Carson Fells 3

The conclusion of my crazy little story ...


“Is it him?” Charles asked.

“I think so. The details all seem to fall into place.”

Charles inched closer, unnaturally nervous. “Look what it’s doing to him,” he whispered, incredulous. “Why do they have to do it this way?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take a guess, Bill.”

Gilchrist adjust his latex gloves and sighed, opening the leather bag on the side table. “We’re in an undeclared war, I suppose. No one on the outside knows of their existence. No real reason to. It’s a way of staying covert. Ever see one outside a host?”

Charles’ eyes lit up. “Body-less? No – have you?”

“Once. In Bolivia – ”

“You were involved in that?” Charles fished around for straps to bind Carson’s arms to the side of the gurney, repeated the process with the old man’s legs.

“How do you think I made section chief at thirty-two?”

Charles whistled approval as he put on latex gloves of his own. “Gilchrist, I have new found respect for you. Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”

“Cause then I’d have to kill you.” A wink through Coke-bottle glasses. “Nah. Never came up. Enough talk, let’s do this.”

Charles withdrew a vial and syringe from the leather pouch. Holding both up to the dim ceiling light, he drew a full hypodermic of the chemical, then pressed on the plunger resulting in a misty spray above Carson.

The miner’s eyes opened.

“Quickly, Charles. We don’t have much time.”

The agent injected the serum into Carson’s arm, a full dose. Charles motioned over to the table. “That thing on?”

The recorder was still running. “Yes. Any second now – ”

All the muscles in Carson’s body convulsed simultaneously, eliciting an agonized shriek from the burned man. Blood sprayed straight up in the air. He thrashed wildly, tendons and veins straining, but the restraints held. Gilchrist felt his skin crawl as he heard the old man hyperventilating. I’ve set free a dozen outsiders, but still can’t get used to the way they discard a body . . .

Charles unclipped his revolver and checked the chambers. Through grit teeth he asked, “They can’t live outside a human host, right Gilchrist?”

“No. Not long, anyway. There’s no danger, just don’t get too close.”

Then Carson quieted, and relaxed, and a curiously deflated look spread across his features.

“Hmmmmm . . . ” Gilchrist stepped back. At this stage, anything out of the ordinary was bad news. He looked at Charles, who suddenly seemed ready to bolt. He held up a hand: “Wait.” He had an odd thought. “Maybe it wants to communicate.”

“With enough juice in him to drop an elephant?”

Gilchrist edged toward the foot end of the gurney, not wanting to get too close but not wanting to miss anything out of the ordinary, a clue, anything he could report back to Mr. Gray, something that could bring an edge in an undeclared war.

He whispered: “Who are you?”

The old miner focused on something above him, then searched out Gilchrist. He smiled and some dark liquid trickled down the corner of his mouth. The real Carson is dead, Gilchrist decided.

The head then raised, as if on a string. In a gravelly voice it said, “You will be wise to let me go.”

Gilchrist backed up, noted Charles doing the same. He glanced behind him and saw the recorder reels rolling. An idea struck him. “You have no where to hide. No where to run. But we’re willing to deal.”

The head turned to survey Charles, then swiveled back to Gilchrist. “You are in no position to deal with us. Let us go.”

“No.” He nodded to Charles, who withdrew a second syringe from the leather pouch, in slow and full view of the old man strapped to the gurney.

“What is it you want?” the head asked.

“We might ask the same of you.”

Carson’s smile broadened, and it only served to strengthen Gilchrist’s odd feeling that something wasn’t right. “We want what all species want,” it oozed. “Survival.”

Charles put the syringe down on the table and placed his colt revolver in full view of the bedridden figure. “Where’s the mother ship? Answer that, or it’s vaya con dios.”

“We don’t understand you.”

Gilchrist waved Charles back and pointed to the syringe. “We shot down a scouting vessel over our atom bomb testing range last night. We think you were the pilot. True or false.”

Carson nodded. “But I am not what you think I am.”

“Where is the mother ship hiding?”

“You would be wise to let me go.”

“Where is the mother ship?”

“I am not what you think I am.”

“Then who are you?” Gilchrist nearly screamed, clearly phased. Then a moment to regain his composure, as the beast beneath him lay studying him peaceably.

“I am not what you think I am.”

Gilchrist snatched the syringe from Charles, pounced on the miner and stabbed him with it. “Fry in hell,” he muttered under his breath, as he’d done a dozen times before, and jumped back.

Carson writhed again, trembling more violently than any man should. Gilchrist and Charles backed up, arms outstretched, unsure of what would happen next. Someone was pounding on the locked door. In between enormous gulps for air, the thing bellowed: “I bring a message for you!”

Gilchrist panicked. This was outside his realm of experience. Mr. Gray always said, always drilled into his boys that anything unusual is dangerous. Be careful. Now here he was with an outsider before him, with two hypodermics of chemical sizzling its brain, crying out that it had a message for humanity –

“What message?” Gilchrist demanded. Knocks and shouts at the door behind them.

The thing grew in strength. One by one the bed binds were tearing, threatening to burst at any moment –

“What message!” Gilchrist cried. Shouts of dismay echoed from the hallway.

Carson abruptly calmed, deflated of pain and rage. In a clear, human voice, eyes locked with Gilchrist, it spoke: “Please just leave us alone.”

Charles stepped forward, colt still drawn, and aimed it at the miner’s head. “Take this message back to your fellow Martians, comrade. Courtesy of the Atomic Energy Commision.” He cocked the hammer and fired.

Without warning a thing the size of a man materialized above the bed, a horrible oozing monstrosity, becoming the mass of two, four, eight men in the blink of an eye, increasing and engulfing Charles in the process, expanding to fill the hospital room. Gilchrist turned to run, actually made it to the locked door, but his final thought was, Who will miss me . . .


THE END


Or, should we see (as I imagine we should) the words "THE END" appear as that little blobby nasty who just ate our two protagonists floats in the air and resolves itself into a question mark, a la the final shots of the movie The Blob (1958) ???

Tomorrow, some analysis, for what it may be worth ...