Monstrous

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “Former combat transports really aren’t built for comfort,” she said from behind the wheel. “Never imagined I’d be driving one of these again, especially down the streets of Boston.”

  They had been met with the occasional attack: pockets of gulls, pigeons, and crows dropping down out of the stormy sky to pounce upon the blocky vehicle.

  “But of course Dirty Harry drove a Humvee,” Langridge said, making a sarcastic reference to the security guard back at the hotel.

  Cody held on, watching through the windshield as Langridge drove up onto the curb near Government Center to get around a clump of cars that looked as though they’d collided before the drivers were attacked.

  “There’s the North End,” Rich said, pointing out some cramped side streets that flowed up into what used to be a predominantly Italian-American neighborhood. “What I wouldn’t give for a cannoli from Mike’s Pastry right now.”

  “Maybe we’ll stop on the way back,” Cody responded sarcastically.

  Sayid sat in the passenger seat, holding on to a piece of paper with the written directions like it was the most valuable thing in the world. Cody noticed that he stared at it almost the entire time, rarely looking up as they made their journey through the clogged streets. Maybe he’s had enough of the carnage, Cody thought.

  “We want to get back onto Cambridge Street,” the doctor said, lifting his head and pointing.

  Langridge did the best she could to maneuver the vehicle in the right direction through the graveyard of cars and trucks and bodies—and that was when they found it.

  “What the hell happened here?” Rich said, sliding over in the backseat, much to Cody’s annoyance.

  It was a scene of bloodshed and violence unlike any they had already witnessed.

  “It looks like the animals freakin’ self-destructed or something,” Rich commented in his understated way.

  But Cody had to admit: He was right.

  It was an entire area, close to a city block, that was littered with the corpses of every type of beast involved with the city attacks.

  Snowy stuck her nose close to the window, sniffing the air, and began to whine.

  Langridge moved the Humvee in closer for them to look, the disturbing sound of crunching bodies filling the cab as she did.

  “What do you think, Doc?” she asked. “Anything we should be taking note of?”

  Sayid was silent, his eyes darting about the carnage as the windshield wipers moved at a steady, rhythmic pace. “It looks as though they attacked each other,” he said, pointing certain corpses out. A German shepherd with a smaller dog crushed in its jaws, multiple rats bloodily burrowed into the bodies of other rats, piles of dead birds of all kinds—all stricken dead in what looked to be some epic battle.

  “So they’re killing each other now?” Rich asked. “What sense does that make?”

  Snowy was whining even louder now, a kind of sad howl that Rich had only heard when—

  “Sidney,” Cody said. “It’s got something to do with her.”

  Sayid turned in his seat, considering what Cody had said, and then turned back.

  Langridge was still looking at him in the rearview mirror, her eyes intense.

  Rich laughed nervously. “Are you joking?” he asked. “How could Sid . . . ?” His question trailed off as they all silently pondered the disturbing answer to the question.

  They were still considering that, Snowy pacing back and forth on the seat, as Langridge got them back onto the main road, continuing their journey to Elysium.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Their instinct to survive caused them to run.

  Delilah and Mason spun away from the animals that wished them harm and back toward something equally bad.

  What was it that her grandmother used to say in these situations? Delilah’s fevered brain thought, at the most inopportune of times.

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire?

  They both went down the tunnel, turning the corner to face the boneless monster and the swirling hole hanging in midair. Delilah tried to change course, to somehow go around, to find some means of escape, but Mason’s sudden screams caused her to stop—to turn.

  The cocoons had hatched.

  It turned out that’s exactly what they were—cocoons.

  But instead of beautiful butterflies emerging, these were monsters—pale-skinned things, human in basic design, but also sharing certain animal traits. Their faces were pointed, ratlike, their slime-covered bodies misshapen, and some even had vestigial tails.

  They were nightmares. That was the best way that she could think of it. Nightmares that had captured her friend and were dragging him struggling and screaming toward the spine-covered monster that had been spit out of the whirlpool hanging in the air of the tunnel.

  She saw an opportunity—brief and fleeting—to actually escape deeper into the tunnels—a split-second decision.

  Either stay and try to help—or escape.

  More monsters climbed from the cocoons, scrambling across the rocky ground toward her, obeying some unspoken command.

  Maybe she would make it—ducking into shadows or hiding in one of the concave pockets built into the tunnel walls.

  There was a chance—albeit slight. But she had to run.

  Now.

  They were almost on her, and she knew her time was up. Her loyalty had doomed her.

  The monsters sprang upon her, driving her backward to the ground. She fought them the best she could, kicking and punching and clawing like some sort of animal herself, but they seemed impervious to her abuse.

  Within seconds they had her, dragging her back toward Mason.

  Back toward the throbbing, gelatinous life-form and the swirling hole in the air.

  A passageway, she now believed, but from where she did not know.

  For all she knew, it could have been from hell.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Sidney’s brain felt three sizes too big for her skull.

  The pain was something the likes of which she’d never experienced before. Sure, she’d had headaches—the sinus ones being the worst—but nothing like this.

  It felt as though her brain was continuing to swell, pushing against the sides of her skull, and would soon start to squeeze out through any holes available.

  She imagined her eyeballs popping out and brain matter oozing hot and slimy down her cheeks.

  But she couldn’t dwell on the pain, because to do so might cause her to lose her life. Sidney was under constant attack. The closer she got to her destination, the more furious the attacks became.

  Standing on Blossom Street, she flexed a swollen and bruised section of her brain, emitting something that caused a wave of rats to veer off, smashing their bodies into a nearby brick wall. For a brief moment she was inside their nasty minds, controlling them through the alien growth that the invaders had caused to develop inside the skulls of the animals.

  But as soon as one attack was neutralized, there was another right behind it. Something did not want her to reach Elysium. Something wanted to stop her and was willing to throw just about anything at her to do it.

  Crows, sparrows, and pigeons circled above her head, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike, while a pack of dogs came at her from a nearby alleyway.

  The pain was incredible, and it was taking everything she had to stay conscious. She knew that her nose was bleeding, feeling the warm trickling sensation as blood ran down from both nostrils.

  First she handled the dogs, finding her way inside their altered brains and stopping them in their run. The birds were next, as she held the dogs in place. Her vision went double as she fought the urge to vomit, reaching up into the sky, into the brains of each and every bird that flew above her, ready to attack.

  Sidney was amazed at what she was doing, holding on to the control of both groups of animals, but the wonder was quickly cancelled out by the excruciating agony inside her skull as the conflicting forces attempted to wrest control
away from her.

  Before she passed out, she directed the birds down to the ground, into the midst of the pack of dogs that she was still managing to hold in place. The birds dropped like missiles, striking the canines with such force that they shattered bones in some and killed others.

  The rain was coming down even more heavily than before, a whitish-gray sheet of water obscuring her sight.

  She stumbled down the street like a high school kid after her first six-pack, trying her hardest to walk straight, but somebody kept moving the sidewalk. Sidney didn’t know how much longer she could keep this up; a voice inside her mind told her that there was only so much punishment the human body could take before . . .

  The sidewalk rushed up to meet her knees. The impact was jarring, and Sidney’s hands shot forward to stop herself from falling flat. It took her a moment to realize that she had fallen, that her body had stopped working properly and she was no longer upright.

  Wave after wave of dizziness threatened to drag her forward, the ground acting as a kind of magnet pulling her to its hard surface.

  “No!” she found herself screaming, the thunder seeming to mock her. Sidney fought the vertigo, squeezing her eyes closed as she attempted to stand. She could sense more attacks coming; birds, dogs, roaches, and rats—all being directed toward her. She guessed that the presence inside her brain could feel that she was weak, that what had been done to her was making it more and more difficult for her to go on.

  But go on she did.

  Sidney heard high-pitched screaming as she stood, not realizing that they were her own cries until she was upright, swaying upon legs that trembled as if thousands of volts of electricity were coursing through them. She had to concentrate to remain standing, defiantly waiting for the next wave of attack that she would hopefully be able to counter in some way.

  She blinked her eyes and watched as her vision temporarily corrected, and she found herself looking at a sign. It was just like the one that she had seen in her strange vision, thick bronze letters on a gray, concrete background.

  ELYSIUM HOSPITAL FOR BRAIN INJURY TREATMENT.

  It took her a moment to realize that she was smiling, that despite all that the unseen force had thrown at her on her trek from the waterfront, she had made it—she had survived.

  A newfound energy surged through her body, and she pushed herself toward the hospital. The driveway was littered with abandoned vehicles, doors open to reveal driverless front seats. She wondered about them as she passed, pelted by the heavy rainfall, turning her attention to the front entrance of the building.

  And to the strange figures she saw standing there upon the steps. She noticed immediately how they were dressed, some in pajamas, others in hospital johnnies, and others completely naked. At once she knew that they were patients of the hospital, and she wondered what they were doing out here.

  But suddenly she understood: The alien force had the ability to affect the brains of simpler life-forms—

  Or those with damaged brain functions.

  Sidney remembered Ronald Berthold back on Benediction and how the alien force had used the brain-injured man, and felt increasingly nauseous as she looked at the poor souls now under the invaders’ control. Stopping mid-driveway, she stared at the entrance wondering how she could get into the building, past the waiting sentries, when it struck her.

  The vision was like a physical blow, something that seemed to push itself up and out of her swollen brain for her to see.

  She saw darkness and stone—a tunnel of some kind. Something hung in the air, a passage—a hole in time and space.

  The vision confused her, and she tried to push it away, fearing that it might cause her brain to explode. But it was the last detail, the last piece of information that her swollen brain saw, that told her where she really wanted to go.

  Tracks. Metal tracks on the rocky ground.

  The vision cleared, and she found herself back in front of the hospital, patients now slowly descending the steps, knowing what she now knew.

  Knowing that she was a danger to the ones that controlled them.

  Sidney watched as the patients came toward her, and she reached out with her mind to garble their commands. The patients stopped, some tipping over and falling to the rain-swept ground. Temporarily safe, she looked around, realizing that it wasn’t Elysium itself that was her destination, but something connected to it.

  Something that appeared to be underground.

  The incomplete subway station sat no more then ten yards away. She knew the minute her eyes touched it and that painfully terrible sensation electrified the base of her neck and spine that she had found what she was looking for.

  Fearing that she could not keep this up for much longer, she walked toward the station, ready to face what was in store for her.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Is this it? Delilah wondered. Is this how it’s all going to end?

  The things from the cocoons had dragged her over to the jellyfish.

  Jellyfish. If only. But that’s what it looked like as it sat there, its body spreading out over the rocky floor, pulsating with tremulous life.

  She could see what was going to happen to her, as it was already happening to Mason.

  They had forced him to the ground, and these things—legs? tentacles?—had emerged from beneath the jellyfish. From the ends of these limbs a thick fluid was sprayed onto his struggling body, covering him up, cocooning him as he screamed.

  And then he wasn’t screaming anymore, his body completely rigid. Eyes bulging wide as his face was slowly covered up.

  “Mason!” she screamed, fighting all the harder as they forced her to the ground. “Fight it, Mason! Whatever they’re doing, fight it!”

  Delilah’s mind raced at what she’d seen emerge from the original cocoons. Was that to be her and Mason’s fate? Were they to be cocooned, changed into monsters to serve the jellyfish?

  If she wasn’t so terrified, it would have been ridiculous.

  Delilah fought with everything she had but knew that her strength was failing. There was only so much that she had to give, and exhaustion was most certainly setting in.

  But it didn’t mean that she was giving up.

  As they forced her to the ground, she flailed and kicked. One of the tentacle limbs slithered snakelike out from beneath the fleshy skirt of the jellyfish, moving across the ground toward her to perform its disgusting function.

  It got close to her and she kicked out, the heel of her shoe pinning the writhing limb to the ground. She actually managed to get one of her arms free and reached down to grab a handful of gravel and dirt. Delilah wasted no time in throwing this into the face of one of the creatures that was holding her arm. The thing recoiled, pulling its hands up to protect its face and eyes.

  This gave her a chance . . . that one opportunity that she was hoping for. More tentacles were slithering toward her as she scrambled on the rocky ground to climb to her feet, lashing out at the animal things, pushing them backward into each other as she sprinted to escape.

  Delilah didn’t know where the strength had come from, only that she had it, and she needed to use it right away before it was gone. She was running as fast as she could, away from the creatures and down toward an offshoot tunnel that would hopefully bring her to another station where . . .

  Something snagged her ankle, and she fell hard, chin whacking off the ground. It took a moment for the stars to clear, but Delilah wasn’t about to give up. She attempted to crawl away, but the thick, muscular tentacle remained tightly wrapped around her leg. Struggling in its grasp, she screamed, digging her fingers and nails into the gravel as the limb dragged her back.

  The animal people were waiting for her, their clawed hands reaching to take possession of her again. She was about to fight some more, to not give them the satisfaction of going quietly, when the wave struck them.

  It was a living wave, made up of every type of horrible crawling thing that she could imagine. It struck wit
h the force of a truck, throwing her from the grasp of the monstrous hybrids. She stared as the wave swarmed over them, biting, clawing animals ripping the creatures to pieces.

  Delilah was able to pull her foot from the jellyfish’s grasp and was terrified by the sight of an even larger wave of animals moving across the tunnel floor toward them like some sort of enormous snake.

  She was going to run again, to head down toward the entrance to one of the other tunnels, when she saw her.

  A woman, maybe a little younger than Delilah, standing defiantly, fists clenched at her side.

  Who the hell was she, and why was she down there?

  “Run!” Delilah screamed to the young woman. “Get out of here as fast as you can or . . .”

  Even as she spoke, another serpent made up of roaches, rats, and even stray dogs and cats began to form.

  “Run!” Delilah screamed again.

  “I got this,” she heard the young woman say.

  And just as she said that, the first serpent of life lunged toward the newest, the two of them colliding in an explosion of vermin.

  Delilah threw up her hands, shielding herself from the flying gore exploding from the impact between the two serpents. Wiping the thick spatter from her arms, she watched as the young woman approached the jellyfish, standing defiantly before the swirling portal in the air.

  Not truly understanding why she did it, Delilah ran to her, grabbing her arm and trying to lead her away. “You don’t want to be anywhere near that,” she said.

  The younger woman resisted, looking away from the whirlpool to look at her with wet and feverish eyes. Dark blood streamed from her nose, staining the front of her shirt.

  “No, I do,” she said, pulling her arm from Delilah’s grasp. “You run . . . I can handle this.”

  Delilah was torn, but the thought of seeing her son pulled at her, and she found herself starting to back away.

  The younger woman strode toward the jellyfish and swirling hole in the air. The animals were joining again, as well as the surviving things from the cocoons . . . all advancing on the bloody-faced woman as she stood there.