The Blob

11

Meg Penny sat in the waiting room, flipping through the magazine and waiting for her diet orange soda.

She wondered what was keeping Paul. He should have been back by now, she reasoned. Something was wrong. The doctor had called the nurse, and the nurse had gone running. Since then there had been silence. The clinic felt spooky now to Meg, as if something was about to happen, something bad.

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.