“Yes, sir,” said Colonel Hargis. “We’ve got this town locked up tight.”
A radioman suddenly rushed up clutching a field radio.
“Colonel,” he said, “we have a sighting.”
Colonel Hargis grabbed the phone and barked into the receiver. “Hargis here.”
A soldier’s voice erupted loudly from the radiophone. In the background was the sound of a hysterically sobbing child.
“Colonel,” said the soldier reporting in, “we’ve got an eyewitness who says the organism pursued some civilians into the sewers.”
The child’s voice burst out over the radio. “My name is Anthony, and that thing has Eddie and Kevin and Meg down there!”
Dr. Trimble blinked. The sewer system. Of course. That was where it probably traveled with greatest ease in its present form. And what better place to stopper the thing up?
“Excellent,” he said. “We need a schematic of the sewer system. We’ll isolate it and contain it down there. I want that organism alive.”
“What about the civilians?” asked Colonel Hargis.
Dr. Trimble sighed. “I’m afraid, Colonel, that we are dealing with a matter of paramount importance. In this situation civilians, I’m sorry to say, are expendable.”
The words rang in Brian Flagg’s ears.
“It’s got Eddie and Kevin and Meg down there.”
Expendable.
Outrage filled him. But more, Brian felt fear for Meg Penny. This was his fault. He felt ashamed.
Most of all he felt angry. That creature, that hungry blob of death—it was more important to these scientists, these military men, than the lives of the citizens of Morgan City.
And though Morgan City had never done much for him, it was his home. And the people… well, they hadn’t been much of a family to him, but they were all he had.
And they were human beings. Not monsters, like those goons down there, blithely talking about Morgan City residents being “expendable”!
A hand reached down and grabbed him by the shoulder, yanking him up. He found himself staring into the faceplate of a soldier.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the soldier demanded.
As Brian struggled to get away, he could see the men down by the crater turning toward him. He caught Dr. Trimble’s eyes, and knew at once that Trimble recognized him.
Damn. Had to get outta here. Had to.
He pulled out Moss’s ratchet and cracked the soldier across the head with it. The man staggered back, dropping his gun, blood running into his eyes and down his nose, and gave off a blubbering scream.
Brian lit out through the bushes, back for his bike, running for his life.
He’d seen his death in Dr. Trimble’s eyes. Trimble knew that he’d overheard.
He raced to where he’d left his bike, lifted it up, kick-started it into grumbling life, and gunned the motor.
Behind him he heard the loudspeaker blast away with a message. He recognized Trimble’s amplified voice, and it sounded cold and menacing, echoing through the night above the sound of his growling motorbike.
“WE HAVE AN INFECTED CIVILIAN TRYING TO ESCAPE. STOP HIM AT ALL COSTS BEFORE HE REACHES A POPULATED AREA. SHOOT TO KILL.”
Up ahead, bathed in moonlight, was the road to freedom. The road away from Morgan City. All he had to do was to hit that road, put on some speed, and get the hell out of there.
But he knew he couldn’t do it. He knew now he couldn’t leave Meg and the rest of Morgan City at the mercy of that mutated organism, that mutated scientist.
He turned the handlebars, cutting a hard U-turn.
If he could just get around that army, now.
Above he could hear the distant sound of helicopter rotors. Ahead he could hear the yapping of dogs, the shouts of men. He cut off to the field past the trees and gunned the engine, zooming and bouncing along away from the main encampment.
A whole crew of soldiers were running down the hill now toward him, and bright flowers of gunfire blossomed in the dark. The dogs were let loose, and he could hear them barking behind him. A searchlight from the approaching helicopter raked along the field like a starship’s laser, looking to fry one desperately fleeing biker.
No, he thought, riding hard, riding low. It didn’t look good. Didn’t look good at all.
But up ahead all was clear.
No soldiers coming toward him; they were all behind him.
And then the jeeps cut him off.
The staccato blasts of gunfire ripped the ground just yards from him. These bastards meant business.
He was trapped!
Desperate, with only seconds left before they closed in on him tight as a bear trap, he recognized where he was.
Up ahead was that ridge of the riverbed, the one with the jutting bridge ruins, the one that had beaten him before. It was his last hope. He turned around, gunned the bike, and jammed it into gear, racing for the gully.
Even as he picked up speed, the dog pack closed in on him, snapping at his heels. But he upped his speed, racing ahead of them.
He threw the throttle even wider, all the way and then some…
And just as when he’d tried it before, the engine sputtered. The bike lost speed. The dogs gained.
“Not now!” Brian Flagg cried. “Please… !”
He heard the sound of gunfire behind him. A bullet smashed through his rearview mirror, shattering it.
“C’mon, c’mon!” he cried. Damn thing! He stepped down on the kick start.
Hard.
The engine screamed to life, and the bike rocketed forward with a burst of new speed. Brian hung on for dear life as the ramp of the bridge approached.
“Whooaaaaa!” cried Brian, feeling as if he were surfing on a tornado.
The ramp loomed. Brian’s bike hit it. He felt the bike lift up with a tremendous surge, like the fiercest roller coaster ride imaginable. The helicopter’s searchlight flashed across him briefly, but he was going too fast. It lost him, and then he started coming down.
Coming down, coming down.
Coming down, heart in his throat, the wind blasting into his face. He had to concentrate on keeping the wheels straight, or he was lost. Wheels straight… wheels straight…
Thump! Thump crunch! He landed, the wheels turning beneath him, and all his powers of balance were put to the test.
Somehow, with the help of his shoes angled out against the old road, he stayed upright.
He roared off into the night, flipping the bird to the barking dogs on the other side of the bridge.
Brian Flagg gunned his motorbike and headed toward Morgan City.
But he couldn’t get there.
Not on his bike, anyway.
It was that helicopter, that goddamn whirlybird. It was after him, and fast as Brian Flagg was on his Indian bike, it was much faster.
Its searchlight caught him once, but Brian pulled a neat evasive maneuver, heading off to the west of Morgan City.
Besides, he had an idea.
He knew where he was going now, and he ate up the distance quickly, the helicopter still on his tail.
The aqueduct was up there, in the foothills. Yeah, he thought, pushing the engine hard, praying it didn’t quit on him. When he reached the aqueduct, he rolled down into the concrete riverbed.
The helicopter swept past, searching, searching.
Gotta hide the bike, he thought, cutting the engine, laying the machine down in a pile of reeds.
Then, dodging the probing searchlight, he splashed up through the trickle in the concrete riverbed, up to the dark cave of the entrance. He crouched down in the shadows by the huge round pipe.
In the spring when the snows in the mountains melted, Morgan City would have floated away but for the system of aqueducts which dealt with the runoff, and were linked with the town’s sewers.
The helicopter zoomed past, but it kept on going, giving no indication of having found him.
Good.
Brian Flagg looked in
to the darkness of the aqueduct pipe.
19
Contain the thing!
They must contain the thing, thought Dr. Trimble as the jeep lurched to a stop by the impromptu command post in Morgan City. If they could trap it, it would be just a matter of time before he could find the way to immobilize it. And then he could learn the true nature of this wonderful life he had created. Study it, get to know it, use it to create new mutants. Why, the secrets of life lay below him now in the sewers of Morgan City. How precious, how terribly precious!
“Come on, Doc, over here,” said Colonel Hargis, guiding him to where a soldier was hunched over a folding table, under a bank of lights. “I radioed ahead to get the information. Lieutenant Benton’s got the stuff we need.”
The lieutenant welcomed them, and they declined the offered coffee. Then Lieutenant Benton gestured down to the sheets of schematics spread out on the table in front of him.
“The whole goddamn town’s sitting on a system of aqueducts,” he said. “Runoff from the mountains.”
“Can we trap the thing down there?” asked Hargis.
“There seem to be three main junctions.” Benton tapped three times on the map. “Here, here and here. We close off those valves, I think we got it.”
“Excellent,” said Dr. Trimble. “How fortunate it chose Morgan City to descend upon!”
“Just hope it stays in the pipes, if you want it alive,” said Colonel Hargis.
“I want it alive, Colonel, whether or not it stays down there, do you understand me?”
“I don’t know, sir. Isn’t it just as good to us dead? I mean, can’t you do an analysis from a dead—”
Trimble shot the officer a glare that stopped him talking, fast. “Alive, Colonel. Alive! Now, start getting those valves closed, pronto. And what about storm drains, for God sakes!”
“We’re working on those, sir,” promised Benton.
“So do it!” said Trimble. “A team of soldiers for every valve. Now!”
Colonel Hargis scrambled off to do his duty.
Dr. Trimble smiled to himself. Maybe I should have been a general, he thought.
No, he told himself, thinking about his creation oozing beneath the streets of Morgan City. As a general he never would have hoped to have a night as thrilling as this!
The aqueducts and sewer system below Morgan City were built in the fifties, after perennial flooding problems finally forced the town to raise the necessary capital. The builders had not used stone, as the Romans had in the original aqueducts, but rather huge concrete pipes.
Now Meg Penny walked within one of those pipes, guiding her little brother Kevin and his friend Eddie through the maze of dark, drippy tunnels, slogging through ankle-deep water.
Somewhere in this network of tunnels, she knew, the creature lurked.
Somehow they’d gotten away from it for a time. How, she had no idea. She didn’t even care about losing the hair; she was just happy they’d gotten away. But now they were lost, and she had to find the way out. The only lights they had were dim maintenance bulbs widely spaced along the tunnels.
But they had to keep going. They had to find a way out. Getting back to the street was their only hope. If they stayed down here too long, the monster was bound to find them.
They had to get out.
Eddie was wiping his nose with the back of his sleeve and snuffling back tears.
“Is it still after us?” he wanted to know.
“I don’t think so,” said Meg, noticing how their voices echoed and carried down here, wondering if that thing had ears. “Quiet, now.”
Kevin was in bad shape. She could feel him trembling. “I’ll be good. I swear,” he said. “I’ll never go to the movies again!”
“It’s gonna be okay, Kev,” she said, wishing she believed it. “C’mon. Let’s find a way out of here.”
In another tunnel, not far away, three heavily armed soldiers in plastic suits made their way slowly forward, weapons at the ready. Corporal Dennis Johnstone held in his hands the map that would guide them to the valve they had to close. Private Bill North’s heavy-duty flashlight probed the steamy darkness ahead. He leaned over to speak to Sergeant Henry Washington.
“Sergeant!” said North.
Sergeant North jumped, startled. “What?”
“I think I hear something!”
“That’s the sound of me having a heart attack, you idiot!” said the sergeant. “Corporal, let’s see that map. Christ, we’ll never find that goddamn valve.”
“Uh, Sarge,” said Corporal Johnstone, directing his own flashlight to an area behind them.
The sergeant looked. The beam picked out a bright red valve wheel.
“All right, let’s close it up and get outta here!”
They went to deal with the wheel.
At just about the same time Meg and the boys entered a large chamber.
Several tunnels connected here, up on the walls of the chamber. The floor, though, was a lake of muddy water. At the far end of the chamber was a concrete spill-off ramp.
“Look!” said Kevin. “Look up there, Meg!”
From the top of the chamber there was a spill of street-lamp light! Coming through an open storm drain above.
“How do we get up there?” said Eddie, whining.
As Meg’s eyes adjusted to the increased illumination, she saw the answer. “Those pipes over there. We can climb those pipes!” There was a series of cross-brace pipes running up the wall to the storm drain. “C’mon, that’s our way out!”
But first they had to wade through this fetid lake.
Meg stepped in, and it went nearly up to her waist. But still not too deep for the boys, thank God.
They splashed in after her, revitalized by the sight of a way out.
As she waded, Meg heard the sound of a soft squealing. She looked around and found herself nose to whiskers with a large, grizzled rat, paddling through the water nearby.
“Ugh! Watch out for that rat!” she warned the boys.
She looked away, just as the rat was tugged under the water.
“What rat?” asked Kevin.
She looked back, and there was no swimming rat.
But farther on she spotted another rat, clinging to a floating piece of garbage.
Even as she watched, the rat was sucked under.
The creature! It was close!
She turned to the boys. “C’mon!” she said. “Hurry!”
They hurried, all right, but the trouble was that the concrete bottom of this chamber was slippery as hell with crud and mud.
Meg heard a whirring sound behind them. She looked around, and in the dim light she saw the water… churning!
And the churning was getting closer!
“What’s happening?” asked Eddie, noticing as well.
“Go!” cried Meg. “Go!”
After what seemed an eternity jammed into a few seconds, they reached the network of piping riding up the wall to the storm drain.
“Get up, there, Kevin!” cried Meg, boosting her little brother up onto the first pipe. Kevin’s foot caught hold, and his hands started pulling him up out of the water and onto the wall.
“Okay, Eddie,” she said. “You, too, now!”
She grabbed him to boost him up as well…
But with a speed that astonished her, Eddie was suddenly ripped from her grasp. Like a half-submerged skier he shot through the water, back across the chamber, splatting up a spray of water.
“Eddie!” yelled Meg.
Eddie screamed all the way.
And then, halfway back to the other edge of the water, Eddie was sucked under.
Meg Penny, hysterical, jumped out after him, trying to drag him back.
Kevin Penny, on the pipes, horrified, saw his sister vanish beneath the surface in Eddie’s wake.
His shock broke loose in a cry. “Meg! No!”
The turbulence in the water settled. Kevin could see nothing beneath the turbid calm.
Kevin could not move. He felt as though he were frozen on the pipes. His sister… Eddie… both down there under that water… with that awful, horrible, gummy, sticky, hungry creature. It was too much to take, and the young boy’s mind seemed to snap for a moment from the overload.
Meg! Oh, Meg, he thought. It got you. It got—
But then a head bobbed up through the surface, flinging off water from long hair. It was Meg! The thing hadn’t got her!
“Eddie!” Meg Penny cried. The loss of the little boy was just too much. Her mind was spinning as she gasped in air, and swung her head around, looking for him.
“It got him!” Kevin yelled at her. “Get out of there, Meg. It got Eddie!”
She couldn’t believe it. They’d been so close, so very close to escaping. Meg waded back toward the pipes, still hoping that maybe it hadn’t gotten Eddie, that she could save him, bring him back to his parents.
An explosion of water directly in front of her.
Eddie!
The boy burst up from the water and for a moment hope filled Meg. But then she saw the expression on Eddie’s face—twisted in the throes of death. And she saw the stuff wrapped around his head.
Gummy liquefaction.
The creature!
Meg screamed, and Eddie was jerked back under, thrashing and struggling, eyes almost popped from their sockets.
Fear drove her legs forward. She raced for the pipes. She had to get out of here! Had to get out! Get out!
She reached the side of the chamber and grabbed the first pipe. “Up!” she cried. “Kevin, go up!”
She couldn’t help but look behind her as Kevin turned and started climbing up the pipes toward the drainpipe.
The creature was rising up from the water.
The top of it looked like the head of a cancerous jellyfish, rippling with inner gases. But then it lifted up higher, higher, an island of bloody mucus, quivering and sozzly.
By the faint light Meg could see the half-dissolved bits of human carcasses hanging in the colloidal stuff, like obscene fruit in a satanic Jell-O mold.
She climbed frantically.
Above her, Kevin slipped.
She was far enough up to catch him. She set his feet back on the pipes and pushed him up.
The Blob Page 13