The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

by Marie O'Regan

  “What is it?” Garry asked, as they stood again in the main room. “How long will it take?”

  “I don’t know, exactly,” said McReady, his voice brittle with angry determination. “But I know it will work, and no two ways about it. It depends on a basic quality of the monsters, not on us. ‘Kinner’ just convinced me.” He stood heavy and solid in bronzed immobility, completely sure of himself again at last.

  “This,” said Barclay, hefting the wooden-handled weapon, tipped with its two sharp-pointed, charged conductors, “is going to be rather necessary, I take it. Is the power plant assured?”

  Dutton nodded sharply. “The automatic stoker bin is full. The gas power plant is on stand-by. Van Wall and I set it for the movie operation and – we’ve checked it over rather carefully several times, you know. Anything those wires touch dies,” he assured them grimly. “I know that.”

  Dr Copper stirred vaguely in his bunk, rubbed his eyes with a fumbling hand. He sat up slowly, blinked eyes blurred with sleep and drugs, widened with an unutterable horror of drug-ridden nightmares. “Garry,” he mumbled, “Garry – listen. Selfish – from Hell they came, and hellish shellfish – I mean self – do I? What do I mean?” He sank back in his bunk, and snored softly.

  McReady looked at him thoughtfully. “We’ll know presently.” He nodded slowly. “But selfish is what you mean all right. You may have thought of that, half sleeping, dreaming there. I didn’t stop to think what dreams you might be having. But that’s all right. Selfish is the word. They must be, you see.” He turned to the men in the cabin, tense, silent men staring with wolfish eyes each at his neighbour. “Selfish, and as Dr Copper said, every part is a whole. Every piece is self-sufficient, an animal in itself.

  “That and one other thing tell the story. There’s nothing mysterious about blood; it’s just as normal a body tissue as a piece of muscle, or a piece of liver. But it hasn’t so much connective tissue, though it has millions, billions of life-cells.”

  McReady’s great bronze beard ruffled in a grim smile. “This is satisfying in a way. I’m pretty sure we humans still outnumber you – others. Others standing here. And we have what you, your other-world race, evidently doesn’t. Not an imitated, but a bred-in-the-bone instinct, a driving, unquenchable fire that’s genuine. We’ll fight, fight with a ferocity you may attempt to imitate, but you’ll never equal! We’re human. We’re real. You’re imitations, false to the core of your every cell.

  “All right. It’s a showdown now. You know. You, with your mind reading. You’ve lifted the idea from my brain. You can’t do a thing about it.

  “Standing here—”

  “Let it pass. Blood is tissue. They have to bleed, if they don’t bleed when cut, then, by Heaven, they’re phoney! Phoney from hell! If they bleed – then that blood, separated from them, is an individual – a newly formed individual in its own right, just as they, split, all of them, from one original, are individuals!

  “Get it, Van? See the answer, Bar?”

  Van Wall laughed very softly. “The blood – the blood will not obey. It’s a new individual, with all the desire to protect its own life that the original – the main mass from which it split – has. The blood will live – and try to crawl away from a hot needle, say!”

  McReady picked up the scalpel from the middle of the table. From the cabinet, he took a rack of test-tubes, a tiny alcohol lamp, and a length of platinum wire set in a little glass rod. A smile of grim satisfaction rode his lips. For a moment he glanced up at those around him. Barclay and Dutton moved toward him slowly, the wooden-handled electric instrument alert.

  “Dutton,” said McReady, “suppose you stand over by the splice there where you’ve connected that in. Just to make sure nothing pulls it loose.”

  Dutton moved away. “Now, Van, suppose you be first on this.”

  White-faced, Van Wall stepped forward. With a delicate precision, McReady cut a vein in the base of his thumb. Van Wall winced slightly, then held steady as a half-inch of bright blood collected in the tube. McReady put the tube in the rack, gave Van Wall a bit of alum, and indicated the iodine bottle.

  Van Wall stood motionlessly watching. McReady heated the platinum wire in the alcohol lamp flame, then dipped it into the tube. It hissed softly. Five times he repeated the test. “Human, I’d say.” McReady sighed, and straightened. “As yet, my theory hasn’t been actually proven – but I have hopes. I have hopes.

  “Don’t, by the way, get too interested in this. We have with us some unwelcome ones, no doubt. Van, will you relieve Barclay at the switch? Thanks. OK, Barclay, and may I say I hope you stay with us? You’re a damned good guy.”

  Barclay grinned uncertainly; winced under the keen edge of the scalpel. Presently, smiling widely, he retrieved his long-handled weapon.

  “Mr Samuel Dutt–– BAR!”

  The tensity was released in that second. Whatever of Hell the monsters may have had within them, the men in that instant matched it. Barclay had no chance to move his weapon as a score of men poured down on that thing that had seemed Dutton. It mewed, and spat, and tried to grow fangs – and was a hundred broken, torn pieces. Without knives, or any weapon save the brute-given strength of a staff of picked men, the thing was crushed, rent.

  Slowly they picked themselves up, their eyes smouldering, very quiet in their emotions. A curious wrinkling of their lips betrayed a species of nervousness.

  Barclay went over with the electric weapon. Things smouldered and stank. The caustic acid Van Wall dropped on each spilt drop of blood gave off tickling, cough-provoking fumes.

  McReady grinned, his deep-set eyes alight and dancing. “Maybe,” he said softly, “I underrated man’s abilities when I said nothing human could have the ferocity in the eyes of that thing we found. I wish we could have the opportunity to treat in a more befitting manner these things. Something with boiling oil, or melted lead in it, or maybe slow roasting in the power boiler. When I think what a man Dutton was—

  “Never mind. My theory is confirmed by – by one who knew? Well, Van Wall and Barclay are proven. I think, then, that I’ll try to show you what I already know. That I too am human.” McReady swished the scalpel in absolute alcohol, burned it off the metal blade, and cut the base of his thumb expertly.

  Twenty seconds later he looked up from the desk at the waiting men. There were more grins out there now, friendly grins, yet with all, something else in the eyes.

  “Connant,” McReady laughed softly, “was right. The huskies watching that thing in the corridor bend had nothing on you. Wonder why we think only the wolf blood has the right to ferocity. Maybe on spontaneous viciousness a wolf takes tops, but after these seven days – abandon all hope, ye wolves who enter here!

  “Maybe we can save time. Connant, would you step for—”

  Again Barclay was too slow. There were more grins, less tensity still, when Barclay and Van Wall finished their work.

  Garry spoke in a low, bitter voice. “Connant was one of the finest men we had here – and five minutes ago I’d have sworn he was a man. Those damnable things are more than imitation.” Garry shuddered and sat back in his bunk.

  And thirty seconds later, Garry’s blood shrank from the hot platinum wire, and struggled to escape the tube, struggled as frantically as a suddenly feral, red-eyed, dissolving imitation of Garry struggled to dodge the snake-tongue weapon Barclay advanced at him, white-faced and sweating. The Thing in the test-tube screamed with a tiny voice as McReady dropped it into the glowing coal of the galley stove.

  Chapter 14

  “The last of it?” Dr Copper looked down from his bunk with bloodshot, saddened eyes. “Fourteen of them—”

  McReady nodded shortly. “In some ways – if only we could have permanently prevented their spreading – I’d like to have the imitations back. Commander Garry – Connant – Dutton – Clark—”

  “Where are they taking those things?” Copper nodded to the stretcher Barclay and Norris were carrying out.

 
; “Outside. Outside on the ice, where they’ve got fifteen smashed crates, half a ton of coal, and presently will add ten gallons of kerosene. We’ve dumped acid on every spilled drop, every torn fragment. We’re going to incinerate those.”

  “Sounds like a good play.” Copper nodded wearily. “I wonder, you haven’t said whether Blair—”

  McReady started. “We forgot him! We had so much else! I wonder – do you suppose we can cure him now?”

  “If—” began Dr Copper, and stopped meaningly.

  McReady started a second time. “Even a madman. It imitated Kinner and his praying hysteria—” McReady turned toward Van Wall at the long table. “Van, we’ve got to make an expedition to Blair’s shack.”

  Van Wall looked up sharply, the frown of worry faded for an instant in surprised remembrance. Then he rose, nodded. “Barclay better go along. He applied those lashings, and may figure how to get in without frightening Blair too much.”

  Three-quarters of an hour, through minus-thirty-seven-degree cold, they hiked while the aurora curtain bellied overhead. The twilight was nearly twelve hours long, flaming in the north on snow like white crystalline sand under their skis. A five-mile wind piled it in drift lines pointing off to the north-west. Three-quarters of an hour to reach the snow-buried shack. No smoke came from the little shack, and the men hastened.

  “Blair!” Barclay roared into the wind, when he was still a hundred yards away. “Blair!”

  “Shut up,” said McReady softly. “And hurry. He may be trying a long hike. If we have to go after him – no planes, the tractors disabled—”

  “Would a monster have the stamina a man has?”

  “A broken leg wouldn’t stop it for more than a minute,” McReady pointed out.

  Barclay gasped suddenly and pointed aloft. Dim in the twilit sky, a winged thing circled in curves of indescribably grace and ease. Great white wings tipped gently, and the bird swept over them in silent curiosity. “Albatross—” Barclay said softly. “First of the season, and wandering way inland for some reason. If a monster’s loose—”

  Norris bent down on the ice, and tore hurriedly at his heavy, windproof clothing. He straightened, his coat flapping open, a grim blue-metalled weapon in his hand. It roared a challenge to the white silence of Antarctica.

  The thing in the air screamed hoarsely. Its great wings worked frantically as a dozen feathers floated down from its tail. Norris fired again. The bird was moving swiftly now, but in an almost straight line of retreat. It screamed again, more feathers dropped and with beating wings it soared behind a ridge of pressure ice, to vanish.

  Norris hurried after the other. “It won’t come back,” he panted.

  Barclay cautioned him to silence, pointing. A curious fiercely blue light beat out from the cracks of the shack’s door. A very low soft humming sounded inside, a low soft humming and a clink and clank of tools, the very sounds somehow bearing a message of frantic haste.

  McReady’s face paled. “Lord help us if that thing has—” He grabbed Barclay’s shoulder, and made snipping motions with his fingers, pointing toward the lacing of control-cables that held the door.

  Barclay drew the wire-cutters from his pocket, and kneeled soundlessly at the door. The snap and twang of cut wires made an unbearable racket in the utter quiet of the Antarctic hush. There was only that strange, sweetly soft hum from within the shack, and the queerly, hectically clipped clicking and rattling of tools to drown their noises.

  McReady peered through a crack in the door. His breath sucked in huskily and his great fingers clamped cruelly on Barclay’s shoulder. The meteorologist backed down. “It isn’t,” he explained very softly, “Blair. It’s kneeling on something on the bunk – something that keeps lifting. Whatever it’s working on is a thing like a knapsack – and it lifts.”

  “All at once,” Barclay said grimly. “No. Norris, hang back, and get that iron of yours out. It may have – weapons.”

  Together, Barclay’s powerful body and McReady’s giant strength struck the door. Inside, the bunk jammed against the door screeched madly and crackled into kindling. The door flung down from broken hinges, the patched lumber of the doorpost dropping inward.

  Like a blue-rubber ball, a Thing bounced up. One of its four tentacle-like arms looped out like a striking snake. In a seven-tentacled hand, a six-inch pencil of winking, shining metal glinted and swung upward to face them. Its line-thin lips twitched back from snake-fangs in a grin of hate, red eyes blazing.

  Norris’s revolver thundered in the confined space. The hate-washed face twitched in agony, the looping tentacle snatched back. The silvery thing in its hand a smashed ruin of metal, the seven-tentacled hand became a mass of mangled flesh oozing greenish-yellow ichor. The revolver thundered three times more. Dark holes drilled each of the three eyes before Norris hurled the empty weapon against its face.

  The Thing screamed in feral hate, a lashing tentacle wiping at blinded eyes. For a moment it crawled on the floor, savage tentacles lashing out, the body twitching. Then it staggered up again, blinded eyes working, boiling hideously, the crushed flesh sloughing away in sodden gobbets.

  Barclay lurched to his feet and dove forward with an ice-axe. The flat of the weighty thing crushed against the side of the head. Again the unkillable monster went down. The tentacles lashed out, and suddenly Barclay fell to his feet in the grip of a living, livid rope. The Thing dissolved as he held it, a white-hot band that ate into the flesh of his hands like living fire. Frantically he tore the stuff from him, held his hands where they could not be reached. The blind Thing felt and ripped at the tough, heavy, windproof cloth, seeking flesh – flesh it could convert—

  The huge blow-torch McReady had brought coughed solemnly. Abruptly it rumbled disapproval throatily. Then it laughed, gurglingly, and thrust out a blue-white, three-foot tongue. The Thing on the floor shrieked, flailed out blindly with tentacles that writhed and withered in the bubbling wrath of the blow-torch. It crawled and turned on the floor, it shrieked and hobbled madly, but always McReady held the blow-torch on the face, the dead eyes burning and bubbling uselessly. Frantically the Thing crawled and howled.

  A tentacle sprouted a savage talon – and crisped in the flame. Steadily McReady moved with a planned, grim campaign. Helpless, maddened, the Thing retreated from the grunting torch, the caressing, licking tongue. For a moment it rebelled, squalling in inhuman hatred at the touch of icy snow. Then it fell back before the charring breath of the torch, the stench of its flesh bathing it. Hopelessly it retreated – on and on across the Antarctic snow. The bitter wind swept over it, twisting the torch-tongue; vainly it flopped, a trail of oily, stinking smoke bubbling away from it—

  McReady walked back toward the shack silently. Barclay met him at the door. “No more?” the giant meteorologist asked grimly.

  Barclay shook his head. “No more. It didn’t split?”

  “It had other things to think about,” McReady assured him. “When I left it, it was a glowing coal. What was it doing?”

  Norris laughed shortly. “Wise boys, we are. Smash magnetos, so planes won’t work. Rip the boiler tubing out of the tractors. And leave that Thing alone for a week in this shack. Alone and undisturbed.”

  McReady looked in at the shack more carefully. The air, despite the ripped door, was hot and humid. On a table at the far end of the room rested a thing of coiled wires and small magnets, glass tubing and radio tubes. At the centre, a block of rough stone rested. From the centre of the block came the light that flooded the place, the fiercely blue light bluer than the glare of an electric arc, and from it came the sweetly soft hum. Off to one side was another mechanism of crystal glass, blown with an incredible neatness and delicacy, metal plates and a queer, shimmery sphere of insubstantiality.

  “What is that?” McReady moved nearer.

  Norris grunted. “Leave it for investigation. But I can guess pretty well. That’s atomic power. That stuff to the left – that’s a neat little thing for doing what men hav
e been trying to do with hundred-ton cyclotrons and so forth. It separates neutrons from heavy water, which he was getting from the surrounding ice.”

  “Where did he get all – oh. Of course. A monster couldn’t be locked in – or out. He’s been through the apparatus caches.” McReady stared at the apparatus. “Lord, what minds that race must have—”

  “The shimmery sphere – I think it’s a sphere of pure force. Neutrons can pass through any matter, and he wanted a supply reservoir of neutrons. Just project neutrons against silica, calcium, beryllium, almost anything, and the atomic energy is released. That thing is the atomic generator.”

  McReady plucked a thermometer from his coat. “It’s a hundred and twenty degrees in here, despite the open door. Our clothes have kept the heat out to an extent, but I’m sweating now.”

  Norris nodded. “The light’s cold. I found that. But it gives off heat to warm the place through that coil. He had all the power in the world. He could keep it warm and pleasant, as his race thought of warmth and pleasantness. Did you notice the light, the colour of it?”

  McReady nodded. “Beyond the stars is the answer. From beyond the stars. From a hotter planet that circled a brighter, bluer sun they came.”

  McReady glanced out the door toward the blasted, smoke-stained trail that flopped and wandered blindly off across the drift. “There won’t be any more coming, I guess. Sheer accident it landed here, and that was twenty million years ago. What did it do all that for?” He nodded toward the apparatus.

  Barclay laughed softly. “Did you notice what it was working on when we came? Look.” He pointed toward the ceiling of the shack.

  Like a knapsack made of flattened coffee-tins, with dangling cloth straps and leather belts, the mechanism clung to the ceiling. A tiny glaring heart of supernatural flame burned in it, yet burned through the ceiling’s wood without scorching it. Barclay walked over to it, grasped two of the dangling straps in his hands, and pulled it down with an effort. He strapped it about his body. A slight jump carried him in a weirdly slow arc across the room.