Текст книги "[Magazine 1968-012] - The Million Monsters Affair "

Автор книги: Robert Hart Davis

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 7 страниц)

When Marsha leaped back in an attempt to dodge the thrown shoe, she went off balance. It was this more than the blow that knocked her off her feet. She hit the wall and slipped to the floor.

Instantly she jerked her body around as Napoleon leaped off the processing machine. She fired at him from the floor. There wasn’t time to aim. The bullet smashed into the ceiling as he landed on top of her.

The weight of his body hit her with such force that the breath was knocked out of the confused girl. She collapsed, gasping.

Solo leaped to his feet. Blood oozed from a gash where his head struck the wall. He was not even conscious of the blow.

He pulled the gun from her slack fingers and shoved it in his pocket. Then, lifting her in his arms, he went back to the office.

He dumped her in a chair by the desk. The dead body of Griffis was beside her. Across the small room lay the unconscious figures of two THRUSH men and Theresa LeBrun. Illya Kuryakin was gone.

“Illya!” Solo called. Then realizing he had spoken in his normal tones, repeated his call, aping the inflections of Theresa LeBrun.

Kuryakin stuck his head in from the hall.

“You can forget that, Napoleon,” he said quickly. “I’m coming out from under the drug’s influence.”

“I’ve got the girl, now -” Napoleon began.

“THRUSH has an exterminator crew after us, Napoleon!” Illya broke in. “I heard them coming and got the fire doors closed in the hall. It won’t stop them for long. I heard one of them shout for the other to go get a wrecking bar.”

“Can you stop them until I can talk some sense into the addled head of this silly woman?” Solo asked.

“I got my bare hands,” Illya said. “I’ll do what I can.”

“We have her gun. It’s the one she took from Griffis. It can’t have more than a couple of shots left in it. That’s no help either.”

He was deathly tired. His body had taken constant punishment since the beginning of this miserable affair. His face was drawn and haggard. His eyes were bloodshot. Every line of his sagging body betrayed his near exhaustion. Illya Kuryakin was in no better shape.

“What are we going to do?” Illya asked.

“Fight!” Solo snapped. “That’s all that’s left for us to do.”

“Then lead on, MacDuff!” Illya said. “If we get out of this mess alive, I’ll never, never doubt us again. We can do anything!”

“We’re not going to get out alive unless I can knock some sense into this idiot’s head,” he said savagely, glaring at Marsha Mallon.

The girl glared back, equally ferocious and equally stubborn.

“Listen to me,” Napoleon Solo said, his voice shaking with earnestness. “There is only one way to smash THRUSH’S transmitter. We have to have an army to do it. We have an army – an army of teenage monsters! There’s one of the portable transmitters on the desk at your elbow. It’s broken. Even if it wasn’t, I don’t know how to use it. If you can repair the thing and send out the impulses to activate that Sunset Strip gang, we’re in! They can be made to storm this place. If they do half as much damage as they did on Sunset Boulevard, they’ll put the THRUSH transmitter out of commission.”

“I can’t trust you,” Marsha mumbled. Her pretty face was flushed and set in stubborn lines.

“Then damn it, don’t trust us!” Solo cried.

He jerked the gun from his coat pocket and shoved it across the desk to her.

“There’s at least two shots left in that thing,” he snapped. “We’ll stand on the opposite side of the room from you. Get that damned transmitter working and zombie those kids into tearing this place down! Then if you think we’re trying to put anything over on you, you can pull the trigger of that gun with it pointed straight at my heart! What else must I do to convince you that the only stake Illya and I have in this mess is to try and save a lot of lives – including, in case it never occurred to you, yours and ours as well!”

A wave of uncertainty spread across Marsha’s face. She picked up the gun. A quick glance showed her it was loaded. She looked at Napoleon Solo with a tired, almost vacant stare.

Then she said slowly, “I – I don’t know -”

She got up and backed across the room, putting as much space between herself and the men from U.N.C.L.E. as she could.

From down the hall came the sound of heavy battering.

“They are attacking the door!” Illya said. “There’s no way out for us. This place has no windows and no back door. You had better do something quickly, Miss Mallon, or we’re all dead!”

“Pick up the transmitter,” she said in a defeated voice.

Solo grabbed it up from the desk.

“Open the back,” Marsha Mallon said.

Solo opened the back of the camera-appearing device. He saw a jungle of wires, transistors and coils. At her order he set a tiny switch.

“Do any of the five crystals in the center of the circuit glow?” she asked.

“Three,” he replied.

“Then all that happened when Griffis broke the transmitter was that the wires to the capacitor snapped. Cut off the circuit. That thing works like a car’s coil to store up energy for a step-up in voltage. It’s off? Then push the red wires back in place.”

Solo found the break and repaired it quickly.

“They’re breaking the door in, Napoleon!” Illya yelled from the hall.

“Hold them back!” Solo snapped. “We’ve got to have a little more time.”

“Hold them back with what?” Illya snapped. “They’re breaking the fire door in. They’ll be on us in a couple of minutes.”

“Build a fire in the hall!” Solo yelled back. “That should stop them long enough for us to get this thing working.”

“And cook us with them!” Kuryakin retorted. “Well, that’s better than letting THRUSH win!”

He grabbed a full waste paper basket for tinder and rushed out.

“It’s ready, all five lights are burning now,” Solo said to the girl.

“Hold the transmitter so the lens points in the direction of Sunset,” she said. “Speak into what looks like a camera viewfinder, tell them to destroy the Mallon Studios. I don’t know where the transmitting station is, but I suspect that it must be on top of the studio administration building. Send them there first.”

“Any special tone?” Solo asked.

“The transmitter is automatic,” she replied. “Open with the call letters Seven-seven-Four. That activates the subliminally induced hypnosis in their minds. Then give your orders.”

“Seven-seven-four!” Solo cried into the disguised microphone. “Seven-seven-four. Rush to the Mallon Studios. Destroy the Administration building! Then rush the processing laboratory. More of your enemies are there! Seven-seven-four -”

He was interrupted by Illya rushing in, dripping wet. “The fire in the hall only activated the automatic fire extinguisher sprays. It’s out. They’re coming, Napoleon!”

“Come on!” Solo cried. “Back into the processing room. There’s still a vat of acid in the bleach room. There are some buckets in the corner. We’ll make a last stand there. We’ll throw acid on them when they come in the door!”

“Look out!” Illya shouted. “Here they come!”

He grabbed the chair that lately had been bound to Solo and hurled it though the door as the first running THRUSH man bore down upon them with a gun in his hand.

A gun exploded behind him. He whirled to see Marsha Mallon emptying her gun at the oncoming men from THRUSH. Two shots and she was through. The three retreated back into the processing room. Their enemies halted. Two of the THRUSH men were dead. A third had a bad cut where the chair hit him.

“Don’t stand there like a pack of fools!” In the other room the three fugitives heard a man’s angry voice cry out. “I’m in charge here now that Griffis is dead. Get in there and drag them out. Don’t worry about taking prisoners. We’re through with them now. Slaughter them!”

“How long will it take the zombie-monsters to get here?” Illya asked Napoleon.

“It shouldn’t take more than five minutes,” Solo replied, “if they got the message.”

“Can we hold out?” the girl asked fearfully.

“Yes,” Illya said quickly. “I don’t know how. But we’ll do it. We have to!”

“There’s one!” Marsha cried as a THRUSH man appeared in the light trap opening.

Solo hit the light switch, plunging the room back into total darkness. At the same time he kicked the processing machine, making a sound almost like a bullet exploding. They heard a scramble of feet as their pursuer withdrew.

“They got guns!” the trapped trio heard him squall. “It’s pitch black in there. We have no chance to rush them.”

“Then set some rags afire in a trash can,” their boss ordered. “Throw that in. We’ll smoke them out!”

“Mr. Clary! Mr. Clary!” It was a voice from the far end of the hall.

“More reinforcements!” Illya said. “That’s no worry to us. When the odds are already impossible what does it matter whether you face fifty or a hundred?”

“Quiet, Illya!” Napoleon said. “Let’s hear what he says. He sounds hysterical to me. Maybe -”

“Mr. Clary!” the newcomer squalled again, his voice coming nearer. “The monster-kids! Something has gone wrong! They’re attacking the studio. They broke through the gate and are ripping everything to pieces.”

“What! Then that woman has one of the transmitters working! Get back to the satellite transmitter and tell them to start the signal early. We’ll drown out her transmission and take over! Get moving! We’re in one hell of a spot! Damn those U.N.C.L.E. rats!”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Clary, I – Help! The monster-kids are coming down the hall. They’re closing in on us!”

“Stop them! Shoot them! Do something, you fools, or we’ll be overrun!” Clary screamed.

Shots echoed through the narrow halls. Screams cut above the din. The tramp of running feet beat like a thousand drums. The noise sounded like they were inside the office. The three fugitives could hear nothing but the crash of furniture and the shouts and screams.

“Leave the lights off,” Solo said. “Maybe they won’t notice we are in here.”

Just then the entire wall separating the office from the processing room collapsed under the crush of the mob screaming in.

“Turn them! Turn them!” Marsha cried. “Use the transmitter.”

“Seven, seven, four!” Solo cried into the mouthpiece. “Seven, seven, four! To the administration building! Tear down the transmitter!”

The mob obediently turned and charged out of the building. The trio came out of the darkroom behind them. Clary and those with them were dead – beaten and trampled to a bloody pulp by the monsters they made themselves.

Once in the open, Solo and Kuryakin were shocked at the terrible damage. The place looked like a town after an artillery bombardment. Across the block the administration building was aflame.

“Is that -” Solo asked.

“Yes,” she said, “the transmitter was there. That wooden tower on top disguises the antenna. It is all over. THRUSH has lost. Thank you for forcing me to help you. I -”

She turned and fled into the darkness. Illya started after her, but Napoleon Solo stopped him.

“Remember,” he told Kuryakin, “in our report there is to be nothing about her that implies she was at fault in letting THRUSH get this secret. That was one of the things she feared. She wanted to save her own reputation and that of her dead father.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” Illya said, “if she did anything wrong, she more than atoned for it. We wouldn’t be here but for her.”

“I think we can call off these Frankenstein teenagers now,” Solo said.

He gave the order into the speaker. Instantly all the wild commotion stopped just as screaming police cars wheeled up the street fronting the studio.

A burly nineteen-year-old who looked like center timber for a Notre Dame football squad looked at Solo in amazed confusion.

“I just had a coke,” he mumbled, “and this happened! What do they put in those things now?”

Illya smiled wearily.

“Making them stronger, I guess,” he said. “And watch out for those California milk shakes too. Can’t tell how they’ll make you act either!”

“Come on,” Solo said. “We must report to Waverly. THRUSH has lost again.”

“But just a setback,” Illya said. “That crazy group never stops trying.”

“Stop complaining,” Napoleon said. “It provides a living for us.”

“A living that comes pretty close at times to dying!” Illya Kuryakin retorted.

“You can say that again!” Napoleon Solo replied.

He was suddenly very tired.

THE END

In the Next Issue – Complete and Exclusively Yours -

The VANISHING CITY AFFAIR

A Thrilling New “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” Novel by ROBERT HART DAVIS

Next month’s big lead novel is a truly spine-tingling story of Evil which, unchecked, threatens a nation. For shrouded in darkness, peopled by fear-maddened hordes, a once proud city awaited her doom, as Solo and Illya, racing against THRUSH’S deadline of death, sought to track down the dread riddle of the metropolis which had vanished from the world. Don’t miss this truly extraordinary U.N.C.L.E. story!