“Sidney, move!” Cody screamed, and she hoped that this was all some sort of crazy dream.
But it wasn’t. It was real.
The wave of animals flowed across the lawn, obliterating any sight of grass. It was as if a living cover was being slowly pulled over the entire expanse of Rich’s backyard.
Sidney managed to tear her gaze from the terrifying sight to see that Cody and Snowy were waiting for her. They urged her on, Snowy barking excitedly and Rich waving with his hands as they ran alongside Rich’s house toward the driveway.
The bushes and trees to the left of her rustled, but she refused to look there, knowing full well what she would see and afraid that her brain just might completely shut down from the sight of it.
“Get in the truck!” Cody screamed to Rich.
The ground was crunching beneath her feet, and Sidney looked down to see that it was covered with the glistening bodies of june bugs—hundreds and hundreds of june bugs writhing en masse, crawling upon each other and now attempting to crawl on her. She kicked out with her feet, clearing a swath in front of her, continuing to follow her dog and friends to Cody’s truck.
The ground before the driveway was moving, the living flow spreading there as well. They all reached Cody’s truck, grabbing hold of the door handles to pull open the doors and—
The doors didn’t open.
Sidney looked across the truck to see Cody reaching into his pockets.
“Locked? Are you kidding me?” she asked.
“What the frig is wrong with you—you locked your truck in the driveway of my house—in a freakin’ hurricane?”
Cody didn’t answer, ripping the ring of keys from his pocket and dropping them to the ground.
“Damn it!” Sidney heard him scream.
Hand still clutched to the wet metal of the door handle, she looked about her and felt her terror grow. There were larger things among the small ones, almost as if the smaller animals and insects had failed in their duty to kill them and now . . .
She heard the car lock pop and yanked on the door, crawling up into the front cab, with Snowy and Rich right beside her. Cody sat behind the wheel, feeding his key into the ignition.
“Lock the doors,” she said, eyes scanning the night outside the vehicle. “Please lock the doors.”
Cody hit the switch that made his and the passenger-side doors lock up tightly, and she found that she really felt no better. All around them, the night was moving.
The truck engine roared to life, and the headlights of the vehicle illuminated the darkness before them.
No one in the car said anything. Their voices had been taken from them by the horror of what they saw.
The row of cats in the headlight beams was growing, more and more of the water-drenched felines casually emerging from the darkness of the woods that surrounded the house.
It was one of the scariest things Sidney had ever seen in her life.
Then dogs showed up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Gregory Sayid huddled in a darkened corner of his office talking into his cell phone.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll be,” he said. “Hopefully, not much longer.” The scientist paused before saying anything else, thinking about the events that had already occurred and what was likely occurring on an island in Massachusetts as he spoke to his daughter.
She then asked about his current assignment.
“You know I can’t talk about that,” he said. “Yes, it’s top secret,” he mimicked her with a fake chuckle. He hoped that she couldn’t pick up on the concern and sense of impending dread in the manufactured attempt at jocularity.
“I’m fine, seriously,” he told her.
His daughter was as perceptive as he feared.
“I should probably get going.” Sayid turned from his darkened corner and noticed that he wasn’t alone. Brenda Langridge leaned casually against the frame of his office doorway.
He turned away from the security officer’s scrutinizing eyes.
“I love you too,” he told his daughter. “Be good, and I’ll see you soon.”
He listened to her tell him good-bye and the sound of the connection being broken as she hung up before he ended the call.
“You know I could have you arrested for breaking protocol, right?” Langridge said as she pushed off the doorframe and entered his space.
“If it would mean that you’d lock me away someplace for the next twenty-four hours or so, I might be down for that,” he told her as he sidestepped to his desk.
The top of the desk was a sea of files and paperwork. To anybody else it was an example of complete chaos, but to him it was actually a kind of order only he could understand.
“No such luck,” she said, eyeing the wreckage of his desktop. “We’ll be ready to take off within the hour.”
Sayid sat down heavily in his chair. He knew that they’d need to head to Benediction as soon as humanly possible, but the idea of what they would be encountering—what they might find—was still an incredible weight on him.
“When are they estimating the storm letting up?” he asked, not looking up. He took a file from a smaller pile and opened it, wanting to check some things before they had to go.
“The National Weather Service estimates that it’s got at least another ten to twelve hours before it subsides,” Langridge said, stepping closer to his desk, tilting her head to see what was in the file he was working on. “That is, if the storm continues to behave like a normal storm, which we’re not sure that it will.”
He was reading a morning report on the child that they’d brought back from the Heaven’s Breath occurrence.
“How’s the survivor doing?” Langridge asked as she leaned over his desk, attempting to read upside down.
“Alexandria,” he said, jotting down some notes in the file.
“Excuse me?”
“The survivor,” he said, turning his gaze to the woman. “She has a name. Alexandria.”
“Right,” Langridge said, acknowledging the information but still not saying the child’s name. “How is she?”
“Better,” Sayid said. “They’re weaning her off of the sleep and antianxiety meds, and she seems to be adjusting.”
“And has she said anything more about the event?”
“The doctors and nurses are avoiding the topic,” Sayid explained. “Letting her adjust some more before—”
“It might be beneficial to have some firsthand information before Benediction,” Langridge explained.
Sayid now believed he understood why the security officer had refused to call the child by name. Just being known as the survivor, the child was simply another source of intel. Just a source of information, and not a little girl who had lost her mother and father when a mysterious storm raged over an island paradise and . . .
His mind was filled with the horrific images of the bodies that had been recovered after the storm.
“It might be,” Sayid answered, “but I don’t feel that she’s far enough along to be able to contribute anything of use right now.”
“So we’re just going to go by the latest reports.”
“Yeah,” Sayid confirmed, closing the child’s folder and leaning back in his chair. “At the moment it’s the most up-to-date information that we have.”
“Information that says that these mysterious storm manifestations seem to somehow affect the behavior of native animal species.”
“That’s right.”
“Affect? I’m not even sure I understand what that means.”
He stared at her for a moment, not sure how much more he should say before the next debriefing, but decided that it was inevitable she would know, so why not now.
“The storm—or something in the storm that we haven’t yet quite determined—affects the behavior of local insect and animal life.” He paused, seeing that she was truly listening to him now.
“It appears to make them more . . . aggressive,” he explained.
“Aggressive how?” Langridge asked.
He thought about how he might say it, remembering the bodies that they had found and the shape that they were in, and decided that there really were not too many ways.
“It turns them into killers,” Sayid told her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The first thing that Cody noticed about the dogs was the way they moved. There wasn’t that fluid, natural movement when a dog trotted or began to run. This was stiff, odd, like the animals were getting used to their legs.
The dogs came from the woods surrounding the house, from all sides, and Cody found that he even recognized some of them from the neighborhood, having seen them walking with their masters down the street or chasing a stick at the beach.
The only thing that wasn’t familiar about them was the dark stains around many of their muzzles. Cody didn’t even want to acknowledge the reality of what the stains could be or he just might find himself screaming at the top of his lungs and boarding the next train to Crazy Town.
The dogs stood in a formidable cluster at the left of the two-car garage, the pack of cats—was that what it would be called, a pack?—had collected over to the right.
“What are we waiting for?” Rich asked, his fingers nervously tapping on the dashboard.
Cody really didn’t have an answer other than he was mesmerized by the weirdness, feeling relatively safe to observe the strangeness of it all from the inside of the car.
“We need to see Doc Martin,” Sidney spoke up. “She needs to take a look at the dead raccoon if we’re going to have any clue as to what might be going on here.”
Cody said nothing as he put the car in reverse, turning his head to look behind him as he began to back down the driveway and—
“Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed, slamming his hand angrily against the back of the seat.
“What?” Sidney asked, concerned by the outburst as Snowy began to bark.
“The sailboat,” he said, pointing out the back window. “The trailer is still attached.”
Rich and Sidney turned around briefly and then back.
“I’m not going out there to unhook it,” Rich said.
“Well don’t look at me,” Cody added.
A Labrador retriever landed atop the truck as if it had dropped out of the sky, its claws raking across the surface of the hood as it rammed its face viciously into the windshield.
They all screamed at the suddenness of the attack, the dog’s yellow teeth scraping along the surface of the curved glass, leaving bloody smears as it attempted to bite them through the transparent obstruction.
“We’ll take the sailboat with us,” Rich screamed, pushing himself back in the seat as more of the dogs rushed toward the vehicle. “Just go!”
Cody put the car in reverse, turning again in his seat to watch out the back. The truck began to rock as it was struck on all sides.
“What the hell?” Cody said, staring out the driver’s-side window at the nightmarish sight of four dogs throwing themselves into the side of the vehicle with enough force to dent the door.
Snowy was barking wildly at the Labrador, which continued to stare in at them, snapping at the glass, its mouth smeared with bloody foam.
In the side mirror Cody could see that the dogs were circling the vehicle, moving faster and faster, building up speed before they plowed into the truck once again on all sides.
“We really should get out of here,” Sidney said, eyes wide and darting around.
Cody wanted to do what she asked, but . . .
He checked his mirrors as he began to back up, then slammed on the breaks again. The Labrador on the hood slipped and slid off to the side to join its angry brethren.
“What now?” Rich asked. He looked like he was going to jump out of his skin with each new bang, bump, and thud.
“I don’t . . . ,” Cody began.
“You don’t what?” Sidney asked as they were hit on both sides with enough force to make the truck rock.
“I don’t want . . . I don’t want to hurt them!” he finally screamed, leaning on his horn, hoping that the sound maybe would drive them off.
Yeah, that will happen.
The dogs continued their assault, running about the car, darting in to collide against the sides and doors as well as bite at the tires.
“You just have to go,” Sidney said. “Don’t worry about them . . . you don’t have a choice.”
He could see that she was just as upset about the potential as he was, but there was no choice.
Cody stepped on the gas, and with the car still in reverse, backed up as quickly as he was able while paying close attention to the boat and trailer still attached to his truck.
He turned the wheel to the left, angling the car from the driveway onto the road that ran in front of the Stanmores’ property. He then put the car in drive, the vehicle continuing to be hit from all sides as he sped up, the last sight he saw reflected in the rearview mirror being the pack of cats moving as one living mass following down the driveway before dispersing suddenly into the woods as if they had never been there.
* * *
Sidney turned in her seat to look out the back window at the boat and the road behind them. A pack of dogs ran through the pouring rain in pursuit of them, showing no signs of slowing.
“They’re still chasing us,” she said, turning back around. “This is so freaking insane I don’t even know what to say.”
“What’s to say,” Rich said. “Something has made all the animals and bugs and stuff go batshit crazy. How’s that?”
“Sounds right,” Cody said, continuing to drive.
Sidney pulled the bag containing the body of the raccoon a little closer. “Which is why getting this to Doc Martin is essential,” she said.
“Here’s a question,” Rich suddenly blurted out. She looked over to see that he was pushing himself over against the passenger-side door as he spoke.
“If something is making all the animal life on the island go nuts . . . ,” he said.
“Yeah?” she urged.
“What about Snowy?” he asked. “Why isn’t Snowy trying to rip our throats out?”
She watched him eye her dog before raising a tentative hand to pat her head. Snowy accepted the affections lovingly, leaning over to lick Rich’s face.
“I don’t know why,” she said as she put an arm around her dog. Snowy then decided that she needed a kiss as well. “Maybe whatever it is that’s causing this . . . she hasn’t been exposed to it.”
She continued to think, going through countless scenarios, but nothing really felt right. They were all easily picked apart.
“This is why Doc Martin is our best bet,” she said. “She can take a look at the specimen we have, and maybe we can learn something.”
She looked through the windshield to see where they were and saw that they weren’t that far from the center of town.
“We’ll head by her place first,” Sidney said. “If she’s not there, she might still be at the hospital and—”
“There’s someplace we have to go first,” Cody said, staring straight ahead.
“Someplace first?” Sidney questioned. “Where?”
Rich was leaning over in the seat, waiting for the answer.
“The marina,” Cody said. “We’re going to pick up my dad.”
Sidney was going to argue but quickly realized if she did, she’d sound like a total bitch. Of course he wanted to pick up his dad.
“Yeah, good idea,” she said, nodding in agreement. “And then we’ll go get mine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Doc Martin pulled the clear plastic shield down over her face and picked up the rotary bone saw from the table.
She remembered how her staff, Sidney included, had laughed when she’d told them that she wanted to invest in the equipment.
“What the heck for?” Sidney had asked. “Are we going to be filming CSI: Benediction here?
They’d all had a good chuckle, but then Doc Mart
in bought it anyway. One never knew when a good necropsy might be in order. And even though she already had adequate tools for the job, an electric bone saw was just so damn sexy.
Now it would prove its weight in gold.
“CSI: Benediction my ass,” she said, hefting the saw in her rubber-gloved hands. She flipped the switch to on, and the battery-operated motor hummed softly.
“Sorry about this, big guy,” she said as she leaned over and touched the spinning blade to the side of Bear’s head.
She couldn’t help but remember Bear when he was alive, a gentle giant of a dog. Even as a puppy, he was huge, and she used to joke that he must have been given some sort of growth hormone or been exposed to nuclear radiation to grow the way he did. There had been talk among the office staff of charging for rides on the huge mastiff’s back at the next school fair.
But the good memories were warped with the recollection of the usually gentle giant attempting to tear out her throat.
Doc Martin chose to believe that it wasn’t Bear’s fault at all, that something else—some unknown malady—was responsible.
A malady that she was hoping to discover and perhaps be able to cure.
The circular cuts around the dog’s skull finally met end to beginning, the acrid smell of burning bone and blood filling the air of the cramped operating room space. She leaned over and flicked a switch to turn on the ceiling fan to suck out the lingering dust and odor, again grateful that the emergency gas-powered generator had kicked in as it was supposed to.
She set the bloody saw down on the metal table beside her and reached over to peel the layer of fur and skin away from the dog’s head to expose the skull. Doc Martin then grabbed a thin chisel and hammer from the tools on a stainless-steel tray. Leaning over the dog’s corpse again, she wedged the end of the chisel into the bloody line around Bear’s skull and gently tapped it with the hammer. She did that all around the dog’s skull until the bone cap lifted with a wet sucking sound.
“All right then,” she muttered as she set her tools and the skull cap down upon the instrument table. “Let’s have a look.”