Gremlins (22 page)

“I’m all for spending the money to provide the office areas of these buildings with burglar devices,” one councilman had said, “but I don’t see why we should waste money making the ground floor of the YMCA burglarproof. The only things there are a bunch of nailed-down metal lockers, a basketball court, and other nonportable facilities. What are they gonna steal? Anyway, the cops patrol that area closely and the neighbors watch the place.”

Now, as he balanced himself precariously on the ledge, Billy wondered if, despite the weather and poor visibility, someone had already spotted him. If so, he knew it wouldn’t be long before he heard sirens, for the people of Kingston Falls prided themselves on their respect for law and order and were not inclined to look the other way when confronted with criminal activity. Criminal activity, he thought, is that what I’m involved in? He knew such was not the case, but he had to admit that to an outsider his actions certainly appeared illegal. What would he say if the authorities caught him inside? No excuse being logical under the circumstances, he would be arrested for breaking and entering—it was as simple as that. He wondered if he would be allowed to receive his Christmas presents in jail.

“So back out, then,” he said aloud. “It’s last call for chickens . . .”

Accepting his own challenge, he gave himself a strong push into the building. Landing on his side in the darkness, he quickly located the flashlight, which had rolled out of his pocket, and started to get to his feet. As he did so, an unearthly treble giggle reverberated through the lower floor area. It sounded close by, but because the hall was so spacious and empty, Billy knew Stripe could be fifty or a hundred feet away.

Pausing, he decided to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness before moving ahead. A minute passed. No sound could be heard except the floppy chains of a car passing near the center. Another minute crawled by. Billy could feel Gizmo’s warm breath on the back of his neck, hear the slight rustle of material as his arm shifted position against his side. Other than that, nothing . . . No clawed feet clattering over metal lockers, no more giggling, nothing.

Finally a sound shattered the ghostly silence. Not a soft or subtle betrayal of its maker’s whereabouts, but a definite and distinct sound one would expect to hear in a facility such as this.

A dribbling basketball.

Blep . . . Blep . . . Blep-blep-blep . . .

Not a basketball being dribbled, Billy amended, but a basketball that had been dropped or fallen and was even now coming to rest.

Orienting himself, he moved as quickly as the darkness permitted in the direction of the equipment cage, a part of the ground floor the councilman had forgotten when he’d claimed there was nothing worth stealing here. But the cage was always locked, Billy recalled, and not with some hang-on job that could be sawed or broken off. Arriving at the door, he reached out to touch the bronze square lock, which had always reminded him of the type one sees in prison movies. He pushed gently, then with more force. The door was still locked.

Then how, he began to ask himself—

A hard object striking him on the head provided the answer. It was followed immediately by a hysterical giggle, very loud and directly above him.

Swinging the flashlight upward, Billy heard the giggle segue to a shriek of pain and then something that sounded very much like an extended curse in Mogwai language. For a moment he saw the flashlight beam striking Stripe’s red eyes, and as the Gremlin’s head jerked convulsively backward, he could see that there was a six- or eight-inch space between the ceiling and the top bar of the cage. Too narrow for a human to slide through, it had obviously been an easy maneuver for Stripe.

Now that he had broken the darkness, Billy decided to keep the flashlight beam trained on the Gremlin, for if it got away again—

He had little time to think about the consequences of another mistake. A shower of debris made up of every small object in the cage rained down on him. It consisted, as nearly as he could tell while dodging the pieces, of baseballs, nails, screwdrivers, a wrench, an old sneaker, hunks of wood, and everything metallic Stripe could handle. Avoiding the objects as best he could while shielding his head and Gizmo from the barrage, Billy somehow managed to keep the flashlight on Stripe throughout the angry shower. He had no strategy other than to see if he could flush the creature out of the cage and attack it with his sword, a strategy that depended largely on how long the flashlight batteries—

Suddenly the light was gone, a sharp object having struck Billy’s hand, causing him to drop it. As the flashlight hit the floor, the plastic front flew off, sending the batteries and bulb assembly clattering in different directions.

Billy’s groan blended with Stripe’s giggle in the abrupt and total darkness.

Falling to his knees, Billy spread his palms and began feeling for the component parts of the flashlight. He located the batteries quickly, then the bulb assembly, and finally the top. While he tried putting the thing together in the black void, he could hear Stripe making his escape down the side of the cage, the clawed feet landing with a metallic thump only a yard or two away. Had he not been busy with the flashlight, Billy would have started swinging the sword blindly, so close did he feel to the Gremlin. A moment later, with the flashlight operating again, he swung it down the hallway just in time to see Stripe turn the corner.

He was headed across the basketball court, his sharp claws scratching noisily on the smooth wooden surface, toward a corner with some small utility rooms and the door leading to the large room containing—

“Oh, no!” Billy breathed as he broke into a run. “The swimming pool! We gotta beat him to that door!”

Racing at full speed, the light bouncing ahead of him, he noted with a grunt of satisfaction that Stripe had veered off in the direction of the utility rooms. Good, Billy thought, now we’ve got a chance at least.

Having reached the swimming pool doorway first, they could now prevent Stripe from making it to the pool—until their batteries gave out. But in the meantime Billy could try to locate the main switches.

“Here,” he said, as he shrugged off the knapsack. He put the flashlight in Gizmo’s paws so that it shone away from his face but directly outward from the door. “You hold it just like this. Don’t move, O.K.?”

Gizmo held the light firmly in his paws, gulping thickly as Billy disappeared into the darkness.

As he stumbled off, Billy worried what Gizmo would do if and when the main lights were located. The pain would hurt him as much as Stripe, possibly kill him as it had the Mogwai that died on the back porch in the sunlight. He hesitated briefly, debating whether to go back or not. Then he plunged ahead. If the lights go on, he reasoned, Gizmo will be able to fall back into the knapsack and avoid the pain. Stripe will be immobilized with pain and I’ll be able to finish him off.

Sword in hand, he groped his way along the wall, wondering which he would encounter first—Stripe or the light switches. A minute later, after encountering nothing but smooth cold squares of tile with his groping fingers, he began to think the search for either or both was endless.

“Where are the light switches?” he murmured helplessly, looking back over his shoulder to make sure the flashlight was still guarding the door. Although the batteries had waned visibly, Billy reckoned they had a few more minutes’ worth of life. Realizing that and despairing of locating the switches—if they existed—in this corner of the gymnasium, he started for the opposite wall.

He had gone perhaps fifty feet when, looking back toward the pool door to see how much weaker his batteries had gotten, he saw the last act of Stripe’s clever strategy. Obviously having figured out that Gizmo was holding the light while Billy tried to outflank him or locate the overhead switches, Stripe had hugged the wall near Gizmo, creeping slowly toward him while shielding himself from the direct rays of the light. Now, too late, Billy saw the Gremlin’s unmistakable form, black except for the chiaroscuro outline created by the light. In diabolically slow motion the figure rose high in the air next to Gizmo, a cobra ready to strike its prey.

“Look out!” Billy shouted across the court. “Look out, Gizmo! He’s—”

The flashlight fell noisily to the floor and rolled away as a series of growls and tiny yelps echoed through the gymnasium. Heading toward the dim outline of the pool door, Billy literally threw himself into the tangle of bodies. Two simultaneous bolts of pain struck him in the shoulder and side. Swinging his fist in a wild backhanded arc, Billy felt it strike a solid object, heard Stripe whine.

Lashing out again in the direction of the sound, he landed another blow, causing Stripe to disengage himself and scamper into the pool room.

“No!” Billy heard himself shout futilely.

As the sound of Stripe’s scratchy claws moving across tile grew weaker, Billy hastily retrieved the flashlight and started into the pool room. At the door he turned off the flashlight, though he could barely see without it. Even in his present state of near-panic, he knew that the light must be used judiciously—not only because it was getting weaker, but because a sudden movement by Stripe in the wrong direction now . . .

A protracted and especially evil giggle told Billy that the worst had already happened. Stripe had discovered the swimming pool and its power of illimitable reproduction.

He was standing at the far end, hopping up and down lightly, his nose inhaling the heady aromatic mist rising from the surface, his arms making wide joyous arcs above his head in the manner of an athlete who has just scored the winning points of a game. Each time he hit the tile floor during his victory dance the giggle increased slightly in volume, so that he sounded rather like a human bagpipe hopelessly hooked on a single hysterical chord.

“No . . .” Billy breathed. “Please,
no!”

The gentle touch of fur against his hand told him that Gizmo was all right, a bit of good news as he stood helplessly watching Stripe lean forward into the water.

Turning on the flashlight, Billy raced to the far end and pointed it into the water. Stripe had sunk gently to the bottom of the pool and was lying facedown, his arms relaxed at his sides. For a long moment Billy dared to hope—

A gentle rumbling destroyed the hope. Stripe’s back was aflame with tiny pods erupting to life and spreading across the surface of the pool. Like a giant rolling fungus, they divided and redivided, churning the water into a green froth. The gentle rumbling soon became a roar, a deafening wail of a hundred inhuman voices crying out in pain.

Billy watched, fascinated, but for only a moment. Then, grabbing Gizmo, he half ran, half stumbled out of the building.

C H A P T E R
SEVENTEEN

C
ollapsing on a gentle slope fifty yards from the YMCA building, Billy found himself a spectator of a grim show that was largely his creation. At first there was little to watch or hear but a greenish glow emanating from the swimming pool area and a faraway giggling chorus. Then there was movement inside the building and a marked increase in the chorus’s volume. Soon Billy could see one form and then dozens moving past the windows—each a fully grown Gremlin!

“Oh no! When they multiply as Gremlins, they don’t lose a beat, do they?”

Gizmo blinked back a tear. He could have told them of the dangers and all this could have been avoided . . . if he had been able to communicate better . . . if these humans had taken his advice. If, if, if . . .

Now there were no more ifs. To Billy’s way of thinking, his last hope was now gone. As he and Gizmo scrambled up the slope only minutes before, he had entertained the notion of calling the fire department so that they could set fire to the pods while they were waiting to hatch. But there were no pods, no intermediate stage even momentarily vulnerable to destruction or movement to a place where they could do less harm.

Billy sighed. “What can we do now, Giz?” he asked wearily. “Just give up, go home, and wait? There’s nothing else we can do, is there?”

That was the sensible course of action, but he knew he couldn’t surrender now. Having helped unleash these devilish creatures on Kingston Falls—and perhaps the world!—he owed it to himself and everyone else to do everything possible to rectify his mistake. That was the major, most moral, consideration. He also knew that merely sitting still would drive him crazy.

“I guess,” he said slowly, “this means we’ll have to go to the police.”

He did not relish explaining what had happened to Sheriff Reilly and Deputy Brent, who were as hardheaded a pair as were ever born. Even describing a normal problem to them was often difficult, so hung up were they on the idea that everyone else in the human race was devious, dumb, or both. Added to this was the perfectly reasonable resistance anyone would have to a story dealing with Gremlins or other alien creatures. A dedicated movie buff, Billy already had visions of the scenario that would be acted out at the police station. As in so many horror movies, he would explain what had happened. The police would be skeptical, to say the least. Then, to convince them of his story’s validity, he would suggest they go to the high school in order to see both Roy Hanson’s body and the remains of a dead Gremlin. After much prodding they would accompany him there—and, of course, both bodies would be missing. Either that, or the Gremlin would be gone and the police would have no choice but to arrest Billy on suspicion of murder.

Faced with explaining his story to these men, Billy hesitated. But not long, for the inside of the YMCA was obviously swarming with bodies. Passing by the windows, they made the building look like a dimly lit concert hall or theatre a minute after the night’s entertainment had ended.

“Let’s go, Giz,” Billy said finally. “I guess if we’re gonna stop those guys from taking over the whole town, we’d better tell the cops.”

A quarter hour later, at the tiny Kingston Falls Police Department station, Billy told his story as simply and unemotionally as possible, avoiding as best he could the hysterical-sounding descriptions used by movie characters.