Monstrous

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  The security officer looked back to the truck, and then to him.

  Rich walked down the driveway to the street and gestured toward the marina below. “We’re on a hill,” he said. “We’ll just roll down into the parking lot.”

  Langridge smiled and slowly nodded. “Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all.” She hopped into the driver’s seat and put the truck in neutral. There was a little resistance, but eventually it moved . . . and stopped.

  Sayid quickly opened the front door and began to push, while Rich and Cody went to the rear doors and did the same. Sidney moved to join them but was distracted by Snowy. The dog was seriously freaking out, but she couldn’t see what was causing it. And she wasn’t about to discount it, for if Snowy was upset, there was a reason.

  “Hey, guys, we might want to speed this up a bit,” she said as she scanned the road behind them and the woods on either side.

  She caught sight of the underbrush moving. At first she thought it was a soft breeze . . .

  And then a wave of forest animals appeared, flowing out from both sides of the road to become one writhing mass of angry life.

  “Time to go!” Sidney shouted, ushering a crazily barking Snowy into the front of the truck beside Langridge.

  They had all seen what was approaching, and the guys pushed the van even harder, grunting with exertion. Sidney added her own strength to theirs.

  “It’s moving!” she cried. “We almost got it!”

  “Don’t stop—let’s do this!” Cody urged, and they screamed and groaned and strained muscles that had already been strained to the max.

  Snowy barked, and Sidney didn’t know if it was to encourage them or warn them of the horror that was still on the move toward them.

  “Go! Go! Go! Go!” Sidney screamed, using every bit of strength she had left and hoping that everybody else was too.

  She glanced over at Rich and saw that his skin looked even more gray than before, and she thought that he might pass out—but then the vehicle began to roll faster, and Langridge cheered from the driver’s seat.

  One by one they all jumped into the van, Sayid into the seat next to Snowy and Langridge, Rich into the back, followed by Sidney, who chanced a quick look over shoulder and felt an icy chill run up her spine.

  The mass of life was slithering in a serpentine motion down the road toward them. It moved like a single organism, multiple forms of life under the command of a single, malicious intelligence.

  The more she stared at it the more she seemed to get inside the malevolent force that powered it, understanding its purpose and how nothing must stand in the way of its plans for this world.

  Sidney shook her head violently, somehow breaking the connection; a spike of pain jabbed into the center of her brain as a wave of nausea rolled over her.

  “We really need to get out of here,” she gasped, and then she realized that Cody wasn’t in the truck. “Cody?” she cried.

  “Where is he?” Langridge asked. “Should I put on the brakes or . . .”

  “No.” The word left her mouth, and she felt the grip of terror on her heart. She knew that to slow down would be the end of them. She turned around and saw Cody still running behind the van, just beyond the reach of the door. The living mass was close behind, the sound of thousands of claws scratching the pavement nearly overpowering.

  “Cody!” Sidney screamed as she realized he was trying to dislodge something from his back. Their eyes connected, and she saw something that she didn’t want to see. He was going to give up . . . he was going to stop.

  “Don’t you dare,” she screamed at him. “Don’t you dare give up!”

  He moved in such a way that she saw what clung to him. It looked like it might have been a gopher at one time, but now it was filthy, crusted with blood and writhing insects.

  For a moment Sidney thought that she had failed, that her demands were about to be ignored and he was going to give in to the darkness that had been present since he’d watched his father die. She was going to scream at him again, but he surprised her, grabbing his shirt and pulling it up over his head. The gopher went with the shirt, and so did most of the bugs.

  “Hurry it up!” She screamed at him, hanging from the doorway and extending her hand.

  She could see the look slowly start to fade, replaced by a fire to live, and she leaned out even farther, afraid that she might tumble out, when she felt strong hands grip her, holding her in place—Rich, and Sayid had hold of him from over the front seat.

  Cody grabbed her hand, and she pulled, the muscles and tendons in her arm threatening to snap like rubber bands, and suddenly he was in the vehicle, where the two collapsed backward, he on top of her.

  She couldn’t breathe, gasping for air as he lay upon her. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she said, before breaking into giggles.

  It felt good.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Doc Martin barely got Burwell through the door before the old lady was pushing them out of the way, kicking what looked to be some kind of draft preventer in the shape of a wiener dog beneath the door.

  “You’ll let the goddamn bugs in,” she cursed, making sure that the stuffed roll was pressed tightly against the bottom.

  The old woman stared at it for a minute, leaning against her shotgun. “That looks good,” she muttered. “Can’t leave ’em an inch or they come squeezin’ in.”

  Doc Martin couldn’t hold Burwell up any longer and let the man drop to the floor; she wasn’t too far behind him.

  The old lady turned and looked at them. “For Christ’s sake, he’s bleedin’ all over everything!” she yelled, walking across the room, using the shotgun as a cane. She grabbed a small stack of newspapers from the top of a bench beneath an old piano and tossed them to Doc Martin. “Here, put him on top of these so he don’t stain my carpet!”

  The newspapers hit the floor in front of Doc Martin, and she quickly knelt to stuff them beneath Burwell’s legs. She could see that blood had already stained the rug, but the old woman seemed a little crazy, so she did not draw attention to it.

  Burwell was barely conscious, muttering and shivering as he lay on the floor.

  “He ain’t going to die, is he?” the old woman asked.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood,” Doc Martin said as she leaned painfully forward to examine the man’s injuries. “But I think I can keep him alive if you can help me with a few things.”

  The old lady offered a loud sigh and rolled her eyes. “What do ya need?”

  “He has a piece of metal in his leg that I need to get out,” Doc Martin explained. “I’ll need some tweezers, something to clean the wound out with, a needle and thread to close it up, and some bandages.”

  When she didn’t get a response, she looked up to see if the old woman was listening.

  “Is that it?”

  Doc Martin nodded. “Yeah, that should be good.”

  The old lady turned toward the kitchen. “If I’d known I was gonna be playing nurse, I would have left you out there to the critters,” she said with a grunt.

  Doc Martin could hear her banging around in the kitchen, and then she returned, dropping a pin cushion, some thread, a pair of scissors, and a bottle of alcohol on the floor beside Burwell. “Gotta go to the bathroom to get the rest,” she said as she headed out of the living room and down the short hallway.

  Doc Martin leaned over Burwell, undid his belt, and tugged his pants down and over his boots. “Don’t worry about a thing,” she said as she tossed his pants to the side. “No interest whatsoever in your naughty bits.”

  “What the hell are you doin’?” the old woman asked, returning from the bathroom.

  “What does it look like?”

  “Don’t think you want me answerin’ that question,” the woman said. “Here’s the bandages and the tweezers. Brought you an old towel, too, just in case.”

  “Thanks.” Doc Martin grabbed the tweezers before they hit the floor and poured some alcohol over them
, remembering to use the newspapers to “protect” the rug. She leaned toward Burwell again and, using the tweezers, gently pulled a jagged piece of metal from the wound in his leg, praying it wouldn’t hit an artery on the way out.

  “That from the explosion I heard out there?” the old woman asked. She was sitting in a wingback chair in the corner.

  “Yeah,” Doc Martin answered. “Nasty thing,” she said as she placed the metal on the newspaper by her side. The wound was bleeding, and she wiped the flow away while dribbling alcohol on it. Finally satisfied that it was as clean as it was going to get, she began to stitch the two sides of sliced flesh back together.

  “So what are you, a doctor or something?” the old woman asked around a piece of hard candy she’d taken from a dish on the table next to her chair.

  “Veterinarian.”

  “Huh. No wonder I’ve never seen you before. Didn’t go to the vet.”

  “No pets?” Doc Martin asked.

  “Oh yeah, plenty of pets,” the old lady said. “Just never needed to take them to the vet.”

  “Didn’t you bring them in for their shots?” she asked.

  The old lady laughed. “They didn’t need any shots.”

  “If you say so,” Doc Martin muttered with a shake of her head, continuing to pull the sides of wounded flesh together.

  They were silent, the only sounds coming from outside as the wildlife tried to get in.

  “Clara,” the old woman said suddenly.

  The veterinarian lifted her head. “Excuse me?”

  “My name’s Clara . . . just in case you were wondering.”

  “Oh,” the doc said. “I’m Patricia, but everybody just calls me Doc Martin.”

  “You all right with just Doc?”

  “Perfectly fine, Clara.”

  “So, is he gonna live?” Clara asked.

  “Probably,” Doc Martin said as she tied a knot in the last stitch and clipped the extra thread. “It ain’t pretty, but it looks like I’ve pretty much got the bleeding to stop.”

  “What more could you ask for?” Clara commented. “What’s his name?”

  “Burwell. I don’t know his first.”

  “Burwell?” Clara repeated. “What the hell kinda name is that? Burwell. Huh.”

  Doc Martin dressed the wound, then pushed herself backward off her knees as a wave of exhaustion threatened to overcome her.

  “Tough day at the office, Doc?”

  She looked at the old lady and chuckled. “You might say that,” she said. “You seem to have done all right last night.”

  The old lady seemed to think a bit before answering. “Wasn’t easy,” she finally said. She leaned forward in her chair and pulled down the high white sock on her left leg, revealing several nasty bite marks.

  “Want me to take a look at those?”

  “I cleaned them good,” the old lady said. “Hurt like hell, but not as much as . . .” Her voice trailed off as her eyes welled up.

  “You okay, Clara?”

  Clara nodded. “She was old, probably close to her time anyway.”

  Doc Martin listened, already having a pretty good idea as to where this was going.

  “Most of my other dogs passed when I wasn’t looking. Figured Allie would go the same way. Here one minute, gone the next.” Clara sniffed and rubbed at her nose and eyes.

  “Did Allie hurt you?” Doc Martin asked quietly.

  The old woman nodded.

  “That’s what happened everywhere on the island.”

  “What caused it?” Clara managed to ask. “What made my poor old girl lose her marbles and attack me?”

  “I hear that it was some outside influence,” Doc Martin said, not wanting to get into too much detail.

  “The Russians?” Clara asked, with a squint and a sneer. “I saw on Fox News that—”

  “Not the Russians,” Doc Martin interrupted. “Something maybe beyond this earth.”

  Clara leaned back in her chair. “You don’t say.”

  Doc Martin nodded. “Do you mind if I get off the floor and sit on your couch?”

  “What, my floor ain’t good enough?” Clara asked disgustedly, and then laughed. “Go on, I don’t care.”

  With a groan, and the popping of many joints, Doc Martin left Burwell lying on the floor and hobbled over to collapse on the coach with a loud moan.

  “That better?” Clara asked.

  “Oh yeah. These old bones aren’t getting any younger.”

  “Wait till you get to be my age,” Clara said. “I’ll be eighty-seven in December, if I make it that long.”

  “Well, you’ve come this far,” Doc Martin said. “A few more months won’t matter.”

  “Allie would have been thirteen,” Clara said, again her eyes filling up.

  “Ripe old age for a dog,” Doc Martin said as Clara nodded in agreement.

  “She had a good run.” Clara’s voice was trembling. “Really wish I didn’t have to kill her though.”

  “Lots of people are saying the same thing,” Doc Martin said.

  “So lots of people survived?” Clara asked.

  “Yeah,” Doc Martin said. “We did all right.”

  “The phone still don’t work, and I can’t get nothing on the TV.”

  “Those outside forces again,” Doc Martin said.

  “Figures.”

  The noises from outside the house, the thumps and the crashes, grew a little more hectic.

  “We good, or should we . . .”

  “Naw, we’re good,” Clara said. “My husband—God rest his soul—made this place practically airtight. Just in case the Russians tried germ warfare.”

  “You two had a thing for the Russians?”

  “Can’t trust those borscht-eating bastards,” Clara said with a sneer.

  Doc Martin couldn’t help but laugh.

  “So how long you think it’ll go on for?” Clara asked her.

  “I thought it was over early this morning,” Doc Martin explained. “But then it started up again. I hear it might even be spreading to Boston.”

  “Boston?” Clara questioned as Doc Martin nodded. “Shit, that could be bad.”

  “Very,” Doc Martin agreed.

  “Was that other kid with you?” Clara then asked.

  Doc Martin perked up. “Other kid?”

  Clara nodded. “Yeah, odd-looking kid. Might’ve been simple. I saw him through the kitchen window, going through the back into the woods. It was the weirdest thing . . . ,” she added, her voice trailing off as she remembered.

  “What made it weird?” Doc Martin urged.

  “Well here’s every kind of animal and bug outside out for blood,” the old lady explained. “And then this kid was walking right in the middle of it.”

  Clara looked directly at Doc Martin.

  “Nothing was showing any interest in him at all.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “What the hell was that?” Delilah asked, her eyes going to the cream-colored metal door that separated them from . . .

  “I don’t know,” Deacon said. “I really don’t know.”

  Deacon and the rest of the group had already climbed the first flight of stairs before they’d realized that Delilah, Mallory, and Mason weren’t right behind them. They’d come back down to help the three.

  “It wasn’t normal,” Phil said.

  “Ya think, Phil?” Mallory asked sarcastically, moving her hands across her body as if feeling for bugs.

  Delilah stared at the surface of the door. It was vibrating slightly, the sounds from the other side growing more intense. Deacon reached a hand out toward it.

  “Don’t,” Delilah warned, her voice nothing more than a scared whisper barely audible over the horrible scratching sounds.

  He didn’t listen and lay his hand flat upon the cool metal surface. “It’s the rats,” he said. “They’re trying to chew through the metal.”

  Phil laughed nervously. “Good luck with that,” he said. “They’ll never
—”

  “I’ve seen a rat eat through a steel sewer grate,” Deacon interrupted. “And that was just a regular, ordinary, everyday rat.” He looked back to the door. “This is something completely different.”

  “Something worse,” Delilah added as the first piece of metal in the bottom of the door was pulled away, and a grayish pink snout pushed through.

  “Oh shit,” Mason said.

  “Oh shit for sure,” Deacon agreed. “We gotta move! Let’s go, folks! Up the stairs to the skyway.” He was waving everyone up as the first of the insects streamed through the holes made by the rats.

  Delilah was the last to the stairs, stomping on bugs as she went, but there were so many, and the bottoms of her shoes were soon slick with their guts. She had just grabbed hold of the rail and begun to climb, eyes on Deacon waiting on the landing above her, when there came a horrifying sound from behind her. She couldn’t help herself, stopping and turning back to see what was happening.

  The door was shifting in its frame, the metal around it disintegrating as if it had been exposed to some highly corrosive acid. Then down it went, and a torrent of vermin flowed through. Delilah spun around and raced up the stairs toward Deacon, but as she neared him, the slick soles of her shoes slid and she pitched forward, whacking her shins on the edge of the steps.

  “Oh God,” she cried, floundering upon the steps. Her legs from the knees down had gone practically numb, and what little she could feel was nothing but excruciating pain.

  She struggled to find purchase, frantically pulling herself up with the metal handrail. Deacon was reaching for her, trying to yank her up, just as she felt the first bites of razor-sharp teeth sink through the leather of her shoe. Delilah screamed, kicking back with her foot and losing her shoe in the process. But it was that sock-covered foot that allowed her to step firmly on the stair again, giving Deacon the help he needed to draw her up to the landing.

  “Don’t turn around,” he ordered as they raced up the second flight. At the next level he pulled open another metal door and unceremoniously shoved her through. He quickly followed, slamming the door closed, leaning his back against it.