The Blob

by David Bischoff

  “It’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen,” said Brian. “It’s like Dr. Frankenstein dumped all the spittoons in the world into one smelly glob, and then stuck the electrodes in!”

  Dr. Trimble nodded.

  “Hmm. Most curious,” he said.

  “We’re telling you how people have been horribly dissolved by that thing,” said Meg, “and all you can say is ‘Most curious’?”

  “Forgive my emotional detachment, but it comes with the job. Biologically speaking, you must understand, I deal with much death, in many horrible ways. Cancer, disease of various sorts… AIDS, what have you. I know them all too well. But this”—he stuck a finger in the air—“this is something quite different, it would seem. All those are diseases that strike from within. This giant amoeboid seems to strike from without! And as it absorbs its victims, so its mass and cellular content expand. But the question is, my friends: Is it single celled… or multicelled? Its rate of growth suggests single celled, and yet it is like nothing that exists in nature. By the way, did you notice the presence of a nucleus?”

  “He means, like the brain,” said Meg.

  “All I saw floating in that thing were pieces of bodies!” said Brian.

  “How about flagella?”

  “Huh?”

  “Like, long antennae,” said Meg. “You mean, like in paramecia?”

  “Aha! The young lady has taken biology. Excellent. Perhaps I should direct my question to you.”

  “No, no antennae, sir, nothing like a paramecium. But come to think of it, it was kinda like the things we looked at under microscopes… Only, it doesn’t seem to have any skin!”

  “A giant amoeba without a membrane—well, that is something. That’s not to say it’s an amoeba, but I think that we can assume that it’s single celled. The DNA structure must be very simple yet terribly elegant to promote an eating machine of this magnitude!”

  “You believe us!” said Meg, just beginning to comprehend that they were being taken seriously.

  “Yes, my dear. I believe you. Everything you have said confirms the existence of this thing, this horrid yet fascinating blob… And yet there may be even more to it than we know.”

  As they were talking, more equipment and vehicles had arrived. Brian turned around, noticing for the first time that a windowless van had pulled up behind them.

  “I can’t begin to thank you both,” Dr. Trimble was saying. “This information is incredibly valuable.” He went to the van and opened a back door. “Please, get in.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Meg.

  “Back to town,” said Dr. Trimble. “Morgan City is under quarantine until we’ve isolated that organism and checked every living soul for signs of infection. As I mentioned before, we are a containment unit. We don’t want any disease to spread.”

  But Brian didn’t like the sound of this. He stayed put. “In the meantime we’re your prisoners.”

  “Nonsense,” said Dr. Trimble. “You’re my patients.”

  “Sounds like the same thing to me.”

  “Brian,” said Meg, already getting in.

  “Young man,” said the scientist, getting stern, “I’m far too busy to debate the point with you. Now, please step into the van.”

  Meg stepped back down and grabbed Brian by the arm. But Brian instead backed away toward the woods, dragging Meg along with him. “Look, thanks for the offer, Doc, but my bike’s right over there and we can make it back on our own.” He waved good-bye with his free hand. “By the way, love your tailor. Gotta get me one of those.”

  He turned around and ran smack into the broad-shouldered Colonel Hargis, accompanied by two other husky white-suited soldiers gripping M16’s. Tall too. They loomed over Brian Flagg like twin sentinels.

  “Get in the van,” rumbled Colonel Hargis, in a voice like God’s.

  Brian recognized the tone immediately, and knew that this was no time for rebellion. “Oh! Right! Van ride sounds nice!”

  He and Meg clambered in, and the door immediately slammed shut behind them. Brian could hear the colonel bellowing outside. “Get these civilians to the relief station, ASAP!”

  “Yes, sir!” came the response.

  Brian sat down on one of the benches in the windowless compartment. A dim light shone near the cab of the van.

  A few moments later the engine started and the van jumped and rumbled toward its destination. Brian stared at the door a moment, then smiled over to Meg. He got up and tried it.

  “It’s locked,” he reported to his companion.

  “So what?” She was sitting, clearly tired, on her bench, as though relieved to be there. “Brian, what’s with you? You’re acting like a complete jerk.”

  “I have problems with authority figures.”

  He checked his back pocket. Sure enough, Moss’s ratchet was still there. He supposed he had a good enough excuse for not getting it back on time. He pulled the tool out and started working on the lock.

  “What are you doing?” Meg demanded.

  “I think we should get out of here,” he said.

  “What?”

  “We ought to get my bike and blow this town. Things are getting a little thick.”

  “Brian, that’s crazy! These people are here to help us!”

  “Come on, Meg. We don’t even know who they are! NASA? CIA? The Royal Canadian Mounties? All I saw was a bunch of unmarked trucks. The whole thing stinks.”

  “We can’t just run out!”

  “Let’s think of it as looking out for our best interests.”

  The lock clicked free. Brian pushed on the door. It opened. He turned to Meg. “You coming?”

  She wore a look of resolve on her face. “I have to go back, Brian. My family’s there. People I care about.”

  “Well, I’m going. If you’re smart, you’ll come with me.”

  She looked at him crossly, speaking bitterly. “Then go, take care of yourself. It’s the only thing you’re really good at, isn’t it?”

  That hurt worse that he’d have expected it to.

  “Nobody else ever volunteered for the job,” he murmured, turning and checking outside. He didn’t want to get run over by a truck cruising along behind. But there was no truck, and the ground that was trundling by wasn’t passing too fast. A good jump would be a cinch.

  Then it got even better. The van slowed for a turn, and Brian jumped, without even turning to say good-bye to Meg. He hit the ground, tucked himself into a ball, and rolled into the roadside brush. The world whizzed around him for a time, then stilled. He picked himself up and he brushed himself off.

  The van bumped along toward Morgan City. Meg Penny had already closed the door.

  Brian watched for a moment.

  “Christ, Flagg,” he muttered in disgust. “A cheerleader.”

  Then he turned and started walking back to Elkins Grove, where all this had started, and where his bike waited.

  17

  Bloody murders were imminent.

  Smack dab in center aisle, tenth row, Kevin Penny sat with his friends Eddie and Anthony, waiting for the deaths to begin.

  The movie screen was splashed now with the images of Susie, a gorgeous blonde in cutoffs and a well-filled T-shirt, and Lance, the muscular young camp counselor. They were sitting on a picnic table by a bunch of hedges, and they were necking. This was boring to Kevin Penny. He wanted the exciting stuff to start, and he had the feeling that that gardener there, the one in the hockey mask with the hedge trimmer, was going to get things going!

  “What’s wrong?” said Susie as Lance came up for air, looking around apprehensively.

  “Isn’t it awfully late to be trimming the lawn? Maybe that guy’s a Peeping Tom or something.”

  “Well, let’s give him something to peep at!” said Susie, pulling her hunk back down.

  There was a cut to a close-up of the hedge trimmer, whirring and cutting twigs and leaves.

  Kevin Penny shuddered deliciously, stuffing his face with a handf
ul of popcorn. To his left Eddie and Anthony were wolfing down jujubes like nobody’s business. There was the air of the forbidden here in the dank and musty movie theater, and it gave Kevin an extra charge to be doing just what his mother had told him not to.

  Not that what was happening on the screen wasn’t exciting! Boy, it sure was!

  “I’m telling you,” said the camp counselor in the movie. “Something’s weird about that guy. Hockey season ended months ago.”

  Behind the boys one of the moviegoers was talking loudly to his date. “Watch this,” he was saying. “He gets the camp counselor with the electric Garden Weasel, but the girl gets away!”

  The whirring got louder and sure enough, here came Puck Face, slamming down his weapon onto poor Lance. Popcorn splattered as Kevin put salty fingers up to cover his eyes. Eeuuk! Blood everywhere! He couldn’t help but notice that Eddie and Anthony didn’t stir at all. They just stared and chuckled, eating all this up along with their candy.

  “Watch,” said the goofball behind him. “She’s gonna run in the lodge and hide.”

  Kevin was very annoyed. His very first slasher film was being ruined by some jerk who’d seen it before and insisted on telegraphing the upcoming action. Kevin turned and put his finger to his lips. “Shhh!”

  As Kevin Penny expressed his annoyance, upstairs in the projection booth Phil Hobbs, who had seen the movie many times, leaned back in his chair and turned the page of his old Creepy magazine. The projectionist had read it before, and it wasn’t as good as the old EC horror comics he collected, but he couldn’t read his precious ECs at work. They’d get ruined, since he tended to suck down Cokes and smear his comics with peanut grease while unspooling the evening’s entertainment.

  You had to find something to do up here between pushing the “on” button to the film and rewinding the things or you’d go crazy. Phil Hobbs liked to read comics, he liked to play with his yo-yo, and he liked companionship. The companionship he’d found in a pet he had bought some years ago—a spider monkey. He called the monkey Charlie, and Charlie really dug being assistant projectionist. He was also real good at shelling peanuts, and damned generous for a monkey.

  That was exactly what he was doing now, perched atop the rewind table—shelling peanuts. He took two from their husk, gave one to Phil, and ate the other.

  “Thanks, Charlie,” said Phil Hobbs, chomping down on the nut, then flipping the page of the old black-and-white comic, not missing a flip of his yo-yo.

  Charlie chittered in reply.

  “Geez, what you think, Charlie,” said Hobbs, realizing that he was sweating. “Getting kinda hot in here, isn’t it? Stuffy too? Think we should report bad working conditions to the management or to the union?”

  He got up to check the air-conditioning vent. “Thing’s giving off nothing, and on a night like this! Maybe the vent’s clogged or something.”

  He unlatched the vent and opened it. Still not a bit of cool air was forthcoming.

  “Wonderful,” said Phil Hobbs. “No, the union won’t get the results as fast as we need them.” He went to the phone and called down to Clyde Mitchell, the manager, still keeping the yo-yo going, executing some tricky moves to keep his mind off the heat. “Hi, Clyde,” he said when the phone was picked up on the other end. “It’s Hobbs. Listen, it’s boiling up here. The air conditioning on?”

  “Sure is,” said Mitchell. “And don’t you know I’m paying a pretty penny for it!”

  “Well, it ain’t happening up here. Come up and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.” He cradled the receiver and continued his yo-yoing as he delved back into his vampire story. Shoulda brought a Vampirella comic, he thought. He liked any given Vampy story better than the usual run of Creepy vampire stories.

  Charlie the spider monkey didn’t care much about the heat, but something did attract his attention. A barely audible metallic creaking sound was coming from the duct that his master had opened. Charlie wondered what the hell it was, and his curiosity got the better of him. He abandoned his paper bag of peanuts and skittered over there, jumping up to the edge and perching, looking down into the dark hole.

  Creak creak creak…

  When Phil Hobbs held his hand out for his next peanut, he received nothing. He looked up from his comic book and saw no monkey on the rewind table.

  “Charlie?”

  He swiveled around and caught movement at the air-conditioning duct—Charlie’s tail, just disappearing.

  Good Lord, the simian simpleton had gone into the hole!

  “Hey!” cried Phil Hobbs and rushed to the hole. “Charlie, get outta there!”

  In the hole there was only darkness. He could see nothing. He stuck his head in, calling for his pet. “Charlie!”

  His voice echoed into the piping.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  It gobbled down the tiny creature, but the protoplasm only maddened it. Food, more food!

  It had lain awhile in the sewers, feeding on rats and digesting its prey from the phone booth and from the police car it had invaded, but its raging need for more flesh and blood had urged it out of its hole, up and up, to where it sensed many animate bags of blood. Food, more food!

  And now the Blob saw the man sticking his head into the duct, and it raced up toward the vibrations of his voice… and the pulsing of his blood.

  Clyde Mitchell, the manager of the Morgan City theater, walked up the steps toward the projection booth.

  He couldn’t figure out for the life of him what was wrong with the air conditioning. He’d checked the units downstairs and they were churning along, nice as you please. Still, he didn’t want to upset his projectionist. Hobbs was a good one, and they were hard to get in a town like Morgan City. Mitchell was young yet, and he had aspirations of heading for the top of the chain of theaters that he worked for. But he wouldn’t get anywhere if this job wasn’t run efficiently.

  At the top of the stairs he tried the door. It was locked. He rattled it a bit, but no one came to open it.

  “C’mon, Hobbs, put the yo-yo down and open this door!”

  No answer. Well, he had a key ring. Wearily he pulled out the proper key and opened the door.

  The film was still chugging away. Light flickered along the front of the booth, almost like an erratic strobe, but otherwise the room was dark. The manager pulled out his usher’s flashlight and swept it across the room in a slow arc.

  Phil Hobbs was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hobbs? You in here?” he called, becoming apprehensive.

  It came down with a whir.

  The yo-yo.

  It came down from the ceiling, and bumped there at the end of its string. And something was dripping down it.

  Mitchell jumped back. What the hell?

  He automatically swung the flashlight up, cutting through the shadows.

  Phil Hobbs the projectionist seemed to be embedded in the ceiling! Some kind of runny glob was holding him there, like an insect stuck in tree sap. Even as Clyde Mitchell looked, he could see the light going out of the man’s eyes. Could see the skin starting to melt away, exposing cartilage and skull, as the jaw opened and closed and the body twitched and jerked.

  And then Mitchell could see that Hobbs’s body was being dragged across the ceiling, that the whole ceiling was a writhing mass. It seemed alive! And more gunk was spewing up from out of the air-conditioning duct.

  Stunned, the manager could only think, So that’s why he wasn’t getting any AC.

  Then ropes of slime dropped from the ceiling, surrounding him. Terrified, he turned to escape…

  But the whole door was covered in a sheath of gunk.

  The audience in the theater screamed as the hockey-masked killer struck again.

  As though on cue Clyde Mitchell screamed as well, as the ceiling dropped down on him.

  Meg Penny fumed as she was jerked and jostled by the military van zooming through town.

  That damned Brian Flagg! He’d just flown the coop. And here
she’d thought he was showing some special qualities she’d never imagined he possessed all these years! She’d actually felt something for the jerk! You couldn’t go through what they’d been through together and not feel something. But then he’d abandoned her, just like that, to save his own rotten skin.

  The van squeaked to a halt and Meg heard the sound of footsteps running up to open the back door.

  The door was opened by another of those plastic-suited soldiers, who motioned her out. As she stepped onto the pavement, she realized where she was. The center of Morgan City: Town Hall.

  The Town Hall was two stories of ivy-covered brick, situated to the north of the tree-lined Town Square. Usually it projected an image of dignity and austerity, but tonight all was chaos. White-suited soldiers ran hither and yon, escorting Morgan City citizens to shelters. Meg could see medical teams working with clumps of people, checking them out for infection under artificial lights. Lots of people were still in their bedclothes, having been roused from sleep.

  Yes, now the Town Hall was the Town Emergency Relief Station.

  From the top of a military half-track a loudspeaker blared: “Please assemble in an orderly fashion and cooperate fully with our medical personnel…”

  The soldier who had opened the door for her thumped the side of the van with his fist and shouted, “Clear!”

  A little dazed and discombobulated, Meg walked forward into the confused scene, looking for her parents.

  She found them quickly. They were in line for medical attention, along with two people she recognized as Eddie’s parents. Mrs. Penny was holding her little baby sister, Christine.

  “Mom! Dad!” she called, running to them.

  Mrs. Penny welcomed her with a frantic hug. “Meg! Thank God you’re all right!”

  “Where have you been?” said her father. “You had us scared out of our minds!”

  She looked around, noticing an absence. Kevin. What had happened to her little brother?

  “Where’s Kevin?” she asked.