Read Slither for Free Online Page A

by streams, ditches, sewage outlets on the beaches… The worms could be in any one of them, lying in wait. He’d no hard evidence, of course. Only that gut feeling which had stayed with him since their minds had gen-locked into his just as their teeth had bitten into his flesh. The psychiatrist had tried to convince him it was a symptom of shock; sooner or later, with any luck, he might overcome it.
    No, this was no hallucination. This was real.
    ‘Well, Mr Parker, how are you feeling?’ The surgeon shook his hand and patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. He was a youngish, athletic-looking man who was beginning to put on too much weight. The best specialist for this kind of operation in the whole of Europe, someone had told him. Rumour had it New York had offered him ten times his British income plus all the facilities he needed but he’d turned them down. ‘And this is Mrs Parker, is it?’
    Matt introduced Helen and Jenny. He began to explain once again why he’d like them to be present. The surgeon held up his hand to stop him.
    ‘Of course you’d like your family near you,’ he agreed. ‘Now, nurse…’
    They placed him with his back to Helen and Jenny while the nurse clipped through the bandages. Carefully she lifted the dressing away. Matt kept his eyes on the surgeon’s white coat, bulging over his stomach.
    ‘Mm, yes … yes. Now, Mr Parker, would you like to see yourself in a looking-glass, or would you prefer to turn round to face your wife and daughter first? It’s just as you wish. Feel free. Take your time.’
    The surgeon’s expression betrayed nothing. Matt took a breath, then slowly turned to look at Helen.
    For a few moments she said nothing. Then, unhappily: ‘Oh, Matt!’
    ‘I think it makes you look …
special
!’ Jenny announcedbrightly. ‘Like a soldier back from a war. You should have a V.C.!’
    Unexpectedly, Helen took a couple of quick steps towards him, hugged him tight, then kissed his new face. ‘We’ll have to get used to it, won’t we?’
    Matt took the looking-glass the nurse was holding out to him. His mouth was slightly lopsided, but it’d been that way while he still wore the bandages so he was already accustomed to it. His face itself was longer and gaunter than he remembered it; one cheek was pinker than the other, as though made of different material, and puckered. There were more scars on his neck and throat.
    Yet it was all natural flesh and blood, he thought. Flesh which the sewer worms would devour only too eagerly, given half a chance.
    ‘You have to realize, Mr Parker,’ the surgeon was saying, ‘the whole of your cheek on that side had been practically eaten away. We’ve had to build it up from nothing.’
    ‘You’ve done a good job,’ Matt said dully. ‘And I never was much of a beauty.’
    ‘Later on we could try some more cosmetic surgery… Er, nurse, I wonder if you could rustle up some cups of tea?’
    The nurse smiled and left them. Jenny took hold of his hand, pressing herself against him affectionately. ‘It’s a funny face but I think I like it,’ she decided. ‘My teacher said we must be grateful you’re still alive. Daddy, where did the worms come from?’
    It distressed Matt when he left hospital to find most people had come to accept the worms as just one more natural hazard in the same class as jellyfish, wasps, hornets, scorpions or sharks – nasty to have around, but unlikely to affect them personally. He tried to convince anyone who’d listen that they were more calculating and deliberate in their attacks on human beings, but very few seemed to understand.
    Until, that is, they realized who he was. Then they switched on expressions of sympathy he could well have done without. ‘Try to forget,’ was the most general advice. But how couldhe when every glance in a mirror brought back the memory?
    ‘I’m worried about you, honestly,’ Helen confessed as she snuggled up to him in bed on his fourth night home. ‘You