‘He was my best friend. Now he’s a pathetic junkie who’d sell us out for just a sniff of heroin. And don’t forget it was his fault the slimer got Chris.’
‘I know, but…’ she paused. Then, ‘Look, up ahead. A glow.’ '
‘I see it. It’s coming from one of the bathrooms.’
They approached the doorway cautiously. What they saw inside shocked them in spite of all the bizarre things they’d witnessed during the last forty-eight hours.
‘Oh God…’ said Linda.
‘Careful. Get ready to move fast,’ said Paul, lighting the flame-thrower.
But the thing on the bathroom floor didn’t stir. Finally Paul walked warily towards it for a closer look.
Parts of it were still recognisable as Mark — and his clothes lying nearby were further proof of his fate — but sections of several other bodies also protruded from the grotesque mass of organic material on the floor. Arms, legs, heads, the entire upper section of a female torso, as well as bits of animals too.
At first Paul thought the whole hideous mess was dead but then, to his profound disappointment, he saw one of the appendages stir. And then one of the heads — one he didn’t recognise, thankfully — opened its eyes and looked at him disinterestedly. The eyes closed again…
‘What does it mean?’ asked Linda anxiously from the doorway. ‘What’s happening to it now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Paul helplessly. He was wondering whether it would do any good to try and incinerate it again.
Then he noticed the fallen hypodermic and the plastic packets of white powder. He picked up the hypodermic. It was empty. Mark had obviously just given himself a fix when the thing took him by surprise.
Paul stared thoughtfully at the obscene mass of slimy white flesh with its protruding sections of human and animal anatomy. A slow smile began to spread across his face. Then he actually laughed aloud.
For Linda, under the circumstances, it was an unnerving sound. ‘What’s the matter, Paul?’ she cried. ‘Are you all right?’
He grinned at her. ‘I’ve just figured out what’s up with our unpleasant friend here. Would you believe it? The bastard’s stoned.. ’
Fifteen
Linda was home again. It was Sunday morning and she and Paul were in their small flat in Islington, North London. They had spent the morning having a luxurious lie-in and were now about to go down to the local pub with their next-door-neighbours, a young couple called Greg and Sheila who were good friends of theirs.
It was a hot day and the pub was crowded so they sat in the beer garden at the rear of the building. Linda felt very happy and contented. It was great to be back in familiar surroundings again with familiar faces. It made her feel secure.
She needed that feeling. She couldn’t remember exactly what had happened but she knew it had seemed like a terrible nightmare at the time…
But it was all over now. Gone and forgotten. She caught Paul’s eye and grinned at him. He grinned back and raised his pint of bitter. She picked up her glass too, clinked it with his then took a swallow…
She had to spit it out. It tasted horrible. She stared into the glass but instead of the expected scotch and lemonade it was filled with some kind of black jelly. And it was moving; trying to get out of the glass.
She flung the glass away and leapt to her feet. ‘Paul!’ she screamed.
But he remained motionless in his seat, looking at her with a blank expression. Then he opened his mouth and the same black jelly that had been in the glass began to ooze out of his mouth. She screamed again and turned to Greg and Sheila for help. But they too were undergoing the same horrible transformation. Black slime was dripping from their mouths too and their eyes were black holes leading into a pit where something nameless lurked, waiting… waiting for her.
She tried to run but then she saw that everyone in the beer garden looked the same. And they were moving in on her. She was surrounded. Trapped. And all alone.
She shut her eyes and screamed.
‘Linda!’
She was being shaken by the shoulder. It had her. She screamed louder.
‘LINDA! It’s me, Paul. You were having a nightmare, that’s all!’
She opened her eyes. Paul was leaning over her. She was in a small room lit by a single lamp. Where am I? she wondered. Totally disorientated, she couldn’t remember a thing at first, then it all came flooding back…
She groaned. The nightmare wasn’t over. They were still on the rig.
‘Linda? Are you okay?’
She sat up on the bunk. The movement made the pain in her broken arm worse. ‘I think so. What time is it?’
‘Almost six in the morning. I think we should get moving. I want to check the creature.’,
She remembered the events of a few hours ago. They had found the creature in a comatose state in the bathroom where it had got poor Mark. Paul decided that it had been affected by the heroin that Mark had just taken before he was absorbed by the thing. Excitedly, he told her they might have accidentally discovered an effective way of dealing with it…
‘If it was a simple poison the thing would just evolve the means of neutralising it,’ he had said, ‘but because it doesn’t chemically perceive the heroin as a threat to its existence it’s susceptible to it.’
‘Fine,’ she said impatiently, trying to avoid looking at the horror on the floor but at the same time worried that it might suddenly spring to life, ‘but how does that help us? It’ll just wear off eventually.’
‘Not if we give it a massive overdoseV Paul had cried. ‘Who knows — it might even kill it before it realises what’s happening. At the very least it will knock it out of action for a few days and give us time to get away from here.’
So they then" spent about half-an-hour dissolving the heroin in water and injecting it into the creature. Or rather Paul did all the injecting; she couldn’t bring herself to go near the thing. Just being in the same room as the slimy mass with its ghastly outcrops of human and animal sections was almost too much for her.
They only used two thirds of the drug altogether. Paul decided to keep the rest in reserve. ‘We’ll come back in the morning. If it’s dead — great! If not, we’ll inject the rest of it and then make for the roof.’
‘We’re not going up there now?’ she’d asked.
‘No. I think we can risk grabbing some sleep in one of the cabins. We’re both in need of some rest — you especially.’ ‘Are you sure we can take the chance?’ she asked.
She prayed he would say yes — she couldn’t imagine anything better than to be able to go to bed and sleep, even if it was only for a couple of hours.
‘Yes. I think so. The small amount of junk it got from Mark’s body put it under for quite a time so all this we’ve pumped into it should really drop it in its tracks.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ she’d said, glancing briefly at the thing and looking away with a shiver.
And now, five hours later, she felt just as exhausted and sore as before she’d gone to sleep. And the nightmare echoed in her mind like a nasty after-taste…
Her first try at getting off the bunk wasn’t a success. On top of everything else she was very stiff. She looked at her bare legs and groaned. They were covered with dark bruises and ugly abrasions — a legacy from her encounter with the transformed Alex. And from the feel of her back and shoulder where Alex’s claws had dug into her she was an even bigger mess.