I turned and stumbled out to where Vicki stood, shaking and white faced.
"Come on!" I said, "Let’s get out of here! The whole place is going to go up!"
We ran out to the car and drove away rapidly.
CHAPTER NINE
There isn’t too much left to say. I’m sure that you have all read about the fire that swept the residential Belwood District of California, leveling fifteen square miles of woods and residential homes. I couldn't feel too badly about that fire. I realize that hundreds might have been killed by the gigantic maggot-things that Weinbaum and Rankin were breeding. I drove out there after the fire. The whole place was smoldering ruins. There was no discernable remains of the horror that we had battled that final night, and, after some searching, I found a metal cabinet. Inside there were three ledgers.
Once of them was Weinbaum’s diary. I clears up a lot. It revealed that they were experimenting on dead flesh, exposing it to gamma rays. One day they observed a strange thing. The few maggots that had crawled over the flesh were growing, becoming a group. Eventually they grew together, forming three separate large maggots. Perhaps the radioactive bomb had speed up the evolution.
I don’t know.
Furthermore, I don’t want to know.
In a way, I suppose, I assisted in Rankin’s death; the flesh of the body whose grave I had robbed had fed perhaps the very creature that had killed him.
I live with that thought. But I believe that there can be forgiveness. I’m working for it. Or, rather, we’re working for it.
Vicki and I. Together.
THE END