Snail
“What’s with the snails today?”
“They’re snails.” Craig studied a stain on the sleeve of his otherwise pristine lab coat, wondering: dried blood or old coffee?
“Yeah, but they’re… well, look,” Alexa said, pointing at the massive aquarium perched precariously on a shelf above two cages of rats and a loose chameleon.
“Huh.”
“‘The snails swarming and you’re going with, ‘Huh?’”
“We are testing chemicals on them, Alexa. Deviation from norm is good.”
“Can snails shamble? They sort of look like they’re shambling.”
“Someone emailed you a PETA video again, didn’t they? Again. Everyone wants progress, and they want now, but they flip out if one gastropod dies in the making of life saving medication…”
“Um, Craig?”
“‘How dare you inject an innocent monkey! What? Test it on me? You murderous bastard, you should be tried at Nuremberg.’ Remember what they did to my car last year? My fucking hybrid, no less —”
“Craig!”
“What?” he turned to glare at Alexa, saw her backing up against the far wall, shaking hand pointing at…
The snails.
The snails were shambling. En masse. A wave striking the glass and peeling off to be replaced by the next and the next.
“That isn’t possible!” Craig shouted, joining Alexa as a crack spider-webbed, the side of the aquarium bowing outward. “Ganglia, they only have ganglia!”
“Neither is fucking hippies taking their self-righteous rage out on a hybrid,” Alexa told him, “but you were bitching about that thirty seconds ago!”
“We made zombie snails?”
“I think they prefer crawling dead.”
The tank shattered and the snails poured out, an oozing puddle flowing across the floor toward the two scientists.
“We should go,” Alexa suggested.
But the hoarde had reached them, moving faster now that they were free, far faster than snail feet should have allowed.
The mass surged around them, up their legs.
“Oh, god,” Alexa sobbed. “Slimy. They’re so slimy…”
“Ow. Ow! Damn it!” One oozed across his shoulders, around his neck. Another surge of gastropods, heedless of their antennae folding, breaking, as they leapt against his skull over and over again.
“Your brain!” Alexa rasped, pulling the beasts out of her hair. “Their trying —” She gagged as a snail burst into her mouth, spat it out.
Another fought its way past Craig’s guard, entering one of his nostrils. He yelped and tore it away; Alexa plucked another from her ear.
“Emergency shower!” she shouted, hauling him after her into the small cubicle and turning the icy water to full.
The flood forced the undead monsters off.
They immediately began reforming their foul mass.
“Next lab!” Alexa sprinted.
Craig slammed the door behind them.
They leaned against the wall, shaking in the dark.
“We have to call the company,” Craig said. “There must be biohazard protocols in place.”
“For zombie snails?”
“I didn’t say it would be perfect!”
Alexa staggered forward, triggering the light sensor. “Oh. Oh, god.”
“What?” Craig leapt away from the door. “Are they squeezing underneath?”
“Oh, god. The roaches…”
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