Slimer (18 page)

    'Okay,' said Paul, 'now we follow my original plan. We'll try and get outside and head for the roof…' He turned to Linda. 'How are you feeling? Do you think you can make it?'

    All Linda really wanted to do was lie down and sleep for a hundred years but she nodded and said, 'I'll be fine… look out!'

    Her warning came to late. Mark brought down the heavy flashlight and Paul staggered as the blow caught him on the side of the head.

    As Linda rushed to help him Mark whirled round and ran off into the darkness.

    

    

    It was too much for him to bear. There was no way to avoid the truth. Chris was gone - and he was responsible. He couldn't live with that knowledge, not without a fix. A big one…

    He headed for Alex's cabin. Paul had taken the three packets of heroin from him earlier so he was making for the remainder of the supply stored in the money belt. He hoped it was still under the mattress where he'd left it. If it wasn't he didn't know what he'd do.

    He ran through the corridors without making any attempt at stealth. He didn't care about the creature. He didn't care about anything. Only the fix he was going to give himself soon. The fix that would banish all the demons that plagued him. The fix that would provide an entrance into a world where nothing mattered…

    He found his way back to Alex's cabin almost by chance. He shone the torch briefly around the interior, stifling the painful realisation that this was where Chris had been killed by the thing, and then tore the mattress off the bunk. The money belt was still there.

    Next he went to his cabin and picked up the hypodermic and spoon he'd hidden in a cupboard. His final destination was the bathroom. It was a big room with several separate shower cubicles and a long row of sinks. He set up the lamp on the shelf above the sinks and quickly prepared the heroin. He diluted some of the white powder with water in the spoon, heating it up with a cigarette lighter. Then he filled the hypodermic and rolled up his sleeve. After wrapping his belt tightly around his right arm to cut off the circulation and make the veins stand out he drove the needle, into the biggest vein he could locate on his inner forearm.

    He pushed the plunger all the way down then loosened the belt. Almost immediately his body was suffused with the unmistakable sensation of the heroin spreading through him - a kind of glorious numbness that blotted out everything and left nothing but a feeling of blank well-being. It was the ultimate anaesthetic…

    Mark let his breath out in a long sigh and leaned his head back, eyes closed. Already the unbearable fact of Chris's death and his guilt over it had been reduced to a barely troublesome pinpoint in his mind. The hypodermic fell from his hand and clattered onto the flopr.

    The noise made him open his eyes. That's when he saw it.

    He could just make it out - a long black stain on the ceiling. It stretched all the way across from a ventilator grill and ended directjy above his head.

    It took him awhile to work out what it was. He opened his mouth to scream but as he did so the black slime dropped down on him. It covered his head and face completely, filling his nostrils and slithering down his throat.

    And as the creature invaded his body, breaking it down to its basic chemical compounds, his mind was similarly penetrated by a psychic presence that felt icy cold and unspeakably evil. Mark had a mental impression of something white and slimy lurking in the blackness that had enveloped him. Then he screamed as it began to rip and tear at his unprotected self…

    But he was already lost in a different universe and his scream was a feeble mental flicker against an infinite ocean of darkness as the Beast consumed him…

    

    

    'It's useless,' said Paul impatiently, 'we'll never find him. Let's go topside. We did our best.'

    'But we can't just leave him,' protested Linda.

    'I can. Besides, it's probably too late to help him by now. We've risked our lives for him long enough. I'm tired and I'm about to drop. I want to get out of here.'

    They had been searching for Mark for about twenty minutes. They had checked his cabin and several other rooms but without success.

    'He's your best friend, Paul,' persisted Linda. 'You can't abandon him to that creature…'

    'He was my best friend. Now he's a pathetic junkie who'd sell us out for just a sniff of heroin. And don't forget it was his fault the slimer got Chris.'

    'I know, but…' she paused. Then, 'Look, up ahead. A glow.'

    'I see it. It's coming from one of the bathrooms.'

    They approached the doorway cautiously. What they saw inside shocked them in spite of all the bizarre things they'd witnessed during the last forty-eight hours.

    'Oh God…' said Linda.

    'Careful. Get ready to move fast,' said Paul, lighting the flame-thrower.

    But the thing on the bathroom floor didn't stir. Finally Paul walked warily towards it for a closer look.

    Parts of it were still recognisable as Mark - and his clothes lying nearby were further proof of his fate - but sections of several other bodies also protruded from the grotesque mass of organic material on the floor. Arms, legs, heads, the entire upper section of a female torso, as well as bits of animals too.

    At first Paul thought the whole hideous mess was dead but then, to his profound disappointment, he saw one of the appendages stir. And then one of the heads - one he didn't recognise, thankfully - opened its eyes and looked at him disinterestedly. The eyes closed again…

    'What does it mean?' asked Linda anxiously from the doorway. 'What's happening to it now?'

    'I don't know,' said Paul helplessly. He was wondering whether it would do any good to try and incinerate it again.

    Then he noticed the fallen hypodermic and the plastic packets of white powder. He picked up the hypodermic. It was empty. Mark had obviously just given himself a fix when the thing took him by surprise.

    Paul stared thoughtfully at the obscene mass of slimy white flesh with its protruding sections of human and animal anatomy. A slow smile began to spread across his face. Then he actually laughed aloud.

    For Linda, under the circumstances, it was an unnerving sound. 'What's the matter, Paul?' she cried. 'Are you all right?'

    He grinned at her. 'I've just figured out what's up with our unpleasant friend here. Would you believe it? The bastard's stoned…'

    

    

    Linda was home again. It was Sunday morning and she and Paul were in their small flat in Islington, North London. They had spent the morning having a luxurious lie-in and were now about to go down to the local pub with their next-door-neighbours, a young couple called Greg and Sheila who were good friends of theirs.

    It was a hot day and the pub was crowded so they sat in the beer garden at the rear of the building. Linda felt very happy and contented. It was great to be back in familiar surroundings again with familiar faces. It made her feel secure.

    She needed that feeling. She couldn't remember exactly what had happened but she knew it had seemed like a terrible nightmare at the time…

    But it was all over now. Gone and forgotten. She caught Paul's eye and grinned at him. He grinned back and raised his pint of bitter. She picked up her glass too, clinked it with his then took a swallow…

    She had to spit it out. It tasted horrible. She stared into the glass but instead of the expected scotch and lemonade it was filled with some kind of black jelly. And it was moving; trying to get out of the glass.

    She flung the glass away and leapt to her feet. 'Paul!' she screamed.

    But he remained motionless in his seat, looking at her with a blank expression. Then he opened his mouth and the same black jelly that had been in the glass began to ooze out of his mouth. She screamed again and turned to Greg and Sheila for help. But they too were undergoing the same horrible transformation. Black slime was dripping from their mouths too and their eyes were black holes leading into a pit where something nameless lurked, waiting… waiting for her.

    She tried to run but then she saw that everyone in the beer garden looked the same. And they were moving in on her. She was surrounded. Trapped. And all alone.

    She shut her eyes and screamed.

    

    

    'Linda!'

    She was being shaken by the shoulder. It had her. She screamed louder.

    'LINDA! It's me, Paul. You were having a nightmare, that's all!'

    She opened her eyes. Paul was leaning over her. She was in a small room lit by a single lamp.
Where am I?
she wondered. Totally disorientated, she couldn't remember a thing at first, then it all came flooding back…

    She groaned. The nightmare wasn't over. They were still on the rig.

    'Linda? Are you okay?'

    She sat up on the bunk. The movement made the pain in her broken arm worse. 'I think so. What time is it?'

    'Almost six in the morning. I think we should get moving. I want to check the creature.'

    She remembered the events of a few hours ago. They had found the creature in a comatose state in the bathroom where it had got poor Mark. Paul decided that it had been affected by the heroin that Mark had just taken before he was absorbed by the thing. Excitedly, he told her they might have accidentally discovered an effective way of dealing with it…

    'If it was a simple poison the thing would just evolve the means of neutralising it,' he had said, 'but because it doesn't chemically perceive the heroin as a threat to its existence it's susceptible to it.'

    'Fine,' she said impatiently, trying to avoid looking at the horror on the floor but at the same time worried that it might suddenly spring to life, 'but how does that help us? It'll just wear off eventually.'

    'Not if we give it a massive overdoseV Paul had cried. 'Who knows - it might even kill it before it realises what's happening. At the very least it will knock it out of action for a few days and give us time to get away from here.'

    So they then' spent about half-an-hour dissolving the heroin in water and injecting it into the creature. Or rather Paul did all the injecting; she couldn't bring herself to go near the thing. Just being in the same room as the slimy mass with its ghastly outcrops of human and animal sec-tions was almost too much for her.

    They only used two thirds of the drug altogether. Paul decided to keep the rest in reserve. 'We'll come back in the morning. If it's dead - great! If not, we'll inject the rest of it and then make for the roof.'

    'We're not going up there now?' she'd asked.

    'No. I think we can risk grabbing some sleep in one of the cabins. We're both in need of some rest - you especially.'

    'Are you sure we can take the chance?' she asked.

    She prayed he would say yes - she couldn't imagine anything better than to be able to go to bed and sleep, even if it was only for a couple of hours.

    'Yes. I think so. The small amount of junk it got from Mark's body put it under for quite a time so all this we've pumped into it should really drop it in its tracks.'

    'I hope you're right,' she'd said, glancing briefly at the thing and looking away with a shiver.

    And now, five hours later, she felt just as exhausted and sore as before she'd gone to sleep. And the nightmare echoed in her mind like a nasty aftertaste…

    

    

    Her first try at getting off the bunk wasn't a success. On top of everything else she was very stiff. She looked at her bare legs and groaned. They were covered with dark bruises and ugly abrasions - a legacy from her encounter with the transformed Alex. And from the feel of her back and shoulder where Alex's claws had dug into her she was an even bigger mess.

    She picked up her jeans with her one good hand and began to struggle into them. As she did so she realised they stank. And so did her shirt. 'I need a bath,' she moaned.

    'You need a hospital,' Paul told her. He was already dres-sed and was strapping the flame-thrower onto his back. She saw that the few hours sleep hadn't done him much visible good either. He still looked haggard and there were lines on his face she'd never noticed before. He was only twenty-six but now he looked thirty-six. She guessed that the terrible events of the last couple of days were going to leave indelible marks on both of them.

    When she was ready Paul told her to carry the lamp. He was carrying both the flame-thrower and one of the Ml6s. Then they headed back to the bathroom where they'd found the creature. But when they arrived they got a shock.

    It was gone.

    The floor was bare. All that was left was Mark's pathetic pile of empty clothing.

    'Oh no,' groaned Linda. This meant the horror would continue. It was a nightmare. It would go on and on…

    'I don't believe it,' said Paul angrily. 'We injected enough heroin into it to drop a herd of elephants.'

    'It must have adapted to the drug after all. It sensed it was a form of poison and the Phoenix gene devised a protection against it…'

    Paul sighed. 'You're probably right. The damn thing just can't be killed.'

    'What do we do now?' she asked, nervously glancing behind her.

    'We head straight for the roof. Come on.'

    The nightmare feeling grew more pronounced as Linda followed him down the black corridor. It seemed they had been running from the creature for years - for an eternity. Would it never end? Or would they suffer the same fate as all the others? Was it simply playing with them? Like a sadistic little boy pulling the wings off a fly?