The Blob (14 page)

The scientist shook his head, smiling. “No. Prevention. Think of us as that apple a day that keeps the doctor away. We look for possible infection from outer space. And if it comes, we make sure it doesn’t spread.”

“And you think your meteor brought some killer germ from outer space?”

The man’s eyes looked up to the sky and he spoke in a breathless tone. “It’s something I’ve expected—and prepared for—all my life.”

Brian shook his head. “Oooh, boy, you got a surprise coming, buster.” He’d figured it out by now. This was what the Can Man had been babbling about. The light from the sky, the meteor—that thing on his hand! He must have picked it up from the meteor, steaming now in the ground! “That meteor brought something, all right, but if it’s a germ, it’s the biggest son of a bitch you’ve ever seen.”

“And getting
bigger
!” Meg added.

Brian was surprised at the white-suits’ reaction. All the plastic faceplates swung their way, and the buzzing talk ceased. Dr. Trimble’s eyes got very big as he turned to face them like somebody who had just been told he’d won a jackpot.

“Would you care to enlighten me?” he requested.

Meg and Brian looked at each other. How could they describe what they’d been through? Paul thought. “You’d better start with Paul and the Can Man, Meg,” said Brian. “And then I’ll pick up from there.”

She nodded and proceeded to tell the story, starting with that glistening glob on the hand of the Can Man. The scientist stayed stock-still as he listened to how the thing had grown, how it had attacked and eaten Paul, how no one would believe what Meg had seen.

And then Brian took over. He told of the huge thing in the Tick Tock Diner and how it had pulled George Ruiz into the sink, and how it had moved like a son of a bitch, almost getting them.

“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.

B
loody 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 handful 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!