The Body Snatchers, Conclusion (Details)
citation: Collier's, December 24, 1954, 134(13):62, 64-65, 68-69, 71-73
alias: None
teaser: Becky and I were alone, caught in a nightmare that threatened the world
summary: After leaving Professor Budlong's, and seeing Jack and Theodora pursued by police, Miles and Becky make their way to Miles' office. From there, they observe the town square of Santa Mira.
It seems to be an ordinary scene, but then Miles notices more than usual numbers of people for a Saturday. He also notices most are wearing an unusual blue and yellow jubilee button. He watches as police begin to cordon off the square, and the crowd grows silent.
A truck, followed by four others, drives into the square. They are loaded with pods. People are summoned to the trucks, to receive pods for distribution to nearby towns.
Miles hears the door to his office being unlocked. He welcomes Mannie, then realizes something is amiss. Yes, Miles.
Mannie says. And for a long time. One of the patients you sent me left a pod in my office.
Professor Budlong and two other men accompany Mannie into Miles' office.
As pod distribution continues outside, Mannie informs Miles and Becky invasion of the rest of the country is in progress. Budlong explains how the pods conquered Santa Mira, crediting one man, the gas-and-electric-meter reader, with seventy-five change-overs because he could easily enter basements.
In answer to Miles' questions, Budlong informs him they are reproducing the pods vegetatively, growing them at Art Gessner's farm.
As pod distribution ends, Mannie tells Miles he and Becky must sleep for them to be duplicated. Miles asks Mannie, out of memory of their previous friendship, to lock him and Becky alone in the office to fall asleep. Mannie agrees.
Resigned, Miles and Becky acknowledge their love for one another, wishing they'd married. Miles resolves to correct that mistake, and searches for a way out of their predicament.
Aside from a bottle of Benzadrine he pockets to keep them awake, Miles finds nothing useful for escape. He searches for a way to delay duplication; to force Mannie to transfer them somewhere else. Then he remembers two articulated skeletons in the closet.
Miles hopes the pods will duplicate the skeletons rather than him and Becky, thereby wasting the two pods in the other room. To ensure the deception, Miles withdraws blood from himself and Becky to spray onto the skeletons.
While they wait, Becky proposes a plan in which she will feign fear while Miles battles the four men, then unsuspected, join Miles in attacking them. For lack of any other idea, Miles agrees.
They watch the skeletons begin to transform, then collapse into a heap of gray fluff. The four men burst into Miles' office to see how the'd been tricked. As Miles planned, Mannie proposes to imprison them elsewhere during a new duplication.
Miles and Becky accompany the men down the stairs. Removing hypdermic syringes hidden up his sleeves, Miles injects two of the men with morphine. All four men attack Miles, overpowering him.
Becky, who had been pretending to cower in the corner, suddenly removes syringes she's hidden, injecting Mannie and Budlong. The struggle continues for a short time before the captors pass out from their injections. Miles and Becky run.
They run toward Highway 101 two miles away, as they hear the town fire signal. Knowing the search is on, Miles leads Becky through a field. They lie down in the middle of the field, covering themselves with weeds.
Although searchers come near their hiding place, and they hear cars signaling one another nearby, Miles and Becky remain undiscovered as night falls. Miles considers whether Jack has been duplicated, or escaped with Theodora to summon help.
Miles and Becky resume their walk across the field to the highway. Although Miles realizes this is their only route, and the townspeople will be waiting for them, he hopes to find a way to safety. After an hour's walk, he imagines reaching the highway and running onto it, stopping traffic suddenly, bunching it up, brakes squealing — twenty or a hundred cars deep, bumper to bumper, and filled with real and living people.
A half mile from the highway, they see pods growing in rows separated by irrigation ditches at Art Gessner's farm. Despairing that their capture is an absolute certainty, Miles resolves to use whatever time is left to destroy as many pods as possible.
Finding drums of tractor gas inside a nearby barn, Becky helps Miles line them up, emptying them into the pod irrigation ditch. After the drums empty, Miles sets the irrigation ditch aflame. They watch the flames rise, as pods burst. Over the roar of the fire, they hear approaching voices. To their dismay, they watch the flames die down as hundreds of dead-eyed townspeople
approach, gathering around them.
Suddenly, three cars race into the crowd from the highway. In the lead is Jack Belicec, pistol drawn, with other armed men. The townspeople move passively back toward their town. Jack explains he and the FBI had been guided by the flames from the pods, having intercepted people trying to take pods to other towns. They notice the townspeople become quiet, staring into the sky.
The night sky is peppered with dots; pods swarming from the field into the sky, leaving a fierce and inhospitable planet.
With Jack and the FBI men, Miles and Becky turn toward the highway.
Miles notes the incident was never reported in the newspapers; that Santa Mira remains just a town, albeit with its own peculiarities. As time passes, he's no longer certain what really did happen. He's simply happy he and Becky are together.
Miles concludes:
But this much I know: once in a while, the orderly, immutable sequences of life are inexplicably shifted and altered. You may read occasional queer little stories about them, or you may hear vague distorted rumors of them, and you probably dismiss them. But — some of them — some of them — are quite true.
words: 9,180
genre: Horror, Science Fiction
similar: The Body Snatchers, Part One, The Body Snatchers, Part Two
people: Miles Boise Bennell, Becky Driscoll, Bill Bittner, Jansek, Jack Belicec, Theodora Belicec, Joe Grimaldi, Joe Pixley, Art Gessner, Bert Parnell, Wally Eberhard, Manfred (Mannie) Kaufman, Chet Meeker, little stout man, L. Bernard Budlong, Stan Morley, Ben Ketchel
places: Santa Mira (CA): Medical Building, Main Street, Vasey's Hardware, Sequoia Theater, Elman's Restaurant, Highway 101, Art Gessner's farm, Greeson place; Sausalito (CA); Marin City (CA); Mill Vallley (CA); Belvedere (CA); Tiburon (CA)
notes: Content
Content