The Incredible Melting Man

THREE ASTRONAUTS HAD
RETURNED SAFELY FROM
THE MARS LANDING.
TWO WERE DEAD
AND STEVE WEST
WAS ON THE RUN.

On the run from the quarantine hospital which had been treating him . . . from the authorities who had to conceal his escape at all costs . . . from his friend Ted Nelson . . . and from the dreadful organism which had taken possession of his flesh, turning him into a fiendish nightmare but leaving his mind intact to cringe from the murderous horror he had become.

MAX J. ROSENBERG
Presents

A
ROSENBERG-GELFMAN
PRODUCTION

THE INCREDIBLE
MELTING MAN

Produced by
SAMUEL W. GELFMAN.

Written and Directed by
WILLIAM SACHS.

Starring
ALEX REBAR
as

“THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN”

Music by
ARLON OBER.

Special effects and overall
design created by the master of them all
RICK BAKER.

A New English Library Original Publication.

© 1978 by Quartet Productions.

All rights reserved.

FIRST NEL PAPERBACK EDITION
FEBRUARY 1978

ISBN: 0-450-04348-7

Cover art by Joe Petagno

NEL Books are published by New English Library Limited from Barnard’s Inn, Holborn, London EC1N 2JR

Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Reading and Fakenham

PROLOGUE
ONE

P
ROMETHEUS
O
NE
broke through the grey cloud cover. Flames seemed to burst from her as the bright orange parachutes were released. For a moment the capsule hung in the sky as if in doubt about where it truly belonged—back there in the cold void of space, or in the warm embrace of the living planet whose waters now stretched to meet it. Then, its mind made up, it began its slow descent through the dawn air of the Pacific.

Long before the splash of white spume signalled her return, a helicopter had left the deck of the one naval vessel to witness the splashdown. It sped across the ocean, cuffing the calm sea into a flurry of turmoil. Only a handful of selected personnel were on deck to see the frogmen begin to release the hatch on the outside of the capsule. Anxious eyes watched as the three spacemen were carried out and winched aboard the helicopter. Minutes later they were being stretchered into the specially prepared quarantine unit and the ship was racing at full speed for the mainland.

ONE

A
SCREAM
of terror shattered the dawn stillness of the research centre. A door crashed open at the end of the corridor and the uniformed figure of a nurse hurled herself through it. Her clothes were torn and bloodstained and a cruel red scratch ploughed down her cheek and into her neck.

Blind panic propelled her along the corridor where the polished surface of the floor tripped and snared her like a wicked accomplice. She was a fat girl and her huge bosom sobbed and heaved with effort as she clawed her way along the wall.

Her outstretched hand accidentally caught the light switch, throwing the corridor behind her into darkness. From the blackened doorway where she’d come, emerged the sound of breathing, heavy and difficult, like someone drawing alien air. Then the moist pad of footsteps. Something had followed her out into the darkened corridor.

She was running like someone in a nightmare, desperately trying to reach the end of the corridor. But it seemed to retreat and the shadow behind advanced, breathing sharp and urgently, hot on her neck. And the sound of its movements grew, like a heavy wet sack being humped along, slumping against the floor and then lifting stickily, like wet adhesive being peeled back from the shiny tiles.

The girl hurled herself at the window, shivering the glass in all directions; a long shard piercing into her thigh, deep into the living tissue. But she was oblivious to the pain in her panic at the terror in her wake. Gouting blood she picked herself up and staggered across the empty parking lot.

Still the breathing grew, sharper, more eager, sensing the kill. The glass had severed the nerve in her leg and it would no longer support her huge, hopeless weight. She slithered and fell in a pool of mud and a hand reached down for her.

The fingers parted like claws and strings of glistening mucus stretched between them. She felt the shadow bend over her and the hot breath burn her flesh. Then came the searing pain of teeth sinking into her neck and the life-blood being sucked from her. She squirmed in agony and slipped from under the weight of the thing on the slime which had come off it. Streaking the mud with her blood she clambered to her feet and tried to run again. But it was on her in a flash, bubbling and slobbering in its thirst for her flesh, wrestling to gain a grip with hands that slid over her body, sloughing off its own tissue.

Then it stopped, conscious of its own body slowly dissolving. It let out a cry, half human and afraid, so that the girl was forced to look into its eyes. For a moment, shame and fear struggled with some other impulse. Then it uttered another cry, cold and empty of humanity as the space between stars, and struck with renewed fury. Her skull collapsed and crushed the life within.

His fingers drummed distractedly on the desk in front of him, then, his mind made up, he reached for the phone.

“Get me General Perry in Houston, will you? And put it through the scrambler.”

Doctor Theodore Nelson glanced apprehensively at his assistant as he waited for the reply.

“What are you going to tell him?” asked the other man.

“What the hell can I tell him, except that Steve’s loose, and he’s killed, and if we don’t get him soon he’ll kill again.”

“But he’s going to want some explanation.”

“Well, I haven’t got one!” exploded Nelson.

“All right,” replied the assistant. “I’m only trying to be helpful.” There was a tense silence.

“Will you mention the radiation?” went on the assistant. “It was most pronounced on the body, though the spot where we found her was contaminated too. Not enough to be a risk to personnel, but enough to be significant.”

Doctor Nelson made to answer as the phone rang. His hand shook as he reached for it.

“Hello? General? Good of you to ring so promptly, sir. I’m afraid I’ve some bad news, sir. It’s West. He’s escaped.”

There was a gasp of dismay at the other end of the phone. The General’s voice barked down the line.

“How in God’s name could he?”

Nelson did his best to explain. “He was stronger than the others,” he began. “That’s why he’s lasted so long. Where he got the strength to kill the girl, I don’t know. The tissue degeneration is already at an advanced stage. We’re baffled.”

The silence stretched like a force field before the General replied.

“You say he’s killed a girl?”

Nelson explained about the nurse.

“Why aren’t you out looking for him, Doctor?” came the curt response.

“I’ve got some men out after him now, but we’re hamstrung by security. If we bring in anyone else and the press get to know, there’s going to be a panic. I’m using as many men as I dare.”

Again the silence. Then: “I’m coming over. We’ve got twenty-four hours to find out just what’s going on. Nothing must interfere with the next phase of the programme. Understand?” He hung up before the doctor had time to reply.

Nelson snapped the ballpoint pen he’d been nervously fiddling with during the telephone conversation.

“Sod the programme!” he ejaculated. “I might have known it would be the only thing that mattered to him. Typical of the Pentagon. The whole expedition amounts to nothing more than an exercise in military prestige as far as they’re concerned.” All the self-control of the past few hours seemed to have ebbed. “They don’t give a damn that there’s a man out there going through agony. My friend!” He fought to suppress the image of what he’d seen happening to Steve as he lay in the unit’s hospital. “And they expect me to go along with their ludicrous cover-up,” he added bitterly.

The assistant rested a comforting arm on his shoulder. “He won’t know much about what’s going on, will he?” he asked.

Nelson wasn’t listening. “Judy’s not going to take this at all well, Dick,” he said. “She was very fond of Steve. The shock could mess things up again.”

Dick Loring didn’t understand.

“My wife’s pregnant again,” Nelson explained. “It’s our third try. She lost the other two around this time—about fourteen weeks.”

They lapsed into silence. The morning sunlight was streaming in through the lab window, falling now for the first time on the bulky figure lying on the bench by the wall and draped with a white sheet. The red stains shone like poppies.

“Pray God they’ve caught up with him,” said Nelson, clenching his knuckles and looking out across the car park towards the woods where the men with the Geiger counters had disappeared in search of his patient.

Loring glanced apprehensively at the body under the sheet.

“Do you think he’ll try and kill again?” he asked.

The doctor shook his head. “I don’t know. By rights he should be
in extremis,
unable to move. The effects of the pain-killing drugs will be wearing off all the time. The tests show his brain and internal organs are decomposing as rapidly as the epidermal layers. His ability to function rationally will be hopelessly impaired. It’s the only explanation for what he did to the nurse.”

He drew his hand across his forehead as if to try and brush away the unsavoury thoughts that began to invade his brain.

“There’s nothing in his background to suggest an aggressive nature,” went on the doctor, tormenting himself in the search for a clue to the grotesque change in his patient’s behaviour.

The truth was that Steve had been the sensitive one—Nelson had begun to realise that only recently as their friendship had deepened. The training for the flight tended to ignore such things, something Nelson was growing bitterly aware of. But—he’d come to recognise it as he’d monitored their condition during the flight—Steve was the thinker, the poet of the expedition. He was the one the flight had affected most profoundly.