Slimer

‘No!’ yelled the creature with surprising vehemence. ‘I don’t need it!’

But already one of the appendages had released its grip on Paul’s shoulder and was fumbling at the money belt. Small rudimentary fingers, like those of a thalidomide victim, reached into one of the pouches and produced several packets of heroin.

Linda knew then that her gamble was going to pay off. She had remembered that when women heroin addicts gave birth their babies were similarly addicted.

The creature, though ‘new-born’ was still an addict!

Other appendages had joined the first one at the belt. More packets of heroin were pulled out of the belt.

‘No!’ cried the creature. But it couldn’t help itself. The appendages holding the packets started to withdraw back into the body, taking the heroin with them. And as the drug disappeared into the creature Linda immediately felt its grip on her relax. ‘No…’ it repeated, but in a much weaker voice.

A few seconds later it slumped sideways in its seat and the other ‘arms’ began to retract. Suddenly Linda was free. She knew what she had to do…

Undoing her belt she stood up and leaned across the thing’s right shoulder. As quickly as possible she released its own seat belt, praying that it wouldn’t stir.

‘What.?’ began Paul dazedly.

‘Shhh. Get ready.’

Now she was stretching to reach the door handle. The effort caused a flare-up of pain in her broken left arm but she ignored it. Her fingers touched the handle. She undid the safety catch then turned it. Then she began to slide the door open.

Paul now saw what she was doing. Quickly he swung his legs up and planted his feet against the creature’s side. As Linda got the door open he kicked out…

But the contact, together with the rush of cold air into the cabin, had the effect of rousing the thing out of its somnolent, state. As its body slid sideways through the doorway it gave a bellow of rage and made a grab for the edges of the opening. T o Linda’s horror it succeeded in getting a grip and hung there…

Linda gave a wailing cry ofdespair when she saw this. It was going to beat them after all.

There was a deafening explosion. Paul had opened fire with the Ml6. As the bullets tore into it the thing’s head erupted, gushing black slime… Itwasasifithadbeenhitwithalarge, black tomato. The creature screamed. For a long moment it hung on then, abruptly, it vanished. One second it was there, its bulk filling the doorway, and the next there was nothing to see but grey sky.

Paul let out a cry of triumph. ‘Sonofabitch! We did it!’

But there was no time to celebrate. The helicopter gave a violent lurch and then started to go into a spin. Linda screamed with pain as she was flung off balance and fell hard onto her broken arm. She was only dimly aware of Paul grabbing at the controls in a desperate attempt to bring the machine out of its spin…

Finally he succeeded. The sickening motion ceased and the helicopter was again flying on an even keel. Linda dragged herself upright and looked around. There was nothing to see through either the windows or the open door but grey cloud.

‘Paul, what are we going to do?’ she cried. The mental image of them crashing into the sea flashed unwanted into her mind.

‘Don’t ask me,’ he yelled over the noise of the engines.

‘I’m out of my league already! Hey, try and close that door, will you?’

She managed jo slide the door shut. ‘Will you be able to land it okay?’

‘Are you kidding? I don’t even know what direction we’re going in. And I pulled her out of that spin by pure fluke.’ Linda peered over his shoulder to look at the controls. She saw he was gripping two levers and had his right foot pressing on a floor pedal.

‘The thing on the floor controls the tail rotor,’ he explained. ‘And that’s the tricky bit. Or one of them. I think you can use it to turn with… but I’m not sure how and I don’t want us to go into another spin.’

‘I thought you knew the basics of flying a helicopter,’ she cried accusingly.

‘I do, sort of. I know if you push forward on this lever here we go down, and if I pull back on it we go up. It tilts the plane of the rotors. And if I push this other lever to the side, we fly sideways…’

‘Oh, that’s marvellous.’ How ironic it would be, after overcoming probably the most dangerous creature ever to exist on Earth, to die in a silly helicopter crash.

‘Hey, it’s going to be okay. We’ll get out of this somehow.’

‘'Sure. We can fly sideways until we run out of fuel. Perhaps by then we’ll be over a mattress factory.’ She felt light-headed. Despite the danger they were still in she was experiencing a vast sense of relief. It was gone…

‘Do you think it’s dead?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Not yet, probably. But I think it soon will be. That was a massive dose of heroin it gave itself. Not as much as we injected into the other one but I’m certain it will be enough to do the job. It’s about 200 miles from land — it won’t last long enough to reach another supply of the drug.’

‘God, I hope so Paul. But what if that wasn’t enough heroin to kill it? What if it does get to the mainland?’

He shrugged. ‘It’ll be the government’s worry then. Out of our hands. We’ll give them all the information we’ve got — the cassettes — and leave it up to them.’

‘If we make it,’ she said darkly.

They flew on in silence through the grey cloud. Then Paul said, ‘I’m going to try to take us down underneath this cloud. Then we’ll give your original idea a go.’

‘My idea? Which one was that?’

‘Finding another oil platform and ditching this thing near it. It has floats. Our chances will be better in the water than me trying to come down on hard ground.’

The plan almost worked. Paul succeeded in bringing the machine down below the cloud level and after a tense half hour’s flying they sighted another oil platform ahead in the distance. For one awful moment, as it emerged out of the greyness, Linda thought it was the same one they’d been on but as they drew closer to it she could see it was definitely a different rig. Instead of having four separate legs it rested on a huge single concrete pillar.

Paul also managed to guide the helicopter fairly close to the rig, swooping low in a wide circle around it to ensure its occupants were aware of their arrival. Then, when he was certain they’d been spotted, Paul started his descent, aiming to set the machine in the water some sixty yards from the platform.

‘Brace yourself,’ he warned Linda when they were about thirty feet above the water. ‘I’m going to cut the engines. It’s the only way I can be sure of setting us down without possibly driving this thing straight under the waves. The rotors will keep turning and should let us down pretty gently but there’s still going to be a hell of a bump…’

He cut the engines and the helicopter began to drop like an express elevator. It would have been a perfect three-point splash-down if a sudden gust of wind hadn’t tipped the machine over, causing it to come down on its side.

At the moment of impact Linda received a violent blow on the head and lost consciousness as water began to rush into the cabin. The next thing she knew she was outside with Paul’s arm supporting her. Somehow he had got her out of the helicopter.

Choking and spluttering she looked up and saw another helicopter hovering above them. A man was being lowered on a cable towards them…

Very soon he was in the water beside them and slipping a rubber brace under her arms. Then suddenly she was being winched upwards to safety. She felt numb, dazed. She stared down at the heads of Paul and her rescuer in the water almost disinterestedly. Then she noticed that there was no sign of their helicopter. It had obviously sunk.

A terrible thought occurred to her.