The Incredible Melting Man (12 page)

The driver left his cab and it gave the reporter a chance to slither out and stagger into the shadow of the building. Another spasm of retching seized his stomach and nearly gave him away again. He could only crouch miserably in a corner swallowing it down. Release came with the noise of the truck manoeuvring the car into position and drowning the sounds of his distress.

He had to wait until the truck had gone. By then the impulse to abandon the whole ill-conceived venture had lessened. He felt slightly better and had already made plans to break into the first toilet he could find in order to clean himself up. His physical discomfiture worked one way in his favour: it made him forget the risk he was running snooping about a top security establishment and it spurred him on to get inside the building.

He moved swiftly towards a row of lighted windows. His attention had been caught by two white-coated figures bending over something that was heaped on to a long table. From a distance it looked like an untidy assortment of coloured rags, grey and red. Only when he’d taken several steps nearer did he realise what it was that was spilling over the edge of the table. It was a human arm, limp and lifeless.

He crept up to the window and peered over the sill. His well-practised stomach turned again. One of the men was probing about inside the most gruesomely mangled corpse he’d ever seen. A leg was torn off and from the stump blood still dripped through the tangle of shattered bone and twisted cartilage. The torso was unrecognisable. But the face. He easily recognised that. It was General James Perry, Head of Space Probe Operations, Houston.

What the hell had he unearthed?

Many of the deeper layers of tissue were unscathed and Loring’s scalpel worked deftly. He rapidly transferred the neat strips of tissue to the waiting saline solution, and they bore what they could decently remove from General Perry back to the lab.

Loring introduced smears of the alien cells to the new medium. He was working under sterile conditions on most of the dishes. It was crucial that they find optimum conditions for multiplication as quickly as possible. The remaining cultures went into the simulators on the off-chance that it would reveal the source of the parent cells.

When they’d finished, both men could do nothing but wait for the voracious cells to do their work. Geiger counters installed alongside each culture would measure their success. They switched out the lights and left the lab.

Loring went for a bite to eat while the doctor returned to his office to get the latest on the search for Steve. The young, smooth-faced officer who’d replaced the General was looking very pleased with himself when he arrived. He’d just replaced the telephone receiver.

“You’ve found him?” demanded Nelson eagerly when he saw the expression.

Captain Gerald Sharpe shook his head, adjusting the self-satisfied smirk fractionally in deference to the doctor’s worried frown.

“No, but we’re closing in on him,” the Captain drawled. “We’ll soon have him. Don’t you worry.”

Nelson could have floored him. He’d taken an instant dislike to the man when he’d heard his voice over the phone. The calm tone had belittled his own grave concern, and it seemed to epitomise the problem he was having in getting the authorities to listen to him.

In his own estimation Captain Sharpe had good reason to feel pleased with himself. He’d just replaced one of the most senior ranking officials in the US Army, literally taken over his command, as he saw it. It was an undreamed-of honour that augured very well for his future. Promotion could only follow. Of course he was ignoring the fact that he happened to be the only senior officer on duty when the emergency broke out—the rest of the base at Hale was out on an operation. And he also ignored the fact that it wasn’t really a military operation, just a man-hunt for a nutty killer. None the less, he felt extremely pleased with the way things had turned out. And he’d particularly enjoyed putting that officious sheriff down just now on the phone. Ordering him, a trained soldier, where to deploy his men, indeed!
He
gave the orders and he wasn’t having his troops following up routine police enquiries involving hysterical farmer’s wives. He needed all his available manpower for the sweep. The net was tightening and he knew that the enemy was inside it. It was only a question of time.

“No reports of him striking again?” asked Nelson apprehensively.

The Captain stepped briskly to his feet and strode over to the map that was hanging on the wall. Waving a makeshift baton he proceeded to give Nelson a lecture in military strategy. It was the classical pincer movement, he expounded meticulously, adjusting a pin which was in danger of coming unstuck and removing a crucially important party of his men from the scene of battle.

The doctor ignored the lecture. “Have you heard from the police?” he asked. “Have they had any reports?” He knew Steve would strike again soon, a pattern was emerging. The cells craved nourishment.

The Captain looked offended at the interruption. “I’ve just had a call from the sheriff,” he replied brusquely. “Nothing important. Something about a farm. But he can’t be over there. My men—” He was returning to his map when the doctor grabbed his arm.

“What farm?” he demanded.

The Captain grudgingly repeated the sheriff’s story about a telephone call. Judy’s call of only a few hours earlier was still fresh in Nelson’s mind in all its horror.

“Get back on to him,” Nelson ordered. “We’re going there. It’s time you saw what we’re up against, instead of messing about playing at soldiers.”

Nelson’s worst fears were confirmed when they arrived at the Winters’ farm. At the gate the Geiger counter was picking up a moderate reading but as they approached the door it intensified. He ordered the party to stop.

“It looks as though he could still be here,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. He turned to the Captain. “Order reinforcements. We want the place surrounded.”

The Captain hesitated but Nelson swung round on him in the dark. “More men, Captain,” he hissed. “Now. We mustn’t let him go this time.”

Nelson ordered them back beyond the gate. While the Captain contacted his men on the short-wave radio, Nelson instructed two of the soldiers to mount their searchlights on the wall and sweep the garden for any signs of life. When they failed to locate anything he ordered them to train the light on the door.

“I’m going to go in there to see if he’s inside,” he announced.

“I can’t allow you to do that, Doctor,” said Captain Sharpe. “It’s too risky. I’ll come with you.”

He turned to his men. “I want you to cover us with your rifles. When I give the order, fire. Right?”

The doctor grimaced in the darkness. “I don’t think that will be necessary, yet, Captain,” he said, controlling his exasperation with difficulty. “As far as we know he’s still a human being. A very sick human being.”

Without replying the Captain clicked his heels and held open the gate. He had his hand on his gun as they followed the yellow track of light thrown by the searchlight. It picked out a glistening trail of mucus at their feet.

“What’s that stuff?” asked the Captain with distaste.

His manner made Nelson callous. “Part of the man we’re looking for,” he said bluntly.

The Captain stopped. “I beg your pardon?”

“Part of Steve West’s epidermal tissues,” replied the doctor coldly. “They’ve melted into a unicellular jelly. Amongst other things,” he added darkly.

“But how on earth—?” stammered the Captain. “I’d no idea—!”

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about this matter, Captain,” interrupted Nelson. “So if you could stop treating it like a West Point exercise and remember that lives are at risk, maybe many more than we can imagine—” He left the sentence unfinished, afraid to voice his growing fears.

The farmhouse door was half open and he gently pushed it further until the searchlight spilt inside and illuminated the whole corridor. His heart sank when he saw the film of mucus shining amongst the wreckage.

“Steve?” he called quietly. “Are you there?”

His words echoed down the corridor before being swallowed by the silence.

He stepped over the threshold and a huge shadow stretched down the corridor before him. A faint whimper arose from a room near the end.

Nelson sprang forward, driving his shadow into the far wall. He pushed on the door but it wouldn’t open. The woodwork was smothered in slime.

“Quick,” he called to the Captain. “Give me a hand with this door.”

As they pushed, the whimpering grew into a crescendo of terror.

“He’s in there,” gasped Nelson. “Push harder, man! We must save her!”

The door suddenly began to move and edge open with the scrape of heavy furniture. Nelson slid through the gap and jabbed on his torch.

“Don’t, Steve,” he yelled. But the room was empty apart from the huddled screaming creature in the corner.

Nell Winters, her hands clasped tightly over her eyes, was beyond his reach in her private hell.

Nelson was doing his best to quieten her when there was a cry from behind him.

“Come and look at this!” called the shocked voice of the Captain.

The remains of Steve’s dismembered arm lay on the floor. The flesh was melting and the fingerbones protruded like talons. In the shadow of the unlit kitchen, the dissolving flesh glinted with a faint red phosphorescence.

“Don’t touch it!” cried Nelson. The Captain shrank back.

“Why? What is it?”

“It’s his arm,” replied Nelson grimly. “And it could be dangerously radioactive by now. Come on, help me to get her out.”

They supported the farmer’s wife out of the house where two policemen took her to a waiting car. Nelson returned with a Geiger counter. It confirmed his suspicion that the release of radiation was on the increase and that the alien cells were maturing faster. Steve was becoming lethal in more ways than one.

The Captain found Matt Winters’s remains and it matured him. The farmer’s insides had been scooped out and plastered all over the corner of the room. He’d died from a single blow that had torn off the top of his skull like an extrovert peels an egg. His face still bore the mixed expression of horror and surprise that death could come so quickly. The egregious slime draped the body, almost tenderly, like a silk moth swathes her eggs.

Captain Sharpe fought back the nausea and went outside to organise his men. This time he led the search party himself. He’d stopped playing soldiers.

Fred Zimwell stared aghast at the face which met him in the mirror. It was caked with dry blood and puckered where the slime had dried and pulled the skin. He looked like the victim of an amateur plastic surgeon. The revolting smell still hung about him.

He’d been lucky to find an empty washroom and he plunged his hands into the warm water and worked up a good lather before smothering his face with the fresh-smelling soap. He felt like someone who’d been rescued from a plague pit.

When he’d sponged down his clothes and combed his hair, he felt a sudden resurgence of the journalistic adrenalin. He was on to the biggest story of his life and it was worth the discomfort and risk. He pushed his head out of the washroom door and surveyed the corridor. First he must find the room with the corpse and make absolutely sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. He’d seen the General before when he was first put in charge of operations at Houston last year. He’d paid a brief visit to the centre then and he’d been sent to get an interview. He’d got within two aides of the great man before being turned away. Still, it was a face he’d seen in the papers and he was ninety-nine per cent sure he wasn’t wrong. But he wanted to be a hundred per cent. God! If only he’d brought the camera!

He slipped out into the corridor and made his way stealthily towards the morgue. It was the middle room of the wing and he had no difficulty in finding it. A spasm of nervous excitement shook him as he pushed open the door and stood in the darkness. He’d have to switch on the lights. As he did so he had a sudden idea. There were a number of lab coats hung up over by the wall. He’d look a lot less conspicuous to anyone outside if he slipped one on.

In his white coat he stood over the corpse and removed the cover. It was the General all right, they’d even put a name tag on his toe. But what a mess! He considered himself fairly unsqueamish when it came to corpses. He’d been first on the scene at plenty of automobile pile-ups, and he’d watched the ambulancemen scrape up some pretty dire sights from the highway. But impact crushed and pulped things. This guy had been eaten: there were teeth marks everywhere and long scratches like claw marks. Some effort had been made to clean him up, but where the wounds were deep there were pools of transparent fluid. He tentatively touched the stuff with a finger and watched with disgust as it stuck to him and stretched like wet glue. So that’s why they’d wanted the car. The same thing that had been chewing lumps out of the General had been inside the back of the Buick with the old couple.

Was it a bear? But since when did bears hitch rides in Buicks? And it didn’t explain what he’d seen half an hour earlier through the morgue windows. What had they been doing performing an autopsy on a man who’d died in such a manifestly obvious way? That was the next thing he must find out: what the two scientists had done with the bits of General Perry they’d removed.

He carefully replaced the sheet over the remains of the General and retreated from the morgue. The room next door was locked, and so was the one at the other side. The third door he tried was marked Pathology and it was open.

He’d got halfway inside when the sound of footsteps rang out in the corridor. Someone had left one of the rooms on the other side and was coming in his direction. He quickly closed the door and stood behind it listening. The footsteps arrived outside and stopped. There was a moment’s hesitation as they began to retreat.

He breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Whoever it was had obviously seen there was no light above the door and thought better of the visit. It meant that this time he daren’t take the risk of switching on the light. He’d just have to wait and give his eyes time to grow accustomed to the gloom.