The Incredible Melting Man by Phil Smith Page A

hatred. Five minutes had robbed her of a lifetime’s love and happiness. Five minutes and some crazy perverted psychopath had torn out her life as well as Matt’s and the lives of their unborn children.
    She raised the cleaver menacingly, emitting a sob of fury. She must be revenged.
    She heaved at the dresser, trying to pull it away from the door. But her strength had ebbed. She spent some of her fury in vain struggling to move it, tears of frustration running down her face. Then she slumped back into a chair by the window, the cleaver hanging loosely from her limp hand. Her mind went numb.
    There was an explosion of glass and she was showered with splinters. Something wet whipped round her neck like a slimy rope and dragged her up against the sink. A blast of hot and foetid breath burst on her. She squirmed round and found herself staring into the decaying pits of the thing’s eyes. Black and swollen pupils swam restlessly in a sea of red jelly and dripping remnants of flesh hung to the exposed bone of its forehead like pallid fungus. It bent towards her and she watched the frayed edges of the mouth pucker around the bloodstained teeth. The burning stench of its breath kissed her lips as a gurgle of pleasure bubbled up from its hot throat.
    She shrank with revulsion, sliding loose on the wet arm. Her fingers tightened round the shaft of the cleaver and she swung it in the air bringing it down hard on the glistening arm. It sliced through the limb like cheese and the arm fell at her feet, the fingers twitching and clawing at the floor in a paroxysm of death. She watched in horrid fascination as the stump ran blood which suddenly set like sealing wax.
    The thing let out a bellow of pain and shrank back from the window. Whimpering and gasping it disappeared into the shadows of the garden.
    She struggled with the slime that covered her neck but it clung to her like melting plastic. It was in her hair, a thick web of mucus, reeking with the unmistakable stink of putrescent flesh. She clawed madly at her hair like an ensnared creature before slumping to the floor in impotent exhaustion.
    Only her eyes showed signs of life as she stared at the dismembered limb in abject terror.

NINE
    T HEY WERE having difficulty trying to get the cells to grow. They were voracious but vulnerable. Without plentiful supplies of living tissue they rapidly encysted, clustering together in colonies which took on a reddish hue. But living tissue of the right kind was something they didn’t have much of, not to spare.
    At first Loring had suggested using some of the laboratory rats. They’d injected the blood stream with the cells and waited for it to have some effect. But the animals remained disconcertingly robust. When they eventually killed one and opened it up, they found groups of the cells engulfed by leucocytes. They hadn’t troubled the rats.
    “It’s only interested in human cells, I’m afraid,” announced Loring after he’d examined the rat. “It’s sensitive enough to tell the difference and unless it gets what it wants it curls up and won’t play.”
    Not for the first time Ted Nelson cringed at his colleague’s choice of words. What was happening to Steve didn’t seem to affect him. He was absorbed in the hunt for a new species. His objectivity distressed the doctor because he still kept alive an insane hope of saving his friend.
    “We’ll use Perry.”
    Loring’s words cut deep into the doctor’s thoughts.
    “What’s that?” he demanded sharply.
    “Use Perry,” repeated Loring. “There’ll still be enough living tissue about him. Why not grow the cells on Perry?”
    Nelson felt sick. He stared bleakly at his assistant.
    “Are you suggesting that we start cutting up one of the most important men in the Pentagon before the public knows he’s dead?” he said with slow incredulity.
    “We won’t have to cut him up,” said Loring blandly. “Given the state he’s in, it’s only a question of rearranging a few