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The Glob
by Terry Wright
Billy
took the high point of rock down in the Cavern of the Damned, which was lit only
by torches mounted to rock walls. Hell’s heat had become bearable for him, if
not somewhat comfortable. Stroking his goatee, he looked over his new charges.
Flickering flames cast an eerie red glow on the legion of demons assembled
before their new master. As the devil had agreed, Christy’s delivery into hell
was rewarded most adequately. These
demons were an unsightly bunch of squatty-looking gargoyles. Their blood red
bodies were mostly smooth, completely unclothed, and smelled of vinegar. They
had hairless heads, piercing black eyes, and pointy tails that bent at sharp
angles. The horde, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, swayed back and forth and
chanted Cara, Tara, Shara, Cara, Tara, Shara, a show of allegiance to
their new leader. As
he scanned the hellish members of his new gang, his eyes were drawn to a demon
standing in the front who appeared to be older, his skin being rougher than the
others, and one place on his chest appeared scarred. Billy pointed down at him.
“Come up here.” With
the moves of a monkey, the demon clambered up the rock, slouched at Billy’s
feet, and twisted his neck around so his inky eyes looked up. “Master?” “I’m
going to need a little help with these guys.” “Leon,
at your service,” the demon said, and with a twinkle in his eye added, “They
call me the baby killer.” “Admirable.”
One thing Billy liked about demons, they enjoyed bragging about their evil
exploits and the ghastly deeds they’d committed to gain rank and favor with
the devil. “You’ll be my right hand man.” Leon
hissed his approval and turned to the legion. Cara,
Tara, Shara. Cara, Tara,
Shara. The cavern was alive with death. Billy
extended his hands, palms down. “Listen up, you guys!” The
chanting subsided, leaving only the gaseous sound of fiery torches. “You’ve
been draggin’ ass around here for too long. Things are going to be different. The
demons stopped swaying and began murmuring to each other. “I
expect twice as many souls fried in the fires of Hell’s kitchen. You got
that?” Now
the demons eyes widened, and they hissed loudly. Leon
looked up at his new master. “What’s the rush? We’ve got all eternity.” “Are
you going to be insubordinate?” “But
we’ll need to increase coal rock production. We’ll need more chains, more
diggers. New gas lines will have to be run and more wells drilled. The logistics
of such an operation is mind boggling.” “I
don’t want to hear none of that crap,” Billy said. “Tell your boys to get
on it.” “But…” “Do
it!” “You
don’t understand…” Billy’s
eyes became threatening slits. “I’ll tell the devil. He’ll strip you of
your demonship and cast you into the hell fires along with all the other losers
in this fricken place.” Leon
flinched, paused in thought, then turned and crouched on all fours, his tail
angling upward. “You heard the boss.” The
demons began to sway. Cara, Tara, Shara. Cara,
Tara, Shara. Feeling
the rapture of his power, Billy thrust a fist in the air. “Now get to work!” As
the demons filed out of the Cavern of the Damned, he turned to Leon. “You take
care of things around here. I have another matter to attend.” “Justin
Graves?” “The
devil is obsessed.” “They
are worthy opponents.” Billy
huffed. “I’d like to see them choke each other to death.” “They’re
already dead, my master.” “Lucky
me.” Leon
sat on his tail. “Because of them, you get to go back up there and raise a
little hell of your own. Some of us down here would call that lucky.” “I’m
bored with it all,” Billy said with a sigh. “I mean, being invisible and
sneaking up on people to slash them was okay at first. But what I really want to
do is make them piss their pants.” Leon’s
brow arched. “Let me get this straight. Before you kill them, you want to
scare them?” “Shitless.” “Then
you need to learn a few tricks.” Billy peered quizzically at the old demon Leon, the killer of babies. “Tricks?” “Lighten up on my boys, I’ll show you.” “If
you make it worth my while, I might.” “Follow
me.” In
a whirl of smoke and ash, Billy found himself transported to another rock-walled
chamber. “This way.” Leon led him down a sloping tunnel that smelled of oily
decay, swampy and tarry. Bats clung to ceiling rocks with sharp claws and
protested the intrusion with high-pitched squeals. Billy felt a chill. This
place was darker and colder compared to the rest of hell. “Where are we?” “Down
here,” Leon said, loping along with a crab-like gait, “are many secrets of
the dead, where horrors abound, and the tools of the trade are at our disposal.
One of my favorites is just ahead.” The
tunnel’s end opened into a steamy cavern, where in its center, a dark pool
oozed and bubbled. Billy half expected to see a woolly Mammoth flailing in its
midst. “Tar?” Leon
squatted on a flat rock at the pool’s edge. “Looks can be deceiving.” “What
is it?” “The
stuff nightmares are made of.”
Captain
Holland set his binoculars aside, satisfied the ravine was clear of personnel.
The sun beat down gleaning sweat on his brow, which he patted with a
handkerchief. “Get ready, men.”
A dozen holes had been drilled into Penelope’s walls. Dynamite was
planted and wired. In a few moments, Holland would be assured no one else would
ever die in that treacherous mineshaft.
“Charging.” Lieutenant Richter had been a Marine demolition expert
back in Vietnam. Both his hands were on the raised T handle. Both his eyes
glittered with anticipation. The light on the detonator glowed solid red. “On
three, sir?” “Just
blow the damn thing,” Holland said. In an instant, the ravine disgorged rocks into the air with a mighty boom. Penelope belched and fell in on herself. The tailings pile gave way and cascaded to the bottom of the ravine. Dust billowed up like an afternoon storm.
Back
at the station, Deputy Ryan had hold of the phone. “I promise,” he said.
“As soon as they get back.” “I
need that prescription right away,” his wife said. “She’s breaking out all
over.” “I’m
on duty.” “Don’t
give me that line of duty crap. Your daughter needs…” “I’ll
get it. I promise.” The
line went dead. Deputy Ryan couldn’t believe that his wife had hung up like
that. He clicked the receiver button several times without raising a dial tone.
Just great. As he set the malfunctioning phone down, a burst of wind threw open
the front door, and a red mist came in, swirling. He’d
seen strange phenomenon before, this reminding him of a rampant dust devil
wreaking havoc down Main Street, blowing open doors and knocking over potted
plants. But this one was different. Its amoeba-like form defied reasoning. It
moved about as if with deliberate intent. Papers on the desk began to fly around
the room. Chairs toppled. He could hear faint laughter. The wind took the form
of an...an...oh my god...an undulating glob of liver. It was upon
him quickly, looming overhead, rasping with a heavy sound like breathing.
Ryan’s hair whipped in the wind, and he felt fire on his face. A distinct
realization came to him. He was no longer alone in the station house.
Captain Holland’s men
threw the last of their equipment into the back of a county maintenance pickup
truck, which they had borrowed for this chore. “Return the truck,” Holland
said. “I’ll meet you back at the station.” He slid behind the wheel of his
black Texas Rangers squad car. It had a silver circled-star emblazoned on the
front door and a multi-colored light bar mounted on the roof. He clicked on the
air conditioner and picked up his radio mike. “Command. This is Unit One.” Static. Holland frowned.
“Command—come in!” Silence. “Deputy Ryan?” A
shot of adrenaline spiked his heart rate and caused a sharp pain in his healing
chest wound. The doctors had told him to take some time off, but that wasn’t
possible. Seemed every time he turned around, Billy Denton or Justin Graves
interfered with his need for rest. Now his radio calls were going unanswered,
and he instantly feared more of the same. The maintenance truck with his men on
board was already cutting across the desert, a plume of dust in its wake.
They’d be more than an hour returning the truck, and if he knew them, they’d
probably stop for lunch at the local Sonic drive in. He switched the radio
frequency to mobile. There might be another Texas Ranger car in the vicinity.
“Captain Holland, here. Anybody on this channel?” Silence. He switched to the
Deckers Police Dispatch. “Somebody call the Texas Ranger station on the phone.
I can’t raise my man.” “Who is this?” a
female voice came back. “Captain Holland.” “Right away, sir.” Filled with dread, he
dropped the transmission shifter into drive and flipped on the overheads. “The line is dead,
sir.” Holland’s throat
clutched. “Send a black and white to investigate. I’m on my way.” “Roger.”
A Deckers Police
cruiser screeched to a stop in front of the Texas Rangers’ station house.
Sergeant Baxter looked at his partner, rookie Steve Mosier. “Watch my back.” Baxter piled out of the
car and headed for the front door, gun drawn and Mosier on his heels. But
something wasn’t right about this. The front door was wide open. Papers and
debris littered the steps. With a quick wave of his hand, he cautioned Mosier to
stay back until he had a chance to scope out the situation. Peering through the
doorway, he saw no one in the reception lobby. The place looked like it had been
hit by a typhoon. Creaking, a wall-mounted fire extinguisher pivoted crookedly
on its broken hanger. The glass partition between the lobby and squad room had
been shattered, a sign someone had breached internal security. Chairs and tables
lay legs-up on the littered floor. Signaling Mosier to close the gap between
them, Baxter entered the station house, his gun held steady in his
white-knuckled hand. Inside, past the
reception counter, he carefully advanced toward the squad room, every nerve on
full alert. Years of training and experience kicked in: clear right, clear left,
advance. Looking back occasionally to check his partner’s progress, he hoped
the young rookie was taking notes and keeping a keen lookout. At the shattered
doorway to the squad room, he stopped and listened. Nothing stirred inside.
He’d been in this room before, on several occasions, back when the Texas
Rangers and the Deckers Department of Safety and Training met to discuss
tactical maneuvers and Critical Incident Procedures. He never thought he’d
ever have to enter this room under these circumstances. What would he find
inside? According to dispatch, Deputy Ryan, a friend of his since high school,
was supposed to be on duty. He wasn’t answering the radio, and his telephone
was out of commission. Had he met with some horrific fate? Instinct and devotion
to duty pressed Baxter to move onward. But nothing in his life
had prepared him for the carnage he found inside the squad room. The walls were
awash with blood, some smears still dripping streamers toward the floor. Bullet
holes punctured the walls and ceiling. Furniture was upended, and he could smell
gunpowder in the air. Wide-eyed and heart drumming, he worked his way around the
room. Mosier entered after
him and began gasping. Behind an upended desk,
Baxter found Deputy Ryan, his torso, that is. His blood-soaked shirt had the
arms cut off, and his trousers had the legs cut off. His neck bone was clearly
visible, like the cheese in French Onion soup. Mosier fell to his
knees and vomited. The stench of his bile knifed through the air. “Get up!” Baxter
grimaced. “Stay alert!” White as a lily petal,
Mosier wiped puke from his lips with his shirtsleeve. Baxter, his gun hand
trembling now, searched the room for Ryan’s legs and arms and his head. Under
tossed tables, toppled chairs and piles of papers, monthly reports and duty
rosters, he looked everywhere without success. The blood and gore made his
insides heave. But after a thorough search, he was sure of one thing; the
perpetrator had left the scene. Holstering his weapon, he clicked the switch on
the radio mike clipped to his collar. “We need the coroner over here,” he
said. “And CIT.” “The Crime
Investigation Team? My God! What happened?” “I’ve never seen
anything…” Suddenly, the air in
the room turned sauna hot. A wind stirred up debris. Baxter turned. A scream
came from behind him. He spun around and froze in disbelief. It was Deputy Ryan,
his head atop a red and undulating glob to which his legs and arms were attached,
like some morbid version of Mr. Potato Head. The look on Ryan’s face was that
of a man who’d seen hell first hand, his mouth wrenched in pain, his eyeballs
staring out blankly. Blood oozed from his neck and streamed down the slimy glob.
Red streaks ran from where Ryan’s sleeved arms were anchored and from where
his pant legs were attached also. The gruesome being walked forward stiffly,
like in a Frankenstein movie, its arms outstretched. A wail came from the depths
of this ungodly aberration, a cry that hurt Baxter’s eardrums. Without
hesitating, he drew his revolver and fired, once, twice, again and again until he’d
lost count of the rounds spent, his mind blinking in and out of consciousness,
at first expelling any notion that this was real, then recognizing the pure
horror before him. Mosier’s gun banged,
too. The screaming beast, the firearm reports, and Mosier’s cursing made for a
macabre cacophony of sounds echoing about the room. As the grisly anomaly
approached, not yielding to the barrage of bullets, Deputy Ryan’s head lolled
back and forth, his arms flailed at thin air, and with each step, his bloody
boots clunked on the tile floor with the clumsiness of a marionette. His
amoeba-shaped body pulsed and throbbed like a living glob of...of...something...something
unearthly. Fighting
panic, Baxter emptied his gun then threw it at his assailant. Only two feet away
now, a third arm shot out of the glob, a tattooed arm with a bloody knife in its
fist, slashing out. At first, Baxter felt a stream of warm urine run down his
leg, then a sharp pain, a bright light, and nothing.
Captain Holland pulled
up next to a black and white cruiser with its overheads flashing. There was no
one in it. He got out of his car and headed toward the station house entrance. A cry came out the open
front door. “No! Don’t!” It sounded like Deckers’ newest rookie,
Lieutenant Mosier. He had a pretty wife and a new baby. A guttural scream came
next. Then silence. Holland bolted inside,
gun drawn, his chest wound on fire. The place was in shambles. In the squad
room, his stomach tightened. He found two officers down, the rookie and Sergeant
Baxter whom he’d known a long time, though they were difficult to recognize
in their beheaded conditions. Mouth agape, Baxter’s head lay on its left cheek
in a puddle of blood, his gray hair all wadded up in gooey red tangles. From a
near corner, Ryan’s lifeless eyes stared out of his head. It looked as though
it had rolled there, several yards from his torso, which Holland found behind an
overturned desk. Mosier’s head was nowhere around. There was no one else
in the squad room, no one else alive. “Christ!” Pivoting around, gun in
both hands and elbows locked, he scanned the bloody room, thinking the
masochistic killer had to be near, maybe hiding in the adjoining office…or
perhaps the locker room down the hall. He couldn’t have gotten far. Only
moments ago, no just seconds ago, Mosier’s life had been snuffed out, his body
brutally dismembered and left piled about, along with Ryan’s and Baxter’s
parts and pieces, like a grotesque game of pickup sticks. The stench was awful:
the upchucked bile, congealing blood, and excreted bowel matter. Flies were
already buzzing around their newfound gruesome feasts. Sirens wailed in the
distance. About then, Holland
heard a rustle of paper and felt a rush of hot air on his face, stiflingly hot
air that sent a chill rippling down his backside. A glob-like form began to ooze
out from the walls and the cracks in the floor, seemingly from everywhere all at
once. It came together before him, suspended in mid air, undulating, stretching,
and expanding. His throat went dry. Behind membrane-thin walls, Mosier’s head
bobbed in a blood-red fluid, his face distorted: eyeballs nearly popped out of their
sockets, mouth agape in an eternal scream, and his skin stretched so tight the
form of his skull was clearly visible. Holland stepped back in
total disbelief, wanting to fire his gun but at the same time realizing how
futile it would be. He’d never seen anything like this before. He had never
known fear like this before either, and he had all he could do to keep from peeing
in his pants. The aberration grew
larger and larger, maybe two-foot by three foot or more. Holland stepped back
again, this time tripping over Baxter’s decapitation. Mosier’s head suddenly popped out on top of the glob and waggled like a
puppet’s head. Now Holland felt bile
rise in his throat. Everywhere he stepped there was blood. Every breath he took
made his insides revolt. He thought he couldn’t take anymore. “What are
you?” he shouted, still clinging to his weapon, yet not firing and not knowing
why. Was it the natural inquisitiveness of a homicide detective, or was it
morbid curiosity? As a captain in the Texas Rangers, he’d seen a lot of
disgusting things during his career. This beat them all with a stick.
“What do you want?” The sirens were getting
louder. Another face appeared
in the belly of this monstrosity, large and alarming. Billy Denton!
His eyes were evilly
slanted, brows set askew, one impaled by a silver ring. A goatee protruded
stiffly from his chin, and his neck was ringed in tattooed barbed wire. He
opened his mouth wide, and an eardrum-shattering scream filled the squad room,
like feedback from a rock and roll band’s speakers, drowning out the
approaching sirens and Holland’s sanity. He began firing his weapon like mad.
“You son of a bitch!” Now he heard laughter. The blob sprouted
knives, a hundred or more, clinking and clanking, coming toward him with deadly
persistence. The sirens seemed so far away. With his back against
the blood-streaked wall, Holland’s gun clicked empty. The stench of death
swelled in the room like a nuclear blast. He knew this was the last moment of
his life. “Billy!” Holland darted his eyes
left.
Justice was standing next to him, his cowboy hat canted on his head, his feet
planted apart, and his long coat drizzling dirt and debris. Steel-gray eyes
dominated his shrunken face, but even through the ravages of decay, Holland
could see determination in his expression, feel the power in his clenched jaw,
and hear his exposed molars grinding together. In one hand, he held a fire
extinguisher filled with carbon dioxide. Holland knew this because there was no
gauge on the bottle. In the other hand, Justice sported his Winchester rifle. “The cavalry to the
rescue?” Billy Denton said and cackled from inside the glob. A malicious smile twitched the corners
of his mouth. “Call it what you
like.” Justice squeezed the extinguisher handle. A cone of powdery dry ice
spewed from the nozzle. Knives
lashed out from the glob, some slicing into Justin’s coat, some plunging into
his bullet-riddled chest. But Justin held his ground and kept the spray aimed on
his target. Holland ducked behind
Justice, cringing from the stench and the horror. In seconds, an
icy-white coating completely covered the glob. The freezing temperature
caused the aberration to become sluggish. Mosier’s head fell to the floor and made a
cracking sound. The knives retracted. “Damn you,
Justice!” Billy cursed through chattering teeth, his voice echoing weakly
inside the icy core. “I’ll get you for this!” “Chill, punk!” The accumulating dry
ice weighted the glob to the floor; it was no longer able to levitate in mid
air. The absolute cold zapped Billy’s power to control his satanic vehicle,
and the colder it got, the less it moved, until finally, it became a totally
immobilized glob of ice. Justin poured on the CO2 until the extinguisher sputtered empty.
Tossing it to the floor, he raised his Winchester. “Go to Hell!” One shot, dead in the
center of the frozen glob, shattered it. Pieces flew through the air like shards
of glass and landed on the floor with a tinkling sound. “You got him,”
Holland said. “You killed him.” Justin frowned as if
those words made no sense to him. Sirens and the sound of
squealing
tires came from outside. Justice turned to
Holland. “The devil has marked you for death.” “What did I do?” “To get to me,
he’ll make you suffer.” “Then give it up,
Justice. Cross over. He’ll have no reason to pursue this.” “I’ll do my best to
protect you.” “Listen to me, damn
it! This is not your problem. Christy is gone. Go find your wife. Be happy.” “But you’re the
only friend I’ve got.” Holland patted dust
from Justin’s shoulder. “Friends like you will get me killed.” The bullhorn crackled.
“DON’T MAKE US SEND IN THE SWAT TEAM! COME
OUT! NOW!” A scraping sound came
from the floor, over by the bloody wall and in the far corner. Justin turned,
and Holland followed his eyes. Splinters of frozen goo were melting into
droplets and moving toward each other, conjoining into puddles and pools, racing
across the floor as if drawn together by some magnetic force. Hundreds of
globules skittered about and quickly combined into one massive aberration that
began to undulate and rise up. Holland felt an ache in
his throat. “WE’RE COMING
IN,” the bullhorn bellowed. In an instant, the glob
dove into the floor cracks as if suddenly siphoned back to hell.
“This isn’t over
yet,” said Justin. “Let it go, Justice, let it go.” “I can’t.” With a gust of wind,
the ghoul was gone.
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