Emily allowed Ben to roll onto his back again. The child’s eyes were tightly closed and his breathing had become faster than normal, almost like a dog’s pant. Drawing in a deep breath for courage, Emily eased back the lid of one eye with her thumb.
Gone were his iris, sclera, and pupil, replaced by a solid-red orb pitted with tiny dimples; at the center of each dimple was a small cluster of black spots. She let the lid drop back into place, then closed the comforter back over the boy and took a step away from the bed.
As she watched the motionless boy, her mind replayed the moment she’d killed the alien-puppeteer; that final second as the tentacle whipped through the darkness and hit Ben. She had been wrong all along about its motives. It hadn’t wanted to kill any of them; it had wanted to make them like it, to turn them, and in its final desperate second of life, it had managed to infect Ben.
Angelic, innocent Ben.
A feeling of utter despair took her firmly between its teeth and bit down hard, sinking its teeth into her very soul.
“How is he?” Emily hadn’t registered Rhiannon coming back in the room, but now she stood outside the door to the bathroom, looking far more concerned than a kid her age should have to.
Emily frantically waded through the morass of thoughts that filled her mind, looking for an appropriate answer. How was she supposed to tell Rhiannon her brother was changing into something alien? And if she told her he was fine, when he very obviously wasn’t, what then? While the transformation was only partially complete, what were they to do when he was no longer human at all? What was he becoming? If it was anything like the creatures that she had encountered so far, then he would be intent on ensuring both her own and his sister’s demise.
“The same,” she said finally as she placed the pills she had set aside in the boy’s mouth and washed them down with water. Ben swallowed reflexively. His breath stank like a cesspool, and she quickly turned away from him.
Rhiannon began to walk over to where her brother was laying.
“He’s asleep still,” Emily whispered, shooing her in the opposite direction. “Best if you leave him be for now. He needs all the rest he can get to fight this bug.”
The lie came easily from her lips, and Rhiannon seemed to accept it.
“Why don’t we get ourselves something to eat?”
“I’m starved,” said Rhiannon, brightening.
Emily popped the lids on the cans Rhiannon had pulled from the supplies and emptied their contents into a saucepan. She heated the food over a low flame on the portable gas stove; all the while her mind was attempting to assimilate what she had just seen and what few options she had to deal with the situation. She could just grab Rhiannon and run; leave Ben here and go. How she would ever be able to explain that to his sister was beyond her, the kid was smart but she was still just a kid. Even if she showed her what was happening to her baby brother, she doubted it would make a difference to her. She was so damn loyal to him.
Emily spooned the warmed food into two waiting dishes.
“Thank you,” said Rhiannon as she took one of them.
“Umm-hmm!” Emily was working on automatic now. She opened a can of dog food for Thor and added it to some dry kibble in his bowl. Poured out some water for him and then some into two plastic mugs for Rhiannon and herself.
“I think it’s probably best that you sleep in a separate bed from Ben tonight.”
Rhiannon looked up from her food. “Why?” she asked.
Why indeed. “I’m not sure if what Ben has is catching or not. And if you get it…you know. That would be bad.”
Rhiannon gave it a few seconds thought, then, “Okay.” And she was back to eating, the thought that she had been in constant close contact with her brother for the past two days never crossing her mind, apparently.
At the bottom of the beds was a reading nook consisting of a table and a couple of high-back chairs. She would spend the night there, she decided, so she could keep a closer eye on Ben through the night.
After dinner, Emily placed the lamp on top of the table and rested the Mossberg against the side of the chair. She searched through the closet and found a spare blanket; the nights were becoming chillier, and she would need it.
Rhiannon decided she wanted to take Thor out for his evening bathroom run, which Emily was quite happy for her to do. Ben was beginning to show signs of movement. She had noticed it while she was still eating dinner; the comforter would give an occasional, almost imperceptible twitch, as though Ben was suffering from some kind of muscle spasm beneath its material. She couldn’t be certain, but she thought that she may have even seen those terrible alien eyes moving back and forth beneath his lids, like a dreamer in the midst of REM sleep. There was no way she was going to leave Rhiannon alone with him. Not now.
As darkness began to pull the remaining light from the window, Rhiannon climbed beneath the covers of the bed. “Good night, Emily,” she said.
“Sleep well,” Emily replied as she took her seat and pulled the blanket around her. A pillow laid on top of the table would allow her to get some rest, at least.
“Good night, Ben.” Emily heard Rhiannon whisper. “I love you.”
* * *
Emily fought her exhaustion in a vain effort to stay awake and aware.
The light from the LED lamp was turned down low enough that Rhiannon could sleep but bright enough that Emily could still make out the still form of Ben in the opposite bed. Her tired mind was still turning over the events of the past few days, flashing first the image of the cute little boy she had met just days earlier, then the terrible images of Ben’s deformed skin in front of her eyes, like some warped movie.
Her fatigue gnawed at her thoughts, dragging them in different directions.
At some point, she lost the battle; her head drooped once, twice. Just five minutes, that’s all I need, she thought as she laid her head against the pillow. Just—
Thor’s growl woke Emily.
—five minutes.
She sat up with a start, her heart doing cartwheels in her rib cage. Where was this place? What time was it? Her disorientation vaporized as Thor’s growl sounded again in the dimness of the room.
She glanced over to the spot on the floor where Thor had been sleeping. Her dog was sitting bolt upright, teeth bared as he slowly tried to back away from something on top of Rhiannon’s bed. Her tiny snores floated across the gap to Emily.
Emily’s eyes flashed back to the bed; Rhiannon was curled up, fast asleep, the comforter pulled up to her head. Ben—or what had once been Ben—was perched on the end of her bed, one side of his face now completely black with the same spiderweb of veins she had seen covering his back. His eyes were open now, those strange red wet orbs glistening in the light of the lamp.
He was crouched over Rhiannon, his head dipped toward her sleeping body as his nose sniffed the air around her; his mouth hung loosely open as rivulets of drool dripped from each corner, collecting in a small damp pool on the comforter.
Ben lowered his head toward Rhiannon. Emily stifled a scream as a thick black tentacle of a tongue snapped from the boy’s mouth and flicked into the air just above the sleeping form. The tongue recoiled and slapped back against the boy’s lips, then disappeared into his mouth, leaving a slather of puffy foam behind.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Emily hissed.
Thor gave another growl, and the boy’s head slowly swiveled until it faced the dog.
Snick! Ben’s tongue flashed into the air between him and Thor. The dog gave a deeper growl, taking a single step toward the bed, his fur bristling.
“Quiet, boy,” Emily whispered. “Stay very still.”
At the sound of Emily’s voice, Ben’s head swiveled silently in her direction.
With very deliberate movements, Ben climbed from his perch, dropping to the floor between the two beds on all fours. He scuttled sideways across the floor before pulling himself up onto the bed and burrowing into the folds of the comforter.
As she watched, Ben’s eyes closed and his rapid panting slowed until it returned to almost normal.
While it might still bear a passing resemblance to the child, what lay on the bed was no longer human. Emily knew that with a deep, painful certainty. She had already seen the results of the alien’s biological technology, its ability to consume and repurpose human flesh to create new creatures as its tools. How long before what lay beneath the comforter woke again and tried to take Rhiannon? Or kill them all?
The change had reached a tipping point within Ben; by the time the sun rose, she doubted there would be anything left of the boy. She had to stop it now, before Rhiannon woke and before it became so strong that she could not.
Emily rose quietly from the seat, picking up the pillow from the table. She checked Rhiannon; she was still soundly asleep.
Silently she made her way to Ben’s bedside. He was curled up within the comforter, his head just visible between two folds of material. Asleep he looked almost normal, those hideous eyes hidden behind his lids, but the black veins pulsing against his temple betrayed what he was, what he was still becoming.
Emily leaned in, ignoring the odor of the boy’s breath.
“I am so very sorry, Ben,” she whispered as she placed the pillow over the boy’s face.
Emily pressed down hard on the pillow, using the palms of her hands to ensure a tight seal around Ben’s nose and mouth. His legs began to kick against the comforter; she could feel his arms pushing the pillow, trying to tear it from his face with a strength that did not belong to a child of his age. She leaned in harder against the pillow, using her full body weight to force it deeper onto the boy’s face. Gradually the thrashing began to subside as he weakened. Eventually, it stopped altogether.
Emily did not let go for what seemed like hours but could only have been mere minutes. She had to be absolutely sure.
When she finally lifted the pillow from the still form, Ben was dead.
Dear God, what had she done?
Survived. She had survived.
That was what it had come down to, pure and simple. She had done what she needed to ensure both her own and Rhiannon’s survival.
Having answered her own question, Emily repositioned the body on its side so the black tattoo of veins covering his cheek and chest would be hidden from sight. His hands were clenched into claws against the material of the pillow, and she had to prize them loose, straightening the fingers as best she could before she moved his arms to his sides and finally placed the pillow she had used to smother him beneath his head.
By the time she had finished, he was just a boy in the bed. A boy who had died in his sleep. Peacefully. Painlessly. That was what Rhiannon would see at least. The burden of his true death would be Emily’s alone to bear.
She pulled the comforter up to Ben’s chin and stepped away, taking a deep breath as she fought back first the urge to vomit and then the desire to scream. Instead, she made her way back to her chair and pulled the blanket around her.
The pain would return tomorrow, when she had to explain to Rhiannon that her brother had died peacefully in his sleep sometime during the night.
Emily’s pain would not be so simple to explain away and would stay with her for the rest of her life.
* * *
Morning crept silently into the room through the dirt-speckled windows of the hotel.
Emily had sat for the remaining hours between darkness and light and waited, her head a jumble of thoughts and dark emotion. Second-guessing her actions was not in her nature, but she had wondered over and over whether there was something else that she could have done, some other way for her to have saved Ben, cured him, fixed him. Every thread of thought led back to the same conclusion: no. There was nothing she could have done. The choice had been clear: wait and put both Rhiannon and herself in mortal jeopardy, or do what she had done.
But her actions hung around her heart like a millstone, and at this point, with Ben’s body cold and still, not six feet away from her, she did not think that weight could ever be lifted.
Rhiannon had barely moved during Emily’s vigil over her, and, other than the occasional moan or murmured dream word, she slept silently through the night.
Emily had never watched someone wake before. It was oddly fascinating, the way the body started to shift and move as their consciousness began to swim toward the surface of reality. Rhiannon had started to move beneath the comforter, her legs pushing the cover off her torso as she shifted position. One hand was wedged between her cheek and the pillow; the other was cocked over her head, toward the bed’s headboard.
Rhiannon’s eyelids began to flutter and her hand slipped from beneath her cheek and reached to meet the other above her head in an almost feline stretch. As a yawn signaled the young girl was close to waking, Emily laid her head against her arm on the tabletop, closed her eyes, and pretended that she was sleep.
* * *
“Emily!”
At the sound of Rhiannon’s shrill cry, Emily slipped into the role she knew she would have to play from this point on.
Her eyes sprung open. “What is it?” she said, with as much surprise in her voice as she could muster. Rhiannon was standing at the head of Ben’s bed, she had pulled back the comforter and exposed his upper torso, pale in the morning light.
“Ben’s not moving,” she said, her voice filled with panic. “I don’t think”—her voice cracked midsentence, and tears flooded her cheeks as she choked out the last few words—“he’s breathing.”
Emily leaped from her seat and was at Rhiannon’s side in two quick steps. She placed the back of her hand against the boy’s head, then tried to lift one thin arm in a show of measuring his pulse, but rigor mortis had set in and the boy’s arm was rigid and unmoving. Emily could see the deep-purple discoloration of lividity along his arm, where it touched the bed. She had expected that, but what she hadn’t expected was that the change she had seen last night had continued to progress even after the boy’s death. Although undoubtedly slowed, the network of black veins had grown in the hours since she had ended Ben’s life, creeping inexorably across the boy’s face and chest.
Emily took both of Rhiannon’s hands in hers, forcing herself to look the girl in the eyes. “Sweetheart, I am so very sorry but—”
“No!” Rhiannon yelled, trying to pull her hands away and push past Emily to get to her brother’s corpse. Emily blocked her with her own body and gripped her hands even tighter, determined not to let her see the full extent of the destruction the alien invader consuming Ben’s body had wrought.
“He’s gone, baby. Ben’s gone.”
“No! No! No!” She repeated the single word over and over, as if it were some kind of magic incantation that by sheer force of will would bring her brother miraculously back to life.
Emily pulled the weeping girl to her, pressing her to her chest, enveloping her with her arms, as she struggled to break free. Finally, Rhiannon collapsed into Emily’s embrace, her tears soaking into Emily’s shirt, damp and cold against her chest.
“Shhhhh!” Emily cooed, her cheek resting against the top of Rhiannon’s head as she gently stroked the girl’s hair.
Emily didn’t think she had ever experienced such manifest anguish; it was as though the child’s very soul had fractured and now spilled from every cell in her young body. It was heartrending and terrifying in its raw despair.
As Rhiannon’s tears turned to a choked sobbing, Emily held her tightly to her and allowed the child’s pain to pierce her.
* * *
They buried Ben in a rose bed near the entrance to the hotel.
Emily searched for a shovel but couldn’t find one, so she broke the wooden back support from a chair she found in the foyer and dug the shallow grave using that instead. By the time she had finished, her hands were blistered and cut and a light drizzle had begun to fall, dampening her already sweat-soaked body.
Emily carried Ben from the room, still wrapped in the comforter that w
ould become his burial shroud. She placed him in the grave she had dug just as puddles of rainwater began to collect in the bottom of the hole. The exposed earth around the opening was quickly turning to mud underfoot.
Rhiannon stood at the edge of the grave and helped Emily push the dirt over the body of her brother, until, finally, all that remained was a mound of wet earth to mark his final resting place. They picked the few remaining blossoms from the rosebushes and laid them on the grave beneath a cross that Emily had fashioned from the wooden legs of the same chair she had used to dig the grave.
Emily could not tell if Rhiannon cried. Her face remained emotionless as the drizzle rained down over them, covering any evidence of tears she might have shed. As the shower turned heavier, a crack of distant lightning was followed seconds later by the low rumble of thunder.
Emily placed her arm around Rhiannon’s shoulder. “Time to go,” she said as gently as she could and led her slowly back to the hotel room to change out of their sodden clothes, a disquieting thought playing over and over in her mind.
Although she could not be sure, as she had laid the boy’s stiff body into the cold wet earth, Emily thought she had felt something move within the comforter.
* * *
She parked them for the night at a highway gas station somewhere just north of Flint. Rhiannon had remained curled up on the backseat for most of the drive after they’d left the motel, silent and morose. She refused to eat, and Emily had to gently chide her into at least taking a few occasional sips of water. She was asleep in the back of the Durango now, Thor watching over her while Emily left the SUV and walked out of earshot.
Emily had promised herself that she would not cry when she spoke to Jacob; she had even considered not telling him about what had happened to Ben. She was sure Jacob had more than his fair share of problems to worry about, and she was not convinced she would be able to vocalize exactly what had taken place anyway. It was all such a mess.
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