“And the great voice said to the seven angels, go your ways and pour the vials of wrath of God upon the Earth… and lo, there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon men which had the mark of the Beast… !”
Meg Penny heard this scripture, but she was too terrified even to comprehend what the reverend was saying. She just clung to her family as the Blob put more and more pressure on the once sturdy Town Hall, until the rafters and the solid brick of the walls began to squeal and tremble as though in terrible agony.
“Mommy!” cried Kevin. “Don’t let it get us!”
But Meg Penny knew the truth. It was going to get them. The monster was going to get them, just as it had gotten the others.
She was too frightened and horrified to even wonder what had happened to Brian Flagg.
22
“It can’t stand the cold!”
Meg’s words echoed in Brian Flagg’s mind.
But he’d already figured it out. He knew it as soon as he saw those pseudopods retreat under the spray of C02, as Meg Penny extinguished the fire on the Reverend Meeker.
Cold! Of course! He’d been so stupid.
When they’d been in the freezer, and the tentacles of the monster had stopped short, withdrawing back through the door cracks—that had been what had stopped the creature! Subzero temperature!
Now, with the thing on the surface, rolling around like an unanchored mountain, there was only one way to stop it, and that was with cold.
There was a big icehouse here in Morgan City. But no way could he convince that monster to come along and get inside it. No, the cold was going to have to be brought to the creature.
And Brian Flagg was going to be the guy to do it!
He ran through the night with surprising speed and energy considering how much he’d already gone through that evening. He ran down the street to Moss’s Repair Shop, praying that the door wasn’t locked.
The door was locked.
Shit!
Behind him he heard the gunfire and the screams and the roar of people running from the advancing monster.
“Shit!” he cried. The side door of the shop had a sectioned, framed window. Brian Flagg smashed his fist through the glass nearest the door. Shattered glass tinkled into the darkness.
Brian reached in, felt for the knob, unlocked the door, and burst through.
His hand was bleeding, but he didn’t notice.
The word throbbed through his head as he ran into the shop, where the hulking shadows of machines lurked.
He hoped that Moss had gotten around to fixing the thing!
Brian fumbled for the light switch.
No light. Electricity gone.
But enough light was coming through the garage-door windows to make out where the cabs were. Brian ran to the machine and clambered into the cab. He felt around in the darkness, praying that—
Yes! His fingers touched the key, already slotted into the ignition.
“Okay, buddy. You gotta work!”
He turned the key.
The engine whined, and died.
Shit!
No, this was unacceptable! He tried again.
The engine growled like a leashed mountain lion. Growled and growled, turning over but only on the power of the battery and—
Brian stepped on the accelerator.
The engine roared into life.
He buckled the safety harness into place, turned the cab lights and the headlights on, and then fumbled with the emergency brake.
Brake off, he downshifted the gear, brought up the clutch.
The mighty machine lurched forward.
There was no time to figure out how to unlock the front garage doors, so Brian Flagg slammed the Indian Summit snowmaker right through them.
Glass broke and wood shattered as the door exploded outward. Stepping up the speed, Brian Flagg hurled the machine into the night. There were parked cars in front of him, but he paid them no mind. The snowmaker blasted through them, sending them careening away like tenpins struck with a bowling ball.
The big-wheeled machine roared onward, its enormous tractor tires bouncing across the bumpy pavement. The headlights picked up the ghastly carnage wreaked by the thing—twisted autos, pieces of bodies, slime. Brian tried to ignore it as he directed the snowmaker up the street.
Town Hall, he thought. They must have run for cover to Town Hall.
He headed in that direction.
He could see it from two blocks away, and it was grotesque.
The Blob was attached to the Town Hall like a throbbing parasite, roiling and shaking as it tried to crush the building.
Meg was in that building.
Meg and the others.
As he headed toward the creature, Brian looked down to the controls of the snowmaker. He’d worked on one of these things before with Moss, and the dude had shown him what lever did what, but he’d never actually
But he knew how it worked.
On top of the cab was a big funnel-like chute that dispensed the snow, while the snowmaking apparatus was housed on the flatbed back of the truck. This included big metal water tanks, and a grouping of tanks of liquid nitrogen that looked like airplane bombs. A central machine siphoned measured quantities of both through its pipes, and then blew out the resulting mixture—man-made snow—from the large blower hooked onto the front.
Brian brought the machine right up to the Blob and stopped it, its air brakes hissing.
The headlights shone through the red-porridge-and-saliva body of the monstrosity. Brian could smell it, and he had to control his revulsion.
He turned on the snowmaker.
With a great gurgling and churning sound the machine set to work immediately. After a growl and a lurch the chute above the cab began to spit out a lovely, high arc of snow that burst up through the night and landed squarely on the monster.
Behind Brian, mist from the machine rose up into the night air. He turned the controls up to full, and a heftier dollop of new snow burst up, splattering onto the Blob.
The creature trembled. The creature shook. Its hold on the Town Hall had seemed unbreakable, but now the Blob streamed back and away, as though in terrible pain, turning to confront this new and hurtful enemy.
Brian could see that waves of steam rose up from the Blob wherever snow touched it. Some kind of chemical reaction was going on. It was working! He kept the snow blowing. He was going to bury this thing in snow, bury it until it was covered with this beautiful white stuff, and then he, Brian Flagg, was going to strap on skis and
But then the Blob, with a speed that belied its heft, rippled away from the torrent of snow.
It moved toward its attacker, rolling faster and faster.
“Shit,” said Brian. “Okay, you want to eat me? Eat me! But you’re gonna have to eat five tons of snow
