David Bischoff: The Blob

“I thought you were gonna look after yourself,” she said.

“I guess I blew it, huh.” He looked around. Shrugged. Sighed. “I’m sorry, Meg. I really am.”

“Me too.”

Then she was looking at something else.

“Brian,” she said.

“Yeah?”

She pointed down at the soldier against the wall, coming apart. “On his belt, Brian. Look!”

Brian looked.

One of the pieces of equipment the soldier carried was strapped to his belt. Brian recognized it from war movies. It was a hand-held grenade launcher. There were words stenciled along the metal side: EXPLOSIVE PROJECTILE—CAUTION: BLOWBACK.

Oh, yes! Perfect!

He looked at her. And to think he had given up!

He grinned, kissed her hard on the lips, and stooped down. He grabbed the grenade launcher and pulled it off the soldier’s belt.

“This thing work?” he asked.

The soldier nodded. With his good hand he reached up and yanked back a cocking lever. “It won’t do any good. Not against that monster…”

Brian looked up the shaft. He put the walkie-talkie to his lips, thumbed the “on” switch. “Hey, Trimble. If you won’t listen to me… then listen to this!”

He aimed the grenade launcher up the shaft.

Meg and the soldier scrambled out of the way for cover.

Brian’s finger found the trigger.

And he pulled it.

The launcher tugged like a bucking bronco on his arms, but the missile went true. In less than a blink of an eye it tore up the vertical shaft to the manhole cover at the top.

Brian stepped to one side the very instant of the explosion. Metal and broken cement rained down—along with pieces of blown-up tire. It felt as though someone had clapped Brian on his ears. They were ringing like bells.

But he was okay.

Choking with the dust from the explosion, he picked himself up and called out, “Come on, folks! We got ourselves a way out!”

As quick as they could, they climbed the ladder, Brian first.

He had something important to do.

The fresh night air struck him, revitalizing him, as he lifted himself out onto the street, gratified at the sight that met his eyes.

Chaos.

The truck that had been standing on the manhole cover was flipped on its side. And so had a lot of soldiers. Including, Brian could see, Dr. Trimble, who lay just yards away, dazed, struggling to get back to his feet.

Brian jumped up through, clearing the way for Meg and the soldier to get out. His eyes raked along the rabble on the ground.

He saw what he needed.

He scooped it up: an M16 rifle.

He swung it toward Dr. Trimble. God, how he wanted to kill that bastard!

A voice stopped him. “Flagg! Drop it!”

He spun. Peripherally he could see Meg crawling out of the hole. Then the soldier, with Meg’s help. But just past them stood Deputy Billy Briggs, leveling his service revolver.

“It’s a lie!” he cried. “All of it!”

“I said, put it down!” cried Briggs. “I’ll blow you out of your shoes, boy!”

Dr. Trimble was using the time to pick himself up. “Shoot him!” he cried to Colonel Hargis.

Colonel Hargis raised his rifle, but hesitated. Brian could read the doubt in his eyes. The man, for all his hawkishness, wasn’t as loony as the scientist. And this business was getting thoroughly crazed.

“Shoot him?” said Briggs. “Shoot him! What is this, Russia?” The deputy swung his revolver, covering Trimble and Hargis.

There were clicking sounds as the other soldiers swung their weapons on Briggs and Brian.

“All right, hold it,” said Briggs. “Everybody just put your guns down!”

“He’s infected!” said Trimble, pointing at Brian. “Contagious! He’ll spread a plague through this town and kill you all!”

Then Brian noticed that there were townspeople gathering around. At the word plague they gasped and they drew back. That even got to Briggs. He swung his revolver around and put it on Brian.

“Listen to me, Briggs,” said Brian Flagg desperately. “ Think for a minute! You suppose an army of guys in plastic suits shows up every time a meteor falls?”

“Shoot him!” cried Trimble. “That is a direct order!”

“How’d they get here so quickly? How’d they even know to come?”

“Shoot, damn it!” Trimble yelled, “Shoooot!”

“I’ll tell you how!” Brian continued. “That ‘meteor’ is man-made. It’s a satellite! It’s some kind of germ-warfare test! They fucked up!”

Maddened by Brian’s words, the scientist jumped over to Colonel Hargis and wrestled his M16 from his grasp. He swung it around, cocking it.

“Don’t try it!” said Briggs.

And the rifle went off.

Blam! Blam! The bullets sliced through the air, whizzing past Brian’s ear. He jumped and pulled Meg down, covering her as Dr. Trimble fired at them wildly. A bullet caught Deputy Briggs in the shoulder and his gun was knocked to the ground.

Silence dropped onto the battlefield as Dr. Trimble swung the rifle toward where Brian Flagg huddled with Meg Penny.

“ You’re the infection, boy! And I’m the penicillin!” said Dr. Trimble.

Brian was suddenly looking down the bore of the Army rifle as the doctor tightened his finger, his aim better this time.

Just then something whipped out from the manhole. A pseudopod flung out, catching Dr. Trimble’s ankles.

His finger squeezed the trigger, but the shot went wide as he was tugged onto the ground.

“What!” he cried, as the tendril pulled him toward the manhole. Dr. Trimble yelled and kicked as he was dragged along, tangled in the M16’s strap.

“Help!” he cried. “Help!”

It was the creature! Brian thought, getting up. The creature, reaching up from the sewers.

Everyone just watched, stunned and unable to do anything, as Dr. Trimble was pulled down into the manhole. The rifle caught on the sides of the manhole, stopping him.

“Help me!” he cried. “Please help me!” His voice was muffled through the plastic and the faceplate.

Then the doctor started screaming, jerking violently, caught there in the manhole.

Brian watched as something oozed and swelled up within the helmet, bubbling up over the man’s head from within.

And Brian could see the awareness in the doctor’s eyes. He knew exactly what was happening.

And then those bulging eyes were engulfed in slime.

The M16 strap broke.

Dr. Trimble was sucked away from sight.

From the sewers of Morgan City there arose a squishing, squelching sound.

The monster was eating.

Eating, and growing.

For Colonel Templeton Hargis it was just too much.

Hell was bubbling below his feet, and the man who had made it was frying in his own mad doctor’s stew.

He looked around at the horrified faces of his men, staring at the manhole where Dr. Trimble had just disappeared. He saw reflected in those men’s faces his own confusion, his own feelings of helplessness.

The Soviet Union was half a world away now, a very distant threat to the national security.

But the hell-spawn created by Dr. Trimble in his satellite laboratory was right beneath their butts. And the trouble was it seemed not to have the faintest inkling that it should be patriotic and loyal to its creators.

The motherfucker would eat anything!

Hargis ripped off his helmet and threw it to the ground. He grabbed an M16 from one of his men.

“Let’s scrag that thing!” he said.

He stuck his rifle barrel down the manhole and let ’er rip. Other soldiers stepped up along with him, aimed down the hole, and began firing, making a furious din.

The kick of the gun was gratifying in his hands, but as soon as his initial wave of anger passed, Hargis realized that if that blob thing was as big as the people who’d escaped the movie theater said it was, it was going to take more than a hail of bullets to snuff the bastard.