During the long trip to the Port of Los Angeles, Vincent’s starfish body had torn itself apart, arms walking off on their own. But as the densovirus caused him to tear himself apart, new legs grew quickly to replace the departed sections.

And the runaway arms, driven to tear themselves free, were still mostly under the command of Vincent Vu. Those runaway arms had become his servants, his henchmen. They slithered and crawled throughout the ship, smothering crewmen to death—and those were the lucky ones. The less fortunate ones were disassembled, piece by piece, square inch by square inch. Some had taken hours to die.

Even less lucky crew members were . . . absorbed. The arm sections crawled over the backs of screaming men and women, penetrated their bodies with their tubular legs, grew inside the helpless victims, and made puppets of them—twisted, scarred, disfigured puppets. One such puppet had concealed his disfigurement with a hood and had been the one to tie off the ship.

Monster, Chapter 25