked exhausted when he came out to the narrow strip of beach, his uniform crumpled and circles under his eyes.
Loren found his diving mask. "Annabelle's a world traveler, from her job."
"A world traveler, huh? I believe it."
Annabelle gave him a sultry smile. "This little island's more like a vacation to me."
Trent rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, me too."
The blonde untopped a tube of waterproof suntan lotion. "Would one of you mind putting some of this on my back?"
When Trent stepped forward to take the tube, she gave it to Loren. Trent frowned.
"You'll definitely need this," Loren said, hands already shaking as he smoothed the lotion over her skin. "Shallow water magnifies UV rays. You'll have to reapply this all day; waterproof means it won't wash off for ten or fifteen minutes."
"Where's Professor Craig?" Trent asked.
"She's already out in the water"
Trent gazed out into the Gulf of Mexico, arms crossed. 'So today's the big hunt for the scarlet bristleworm, huh?"
"Yuh-yep," Loren confirmed. His hands gingerly spread the lotion around the strap of Annabelle's bikini top, then shakily slid lower.
"Loren, since you're down there, would you mind doing the backs of my legs?"
"Shuh-sure," Loren said. Now he knelt to find himself face-level with Annabelle's derriere.
Trent frowned again.
Annabelle glanced over her shoulder. "That's enough, Loren. Thanks.-
His hands continued to shake when he gave her back the tube. Annabelle fitted on her diving mask, then propped it up on her forehead. 'I'm ready when you are, Loren.'