locomotive, an image clearly from the Art Deco period of design, which
evidently had been adapted to serve as the logo for this research
project Although the image was bold and dynamic, without any element of
mystery, I was willing to bet my left lung that this identified Hodgson
as a member of the Mystery Train team.
The only other distinguishing features on the front of the suit were six
or eight holes across the abdomen and chest. Recalling how Hodgson had
turned to face the wall out of which he had appeared, how he had held
his hands up defensively, and how he had jerked as if hit by
automatic-weapons fire, I at first assumed that these punctures were
bullet holes.
On closer inspection, however, I realized that they were too neat to be
gunshot wounds. High-velocity lead slugs would have torn the material,
leaving rips or starburst punctures rather than these round holes, each
as large as a quarter, which looked as though they had been die cut or
even bored with a laser. Aside from the fact that we had heard no
gunfire, these were far too large to be entry wounds, any caliber of
ammunition capable of punching holes that big would have passed directly
through Hodgson, killing Bobby or me, or both of us.
I could see no blood.
“Use the other flash, ” Bobby said.
Silence had replaced the last murmuring voices of the wind.
Explosive scripts of bright, meaningless calligraphy continued to scroll
through the walls, perhaps marginally less dazzling than they had been a
minute ago. Experience suggested that this phenomenon, too, was about to
wind down, and I was reluctant to stimulate it again.
“Just once, quick, for a clearer look, ” he urged.
Against all instincts, I did as Bobby wanted, crouching over the
cumbersomely attired figure for a better view.
The tinted Plexiglas still partially obscured what lay beyond, but at
once I understood why, with the single flashlight, we hadn’t been able
to see poor Hodgson’s face, Hodgson no longer had a face. Inside the
helmet was a wet churning mass that seemed to be feeding voraciously on
the remaining substance of the dead man, a sickening pale tangle of
seething, squirming, slithering, jittering things that looked somewhat
soft-bodied like worms but were not worms, that also looked somewhat
chitinous like beetles but were not beetles, a greasy white colony of
something unnameable that had invaded his suit and overwhelmed him a r
with such rapidity that he had died no less abruptly than if he had been
shot straight through the heart. And now these twitching things
responded to the flashlight beam by surging against the inner surface of
the Plexiglas faceplate, teeming with obscene excitement.
Bolting to my feet, reeling backward, I thought I saw movement in some
of the holes in the abdomen and chest of Hodgson’s violated pressure
suit, as though the things that had killed him were going to boil out of
those punctures.
Bobby split without firing the shotgun, which he might easily have done,
out of shock and terror. Thank God he didn’t pull the trigger.
A shotgun blast or twoor tenwouldn’t wipe out even half the hellacious
swarm in Hodgson’s pressure suit, but it would probably pump them into
an even greater killing frenzy.
As I ran, I switched off the flashlights, because the fireworks in the
walls were gaining speed and power once more.
Although Bobby had been farther from the exit than I was, he got there
ahead of me.
The vault door was as solid as a damn vault door.
What I’d seen from a distance was confirmed close up, There was no wheel
or other release mechanism to disengage the lock bolts.
Back toward the center of the room, about forty feet away from the vault
door, Hodgson’s pressure suit was where we had left it. Because it
hadn’t collapsed upon itself like a deflated balloon, I assumed that it
was still filled out by the nightmare colony and by the remaining odds
and ends of Hodgson on which those squirming things were feeding.
Bobby tapped the barrel of the shotgun against the door. The sound was