The Blob by David Bischoff

too. It looked as though it had been eaten through with acid at the biceps. What kind of madman would be throwing acid around, for Chrissakes? That must have been what happened to the Can Man. Got splashed with some kind of acid.
    Herb Geller just wanted to head into the nearest toilet stall and have a talk with a commode. But his pride kept down his dinner, and his badge kept up his professionalism as he walked outside to talk with Paul’s date.
    Meg was in the parking lot with her mother and father. She stood sobbing into Peg Penny’s arms. Sobbing and babbling hysterically.
    “Awful! A monster!” she was saying.
    “Now, now, dear,” said Mr. Penny. “You said the room was dark. You don’t know for sure—”
    Meg looked up with a tear-streaked face. “But I saw it! It got Paul . . . It covered him . . . ate him!”
    “Shhh . . .” said Meg Penny, trying to offer comfort.
    Mr. Penny saw Geller approaching and separated himself from the others. “Sheriff,” he said, catching him halfway, and speaking in a low voice. “How about it? Can we take her home?” Penny’s face looked lined and old with worry.
    “You might as well,” said Geller. “Make sure she gets some sleep. Maybe she’ll start makin’ sense in the morning.”
    “Yes. Thanks, Herb,” Penny said, turning back and ushering his wife and daughter to the family station wagon parked nearby. Geller watched them for a moment, then felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and found Deputy Bill Briggs standing behind him, a few beads of perspiration dotting the forehead of his young black face.
    “You let her go?” asked Briggs.
    “Oh, yeah. We’re not gonna get anything out of her tonight. She’s hysterical. Keeps going on and on about ‘shapes’ and ‘monsters,’ or whatever.”
    “I got a call in to Paul Tyler’s folks,” said Briggs, nervously rubbing his neat mustache. “They haven’t heard from him.”
    Geller cleared his throat. “Let’s face it, Bill. They’re not going to.” He thought about that arm, and he thought about little Paulie Tyler, and how much he’d loved the special police carnival, and how Geller had piggybacked him all around the Ferris wheel and the carousel and the hot dog stand. “I want the rest of his body found before dawn.” It was the least he could do for Chet and his wife.
    As they walked back toward the clinic, a couple of white-uniformed guys were wheeling a black body bag out to the ambulance idling at the lip of the runway. A paramedic with a crew cut walking alongside saw Geller and handed him a form, connected to a clipboard.
    Geller signed the form. “Get those to Denver tonight. I need an autopsy pronto, not next week.”
    “Right,” said the paramedic, taking the clipboard back and helping with the body bag. Geller watched as the doors were closed and the men took their places in the cab; the ambulance rushed off in a storm of noise and lights. He took a deep breath, then put his official stance aside for a while and closed his eyes, letting himself be stunned, forgetting he was sheriff and focusing only on the fact that he was a human being who had just been confronted by pure horror.
    “Jesus wept,” he murmured softly.
    “Herb?” said Briggs at his side. “You okay?”
    “Tyler was a good kid,” he said. “I want the son of a bitch that did this!”
    Just then a highway patrol car screeched into the parking lot from off the road, its red lights revolving. Geller did not have to move to see who was sitting in the backseat. Mr. Juvie Hall himself, wearing handcuffs. Brian Flagg.
    “Maybe we got him!” said Bill.
    “Yeah,” said Geller, his anger and his sense of outrage obscuring everything else in his head. “Maybe so.”
    He saw Meg Penny, getting into her family car nearby, noticing the patrol car coming in. He saw that she looked alarmed when she saw Brian Flagg being led out from the car. Flagg saw her, too, and there seemed to be an expression of hopelessness and anger