Free The Blob by David Bischoff Page B

hand. It was terrible.
    Being alone in this room made Meg nervous. She had to see what was going on. Besides, Paul had been gone a long time.
    She got up and walked toward the swinging door into the clinic corridor.
    Maybe after this all was taken care of, they should just call it a night, and Paul could take her home That would shock Daddy, all right, especially after what he’d been thinking after that ludicrous condom thing. Maybe she could show Paul some of her collection of books, and the beautiful classical record collection she listened to often.
    Meg saw the doctor and the nurse at the end of the hallway, huddled over the gurney that held the Can Man. Meg couldn’t see what they were doing, so she started to walk toward them. Maybe Paul was with them, she reasoned, and he could tell her what was going on and how long it was going to be before they could leave this place.
    Then, from a nearby office, she heard the scream.
    Paul’s scream.
    It didn’t last long, for almost as soon as it started, it was . . . muffled.
    But it lasted long enough for Meg to tell exactly which office it came from, and she hurried to the door, twisted the knob, and pushed through.
    The lamp had fallen to the floor, and its glow was thrown across the tile and upward, glaring in the young woman’s eyes, casting swathes of light surrealistically across a scene straight from hell.
    Paul Tyler lay on the floor, and something was on top of him. It was pink and translucent, a massive glob of gunk that trembled and contracted around Paul, and it was alive !
    “Paul!” she cried.
    A gurgle. Squishing noises sounded, along with the slap of protoplasm against linoleum as the teenager desperately flopped and struggled against the gelatinous thing enfolding him as some massive flytrap might an insect.
    And it was pulling him across the floor, this mass . . . Pulling him toward an open window! A faint breeze through the window carried an awful odor back to Meg. The stink of acid and blood.
    Paul had managed to push a naked arm free of his attacker, and he reached out for help. Meg raced up to him and grabbed his hand, pulling, trying to prevent the globular creature from dragging him out the window.
    But even as she pulled hard, she could see what was happening to Paul, inside the monster. His skin—it was corroding, just like the Can Man’s hand! But this time the entire body of a healthy teenager was being consumed!
    “No,” she cried. “No!”
    And she tugged for all she was worth, trying to pull Paul from beneath the writhing organism. But the thing was incredibly strong. It carried her along with it, toward the open window.
    Then something gave. She felt herself hurtling back, thumping onto the floor, lights exploding in her vision. As her vision cleared, she realized that she was still holding Paul Tyler’s hand. She had pulled him free! She had—
    Meg looked down at the end, attached to the naked arm, attached to—
    Nothing!
    She was holding Paul Tyler’s severed arm!
    Gasping, unable to do anything, filled with revulsion and terror, she looked up and saw the Blob slurping up the side of the window, to the sill. And inside it, like a dying baby in a dissected womb, his features melting away within the noxious slime, hung Paul Tyler.
    Then, with a flop, and a loud liquid sound, the monster was gone, leaving a spoor of blood behind it.
    Only when she looked back down at Paul’s arm and realized that it was pulsing in her grip, as though still clinging desperately to life, did Meg Penny scream.
    Surrounded by a night alive with flashing red emergency lights and milling people, Sheriff Herb Geller strode from the clinic entrance toward the group of stunned people.
    He still didn’t believe what he had seen.
    God. The Can Man. He’d never seen a body in worse shape. And Herb Geller had seen his share of bodies too. And Paul! Little Paul Tyler, Chet Tyler’s kid? Dead and gone, leaving behind only his arm. Geller had looked at that arm