No more than ten feet away now, she decided they looked like jellyfish. Pale fleshy sacks of skin with streaks of pulsating colors emanating from within.
She knew what they were likely to be now and was surprised that it took her brain that long to get there. It just went to show how one’s mind would avoid the complexities of the impossible, just to find a more plausible answer.
These things lying at the base of the cell tower were somehow connected to Isaac’s bad radio . . . they might have been the bad radio for all she knew.
They were awful-looking, and to see them this close, she instantly knew that they were not of this planet.
She saw that the tendrils of various sizes and thicknesses that originated from the strange organisms’ bodies were wrapped about the cell tower, like creeping vines moving upward, spreading out to entwine the entire structure.
Becoming part of it. Transforming something so mundane and commonplace in this day and age into something . . .
Different.
She stopped a few feet from the organisms. Isaac—or whatever it was that was in control—was just standing there, his expression blank as he stared at the alien life-forms swelling and vibrating with disturbing life.
“Why?” Doc Martin asked, not expecting an answer but feeling the need to ask.
Isaac’s head slowly swiveled to look in her direction.
She looked at him, the silvery eyes in his head still incredibly disturbing to look at. She then pointed to the things.
“Why?” she asked again. “What is this for . . . what’s its purpose?”
Isaac’s eyes just seemed to stare through her, the lenslike quality of the orbs moving in and out as if attempting to focus on her—on her question.
She didn’t think that he understood, but she was wrong.
“The beginning . . . ,” Isaac said, his voice sounding strange, a vibrating quality making it sound as though he were speaking through the blades of a spinning fan.
“The beginning,” Doc Martin repeated. “The beginning of what?”
And he told her, the finality of the words chilling her blood to ice.
“Of the end.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
The wind between the buildings was like an invisible giant’s hand, reaching down to swat them around like toys, the torrential rain like tiny needles stinging their skin and eyes.
Langridge motioned toward one of the hotels near the water, and they all headed in that direction.
Sidney didn’t want to see them, the bodies that littered the streets like broken umbrellas. She tried not to look at their faces. There were dead animals as well, mostly rats and birds, but also the occasional dog and cat, many still wearing their colorful collars and harnesses.
Snowy darted over to the bodies, giving each a brief sniff before moving to the next. At the body of an older woman, the German shepherd looked up to meet Sidney’s eyes, the dog’s gaze saying so much.
This is all so very sad.
Sidney signaled for the dog to come and gave her an affectionate pet as they reached the rounded, brick archway that led from the waterfront to the street and the front of the New Englander Hotel. The passage offered them some protection from the rain, and they stopped to catch their breath.
Cody was staring out at the street and moved his head for Sidney to look.
She turned and saw the swarm in the distance, a living carpet of rats and other vermin. The mass appeared to be searching for something as it flowed across the streets near the hotel.
“We should probably think about getting inside,” Sidney said, and they all agreed.
Without a word, Langridge went back the way they had come and turned right through what would have been patio seating for the hotel’s posh restaurant. She approached the door, stopping with her hand on the handle.
“Give me a hand here,” she called to them.
As the group joined her, they could see through the glass windows the furniture piled high against the door. Cody and Sayid joined Langridge, and they managed to pull the door open and push the furniture aside just wide enough for each to slip through into the restaurant.
Sidney motioned for Snowy to come in, and the shepherd obeyed, zipping inside, her eager nose pressed to the ground, taking in a whole host of new smells.
“Anybody want a drink?” Rich asked, walking toward the bar.
“Don’t tempt me,” Cody said. “A cold beer and—”
The gunshot—and there was no doubt that’s what it was—obliterated the silence, and they all froze.
“Snowy,” Sidney cried suddenly as she realized the shepherd was missing. She was already on the move, weaving in and out between the tables, heading in the direction of the gunshot.
Snowy came bounding around the corner, crashing into Sidney’s legs and knocking her down. It hurt like hell, but she was ecstatic to see her dog in one piece.
“Snowy, come,” Sidney said, motioning for her dog to come near. “I want to make sure that you’re . . .”
A fat man in a security guard uniform appeared in the doorway of the restaurant, still aiming his gun.
“Put that away!” Sidney screamed, pulling her dog tightly to her as she knelt. The security guard looked stunned, but he didn’t lower his weapon.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Langridge’s voice boomed with authority. Sidney glanced over to see that the head of security and Sayid both had their weapons drawn. Cody and Rich looked ready to pounce as well.
“That dog could be dangerous,” the fat man said. He’d lowered the gun, but not all the way.
“My dog is fine,” Sidney told him. “She’s not affected by the signal.”
The man stared intensely as Snowy growled. It took everything Sidney had to hold the animal back.
“Please,” Sidney said. “Put the gun down—we’re okay.”
A man and two women appeared behind the security guard. One woman was holding a butcher knife, while the younger one had a piece of metal that might have come from a coatrack.
“What’s going on?” the younger woman asked.
“She says the dog is fine,” the security guard said, lowering the weapon a little more.
“Good idea,” Langridge said, walking between the tables. She had lowered her weapon as well, but still held it in her hand if needed.
“Who are these people?” the older woman with the knife asked.
The security guard was obviously the keeper of all knowledge, Sidney thought sarcastically.
“Who are you people?” he asked.
“I’m Brenda Langridge of the NSA, and this is Dr. Sayid.” Langridge moved her head in the doctor’s general direction. “These people and the dog are with us.”
“I didn’t know the dog was okay,” the security guard said. “There’ve been others that have tried to get in . . . have attacked . . .”
“This dog is fine,” Langridge told him. She put her gun away, confident, for now, that any problems had been averted.
“There’s an auditory signal being broadcasted,” Sidney said, “that makes the dogs and all the other animals go savage. Snowy here is deaf.”
“Auditory signal?” the woman with the knife asked, coming farther into the restaurant. “What the hell does that mean? That there’s a sound making the animals go crazy?”
“That’s pretty much it,” Langridge said.
“Where’s it coming from?” the man standing with the younger woman asked.
“That’s confidential, I’m afraid,” Langridge said.
Sayid stepped forward to further calm their fears.
“Right now we’re working on finding our way to the proper authorities so we can deal with this situation before it has a chance to escalate.”
“We came in here to finalize a plan,” Langridge said.
They had all come to stand with her now, their strange little group of unlikely heroes on a mission.
“Well come on in,” the security guard said. “I’m Fred, one of the security guards h
ere at the New Englander.”
Fred walked from the restaurant, the others in his party moving along with him. Sidney and the rest followed.
They exited the restaurant, walking a short corridor out into the main lobby, where other survivors of the attacks had gathered. Some survivors eyed them suspiciously, while others looked at them with an anticipatory hope.
Sidney could not help but hear them muttering among themselves.
“Who are they?
“Maybe they can tell us what the hell is going on.”
“What is that dog doing in here? Don’t they know?”
There were more children than Sidney would have thought, and she felt for them. It must have been scary enough to be caught in the city in the midst of a hurricane, never mind having the animals go completely berserk.
But all things considered, they seemed to be doing well. There were a few sitting in their parents’ laps or holding tightly to their hands. But there was another group, probably a little older than the others, a little more independent, off in the lobby seating area, playing with their electronic devices, seemingly unfazed.
“Were many people . . . ?” Rich began as he looked around the lobby at the survivors.
“We really don’t know,” Fred the security guard said. “Many of our guests were inside because of the storm and all, but there were some that had ventured out to look at the water.”
“Most didn’t make it back,” said the woman with the knife, gazing off sadly. “We’re hoping that . . .”
“Mary’s two sons went out first thing this morning,” the younger man that had accompanied the two women said. He put his arm around Mary and gave her a compassionate squeeze.
A front-desk employee with a name tag that read CHRIS approached them.
“Hi,” he said to them with a warming smile. “I’m Chris, the assistant manager here.”
“You’re the manager now,” said one of the hospitality workers.
Chris made a face. “I guess,” he said.
“I’m guessing that something happened to the manager?” Langridge asked.
Chris and some of the other workers nearby all nodded.
“Dogs,” Chris said, eyeing Snowy with a fearful look and loud swallow.
“She’s good,” Sidney said, hugging her dog close and patting her.
Chris smiled politely before looking back to Langridge and Sayid. “They say that you’re from the authorities?” he asked. “Can you give me any information, anything at all, that might help calm my guests’ frazzled nerves?”
Langridge immediately began her assessment of the situation, explaining that they would need to find the local MEMA satellite and eventually reach the governor.
Sidney found herself drifting, this moment’s respite from the horror of what was going on sending her brain into a kind of fugue state. Wandering into the lobby seating area, she and Snowy plopped down in one of the chairs. It felt amazing, and it was taking everything she had to not close her eyes and drift off.
The kids looked up from their smart phones and tablets, and she waved. They acknowledged her presence with brief smiles, and then went back to doing whatever it was they were doing on their devices—probably playing games since there were no cell signals.
She found herself staring at the kids as she absently stroked Snowy’s head. Watching them made her think of the visions she’d been getting from the alien source, those seemingly random images of life as it happened upon the planet.
But she realized then that they weren’t random at all.
Sidney felt the tingle at the base of her spine with the realization and sat up quickly.
It was the same in the visions. Every one of the scenes that she saw involved somebody doing something with technology: on the phone, watching TV, playing with some sort of electronic device. It was such a commonplace thing.
It was why she hadn’t seen it—until now.
She turned in her chair, about to call out to her friends when she felt it. It was as if a clawed hand had suddenly materialized inside her skull, taking hold of her brain and giving it a good squeeze.
“Unngh!” was all she could manage as she slumped in the chair, feeling herself starting to slip away.
She was being watched again, the level of hostility from the things on the other side of her vision filling her with a near-murderous rage.
They were trying to take her, to prevent her from continuing her mission to thwart their plans.
Sidney fought them with all her might, her eyes rolling back painfully in her head as her back arched in the chair. Snowy had begun to bark; she could hear her as if from the end of some mile-long corridor.
They would not have her. She’d made up her mind, mentally planting her feet and resisting the pull of obliteration.
They wanted her stopped in any way that they could. What had happened with her was an unfortunate accident that put their plans in jeopardy.
The invaders did not care for accidents.
Sidney continued to fight back, sensing a commotion all around her.
“Sid!” She heard Cody call her name from down the length of the same long corridor. “What’s wrong, Sid? Sid?”
He was gripping her shoulders, attempting to shake her awake, and she focused on this contact, using it like a tether back to the real world, pulling herself along its line.
Back to where she belonged.
She felt that she had escaped them, that she was almost back when she sensed it. Thousands of simple brains touched by one.
Controlled by one.
For a brief moment she saw through multiple sets of eyes, eyes fighting the winds and rain of the storm descending upon the city.
Descending upon this very hotel.
Sidney opened her own eyes. There was blood on her face, but there wasn’t time for that. She scrambled from her seat, eyes wide.
“Everybody needs to get to safety,” she screamed to the terrified onlookers.
“Sidney, what’s wrong?” Langridge asked in her no-nonsense style.
“They’re coming,” Sidney said.
Her words were followed by the sounds of multiple somethings violently hitting the windows and skylights.
And the sounds of breaking glass.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Deacon held Delilah’s hand so tightly as they ran across the hospital rooftop that she swore her fingers were about to break.
But she didn’t mind the pain, it made her realize that she was still alive, that she had—up until this point anyway—managed to survive.
The wind and rain whipped at them, as if trying to drive them back, but they surged ahead, heads dipped to keep the stinging raindrops out of their eyes.
“Where?” she yelled above the howling wind, hand up to block the pelting rain.
“Next skylight!” he yelled back.
They were temporarily shielded by the air-conditioning and heating unit, and Delilah took a moment to swipe at her eyes and gaze back.
The patients were swarming up from the broken skylight, their progress slowed only slightly as they all tried to fit through the opening at once.
Delilah quickened her step, getting ahead of Deacon as they came around the large heating-and-cooling unit to see his truck parked against the short concrete barrier that separated the roof of Elysium from the roof of the parking garage
Her heart fluttered at the sight, and her thoughts skipped ahead to getting home and holding her little boy in her arms again.
She should never have done that.
The gray metal ventilation units had also blocked their view of the remainder of the garage roof and as they reached Deacon’s truck, they saw what the fans had been keeping from them.
A cell tower had been built on the far corner of the roof of the parking garage not all that long ago. The only reason that Delilah was even aware of it was because of protests about safety issues and whether or not it would interfere with the various medical equipment in the hospital direct
ly below.
The protests had eventually died down, and the tower was installed without any problems whatsoever.
Delilah and Deacon came to a sudden stop before his truck, attempting to understand what it was that they were seeing.
There were more of that thing they’d found down in the shower room spread out along the base of the cell tower, their thick tentacle-like limbs entwined around the metal structure, spreading upward to the various antennas and dishes. There were patients as well, and they appeared to be busily working, administering to the awful, jellyfish-like animals.
“I . . . I don’t understand,” Deacon said. “What are they doing?”
Delilah found herself moving forward, drawn to the bizarre sight by some unknown magnetism. She needed to see what was happening.
She truly didn’t understand their actions. The patients, their hands stained red with blood, were transporting the pieces of disassembled machinery that they had scavenged to the jellylike monsters and dropping them onto the gelatinous flesh—where they were promptly absorbed.
The creatures’ bodies trembled and shook, changing colors as the bits of machinery became part of their bodies.
“The patients were taking the parts for them,” Delilah said. She stood in the torrential rain, watching with curious eyes as the tentacles wrapped around the cell tower became thicker and more elaborate—and then gasped as smaller veinlike offshoots sprouted, coiling around even more of the tower.
“What are they doing?” Deacon asked again as he joined her to watch the nightmarish scene unfold.
“I don’t know,” she said, sure from the bottom of her soul that it wasn’t anything good.
But what could they do?
She felt Deacon’s hand grip her elbow.
“We need to go,” he said. “Before we can’t.”
She nodded, knowing that he was right, and they both made their way toward the truck—where a rat was perched atop the hood, watching them with a silver right eye.
“Aw shit” was all Deacon said.
Delilah looked back to the cell tower. The patients had stopped what they were doing, now turning their own silvery eyes toward her.
“We’ve got to move,” she said, and made a move toward the passenger door.