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 reaching 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.
There was a good chance that she was about to die.
And that pissed her off more than she could have ever imagined. Sidney had often heard people talk about an anger so intense that they were seeing red—at that moment she knew exactly what they meant. Everything around her took on the scarlet hue of her fury.
I will not die like this! her thoughts cried.
Sidney was screaming as she pushed open the car door and dove from the car to the street. Instantly the rats and squirrels were on her, climbing her pants legs toward her face.
No! And suddenly that something inside her brain began to bend and twist.
The animals recoiled, jumping back from where she stood as the animals crawling on her body fell twitching to the street.
The animals reacted aggressively, climbing upon one another to form their single life-form again, rearing up and back like some huge tentacle-like limb preparing to swat her flat.
But Sidney wasn’t having any of that, that newly awakened part of her brain reacting in a very similar fashion, reaching out to whatever was closest—seizing control.
Seeing with their eyes.
The dogs were suddenly there, and under her control, multiple breeds of all shapes and sizes running toward the serpent of vermin, throwing themselves at the swaying monstrosity before it could strike.
The rats and insects attacked their attackers, a maelstrom of snapping jaws, claws, and pincers.
Sidney stood there, feeling the thing inside her head flex, move, and pulsate as it never had done before. Whatever was inside her skull was growing.
Becoming stronger, writhing inside her brain.
Changing her into something more than she had been before.
The carnage went on for what seemed like hours, leaving the Boston street strewn with the bodies of dead animals that had been pitted against each other in a battle for supremacy.
A battle that Sidney believed she had won.
A gush of scalding blood poured from her nose down her face, and Sidney used her arm to wipe it away, surprised by the volume.
Fearing that she may be running out of time, she proceeded up the street, paying close attention to the odd sensation at the back of her skull as she headed toward her final destination.