“We got it!” cried the soldier. “We got the thing. It’s burning up!”
But then a pseudopod shot from the Blob as though from a cannon, heading straight at the nozzle of the flamethrower. It struck with such force that the tanks on the soldier’s back exploded, engulfing him in a fireball.
Flaming fluid splattered over the street.
A splash of it fell on the Reverend Meeker, setting him alight. The Reverend screamed and fell, writhing on the street.
“Reverend!” cried Meg, seeing the man go down, his arms and back on fire.
“That fire extinquisher!” said Deputy Briggs, pointing over to a fire truck parked nearby. Meg dashed over to it along with the wounded deputy, and together they hauled the heavy, shiny cylinder off its mooring and over to where the Reverend Meeker lay burning and screaming.
The Blob rolled forward, just thirty yards away.
Meg blasted Reverend Meeker in a cloud of C02. The flames were snuffed out.
“Come on, get out of that thing’s way!” ordered Briggs, pulling the half-conscious, groaning reverend along with him.
Meg turned.
There it was, rising up above her: the creature, wriggling and quivering with rapacious evil and hunger. Even as she looked, a pseudopod detached from the mass and shot forward toward her.
Not thinking, just reacting, she turned the fire extinguisher on it. The C02 hissed out, slapping against the pseudopod like the hand of a ghost.
The pseudopod stopped. It recoiled, like a snake, writhing in pain.
Meg backed away, having bought some time for herself. Thinking: The C02—it stopped it for a moment. She sprayed some of the stuff onto her hand.
The cloud wrapped her hand in an arctic chill.
“Cold!” she said. “It can’t stand the cold!”
She had to tell Brian! She whirled around to find him.
“Brian!” she cried. “It’s just like in the freezer.”
But Brian was nowhere in sight. Only the frightened, smudged face of Deputy Briggs was there.
“He ran for it, Meg,” said Briggs. “He’s gone. Now let’s get going ourselves. Town Hall. It’s got the strongest walls in the city!”
They retreated.
The creature, like a wobbling, slow-motion avalanche of dung, followed, squeezing easily through the stores and office buildings on either side of the street. As Deputy Briggs carried the moaning reverend, Meg lugged the C02 canister along behind, pausing every ten seconds or so to blast errant streamers of goo. Invariably the pseudopods would wriggle back into their parent, in spasms from the cold. Once, when she accidentally released a particularly large cloud of gas, the stuff sprayed over the nearest part of the crawling Blob.
The thing cringed back, and they were able to gain some yards.
“Good girl!” said Briggs. “Keep it going. Town Hall just ahead.”
The whole street seemed to bow under the Blob’s weight, cracking as it streamed along. Meg let it have another, longer blast, and then dodged back. Pseudopods waggled wildly behind her. The Blob shuddered, then flowed on, inexorably.
Even as they mounted the steps of the Town Hall, the thing flowed its hellish protoplasm up after them, a deadly tide lapping up toward their feet. The C02 canister banged up the stairs, heavy and awkward to drag, but Meg couldn’t drop it. It was their only hope.
She sprayed. The Blob quivered, drew back.
The horrid stench, acid and blood, acid and death, was everywhere now, mixed with the smell of burning. But all that Meg could smell was the C02. Her hands were numb with cold.
“Hurry!” cried a voice from the top of the stairs. “Get in!” Someone was holding the door open for them.
“Thanks,” said Briggs as a man scurried out and helped drag Reverend Meeker inside. “Come on, Meg! Get in!”
Meg Penny let loose a long blast. The Blob pulled back, rearing like a fat, giant cobra.
And hurled itself, coming down at her like a blanket, cutting off the light from burning fires and the remaining streetlamps.
An arm reached out and pulled Meg through the door. The Town Hall door slammed shut, locked, and latched.
With a mighty thunk! the door was hit from the other side. It bowed in with the tremendous pressure. But it held. Tendrils of Blob issued through cracks.
But Meg Penny knew what to do now. She aimed the nozzle and let blast. She described a circle around the door, covering all the cracks quickly. The wriggling streamers shivered and shot back, as though shocked by electrodes.
“Doesn’t like that,” said Meg.
She turned and saw to her relief that all her family, Kevin included, were among the huddled masses in the Town Hall. She saw Moss the mechanic, Jim Adams the banker—so many people were still alive! She’d thought so many would be dead.
“Pull all the C02 you can find!” cried Deputy Briggs. “We can hold it off!”
“You hold it off!” cried Arnold Thatcher, the baker, from the back of the hall. “We’re getting out!”
He dived toward a back window. Pulled on the latch, as the crowd rippled with agreement.
“No, wait!” cried Meg, desperately. “It’s all—”
But even as she tried to finish, tried to haul her fire extinguisher toward Thatcher at the window, the man got the latch loose.
The window angled open on its hinges.
A jet of Blob streamed through, right on top of the man, engulfing him.
Meg aimed the nozzle and fired off a blast of C02 gas. But with a choked gurgle the issuing stream stopped. The canister was empty.
People started screaming.
Moss the mechanic, though, had already stepped up to the nearest fire-extinguisher placement. He pulled open the door, ripped out the canister, and started spraying the arm of gunk.
The effect was immediate. The Blob retreated back out the window, but it carried its prize with it. Meg had one last impression of Arnold Thatcher the baker being dragged out the window, already dissolving in this portable living acid bath.
Moss kept the blast going long enough for others to close the window and latch it.
“That’s not enough,” hollered Briggs. “We’re going to have to barricade every window, every door, here. And let’s get those fire extinguishers! There should be some in the hall, and lots in the basement!”
The people set to work, doing their best to barricade themselves from harm. Streamers of Blob snaked through the front door, and Meg Penny yelled for help.
Within moments Moss was there, spraying, and the streamers retreated.
Then two men ran up to Briggs, each holding a fire extinguisher. Small fire extinguishers.
“Is that it?” said Briggs. “There’s gotta be more. You just didn’t look in the right places!”
He was interrupted by a loud scream from a woman who was scrambling away from an air vent.
The Blob was squeezing through!
“Shit!” said one of the men with an extinguisher. He hurried over to the vent and blasted the monster’s pseudopod with a plume of gas.
The streamer of Blob wriggled back.
The man was just helping the lady back to her feet when another, larger spout of slime suddenly spurted from a nearby chimney.
It wrapped around the man, knocking the fire extinguisher from his grasp.
“Help!” he cried.
He was able to say only that one word before the pseudopod pulled him into the chimney and up into the darkness.
“Oh, my God!” cried someone. “Look! The front door!”
Meg Penny looked. Briggs looked. Everyone looked. But there was nothing to be done. The door latch, bending with the renewed bowing of the doors, snapped even as they looked.