Charlie the spider monkey didn’t care much about the heat, but something did attract his attention. A barely audible metallic creaking sound was coming from the duct that his master had opened. Charlie wondered what the hell it was, and his curiosity got the better of him. He abandoned his paper bag of peanuts and skittered over there, jumping up to the edge and perching, looking down into the dark hole.
Creak creak creak…
When Phil Hobbs held his hand out for his next peanut, he received nothing. He looked up from his comic book and saw no monkey on the rewind table.
“Charlie?”
He swiveled around and caught movement at the air-conditioning duct—Charlie’s tail, just disappearing.
Good Lord, the simian simpleton had gone into the hole!
“Hey!” cried Phil Hobbs and rushed to the hole. “Charlie, get outta there!”
In the hole there was only darkness. He could see nothing. He stuck his head in, calling for his pet. “Charlie!”
His voice echoed into the piping.
“Where the hell are you?”
It gobbled down the tiny creature, but the protoplasm only maddened it. Food, more food!
It had lain awhile in the sewers, feeding on rats and digesting its prey from the phone booth and from the police car it had invaded, but its raging need for more flesh and blood had urged it out of its hole, up and up, to where it sensed many animate bags of blood. Food, more food!
And now the Blob saw the man sticking his head into the duct, and it raced up toward the vibrations of his voice… and the pulsing of his blood.
Clyde Mitchell, the manager of the Morgan City theater, walked up the steps toward the projection booth.
He couldn’t figure out for the life of him what was wrong with the air conditioning. He’d checked the units downstairs and they were churning along, nice as you please. Still, he didn’t want to upset his projectionist. Hobbs was a good one, and they were hard to get in a town like Morgan City. Mitchell was young yet, and he had aspirations of heading for the top of the chain of theaters that he worked for. But he wouldn’t get anywhere if this job wasn’t run efficiently.
At the top of the stairs he tried the door. It was locked. He rattled it a bit, but no one came to open it.
“C’mon, Hobbs, put the yo-yo down and open this door!”
No answer. Well, he had a key ring. Wearily he pulled out the proper key and opened the door.
The film was still chugging away. Light flickered along the front of the booth, almost like an erratic strobe, but otherwise the room was dark. The manager pulled out his usher’s flashlight and swept it across the room in a slow arc.
Phil Hobbs was nowhere to be seen.
“Hobbs? You in here?” he called, becoming apprehensive.
It came down with a whir.
The yo-yo.
It came down from the ceiling, and bumped there at the end of its string. And something was dripping down it.
Mitchell jumped back. What the hell?
He automatically swung the flashlight up, cutting through the shadows.
Phil Hobbs the projectionist seemed to be embedded in the ceiling! Some kind of runny glob was holding him there, like an insect stuck in tree sap. Even as Clyde Mitchell looked, he could see the light going out of the man’s eyes. Could see the skin starting to melt away, exposing cartilage and skull, as the jaw opened and closed and the body twitched and jerked.
And then Mitchell could see that Hobbs’s body was being dragged across the ceiling, that the whole ceiling was a writhing mass. It seemed alive! And more gunk was spewing up from out of the air-conditioning duct.
Stunned, the manager could only think, So that’s why he wasn’t getting any AC.
Then ropes of slime dropped from the ceiling, surrounding him. Terrified, he turned to escape…
But the whole door was covered in a sheath of gunk.
The audience in the theater screamed as the hockey-masked killer struck again.
As though on cue Clyde Mitchell screamed as well, as the ceiling dropped down on him.
Meg Penny fumed as she was jerked and jostled by the military van zooming through town.
That damned Brian Flagg! He’d just flown the coop. And here she’d thought he was showing some special qualities she’d never imagined he possessed all these years! She’d actually felt something for the jerk! You couldn’t go through what they’d been through together and not feel something. But then he’d abandoned her, just like that, to save his own rotten skin.
The van squeaked to a halt and Meg heard the sound of footsteps running up to open the back door.
The door was opened by another of those plastic-suited soldiers, who motioned her out. As she stepped onto the pavement, she realized where she was. The center of Morgan City: Town Hall.
The Town Hall was two stories of ivy-covered brick, situated to the north of the tree-lined Town Square. Usually it projected an image of dignity and austerity, but tonight all was chaos. White-suited soldiers ran hither and yon, escorting Morgan City citizens to shelters. Meg could see medical teams working with clumps of people, checking them out for infection under artificial lights. Lots of people were still in their bedclothes, having been roused from sleep.
Yes, now the Town Hall was the Town Emergency Relief Station.
From the top of a military half-track a loudspeaker blared: “Please assemble in an orderly fashion and cooperate fully with our medical personnel…”
The soldier who had opened the door for her thumped the side of the van with his fist and shouted, “Clear!”
A little dazed and discombobulated, Meg walked forward into the confused scene, looking for her parents.
She found them quickly. They were in line for medical attention, along with two people she recognized as Eddie’s parents. Mrs. Penny was holding her little baby sister, Christine.
“Mom! Dad!” she called, running to them.
Mrs. Penny welcomed her with a frantic hug. “Meg! Thank God you’re all right!”
“Where have you been?” said her father. “You had us scared out of our minds!”
She looked around, noticing an absence. Kevin. What had happened to her little brother?
“Where’s Kevin?” she asked.
“He probably snuck off to that damn movie,” said her mother. “He told us he was staying over at Eddie’s.”
Eddie’s mother, Mrs. Beckner, looked dismayed. “Eddie told us he was staying at your place.”
This was terrible! The thought of little Kevin and that horrible monster… !
A soldier was passing by, and Meg reached out and grabbed him. “Excuse me,” she said. “My little brother’s over at the movie theater on Main!”
“Miss, we’re going by sectors. We’ll get there shortly.”
“You don’t understand—”
The soldier brushed her off. “We’ll handle this, okay?”
Mr. Penny, however, clearly didn’t care for the soldier’s attitude. And Daddy was a very confrontational man.
“I don’t see you handling much of anything, bub. You on a coffee break?”
“Look, mister—” the soldier began.
“Don’t ‘look, mister’ me. I’m a taxpayer! I pay your salary!”
Everyone was listening to the argument. Which gave Meg the perfect opportunity to slip away. She had to get to the movie theater, get Kevin to a safe place and keep him there.
This was no night for a ten-year-old to be out on the town.
Kevin Penny was getting really steamed. This joker in the seat behind him was making a real nuisance of himself. Clearly he’d seen the film before, but why did he have to broadcast what was coming up?