Slimer (10 page)

    Paul suddenly stabbed a finger at one of the monitors. 'Hey, stop right there and don't touch any more switches. We've found Alex!'

    Mark looked at the screen. He could see Alex in long-shot. He was kicking and pounding at a door and appeared to be quite drunk. Then Mark saw something glinting in his hand and realised he was holding his switch-blade. With a sick certainty he knew what was happening.

    'Christ, the girls must be in there!'

    Paul slammed his fists down with impotent fury onto the console top. 'And we can't do a fucking thing to help them!' he cried.

    

    

    Rochelle backed away from the glass tank, her mind filled with disbelieving horror.
This can't be real! I'm having a nightmare! It's all that cheap shit we were smoking in Morocco… Any moment now I'm gonna wake up in the hotel room…

    But she didn't. Instead she was forced to watch as the woman emerged from under the water and began to climb out of the tank. The mass of oily black strands hung out of her mouth like a slimy beard. But the strands continued to move, twitching feebly with a life of their own.

    Rochelle screamed. She'd always thought of herself as the type who would never scream, no matter what happened. It was only stupid women in stupid movies who screamed, or so she'd believed until now. But this was just too much. She couldn't handle this…

    As she began screaming she turned to run. Her intention was to get out the door she'd come in. But she'd only gone two or three paces when she did something else that women in stupid movies always seemed to be doing - she slipped and fell.

    There had been a small pool of water there that she hadn't noticed. As her right foot skidded in it she felt a burst of blinding pain in her ankle. She fell face-down on the floor, catching herself a hard blow on the chin. She was stunned, but only for a few seconds. She struggled to rise, looking back over her shoulder.

    The woman was out of the tank now and walking slowly towards her. She was less than two yards away. The water was dripping from her white coat and her short blonde hair was plastered flat to her head. Despite her overwhelming terror a small part of Rochelle's mind registered the fact that the woman had very attractive green eyes. Sad eyes…

    The black mass hanging out of her mouth was longer now. Even as Rochelle watched more of the stuff emerged. It looked like a monstrous black tongue.

    She screamed again and pushed herself backwards. Using her heels and her elbows she slithered across the floor, away from the apparition, for several yards then scrambled to her feet and made another dash for the door. She was vaguely aware of the agony in her right ankle but her panic enabled her to ignore it.

    She was a few feet from the door when her ankle simply gave way beneath her. Once again she was sent sprawling onto the hard floor. As she lay there, barely conscious, she heard the approaching footsteps of the woman behind her.

    

    

    The sound of a distant scream penetrated Alex's befuddled brain. He frowned. It had sounded like Rochelle. Yeah, Rochelle. What was wrong with the silly bitch? He stood there trying to think, swaying slightly from side to side. The door in front of him was heavily marked with cuts and grooves from his knife but it remained firmly closed. He'd made a few attempts to break it down with his shoulder but got nothing but some bruises and headache for his efforts. He couldn't seem to get his body to do what he wanted… he felt sluggish, heavy… confused.
Maybe I'm drunk,
he thought.

    He gave the door one last frustrated kick and began to stagger off down the passageway. Those bitches in there could wait until later. Right now he'd better go find Rochelle. But why? He frowned again then his face cleared. Oh yeah, to teach her a lesson. He'd teach her a lesson first then he'd come back for the other two…

    'Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Barbara Ann! Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Barbara Ann…!'

    His voice echoed up and down the corridors as he lurched along them, trying to find Rochelle. He became aware of the TV cameras pointing down at him at regular intervals from the walls. They began to seem threatening to him and he waved his knife at them as he passed. He wanted to smash them, to stab each of their single, unblinking eyes…

    He was so absorbed with the camera that he almost bumped straight into the woman before he saw her. She was leaning against the wall, her eyes closed, as if sick. She was also soaking wet. Water was dripping from her white lab coat.

    'Hey, who the fuck are you?' demanded Alex. He brandished the knife at her.

    She opened her eyes and turned towards him. He realised that she was very good-looking. A real beauty, in fact. The old, familiar urges began to stir within him. He grinned at her.

    'Help me,' she said in a voice that was not much more than a whisper. 'I'm not well. Help me get to my room. It's not far away.' If she noticed the knife she gave no sign of it.

    He retracted the blade and put the knife in his back pocket. 'Yeah, sure, I'll help you, lady. Where's your room?' he said with exaggerated concern.

    'Just along there.' She raised a limp hand and pointed.

    'Okay then,' he said, trying unsuccessfully not to slur his words, 'Gimme your arm. I'll help you…'

    She leaned against him and he almost fell over. Shit, the bitch is heavier than she looks, he thought with surprise. But then he got an arm around her waist and managed to hold her upright. Together they began to stagger down the corridor, with Alex soon gasping with the strain and hoping she'd been telling the truth about her room not being far away.

    Their progress was slow, much to his annoyance, but at the same time the feel of her body beneath the wet fabric of her coat excited him. She was slim and firmly muscled, just like Rochelle, and he looked forward to seeing what it was like in the flesh.

    After what seemed hours she indicated that they had arrived. He man-handled her through the open door and onto the single bunk. She lay back with a groan. It took Alex a minute to get his breath then he leaned over her. 'You feelin' better?'

    She opened her eyes again. 'Who are you?'

    'Me? I'm Alex Rinaldo. Look, lady, you should get out of those wet clothes. You'll get sick.'

    'Sick?' She grimaced. 'Yes, I'll get sick alright… very sick.'

    'How'd you get all wet like that? You fall in a swimming pool or something?' asked Alex, vaguely curious in spite of his main preoccupation.

    She didn't answer his question. Instead she said, 'You had better get away from this place Alex. As fast as you can.'

    Thinking she was telling him to leave her cabin Alex immediately became more aggressive. 'Hey, lady, that's no way to talk to the guy who just helped you. You should show some gratitude.'

    She sighed and closed her eyes. 'Go. Fast. As far away as you can.'

    'I'm not going anywhere, lady. Not least till after I've got you out of those wet clothes and we've had some fun…' He grabbed the front of her lab coat with both hands and began to rip it open.

    And got the shock of his life.

    The coat appeared to be attached to her. As he pulled it open it was like peeling skin off an animal. The underside was all red and sticky and her bare flesh looked as if it had been flayed.

    The woman gave a terrible scream and sat bolt upright on the bed. Alex screamed too. Then, in a panicky reflex action, he reached for the knife in his back pocket, flicked open the 6 inch blade and drove it straight into her heart.

    Her body gave a galvanic shudder and she fell back. The scream became a hoarse, bubbling rattle then silence.

    Already Alex had flung himself off the bed and was back-ing out of the doorway. For a brief moment he considered retrieving his knife but then he saw that something was oozing out of her chest around the hilt. Not blood but something that looked like black slime. A terrible stink began to fill the cabin.

    He turned and fled.

    

    

    Mark needed a fix. Badly. They'd been trapped in the video room for hours now and he was feeling worse with every passing minute. He couldn't breathe and the walls seemed to be closing in on him. His clothes were drenched with sweat but his skin felt cold and clammy. And that awful flesh-crawling sensation as if all his nerve ends had been rubbed with a wire brush had also started. It was all part of the now-familiar symptoms of withdrawal.

    He stopped pacing back and forth and went over to the door and rattled the handle as if expecting to find that it wasn't really locked after all. Paul was watching him. 'What's the matter, Mark? Are you feeling sick again?'

    With an effort Mark grinned at him. 'Me? No, I'm fine. I just want to get out of here.'

    'So do I but there's nothing we can do until someone finds us.' Paul turned back to the monitors. The girls were still hiding in the cabin, presumbly under the impression that Alex was still lurking outside. But Alex had wandered away over an hour ago and disappeared. If only Linda and Chris would come out and start looking for them… if only they could communicate with them in some way. It was frustrating to be able to see where they were but not be able to do anything about it.

    There was a bang on the door. Both he and Mark jumped, then glanced at each other. Who the hell could that be, wondered Paul. Rochelle or someone else? The mysterious 'Charlie' perhaps? Then they heard the door being unlocked. It opened.

    It was Alex.

    He actually looked relieved to see them. 'Hey, I've been looking everywhere for you guys. You got to come see this -'

    He didn't get any further. Paul had leapt out of his chair and punched him very hard in the mouth. Alex hadn't been expec-ting it. He went down on his back and lay there looking up at Paul with dazed surprise. 'What the fuck…?' Blood was already oozing from his split lower lip.

    'We saw you,' said Paul, standing over him with clenched fists. 'We saw you trying to get to Linda and Chris, you bastard. I'm going to smash your damn head in -'

    'For Chrissakes, forget that, will ya - this is important. I killed a woman.'

    'You what?' Paul was stunned. 'Not Ro…?'

    'No, no. Some bitch in a white coat. But you got to come to look at her.' He got to his feet, 'Either I'm going crazy or she's not human. Come and see…'

    Paul had no choice but to stifle his anger for the time being and follow him. The confrontation was going to have to be post-poned.

    Alex led the way down to the level below and then along a passageway. It took him awhile to get his bearings but finally he stopped outside an open doorway. 'In there,' he said, thickly. 'She's in there, on the bed.'

    Paul looked inside. The cabin was empty. And so was the bed. 'She's not here,' he told Alex. 'Are you sure you've got the right room?'

    Alex pushed him aside and went in. He bent down and picked something up from the floor. Paul saw that it was his switch-blade. 'It's the right room okay. And she was lying right there with this sticking out of her chest.'

    'And you say her clothes seemed to be part of her, as if they were growing on her like skin?' He couldn't help sounding sceptical. Alex had described what had happened on the way down and Paul found it all too incredible to believe. It was his opinion that Alex had suffered from some alcohol-induced delusion.

    By now Mark had entered the room too and was sniffing the air. 'It stinks in here,' he commented.

    'Not as bad as it did,' said Alex. 'When that black slime started coming out of her chest the stink was enough to make you gag.'

    'Black slime?' Mark stared at Alex with shocked eyes, then he turned to Paul. 'This smell - it's the same as in the crane cabin when I thought I saw that black slime come out of the overalls. Paul, maybe I wasn't seeing things.'

    'What the fuck is he talking about?' demanded Alex. He was reverting back to his usual self now.

    Mark described what he'd seen in the crane. Alex laughed uneasily. 'A pool of slime that moves around by itself? You're off your rocker.'

    'Then so are you if you've been seeing women with their clothes growing out of their skin and who get up and walk away after you've stabbed them.'

    'Someone must have moved her body,' growled Alex. 'I tell you she was dead.' He brandished the knife. 'I put this right through her heart. I didn't mean to, mind, it's just that she took me by surprise.'

    'Yeah, we know you wouldn't really hurt a fly,' said Paul dryly as he examined the knife in Alex's hand. 'No sign of anything on the blade. No black stuff or blood. And no blood on the bed covers, or the floor.'

    'You think it was the same woman we saw earlier?' asked Mark.

    'I suppose so.' Paul began to look aound the cabin. He opened a chest of drawers and pulled out a pile of folded womens' clothing. 'She said it was her cabin?' he asked Alex.

    'Yep. Come on, let's go search for whoever took her body away. They couldn't have got very far with her yet. She weighed a ton.'

    Paul raised an eyebrow. 'She was unusually heavy?'

    'Like she was packed with lead weights.'

    'Must be the same one alright.' He told Alex about being flung across the video room by Dr Carol Soames.

    'I don't understand any of this,' complained Alex. 'What the fuck is going on around here?'

    'I think maybe I can help you guys out on that score,' said an American voice from behind them. They all spun round. Standing in the doorway was a young man in a dirty uniform. And he was holding an M16.