*
The first thing I noted was the smell, even through the respirator mask the tang of the acid I'd had dumped down the hole was strong and acrid, threatening to burn at my nose and throat. We had descended right over the spot where the collapse had happened, but there was no sign of the ooze, although there was a distinct trail on the floor of the sewer to mark its passing that seemed to shine and shimmer in the beam from my flashlight. I motioned to the others that they should follow and I headed, at some speed, deeper into the tunnel.
At least the brickwork was new and hadn't crumbled, for a sewer the tunnel was remarkably clean, and I came to almost be thankful for the stink of acid, for it surely masked many other stenches than might have proved rather more noxious. We were able to make good time, a fact that gave me some pause, for if we were making such rapid progress, then it meant that our quarry was moving just as quickly, and possibly even faster.
The first sign that it was still ahead of us came when my light fell on a partially digested rat. The head end still twitched and squealed in pain but from the ribs to where the tail should have been was just a mess of unregulated protoplasm, bubbling and seething, and growing. I had not considered that the ooze would be able to detach portions of goop and, in effect, multiply more rapidly, and now that I had thought of it, I could think of little else.
The poor beast beside my foot squealed piteously. I squirted acid on it and put it out of its misery with the heel of my boot, but even as I did so I heard more screams, all too human screams, coming up the tunnel from ahead of us.
I didn't wait for the other two, I ran, full pelt toward the hideous noises, the flashlight beam swinging wildly against the walls of the sewer ahead of me.
*
I was too late, far too late. The screaming stopped, leaving only the sound of my footsteps splashing in the puddles in the floor of the sewer and my breathing, loud and heavy inside the respirator. I rounded a long curve, then had to stop, all breath leaving me at the sight that awaited in the tunnel.
The ooze, protoplasm, whatever the hell it was, sat under an open manhole, pulled up into a sphere almost a six feet in diameter, the bulk of it almost filling the tunnel. One of the crews I'd sent to keep watch were embedded inside it, partially melted, skin and bone and clothes in the process of being assimilated into the matrix, three grown men, all already, thankfully, dead as the flesh sloughed from their bones.
I heard young George bring up his lunch in the tunnel behind me. Someone else, Jennings probably, began to weep quietly, but I forced myself to step closer. I raised the pistol grip, squeezed the bag under my arm, and sprayed the ooze with acid.
The result was immediate, it recoiled, as if struck, a wobble travelling all the way through it. As I had seen before, in the laboratory, it pulled itself into a tighter ball, then started to half-slump, half-roll away down the tunnel. The result of that retreat was that the three partially eaten bodies of my friends were unceremoniously deposited in the sewer at my feet, but I had no time for grief, the ooze was already retreating away from me at some speed.
I stepped over the bodies and headed after it, but as fast as I could spray acid, it could retreat faster. I had at least succeeded in slowing its growth, it was half the size it had been as it disappeared at an alarming haste into the darkness beyond the reach of my light.
Even then I might have followed, had I not heard a cry from behind me. I turned to see Jennings shouting up to someone up above the open drain cover. I was torn between pressing my small advantage and my curiosity. Curiosity, and common sense, won in the end, and I returned back up the tunnel to stand under the manhole.
Jennings was talking animatedly to one of the other search crews I'd sent out. I left him to it and went to young George's aid. Despite his obvious distaste and nausea he was intent on checking the three bodies, obviously intent on trying to save them, but it was clear to me that the men were far gone.
"It's all my fault," the lad was saying, over and over again, trying for a pulse on an arm that was barely attached to the molten remains of what had been a shoulder and rib cage. I had to bodily drag him away, and had Jennings tend to him while I caught up with the men above. In truth, there wasn't much to hear, although what there was chilled me to the bone. This was the last manhole before town, and the slime was now surely on its way there.
I almost felt the blood drain from my face. Anchester wasn't big, but it had a population of almost ten thousand. I looked at he bodies at my feet, and tried to picture that scene, multiplied a hundred fold and more. Seconds later I was running, full pelt, down the tunnel. I was vaguely aware of George and Jennings behind me, also running, calling my name, but I had no thought for them.
George had been wring on one thing, it wasn't his fault. They were my men, my responsibility. Any fault was mine and mine alone.
And I was not about to let any more people die due to my negligence.
I came to a junction some five minutes after leaving the open manhole. The new red brick tunnel gave way to a much older sewer, dank and wet, dripping with thick slimy moss and lichen, and ankle deep in black water. Now that I no longer had the tang of acid to keep the smell at bay I noticed the stench, thick, almost chewable. Only the respirator mask prevented me from having to stop, and even then I was almost choking as I headed left, downhill, toward Anchester.
I did not have to go far before I once again heard screams, from above me now, in the streets of the town. George and Jennings caught up with me as I was trying to heave a manhole cover aside to give me access up to the road above. Between the three of us we managed to push the heavy circle of iron up and out of the way. If I was worried that we might disrupt traffic I needn't have bothered, traffic was more than adequately disturbed already.
I climbed up out of the sewer into a scene of utter chaos.
*
The first thing I saw was an overturned butcher's van, it had been in collision with a horse and cart in the middle of the main street. Two older ladies tended to the butcher, he was bleeding profusely from a head wound and was clearly in a daze. His livelihood, the meat from his van, was strewn all across the road, as was the contents of the cart, old iron, clothing scraps and books by the look of it. The cart driver had got the worst of things, his body lay, already mostly eaten, in the center of a mass of oozing protoplasm. The poor horse lay beside its master. The bulk of it was partially digested. Thankfully the ooze had caught it at the front end first so its death would have been quick at least. But the back legs were still kicking, even as flesh sloughed off its back. I looked away, back to the ooze. The horse's head was already little more than sludge and goop; lumps of tissue and blood were visible in the clear protoplasm, clearly being drawn to a spot in the interior of the oozing mass.
The screaming was coming from two children, too frightened to run, too amazed at the sight in the street to take their eyes off it. By rights I should have done something to comfort them, but the digestive processes of the ooze had caught my gaze. As I said, it was clearly taking its sustenance down toward a central part of its bulk, and if that was the case, I knew that there must be some sense to its structure, some degree of organization.
And something with organization could become disorganized, in the right circumstances.
I watched the poor horse be digested as first George, then Jennings pulled themselves up out of the sewer to stand beside me.
"We need to focus our attack," I said as George raised his pistol to point it at the ooze. "And we need to coordinate it too. Follow my lead."
The ooze was growing visibly, throbbing and swelling as it assimilated the bulk of the horse and the meat from the van. A crowd had gathered in the street, keeping a discreet distance, the townspeople clearly unsure what to make of this new thing in their midst. Some of the more curious of them were already encroaching perilously close to the protoplasm, and if I did not take charge of matters soon, someone else was going to get hurt, or killed.
"With me, Ge
orge," I said, and stepped forward. I ignored the closest parts of the ooze and aimed my pistol at the central portion, aiming at the spot where most of the digested matter seemed to be being transported. Blood and pink tissue flowed inward, a grotesque mockery of a circulatory system. I aimed for the central area and squeezed the trigger. George sent a stream of acid at almost exactly at the same spot.
I hoped we would be able to end it there and then as the plasm bubbled and hissed, but I had forgotten how speedy the dashed thing could be. It immediately recoiled away from the acid, and from us, heading off down the cobbled street, scattering the watching crowd in front of it, leaving a trail of bloody slime in its wake. I hosed the slimy remains down with acid, remembering the rat, and how there was life in the ooze, even in the remnants it left behind, then turned my attention to the rapidly departing ooze.
"After it, George, quickly," I called. We can't let it get away." The pair of us, with Jennings close behind, ran in pursuit, leaving the startled townspeople far behind as the chase took us the length of the High Street.
We got close enough on two occasions to send more acid over the bulk of it, but the central portion, the place where a ball of partially digested bloody matter still hung, continued to elude us, and the ooze was capable of moving faster than we could run.
We pursued it through the town, squirting acid at any globs of material it left in its wake, before finally catching up to it on the riverbank near the Rowing Club. It slithered quickly down the jetty and spread out, like a huge cape, across almost the full width of the river. An oily, shimmering glow seemed to rise from the water, even as I squeezed the trigger, over and over again, until the pack was completely empty of acid.
The current flowed past us, and the ooze sank, slowly, out of sight. I raised my gaze from the water and looked downstream.
The city of Oxford lay directly ahead, and the ooze was being taken right to it.
"We're going to need bigger knapsacks," George said.
*
I was kept busy for the rest of that long day, arranging for everywhere, and everything, the ooze might have touched to be washed down with acid and, a much harder task in the end, attempting to impress on the authorities the seriousness of the situation facing us. It didn't help my case that the thing seemed to have gone to ground so to speak, all that afternoon I had teams out looking for signs of it up and down the riverbanks, but to no avail. As evidence I had a butcher with a sore head and a whole lot of bloody, acid scarred, slime, certainly not enough to convince the Ministry to give me any special attention, despite the fact that some of it was the remains of dead members of my team.
"We've got a bally flap on in Gibraltar," the clipped tones on the other end of the phone said. "We don't have the time or the manpower to waste on any blasted jelly from outer space. Please don't be bothering us again unless you've got something that needs our urgent attention. You're a rocket group aren't you? Well just blow the bloody thing up and have an end to it."
Tempting as the idea might be, launching a rocket on the academia in Oxford wasn't really an option. I could only keep a watching brief, prepare as well as I could for any eventuality, and hope that I could control any resultant mayhem without any further loss of life.
At least I had the local constabulary on my side, for two officers had seen what happened on Anchester High Street. One of them, Sergeant Green, was a seasoned veteran and level headed enough that his superiors couldn't ignore his story. By the time night fell I had a team of firemen, the Oxford police force and my own staff at my disposal. George and Jennings had arranged, by hook or by crook, for a delivery of industrial acid to be shipped to us. Instead of water the firemen had access to a tanker of acid and a generator to pressurize it in their hoses, the hoses themselves might not survive for long, but I was hoping that they wouldn't have to.
I sat in the main Police station in Oxford, smoked too many cigarettes and drank far too much strong, sweet tea. I racked my brains, knowing that I must have missed something in my preparations, at the same time feeling ever increasing guilt creep up on me over the death of my friends and companions.
When the inevitable call finally came and we had to move, I was actually glad of the action.
*
It must have been in the sewers, two manholes, both melted and fused as if eaten away, lay on the cobbles, discarded as it oozed, like toothpaste from a too-strongly squeezed tube, up out of the drains, its bulk slowly filling the parking crescent in front of the railway station. Wherever it had been, it had obviously been feeding, it kept coming, and coming, until it lay in a heap almost six feet tall across an area the size of a soccer penalty box. The clear matrix was shot through with red veins, its transport system for taking food back to the central mass. And as I got closer I saw what it had been feeding on, half a dozen cows and several sheep, or what was left of them, hung suspended in the ooze, none of them much more than bags of skin and semi-digested bone. The whole mass of the plasm shimmered in the moonlight, and again I saw the same colors I had seen under the scope, greens and blues and gold hanging in the air above it like a curtain of fine gauze.
The railway's Stationmaster had been the one to call us, and he was clearly flustered, in a situation he did not know how to control or apply to a timetable. He was addressing Sergeant Green, his voice raised almost in a shout.
"What in blazes are you going to do about this then? I can't have this mess on the concourse, the eight ten from Reading will be coming in any minute now, then what am I going to do?"
The Sergeant had the small man taken back into the station but we could all still hear him, promising that he'd be having 'a word with our superiors.'
"Good luck with that," I muttered, with what would be the last bit of levity for a while as the ooze started to creep, not toward the station but toward the main road.
We only just got the fire crew in position in time as the ooze advanced, crawling over a parked car and stripping its paint job as if it was sandpaper. Sergeant Green gave the order and two hoses started to send an arc of acid over the top of the protoplasm, I had already told them to seek out the central digestive mass. The ooze bubbled and hissed, and once again I thought we had it beat, only to be proved wrong.
It surged, I have no other word to describe it, and moved in one smooth motion. We thought we had it contained between the railway station and the tall wall on the other side of the road but the thing flowed up and away and over before we'd scarcely begun to hose it down.
By the time we got round the other side of the wall there was nothing to be seen but a long trail of what looked like partially burned grass across a once-perfect lawn, and some slime draped over the walls and roof of one of the college buildings. It made the old stone shimmer and radiate as if coated in hot oil and in other circumstances might even have been quite beautiful.
*
So begun a long night where we played a dangerous game of hide and seek. The ooze showed up twice more, each time larger than the last, each time arising out of the sewer system, and each time retreating so fast from our acid attack that we were unable to stop it. As dawn approached I realized that the town would be waking up, and with it the chance of many more casualties. I could see no other course of action but to take the fight to where the thing was most comfortable, I was going to have to go down into the main sewer.
The firemen, stout chaps that they were, offered to go down in my place, but I felt the burden of responsibility heavy on my shoulders. I had them show me how to operate the nozzles of their hoses. As I was suiting up into one of their safety suits young George started to do the same beside me.
"It's my fault too, Prof," he said as I made to stop him. "I'm coming, and that's that. If you want to put a note in my jotter later, so be it. But I'm coming."
In truth, I was glad of the company as we went gingerly down one of the main manholes into the sewer under the railway station, the first place we had encountered it earlier in the evening. The two hoses wer
e lowered down to us and we stood there for several minutes as our eyes accustomed to the gloom. I heard the thrum of the generator overhead, the acid was ready and waiting for when we needed it. I only hoped it would be enough.
"Well, here we are then," George said. "What's the plan, Prof?"
"Keep talking, make some noise," I replied, thinking on my feet. "I think it's attracted by sound, our men in the sewer, the butcher's van, the railway station itself, all noise."
"You mean, we're the bait?"
I laughed, the sound echoed around us in the confines of the sewer.
"If you want to put it that way, yes."
"In that case, I've got just the thing."
George then surprised me by starting to sing, loudly and making up in effort what he lacked in musicality.
"I am the Lord High Executioner, a personage of noble rank and title."
It delighted me so much, there in that dark place, that I joined in with all the gusto I could manage.
We had got as far as the second 'I've got a little list' when the light in the tunnel changed, somewhere to our north something shimmered, greens and blues and gold, and it was getting closer. George noticed it, and almost faltered in his singing, but I took up the slack, and belted out another chorus as the protoplasm oozed into view, the bulk of it completely filling the sewer as it came forward, heading straight for us.
George looked over at me and even in the gloom I saw that his eyes had gone wide with fear, but he stood beside me as I hefted the heavy hose at my waist, and he followed suit.
We stopped singing as the tunnel filled with a dancing aurora of color that hissed and buzzed as if in response to our song.
"Ready?" I said.
George nodded, and I twisted the nozzle.
As before the result was immediate. The protoplasm leapt away from us, retreating back in the tunnel. And even as I stepped forward to follow I realized I had indeed forgotten something, the tang of acid and seared protoplasm threatened to choke me. . . and I wasn't wearing a respirator mask.
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