A huge, white maggot twisted on the garage floor, holding
Weinbaum with long suckers, raising him towards its dripping,
pink mouth from which horrid mewing sounds came. Veins, red
and pulsating, showed under its slimy flesh and millions of
squirming tiny maggots - in the blood vessels, in the skin, even
forming a huge eye that stared out at me. A huge maggot, made up
of hundreds of millions of maggots, the feasters on the dead flesh
that Weinbaum had used so freely.
In a half-world of terror I fired the revolver again and again. It
mewed and twitched.
Weinbaum screamed something as he was dragged inexorably
toward the waiting mouth. Incredibly, I made it out over the
hideous sound that the creature was making.
'Fire it! In the name of heaven, fire it!'
Then I saw the sticky pools of green liquid which had trickled over
the floor from the laboratory. I fumbled for my lighter, got it and
frantically thumbed it. Suddenly I remembered that I had forgotten
to put a flint in. I reached for matches, got one and fired the others.
I threw the pack just as Weinbaum screamed his last. I saw his
body through the translucent skin of the creature, still twitching as
thousands of maggots leeched onto it. Retching, I threw the now
flaring matches into the green ooze. It was flammable, just as I had
thought. It burst into bright flames. The creature was twisted into a
horrid ball of pulsing, putrid flesh.
I turned and stumbled out to where Vicki stood, shaking and white
faced.
'Come on!' I said, 'Let's get out of here! The whole place is going
to go up!'
We ran out to the car and drove away rapidly.
CHAPTER NINE
There isn't too much left to say. I'm sure that you have all read
about the fire that swept the residential Belwood District of
California, leveling fifteen square miles of woods and residential
homes. I couldn't feel too badly about that fire. I realize that
hundreds might have been killed by the gigantic maggot-things
that Weinbaum and Rankin were breeding. I drove out there after
the fire. The whole place was smoldering ruins. There was no
discernable remains of the horror that we had battled that final
night, and, after some searching, I found a metal cabinet. Inside
there were three ledgers.
Once of them was Weinbaum's diary. I clears up a lot. It revealed
that they were experimenting on dead flesh, exposing it to gamma
rays. One day they observed a strange thing. The few maggots that
had crawled over the flesh were growing, becoming a group.
Eventually they grew together, forming three separate large
maggots. Perhaps the radioactive bomb had speed up the evolution.
I don't know.
Furthermore, I don't want to know.
In a way, I suppose, I assisted in Rankin's death; the flesh of the
body whose grave I had robbed had fed perhaps the very creature
