The Incredible Melting Man (11 page)

“Can’t you give us a clue?” he wheedled.

The officer leant closer. “Look, Zimwell,” he whispered. “Keep this under your hat, but there’s been a pretty nasty murder. The military are after him now. That’s all I can tell you.”

“And where’s that going?” Zimwell asked, pointing towards the Buick.

The officer looked anxiously over his shoulder before he answered.

“They’re taking it down to the research centre. Some special forensic examination. That’s all I know.”

He straightened up. “Now if you’ll move on, we can clear the road.”

Zimwell drove slowly past, craning to get a good look at the Buick. No, it certainly didn’t look damaged. But what was that stuff on the windows? They seemed to be daubed with something. He must find out what had happened.

He drove several hundred yards down the road until he was out of sight round the corner. Then he drew on to the grass verge and switched off his engine and lights. He’d wait for the breakdown truck and follow it to the centre. He’d got to see this Doctor Nelson and get some answers.

A bold idea suddenly occurred to him. He wouldn’t wait for the truck. He’d go on ahead, park his car somewhere out of sight near the gate to the centre, and when the truck arrived, with a bit of luck he’d sneak in on the back while the driver was getting clearance from the security man.

It was a hell of a risky thing, but he was on to the story of a lifetime. His nose told him.

“Funny,” said Matt as he stopped the pickup outside the farm gate. “I thought I left the light on.”

“You did,” said Nell. “But then you went back inside to see what time the movie started. You probably switched it off again.”

Matt looked unconvinced, but his young wife drew her soft hand over his furrowed brow. Cupping his cheeks in her palms she drew down his head and kissed the wrinkles away.

“You’re getting absent-minded in your old age, you know,” she said laughingly.

“Life begins at thirty,” he protested. “And I’m determined to start to really enjoy it. Now that we’re married and have got a place of our own.”

He slipped his arm round her waist and she let her head rest on his shoulder while they both looked out at their new home.

The clouds had cleared and soft moonlight shone down on the roof. The clematis that hung round the door in profusion climbed to meet it, pale flowers unfolding like hands raised in gentle supplication to the stars.

“Doesn’t it look peaceful,” sighed Nell. “So friendly and welcoming.”

Matt disengaged his arm and kissed her. “I think I know a more comfortable place for this sort of thing. Don’t you?”

Nell laughed, protesting modestly that she didn’t know what he was talking about. They both climbed out of the truck and made their way hand in hand up the garden path.

He reached for the doorknob and suddenly drew back his hand.

“What the devil—?” he cried, bringing the hand close to his face to inspect what had stuck to it.

“Ugh!” he cried in revulsion as the slime stretched between his fingers before falling with its own weight in a long string to the ground.

“What’s the matter, darling?” called Nell in alarm. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” replied Matt, brushing the rest off on the stonework of the house. He bent down and peered closely at the doorknob.

“It’s covered in the stuff,” he complained. He plucked a couple of clematis leaves off the plant and pressed them round the doorknob so that he could open it without touching any more of the slime. With the other hand he fished for his key. He turned it in the lock but nothing happened. The door began to open as he tried the handle. He quickly pulled it back and closed it again.

“It’s not locked,” he whispered in concern.

“You must have forgotten to lock it,” came his wife’s voice from the darkness nervously. “Why don’t you go in?”

Matt paused, distractedly wiping his hand against the leg of his trousers.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “There’s something odd going on. You wait here while I check.”

He slowly turned the handle and pushed open the door. He stood poised on the threshold listening keenly. Nell watched him as he crept noiselessly inside. Halfway down the hallway he stopped and she saw his head turn on one side as if he’d caught a sound but wasn’t sure what it was. Then, his mind made up, he stepped into the darkness of one of the rooms. In the same moment there was a loud thud that shook the passage wall and the door of the room slammed shut.

Nell’s heart lurched sickeningly.

“Matt!” she screamed. “Matt!”

She was answered by a silence that spread round the house like a shroud. Then, slowly, out of the closed room came the sound of lapping, like a giant cat drinking.

Appalled at her own temerity, Nell edged towards the room. Only an overwhelming dread for the safety of her husband drove her trembling limbs. As she wavered in the doorway, from within a dry rasping sound began to punctuate the lapping noises. Her shaking hand clasped the handle and she gradually pressed open the door.

A pale band of moonlight slipped past her into the darkness. It traced a dim path of light through a trail of broken furniture and came to rest on a grey shape crouched over something in the corner.

The lapping stopped and it turned slowly to look at her.

She’d interrupted its meal. Blood dribbled down its chin and daubed the riven edges of its rotting mouth. From its fist hung warm entrails, smoking faintly in the cool air of the room. It shuffled awkwardly, trying to shield what it was doing from her horrified gaze, shame burning in the hunted eyes.

But she had seen the human saucer into which it dipped its dripping mouth: the sprawled form of her Matt with his bowels torn out. She let out a howl of anguish.

The red rage leapt back into its eyes and it stumbled to its feet. Nell’s paralysis dissolved in a panic of flight. She sprang across the hallway into the kitchen, slamming the door behind her. The door had no lock and she cast about despairingly for something to wedge against it as the dreadful rasping noise followed her into the corridor. With it came the moist furtive pad of damp footsteps. They stopped outside the kitchen door.

With a superhuman effort she dragged the dresser in front of the door. As she wedged it into place the handle began to turn. She felt the pressure grow as the thing became frustrated. She had to use all her strength to hold the dresser in place, but still it began to move. Her grip was being lost on the polished tiles of the kitchen floor and her feet began to slide.

Then suddenly the pressure stopped and the door slammed shut. The thing had given up and she heard the broken breathing retreat. It was going away. Her heart pounded a tattoo of relief.

She grabbed the phone from its wall hook and urgently dialled the operator. It rang interminably. Her eyes never left the door, her body coiled like a spring waiting for
it
to return and renew its efforts. After an age the cheerful voice of the operator replied.

“Get help to the farm,” she cried hysterically. “Matt’s been murdered!”

There was a long pause before the operator replied. “Who is this?” she asked suspiciously.

“It’s Nell Winters at the farm. We’re being attacked. Help!”

She could stand it no longer. Her ears were deafened by the drumming of blood, and the image of her mutilated husband burst over her mind in a spasm of delayed shock. She flung down the phone and pulled open a drawer, arming herself with a meat cleaver. It was wickedly sharp, and she’d never before been able to bring herself to touch it. Matt used it when they killed stock. Matt.

She was blinded by the hot tears. Panic and despair fused to throw out burning sparks of hatred. Five minutes had robbed her of a lifetime’s love and happiness. Five minutes and some crazy perverted psychopath had torn out her life as well as Matt’s and the lives of their unborn children.

She raised the cleaver menacingly, emitting a sob of fury. She must be revenged.

She heaved at the dresser, trying to pull it away from the door. But her strength had ebbed. She spent some of her fury in vain struggling to move it, tears of frustration running down her face. Then she slumped back into a chair by the window, the cleaver hanging loosely from her limp hand. Her mind went numb.

There was an explosion of glass and she was showered with splinters. Something wet whipped round her neck like a slimy rope and dragged her up against the sink. A blast of hot and foetid breath burst on her. She squirmed round and found herself staring into the decaying pits of the thing’s eyes. Black and swollen pupils swam restlessly in a sea of red jelly and dripping remnants of flesh hung to the exposed bone of its forehead like pallid fungus. It bent towards her and she watched the frayed edges of the mouth pucker around the bloodstained teeth. The burning stench of its breath kissed her lips as a gurgle of pleasure bubbled up from its hot throat.

She shrank with revulsion, sliding loose on the wet arm. Her fingers tightened round the shaft of the cleaver and she swung it in the air bringing it down hard on the glistening arm. It sliced through the limb like cheese and the arm fell at her feet, the fingers twitching and clawing at the floor in a paroxysm of death. She watched in horrid fascination as the stump ran blood which suddenly set like sealing wax.

The thing let out a bellow of pain and shrank back from the window. Whimpering and gasping it disappeared into the shadows of the garden.

She struggled with the slime that covered her neck but it clung to her like melting plastic. It was in her hair, a thick web of mucus, reeking with the unmistakable stink of putrescent flesh. She clawed madly at her hair like an ensnared creature before slumping to the floor in impotent exhaustion.

Only her eyes showed signs of life as she stared at the dismembered limb in abject terror.

NINE

T
HEY WERE
having difficulty trying to get the cells to grow. They were voracious but vulnerable. Without plentiful supplies of living tissue they rapidly encysted, clustering together in colonies which took on a reddish hue. But living tissue of the right kind was something they didn’t have much of, not to spare.

At first Loring had suggested using some of the laboratory rats. They’d injected the blood stream with the cells and waited for it to have some effect. But the animals remained disconcertingly robust. When they eventually killed one and opened it up, they found groups of the cells engulfed by leucocytes. They hadn’t troubled the rats.

“It’s only interested in human cells, I’m afraid,” announced Loring after he’d examined the rat. “It’s sensitive enough to tell the difference and unless it gets what it wants it curls up and won’t play.”

Not for the first time Ted Nelson cringed at his colleague’s choice of words. What was happening to Steve didn’t seem to affect him. He was absorbed in the hunt for a new species. His objectivity distressed the doctor because he still kept alive an insane hope of saving his friend.

“We’ll use Perry.”

Loring’s words cut deep into the doctor’s thoughts.

“What’s that?” he demanded sharply.

“Use Perry,” repeated Loring. “There’ll still be enough living tissue about him. Why not grow the cells on Perry?”

Nelson felt sick. He stared bleakly at his assistant.

“Are you suggesting that we start cutting up one of the most important men in the Pentagon before the public knows he’s dead?” he said with slow incredulity.

“We won’t have to cut him up,” said Loring blandly. “Given the state he’s in, it’s only a question of rearranging a few things. No one need know there’s anything missing.”

It was macabre enough to be funny on any other occasion, but the events of the past eighteen hours had done nothing for Ted Nelson’s sense of humour.

“Do medical ethics count for nothing with you, Loring?” he demanded angrily.

But Loring countered with equal vigour.

“No, sir,” he replied. “But they do seem to be a trifle superfluous with Steve out there on the rampage carrying God knows what around inside him, and three more men poised to end up in the same way if we don’t come up with something in the next six hours.”

Nelson apologised. Once more he counted his good fortune at having Loring around at a time like this.

He rested a friendly hand on the assistant’s shoulder.

“Come on, Doctor Frankenstein,” he joked grimly. “Let’s go and see what we can rescue from Perry.”

He led the way to the morgue.

At the moment they removed the bloodstained sheet from the body of the General, only a quarter of a mile away Fred Zimwell of the
Trentham Globe
was on the threshold of the most unforgettable journey of his short career.

The breakdown truck had pulled up at the gatehouse and the driver was leaning out of his cab window having his papers checked by the security officer. From out of the shadows at the roadside a hunched figure crept towards the opposite side of the truck. He hesitated when he realised that the lifting gear filled the rear of the truck and there was no room for him to hide. In the same moment, having obtained clearance, the driver pushed the truck into gear and revved the engine. Fred Zimwell had no choice but to scramble into the back of the Buick as its rear wheels began to roll forward into the centre.

It took all his self-control to avoid crying out and betraying himself. Everywhere he touched was coated with slime. As he drew back his hands from one patch, they slid into another. He couldn’t see a thing, and when he tried to steady himself on the tilting slippery floor, the vehicle lurched and pitched him headfirst into the back seat. He hadn’t time to protect his face and as it slid across the upholstery it collected a layer of the stuff. He tasted it on his lips, rank and salty, and it blinded and stung his eyes. As he tried to brush it from his mouth he transferred more of it from his hands. He felt like an insect on flypaper. His lungs burst with the effort of keeping out the nauseating stench: it was like being holed up with a rotting corpse.

By the time the journey was over he lay under the seat, face down in a pool of his own vomit.