The Thing (29 page)

The music filled the corridors, the empty sleeping rooms, the supply section, and the lavatories. It penetrated the walls and shook the floors.

Except for Childs, who had maintained it, Nauls knew that system better than anyone at the outpost. He shouted over the din and gestured back toward the rec room.

"It's got into the pub!" he screamed at his companion. "It's turned on the stereo!"

Sanders gaped across the room at him, straining to hear. "What say?"

Nauls headed for him. "It's between us and the rec room. How are we going to get back?"

Sanders shook his head, looked frightened and confused. "Can't hear you, man!"

In the recreation room Macready cursed steadily as he ripped first one speaker and then another from their wall brackets.

"What are they doing back there?" he asked the station manager, nodding toward the distant kitchen. The music boomed from only one remaining speaker now, but its pounding ostinato continued to reverberate through the rest of the compound.

Garry stood close by the wire entrance and peered down the hallway. Nauls's voice reached him as a distorted wail.

"What's he saying?" Macready asked as he tore at the last speaker.

Garry shook his head. "I can't make it out."

"What's that?"

"Macready!" Nauls was howling. "We been cut off!" He leaned cautiously into the corridor. "Hey, can't you guys hear me up there?"

Something went
whump!
against the door at the back of the kitchen. Nauls turned to stare as a large, scythe-like blade poked through the heavy timbers and began sawing downward. Black ooze stained the fringes of the cut. The blade itself was an unrecognizable shade of nonmetallic red. Odd color for a knife. The sound of tearing wood was largely obscured by the blare from the stereo speakers.

Eyes bulging, Sanders pointed a trembling hand at the disintegrating door. A second knife-blade appeared alongside the first, together with more of the lubricating black substance.

Nauls backed away from the splintering barrier as he realized that the dual blades were not knives. They were fingernails.

Sanders had put his back against the third doorway when another pair of talons came crashing through the thinner wood to spread and lock around his neck. He struggled briefly as he was yanked backward. There was a wistful expression on his face as his bit down on the cyanide capsule just before he was wrenched through the broken door,

Nauls wasn't one for futile gestures. Sanders had bought it. The other door was giving way as he took off through the single remaining exit. Crouching low, he shot out into the corridor. His skates sent sparks flying.

In the recreation room a familiar and nerve-tingling screech rose above the music. It was sharp, distinct, louder than ever.

Macready bent under the wire and looked down the hall. There was no movement. Small speakers continued to bellow their indifferent electronic litany from far rooms.

Nauls had skated like this only once before in his life. It had been back in Chicago. The local gang, the Crips, were after him. The mothers were fast, but not as fast as a frightened teenager on skates. It was late, he had no business being out in that neighborhood, and cockiness had overcome common sense.

He'd gone shooting right past their street corner, leaving them furious and startled in his wake, and he'd skated until he'd thought his legs were going to drop off. Around fences, down deserted streets, leaping curbs and gutters, flying through the vacant urban night.

Now he leaned hard into a turn and kicked with his legs as he accelerated down a straight corridor. Not far, he told himself desperately, not far to home. To Delancy Street, to the rec room. His eyes were glazed. He was a bullet, spinning down the barrel of a gun.

Sanders's body came flying out of the hallway wall directly ahead of him. A thick, knob-encrusted arm pinned it like a fly to the paneling opposite.

Nauls skidded and lost his balance as he tried to stop, slid into the nearest wall hard. The cyanide capsule went flying out of his mouth. He ignored it. The rest of whatever had taken the radio operator was starting to crumble through the wall.

He got to his feet and started forward again, leaping over the flexing, massive limb and rolled on the floor just like they'd taught him to do in gym class. Then he was back on his feet and skating like a roller derby jammer for the next turn.

Macready was out in the corridor and running toward the kitchen. He hadn't gotten very far when Nauls came careening around the corner toward him.

"Get back!" the cook screamed at him. Macready slowed but didn't stop.

"The generator . . ." he started to say.

"Screw the generator!" Nauls shot past the pilot's reaching hand. Hisses and unholy snarls rose above the music. Something like an ambling earthquake was coming up the corridor. Macready turned and rushed after Nauls.

Nauls barely remembered the wire and just did duck under it as he skidded into the rec room. Macready was right behind him chugging like an overheated engine, the cook collapsed on the big couch.

"What happened back there?" Garry asked him quietly.

Nauls looked over at him. His words came in bunches. "Got Sanders . . . he got into his capsule, the poor son bitch . . . World War Three wouldn't mess with this fucker . . . can go through walls . . . and it's big, lots bigger than we thought . . . maybe never reached full size before it froze way back when . . . it's like
all over the place
. . ."

"Calm down and get into your position," Macready told him.

Nauls started off the couch. "Position, my ass . . ."

Garry worked on the generators, readying them. "I'm going to bump this up as much as I can. We'll have to risk a burnout. It ought to do it."

"Boulder Damn might do it," was Nauls's opinion.

Unexpectedly, the loud music that had been blasting through the compound ceased. Something had turned it off. Or maybe the tape had run out.

Garry whispered to the pilot. "Lights."

Macready nodded and flipped the main wall switch. Each man assumed his predetermined station as the rec room was plunged into darkness. The wind moaned overhead.

Their attention was concentrated on the wired doorway, though after Nauls's description of the way the thing had assaulted the kitchen they didn't neglect to watch the two blocked entrances or the walls.

They waited in the darkness for the thing to come to them. Silence filled the compound.

When some time had gone by and nothing had happened, Garry finally spoke. "How long's it been?"

Macready checked the faint glow of his watch. "Little over two hours, I think."

From behind him Nauls sounded hopeful. "Maybe it ain't coming. Maybe it's going to try and wait us out, like you said earlier. With the generator still on, the rest of the camp'll stay pretty warm."

"Then we have to go after it," Macready told him.

"Bet that's the last place you ever go."

"Shusshhh!" Garry quieted them. "Listen."

In the eerie silence they clearly heard the sound of a far-off door opening, then closing. The action was repeated. It was still far away and accompanied by a rustling noise. Macready and Nauls moved a little farther apart.

A soft bubbling came from outside. It was followed by a tentative scratching at the door. Garry's fingers tightened on the generator controls. The scratching intensified, then grew louder. Macready's voice was a strained whisper.

"Wait. Wait until it gets through the door." Garry nodded, his palms damp on the main switch.

The scratching had risen to a steady, insistent pounding. The door was heavier than most in the compound. Nauls and Macready quietly lit a pair of Molotovs and concentrated on the entrance.

The door boomed hollowly as something massive threw its weight against it. The room began to shake. Dirt fell from cracks in the quivering ceiling. Macready raised his arm and aimed the slowly flickering Molotov.

Then the roof gave way and
it
dropped into their midst. Instinctively the three stunned men threw themselves away from the dark mass occupying the middle of the room. As he stumbled backward Macready heaved his Molotov and from the other side of the room Nauls did the same.

Both struck close to the thing's right side. For an instant they could see it clearly: a raging, constantly shifting gelatinous form silhouetted by the flames.

Garry bolted for the door. As he jumped something erupted from the center of the humping mound and speared him. The unaffected two-thirds of the enormous body followed its probing tongue or tentacle or whatever it was and engulfed the hapless station manager before he could get the door open.

A chitinous limb lashed out and sent Nauls sprawling. Macready dodged its mate, dove at the generator and threw the switch.

Current ripped through the wired doorway, electrocuting Garry with merciful speed. One of the thing's talons, caught in the door where it had pinned him, twisted away from the crackling pain. The door came away from its hinges and the pinioned talon began pounding it against the floor, trying to shake it loose.

Nauls scrambled frantically through the gap where the door had been. But the seething, screeching horror was between Macready and the exit. Macready's brain screamed at him to do something. The capsule lay against his right cheek. The other two doors were heavily barricaded from the inside, too heavily for him to free one in time.

The window . . .

He jumped for it and yanked down convulsively on the emergency fire lever. It was tight from lack of use. He put all his weight into a second try and stepped aside as the heavy triple-paned glass tumbled into the room. Something struck his boot a glancing blow as he scrambled out into the storm.

Battered and bloodied, dragging one leg, Nauls crawled along the corridor. Not only his leg but his mind must be damaged, because he was sure he could hear the sound of a revving motor. It must be the regular shuttle flight, come to carry them away to safety, away from the repellent alien monstrosity that would tear the compound apart in its search for the last humans it could take over.

But the plane wasn't due for months. It only came in winter on rare clear days and anyone could hear the storm howling outside, howling and screeching and wailing, coming closer and closer.

Terror made him crawl faster, oblivious to the pain in his broken leg. He didn't know that it was broken, only that when he tried to stand fire shot through it and brought him down.

Bathroom stall, close by. He crawled in and locked it. The gurgling that had been pursuing him grew louder. Nauls leaned against the back of the toilet, looking around desperately. He was imprisoned in a tiny wooden box, no windows, only the thin slatted ventilator. A nice little box, all wrapped up for Christmas dinner, a skinny little turkey waiting for big daddy to start carving him up . . .

The gurgling stopped somewhere on the other side of the door. There came a scratching at the wood. A low moan rose from the depths of Nauls's throat, a sound he couldn't and didn't try to control. He began ripping at the weathered wood forming the back of the stall. Blood started from beneath his nails as he clawed at the reluctant paneling.

A powerful blow struck the door as he wrenched aside one plank. It came away in pieces. Something dark was starting to come through the wood.

Nauls put the jagged end of a large splinter to his throat and gave it a spasmodic shove . . .

The sound of the motor was loud in the deserted lab. One moment the walls stood firm and the next moment they seemed to explode as the tractor barreled through the wall, its huge shovel tearing half the room to shreds. Glass and wood shattered against each other. The refrigerator and its incriminating load of frozen blood went over on its side like a toy.

Macready was in the driver's seat, his eyes wild, his expression like those usually seen on the faces of inmates in mental institutions. He's made a run for Supply, gone in through the broken window there and gathered up the box of plugs and the breather spring that had been removed from the tractor's engine. Instinct and luck had directed him through the storm to the maintenance shed.

Frostbite formed black warpaint on his exposed cheeks and fingertips. A stick of dynamite was a red slash between his lips. On the seat next to him rode a pair of large metal cylinders marked "HYDROGEN." There were no weather balloons left for them to send soaring into the Antarctic sky. Macready had a different destiny in mind for them.

He let the tractor grind to a halt. Snow swirled around him as he took the stick of dynamite from his lips. He was smiling and no more than half crazy.

"Okay, creep," he shouted toward the interior of the compound, "It's just you and me now! Be on your toes, if you got any. We're going to do a little remodeling. Time to let a little fresh air inside. You like the air around this country, don't you?"

He settled back into the driver's seat and gunned the engine, sending the huge machine ripping through the next wall and into the infirmary. Medical equipment and supplies went flying. The operating table got thrown into the far wall.

The big tractor had been designed to move tons of solid ice and rock. The prefabricated walls crumpled like tinfoil under its heavy treads.

The mess hall was next; tables, chairs, and now-silent speakers splintered beneath the relentless shovel. Macready's voice lifted above the wind. He was singing a ribald Mexican folk tune as he demolished the camp, but his eyes searched every corner and missed nothing.

On through the kitchen. Gas hissed from a broken pipe, the stink of propane momentarily tainting the air before the wind whisked it away. The demented troubador in the driver's seat sang on.

A taloned arm slunk around a corner, for the first time moving away from a human voice instead of toward it. Macready's voice echoed down the hall.

"Chime in if you know the words, old boy. You'd like Mexico. Nice and warm there. No ice to lock you up for a few millenia. You'd like to get there, wouldn't you? Like to hop into my bod and go lie on the beach and pick out a few señoritas to take over? Too bad you'll never get there."