Absolute Carnage: Scream #1 (2019)

In an unmarked mass grave in northern New Jersey, the skeletal corpse of Donna Diego erupts from the ground, the Scream symbiote - resurrected by the dark god Knull and guided by his will towards a greater purpose - forming around it and answering Knull's call with a roar. In Manhattan, a mother and her two children flee a four-armed Carnage doppelgänger. Cornered in an alley, the mother and her children cower as it lunges towards them jaws first, but before it can devour them hair-like tendrils snare it and a voice shouts that it can't have them. The mother looks up to see Scream silhouetted by the storm and stammers her thanks for saving them, only for Scream to turn and snarl that they're hers - her eyespots replaced by a crimson spiral. Killing the mother and her children, Scream pats the Carnage doppelgänger on the head as she recalls her resurrection. Patrolling the rainswept streets with an assault rifle, Trish Robertson wonders what's creating the niggling sensation at the back of her mind. Recalling that she had once been the host of a clone of the Venom symbiote, Trish notes that despite Carnage having returned to the City, everything is eerily silent aside from the screams she'd heard earlier. As Trish hears a roar and runs towards it, she notes that while she hadn't been Venom for very long, it had been long enough for her to have become addicted to the symbiote's power; and that while she's been laying low it's time to set things right. Rounding a corner, Trish sees Scream and a group of Carnage doppelgängers eating the mother and her children, noting that something obviously related to symbiotes is going down in the City and that she's done running and hoping for the nightmares to work their way out of her head. Opening fire with her assault rifle, Trish is impaled through the shoulder by one of the Carnage doppelgängers' tendrils, but shoots herself free. Switching to her untested home-made sonic rounds, she opens fire on Scream and is shocked to see that the symbiote is bonded to a corpse, noting that the spiral marking is something else she's never seen before. The Scream symbiote abandons Donna's skeleton and latches onto Trish as she lets her guard down, engulfing her. Reveling in the power of being bonded to a symbiote, the familiar sensation of a voice not her own in her head, Trish recognizes the bones at her feet as having been Donna Diego, the Scream symbiote - having imprinted Donna's psyche into itself - snapping at her not to talk about her like she doesn't exist. Scream clutches at her head in agony as a new voice enters the mix - one so much louder that it's impossible to ignore. Snarling that "God is coming!," the Carnage doppelgängers attack Scream, but she tosses them back with her tendril-hair, Trish struggling to remain in control as the Scream symbiote succumbs to the dark voice - declaring that what Donna wanted was purpose, and now they have it in serving the will of the Symbiote God. A red spiral appears on Scream's forehead as the symbiote takes control, declaring that its god wants her to hunt. Pursued by a horde of Carnage doppelgängers, Andi Benton activates her Hell-Mark and blasts them with a barrage of Hellfire. Watching from a rooftop, Scream recognizes Andi - the one her god has marked for death - from Trish's memories; the Scream symbiote sensing its host's suppressed jealousy and hatred towards the girl for having "stolen" and then lost her old symbiote. Declaring that Andi Benton's life is hers to take, Scream leaps from the rooftop towards the girl with her fangs, claws, and bladed tendrils bared.