An Alien Artifact Crashed On Earth. It Reconstructs Humans Into Living Nightmares

The ankle monitor says his client's leg is getting colder. Fifteen years as a county probation officer have shown him every trick for beating a bracelet, so he expects this one buried in ice. Instead he finds his client folded backward under the basement stairs, eyes sealed under amber, mouth sealed over broken teeth. Cold. Not breathing. Somehow still alive.

By dawn, soldiers have fenced in the subdivision. Something has come down a few streets over, and from the bottom of its crater, it knocks. Neighbors arch backward in their beds. Dogs go hairless and sprout...