The Howling Teenagers Affair
By Dennis Lynds
February 1966
Volume 1, Issue 1
Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo had one last day to find and destroy THRUSH's new deadliest weapon—an army of mindless monsters who killed with a smile—and died laughing!
ACT I: THE MADNESS METHOD
ACT II: THRUSH and COUNTER-THRUSH
ACT III: TRIO OF BEDLAM
ACT IV: A POWER OF TEN
ACT I: THE MADNESS METHOD
Violent death hung in the morning air. It rose with the mist over the great river that flowed past the shining white new city. The rumble in the distance grew louder, a sound like an express train moving closer. The police and thin line of British-uniformed, American-armed troops were in their places around the perimeter of the airfield, at the edge of the city in the morning sun.
The twin-engined aircraft circled the field once and prepared for the landing. The distant rumble grew closer. The gently descending aircraft touched down. The morning mist began to burn off.
The police and soldiers lounged easily in their thin line, joked, pointed toward the approaching rumble that shook the ground, and laughed. They were not worried. This was Africa. The new Africa, but still Africa. The Zulus of Tchaka had roamed across this land, beating their assegais against their shields to frighten the enemy before they ever appeared to do battle with them.
The approaching mob was doing the same thing, and the police and soldiers were not frightened. They had been through this before. Only as a formality they held their weapons ready as the first of the mob advanced along the road from the city.
The twin-engined aircraft rolled to a stop and the door opened. A massive, broad-shouldered man stepped out and stood at the head of the movable stairs. His white teeth flashed in the morning sun. He was taller than the nervous men around him, like some great Zulu chief himself.
At the edge of the field the first wave of the mob made contact with the police and troops. The police and troops held them back, smiling but striking out with clubs and gun butts where necessary. The troops and police smiled, because they had suddenly seen that the entire mob was made up of the young, the teenagers of this emerging new nation.
The tall, broad-shouldered man stepped down the movable stairway and reached the field itself. He started across, his bodyguards trotting to keep up with him.
"Vive le Presidente!" voices shouted.
Suddenly, the mob seemed twice its size. The police stopped smiling. The soldiers battled. Howling, the mob of teenagers smashed through the thin line of guards. Sirens wailed in the distance as reinforcements approached for the outmanned police.
The mob did not wait. Roaring like wild animals, screaming, hysterical, they poured over the line of guards.
Engulfed by the wave of suddenly distorted faces, the sea of wild eyes, the police and troops had no chance.
The teenagers swept across the open air field like the ancient Zulu warriors.
His bodyguards, everything forgotten now but the safety of their chief, fired their machine-guns directly into the advancing mob. The first wave of the roaring mob went down. Blood spurted across the earth of the field. Screams of pain filled the air. Legs and arms kicked, writhed on the ground.
But the mob did not stop, did not pause, did not hesitate even one split second.
The bodyguards fired again, held down the triggers, the barrels of their sub-machine guns turning red.
The mob swept on.
Like the great ocean itself the mob of howling teenagers rolled across the field.
And then the mob passed on toward the distant edge of the open field and the dark jungle.
Behind them they left thirty of their own dead; they left a hundred wounded and writhing. They left the bodyguards trampled and groaning, the police and troops dazed and wounded. They left the twin-engined aircraft leaning crazily on one smashed wing.
And they left the tall president lying on his face, dead, with a long knife plunged into his back.
* * *
The Palladium in London rocked to the screams of the teenagers. On the lighted platform stage four young men sang, twisted, strummed guitars, banged the drums. The young people screamed with delight. They laughed, clapped, sighed. Their bright young faces were excited with the beat of the music, the words of the singers. One tall boy, his hair streaming out behind him, dove from the balcony. His bloody head lay smashed against a seat below.
* * *
In Sydney, Australia, the police answered a call. Citizens complained that there was a noisy party disturbing the peace. When the police arrived in the rich suburb all was silent. Cautiously the police approached the house. Inside, in the basement playroom, they found the dead bodies of twenty-two teenagers.
"Poison?" the detective said. "All of them?"
"Every one. And self-inflicted without a doubt. They all have the glasses near them."
"Mass suicide?" the detective said, unbelieving, staring.
* * *
The laboratory lay in burned smoldering ruins. Captain Parker of the Chicago police stood beside the director of the laboratory.
"They were picketing—nothing unusual," the director said.
"They know we are working on military research. Peace groups often picket us."
"Then they went wild?" the captain of Chicago police said.
"All at once, just before quitting time, the twenty of them became two hundred, perhaps three hundred. They broke into the building and set it on fire."
"All teenagers? Every one?"
"All," the director said. "And the plans for the nuclear fuse are gone."
* * *
On a side street in the Soho section of London, a mob of young people blocked the path of an armored car. The driver and two guards got out to clear them off. The driver and both guards died later of multiple injuries from their beating. Two million dollars in gold bullion vanished.
* * *
The beach near Santa Barbara, California, was deserted when the sixteen boys and girls, all under eighteen years of age, walked into the sea and out of sight. They were never seen again.
"Like lemmings," the highway patrol officer said. Bodies washed ashore all week.
* * *
In Red Square, Moscow, the police failed to hold back the horde of long-haired youths when the deputy chief of security of the Polish People's Republic came to visit the tomb of Lenin. The police were reprimanded. The square was cleared by troops. Six of the teenagers died, and twenty went to prison. But the deputy chief of Security of the Polish People's Republic was dead.
TWO
Napoleon Solo looked deep into her eyes. Violet eyes, like deep, liquid marbles, pools of beauty. She was curled like a kitten at the end of a long, soft couch. Solo's smile was easy, youthful as he looked into those violet eyes.
"How do you do it, Maxine?' Solo whispered into her ear. "Be almost six feet tall and curl up into a powder puff—such a pretty powder puff?"
"Mirrors," Maxine Trent whispered back. "I do it all with mirrors."
"Not all with mirrors, I hope." Solo said softly.
"All Napoleon Solo," she said. "I'm an illusion. I'm only a mirror myself. If you touch me, poof!"
Solo sighed. "The story of my life, poof!"