Slimer

were they? It was so dark…

Stall. Stall. ‘What about Chris?’ she asked, with difficulty. Her throat was so dry she could hardly speak.

‘She’s in here too. Or rather bits of her are. Some memories. Odd thoughts. She’d been dead awhile before it took her. It meant her personality didn’t come through intact. But yours will baby. I’m gonna keep you alive to the very end.. ’ She forced herself to smile. ‘Going to have your cake and eat it too? That’s just like you, Alex.’ Inside her head it was just one big scream.

‘Oh, you’re a cool one, Linda. I got to hand you that,’ he said with grudging admiration. ‘But then you always were. A cool bitch. Superior. Always looking at me as if I was some sort of low-life scum…’

He suddenly darted forward, catching her off-guard. He grabbed her by the throat with one of his large hands and shoved her backwards into a comer. ‘But you’re not superior any more. Are you?’ he hissed.

Gasping for breath, she said, ‘No, no, Alex — ’ Then she tried to hit him with the flashlight. But he caught her wrist with casual ease, blocking the blow before it could land.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Expected you to try that.’ He leaned closer to her. His fetid smell washed over her, making her feel even more nauseous. ‘I still haven’t forgotten how you tried to brain me with that gun yesterday.’ He loosened his grip on her throat and began to drag her towards one of the bunks. ‘Now it’s my turn.’

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.

He shoved her against the bunk. ‘It’s what you’re going to do, baby. Put the flashlight on the bunk so that it’s pointing at me. I don’t want you to miss anything. Then get on your knees.’

She knew then what he had in mind. And she remembered Ro telling her once that the thing that most annoyed her about Alex was his frequent demands for blow jobs. It was practically all he ever wanted.

As she knelt before him she said, ‘Alex, I don’t think I can do this. You’re too big. I won’t be able to open my mouth wide enough.’

‘You’d better. Otherwise I’ll just dislocate your jaw to make it easier for you.’

He wasn’t joking, she knew. Shakily, she said, ‘Okay, I’ll try.. I’ll try…’

She took hold of him with her left hand. The skin felt rough, dry and very cold. Inhuman. With her right hand she was reaching for something else…

‘Hurry up,’ he commanded.

She opened her mouth as wide as she could, stretching her jaws until they hurt. While with her right hand she carefully removed the glass stopper.

As her lips touched the end of his member she suddenly recoiled and leapt to her feet. At the same time she flung the sulphuric acid at him. It sprayed over his upper body, most of it catching him in the face. A small amount of it splashed onto the back of her hand, burning it instantly.

Alex tottered backwards, clawing at his face. He let loose a high-pitched scream of agony and Linda knew she’d aimed right. She’d got his eyes..

Now to reach the door, But as she tried to duck past him he flailed out with one of his arms and she screamed as his razor-sharp nails raked down one side of her back. Then he had a handful of her shirt and was jerking her backwards off her feet.

The fabric gave way but too late to prevent her from being slammed into the wall with an impact that winded her. Alex was continuing to lash out wildly, trying to find her again. She managed to avoid a blow that would have probably broken her neck and attempted to duck by him for the second time.

She succeeded. Then she ran for the door. She got there and began feeling for the doorknob and key. It seemed to take a hundred years before she found them. She turned the key…

And screamed again as claws dug deep into her right shoulder. The next thing she knew she was being picked up and hurled like a sack of potatoes down the length of the cabin. She hit the far wall hard and felt something snap in her left forearm. She knew immediately it was broken.

She lay there in a heap, almost upside-down, stunned and helpless. She couldn’t even move as Alex lurched across and stood menacingly over her. In the dim light from the torch she saw his face was covered with large white and yellow blisters from the acid. Both his eyes had been closed up by the burns but, incredibly, a third eye, a rudimentary one, glared down at her from the centre of his forehead.

‘Fucking bitch,’ he rumbled. ‘For that I’m gonna peel your skin off in long strips and make you eat it.’ He bent down, his huge hands reaching out for her. A sick despair filled her. She’d almost made it, but now…

Then, unexpectedly, he stepped back from her. He began to make a thin, wailing sound, like a terrified child, then fell to his knees in front of her and cried, ‘Oh God, it’s back! It’s here.. it’s hurting me… No! It’s eating me! Eating my mindV

Alex screamed and covered his ruined face with his hands. Linda saw that his body was starting to pulsate, as if something inside was trying to get out…

He took his hands away and the single, unfinished eye stared at her imploringly. ‘Linda, help me! Don’t let it pull me back down there again! I want to stay up here, in the light! Oh Jesus, it’s tearing me to pieces…’

His face started to change. The mouth closed up and vanished, as did the eye, and the head became more elon* gated. Whether he wanted to or not Alex was going.

Linda seized her opportunity. The thing was blind now, and presumably deaf, so she twisted round on her hands and knees and began to crawl past it towards the door. But moving at all was difficult; her body didn’t want to obey her commands and the pain in her left arm was excruciating.

Finally she reached the door and stood up. She felt dizzy, as if she was about to pass out. Do that and you’re dead, she told herself angrily.

She glanced back over her shoulder and saw that no trace of Alex remained. The creature resembled some kind of huge, fish-like foetus. Its skin was now a dead-white colour and looked wet and slimy. The head was long and very narrow and completely smooth except for the two large, round fish eyes…

Eyes. It had eyes again. And it was looking straight at her. It started to get up.

Linda screamed and desperately tried to open the door. It seemed to be jammed, then she realised it opened inwardly but in her panic she was trying to open it outwards.

At last she was outside. She hurled herself into the pitch darkness of the corridor and ran for her life, not caring where she was going just as long as it was away from that thing.

She kept running, trying to ignore the explosion of pain in her broken arm that came with every jarring step, until she collided with the wall at the first turning in the corridor.

She bounced off it and landed hard on her backside on the floor. This caused an even greater burst of agony in her bad arm.

Idiot, she told herself. She struggled to get up again, gritting her teeth as she felt the two ends of the broken bone grind together. Then, behind her in the darkness, she heard a distinct/^ plop sound. It was if someone was trying to run in flippers…

It was after her.

She ran blindly, not even sure if she was running in the right direction. For all she knew she could be heading straight towards it. But she knew that if she should run into the arms of that white, slimy horror her mind was going to snap instantly.

No, thank God. It was still behind her. She could hear the wet sounds of its footsteps.