Monstrous

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “Hey, you’re up!” Rich said, walking over to her. “Your nose is bleeding,” he said, touching beneath his own as if she didn’t know where her nose was.

  “Yeah,” she said, wiping her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “Where are we?”

  “Airport hangar,” Langridge said, as she joined them. “You all right, Moore?”

  Sidney nodded, trying to remember how they had gotten there.

  “We were just about to the hangar when we realized that we’d lost you, Bob, and the dog,” Langridge explained. “Cody found the van parked outside, managed to hotwire it, and drove back to get you.”

  She remembered the fury of the birds, and Bob.

  “Bob . . . ,” she began.

  “Yeah, what happened?” Sayid asked.

  “The birds . . . he got hurt,” Sidney said, the images of his empty eye sockets making her stomach feel all the more queasy. “Hurt so bad that the thing . . . that the thing doing this took control.”

  “Yeah, what’s up with that?” Rich asked. “I thought we killed it.”

  “Obviously there was more than one,” Cody said from where he stood beside a table covered in greasy tools.

  “Well that just sucks,” Rich muttered. As if sensing his distress, Snowy went over and leaned against his legs. He reached down to pet her.

  “Or the one that we thought was destroyed wasn’t.” Sayid offered another explanation. “We know nothing about these things and . . .”

  “Almost nothing, but we do know something,” Sidney offered, fingertips feeling beneath her nose for any more leakage.

  “What are you talking about?” Langridge demanded.

  Sidney thought for a moment, trying to make sense of her visions, or dreams—whatever they were—as she listened to the birds outside slamming their bodies against the unrelenting structure of the metal hangar.

  “I saw some things,” she said finally.

  “What did you see?” Sayid asked eagerly.

  “I’m pretty sure it was Boston again. At least one of those things is there . . . it came with the storm from . . .” She remembered the liquid darkness and felt her stomach churn with dread. “From wherever the hell they’re from.”

  “Do you have any idea where in Boston?” Langridge pressed.

  Sidney shook her head. “Someplace dark, rocky, and kinda wet. Underground, I would think. But there was also a sign, on a building. It said ‘Elysium.’ ”

  “Elysium?” Langridge repeated, then looked to Sayid. The doctor shook his head.

  “I have no idea.”

  Cody returned to the group, holding a long screwdriver in his hand like a weapon. “If there’s another one of those things here, we have to get back to the high school,” he said. “Who knows what they could be dealing with.”

  “No,” Sidney said emphatically. “No, we have to get to Boston.” She didn’t know why, nor did she understand why she felt such urgency. All she knew was going to Boston was what they were supposed to do.

  What they had to do.

  Cody gave her a disgusted glare. “Boston is a long ways away, and we don’t have a way of getting there now.”

  “Boston is important,” Sidney said.

  Langridge watched her carefully, as did Sayid.

  “Why is that?” Sayid asked.

  Sidney shook her head. “I really don’t know. I just have this gut feeling that it’s what we have to do.”

  “Do you think it might have something to do with . . . ?” Rich asked, tapping the side of his head as if he didn’t want to voice her connection with the alien.

  “Maybe.” Sidney shrugged. “All I know is something is telling me that Boston is very important, and we have to get there as quickly as we can.”

  “Well, even if we had a plane, we’ve lost our pilot,” Langridge said.

  “Maybe someone back at the camp can fly,” Cody suggested. “That would at least give us a chance to check on them and . . .”

  Sidney felt a sudden wave of panic shoot through her, making her whole body vibrate with its intensity. “We can’t go all the way back there,” she practically shouted. “We have to get to Boston. I don’t think there’s a lot of time left.”

  “The survivors at the camp should be fine,” Langridge stated. “Our best men are there. If something happens, they’ll know what to do. Sidney’s right—it’s Boston we should be worrying about.”

  “So how do we get there?” Rich asked.

  It was Cody who had the answer.

  “Boat,” the son of Benediction’s harbormaster said as they all looked at him. “We go by boat.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Everything looks normal, Doc Martin thought as she sat in the back of the SUV with Isaac, looking out the window as they passed through Benediction. Well, everything other than the fact that the streets were mostly empty of life and were strewn with animal corpses.

  “So they all died when the original organism was killed?” Burwell asked from the driver’s seat.

  “That seems to be the case,” Doc Martin said, eyes fixed on an enormous pile of what looked to be squirrels rotting in the weak sunlight.

  “So we’re looking for another organism . . . bad radio.”

  “That’s entirely possible,” Doc Martin agreed. “No one mentioned seeing another organism in the cave, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.”

  Velazquez turned in the front seat to look at her.

  “What do you think, Isaac?” Burwell asked, his eyes focused on the young man in the rearview mirror.

  Isaac said nothing, silently staring out the SUV’s window. For a moment Doc Martin didn’t think he was going to answer, but . . .

  “Our cats had babies once,” he said abruptly, still staring out the window, his eyes unblinking. “We didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

  Everybody waited for something more, but Isaac offered nothing else.

  “Well, that’s interesting, Isaac,” Burwell said after several moments. “But what about this bad radio? Do you think it’s the same or—”

  “The kittens were very cute,” Isaac continued as if he’d never stopped, the hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “There were seven of them . . . no, six,” he corrected himself. “One died.”

  Doc Martin saw a shroud of sadness pass over his face.

  “Okay, okay, enough about cats,” Burwell said, obviously annoyed. “Is this another bad radio we’re dealing with?”

  Isaac turned his head, his eyes meeting Burwell’s in the mirror. “It had a baby,” he said, his voice lacking all inflection.

  “Shit,” Burwell said. “Seriously?” He looked over at Velazquez. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  The woman shrugged. “We really didn’t get a chance to do any workup on the corpse, so who knows what’s possible and what isn’t. Doug and Tyler were supposed to be getting tissue samples for study, but we saw how that turned out.”

  “Maybe they had a run-in with the offspring,” Doc Martin offered.

  Burwell slowly stopped the SUV by the side of the road and turned around to look directly at Isaac. “What do you say, Isaac?” he asked the young man, who had already turned back to the window. “Picking up anything? Is the bad radio sending out any—”

  Isaac interrupted with a scream. A bloodcurdling sound that Doc Martin couldn’t quite understand.

  Until she leaned over, following his gaze through the window.

  And then she wanted to scream too.

  * * *

  Isaac had never believed in monsters.

  His mother had told him that they didn’t exist.

  Now, Isaac, we all know that there’s no such thing, right? she would say when something on the television scared him, or he heard a noise that he could not immediately identify.

  But since his mother had died, things had changed.

  Isaac had seen with his own eyes that monsters did indeed exist.

  And that was what he saw, surging aro
und the side of the house, racing across the lawn—like an enormous snake, slithering in a crazy zigzagging pattern toward them. It wasn’t one thing, one single giant animal, but many animals having all come together to form—

  A monster.

  Isaac was still screaming when the creature hit the side of the SUV full force, flipping the vehicle onto its side.

  They were all screaming then as glass from the shattered windows fell around them like rain. Isaac landed on Doc Martin, his flailing arms smacking the older woman in the face, leaving her stunned.

  After a few moments Burwell sprang into action.

  Isaac did not really like the man. There was something about him—maybe his gruffness—that made Isaac very anxious. But Burwell did want to stop the bad radio, and that was all right with Isaac.

  “Out the back!” the man shouted as he climbed over them, Velazquez right behind him.

  “Move, people!” Burwell screamed, his voice very loud in the confines of the car. He was forcing supplies aside to get to the rear window, and once there he knocked it out with a vicious kick. He climbed through the window, dragging a metal case behind him.

  “Isaac, we have to go,” Doc Martin said, giving the young man a push as Velazquez followed Burwell out the window.

  Isaac glanced behind her, over the front seat, and saw that the snake of many animals was slithering in through one of the broken windows.

  Doc Martin must have seen it too, because she was grabbing at him, practically hitting him to get him to move. Isaac finally crawled over the backseat and then the supplies toward the open window.

  The buzzing inside his head was back and grew steadily louder—more painful.

  Angrier.

  He got to the window and glanced back to see Doc Martin following close behind him, her fearful, yet determined expression urging him on.

  Behind her, the snake was fully inside the SUV, watching them with multiple silver-covered eyes.

  * * *

  Doc Martin could feel it through the soles of her sneakers, an increasing vibration that told her that something was close.

  Very. Very. Close.

  Isaac had just made it through the back window and out onto the road with the others when she felt them.

  Hundreds of tiny teeth biting into her legs, thousands of claws on her skin as they crawled up her pants leg.

  She screamed, screamed with the effort of moving her old body through the detritus in the back of the SUV, screamed in pain as she was bitten, clawed, and scratched. She kicked wildly, trying to fling away anything that wanted to make a meal of her. But it was a losing battle. They were everywhere, covering her body in a blanket of writhing fury. There were warm-blooded vermin, as well as insects with carapaces practically clear, indicating they were recently hatched.

  “Grab her arms!” she heard Burwell yell, just as she decided she wasn’t going to make it after all.

  She felt strong hands grab hold of her, and then she was roughly pulled through the window of the SUV and dumped unceremoniously on the road. Immediately she rolled on the ground, slapping at herself, trying to knock the clinging pests away, then practically leaped to her feet, jumping up and down to dislodge the more stubborn of the attackers.

  The swarm of warm- and cold-blooded things surged out from inside the truck.

  “Get back!” Burwell yelled.

  Doc Martin continued to swat at her body as Velazquez grabbed her and pulled her away from the SUV.

  Burwell stood his ground. The metal case he had dragged from the SUV contained the flamethrower, which he had ignited. Flames spewed from the nozzle, and the advancing swarm went up in a silent rush of fire. He continued to spray flame across the vehicle and around it, leaving no patch of ground or shadow untouched.

  “Everybody good?” Burwell asked when he finally turned from the burning wreckage.

  Doc Martin took a quick inventory of her injuries, mostly superficial scrapes and scratches, then looked around her.

  “Where’s Isaac?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The bites on Deacon’s arm were nasty.

  Mallory and Phil cleaned them up as best they could with what was left of a bottle of water that Phil had with him. Delilah had found a white lab coat hanging on a coatrack in the corner and cut some strips of cloth that Mallory used to wrap Deacon’s arm, tying the ends so it wouldn’t come loose.

  “Thanks,” Deacon said to them when they were finished, his gaze lingering a bit longer on Delilah.

  She knew his thanks were for more than the bandages. “You’re welcome,” she acknowledged, then quickly looked away.

  Her eyes fell upon the corpse of the dog, and she felt her entire body go rigid, that frightened-little-girl part of her expecting the animal to spring up from the floor and resume its attack upon them.

  “Did you notice that it didn’t make a sound?” she asked no one in particular, not taking her eyes from the dog. “No growling or barking or even crying out when we hurt it. It isn’t right,” she said, finally tearing her eyes away and turning to the others. “Nothing . . . normal acts like that.”

  “There’s nothing about any of this that’s normal,” Deacon said. He’d slipped his green work shirt back on and was slowly flexing his arm, testing it.

  “Did you see its eye?” Delilah asked. “Its right eye?”

  “Sorry, I was too busy worrying about its teeth,” Deacon said. He came around the desk to join her near the dog. “What’s wrong with its eye?”

  “There’s a shiny film covering it,” she said, moving her fingers around her own eye. “It almost looked like it was covered in metal.”

  Deacon carefully knelt down and angled the dog’s head so they could look at the right eye. Even though Delilah had stabbed it there, a thick, silvery ooze was still noticeable.

  Phil, Mallory, and one of the Nancys stepped cautiously closer, curiosity seeming to get the better of them.

  “Why do you think that is?” Phil asked.

  Delilah shook her head. “I don’t know, but Winston and Lonnie had the same thing.”

  “Winston and Lonnie?” Mallory asked. “What was wrong with them?”

  “Winston killed Cherrie,” Delilah blurted out with a shudder. “Lonnie nearly killed me, and both of them had that same silvery covering over their eyes.”

  “What do you think it means?” Phil asked.

  No one seemed to have an answer.

  “You don’t think it’s some kind of disease, do you?” Nancy asked, as she slowly backed away from the dog’s body, a hint of panic in her voice.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Mallory replied. “I didn’t notice it on any of the patients I saw up and about, but then again, I was pretty busy trying not to get killed.”

  “I can’t imagine there isn’t something to this,” Delilah said, looking at the dog’s oozing right eye.

  “And you may well be right,” Mallory said. “It’s something to tell the authorities, or the CDC, or whoever the hell we finally meet up with once we get out of here.”

  “So are we gonna try this again?” Deacon asked.

  Mason went to the door this time. “Ready?” he asked anxiously.

  Delilah could see the concern for his wife and new baby practically written on his face. She wondered if hers was just as obvious.

  It took a few moments for everyone to retrieve their weapons, but finally they were ready and gathered at the door behind Mason.

  “Do it,” Deacon said, his club raised and ready to bludgeon.

  Mason squeezed the knob, taking a deep breath, then opened the door to an empty corridor. Cautiously he stuck his head out, looking right then left, as if getting ready to cross a busy street.

  “It’s clear,” he said, carefully stepping out.

  The others followed, one at a time, each checking from right to left before leaving the safety of the office. It was strange to hear the hospital so quiet, the only sounds from the raging storm outside.

 
Deacon took the lead again. “We’ll head to the stairs,” he whispered, waving his hand for them to follow. “We go up two flights, cut across the skywalk and head down into the garage.”

  They all nodded in agreement, eyes wide with fear. Clumped together in a tight little group, they cautiously, quietly began to make their way past several offices toward the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

  Suddenly one of the Nancys broke away and headed for a nearby office. “I’ve got to get my purse!” she said as she pushed open the door and disappeared inside.

  “For God’s sake,” Deacon grumbled, but the group stopped anyway, frightened eyes glancing up and down the corridor looking for signs of trouble.

  It seemed to take forever, but Delilah knew they had only been waiting for a few minutes.

  “What the hell’s taking her so long?” Deacon whispered harshly.

  Still there was nothing.

  Finally Delilah couldn’t stand it anymore. She felt as though she would jump out of her skin if they had to stand in the hallway any longer. She moved to the darkened office and placed her fingers upon the partially closed door.

  “C’mon, Nancy,” she began as the door swung open. “We really need to . . .”

  Mr. Armstrong had the honor of being the longest-living resident of Elysium, having been at the facility since it opened in 2005. Delilah knew that because the staff had had a little party for him during her first week on the job. She’d thought that odd at the time, but as she’d grown into her new job, she’d begun to understand the connections staff made with the patients.

  What didn’t make sense was that Mr. Armstrong was standing in the center of the office, strangling Nancy.

  “Shit!” Delilah exclaimed, instinctively charging into the space. She raised her club and swung it at the man’s side, forcing him to lose his grip on Nancy and sending him stumbling into a desk.

  The woman fell limply to the floor, and as Delilah leaned toward her, she could see that her neck was already swollen and a horrible shade of blue.

  She reached down to check for a pulse, just as Mr. Armstrong fell upon her back, his scrawny arms draping around her shoulders as his hands sought out her throat. The two tumbled forward over Nancy’s body and into the desk.