Monstrous

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  Mason was suddenly there, grabbing at Mr. Armstrong, trying to pull him off her.

  “Help me with this guy!” he shouted as Phil and Deacon appeared.

  The three of them managed to haul Mr. Armstrong away from Delilah, slamming him back onto the desk and holding him there, even as he continued to struggle.

  Delilah scrambled out of the way, pushing herself into a corner as she tried to catch her breath. She looked around the room, trying to take it all in. Mallory was kneeling beside Nancy’s body, sadly shaking her head, while the other Nancy stood over her, her hand to her mouth. Deacon, Mason, and Phil were still fighting to hold the struggling Mr. Armstrong down on top of the desk.

  And then she caught sight of the office computer. It was on the floor in the opposite corner, where it would have been hidden to anyone first entering the office. It had been partially taken apart, its pieces neatly stacked in piles nearby.

  Curious, Delilah pushed herself to her feet and approached the disassembled technology, noticing wet smears of red on the inside of the hard-drive casing. She looked back at Mr. Armstrong, flailing on the desk. Mason reached out to grab his arm and pin it to the desk—

  But not before Delilah saw that the man’s fingertips were raw, ripped, and ragged.

  Bloody.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Cody’s idea was a good one—sail to Boston.

  But first they had to get to the marina, and then they had to find a boat that was still in the water and ready to sail.

  Realizing that their time was running short, they all clambered into the panel truck, all except for Langridge, who waited outside, ready to slide open the hangar doors. Cody was behind the wheel; Sidney and the others sat on the floor behind him. Waiting.

  “So, we’re going to the marina and we’re going to steal a boat?” Rich asked.

  “That’s the plan,” Cody said. His eyes were fixed on Langridge, who held up one hand, fingers closing one at a time as she counted down.

  “Just wanted to make sure that I understand how I’m going to die,” Rich said.

  “That’s no way to talk,” Sidney said, although she did understand where her friend was coming from.

  “Sorry,” Rich apologized. “Just can’t think of anything good coming out of being on open water, sailing into the hurricane.”

  “Can’t think like that,” Sidney said, watching as Langridge folded her fifth finger into the fist and pulled the metal door open wide enough for the van to drive through.

  Cody immediately stepped on the gas, and the van lurched forward as birds flew through the opening.

  Langridge covered her head with her arms and ran toward the van as the robins and sparrows swarmed her. Cody barely slowed down as Langridge grabbed the passenger door and threw herself into the front seat—bringing a robin with her.

  “Shit,” Cody said as the angry bird came at them.

  From one to the other it attacked, avoiding their hands with its evil swiftness as they cursed and flailed. It was Snowy who finally dispatched the bird, snatching the assassin from the air and crushing it in her mouth.

  “Good girl,” Sidney praised, prying the dead bird from the dog’s clenched jaws. She could see that the dog was disappointed at having her prize taken away, but Sidney didn’t want to risk anything happening to her best friend. Who knew what would happen if Snowy were to eat the thing?

  Sidney took the bird, glancing at its lolling head just long enough to see that its tiny right eye was covered in that nasty silver covering. It made her stomach squirm, as well as something inside her head. She tossed the robin corpse into the back of the truck, signaling to Snowy to leave it there.

  The birds did not want them to go, dive bombing the truck with intense ferocity. The larger birds thumped and bumped off the hood and windshield, leaving bloody smears and hairline cracks that they all hoped wouldn’t get any larger.

  Cody squirted the windshield with wiper fluid and turned the wipers full on. Langridge shot him a look, and he just shrugged as he sped through the airport parking lot, trying to avoid the plummeting fowl.

  “I thought most of the animals died when the original life-form was destroyed?” Langridge questioned.

  “Maybe there were animals that weren’t initially affected,” Sayid said. “That the life-form could only control a specific number of—”

  “They were held in reserve,” Sidney suddenly said, causing them all to look at her. “Just in case,” she added. “They were held in reserve just in case they were needed by the other.”

  “The ‘other’? Sid, how . . . ?” Rich began to ask.

  Sidney stared straight head, eyes blinking with each new bird hit.

  “I just know,” she added, really not wanting to talk about it anymore.

  “How far to the marina again?” Sayid asked, filling the sudden silence with something other than the sound of birds pummeling the van.

  “Not long,” Cody said. “Shortcut down Herbert Road, and then we’ll cut over to . . .”

  Sidney saw it up ahead but wasn’t quite sure what it was. It looked like someone had tied lengths of string across the road, from one tree to another. “Cody, you might want to . . . ,” she began.

  But it was too late. The white strands sliced through the top of the windshield, shaving off part of the roof with a shriek of rending metal as they drove into it.

  They all cried out, ducking down beneath the strands that remained unbroken as Cody slammed on the brakes. The van spun wildly, its movement finally stopped by the taut, white strands that stretched across the road.

  Slowly, cautiously, they lifted their heads.

  “What the hell just happened?” Sidney was the first to ask.

  Langridge was doing the same, only she was reaching out through the missing part of the windshield to touch the strange white strands of—

  “Don’t touch that!” Sidney yelled.

  But Langridge had already touched the filament. She hissed with pain, pulling her hand back quickly, beads of blood on the tips of her fingers.

  “That shit’s razor wire,” she said, sticking her fingers in her mouth to suck away the blood.

  “Who the hell would put razor wire . . . ,” Rich started to question.

  “It’s not razor wire,” Sidney said, sensing and finally seeing what had started to descend from the foliage in the trees. “We have to get out of here quickly,” she said, already sliding through the van to the back doors.

  “Sidney, what . . . ?” Sayid began.

  “It’s webbing,” she said, reaching out to throw open the doors to the center of Herbert Road.

  “Webbing?” Sayid repeated, the meaning slowly sinking in.

  “Oh shit,” said Rich.

  Oh shit, exactly, Sidney thought as she climbed from the back of the van with the others following close behind.

  Before the spiders showed up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The new voice was speaking to him.

  This wasn’t like the first bad radio—the one that hurt his head and tried to make him do terrible, terrible things.

  No, this was something else . . . something was speaking directly to him and telling him to come.

  Alone.

  And somehow Isaac knew that if he did as the new voice asked, Doc Martin and the others wouldn’t be hurt. He waited just long enough to be sure that the doc got out of the SUV safely, but as Burwell’s weapon spit its liquid fire, the voice became quite insistent, and he felt a sharp pain inside his head.

  Isaac wasn’t sure how to feel about this mysterious new presence in his mind. But the voice was quite persuasive, and as he slowly backed away from his companions, the pain in his head began to subside.

  Come, said the voice.

  But where? Isaac thought.

  It was as if someone . . . or was it something . . . was directing his movements. He would feel the sharp pain in his head when he strayed in the wrong direction, relief when he headed in the direction th
e voice desired.

  Isaac paused for a moment, feeling a pang of guilt over leaving his friends and then the sting of his indecision. The new signal wanted him so very desperately and wasn’t about to let him go.

  He crossed through a backyard loaded with toys and hundreds of dead animals, swollen in the heat of the day. The nasty smell made his stomach churn, but the new signal in his head—sensing his distress—fixed the problem.

  And Isaac could no longer smell the stink of decay.

  That was its way of showing him that it meant him no harm, that it wanted only to show him something.

  To share something so incredibly important.

  Come.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Delilah watched as Phil and Mason held the thrashing old man in place.

  Deacon must have seen her look, because he stepped away from them. “What is it?” he asked her.

  “The tips,” she said, using her own fingers to show him. “They’re all cut up.”

  “Yeah,” Deacon agreed. “So . . .”

  “He did that to his fingers by taking that apart,” she said, pointing at the disassembled computer.

  The surviving Nancy and Mallory were looking over there now.

  “Why would he be taking a computer apart?” Mallory asked.

  “Yeah, why?” Delilah said. “So somebody who’s been in a vegetative state for close to twenty years wakes up and starts to take apart a computer.”

  “As well as strangling somebody to death,” Phil added, trying to hold the man’s wild, flailing arms down.

  Mallory moved to stand beside Mr. Armstrong.

  “Don’t get too close,” the surviving Nancy said, taking some steps back.

  “What this is, is impossible,” Mallory said, studying the man who was struggling to be free.

  “Well, it seems very possible now,” Mason said.

  “Look at his eye,” Mallory gasped.

  The right eye bulged strangely outward, moving independently of the left, turning its silvery murkiness to the nurse.

  Fixing upon her.

  * * *

  The inhuman presence controlling the human vessel fixed its view upon the female looming over it.

  These humans, it thought, making a calculated determination, are a threat.

  It reached out to the near limitless forms of simple life that thrived within its reach.

  So many vessels . . . so many tools.

  To use.

  * * *

  Mallory moved to touch the strange coating over Mr. Armstrong’s eye.

  “Mallory, I wouldn’t,” Delilah warned again, but the supervisor ignored her, the tip of her fingernail touching the shroud—

  With dramatic results.

  A tendril of electrical energy leaped from the curve of the eye, striking the tip of Mallory’s finger. She stumbled backward and fell to the floor.

  “Jesus Christ!” Mason screamed, letting go of Mr. Armstrong and jumping back.

  “Hey, man! A little help here!” Phil yelled as Mr. Armstrong broke free, pushing Phil away and climbing unsteadily to his feet.

  Delilah ducked past them to Mallory. “Hey,” she said, helping her to sit up. Mallory looked stunned.

  “Guess I shouldn’t have touched that,” she said.

  “Told ya,” Delilah said as her supervisor climbed to her feet.

  Mr. Armstrong was attempting to throttle anybody he could get his hands on. Deacon was finally able to grab him about the waist, lift him up off the ground, and slam him to the floor savagely.

  “Anything we can restrain this guy with?” Deacon asked, struggling to hold the man in place.

  Mason bolted from the office.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Deacon yelled after him.

  But it was only a few moments before Mason returned, holding up a roll of silver duct tape.

  “Had this on my cart,” he said, kneeling beside Deacon and the thrashing Mr. Armstrong. “For temporary fixes,” he continued, pulling up a strip and breaking it off with his teeth. He and Deacon managed to wrap the old man’s wrists and ankles together.

  Deacon got up off the floor with a grunt, looking down on the scrawny old man that flopped like a fish. “So are we just gonna leave him here?” he asked.

  “What else should we do with him?” Mason said with a shrug.

  “All right, then,” Deacon said. “Let’s get this show on the road again. No detours this time.”

  They filed out of the office, Delilah bringing up the rear when she stopped. There was one more thing she had to do. Quickly she grabbed a black jacket that had been hanging on the chair behind the desk and gently placed it over Nancy’s face. Beneath her breath she said a little prayer, asking God to look after Nancy, as well as apologizing for not being able to save her.

  “Delilah?” Deacon called.

  She took one last look at the covered corpse of the woman whom she barely knew, but who had become part of this whole bizarre experience.

  “Yeah,” she said, leaving the office. “I’m coming.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Large, spiderlike things dropped out of the trees on razor-sharp strands.

  They weren’t like any spiders that Sidney had ever seen before.

  “I don’t even know what to say,” Dr. Sayid said, coming to stand beside her.

  “We saw things like these back in the cave,” Sidney said. “Part spider and part whatever else the alien thing decided to mix with it.”

  “These are pretty big though,” Rich said, peering around the van.

  “You’re saying that the alien organism makes these things?” Sayid asked.

  Sidney nodded. “Yeah, in those fleshy sacks that hung from the roof of the cave.”

  The scientist looked both fascinated and horrified. “So I’d say this confirms that another alien presence is on the island.”

  “And it wants us to stay here,” Sidney blurted out.

  They looked at her.

  “It knows we’re heading for the marina,” she said. “To get to Boston and try to stop their plans. It doesn’t want us getting there.”

  Snowy could sense the spider-things crawling toward them and began to whine. They were skittering along what remained of the van’s roof, entering the vehicle through the broken windshield, and moving along the ground.

  “So I’m guessing that this road is still the quickest way to the marina,” Langridge said, pulling her gun from its holster.

  “Yeah, it is,” Cody confirmed.

  “So we move forward, then,” Langridge said, as the first of the spider-things came around the back of the van, tensing its eight, hairy legs, preparing to spring.

  She blew it into a million slimy pieces with one shot from her gun.

  “Got another one of those?” Cody asked.

  “Sorry,” Langridge said. “Most of the weapons blew up in the plane or are back at camp.”

  Sayid had a small pistol as well.

  “Looks like we’re gonna have to go MacGyver again,” Rich said, turning toward the back of the van.

  The spider-things were inside, but Langridge took care of them.

  Sidney had to admit the woman was an incredible shot.

  Cody and Rich jumped inside the back of the vehicle and rummaged around for anything that might be used as a weapon. Whoever had had the van must have been doing some kind of plumbing or electrical work, as there were rows of thin metal pipes—excellent for swiping and smashing.

  “Here,” Cody said, handing Sidney a blue canister that she recognized right off as a welding torch.

  “Nice,” she said, checking to make sure that the tank was full. “Got a light for this?” she asked. Cody went through a tool bag and pulled out an old striker.

  Sayid was firing his weapon as Sidney turned the knob to release the gas from the canister, brought the striker up, gave it a quick few squeezes to produce the spark, and—

  The torch came to life with a whoosh, the flame burning a
n icy shade of blue, just in time for use on the long, segmented legs that crawled from beneath the van.

  “Get back, Snowy,” Sidney ordered, pushing the dog behind her as she bent to touch the flame to a hairy appendage. It pulled back, blackened and smoldering.

  “Man, these things are awful,” Rich said, jumping from the van. Cody was right behind him. They each held long pieces of metal piping, with various tools sticking out from the pockets of their jeans.

  Sidney started toward the front of the van, where Sayid and Langridge were already waiting to take their shots. But the spider-things weren’t the only things they had to worry about—the webbing was dangerous as well.

  “We won’t be going anywhere fast if we have to maneuver our way through that,” Sidney said, pointing out the crisscrossing patterns stretched across the width of the road.

  Rich and Cody had joined them.

  “Rich and I can go up ahead and break it down with these,” Cody suggested, hefting a pipe.

  “Or I could do this,” Sidney said. “Watch Snowy for me,” she told Cody as she strode toward the first line of webbing.

  “Sidney, what the hell are you—”

  She touched the flame to the webbing and watched as it disintegrated with a snap and crackle. “Used to burn webs with my father’s torch in the garage,” she said, holding the torch to more of the thin strands.

  The spider-things didn’t care for her efforts and turned their full attention on Sidney. More floated down from the trees on strands of webbing trailing from their egg-shaped abdomens.

  “Something tells me you never played with dolls,” Langridge muttered as she fired at a cluster of spiders. The bullets struck their targets, raining guts onto Sidney’s head.

  A spider darted toward the girl from the side of the road, and she quickly responded, warding it off with the hissing flame. The abomination stopped, throwing up its front legs to block the fire, and Sidney used the opportunity to lunge at the thing and stomp on it, crushing its body with a disgusting crunching sound.