[Magazine 1968-012] - The Million Monsters Affair - Davis Robert Hart - Страница 9

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“Good or bad, it’s all we got left!” Solo replied. “Listen, get a good look and set your bearings straight. I’m going to lob off every pellet I got. We’ll be blinded, but we’ll have the advantage of knowing where we’re going. Just close your eyes tight and plow straight for that drug store. We might make it.”

“The knockout drops didn’t work on them,” Illya panted. “Maybe the tear gas won’t either.”

“Maybe not,” Solo said grimly. “But that is another detail. Are you ready?”

“No. But I’m even less ready to stay here and really get my goose cooked. Get moving!”

ACT III - THE MONSTER MASTER

NAPOLEON SOLO quickly extracted the super-miniature tear gas pellets from his wallet. No larger than buck shot, they packed a ultra-concentrated chemical formula that reacted with air to create a blinding cloud more powerful than ordinary tear gas. It was another of the special U.N.C.L.E. protective devices carried by all Alexander Waverly’s operatives.

“Hold my hand,” he said to Kuryakin as he prepared to hurl the bead sized bombs.

“I’m not that scared!” Illya retorted.

“Don’t try to be funny!” Napoleon snapped. “I just don’t want us to get separated in this damned mob!”

He stepped on the steering column and raised his head through the broken door. But as he drew back his hand to throw the tear gas bombs a thrown bottle smashed into his shoulder.

He was knocked back. His head hit the edge of the door. He fell on top of Illya. The tiny tear gas pellets dropped from his hand. A faint green smoke burst out, spreading rapidly under the force of the highly compressed gas.

Instantly both men’s eyes were streaming. Completely blinded and racked by coughing, they pushed their way out of the crumpled wreck.

It was impossible to tell immediately what effect the gas was having on the teenage monsters. The gas was spreading rapidly from the car, but the men from U.N.C.L.E. had gotten a worse dose because the pellets were crushed right beside them.

The two men clung to the top of the overturned car, trying to get some idea of what was happening.

“I think it’s affecting them,” Illya gasped.

“But we d-don’t know how far it has spread!” Solo choked. “But come on! There’s only one way to find out if we’re going to get out of this mess alive!”

Grasping his U.N.C.L.E. Special with its stunning needle pellet ammunition in one hand, and holding to Illya Kuryakin’s hand with the other, Solo slid off the car.

Instantly they were jammed in between a thick press of screaming, weeping teenagers-turned-monsters. They were slammed and buffeted as the blinded mob stumbled about.

A shrieking girl collided with Solo. She whirled in uncontrolled frenzy and tried to claw his face. Napoleon stumbled, falling to his knees. A boy, weaving drunkenly, fell across him. Illya jerked frantically to pull Napoleon to his feet before he was stomped in the milling mob.

Blinded, choking, the two men from U.N.C.L.E. hunched their shoulders and charged ahead. They crashed into equally blind and stumbling young men and women. Some they bowled over in their rush. Some they bounced off. One knocked Illya completely off his feet. Before Solo could drag him back up, a girl stepped on his leg. Her sharp heel broke through the skin. The pain was dull because the drug he and Solo took earlier still deadened the pain.

But the pain he did feel showed him that its effects were wearing off rapidly. His knees shook. He kept his feet with difficulty.

Neither men had any idea where they were now. They were completely lost in the rioting mass of humanity jamming the street. Their eyes felt as though hot needles were being rammed into them. Their bodies were beginning to ache with excruciating pain. It was becoming harder to keep from being knocked down and crushed.

Then they got a slight break. The mob apparently thinned out although they were too blinded to see where or why. Solo broke into a stumbling run, dragging Illya after him.

They covered about ten feet and then Solo rammed into something hard and rigid. The smack dazed him. He started to fall and threw his arms out to grasp the obstruction. It was a corner street lamp post. He clung to it in a desperate attempt to keep from falling. His senses whirled. For an awful moment he thought he was going to lose consciousness.

Dimly he heard Illya’s anxious voice calling to him.

“I - I’m okay,” he managed to gasp. “Let’s go!”

“Go where?” Illya’s choked reply answered him.

“Anywhere!” Napoleon Solo said. “Anywhere! It will have to be better than this, even if it turns out to be the devil’s doorstep!”

They got across the sidewalk. Through their blinding tears they could see sufficiently to know that they were pressed against a store window, one of the few left unbroken by the howling mob.

They worked their way toward the door, hoping to get inside where air conditioning would clear their eyes.

Illya, who forged ahead, whispered back to his companion: “The door is barred.”

“Follow the store fronts,” Solo said. “Find an alley to get us away from this mob so we won’t be trampled if we get down on the ground. This gas rises. It should be clear right on the ground.”

Wordlessly Illya went forward with Solo stumbling behind him. Each step was becoming worse. They were both near collapse.

They stumbled up a side street. Eventually they made their way outside the area choked with the tear gas cloud.

It was still some time before they could clear their eyes. In the meantime, the energy pills had lost their effect. The pills were so strong that they could not be taken more than once in a twenty-four hour period.

The waning of the pills’ effects left both men near exhaustion. The torture they had taken, first in the Mallon mansion fire and then in the Sunset Strip riots, was more than the human body could absorb and keep going.

Even so, rest was impossible. The ugly THRUSH threat was too great to permit the luxury of stopping even for a few minutes.

So as soon as they could see clearly again, Illya and Napoleon started back to the riot area. They circled the block and came in upwind to avoid the tear gas.

There was a light breeze. The slightly luminous green cloud of gas was moving slowly away.

As the two men from U.N.C.L.E. stumbled back on Sunset Boulevard, they were stunned by the magnitude of the destruction. Solo pulled out his pen communicator and called Waverly in New York.

It would then be about three o’clock on the East Coast, but he had no difficulty getting through to the U.N.C.L.E. chief. Waverly’s clipped slightly British accent came through without delay. There was no sign of fatigue or sleepiness in his voice when he replied to Napoleon Solo’s call sign.

“Yes, Mr. Solo,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“We are on Sunset Boulevard, sir,” Napoleon said in a strained voice. “The street looks like a war has passed by. It is terrible. Shop windows are smashed. Cars are overturned and burned. There are injured people everywhere. I can see a fire hydrant broken and spurting water in the air. There’s a fire blazing in a building across the street. A block away a mob of these monsters are overturning a police car. Everywhere these monsters are destroying, fighting, running wild!”

“This is terrible!” Waverly said, struggling to keep his ordinary calm. “It only bears out what I feared. If these riot continue, they will completely demoralize the world. I have reports that they are going on in both London and Paris right now. So they are not local.”

“This one was started by an audience leaving a showing of Mallon’s Million Monsters film, sir,” Solo said. “But there are more people involved than could possibly have been in the theater. It probably only holds about fifteen hundred. There are at least three thousand kids involved here.”

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