jacket. They were hands like claws, big, powerful and grasping, frozen in Dragosani's final spasm. His face was a rictus of agony, made worse by the fact that it was hardly a human face at all, and worse still by the gash that split his skull ear to ear.
But his face!
Dragosani's jaws were long as some great hound's, gaping open to display curving needle teeth. His skull was misshapen, and his ears were pointed where they curved forward and lay flat against his temples. His eyes were ruptured red pits above a nose long and wrinkled and flattened to show gaping nostrils, like the convoluted snout of some great bat. That was how he looked: part man, part wolf, part bat. And the thing pinned to his chest was worse.
'What… what is that?' Gulharov gasped out the question.
'God help me, Krakovitch shook his head, 'I don't know! But it lived in him. I mean, inside him. It only came out at the end.'
The trunk of the thing had the form of a great leech some eighteen inches long, but tapering to a tail. There were no limbs; it seemed to cling to Dragosani's chest by suction, and was held there by a sharp stake formed of the splintered hardwood stock of a heavy-duty machine gun; its skin was grey-green, corrugated. Gulharov saw that its head, flat and cobra-like — but eyeless, blind — lay on the carpet a little apart.
Like… like some gigantic tapeworm?' Gulharov's horror was plain on his face.
'Something like that,' Krakovitch nodded grimly. 'But intelligent, evil, and deadly.'
'Why have we come up here?' Gulharov's Adam's apple bobbed. 'There are fifty million better places to be.'
Krakovitch's face was white, pinched. He could fully appreciate Gulharov's feelings. 'We've come up here because we have to burn this, that's why.' His talent again, warning him that both Dragosani and his symbiont must be destroyed, utterly. He looked around, saw a tall steel filing cabinet standing against the wall to one side of the door. He and Gulharov tore out the shelving, turning the cabinet into a metal coffin. They lowered it onto its back and dragged it across the floor to Dragosani.
'You take his shoulders, I'll take his thighs,' said Krakovitch. 'Once we've got him in here we can close the door and slide the cabinet down the steps. Frankly, I don't fancy touching him. I'll touch him as little as possible. This way has to be best.'
They gingerly lifted the corpse, strained to get it over the rim of the cabinet, lowered it inside. Gulharov went to close the door and the projecting stake got in the way. He grasped the splintered stock in both hands — and the mental warning hit Krakovitch like a fist in his heart!
'Don't touch that!' he yelled, but too late.
As Gulharov wrenched the stake free, so the leech-thing — headless as it was — came alive. Its hideous slug-like body began to lash in a frenzy, so that it almost ejected itself from the cabinet. At the same time its leathery skin broke open in a dozen places, putting out protoplasmic tentacles that writhed and vibrated in a sort of mindless agony. These pseudopods whipped out, struck the sides of the cabinet and recoiled, settled on Dragosani's body. They passed through clothing and dead flesh and burrowed into him. More of them sprouted from the main body; they formed barbs, hooked themselves into Dragosani's flesh. One of the tentacles found his chest cavity; it thickened rapidly to the diameter of a man's wrist; the rest dissolved their barbs, released their holds, withdrew and followed the main branch into him. With a final sucking plop the entire organism drew itself down into Dragosani's body. His trunk began to heave and throb where it lay in the cabinet.
While all of this occurred, so Gulharov had danced away and clambered up onto the desk. He was mouthing half-inarticulate obscenities, shrieking like a woman. And he was pointing at something. Krakovitch, almost numb with shock and horror, saw the leech-creature's flat cobra head vibrating on the floor, flipping and flopping like a stranded flatfish. He gave a cry of loathing, began to panic, then gripped himself tight and drove the panic out. Finally he slammed the cabinet door shut and shot the bolt.
He grabbed a metal drawer from the cabinet's scattered guts, yelled: 'Well, help me!'
Gulharov got down off the desk. He still had the stake, was hanging on to it like grim death. Prodding the flopping head, and cursing all the time under his breath, finally he juggled the thing into Krakovitch's drawer. Krakovitch slammed a section of shelving down on top of it, and Gulharov brought a pair of heavy ledgers to put on top of that. Both cabinet and drawer shuddered and shook for a few seconds more, then were still.
Like a pair of ghosts Krakovitch and Gulharov faced each other, both of them panting, white as sheets and round-eyed. Then Krakovitch snarled, reached out and slapped the other's face. 'Bodyguard?' he shouted. 'Bloody bodyguard?' He slapped him again, hard. 'Bloody hell!
'I… I'm sorry. I didn't know what to…' Gulharov was trembling like a leaf, looked like he was going to faint.
Krakovitch calmed down. He could hardly blame him. 'It's all right,' he said. 'It's all right. Now listen: we'll burn the head up here. We'll do that first, right now. Go quickly, fetch Avgas.'
Staggering a little, Gulharov went.
He was back in record time, carrying a jerrycan. They slid the shelving over the drawer open a crack, poured Avgas. There was no movement from inside the drawer. 'Enough!' said Krakovitch. 'Any more and there'll be one hell of an explosion. Now then, help me drag the cabinet through into the other room.' In a moment they were back, and Krakovitch tipped out the drawers of Borowitz's desk. He found what he was looking for: a small ball of string. He snapped off a ten foot length, soaked it in Avgas, carefully dangled one end through the crack into the drawer. Then he laid the string out on the floor in a straight line towards the door and took out Gulharov's matches. They shielded their eyes as he lit the fuse.
Blue fire raced across the floor, leaped into the drawer. There was a dull thump and shelving, ledgers and all hit the ceiling, then fell back to the floor. The metal drawer was an inferno, in which the flat snake-head danced and skittered — but not for long. As the drawer began to buckle under the heat and the carpet about it blackened and burst into flames, so the thing in the drawer puffed up, and split open and quickly became liquescent. And then it, too, burned. But Krakovitch and Gulharov waited a full minute more before they put out the fire.
Krakovitch gave a curt nod. 'Well, at least we know the thing burns!' he said. 'It was probably dead anyway, but by my books when a thing's dead it lies still!'
They bumped the cabinet downstairs, two flights to the ground floor, then out through the battle-torn building into the grounds. Krakovitch stood guard on it while Gulharov went back for the Avgas. When he returned, Krakovitch said, This will be the tricky bit. First we pour some of this stuff around the cabinet. That way, when we open it, if what's inside is — active — we just jump back out of range and toss a match. Until it's quiet. And so on….
Gulharov seemed uncertain, but he was far more alert now.
They poured Avgas on to and around the cabinet, and then Gulharov got well back out of it. Krakovitch slid back the bolt, threw the door clangingly open. Inside, Dragosani stared into the sky. His chest stirred a little, but that was all. As Krakovitch began to pour Avgas carefully into the cabinet near Dragosani's feet, Gulharov came forward. 'Don't use too much,' it was the Sergeant's turn to caution. 'Or it will go off like a bomb!' When the fuel swirled almost an inch deep around Dragosani's prone form, evaporating furiously, the dead man's chest gave another sudden lurch. Krakovitch stopped pouring, stared, backed off a little. Outside the circle of danger, Gulharov stood with a match ready to strike. A slickly shining, grey-green tendril sprouted upwards from Dragosani's chest. Its tip formed a knob as big as a fist, which in turn formed an eye. Just seeing that orb, Krakovitch knew there was no thought behind it, no sentience. It was vacant, staring, made no connections and carried no emotions. Krakovitch doubted if it even saw. Certainly there was no longer any brain for it to relay its message to. The eye melted back into protoflesh, was replaced by small jaws which clashed mindlessly. Then it sank down again out of sight.
'Felix, get out of there!' Gulharov was nervous.
Krakovitch backed out of the circle; Gulharov struck a match, tossed it; in a moment the cabinet was an inferno. Like the oblong mouth of a jet engine on test, the cabinet hurled a pale blue sheet of fire roaring into the cold air, a shimmering column of intense heat. And then Dragosani sat up!
Gulharov clutched Krakovitch, clung to him. 'Oh God! Oh, mother — he's alive!' he croaked.
'No,' Krakovitch denied, tearing himself free. 'The thing in him is alive, but mindless. It's all instinct with no brain to govern it. It would flee but doesn't know how to, or even what it's fleeing from. If you spear a sea- cucumber it reacts, spills out its guts. No mind, just reaction. Look, look! It's melting!'
