Slimer

Nine

‘He’s still waiting out there. I know he is.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Linda. ‘It’s been ages since we’ve heard a sound. Alex is too drunk to be that sly. He’s either gone or he’s passed out. I’m going to open the door.’

‘No!’ Chris grabbed Linda’s arm. ‘Don’t! He’s out there. I can feel his vibes.’

Linda sighed. ‘Chris, people stopped having “vibes” at the end of the 1960s. I’m going out. We can’t stay in here forever. Besides Paul and Mark are probably back by now and looking for us.’ She unhooked Chris’s fingers from around her forearm and reached for the key in the door. As quietly as possible she unlocked the door and opened it a couple of inches. She peered out through the crack. No Alex. Encouraged she opened the door wider and looked out. The corridor was empty.

‘Come on,’ she said to Chris, ‘it’s all-clear.’

Chris reluctantly followed her out into the corridor. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked fearfully.

‘Back to that recreation room we were in.’

‘But Alex might be there!’

‘We’ve got to take that chance. The guns are there and I won’t feel safe again until I’m holding one. Anyway, if the guys are back yet that’s the first place they’ll go. So come on or I’ll leave you here.’

‘I’m coming,’ said Chris hastily.

The recreation room was empty. Or so it seemed at first but as Linda bent down to pick up the revolver she’d dropped earlier when struggling with Alex she heard a noise. It came from a nearby cupboard.

Someone was in there.

Chris stifled a frightened gasp. Motioning her to keep silent^ Linda approached the cupboard, the revolver cocked and ready to fire. This time she would have no compunction about shooting Alex if he made a move against her. If it was Alex…

She opened the cupboard door and immediately something leapt straight out at her with a piercing shriek. Linda fell backwards as she tried to avoid the claws that were ripping at her face. As she fell the gun exploded with a deafening report, sending a bullet harmlessly into the ceiling.

The shock of the report distracted Linda’s attacker long enough for her to see who it was. ‘Rochelle!’ she cried.

Rochelle stared down at her. She was almost unrecognisable. Her eyes had the wild look of an animal and her lips were drawn back from her teeth in a feral snarl. But slowly recognition dawned on her face. ‘Linda…’ she whispered in surprise, ‘thank God… I thought it was her.. ’ She got up off Linda and covered her face with her hands. She started to sob. Linda was incredulous. She had never seen Rochelle like this before. Nothing ever unnerved her. Hell, if she could live with Alex she could take anything. Then she noticed a large wet patch on the front of Rochelle’s jeans and realised, with distaste, that it was urine. Something had scared her so much she’d actually pissed in her pants.

‘Rochelle, what happened to you?’ asked Linda as Chris helped her up. ‘And who do you mean by her?’

Rochelle had sunk down onto her haunches now, her face still covered. ‘The woman from the… tank,’ she said between sobs,‘she almost got me… I fell…my ankle…she touched me… but I got away… I crawled away and then I started running and running, but I kept falling over… and I could hear her behind me…’

‘Shhh, listen!’ said Chris urgently, holding up a hand. ‘Someone’s coming!’

‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded Paul.

The young man grinned at him and lowered the Ml6. ‘Name’s Ed Buckley. And boy, am I glad to see you guys. I can’t tell you what it feels like to be with normal people again.’ Paul stared at him suspiciously. ‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly call us normal but what about you? How do we know you’re all right?’

‘Relax. I’m not like them. I avoided getting, uh, infected. I’ve been hiding out ever since. This is the first chance I’ve had to get to you.’

‘And you’re the only one who avoided getting infected?’ asked Paul, still suspicious ‘I was lucky. For a time there were two of us.’ He gestured at the room. ‘Dr Soames was with me but she got careless. Then there was just me. I’ve been on my own for two weeks now, hiding from them… and Charlie…’

Paul sighed. ‘Ed, who is Charlie? And what happened here? All we know is that it had something to do with some experiments to make an artificial gene called Phoenix’ Buckley looked surprised. ‘You know about Phoenix?’

7 fucking don’t,’ growled Alex, ‘what the hell is this Phoenix?’

‘We got part of the explanation from some video tapes,’ said Paul, ‘but we still don’t know the full story.’

‘Well,’ said Buckley doubtfully, ‘it’s not easy to describe and I’m no scientist. I’m just a security jock.’

‘But you had a general idea of what was going on here?’ ‘Yeah…’

‘And you do know what Charlie is?’

‘Yeah, but it’s all pretty crazy. It’s going to sound funny to you…’

‘Believe me, Ed,’ said Paul with heavy sarcasm, ‘we could all do with a good chuckle. So tell us.’

A shot rang out.

For a few seconds everyone was too startled to react. Then Paul muttered, ‘The girls…’

‘It came from that direction,’ cried Buckley, pointing down the corridor. ‘Come on.’

A sick feeling enveloped Paul as he followed Buckley at a run. If anything had happened to Linda…

There was a great deal of mutual relief when the two groups were reunited in the recreation room. After Paul had been reassured that Linda was alright and that the gunshot had been an accident he brought her and Chris up-to-date on whaj they’d learned since they’d left that morning. Then it wajj Linda’s turn to brief him and Mark on what had happened them. By the time she’d finished Paul’s anger towards Ales had been rekindled and he turned on him accusingly.

‘You were going to rape her.’

Alex stared back unabashed. ‘I was just foolin’ around,’ he said arrogantly. ‘I was drunk, I guess. Then after she hit me on the head I got a little mad.’

‘Is that allT Paul began to advance on him. ‘I should kill you.’ ¹

The switch-blade suddenly appeared in Alex’s hand. ‘Go ahead and try.’

‘Leave him, Paul!’ cried Linda. ‘I’m fine. He didn’t touch me. It’s Rochelle we should worry about. Something worse happened to her.Tell them, Ro.’

Rochelle was still sitting on the floor, slumped against the cupboard door. She hadn’t been taking any interest in what had been going on. There was a look of dazed terror in her eyes as if she was still seeing whatever it was that had scared her.

Then, on Linda’s urging, she slowly described the events in the aquarium. When she’d completed her story there was an uneasy silence. Alex was first to break it. ‘Must be the same bitch I ran into,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t see anything wrong with her mouth.’

‘And the same woman we encountered,’ said Paul. ‘Dr Carol Soames.’ He turned to Buckley who was looking uncomfortable. ‘Well?’

He shrugged. ‘She’s infected. With Phoenix. Just like the rest of them. It’s a kind of parasite…’ His voice trailed away.

‘And everybody but you got infected with this thing, is that right?’ asked Paul. '

‘Yeah. I told you that,’ said the American.

‘Ed, where are they all? This place is deserted. You’re the third person we’ve seen since we arrived. Where are all these infected people hiding? And what’s the reason for all the empty clothes we found?’

Buckley’s discomfort grew visibly more acute. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to explain but like I said I’m no scientist.’

‘Go ahead. We’re listening,’ said Paul impatiently.

But now there was a look of alarm on Buckley’s young face. ‘Oh no, it’s coming.’ He turned towards the open doorway and raised his gun.

Paul turned too. He hadn’t heard a sound. But the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up.

‘Everyone grab a weapon,’ ordered Buckley crisply. ‘If we put enough bullets into it we might be able to kill it.’

‘Kill what?’ demanded Alex as he frantically looked around for a gun. ‘What’s coming?’

Buckley ignored the question. He hurried over to the doorway and reached for the light switch. ‘You all got guns yet? I’m gonna turn the lights off.’

With the exception of Rochelle, who hadn’t moved, they hurriedly grabbed weapons and took cover where they could. Paul, armed with one of the Ml 6s, took cover beside the couch, pulling Linda down beside him. She still had the revolver.

The room was suddenly plunged into darkness. The only source of light was from the open doorway. Buckley hurried back across the room and crouched down behind a chair near Rochelle. ‘It’s near, very near,’ he hissed.

But the only thing Paul could hear was the thumping of his heart. His eyes were fixed on the oblong of light that was the doorway. Any moment now it would be outlined there…

‘I still don’t hear a fucking thing,’ said Alex hoarsely. He was sprawled on the floor behind an upturned coffee table. Mark and Chris were huddled in the corner to the right of the door.

‘Sshhh!’ ordered Paul.

There was silence. Paul strained to hear any sound from outside but there was nothing.

‘It’s coming… it’s coming…’ whispered Buckley. ‘You’ve got to kill it. Promise me you’ll kill it no matter what happens to me. I’m finished anyway… I know that now…

Paul was too occupied with watching the doorway to pay any attention to what Buckley was saying. His finger wasj locked around the trigger, ready to fire the instant the creature, Charlie or whatever, stepped into sight…

‘It’s close now… closer…’ Buckley’s nerve-wracking! whisper went on. Then he said, ‘It’s hereV

Paul jumped, but the doorway remained empty.

Rochelle screamed.

Paul glanced sideways and froze with horror. Where^ Buckley had been crouched a dark shape was now standing.; And growing. It was already over seven feet tall but as Paul watched the shape grew even taller.

He had no idea what was going on but he swung the bar-' rel of the M16 round towards the apparition. Beside him he heard Linda gasp as she caught sight of what he was seeing too. The shape had turned slightly and the dim light from, the doorway illuminated part of it. Paul had never seen any-; thing like it before.

The face, if you could call it that, was long and smooth except for two large round eyes that seemed horribly blank and lifeless. At the bottom of the ‘face’ there was an eruption of small, squirming tentacles which parted suddenly to reveal an impossibly wide mouth full of triangular teeth.

As the mouth opened Paul heard the same terrifying and; utterly alien cry that he’d heard outside his cabin the night before. This was Charlie.

It was now over eight feet tall, its head almost brushing the ceiling. It had no neck. The head jutted forward from between a pair of massive shoulders from which hung thick, sinuous arms that seemed jointless and ended in two large clusters of tentacles which appeared to have teeth growing out of them.

Rochelle, still screaming, tried to crawl away from it. It noticed her immediately and lashed out with one of its ‘arms’. Rochelle was scooped up off the floor and flung backwards against the wall. She bounced off it with a bone-jarring thud and lay unmoving at the thing’s feet.

This had the effect of snapping Paul out of his frozen state. He took careful aim at the creature’s head and pulled the trigger. It jerked as the bullets struck home but didn’t fall. Instead it turned on Paul and, with an even more deafening screech of rage, began to advance towards him.

I’m going to die thought Paul as the creature approached him, but he kept firing and at the last moment it halted. It had been hurt, at last.

Two more guns opened up. Linda’s and Alex’s. Mark and Chris were rooted to the spot, unable to move. The thing bellowed with pain and lurched towards the door.

They couldn’t let it get away again, thought Paul. They had to kill it! He kept his finger hard on the trigger but then realised his gun was empty.

Alex barely got out of the way of the creature as it moved towards the door. As he ducked to one side the coffee table he’d been hiding behind was smashed to pieces by one of the thing’s flailing arms. Momentarily it filled the doorway with its bulk as it bent low to get through, then it was gone.

Paul wanted to throw up. His whole body was shaking with reaction. He walked slowly to the door and made sure that the creature was nowhere in sight then switched the light back on.

‘Jesus,’ whispered Alex, getting up off the floor. He was white. ‘What was.?’

‘That was Charlie,’ said Paul. He went over to where Rochelle lay. Linda was already beside her, feeling for a pulse.

‘She’s still alive, but she’s been cut up pretty badly,’ she told him.

He nodded. Rochelle’s shirt was in tatters and he could see a number of vicious cuts on her upper chest. She’d been lucky not to have had her throat slashed open.

Now they knew what had been responsible for the ripped clothing they had found. But what had happened to the bodies? And what about the clothing that had been undamaged? There were still a lot of questions to be answered.

‘We’ll have to go find a first-aid kit,’ he said blankly. ‘I saw one in one of the bathrooms.’

Mark and Chris came over. Chris was staring around with a perplexed expression. ‘I don’t get it — where did the American go?’ she asked.

‘They were one and the same. Buckley became Charlie.’ Chris looked at him as if he was insane. ‘What are you talking about?’

He tried to explain. ‘Buckley turned into the creature. You know, like in the movies when Dr Jekyll turns into Mr Hyde…’ His voice faltered. When you tried to put it into words it did sound ridiculous.

‘That’s impossible,’ said Chris firmly.

‘Yes.’ He turned away from her. He didn’t have the emotional energy to argue.

‘It’s not impossible,’ said Mark dully. ‘It explains what Rochelle saw, what Alex saw and what I saw too.’ He shivered. ‘I caught a glimpse of that woman scientist on one of the monitors She looked kind of like that thing — the same sort of smooth face. And the same eyes. Fish eyes…’

Paul picked up the M16 that had been discarded by Buckley during his transformation. It felt cold. And he noticed there was no trace of Buckley’s clothing on the floor. What had happened to it? He couldn’t help thinking of the TV show, The Incredible Hulk — whenever the little guy turned into the Hulk he burst out of his clothing…

He suddenly felt like laughing but he knew if he started he wouldn’t be able to stop.

With an effort he took a grip on himself and said calmly, ‘So what we have here are a bunch of people who are infected with some synthetic gene that turns them into eight foot tall monsters. But why?’ He felt certain there was still a lot he didn’t know. And somehow he had to find it out. Their survival depended on it.

He was wondering how to go about this when the lights went out.