The Last Days Of Man On Earth (1974) New World

The Monsters Are Loose (1965) Hollywood Star

Fear In The Night (1947) Paramount

Horror Of The Blood Monsters (1970) AIP

Destroy All Monsters (1968) Toho/AIP

I Drink Your Blood (1971) Cinemation

Jaws Of Death (1976) Selected

Night Of The Blood Beast (1958) AIP

The Day The Fish Came Out (1967) International Classics

Target Earth (1954) Allied Artists

The Blood Suckers (1971) Chevron

OVER THE ATLANTIC

Frying west, night came especially early. As darkness engulfed them, the sky cleared, became a crystal dome that revealed the foreign face of the moon set amid alien constellations.

Bill left Nick sleeping back in the passenger compartment and headed forward to take the co-pilot's seat next to Joe. As he gazed out at the night, he was glad for the lack of clouds and excellent visibility in the moonlight. He could find no sign of anything like the air leviathans he'd seen swooping from the Central Park hole Saturday night. No sign of anything in the air, but the water below seemed alive. It churned with shadows and swirled with phosphorescent flashes.

He turned back to the stars, studying them, trying to make sense of them, or find a familiar pattern.

"Where are we?" he said, wondering aloud.

"Over the Atlantic," Joe replied from his left.

"Thanks. I mean where in space? The sun's fading away, the moon's been turned around, and the stars have been shifted into new formations."

"Not just new formations," Joe said, stroking his beard as he craned his neck to see the stars. "Notice that there's fewer stars up there? And every night there's even less than the night before. I wonder if some night soon I'll take a peek and find there's no stars at all."

The stars do look kind of sparse up there, Bill thought.

"It's almost as if the planet's been moved to a different part of the universe."

"Cosmic, man," Joe said, eyes widening. "Maybe it has."

"No," Bill said. "That would be too logical an explanation, and easier to accept than what we're going through."

"Magnetic north's changed too," Joe said. "Compasses have been pointing anywhere they damn well please for the past couple days."

"Really? I hadn't heard that." And then something occurred to him. "If the stars are changed and compasses no longer point north, how do you know where you're going?"

"Radio beacon. I'm homing in on a signal from the English coast. We're not headed for England, but it's on the way."

"Where are we—good God!"

Bill had glanced off to his right at what had looked like a lone cloud in an empty sky. It wasn't the cloud that had startled him, it was what was under it.

Joe was leaning over his shoulder, squinting into the darkness.

"Shee-it! What the hell is that?"

Far to the south, a huge pillar had risen from the sea. It was made of some grayish substance that gleamed dully in the moonlight and streamed with lightning-like flickers of phosphorescence. Bill guessed it was hundreds of feet across and thousands of feet—maybe miles—high. Its top disappeared into the dark cloud growing above it.

So alien, so Cyclopean in its size, the sight of it gave him a crawling feeling in his gut.

Joe must have felt it too. His voice was hushed.

"Almost looks like it's holding up the sky."

Bill said, "Do we have enough fuel to maybe—?"

"No way, Jose!" Joe straightened in his seat and checked his instruments. "Even if we had plenty to spare, I wouldn't get a foot closer to that thing than I absolutely had to. And I don't have to get any closer than I am now, thank-you-very-much."

As they continued east, Bill's eyes remained fixed on the giant column. The dark gray cloud above it continued to grow, and as it grew it began to sink around the column, eventually obscuring it completely from view.

"I'll be damned!" Joe said. Bill turned in his seat and found him pointing north. "There's another one!"

Bill wished the moon was brighter so he could get a better look at it.

And then the moon went out for a second.

"What was that?" Joe said.

Bill's mouth was suddenly dry. "Something big."

"Yeah? How big?"

"Very big. A body two hundred feet across and square miles of wing."

Joe glanced at him with raised eyebrows, then scanned the night.

"I see it," he said after a moment. "Or rather I don't see the stars where it's cruising. It's—shee-it! It's coming this way!"

Joe threw the Gulfstream into a screaming dive that jammed Bill back into his seat. And then the world got darker as something swooped through the air where they had been only seconds before. The jet bucked and rocked in the backwash from the monstrous wings. Bill craned his neck back and forth looking for the behemoth as Joe continued the dive. He saw it, off the south, banking around, coming back to make another run at them.

"Never seen anything so goddamned big in my life!" Joe said.

And still he held the jet into the dive. The black water was looming up below them.

"Joe," Bill said. "Aren't you getting kind of low?"

"Not low enough yet," he said.

And still they dove. Not till Bill was ready to shout with terror that they were going to plunge into the sea did Joe level off. They raced along at fifty feet above the surface.

"You see it?" Joe said.

Bill twisted around. "Yeah. I can see its right wing. It's on our tail, coming up fast. Oh, God it's coming fast!"

"Tell me when it's almost on us. Don't tell me too soon—and f'God's sake don't tell me too late. Just wait till you think its about to chomp us, then give a shout."

It wasn't long. The thing was moving faster than the Gulfstream. Bill barely had time to wonder how something so big could move so fast when suddenly it was almost upon them.

"Now, Joe! Now! NOW!"

Abruptly the Gulfstream banked a sharp left, rocking Bill against his safety belt. And suddenly the ocean was exploding with white water.

"What happened?" Bill said.

"It hit the water," Joe said, grinning. "Simple aerodynamics, boy. You want to make a sharp turn in flight, you've gotta bank. You bank at this altitude with wings that size, the downside one's gonna catch the surface. And then it's cartwheel time."

Bill leaned back in the seat and wanted to throw up. But he swallowed hard and held out his hand to Joe.

"You are one hell of a pilot."

Joe slapped his palm. "I don't argue that."

"When's day?" Bill said.

Joe glanced at his watch. "Not for a long while. Sunrise won't come till 7:21 Greenwich meantime. Still some daylight left back home, I'd guess. Though not much.