“He probably snuck off to that damn movie,” said her mother. “He told us he was staying over at Eddie’s.”
Eddie’s mother, Mrs. Beckner, looked dismayed. “Eddie told us he was staying at your place.”
This was terrible! The thought of little Kevin and that horrible monster… !
A soldier was passing by, and Meg reached out and grabbed him. “Excuse me,” she said. “My little brother’s over at the movie theater on Main!”
“Miss, we’re going by sectors. We’ll get there shortly.”
“You don’t understand—”
The soldier brushed her off. “We’ll handle this, okay?”
Mr. Penny, however, clearly didn’t care for the soldier’s attitude. And Daddy was a very confrontational man.
“I don’t see you handling much of anything, bub. You on a coffee break?”
“Look, mister—” the soldier began.
“Don’t ‘look, mister’ me. I’m a taxpayer! I pay your salary!”
Everyone was listening to the argument. Which gave Meg the perfect opportunity to slip away. She had to get to the movie theater, get Kevin to a safe place and keep him there.
This was no night for a ten-year-old to be out on the town.
Kevin Penny was getting really steamed. This joker in the seat behind him was making a real nuisance of himself. Clearly he’d seen the film before, but why did he have to broadcast what was coming up?
Eddie and Anthony didn’t seem to mind. They were into the gore and the mayhem, not the suspense. But Kevin had always enjoyed suspenseful stuff, from the first time that a grown-up had played peekaboo with him when he was a baby. But there was no suspense in Garden Tool Murders, not with Big Mouth blaring behind him.
He tried to ignore the guy, and turned his attention to the screen, where two pretty coeds in nighties were talking inanely as they made salads. But Kevin couldn’t hear what they were saying. Big Mouth drowned them out.
“Oh, you’ll love this,” said the guy. “He takes the Veg-O-Matic and dices them to death.”
That was the last straw! Kevin was fed up. He was gonna give this guy a piece of his mind, just the way Dad would. In fact, he pretended he was Dad now, Dad with a mad on, as he turned to confront Big Mouth.
But as he turned, expecting to see the bespectacled man with the bad haircut, he was buffeted by a faint wind. There was a blur of motion. All he got a glimpse of was the heels of the guy’s wing tips as he was yanked up into the air.
Kevin—and the guy’s girlfriend—stared up, dumbfounded.
What they saw was infinitely worse than any killer wearing a hockey mask and waving a garden hoe.
Some kind of awful glop was spilling out of the three projection windows behind the audience. Only, it wasn’t like it was just liquid—it looked kind of like loose clay, animated. A tendril of the stuff had whipped down, lassoed Big Mouth, and pulled him up toward the greater mass.
Big Mouth was screaming.
But then the screaming stopped as he was pushed head first into the writhing mass—with no splash. His legs and arms wriggled frantically, and then blood and some other liquid started pouring down over the heads of the audience.
Screams began, louder than any movie had ever aroused.
“Look at that!” cried Kevin, pounding on Eddie and Anthony to attract their attention. Even as they looked, gobs of muck rolled down onto the aisle, grabbing a woman and pulling her off her feet.
Panic seized the crowd.
The projector jammed, freezing the movie on the image of a screaming coed. And then the hot light burned the image away—even as the creature invading the movie theater burned away the face of a man with a flick of a pseudopod.
The audience became a mob. Panicked, they ran for their lives toward the bright red exit signs.
“We gotta get outta here,” said Anthony, but as the boys ran into the aisle, they were hit by running people. Anthony was carried along with the crowd, but Eddie and Kevin were knocked down onto the sticky, popcorn-covered carpet.
The creature roiled toward them.
The people came exploding out of the theater, and Meg Penny immediately knew why.
The creature was in there.
The monster was in there, and so was her little brother Kevin.
She fought her way through the fear-crazed crowd and through the doors. She smelled the thing before she saw it. The gut-wrenching acidy smell, and the blood, and the taint of the sewer… She looked up the aisle and sure enough, there it was, bigger than before, incredibly big, spouting through the projection-booth openings and pouring down the walls and aisle like oatmeal lava pouring through a flickering nightmare.
“Kevin!” she cried, fighting her way through the crush of bodies. “Kevin!”
There were groans and cries and screams everywhere, dominated by the obscene squelching sound the creature made as it wriggled through, grabbing people in a feeding frenzy.
Meg was knocked over. A man above her tried to run along the top of a row of seats toward the exit. But with a whipping sound a pseudopod lashed around his midsection, tore him away with a yelp, and dragged him back into the main mass of the thing.
“Kevin!” she cried, pulling herself up. But she was immediately knocked down, landing just inches away from the face of a woman who had been half dissolved from forehead to chin.
A scream struggled to break free, but she choked it back. Have to find Kevin, she told herself. Have to find Kevin.
“Kevin!” she cried, getting back up.
“Meg!”
She turned toward the sound of the yell. There he was! Still alive! He and Eddie were cowering in a corner, near the theater’s curtain, as people surged past.
She dodged around a row of seats and struck out toward them. The crowd was thinning out—either the creature had got them, or they’d escaped from the theater. She reached the boys and, taking no time to hug Kevin, wrenched them away from where they stood and pointed toward the side exit. “This way,” she cried.
But even as they ran, Meg saw peripherally the pseudopod lapping toward them over the seats in the strobing darkness.
“Down!” she called, pushing the boys down onto the floor.
The tendril flopped over them at freight-train speed, smashing a plaster angel on the side wall into dust.
“Come on!” cried Meg. “Hurry!”
The boys responded instantly, getting to their feet and running with her to the exit. Meg could hear the surging horror lapping at their feet.
The exit door was the traditional gray metal variety with a heavy-duty lock. Meg and the boys burst through it into the alley. Meg had a glimpse of the thing filling up the short hallway behind them.
She had to close that door! That thing was going so fast!
Meg slammed the door behind her. She heard and felt the thing pound against the other side like tons of dough striking a kneading counter. The door clicked shut, locking behind them.
Meg permitted herself a quick sigh of relief.
“Hurry,” she cried, and she struck off down the alley, along with Eddie.
But where was Kevin?
“Meg! Help!” cried the boy, and Meg turned around.
Kevin was still at the door, and instantly Meg could see why. She’d shut the door so fast, she’d caught the hood of his nylon jacket between the door and the jamb! And now Kevin was struggling to get the thing off… but the zipper was stuck.
She ran back to him.
“Stupid coat!” sobbed Kevin. “Stupid coat!”
God! The door was starting to bulge outward, pushed with incredible force from the creature.
She grabbed the zipper and tugged on its latch. It refused to budge. Tears ran down Kevin’s face, and he mewled softly.
Bubbles of slime squeezed through the bulging door. From the cracks oozed strands of the monster, blindly feeling around for prey. Then, one by one, the bolts on the door burst from their fittings.
Behind her she coul
d hear Eddie yell. “Watch out! Hurry!”
Why hadn’t the kid run?
With a strength born of desperation Meg released the zipper and grabbed the front of Kevin’s jacket. She pulled and ripped it wide open. Immediately she tugged Kevin out of it and pushed him to one side.
The creature spewed from the doorway, slapping across the alley, its deadly steaming tissue just missing Kevin and Meg and Eddie.
“C’mon!” she cried, grabbing them up and turning away from the surging tide of monstrosity.
They ran down the alley. Her lungs were on fire, but she ran for all she was worth. Turned a corner.
Hit a dead end.
“There’s no other way out!” she cried.
She could hear the garbage cans being hit by the creature as it probed out for them.
She looked around, and then down, and caught sight of a manhole cover.
“Here!” she cried. “Help me lift it!”
The boys helped her, putting their fingers in the pryholes and lifting the cover to one side with a clatter.
At the corner a Dumpster, borne on a wave of the monster, smashed into the brick wall, crumbling and spewing trash, which was rapidly covered by the rolling putrescent ooze.
“Down!” she ordered, grabbing Kevin and pushing him into the dark hole. “Come on, you too!” she said, but Eddie needed no urging. He was already jumping down in Kevin’s wake.
The Blob hissed closer, closer.
Meg stepped down the first three metal rungs, ducking down below ground level and grabbing the manhole cover by its side. Somehow she found the energy to pull it back over the hole. It clanged into place, just as she sensed the Blob pouring over it.
She started moving farther down into the darkness, where she could hear Kevin and Eddie moving around.
Something grabbed at her hair.
Strands of acidic slime were leaking down, tangling in her hair! With a scream she jumped, and felt a rip on her scalp as whole clumps were pulled away. She hit concrete piping.
She could hear her hair sizzling above her.
She rolled away, sloshing through the water at the bottom of the round pipe, not even noticing the terrible stench.
She ran into a form and gasped.
“Meg!” cried Kevin. “It’s us!”
Kevin and Eddie were waiting for her at a juncture of the piping, in the dark.
“Which way, Meg?”
She pushed them in a random direction. One way was as good as another, as long as it headed away from that thing dripping down behind them.
Anthony Peters watched in disbelief as the stuff slammed through the theater exit door, cutting his friends off.
What was that thing? The kid watched it as it poured out, assuming a bulbous shape as it rolled after its three intended victims. Anthony was so dazed he didn’t think to just turn and run. Fascinated, he watched the slimy creature squirm down the alley like an inside-out giant worm.
It disappeared around the corner.
“Eddie!” he cried.
Eddie was his best buddy! They were blood brothers, he and Eddie. He couldn’t just leave him!
Anthony ran after the creature. Maybe he could help Eddie and Meg and Kevin.
When he turned the corner, he saw an astonishing thing.
There was the pile of gunk that had chased them all, at the cul-de-sac of the alley.
And it was dwindling in size.
“Eddie!” he cried in horror as he noticed by the dim streetlighting the half-eaten bodies bobbing inside the gelatinous ooze. Could it have gotten Eddie?
But then Anthony realized that the thing wasn’t disappearing. It was flowing down a manhole, into the sewers. It was still chasing Eddie and Meg and Kevin.
They might be still alive!
“Help!” he cried, turning and running back out of the alley. “Somebody help!”
He had to tell everybody where that monster went!
They had to save Eddie!
18
It didn’t take long for Brian Flagg to find his motorbike again, and it didn’t take long to fix it, with the help of Moss’s ratchet.
Now came the tricky part.
Getting away from this crazy place.
Like, there were soldiers swarming all over!
Brian didn’t dare get on his bike and start it. The thing was too loud, and this close to all this military activity he’d be a goner—they’d hear him for sure, run out in their high-tech gadgets and grab him up, just like that.
So he was walking his bike now, through the undergrowth, trying to figure out the best way to sneak around the encampment to the road.
Yikes!
He ducked down behind a clump of bushes as two of the plastic suits, carrying M16’s, marched by. Boy, and they had reinforcements too! One of the soldiers had a German shepherd at the end of the leash. The dog’s nose was on the ground, sniffing away.
One of the soldiers had a walkie-talkie. The sound of cross-chatter drifted over to Brian’s ears from the device.
“We got the town sealed tight as a drum,” said the voice from the walkie-talkie. “Roads closed. Phone lines severed. Civilian radio frequencies jammed. Over.”
The soldier turned and disappeared over a rise, the light from their flashlights bouncing ahead of them.
This was the way, wasn’t it? thought Brian, getting back up and pushing his bike ahead of him. The one-lane road was just up ahead. If he could get there, he’d be home free.
Of course, the best route was right past the area where that meteor had fallen. It was just as chancy as the alternatives, so Brian Flagg decided to try for it.
Sure enough, there was the crash site, with all the vehicles and lights and equipment and stuff huddled around it. Brian skirted the periphery, the wheels of the bike rolling along beside him among the trees. The familiar burnt smell of the place wafted to him, along with the murmur of voices…
And the whirring of machinery.
Just ahead, past a break in the trees, the moonlight washed across that narrow country road he’d been looking for, the one heading away from town.
Yes, sir, he thought, smiling. Freedom just ahead!
But then he stopped. The machinery sound had stepped up in volume. And there was a whining sound. Brian knew that sound. It was the sound of a winch!
Those dudes were hauling something up! The meteor? But how could they get a grip on a piece of rock?
Intrigued, Brian carefully set his bike down and went over to check this out. One little peep wouldn’t do any harm.
He crawled up through some underbrush toward the top of the rise. Looking down, he had a good view of the crash site and the crater.
Holy moley, they had a crane there, all right, and he could hear the whining of the winch even better from here as it pulled something up out of the hole. Soldiers were clustered all around, yeah… And wait… there was that old dude, Dr. Trimble, watching, alongside Colonel Hargis and another guy.
“Gently, now. Gently!” Trimble was saying.
The thing at the end of the crane was being lifted up out of the hole, and Brian could see it very clearly. It was a charred and battered orb, but its smooth metallic surface gleamed in the moonlight.
Brian Flagg took in a breath.
Jeez! That was no meteor.
That was a satellite!
A man-made, shot-up-in-the-sky-on-the-nose-of-a-rocket satellite!
The crane arm swung the demolished satellite away from the crater into the flatbed back of the truck waiting to transport it away.
Dr. Bruno Trimble watched the operation, cautioning the technicians to be careful. They were going to need everything here for their work, and they couldn’t afford to leave any bits and pieces out in the countryside for someone to stumble across.
No, there was too much at stake.
“Incredible. Just incredible,” said Dr. Jainway, a younger scientist.
“Yes, isn’t it,” said Trimble. “We’ve known for years that c
onditions in space have a mutating effect on bacteria.”
Dr. Jainway nodded. “But who could have guessed this?”
Dr. Trimble smiled to himself. It was happening! His dream! He would prove once and for all that he’d been right all along! For years his colleagues had merely humored him and his theories. But now, through this accident, there would be no way they could patronize him. His name, in boldface, would go down in science history books, for all the ages!
“Who indeed?” he said. “Our little experimental virus seems to have grown up. Grown up into a plasmic life-form that hunts its prey. A predator, for God’s sake! It’s fantastic!”
What he didn’t mention was that what he’d accomplished was nothing less than a recreation of what had happened billions and billions of years ago in the seas of Earth. A bubbling broth of amino acids had mutated into life-forms. Life-forms that fed on one another to survive, life-forms that reproduced rapidly, forming colonies of cells which were the first living animals…
He’d always thought that cosmic rays from space had had a great deal to do with that mutation, but he’d no idea how extremely right he’d been. Putting that recreation of life’s building blocks in a satellite, that chemical soup in a controlled environment, and then shooting it up past the shielding ozone layer… a brilliant move, one that had taken years to engineer!
And now it had worked.
But Dr. Jainway, a rather muddled sort, seemed slightly upset by this. “Sir,” he was saying, “the organism’s growing at a geometric rate. By all accounts it’s now a thousand times its original mass.”
Colonel Hargis wasn’t concerned about the creation of life. He had other fish to fry. “Gentlemen, this could put the U.S. defense system years ahead of the Russians.”
What a petty mind, thought Trimble. Of course, those dollars the U.S. defense system had contributed weren’t petty, and Trimble had taken them gladly.
“You don’t understand,” said Jainway, clearly quite troubled. “At this rate there may be no U.S.!”
“Nonsense,” said Trimble. “All we have to do is to contain it properly.” He turned to Colonel Hargis. “This is an incredible breakthrough, and I want it treated as a matter of top national security.”
The Blob Page 12
