Monstrous

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “Yeah, but where is that? What does it even mean?” Cody asked.

  “It’s a hospital.” They turned to see Fred the security guard standing there. He had his gun out again. “Everything all right?” he then asked, noticing that they were all now staring at him.

  “Elysium,” Sayid said. “You said it’s a hospital?”

  Fred nodded. “Yeah, I actually used to work there a few years back. It’s a hospital for traumatic brain injury patients.”

  Cody saw Sayid look at Langridge.

  “Why do I suddenly have a bad feeling about this?” the woman asked.

  “I have no idea what this means,” Sayid said.

  “I think what it means is that we should go there, and hopefully find Sidney,” Cody said.

  “And if not, maybe at least some answers,” Langridge answered.

  “So I guess we’re going out there again,” Rich said with a nod. “Great.”

  “We’re going to need a map,” Sayid said, looking toward Fred. “Directions to this Elysium.”

  Fred nodded. “I can do that—it isn’t all that far from here.”

  “And we’re going to need a car,” Langridge said. “Something to protect us from the storm as well as the things prowling the streets.”

  She then looked at Fred too.

  “What do you drive, Fred?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  The roaches were pouring inside the truck as if somebody had turned on a faucet.

  “Deacon!” Delilah yelled as loud as she was able. “Deacon, we really need to be getting out of this truck.”

  His head and nose were still bleeding, and she had to wonder if he might have a concussion. But she couldn’t worry about that until they were out of the wreck and someplace safe.

  With revulsion, she swiped at the cockroaches that crawled on her body, keeping herself from utterly freaking out as she focused on getting Deacon free from his belt.

  The man moaned as she fumbled at his waist.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” she said. “Wake up. You gotta wake up.”

  A roach was on the side of his face, and she lashed out, slapping it to paste, but also seriously connecting with him.

  “Sorry, but I’m not,” she said. “You need to wake up right this minute.” She found the clip and released the seat belt.

  Delilah looked to see if there was anything that might prevent him from being able to move, to escape the truck. Remembering all that she had learned about moving an unresponsive patient, she put her hands beneath his arms and attempted to pull him toward her.

  Deacon started to moan, and she saw that his foot was caught, the driver’s door having been pushed in during the crash, pinching his foot to the floor of the cab.

  “Damn it,” she cursed, reaching down to see if there was any way that she might maneuver the foot to free it. There wasn’t.

  Through the cracked, and spiderwebbed windshield she could see that not only was the ground being spattered relentlessly with rain, but it was also moving with life.

  “Deacon,” she said again all the more forcefully, and gave him a shake before wiping away the bugs that scurried up his body to his mouth. His eyes fluttered, and they remained open this time, and she actually believed that they just might have a chance.

  “Deacon, your foot is caught.” She tried again to pull his foot free but couldn’t. “Can you move it at all?”

  He seemed to understand what she was asking and started to move his body, but then cried out.

  Delilah’s heart was racing.

  “You’ve got to try, Deacon,” she urged. She was hearing things now, scratching sounds as something larger than bugs was moving around the truck.

  “Stuck,” he said, leaning his head against the side window.

  “Well, get unstuck,” she ordered, again attempting to go up into the area where his foot was trapped. She got a better look and saw that a section of the door had crimped entirely around his ankle.

  “Can’t,” he managed.

  “Don’t say that,” she said. “Let me see if we can get your boot off. . . . Do you think if the boot was off that—”

  She felt his hand grab hold of her upper leg, and she looked at him.

  “You’ve got to go,” he said, his eyes sparkling with emotion.

  “Yeah, we both do,” she said, going back to trying to remove his boot.

  “Delilah!” he screamed, but she refused to look. “You have to get away.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” she said. The top part of the boot was completely sandwiched in between metal. She couldn’t get to the laces no matter how she tried.

  “Then you’re going to die,” he said.

  “No we’re not,” she said stubbornly, now trying to bend the metal apart, while ignoring the sounds of the torrential downpour, as well as the claws clicking upon the side of the truck.

  His grip on her leg became stronger, and it hurt.

  “Stop it,” she cried, on the verge of collapse. She could feel herself beginning to crumble.

  Is this where I’m going to die? a whispery voice asked inside her head.

  “Get out now,” Deacon said to her. She noticed how badly his face was covered in blood and that his eyes were dilated. A concussion—or something worse—for sure.

  “I won’t leave you,” she said, her voice cracking. “I can’t leave you.”

  “Then you will die, and your son will lose his mother . . . and your mother will lose a daughter.”

  It hit her like a physical blow, rearing up like a serpent, forcing her to confront the possible reality.

  “I don’t even know if they’re still alive,” she screamed, going back to his foot—that goddamned trapped foot.

  “That’s exactly right,” Deacon said. “You don’t know . . . and you need to find out.”

  She could see movement flowing past the shattered windshield, hear the claws scratching the metal as they tried to get in. The rats were outside the truck; there was no denying that.

  Delilah froze, not knowing what to do, which is when, and why, Deacon decided for her.

  “Get ready,” he said to her, angling his body in such a way that he could lift his other leg. There were rats at the windshield, peering through the cracks with their awful silver eyes.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, on the verge of panic. “Deacon?”

  “Get ready,” he said again, a little bit louder, kicking at the windshield, pushing the shattered safety glass outward.

  “Deacon, oh no,” she said, and started to cry. “Don’t do it this way . . . don’t do it!”

  “Are you ready? I’m ready,” he said, and kicked at the glass again. She could practically feel the animals collecting outside the window, waiting for their opportunity to stream in.

  He glanced away from the windshield to her, and she saw a look there that she could only describe as acceptance.

  “Are you ready?” he asked her again, and even though the tears streamed from her eyes and she wanted to scream, she nodded.

  “Get home to your boy,” he said. “Go on . . . now!”

  Delilah unleashed a sob that came from the very bottom of her soul as she turned away from him and climbed up toward the passenger window. She could hear him grunt with exertion, and then he let loose a scream of anger and resignation as he kicked out the windshield, allowing the multitude of vermin to flow over him.

  Delilah pulled herself through the window and tumbled to the ground. Immediately she jumped to her feet and peered back inside the truck, just as her friend was completely swarmed, any sign of the man quickly covered by glistening insect bodies, dark matted fur, and pink naked tails.

  “Go . . . now!” Deacon screamed again through the covering of vermin, and she did what he asked of her—what he sacrificed so very much for.

  But she wasn’t alone. The rats and the bugs and other things that she could not identify came at her in a wave across the rain-soaked ground. She tried not to look, or to
listen to Deacon’s terrible screams, putting her entire focus on getting to her feet and running as fast as she was able to . . .

  Where?

  Her brain hadn’t gotten that far as she managed to rise. The roaches and other biting insects had reached her first, flowing over the tops of her nurse shoes. Instinctively she cried out, swatting at her legs and feet, but that slowed her down long enough for the rats to turn their attention to her.

  Delilah could only stare as the living carpet flowed across the ground toward her at a speed that she knew would be impossible to beat.

  She had accepted her fate when the unexpected occurred.

  A man in a heavy jumpsuit and respirator mask appeared. There was a canister on his back and a spray wand in his hand, and he stood in front of her, blocking her from the approaching wave of vermin as he began showering the attacking creatures with whatever was held inside that tank.

  She couldn’t believe her eyes, but there was an immediate reaction, the animals instantly repelled, their uniformed attack breaking up as the beasts attempted to escape the unknown substance sprayed upon them.

  “Run,” the man told her, his voice muffled by the plastic filter that covered his mouth.

  She turned and did as she was told, but she had no idea where she was going. The rain continued to pour, soaking her through to the skin as she ran as fast as she could down the driveway, away from Elysium. At the end she turned to see the masked man now running after her.

  “Go! Go! Go!” he said, waving his sprayer at her like a magic wand.

  “Where?” she asked, looking around. She noticed movement from the opposite side of the street, packs of dogs and cats coming from different streets to merge together, to form one enormous pack. This was certain death, she thought as her eyes scanned the area for any place that might provide them with some cover. The man reached her; he too was looking around frantically.

  “This way,” he said from behind his mask, directing her to follow him down Cambridge Street.

  But the new Elysium subway stop loomed before them, and although it was still under construction, Delilah realized it was where they would be safest the fastest.

  “No! There,” she said, already starting across the street from the end of the driveway.

  The masked man was still headed in the opposite direction when he stopped.

  “Here!” she said, pointing to the entrance. The glass front was yet to be exposed, large pieces of plywood nailed in place. There was also a makeshift wooden door used by the workers, instead of the actual door.

  She saw a heavy padlock hanging from the door and felt her heart sink, but then noticed it was undone.

  “It’s locked,” she heard the man’s muffled voice yell as he came up behind her.

  “No,” she told him, grabbing the lock in hand, easily removing it from the latch and pulling the door open. She made it inside, the air choked with dampness and plaster dust.

  The masked man quickly entered behind her, pulling the door closed. Standing there, she could see him looking around for something to close it more securely. There were some bungee cords in a plastic bucket, and he motioned for her to get them for him. She did what he asked, helping him to secure the barrier between them and what lurked just outside.

  There was a half inch or so beneath the wooden door, and the bugs started their way in.

  “Beneath the door,” Delilah said, and looked for something to wedge into the cracks when the masked stranger began to use his spray gun and its toxic contents, spraying a thick line of the fluid under the door, stopping them.

  “That should keep the bugs on the other side,” the man said through his respirator, and in that second she recognized his voice.

  He turned around to face, her, his shoulders sagging not only from the canister he wore upon his back, but from the weight of what he had experienced this day. She watched as he reached up to pull the mask away from his face, to breath in the damp air.

  “I thought it was you,” she said, an attempt at a smile making its way across her face.

  Mason seemed to make an attempt as well.

  “I tried to save him,” she said then.

  And suddenly the sadness washed over her in a scalding wave, and, for a brief moment, she allowed herself to cry.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  “What are you?” Doc Martin asked flat out. “Are you from another planet or . . .”

  The thing controlling Isaac looked at her with his strange, reflective eyes, the aperture in the center opening and closing as he focused upon her.

  “Another planet?” he repeated, his head slowly tilting to one side and then back again.

  “You know, space,” she said. “Out there beyond this world.”

  “Space,” he said, tasting the word before slowly shaking his head from side to side. “Not space . . . not out there. The other side.”

  “The other side of what?”

  Again he thought for a moment. “This.”

  She looked at him, attempting to figure out what he meant. “Are you talking about another dimension?”

  In her younger years she’d been fascinated by the concepts of parallel worlds and alternate realities, reading science fiction, and smoking a bit of weed. She was surprised that she could still remember what she’d read.

  “A world, or place, that exists alongside this one, but on another plane of existence?”

  Interpreter actually smiled, an expression so chilling that she had to look away. “Yessssssss,” he said, drawing out the last letter of the word like the hiss of a snake.

  “So you’re from another dimension, and you guys just broke into our reality?”

  “Yessssssss,” he answered again, his mouth becoming more adjusted to the pronunciations. “Break through to take . . . use world’s . . . own resources . . . against . . .”

  “Resources,” Doc Martin said. “You’re talking about the weather, and the animals.”

  “Yes . . . at first. And when you are surprised . . . and scared . . . and . . . distracted . . .”

  A knot formed in the pit of her belly, something that was growing tighter and tighter with the passing seconds.

  “And then what?” she asked, dreading the answer but needing to know.

  “We use . . . more of your world’s resources . . . against you.”

  “What resources?” she asked, feeling her mouth go completely dry as her throat started to constrict.

  “Technology,” the thing wearing Isaac’s body said. He was looking up at the cell tower again.

  “Technology will be your downfall.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  She really didn’t know where she was going, but somehow Sidney knew she was headed in the right direction.

  Something inside her altered brain was drawing her close to . . .

  What exactly?

  Her stomach grew tight with the thought.

  The streets were what she imagined hell must look like: buildings burning, cars abandoned, lifeless bodies strewn on the sidewalks.

  And she could sense that she wasn’t alone, that there were . . . things . . . just beyond her vision waiting for her. She jumped at every shadow or sound, no matter how faint, expecting to be attacked.

  She passed a car that had run up onto the sidewalk, its female passenger, her body swollen with insect stings, hanging from the driver’s seat onto the rain-swept street, as if she had been attempting to crawl to safety.

  She hadn’t made it.

  Sidney found herself stopping, making up her mind in an instant. She was going to take the car. She looked down at the woman’s body, then grabbed the waist of the woman’s pants and hauled her from the vehicle, laying her gently on the street.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Sidney said to the corpse. The keys were in the ignition, and she hoped that the battery was still good. She sat down in the driver’s seat and said a little prayer before turning the key. The engine started without any problem.

  She was r
eaching out to close the car door when a nearby manhole cover exploded upward, crashing down on the hood of an abandoned car, nearly crushing it. And from the manhole, a living tentacle emerged—hundreds of life-forms coming together to form a single appendage of death.

  She barely had the door shut before the tentacle slammed into the driver’s side, rocking the car with the intensity of the impact. The life-form broke apart upon striking the car, insects, squirrels, and rats scrabbling across the surface of the car, attempting to find a way in.

  Sidney slammed the car in reverse, tires squealing as she backed down the length of sidewalk. The windshield was covered with a writhing mass of insect life, and she put on the wipers to sweep away the obstructions so she could at least make an attempt to get away. Putting the car back in drive, she angled the ride to go into the street, avoiding the corpses lying about. She knew that they were dead but still couldn’t bear the thought of running them over.

  The street was like an obstacle course of cars and bodies. Sidney drove as quickly as she was able, paying attention to the weird sensation at the base of her brain. When she was traveling on course, it vibrated with an almost pleasurable sensation.

  But when it looked as though she might be losing her way, the sharp, stabbing pain nearly brought tears to her eyes.

  She was on course now, and getting the hang of driving the obstructed streets, when the car suddenly lurched, sputtered, and died.

  “No!” she screamed, pulling on the steering wheel as the car coasted to a gradual stop. Her foot stomped on the gas, but nothing happened. Quickly she put the car in park, listening to the sounds of the storm above the accumulating animal life that had caught up to her, swarming upon the dead vehicle.

  Sidney turned the key, praying for the engine to turn over.

  Nothing.

  She instantly knew what was happening, listening to the rattling and pinging sounds from somewhere inside the car—more specifically, underneath the hood. The insects, and whatever else had managed to crawl up into the engine, had likely eaten away at the connections, shutting down the car’s power source and causing the engine to fail.

  The car was slowly becoming engulfed, the noises inside becoming more prominent. Louder. If they were under the hood, it wouldn’t be long until they were inside with her. Fighting back panic, she looked for an escape route, but the vehicle was surrounded.