The Blob

doors were closed and the men took their places in the cab; the ambulance rushed off in a storm of noise and lights. He took a deep breath, then put his official stance aside for a while and closed his eyes, letting himself be stunned, forgetting he was sheriff and focusing only on the fact that he was a human being who had just been confronted by pure horror.

“Jesus wept,” he murmured softly.

“Herb?” said Briggs at his side. “You okay?”

“Tyler was a good kid,” he said. “I want the son of a bitch that did this!”

Just then a highway patrol car screeched into the parking lot from off the road, its red lights revolving. Geller did not have to move to see who was sitting in the backseat. Mr. Juvie Hall himself, wearing handcuffs. Brian Flagg.

“Maybe we got him!” said Bill.

“Yeah,” said Geller, his anger and his sense of outrage obscuring everything else in his head. “Maybe so.”

He saw Meg Penny, getting into her family car nearby, noticing the patrol car coming in. He saw that she looked alarmed when she saw Brian Flagg being led out from the car. Flagg saw her, too, and there seemed to be an expression of hopelessness and anger in his usually blank face. And of accusation? What the hell had been going on with those kids? Some kind of weird ritual involving dousing the Can Man in acid or something? Geller had read about weirder things in the newspaper, but he’d never thought that something like this could happen in Morgan City.

And then the Penny car drove off, and the suspect was brought before the sheriff.

“Hello, Flagg,” said Geller. “We’ve got some serious talking to do, boy. And if I hear an ounce of attitude”—he lifted his fist—“God help me, I’ll give you a pound of knuckles!”

Brian Flagg said nothing.

12

All in all Scott Jesky was very pleased. The date with Vicki Desoto was going exactly according to plan. If all went well at this delicate stage of negotiations, he’d be in the saddle in just a matter of minutes, and then be home by midnight, where he could chalk another victory mark up on his “hit board.”

He’d parked his battered white ’63 Impala on top of Lakey Ridge, a classic lover’s lane overlooking Morgan City. The date was supposed to have been for a movie, but he’d managed to nix that pretty quick, getting on to more active aspects of teen courting by feeding Vicki a drink. She’d taken it, all right, and she’d liked it. They always did—the ones he was able to convince, anyway. “Painless punch,” he called it—his own special concoction. Then he’d convinced her that it was such a gorgeous night, they shouldn’t waste it being inside at some stuffy, boring movie, but should enjoy the fresh air, the night sky. And so, off to a place with just an absolutely wonderful view. And, they could just sit and talk.

Vicki had swallowed it, hook, line, and another drink.

“I can’t tell you how agonizing it is,” Scott Jesky was saying now, leaning toward his groggy date. “I guess what I really just need is a shoulder to cry on. The thought of all those years… I was cut off, I didn’t have the courage to tell people about how I was starving for physical affection.”

He leaned over and put his hand around her shoulder, while the other hand crept up her stocking to the hem of her high-riding skirt. She regarded this movement with giggly bemusement for a moment. Then his hand shot out for home base, triggering a cry of protest.

“Scott, cut it out!” she said, slapping his hand away. “I’ll kiss you, I told you. But that’s the limit!”

“What? But kisses… My heart kisses your heart. My soul kisses your lips. My fingers kiss your lovely frilly underwear.”

She moved over to the door, pushing him away, her huge breasts rising up with alarm beneath her tight blouse. With a finger she described a line across her midsection. “That’s the imaginary line, and you can’t cross it!”

Scott blinked. “Line? What are you, Libya?”

“Look, I like you, Scott, and—and you make me feel liked too. I told you we could go out steady for a while… Isn’t that enough?”

“Steady! C’mon, Vicki, you’re wearing my ring now! That makes you my girl!” That “painless punch” had really done the trick, along with the football game today. She was just aching for a boyfriend, and apparently she really did like him. He’d thought for just a moment that maybe he could lake it easy tonight, just get to know her, enjoy a few easygoing, no-tension dates. But the thought did last only a moment.

“It is a nice ring,” said Vicki, admiring the glitter at the end of the necklace hanging from her neck. “I do like it, Scott.”

“Thank God it doesn’t have to breathe,” Scott said, looking at the way it was stuffed between the mounds of her breasts. “Course, that wouldn’t be a bad way to go… Now, c’mere, baby! You don’t want to traumatize me, do you?”

But she pulled away from his embrace, attracted by something. She pointed out through the fogged-up window, down the hill past the woods. “Hey, what are all those lights down there? Isn’t that the hospital?”

“Ahhhh, probably just some promotional gimmick. They’re giving away free tonsillectomies or something.” He made another lunge, but she dodged. Boy, the lady sure was cooling… What was the matter? Scott wondered. Then he noticed the empty cocktail glass by the gearshift. Of course! The “painless punch” was wearing off!

“Saaay, young lady, it looks like you’re ready for another of my famous cherry coolers.”

“I think I’ve had enough,” she murmured.

“Nonsense!” He pushed open the door, got out the door, and went around to open the trunk and make her another one.

It sensed food.

It was still hungry, and it sensed the pair of animate foodstuffs in that frame of metal and glass atop the hill.

It undulated toward the car, the remains of Paul Tyler still digesting, within its mass, like a lump in the stomach of a glass python.

Food. It slithered up the metalwork, and it sensed an opening. A narrow opening, true, but it could rearrange its cells so that it could squeeze through. It lifted itself and pushed through the bottom of the doorjamb, and it immediately sensed the warmth and the smell of the pulsing blood and skin and flesh, and another smell… astringent, odd.

Inside the car, as the Blob oozed through the door below her, Vicki Desoto dozed, doped to the gills with Scott Jesky’s alcohol, unaware of the creeping death hissing below her.

Scott Jesky opened the trunk.

A two-tiered, homemade bar unfolded, complete with ice chest and swizzle sticks. Nearby, in a little box, hung his collection of cheap school rings. A deadly combination, commitment and alcohol. They opened up a girl’s heart—and everything else—almost every time!

Scott grabbed a bottle of 150-proof Everclear grain alcohol and a bottle of cherry juice. “My own special blend of fine imported liqueurs!” he pronounced as he poured the drink. Voila! “Painless punch!” “Cherry cooler!” Whatever you called it, it packed a wallop.

He took out an old egg beater and whipped the mix to a froth; added some ice cubes, and a cherry, and it was ready for round three. Yessir, one more of these babies tucked away into her tummy, and Vicki Desoto would be wanting to take advantage of him!

He slammed the trunk, sipped the drink to make sure it wasn’t too poisonous, and then cruised around to the driver’s side of the Impala, where he eased back in, his offering ready for the lady’s consumption.

“Just the thing to beat the heat,” he pronounced. Even as he said this, he noticed that it was rather hot in the car. Whew. “It’s like a steambath in here!” he commented. Jeez, just a few of his kisses on her voluptuous lips