Slither Read Free Page B

need."
    Loren inquired, "Head shacks?"
    "That's army lingo for the old launchpads. A head
shack is a missile bunker. The missile on its launch rail
is called the missile `head,' so that's where head shack
comes from. You'll see them in a few minutes. You
might have to sweep one out, though. All I do is stick
my head in them once a month to make sure there's no
squatters."
    And ten to one this head shack is chock-full of spiders and God knows what else, Nora considered.
    "Could you show us around the island now?"
Annabelle asked Trent, a camera slung around her
neck. "I'm dying to see it. It looks so exotic."
    Trent led them toward. a trail. "If you're a tropical
nature buff, you'll find this place pretty interesting."
    Nora frowned, lugging two suitcase-sized field kits,
while Loren carried the laptop and a bigger bag of collection and indexing gear. Annabelle bopped along
with her big Nikon bouncing off her bosom. "It's so
beautiful," she said wistfully.
    You think it might be nice of you to carry one of
these for me? came Nora's sarcasm again. She sputtered. Fat chance.
    Various types of palm trees formed a maze before
them. Nora didn't walk ten feet before she noticed
three different kinds of geckos, two kinds of parrots, and a squawking gull-billed tern. Just as they entered
the trail, a sedate marsh extended, mangrove roots jutting upward like weird plumbing. Clumps of water locus seemed to shiver as they passed; owls looked
down at them from high nests in cabbage palms. A
minute ago they'd been baking in the sun, but now the
woods seemed to draw them into a labyrinthine coolness. Nora oddly felt as though she were traversing
worlds.

    KEEP our! a red-lettered sign warned. THIS IS A U.S.
ARMY RESERVATION AND IS UNDER SURVEILLANCETRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED ACCORDING TO THE
CIVILIAN STATUES OF THE UNIFORMED CODE OF MILITARY
JUSTICE AND ALSO FLORIDA STATE LAW.
    "That's what I call a welcome," Loren joked.
    "You've got surveillance cameras out here?" Nora
asked.
    "Not anymore," Trent said, bored as he strode forward. "The sign's all bark and no bite, but it usually does
the job."
    "A heyday of regional flora and fauna," Loren commented next. A marsh rabbit shot away through brush
at their approach. Swamp lilies and wild purple petunias bobbed their heads, and Spanish moss hung like
mop heads off low branches.
    "There are also leatherback turtles, peregrine falcons, and big-eared bats."
    "I'll have to get pictures of those," Annabelle assured them.
    "Hate to tell you," Trent went on, "but most of the
wildlife out here is so unused to human contact, you'll
never see them."
    "What about alligators?" Annabelle asked next.
    "There aren't any here. But even if there were ..."
Trent indicated the pistol on his hip. "I'm a qualified
army pistol expert."

    Dirty Harry in green, Nora thought.
    Ahead she noted a long wall of sunlight beyond
more trees. It seemed uncharacteristic until they broke
through. "Wow," someone said. Now Nora saw what
had been done: A clearing the size of a football field
had been cut into the woods and in it had been erected
Trent's drab cinder block "head shacks." They didn't
look like shacks at all, more like blockhouses. Fifteen
such structures in even rows, forty feet long, twenty
high, and twenty wide. Gray-painted metal roofs sat
atop each.
    "Those are about the ugliest things I've ever seen on
an island," Loren remarked.
    "In the army," Trent said, "the ugliest is the most efficient. It doesn't matter what it is. A truck, a garbage
can, a tie, or a head shack-the army will go out of its
way to make it as ugly as possible. Even the Nike missiles themselves were ugly."
    "But you said there's no missiles here now?"
Annabelle asked.
    "Not a one. Like I told you earlier, they were dismantled at the end of Reagan's second term and I think
we gave them to Israel."
    "Lucky them," Nora said.
    Keys jangled. "Say hello to your new field lab," and
then Trent opened a