The Thing

  Then the rope was gone, all tension vanished as it gave way somewhere behind them. The end went whistling past the mechanic and the wind sent him tumbling after it.

  Macready clung to his own fragment of line as he saw Childs vanish into the darkness. Something bumped into him from behind and he screamed. It yelled back at him as it skittered off into the snow.

  Good-bye, Nauls.

  The screeching came again, louder this time. It was definitely somewhere behind him.

  Frantically, Macready fought to orient himself. The compound had to be there, straight ahead. He thought he could make out the dim glow of the outside lighting, but he wasn't sure. It might be that exhaustion and cold were making him see lights where there weren't any. He struggled forward on hands and knees, hoping he was crawling in the right direction.

  That awful, grating wail was growing nearer. Was it coming after him or was he heading toward it? He remembered what had happened to Copper, remember the half-formed abomination that had come out of that yawning mouth before he'd fed it the dynamite. It might be at his heels now, flicking about over the snow, searching for him, waiting to wrap itself around a leg and draw him down, down into . . .

  He missed the entrance to the dog kennel and its outside doorway, missed seeing Nauls crawl over the rim to tumble down the open ramp to safety.

  But he bumped up against the main compound. Desperately he began searching along the wall. The supply room window he'd used to get inside when they'd locked him out, earlier ought to be nearby, a little to the right.

  And then he was falling. It was a short, unexpected drop. The frozen burned plants he landed on did nothing to cushion his fall. He rolled over, holding a throbbing shoulder. It rotated. Nothing broken, then.

  Standing up he took stock of his surroundings, noted the shattered skylight he'd fallen through, and tried to orient himself. Where the hell was he? Couldn't be supp . . . oh yeah. Childs's illegal-but-tolerated "garden." He stumbled forward and rested against the open door as he caught his breath.

  Something groaned overhead, followed by a tinkling sound. He looked up at the skylight. Something was bending the steel-support bars outward, widening the opening so it could get inside.

  He sprinted for the hallway door. Fuchs's frozen corpse was there to greet him, still pinned to the wood by the deeply imbedded axe. The body was blocking the door handle.

  The splintering sound grew suddenly loud behind him. A backward glance showed something black and knobby flailing around inside the garden room.

  Unaware that he was moaning softly, Macready finally got Fuchs out of the way long enough to wrench open the door. He slammed it shut behind him and threw the latch.

  He rushed up the corridor, skidding around the turns and taking steps two at a time, locking every intervening door behind him. His heart was hammering at his ribs as he raced for the recreation room.

  Something slammed into him around the next junction and he screamed.

  "Shit, man!" said Nauls, almost crying. "Don't you ever watch where you're going?"

  "Christ." Macready eyed the cook up and down. They hadn't been separated very long. Surely not long enough for takeover to have occurred. "Where the hell did you come from?"

  "Fell into the doghouse," Nauls told him, fighting for breath. "What about you?"

  Macready looked back the way he'd come. The corridor behind them was still quiet, still empty. He knew it wouldn't stay that way for long.

  "Came in through Childs's skylight. You know, the one over the little room he and Palmer turned into their private pot patch. The thing was right behind me." The knowledge of how close it had actually been chilled him far more deeply than had the brief sojourn outside.

  "What do we do now?" Nauls was pleading for reassurance.

  Macready couldn't give him that, but he did have an idea.

  "We know it doesn't like the cold. It can tolerate it, but only for a while. We blew up its transportation and that means it can't hang around looking like itself. It's got to find another live body to take over. Come on." He started up the corridor.

  They worked quickly and efficiently in the recreation room, pouring gasoline into empty bottles. They'd had three of the small blowtorches left. All three now lay somewhere outside in the snow, lost when the guide rope had been severed. Neither man had any intention of going outside to hunt for them. The Molotov cocktails would have to serve as a substitute.

  Garry was busy nearby, stringing a thin wire between two battery-charged generators. Sanders had taken over the task of readying the last of the Molotovs. He held the funnel steady and emptied the last drop of gas from the last can into the glass. The activity gave him back a little courage.

  Coke adds life, he thought grimly, noticing the label on the bottle. But not this time.

  Macready sat at the nearby card table, fooling with some empty gelatin capsules he'd scrounged from the infirmary. A loaded hypo rested nearby. He'd inject a portion of the syringe's contents into a capsule, carefully set it aside, and move on to the next.

  Nauls came skating in with another box of dynamite. Repossession of his wheels boosted his confidence the same way pouring the gas helped Sanders.

  He put the crate alongside the others. There was now enough of the explosive in the rec room to blow the compound halfway to Tierra del Fuego.

  He looked over at the busy Macready. "What are we going to do about Childs?"

  "Forget about Childs. He's gone." Macready spoke without looking up from his work. "If he was still in control of himself he'd have found his way back here an hour ago."

  "You don't know that for sure, man." The cook used a small crowbar to pry the lid off the dynamite crate. "Remember how long you were stuck out there before we let you back in?"

  "You mean, before I let myself back in," Macready reminded him. He shook his head regretfully, refused to reconsider the matter. "He's been outside too long. That thing out there's had too long to work on him. If it was able to find him. The wind was pushing him along pretty good. He could be halfway to the pole by now."

  "But we don't know that," Nauls argued. "Why should it bother with him? He's stuck out there in the snow, alone and unarmed. It's got plenty of time to go looking for him. Wouldn't it make more sense to ignore him and take care of us first?"

  "Hell, how should I know?" Macready replied gruffly. "I don't think like it does. But I'll bet you're right about one thing."

  "Yeah, what's that?"

  "It getting ready to take care of us."

  Garry spoke softly, separating the two with words. "Make those fuses short, Nauls. They'll go off quicker if we need to use them."

  The cook nodded, favored the indifferent Macready with a final scowl, and turned his attention to the linen wicks protruding from each Molotov cocktail.

  Garry rose and made sure the wire running across the main entrance to the recreation room was stretched taut. The two generators sat off to either side, out of sight from the hallway. Macready had finished his task with the capsules and was straining to maneuver a storage cabinet into place, blocking one of the other side doorways.

  Sanders put the last gas can aside and stared at the main entrance and its almost invisible wire barrier. "What if it doesn't come?"

  Macready rammed his shoulder against the unwieldy cabinet. "It'll come. It needs us. We're the only things left to expropriate. Give me a hand with this, will ya?"

  Sanders obliged, adding his weight to the pilot's. As soon as the storage cabinet was in place they started wrestling one of the heavy video game consoles toward the second doorway. It took another console to complete the job. One of the games was Space Invaders. No one tried to joke about it.

  Macready turned to his helper, gesturing with a thumb toward the last unbarred opening. "You and Nauls got to block off the west side bunks, the mess hall, and the kitchen."

  Nauls looked at the pilot as if he'd gone over the edge. "You crazy? It might be inside there already."

  "Chan
ce we got to take," replied Macready evenly. "We've got to force him to come down the east side to the door we've got rigged for him."

  "Why me?" Nauls wanted to know.

  Macready stared at him. "Why not you?"

  "Okay, okay. Don't give me that what-are-you look." He started for the door.

  Sanders licked his lips and tried to think of a fault, any fault, with Macready's reasoning. "He might just chose to wait us out."

  Macready shook his head. "Uh-uh, I think not. He froze solid here once." He indicated the window and the howling polar storm raging outside. "Maybe it's not as cold here now as it was a hundred thousand years ago, but I'll bet it's cold enough. He could freeze up again, and this time would be the last time. So he's got to come inside."

  "All right," countered the radio operator, "so he waits us out from the inside."

  Macready smiled. "That's where we've got him. As soon as you and Nauls get back I'm going to blow the generator." He indicated the rectangular metal shapes stacked neatly in one corner. "Garry and I lugged all the portable heaters in here. He'll have to come for us, or freeze." He turned and started pushing a small couch toward the door blockaded by the video consoles.

  "We can run the portables off those." He nodded toward the generators linked by the single wire. "We can sit here as long as necessary and outlast him. But I don't think that'll happen. He isn't stupid and he'll figure out his options are limited. Oh, he'll come for us, all right."

  Sanders joined Nauls in the doorway.

  "Hold it a sec." Macready finished positioning the couch, then went over to the card table where he'd been injecting capsules.

  He handed each of them one of the bright red containers. They looked like ordinary cold pills.

  "Sodium cyanide," he said quietly. "If it comes down to it, put one between your cheek and gum and bite down hard. This thing can't control anything that's dead. If it could, Fuchs wouldn't be decorating the door in Corridor G." Sanders and Nauls regarded the capsules silently.

  "If it gets a hold of you, like it did Copper, use 'em. This stuff's supposed to be fast and painless. They issued me something like it in 'Nam. Never thought I might have to use it here. Now, move it."

  They vanished down the hallway. Macready listened until the rumble of Naul's skates faded into the wind. Then he turned to where Sanders had been working and started checking the wicks on the Molotovs.

  Garry was running current through the wire blocking the main entrance. The generators hummed, the air crackled, and there was a satisfying amount of smoke and sparks.

  "Looks good," Macready complimented him.

  "A thousand volts." The station manager checked the reserve level on one of the generators. "That ought to be enough. It's a hell of a lot more than the doc gave the thing that was trying to look like Norris."

  Nauls shoved the portable stove around on greased wheels. It squeaked anyway. He managed to wedge it against a locked kitchen door. Across the room Sanders was rolling one of the refrigerators in front of a second door. As soon as it was in position, he bent over and jammed the butcher knives he was carrying into the rollers.

  A sudden surge of sound drifted in to them. A purring, bubbling noise. Sanders froze, and turned to face Nauls. "You hear that, man?"

  Nauls glanced over at him. "Hear what?"

  Suddenly the noise was all around them. Familiar noise, erupting from the stereo speakers flanking both ends of the kitchen. Electric guitar, drums, organ, synthesizer. Someone had the camp-wide system going on maximum volume.

  The same thunder swamped the rec room. Macready and Garry stared dumbly at the three speakers fastened to the walls. The pilot shouted at his companion. Garry's lips moved, but all Macready could hear was amplified electronics.

  Neither man could hear the other . . .

  The music filled the corridors, the empty sleeping rooms, the supply section, and the lavatories. It penetrated the walls and shook the floors.

  Except for Childs, who had maintained it, Nauls knew that system better than anyone at the outpost. He shouted over the din and gestured back toward the rec room.

  "It's got into the pub!" he screamed at his companion. "It's turned on the stereo!"

  Sanders gaped across the room at him, straining to hear. "What say?"

  Nauls headed for him. "It's between us and the rec room. How are we going to get back?"

  Sanders shook his head, looked frightened and confused. "Can't hear you, man!"

  In the recreation room Macready cursed steadily as he ripped first one speaker and then another from their wall brackets.

  "What are they doing back there?" he asked the station manager, nodding toward the distant kitchen. The music boomed from only one remaining speaker now, but its pounding ostinato continued to reverberate through the rest of the compound.

  Garry stood close by the wire entrance and peered down the hallway. Nauls's voice reached him as a distorted wail.

  "What's he saying?" Macready asked as he tore at the last speaker.

  Garry shook his head. "I can't make it out."

  "What's that?"

  "Macready!" Nauls was howling. "We been cut off!" He leaned cautiously into the corridor. "Hey, can't you guys hear me up there?"

  Something went whump! against the door at the back of the kitchen. Nauls turned to stare as a large, scythe-like blade poked through the heavy timbers and began sawing downward. Black ooze stained the fringes of the cut. The blade itself was an unrecognizable shade of nonmetallic red. Odd color for a knife. The sound of tearing wood was largely obscured by the blare from the stereo speakers.

  Eyes bulging, Sanders pointed a trembling hand at the disintegrating door. A second knife-blade appeared alongside the first, together with more of the lubricating black substance.

  Nauls backed away from the splintering barrier as he realized that the dual blades were not knives. They were fingernails.

  Sanders had put his back against the third doorway when another pair of talons came crashing through the thinner wood to spread and lock around his neck. He struggled briefly as he was yanked backward. There was a wistful expression on his face as his bit down on the cyanide capsule just before he was wrenched through the broken door,

  Nauls wasn't one for futile gestures. Sanders had bought it. The other door was giving way as he took off through the single remaining exit. Crouching low, he shot out into the corridor. His skates sent sparks flying.

  In the recreation room a familiar and nerve-tingling screech rose above the music. It was sharp, distinct, louder than ever.

  Macready bent under the wire and looked down the hall. There was no movement. Small speakers continued to bellow their indifferent electronic litany from far rooms.

  Nauls had skated like this only once before in his life. It had been back in Chicago. The local gang, the Crips, were after him. The mothers were fast, but not as fast as a frightened teenager on skates. It was late, he had no business being out in that neighborhood, and cockiness had overcome common sense.

  He'd gone shooting right past their street corner, leaving them furious and startled in his wake, and he'd skated until he'd thought his legs were going to drop off. Around fences, down deserted streets, leaping curbs and gutters, flying through the vacant urban night.

  Now he leaned hard into a turn and kicked with his legs as he accelerated down a straight corridor. Not far, he told himself desperately, not far to home. To Delancy Street, to the rec room. His eyes were glazed. He was a bullet, spinning down the barrel of a gun.

  Sanders's body came flying out of the hallway wall directly ahead of him. A thick, knob-encrusted arm pinned it like a fly to the paneling opposite.

  Nauls skidded and lost his balance as he tried to stop, slid into the nearest wall hard. The cyanide capsule went flying out of his mouth. He ignored it. The rest of whatever had taken the radio operator was starting to crumble through the wall.

  He got to his feet and started forward again, leaping over the flexing, massive l
imb and rolled on the floor just like they'd taught him to do in gym class. Then he was back on his feet and skating like a roller derby jammer for the next turn.

  Macready was out in the corridor and running toward the kitchen. He hadn't gotten very far when Nauls came careening around the corner toward him.

  "Get back!" the cook screamed at him. Macready slowed but didn't stop.

  "The generator . . ." he started to say.

  "Screw the generator!" Nauls shot past the pilot's reaching hand. Hisses and unholy snarls rose above the music. Something like an ambling earthquake was coming up the corridor. Macready turned and rushed after Nauls.

  Nauls barely remembered the wire and just did duck under it as he skidded into the rec room. Macready was right behind him chugging like an overheated engine, the cook collapsed on the big couch.

  "What happened back there?" Garry asked him quietly.

  Nauls looked over at him. His words came in bunches. "Got Sanders . . . he got into his capsule, the poor son bitch . . . World War Three wouldn't mess with this fucker . . . can go through walls . . . and it's big, lots bigger than we thought . . . maybe never reached full size before it froze way back when . . . it's like all over the place . . ."

  "Calm down and get into your position," Macready told him.

  Nauls started off the couch. "Position, my ass . . ."

  Garry worked on the generators, readying them. "I'm going to bump this up as much as I can. We'll have to risk a burnout. It ought to do it."

  "Boulder Damn might do it," was Nauls's opinion.

  Unexpectedly, the loud music that had been blasting through the compound ceased. Something had turned it off. Or maybe the tape had run out.

  Garry whispered to the pilot. "Lights."

  Macready nodded and flipped the main wall switch. Each man assumed his predetermined station as the rec room was plunged into darkness. The wind moaned overhead.

  Their attention was concentrated on the wired doorway, though after Nauls's description of the way the thing had assaulted the kitchen they didn't neglect to watch the two blocked entrances or the walls.