The Blob

17

Bloody murders were imminent.

Smack dab in center aisle, tenth row, Kevin Penny sat with his friends Eddie and Anthony, waiting for the deaths to begin.

The movie screen was splashed now with the images of Susie, a gorgeous blonde in cutoffs and a well-filled T-shirt, and Lance, the muscular young camp counselor. They were sitting on a picnic table by a bunch of hedges, and they were necking. This was boring to Kevin Penny. He wanted the exciting stuff to start, and he had the feeling that that gardener there, the one in the hockey mask with the hedge trimmer, was going to get things going!

“What’s wrong?” said Susie as Lance came up for air, looking around apprehensively.

“Isn’t it awfully late to be trimming the lawn? Maybe that guy’s a Peeping Tom or something.”

“Well, let’s give him something to peep at!” said Susie, pulling her hunk back down.

There was a cut to a close-up of the hedge trimmer, whirring and cutting twigs and leaves.

Kevin Penny shuddered deliciously, stuffing his face with a handful of popcorn. To his left Eddie and Anthony were wolfing down jujubes like nobody’s business. There was the air of the forbidden here in the dank and musty movie theater, and it gave Kevin an extra charge to be doing just what his mother had told him not to.

Not that what was happening on the screen wasn’t exciting! Boy, it sure was!

“I’m telling you,” said the camp counselor in the movie. “Something’s weird about that guy. Hockey season ended months ago.”

Behind the boys one of the moviegoers was talking loudly to his date. “Watch this,” he was saying. “He gets the camp counselor with the electric Garden Weasel, but the girl gets away!”

The whirring got louder and sure enough, here came Puck Face, slamming down his weapon onto poor Lance. Popcorn splattered as Kevin put salty fingers up to cover his eyes. Eeuuk! Blood everywhere! He couldn’t help but notice that Eddie and Anthony didn’t stir at all. They just stared and chuckled, eating all this up along with their candy.

“Watch,” said the goofball behind him. “She’s gonna run in the lodge and hide.”

Kevin was very annoyed. His very first slasher film was being ruined by some jerk who’d seen it before and insisted on telegraphing the upcoming action. Kevin turned and put his finger to his lips. “Shhh!”

As Kevin Penny expressed his annoyance, upstairs in the projection booth Phil Hobbs, who had seen the movie many times, leaned back in his chair and turned the page of his old Creepy magazine. The projectionist had read it before, and it wasn’t as good as the old EC horror comics he collected, but he couldn’t read his precious ECs at work. They’d get ruined, since he tended to suck down Cokes and smear his comics with peanut grease while unspooling the evening’s entertainment.

You had to find something to do up here between pushing the “on” button to the film and rewinding the things or you’d go crazy. Phil Hobbs liked to read comics, he liked to play with his yo-yo, and he liked companionship. The companionship he’d found in a pet he had bought some years ago—a spider monkey. He called the monkey Charlie, and Charlie really dug being assistant projectionist. He was also real good at shelling peanuts, and damned generous for a monkey.

That was exactly what he was doing now, perched atop the rewind table—shelling peanuts. He took two from their husk, gave one to Phil, and ate the other.

“Thanks, Charlie,” said Phil Hobbs, chomping down on the nut, then flipping the page of the old black-and-white comic, not missing a flip of his yo-yo.

Charlie chittered in reply.

“Geez, what you think, Charlie,” said Hobbs, realizing that he was sweating. “Getting kinda hot in here, isn’t it? Stuffy too? Think we should report bad working conditions to the management or to the union?”

He got up to check the air-conditioning vent. “Thing’s giving off nothing, and on a night like this! Maybe the vent’s clogged or something.”

He unlatched the vent and opened it. Still not a bit of cool air was forthcoming.

“Wonderful,” said Phil Hobbs. “No, the union won’t get the results as fast as we need them.” He went to the phone and called down to Clyde Mitchell, the manager, still keeping the yo-yo going, executing some tricky moves to keep his mind off the heat. “Hi, Clyde,” he said when the phone was picked up on the other end. “It’s Hobbs. Listen, it’s boiling up here. The air conditioning on?”

“Sure is,” said Mitchell. “And don’t you know I’m paying a pretty penny for it!”

“Well, it ain’t happening up here. Come up and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.” He cradled the receiver and continued his yo-yoing as he delved back into his vampire story. Shoulda brought a Vampirella comic, he thought. He liked any given Vampy story better than the usual run of Creepy vampire stories.

Charlie the spider monkey didn’t care much about the heat, but something did attract his attention. A barely audible metallic creaking sound was coming from the duct that his master had opened. Charlie wondered what the hell it was, and his curiosity got the better of him. He abandoned his paper bag of peanuts and skittered over there, jumping up to the edge and perching, looking down into the dark hole.

Creak creak creak…

When Phil Hobbs held his hand out for his next peanut, he received nothing. He looked up from his comic book and saw no monkey on the rewind table.

“Charlie?”

He swiveled around and caught movement at the air-conditioning duct—Charlie’s tail, just disappearing.

Good Lord, the simian simpleton had gone into the hole!

“Hey!” cried Phil Hobbs and rushed to the hole. “Charlie, get outta there!”

In the hole there was only darkness. He could see nothing. He stuck his head in, calling for his pet. “Charlie!”

His voice echoed into the piping.

“Where the hell are you?”

It gobbled down the tiny creature, but the protoplasm only maddened it. Food, more food!

It had lain awhile in the sewers, feeding on rats and digesting its prey from the phone booth and from the police car it had invaded, but its raging need for more flesh and blood had urged it out of its hole, up and up, to where it sensed many animate bags of blood. Food, more food!

And now the Blob saw the man sticking his head into the duct, and it raced up toward the vibrations of his voice… and the pulsing of his blood.

Clyde Mitchell, the manager of the Morgan City theater, walked up the steps toward the projection booth.

He couldn’t figure out for the life of him what was wrong with the air conditioning. He’d checked the units downstairs and they were churning along, nice as you please. Still, he didn’t want to upset his projectionist. Hobbs was a good one, and they were hard to get in a town like Morgan City. Mitchell was young yet, and he had aspirations of heading for the top of the chain of theaters that he worked for. But he wouldn’t get anywhere if this job wasn’t run efficiently.

At the top of the stairs he tried the door. It was locked. He rattled it a bit, but no one came to open it.

“C’mon, Hobbs, put the yo-yo down and open this door!”

No answer. Well, he had a key ring. Wearily he pulled out the proper key and opened the door.

The film was still chugging away. Light flickered along the front of the booth, almost like an erratic strobe, but otherwise the room was dark. The manager pulled out his usher’s flashlight and swept it across the room in a slow arc.

Phil Hobbs was nowhere to be seen.

“Hobbs? You in here?” he called, becoming apprehensive.

It came down with a whir.

The yo-yo.

It came down from the ceiling, and bumped there at the end of its string. And something was dripping down it.

Mitchell jumped back. What the hell?

He automatically swung the flashlight up, cutting through the shadows.

Phil Hobbs the projectionist seemed to be embedded in the ceiling! Some kind of runny glob was holding him there, like an insect stuck in tree sap. Even as Clyde Mitchell looked, he could see the light going out of the man’s eyes. Could see the skin starting to melt away, exposing cartilage and skull, as the jaw opened and closed and the body twitched and jerked.

And then Mitchell could see that Hobbs’s body was being dragged across the ceiling, that the whole ceiling was a writhing mass. It seemed alive! And more gunk was spewing up from out of the air-conditioning duct.

Stunned, the manager could only think, So that’s why he wasn’t getting any AC.

Then ropes of slime dropped from the ceiling, surrounding him. Terrified, he turned to escape…

But the whole door was covered in a sheath of gunk.

The audience in the theater screamed as the hockey-masked killer struck again.

As though on cue Clyde Mitchell screamed as well, as the ceiling dropped down on him.

Meg Penny fumed as she was jerked and jostled by the military van zooming through town.

That damned Brian Flagg! He’d just flown the coop. And here she’d thought he was showing some special qualities she’d never imagined he possessed all these years! She’d actually felt something for the jerk! You couldn’t go through what they’d been through together and not feel something. But then he’d abandoned her, just like that, to save his own rotten skin.

The van squeaked to a halt and Meg heard the sound of footsteps running up to open the back door.

The door was opened by another of those plastic-suited soldiers, who motioned her out. As she stepped onto the pavement, she realized where she was. The center of Morgan City: Town Hall.

The Town Hall was two stories of ivy-covered brick, situated to the north of the tree-lined Town Square. Usually it projected an image of dignity and austerity, but tonight all was chaos. White-suited soldiers ran hither and yon, escorting Morgan City citizens to shelters. Meg could see medical teams working with clumps of people, checking them out for infection under artificial lights. Lots of people were still in their bedclothes, having been roused from sleep.

Yes, now the Town Hall was the Town Emergency Relief Station.

From the top of a military half-track a loudspeaker blared: “Please assemble in an orderly fashion and cooperate fully with our medical personnel…”

The soldier who had opened the door for her thumped the side of the van with his fist and shouted, “Clear!”

A little dazed and discombobulated, Meg walked forward into the confused scene, looking for her parents.

She found them quickly. They were in line for medical attention, along with two people she recognized as Eddie’s parents. Mrs. Penny was holding her little baby sister, Christine.

“Mom! Dad!” she called, running to them.

Mrs. Penny welcomed her with a frantic hug. “Meg! Thank God you’re all right!”

“Where have you been?” said her father. “You had us scared out of our minds!”

She looked around, noticing an absence. Kevin. What had happened to her little brother?

“Where’s Kevin?” she asked.

“He probably snuck off to that damn movie,” said her mother. “He told us he was staying over at Eddie’s.”

Eddie’s mother, Mrs. Beckner, looked dismayed. “Eddie told us he was staying at your place.”

This was terrible! The thought of little Kevin and that horrible monster… !

A soldier was passing by, and Meg reached out and grabbed him. “Excuse me,” she said. “My little brother’s over at the movie theater on Main!”

“Miss, we’re going by sectors. We’ll get there shortly.”

“You don’t understand—”

The soldier brushed her off. “We’ll handle this, okay?”

Mr. Penny, however, clearly didn’t care for the soldier’s attitude. And Daddy was a very confrontational man.

“I don’t see you handling much of anything, bub. You on a coffee break?”

“Look, mister—” the soldier began.

“Don’t ‘look, mister’ me. I’m a taxpayer! I pay your salary!”

Everyone was listening to the argument. Which gave Meg the perfect opportunity to slip away. She had to get to the movie theater, get Kevin to a safe place and keep him there.

This was no night for a ten-year-old to be out on the town.

Kevin Penny was getting really steamed. This joker in the seat behind him was making a real nuisance of himself. Clearly he’d seen the film before, but why did he have to broadcast what was coming up?

Eddie and Anthony didn’t seem to mind. They were into the gore and the mayhem, not the suspense. But Kevin had always enjoyed suspenseful stuff, from the first time that a grown-up had played peekaboo with him when he was a baby. But there was no suspense in Garden Tool Murders, not with Big Mouth blaring behind him.

He tried to ignore the guy, and turned his attention to the screen, where two pretty coeds in nighties were talking inanely as they made salads. But Kevin couldn’t hear what they were saying. Big Mouth drowned them out.

“Oh, you’ll love this,” said the guy. “He takes the Veg-O-Matic and dices them to death.”

That was the last straw! Kevin was fed up. He was gonna give this guy a piece of his mind, just the way Dad would. In fact, he pretended he was Dad now, Dad with a mad on, as he turned to confront Big Mouth.

But as he turned, expecting to see the bespectacled man with the bad haircut, he was buffeted by a faint wind. There was a blur of motion. All he got a glimpse of was the heels of the guy’s wing tips as he was yanked up into the air.

Kevin—and the guy’s girlfriend—stared up, dumbfounded.

What they saw was infinitely worse than any killer wearing a hockey mask and waving a garden hoe.

Some kind of awful glop was spilling out of the three projection windows behind the audience. Only, it wasn’t like it was just liquid—it looked kind of like loose clay, animated. A tendril of the stuff had whipped down, lassoed Big Mouth, and pulled him up toward the greater mass.

Big Mouth was screaming.

But then the screaming stopped as he was pushed head first into the writhing mass—with no splash. His legs and arms wriggled frantically, and then blood and some other liquid started pouring down over the heads of the audience.

Screams began, louder than any movie had ever aroused.

“Look at that!” cried Kevin, pounding on Eddie and Anthony to attract their attention. Even as they looked, gobs of muck rolled down onto the aisle, grabbing a woman and pulling her off her feet.

Panic seized the crowd.

The projector jammed, freezing the movie on the image of a screaming coed. And then the hot light burned the image away—even as the creature invading the movie theater burned away the face of a man with a flick of a pseudopod.

The audience became a mob. Panicked, they ran for their lives toward the bright red exit signs.

“We gotta get outta here,” said Anthony, but as the boys ran into the aisle, they were hit by running people. Anthony was carried along with the crowd, but Eddie and Kevin were knocked down onto the sticky, popcorn-covered carpet.

The creature roiled toward them.

The people came exploding out of the theater, and Meg Penny immediately knew why.

The creature was in there.

The monster was in there, and so was her little brother Kevin.

She fought her way through the fear-crazed crowd and through the doors. She smelled the thing before she saw it. The gut-wrenching acidy smell, and the blood, and the taint of the sewer… She looked up the aisle and sure enough, there it was, bigger than before, incredibly big, spouting through the projection-booth openings and pouring down the walls and aisle like oatmeal lava pouring through a flickering nightmare.

“Kevin!” she cried, fighting her way through the crush of bodies. “Kevin!”

There were groans and cries and screams everywhere, dominated by the obscene squelching sound the creature made as it wriggled through, grabbing people in a feeding frenzy.

Meg was knocked over. A man above her tried to run along the top of a row of seats toward the exit. But with a whipping sound a pseudopod lashed around his midsection, tore him away with a yelp, and dragged him back into the main mass of the thing.

“Kevin!” she cried, pulling herself up. But she was immediately knocked down, landing just inches away from the face of a woman who had been half dissolved from forehead to chin.

A scream struggled to break free, but she choked it back. Have to find Kevin, she told herself. Have to find Kevin.

“Kevin!” she cried, getting back up.

“Meg!”

She turned toward the sound of the yell. There he was! Still alive! He and Eddie were cowering in a corner, near the theater’s curtain, as people surged past.

She dodged around a row of seats and struck out toward them. The crowd was thinning out—either the creature had got them, or they’d escaped from the theater. She reached the boys and, taking no time to hug Kevin, wrenched them away from where they stood and pointed toward the side exit. “This way,” she cried.

But even as they ran, Meg saw peripherally the pseudopod lapping toward them over the seats in the strobing darkness.

“Down!” she called, pushing the boys down onto the floor.

The tendril flopped over them at freight-train speed, smashing a plaster angel on the side wall into dust.

“Come on!” cried Meg. “Hurry!”

The boys responded instantly, getting to their feet and running with her to the exit. Meg could hear the surging horror lapping at their feet.

The exit door was the traditional gray metal variety with a heavy-duty lock. Meg and the boys burst through it into the alley. Meg had a glimpse of the thing filling up the short hallway behind them.

She had to close that door! That thing was going so fast!

Meg slammed the door behind her. She heard and felt the thing pound against the other side like tons of dough striking a kneading counter. The door clicked shut, locking behind them.

Meg permitted herself a quick sigh of relief.

“Hurry,” she cried, and she struck off down the alley, along with Eddie.

But where was Kevin?

“Meg! Help!” cried the boy, and Meg turned around.

Kevin was still at the door, and instantly Meg could see why. She’d shut the door so fast, she’d caught the hood of his nylon jacket between the door and the jamb! And now Kevin was struggling to get the thing off… but the zipper was stuck.

She ran back to him.

“Stupid coat!” sobbed Kevin. “Stupid coat!”

God! The door was starting to bulge outward, pushed with incredible force from the creature.

She grabbed the zipper and tugged on its latch. It refused to budge. Tears ran down Kevin’s face, and he mewled softly.

Bubbles of slime squeezed through the bulging door. From the cracks oozed strands of the monster, blindly feeling around for prey. Then, one by one, the bolts on the door burst from their fittings.

Behind her she could hear Eddie yell. “Watch out! Hurry!”

Why hadn’t the kid run?

With a strength born of desperation Meg released the zipper and grabbed the front of Kevin’s jacket. She pulled and ripped it wide open. Immediately she tugged Kevin out of it and pushed him to one side.

The creature spewed from the doorway, slapping across the alley, its deadly steaming tissue just missing Kevin and Meg and Eddie.

“C’mon!” she cried, grabbing them up and turning away from the surging tide of monstrosity.

They ran down the alley. Her lungs were on fire, but she ran for all she was worth. Turned a corner.

Hit a dead end.

“There’s no other way out!” she cried.

She could hear the garbage cans being hit by the creature as it probed out for them.

She looked around, and then down, and caught sight of a manhole cover.

“Here!” she cried. “Help me lift it!”

The boys helped her, putting their fingers in the pryholes and lifting the cover to one side with a clatter.

At the corner a Dumpster, borne on a wave of the monster, smashed into the brick wall, crumbling and spewing trash, which was rapidly covered by the rolling putrescent ooze.

“Down!” she ordered, grabbing Kevin and pushing him into the dark hole. “Come on, you too!” she said, but Eddie needed no urging. He was already jumping down in Kevin’s wake.

The Blob hissed closer, closer.

Meg stepped down the first three metal rungs, ducking down below ground level and grabbing the manhole cover by its side. Somehow she found the energy to pull it back over the hole. It clanged into place, just as she sensed the Blob pouring over it.

She started moving farther down into the darkness, where she could hear Kevin and Eddie moving around.

Something grabbed at her hair.

Strands of acidic slime were leaking down, tangling in her hair! With a scream she jumped, and felt a rip on her scalp as whole clumps were pulled away. She hit concrete piping.

She could hear her hair sizzling above her.

She rolled away, sloshing through the water at the bottom of the round pipe, not even noticing the terrible stench.

She ran into a form and gasped.

“Meg!” cried Kevin. “It’s us!”

Kevin and Eddie were waiting for her at a juncture of the piping, in the dark.

“Which way, Meg?”

She pushed them in a random direction. One way was as good as another, as long as it headed away from that thing dripping down behind them.

Anthony Peters watched in disbelief as the stuff slammed through the theater exit door, cutting his friends off.

What was that thing? The kid watched it as it poured out, assuming a bulbous shape as it rolled after its three intended victims. Anthony was so dazed he didn’t think to just turn and run. Fascinated, he watched the slimy creature squirm down the alley like an inside-out giant worm.

It disappeared around the corner.

“Eddie!” he cried.

Eddie was his best buddy! They were blood brothers, he and Eddie. He couldn’t just leave him!

Anthony ran after the creature. Maybe he could help Eddie and Meg and Kevin.

When he turned the corner, he saw an astonishing thing.

There was the pile of gunk that had chased them all, at the cul-de-sac of the alley.

And it was dwindling in size.

“Eddie!” he cried in horror as he noticed by the dim streetlighting the half-eaten bodies bobbing inside the gelatinous ooze. Could it have gotten Eddie?

But then Anthony realized that the thing wasn’t disappearing. It was flowing down a manhole, into the sewers. It was still chasing Eddie and Meg and Kevin.

They might be still alive!

“Help!” he cried, turning and running back out of the alley. “Somebody help!”

He had to tell everybody where that monster went!

They had to save Eddie!