[Magazine 1968-012] - The Million Monsters Affair - Davis Robert Hart (серия книг .txt) 📗

He clubbed Illya to his knees, but as he fell Kuryakin threw his arms about his assailant’s knees and knocked the THRUSH zombie off balance.

Two airline employees came running to their assistance. The man Solo shot loomed up in their way. He was streaming blood, but it didn’t slow him. He grabbed one of the oncoming men, lifted him and smashed him into his companion. Then he whirled to throw himself at Kuryakin.

Solo slipped between the two men who rushed him. He whirled, shooting a frantic glance around to see how Illya was faring. Kuryakin was in the grasp of the wounded zombie.

“You can kill them and they still won’t lie down and die!” Solo thought frantically. “We got to get out of here. We’re no match for them!”

He ducked a clubbing blow that would have taken his head off his shoulders if it had landed. He grabbed the swinging arm and slammed his attacker into the other assailant. They collided with a bone-shaking crash and fell.

Napoleon turned, grabbed the long hair of the bleeding human monster throttling Kuryakin. The streaming blood was sapping the berserk hippie’s strength although his controlled mind kept driving him forward. His grip on Illya broke as Solo pushed him around and slammed him into the two other who were moving in again.

“Come on, Illya!” he yelled.

Kuryakin tried to follow, but his wounded leg buckled. Solo grabbed a heavy sand-filled basin used for cigarette stubs and hurled it. The man it hit collapsed with a broken leg, but still he tried to crawl.

Solo grabbed Illya’s arm and swung him up over his shoulder in the fireman’s carry. He started for the door in a lumbering run.

Two of their assailants started after them. The third had now lost so much blood he couldn’t stand, but he kept trying to crawl. The terrible force that drove him would not let him rest, even as he was dying.

There was a photographer in the doorway. He was holding up a camera shaped something like a press box.

“Never mind the pictures!” Solo yelled at him. “Give us a hand!”

The photographer ignored him. He stepped back hastily out of the way as the two crazed hippies charged down on Illya and Napoleon. Handicapped as he was by his wounded companion, Solo couldn’t move fast enough. The nearest hippie charged into him.

He tried to duck, but Kuryakin’s weight was too much for him. He stumbled and pitched into the photographer. The Hippie swung wildly, missed and lunged past, bowling over the photographer and Solo.

Napoleon twisted frantically, but as he jerked himself up he realized that the fight had gone out of their two assailants. The first lay across Kuryakin, unmoving. The second stopped in his forward charge. The berserk expression on his face faded, turning into bewilderment.

The photographer pulled back, clutching his camera box. The bellows hung down from the broken bed. He swung the box as if he intended to strike Solo, but thought better of it. He broke and ran.

Napoleon shot a quick glance at the two hippies. They seemed to be out, but from past experience he didn’t care to trust appearances. He kept a wary eye on them as he went over to Illya.

His companion’s trouser leg was soaked with blood.

“Bad?” he asked.

“No,” Illya said. “Painful as hell, but I can walk if I don’t push it too hard.” He pulled up his pants leg and pressed a wadded handkerchief down on the wound to staunch the blood flow. Solo kept an anxious eye on the two prone hippies.

Outside a screaming police car pulled up with red light flashing.

“Where have they been? On vacation?” Illya asked sarcastically.

Napoleon looked at his watch. “It does seem an age, but did you know it has been exactly three minutes since those hippies ran amok on us?”

“Three minutes!” Illya said wonderingly. “It seems like three weeks.”

Solo nodded soberly. “What made them attack us?”

“That’s easy to answer. They think we’re on their track. What isn’t so easy to answer is what gives them the power to keep going? It isn’t human.”

“I know,” Napoleon replied. “And just as baffling is why they ran out of steam there at the last. The girl didn’t, you remember. She was still fighting with the strength of ten when they crammed her in that car and drove away.”

“I know that,” Illya said, grimacing as he extended his wounded leg. “There is something very peculiar about all this. I’d feel better about it if I just knew what we are fighting.”

“If THRUSH is mixed up in this, as Mallon claimed, then we can be assured that it is something diabolical.”

Illya looked at the policemen hurrying across toward them. He nodded. “I know,” he said. “And it scares me. Somehow, the title of that Mallon movie, The Million Monsters, keeps bugging me. If THRUSH can turn a million people as crazy as these hippies and that girl were, then we really have something to worry about. They would have an army of rioters that could completely wreck the United States.”

“Not just the United States, Illya,” Solo said, giving his companion a dark, brooding look. “If they can monsterize a million youth here, they can do it anywhere in the world! THRUSH has been seeking to dominate the world for a long time. They just may have found the right gimmick at last - unless we can stop them!”

ACT II - THE MONSTERS!

ILLYA AND NAPOLEON accompanied the police back to the Los Angeles Police Headquarters. Interrogation of the prisoners produced nothing. Each seemed genuinely surprised at his actions and could remember nothing of the attack on the two men from U.N.C.L.E.

“It was the same with Marsha Mallon,” Sergeant Leffler of the riot squad told Solo. “We questioned her very closely. She indignantly denied trying to fire a gun in the airline terminal. She could remember nothing until her frenzy broke in the patrol car as she was being carried from the airport.”

“These two evidently were trying to murder Illya and me,” Solo said. “But Miss Mallon was not attacking us until we tried to stop her. Was she after somebody? Or was her attack spontaneous, directed at nothing or everything?”

“We don’t know,” Leffler said. “We do know that a well-known European film distributor was at the service counter she aimed at. He had been in Hollywood to see her father about foreign distribution of Mallon’s latest film. There might or might not be a connection.”

“Was the film called The Million Monsters?” Illya asked.

“I believe it was,” the riot squad man said. “Another of those cheap horror movies.”

“Did you talk to this man?”

“He must have been frightened by the commotion. He broke and ran. We traced him later. He took a rental car from the airport to Tijuana. From there he took a plane to Mexico City and then to Paris.”

“I see,” Illya said thoughtfully. “It would appear that there might be a connection.”

“Possibly,” the policeman said. “But we must have better evidence before we can ask INTERPOL to investigate.”

He paused and added in an offhand manner: “Of course, U.N.C.L.E. is not bound by international restrictions. If you -”

Napoleon nodded without committing himself to the hint.

“What happened to Miss Mallon?” he asked.

“Her father’s lawyer got her released. She seemed genuinely bewildered. From her past history, I am inclined to believe she really didn’t realize at all what she was doing.”

“Very strange,” Solo said thoughtfully. “Was there evidence of any kind of narcotic influence?”

Leffler shook his head.

“None,” he said. “It was just as if something had taken possession of her brain for a short time.”

“I can understand something like that happening with hippies like those brutes who attacked Napoleon and me,” Illya said. “But if they can possess the mind of a woman like Miss Mallon was reputed to be -”