The Blob (9 page)

She was worried about Paul. Even though this date had taken a bad turn, it wasn’t Paul’s fault. He was a good guy—she knew that much now—good and conscientious. There was plenty of time for more dates, and Meg Penny knew that she wanted to go out with Paul Tyler again.

But they had to get through this nasty business first.

That old man . . . that horrible gunk on his hand . . . It made Meg sick just to remember it, the way it had eaten away his hand. It was terrible.

Being alone in this room made Meg nervous. She had to see what was going on. Besides, Paul had been gone a long time.

She got up and walked toward the swinging door into the clinic corridor.

Maybe after this all was taken care of, they should just call it a night, and Paul could take her home That would shock Daddy, all right, especially after what he’d been thinking after that ludicrous condom thing. Maybe she could show Paul some of her collection of books, and the beautiful classical record collection she listened to often.

Meg saw the doctor and the nurse at the end of the hallway, huddled over the gurney that held the Can Man. Meg couldn’t see what they were doing, so she started to walk toward them. Maybe Paul was with them, she reasoned, and he could tell her what was going on and how long it was going to be before they could leave this place.

Then, from a nearby office, she heard the scream.

Paul’s scream.

It didn’t last long, for almost as soon as it started, it was . . .
muffled.

But it lasted long enough for Meg to tell exactly which office it came from, and she hurried to the door, twisted the knob, and pushed through.

The lamp had fallen to the floor, and its glow was thrown across the tile and upward, glaring in the young woman’s eyes, casting swathes of light surrealistically across a scene straight from hell.

Paul Tyler lay on the floor, and
something
was on top of him. It was pink and translucent, a massive glob of gunk that trembled and contracted around Paul, and it was
alive
!

“Paul!” she cried.

A gurgle. Squishing noises sounded, along with the slap of protoplasm against linoleum as the teenager desperately flopped and struggled against the gelatinous thing enfolding him as some massive flytrap might an insect.

And it was pulling him across the floor, this mass . . . Pulling him toward an open window! A faint breeze through the window carried an awful odor back to Meg. The stink of acid and blood.

Paul had managed to push a naked arm free of his attacker, and he reached out for help. Meg raced up to him and grabbed his hand, pulling, trying to prevent the globular creature from dragging him out the window.

But even as she pulled hard, she could see what was happening to Paul, inside the monster. His skin—it was corroding, just like the Can Man’s hand! But this time the entire body of a healthy teenager was being consumed!

“No,” she cried. “No!”

And she tugged for all she was worth, trying to pull Paul from beneath the writhing organism. But the thing was incredibly strong. It carried her along with it, toward the open window.

Then something gave. She felt herself hurtling back, thumping onto the floor, lights exploding in her vision. As her vision cleared, she realized that she was still holding Paul Tyler’s hand. She had pulled him free! She had—

Meg looked down at the end, attached to the naked arm, attached to—

Nothing!

She was holding Paul Tyler’s severed arm!

Gasping, unable to do anything, filled with revulsion and terror, she looked up and saw the Blob slurping up the side of the window, to the sill. And inside it, like a dying baby in a dissected womb, his features melting away within the noxious slime, hung Paul Tyler.

Then, with a flop, and a loud liquid sound, the monster was gone, leaving a spoor of blood behind it.

Only when she looked back down at Paul’s arm and realized that it was pulsing in her grip, as though still clinging desperately to life, did Meg Penny scream.

Surrounded by a night alive with flashing red emergency lights and milling people, Sheriff Herb Geller strode from the clinic entrance toward the group of stunned people.

He still didn’t believe what he had seen.

God. The Can Man. He’d never seen a body in worse shape. And Herb Geller had seen his share of bodies too. And Paul! Little Paul Tyler, Chet Tyler’s kid? Dead and gone, leaving behind only his arm. Geller had looked at that arm too. It looked as though it had been eaten through with acid at the biceps. What kind of madman would be throwing acid around, for Chrissakes? That must have been what happened to the Can Man. Got splashed with some kind of acid.

Herb Geller just wanted to head into the nearest toilet stall and have a talk with a commode. But his pride kept down his dinner, and his badge kept up his professionalism as he walked outside to talk with Paul’s date.

Meg was in the parking lot with her mother and father. She stood sobbing into Peg Penny’s arms. Sobbing and babbling hysterically.

“Awful! A monster!” she was saying.

“Now, now, dear,” said Mr. Penny. “You said the room was dark. You don’t know for sure—”

Meg looked up with a tear-streaked face. “But I
saw
it! It got Paul . . . It covered him
. . . ate
him!”

“Shhh . . .” said Meg Penny, trying to offer comfort.

Mr. Penny saw Geller approaching and separated himself from the others. “Sheriff,” he said, catching him halfway, and speaking in a low voice. “How about it? Can we take her home?” Penny’s face looked lined and old with worry.

“You might as well,” said Geller. “Make sure she gets some sleep. Maybe she’ll start makin’ sense in the morning.”

“Yes. Thanks, Herb,” Penny said, turning back and ushering his wife and daughter to the family station wagon parked nearby. Geller watched them for a moment, then felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and found Deputy Bill Briggs standing behind him, a few beads of perspiration dotting the forehead of his young black face.

“You let her go?” asked Briggs.

“Oh, yeah. We’re not gonna get anything out of her tonight. She’s hysterical. Keeps going on and on about ‘shapes’ and ‘monsters,’ or whatever.”

“I got a call in to Paul Tyler’s folks,” said Briggs, nervously rubbing his neat mustache. “They haven’t heard from him.”

Geller cleared his throat. “Let’s face it, Bill. They’re not going to.” He thought about that arm, and he thought about little Paulie Tyler, and how much he’d loved the special police carnival, and how Geller had piggybacked him all around the Ferris wheel and the carousel and the hot dog stand. “I want the rest of his body found before dawn.” It was the least he could do for Chet and his wife.

As they walked back toward the clinic, a couple of white-uniformed guys were wheeling a black body bag out to the ambulance idling at the lip of the runway. A paramedic with a crew cut walking alongside saw Geller and handed him a form, connected to a clipboard.

Geller signed the form. “Get those to Denver tonight. I need an autopsy pronto, not next week.”

“Right,” said the paramedic, taking the clipboard back and helping with the body bag. Geller watched as the doors were closed and the men took their places in the cab; the ambulance rushed off in a storm of noise and lights. He took a deep breath, then put his official stance aside for a while and closed his eyes, letting himself be stunned, forgetting he was sheriff and focusing only on the fact that he was a human being who had just been confronted by pure horror.

“Jesus wept,” he murmured softly.

“Herb?” said Briggs at his side. “You okay?”

“Tyler was a good kid,” he said. “I want the son of a bitch that did this!”

Just then a highway patrol car screeched into the parking lot from off the road, its red lights revolving. Geller did not have to move to see who was sitting in the backseat. Mr. Juvie Hall himself, wearing handcuffs. Brian Flagg.

“Maybe we got him!” said Bill.

“Yeah,” said Geller, his anger and his sense of outrage obscuring everything else in his head. “Maybe so.”

He saw Meg Penny, getting into her family car nearby, noticing the patrol car coming in. He saw that she looked alarmed when she saw Brian Flagg being led out from the car. Flagg saw her, too, and there seemed to be an expression of hopelessness and anger in his usually blank face. And of accusation? What the hell had been going on with those kids? Some kind of weird ritual involving dousing the Can Man in acid or something? Geller had read about weirder things in the newspaper, but he’d never thought that something like this could happen in Morgan City.

And then the Penny car drove off, and the suspect was brought before the sheriff.

“Hello, Flagg,” said Geller. “We’ve got some serious talking to do, boy. And if I hear an ounce of attitude”—he lifted his fist—“God help me, I’ll give you a pound of knuckles!”

Brian Flagg said nothing.

A
ll in all Scott Jesky was very pleased. The date with Vicki Desoto was going exactly according to plan. If all went well at this delicate stage of negotiations, he’d be in the saddle in just a matter of minutes, and then be home by midnight, where he could chalk another victory mark up on his “hit board.”

He’d parked his battered white ’63 Impala on top of Lakey Ridge, a classic lover’s lane overlooking Morgan City. The date was supposed to have been for a movie, but he’d managed to nix that pretty quick, getting on to more active aspects of teen courting by feeding Vicki a drink. She’d taken it, all right, and she’d liked it. They always did—the ones he was able to convince, anyway. “Painless punch,” he called it—his own special concoction. Then he’d convinced her that it was such a
gorgeous
night, they shouldn’t waste it being inside at some stuffy, boring movie, but should enjoy the fresh air, the night sky. And so, off to a place with just an absolutely
wonderful
view. And, they could just sit and talk.

Vicki had swallowed it, hook, line, and another drink.

“I can’t tell you how agonizing it is,” Scott Jesky was saying now, leaning toward his groggy date. “I guess what I really just need is a shoulder to cry on. The thought of all those years . . . I was cut off, I didn’t have the courage to tell people about how I was starving for physical affection.”

He leaned over and put his hand around her shoulder, while the other hand crept up her stocking to the hem of her high-riding skirt. She regarded this movement with giggly bemusement for a moment. Then his hand shot out for home base, triggering a cry of protest.

“Scott, cut it out!” she said, slapping his hand away. “I’ll kiss you, I told you. But that’s the limit!”

“What? But kisses . . . My heart kisses your heart. My soul kisses your lips. My fingers kiss your lovely frilly underwear.”

She moved over to the door, pushing him away, her huge breasts rising up with alarm beneath her tight blouse. With a finger she described a line across her midsection. “That’s the imaginary line, and you can’t cross it!”

Scott blinked. “Line? What are you, Libya?”

“Look, I like you, Scott, and—and you make me feel liked too. I told you we could go out steady for a while . . . Isn’t that enough?”

“Steady! C’mon, Vicki, you’re wearing my ring now! That makes you my girl!” That “painless punch” had really done the trick, along with the football game today. She was just aching for a boyfriend, and apparently she really did like him. He’d thought for just a moment that maybe he could lake it easy tonight, just get to know her, enjoy a few easygoing, no-tension dates. But the thought did last only a moment.

“It
is
a nice ring,” said Vicki, admiring the glitter at the end of the necklace hanging from her neck. “I do like it, Scott.”

“Thank God it doesn’t have to breathe,” Scott said, looking at the way it was stuffed between the mounds of her breasts. “Course, that wouldn’t be a bad way to go . . . Now, c’mere, baby! You don’t want to traumatize me, do you?”

But she pulled away from his embrace, attracted by something. She pointed out through the fogged-up window, down the hill past the woods. “Hey, what are all those lights down there? Isn’t that the hospital?”

“Ahhhh, probably just some promotional gimmick. They’re giving away free tonsillectomies or something.” He made another lunge, but she dodged. Boy, the lady sure was cooling . . . What was the matter? Scott wondered. Then he noticed the empty cocktail glass by the gearshift. Of course! The “painless punch” was wearing off!

“Saaay, young lady, it looks like you’re ready for another of my famous cherry coolers.”

“I think I’ve had enough,” she murmured.

“Nonsense!” He pushed open the door, got out the door, and went around to open the trunk and make her another one.

It sensed food.

It was still hungry, and it sensed the pair of animate foodstuffs in that frame of metal and glass atop the hill.

It undulated toward the car, the remains of Paul Tyler still digesting, within its mass, like a lump in the stomach of a glass python.

Food. It slithered up the metalwork, and it sensed an opening. A narrow opening, true, but it could rearrange its cells so that it could squeeze through. It lifted itself and pushed through the bottom of the doorjamb, and it immediately sensed the warmth and the smell of the pulsing blood and skin and flesh, and another smell . . . astringent, odd.

Inside the car, as the Blob oozed through the door below her, Vicki Desoto dozed, doped to the gills with Scott Jesky’s alcohol, unaware of the creeping death hissing below her.

Scott Jesky opened the trunk.

A two-tiered, homemade bar unfolded, complete with ice chest and swizzle sticks. Nearby, in a little box, hung his collection of cheap school rings. A deadly combination, commitment and alcohol. They opened up a girl’s heart—and everything else—almost every time!

Scott grabbed a bottle of 150-proof Everclear grain alcohol and a bottle of cherry juice. “My own special blend of fine imported liqueurs!” he pronounced as he poured the drink.
Voilà!
“Painless punch!” “Cherry cooler!” Whatever you called it, it packed a wallop.