They Thirst Part 30

FIFTEEN.

At the end of two hours, Father Silvera had found more than fifty people and herded them back into the church. Some of them were dazed, some were hysterical, others whimpered softly. The sanctuary teemed with life-people crying and praying, infants howling, people babbling, nearly insane. Silvera appointed four men to act as supervisors over the group; some of them wanted to go with him when he left again to continue his search, but he firmly told them no.

It was all he could do to keep himself steady out there. He didn't want to be responsible for losing anyone else. Stepping across that threshold and out into the dark, sand-whipped street was the most terrible thing he'd ever asked himself to do. He was shaking very badly now, his grip on the heavy bra.s.s crucifix so weak that several times he thought he couldn't continue holding on to it. But he did, mentally commanding those strained, deteriorating muscles to hold firm just a moment, just a second longer. His hands ached with his body's insidious betrayal.

Now out on the street again, he was alert for running shapes. He'd seen them several times, and once one of them had come dangerously close before it suddenly stopped and dodged away. Silvera presumed it was because of the crucifix. Perhaps thty were afraid of it, just like in all the old vampire movies. He walked on, thankful that the wind had dropped enough for him to see the buildings on either side of the street. His face was raw and swollen from the sand's abrasion, and it was by sheer habit now that he kept his eyes narrowed into tight, protective slits. Mary's Voice called out behind him, the sound echoing from street to street. He pa.s.sed a grocery store where the front window had been knocked out by a wind-tossed garbage can; he made a mental note to come back and get food and water for the people in the sanctuary. He was about to step into an apartment building on Marquesa Street, just three blocks from his church, when he heard a voice call, "Father Silvera! Help me!" It was a little child's voice, and he didn't recognize it at first. But then he heard "Please help me!" and a series of broken sobs that faded away. He looked across the street and up, and there in a broken third-floor window was Juanita LaPaz, her tiny face barely visible over the sill. He could see her fingers grasping the wood tightly, her eyes wide and terrified. "Please I wan'

my papa!

I wan' my . . ." She started to cry again, her hands going to cover her eyes, and then she disappeared from the window.

Silvera ran across the street, his shoes sinking down into sand, and entered the building. It seemed deserted and was as hot and dirty as a bowl of street-corner chili. He took the stairs three at a time and was panting when he got to the third-floor hallway, which was littered with newspapers and old furniture and clothes. Graffiti covered the walls, along with splatters of what looked like paint and dried blood. He paused, listening for the little girl's crying.

"Juanita?" he called out. "It's Father Silvera! Where are you, querida?" He heard her m.u.f.fled sobbing a couple of doors away. When he opened the door, he found her standing barefoot in a room whose walls were covered with Power to the People posters. Beneath her black bangs, her eyes looked dull and glazed, as if-oh, my G.o.d! Silvera thought-as if someone had given her drugs. She stood staring at him and s.h.i.+vered.

"Thank G.o.d I've found you!" Silvera said, bending down and hugging her. She didn't respond; her arms hung limply at her sides. "Are you all right?"

"Si" she replied very softly. She seemed to be staring right through him.

"Where's the man who took you, Juanita? Where did he go?"

"Gone far away. Please help me, I wan' my papa. Gone far away. Please help me, I wan' my . . ." Her eyes moved a fraction, staring over his right shoulder, and he saw a quicksilver glimmer of the terror frozen behind the doll-like mask of her face.

Silvera twisted his head around just as Cicero leapt through the doorway with a triumphant shriek.

They slammed together and crashed to the floor. Cicero hissed and tried to force the priest's chin back to get at the jugular vein. Silvera tried to gouge out the thing's eyes, but every time he struck, Cicero's head whipped to one side to evade the blow. Silvera clung to the crucifix with all his strength, and with his free hand he slammed an uppercut to the vampire's jaw. Cicero blinked but seemed unhurt. The vampire's head darted forward, fangs glistening. Silvera threw his arm across his neck and spat into the thing's eyes. Cicero recoiled, and Silvera struck out with his fist again, so hard he felt the vibration thrum up his shoulder. Before the thing could regain its grip, Silvera twisted and got a knee between them, then kicked out with tremendous thigh-cracking effort.

Cicero was flung back across the floor, but he quickly scrambled to his feet. Silvera stood up, his lungs heaving. He grasped Juanita's shoulder and shook her hard to try to break the vampire's power over her. "Get behind me, Juanita!

Hurry!" She was too dazed to understand.

Cicero grinned, the fangs sliding out of his upper and lower jaws. "Ain't gonna be so easy as that, Mr. Priest. Oh, nooooo. You in old Cicero's territory now.

You got to play by my rules." The vampire stepped forward, hands curling into claws.

Silvera took a step backward. The crucifix felt leaden in his left hand. He held it up and thrust it forward at the vampire, his arm trembling. "Get back!" he commanded. "Your master's dead, Cicero! He's destroyed!" Cicero stopped, his face contorting. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

"'Get back'? Ha! Man, you been watchin' too many old movies!" His eyes flamed.

"Cicero Clinton ain't ashamed of what he is! I never believed in that religion bulls.h.i.+t anyway, man, so that thing don't hurt me none now! And you're wrong. The Master lives! He's in me right now, and I'm hungry, reallll hungry ..." He came forward, his claws twitching, his face split by that leering, terrible grin.

Silvera grabbed the little girl and shoved her against the wall so he stood between her and the vampire. He heard her saying, like a broken record, ". . . gone far away. Please help me, I wan' my papa . . ."

"Gonna take you out slow, Mr. Priest," Cicero whispered. "Gonna make you hurt .

. ." He tensed, knees bending for the leap. When he came for the priest's throat, he was a savage blur of motion.

But Silvera stood his ground. He swung the crucifix around in a vicious arc, aiming for the vampire's head. Cicero twisted slightly, but the sharp bra.s.s edge sliced a sizzling wound at the base of his neck. The dead flesh rippled and writhed, trying to close the smoking tear. There were yellowish-white tissues in the cut, but the vampire did not bleed. Silvera stepped forward quickly and struck again, aiming for the same place. The cut's edges now hissed and widened. Cicero staggered back, trying to s.h.i.+eld the wound with his hands. Silvera's strength was weakening rapidly, and he felt his grip slipping. He feinted toward the thing's eyes, then struck again at the neck. Gray flesh ripped like rotten cheesecloth, exposing dead tissue and veins. The next blow of the crucifix almost severed Cicero's head from his body. The vampire staggered back, arms flailing in pain.

Cicero's face hung at a right angle. It was contorted with fury; the fangs clicked together, seeking a hold on human flesh.

Then Cicero shrieked and rushed forward, trying to get the crucifix away from Silvera. The priest braced himself and swung out with the rest of his ebbing strength.

Cicero's head ripped from his body and tumbled into a corner. The headless body staggered on, its claws gripping Silvera's coat and hanging there; the fingers still writhed. Silvera could feel the waves of cold rolling off it, and he heard himself cry out in terror. He jerked away from the thing, and the body crumpled to the floor at his feet.

It was then that Juanita screamed and ran into his arms. He hugged her close, pressing her head against his shoulder so she would not see anymore of the horror. Across the room the fangs in the severed head kept clicking like dreadful castanets. The body at his feet suddenly shuddered, twisting like a dying snake. "G.o.d help us!" Silvera breathed. The body's limbs were still moving, it was pus.h.i.+ng itself toward the head in the corner. Silvera didn't wait to see what would happen when it got there. With Juanita around his neck, Silvera raised the crucifix high over his head and slammed it down through the thing's spine. Bone and wood cracked; Silvera had driven the crucifix through the body and into the floor. The vampire writhed, the feet trying to push it forward, but it was firmly pinned to the floor. The fangs began to grind together. Silvera left the crucifix where it was, put his arms around Juanita, and raced out of the building.

On the street he realized that he and the child were unprotected, but he felt certain that if he hadn't left Cicero's body pinned, it would have crawled across that floor and somehow made itself whole again. His stomach turned over at the thought. The moving shadows seemed to be on all sides. He was running now as hard as he could, his lungs pumping like bellows. He thought he heard something coming up from behind, but when he dared to look back, he saw nothing.

Less than a half-block from the church, he saw a corpse lying in the middle of the street. He was almost around it when the corpse's hand shot out, grabbing his ankle and almost tumbling him to the ground. The man raised his sand-caked face and whispered, "Help me . . ."

Thursday, October 31 the ghost town Tommy Chandler stirred uneasily. The last bell was ringing, echoing down the long, silent halls of Fairfax High School. He was running and trying to hold on to his books. When he looked back, he could see the shadow that followed him relentlessly, its long arms swinging like the orangutan's from "Murders in the Rue Morgue." And he heard the loathsome guttural voice rolling down on him like a tidal wave. "I told you not to come back, f.u.c.kface . . . told you not to ...

told you not toooooo . . .!"

"Go away!" Tommy shouted, his voice cracking. "Leave me alone!" And then he dropped his books all over the hallway, which suddenly started changing shape, elongated to incredible dimensions like a set from The Thousand Fingers of Dr. T. He stopped to gather up his books, but they kept slipping away from him, and he could hear the m.u.f.fled boom boom boom of Bull Thatcher's combat boots coming up fast behind him. A shadow fell upon him like a winter storm, and he looked up in terror . . .

... at the clock beside his bed. He could hear the alarm ringing, and he reached out to shut it off. But before he could grasp it, the ringing stopped. He heard his father's voice say, "Who is this? Why don't you say something?

d.a.m.n it, Cynthia, either someone's making crank phone calls or . . ." Tommy sat up in bed and fumbled for his extra pair of eyegla.s.ses on the table beside his bed. He put them on and looked at the clock; it was a windup and hadn't gone off at nine-forty, when the electricity had died. It was five minutes after midnight. Who could be calling now? he wondered. The wind was still screaming at his window, punctuated by the scatter-shots of sand on gla.s.s.

Before the television had gone black, the special KABC weather report had said to expect winds of between thirty-five and fifty miles per hour. And then the TV and lights had flickered out.

The telephone was ringing again. Tommy heard his father's m.u.f.fled curse as he picked up the receiver.

Tommy had walked home from school that afternoon buffeted by hot western winds.

He could look at the sky and tell a storm was coming because the clouds were thickening and cartwheeling for as far as he could see. He'd never seen anything quite like it before, not even in Denver. But the freak storm wasn't anything as incredible as the miracle at school yesterday. Of course, he'd had to return to the locker room, and as he was hurrying to gather up his books and get out, Mark Sutro told him not to worry, that Bull Thatcher and Ross Weir hadn't come to school, so he was safe. Buddy Carnes did come in while he was still at his locker, but Carnes hadn't even given him a sidelong glance. Now there might not even be any school today. That would be great, he thought, then he could watch "Flash Gordon" and "Thriller" on the Mexican stations ... if the electricity came back on.

He got out of bed. From one wall a poster of Orion Kronsteen, resplendent in his King Vampire makeup, glowered down at him. He went out into the hall and knocked on his parents' door. His father, a thin, pale man with thick eyegla.s.ses like his son's, looked out. "What are you doing out of bed?"

"Woke up. Heard the phone ringing." Tommy yawned, lifted his gla.s.ses, and rubbed his eyes. "Who's been calling?"

"I don't know. Some idiot who won't answer. I can hear a lot of static, but no voices. Why don't you try to go back to sleep?"

"The storm's still pretty bad, isn't it, Dad?"

"Yes. It is." He paused for a few seconds and then opened the door wider. "You want to come in and talk for a while?"

Tommy's mother, a sharp-chinned Radcliffe grad with dark, intense eyes, was sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, making a mountain out of the covers. She was staring at the pale green curtains drawn across the window, watching them tremble every time an errant whisper of wind slipped through the cas.e.m.e.nt. She looked at Tommy and smiled her tight, crooked smile.

"Can't sleep either, huh?"

"Nope."

"Sounds like a hurricane, doesn't it? Gosh, who ever heard of a hurricane in California?"

"It's not as bad as it was a little while ago," his father said quietly. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the telephone. "I wonder who the h.e.l.l that was? Somebody playing a joke?"

"Not very funny," Cynthia said.

Tommy stepped to the window, pushed aside the curtain, and looked out. For an instant he could've sworn he was back in Denver-there was snow all over the place out there! Heaps and heaps of it, even beginning to cover over cars! But then he saw a felled palm tree, all its fronds stripped away to leave a bare, ugly nub, and then he remembered this was California so that couldn't possibly be snow. It was sand, hot and thick, slowly piling up into mountainous dunes.

"Where did all this sand come from, Dad?" he asked. His heart was beating a little faster.

"The Mojave Desert. The wind just carried it right over the mountains. That would be our luck, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah," Tommy said. "It sure would be." He strained his eyes to see across the street through the swirling yellow sheets to the Vernon house.

"I never wanted to come to California," Tommy's father was saying. "I told Mr. Oakes I was an Achilles man all the way and, of course, I wanted the promotion, but. . ." He looked at his wife. "I wish we could've stayed in Scottsdale. That was a really beautiful city, and you didn't have to worry about earthquakes or smog or some crazy murderer running loose . . ."

"Dad," Tommy said very quietly. He wasn't sure what he was seeing, wasn't sure at all, but he thought he should say something.

"Now this," his dad said. "Christ! No electricity, no ... where's that transistor radio, Cynthia?"

"Dad," Tommy said. "There's-"

"The one you bought at K-Mart? I think it's still packed away in a box, honey. Probably out in the hall closet. I doubt if the batteries are still working."

"I'll try to find it. Tommy, why don't you scare up some candles and matches if we're going to stay up? Okay?"

Tommy nodded and looked back out the window. What he thought he'd seen -a figure standing amidst the sand drifts on the Vernon's front yard, staring across at his house and seemingly right at him-was no longer there now. He craned his neck to either side but could see no one out there, if he had actually seen anyone at all. Still, a s.h.i.+ver ran up his spine. He went to get the candles and matches, pa.s.sing his dad rummaging through the hall closet and feeling his way down the stairs to the kitchen. The wind shrilled and whistled around the house, trying to suck it off its foundations, but at the house's center there seemed to be a hole of unearthly darkness and silence, the stuff that had crept in when the electricity had gone. Tommy started opening drawers. He found a couple of candles and now he needed matches. He searched on a shelf above the sink and from the corner of his eye saw something move near the window that looked out over their tiny backyard. He wasn't sure what it was, but it had looked like someone ... running. He stared out, his heart pumping ice water. "Hey, Mom!" he shouted. "Where are the matches?"

"Look under the sink!" she called down to him.

He opened a couple of cupboards down there and finally found a large pack of Fire Chiefs, the kind you could strike anywhere. And suddenly from the front of the house, there came an ugly-sounding whump and he could hear things cras.h.i.+ng around in the living room. A whirl of wind and sand hit him as he raced out of the kitchen to the stairs. He could see the front door hanging on one hinge, and a coffee table had gone flying against a wall. His dad called out from upstairs, "Tommy? What was that?"

"Door's open!" he said. "The wind knocked it loose ... I guess."

"Christ! If that sand gets inside . . . Tommy, can you prop it shut?"

"I'll try!" He moved across the room against the wall of wind and dragged a chair over to secure the door. It held, although the whistlings through the doorjamb had grown savage. Then he hurried upstairs, the flesh at the back of his neck beginning to creep.

His father had found the transistor radio and tuned it to KALA. A rock song was playing, the singer wailing something about everybody being part of a food chain. Tommy lit the candles and placed one on either side of the bed. The gruff-voiced dj came on after the song had ended, his patter garbled by static.

"Yeaaah! That was Tonio K. and 'Life in the Foooooodchain!' Tha.s.s what it's all about now, ain't it, brothers and sisters? Lemme reeeelay to you what the scouts are tellin' old Tiger Eddie. Got a whole lot of fine young ones trapped up in the Hollywood Recreation Center on Lexington Avenue. You get yourself up there early for the best pickin's, you dig? Got a few scattered all along Rosewood Avenue, you just got to keep knockin' on them doors 'till you get lucky . . ."

"What's he talking about?" Tommy's dad asked nervously, looking at his son.

". . . old Tiger Eddie's gonna be with you right up 'til night-night time about five-thirty this morning. Here's a little note to make your mouths water. There are sixty-count 'em, sixty-holed up over at the Westside Jewish Center between Olympic and San Vicente. Just a reminder-the Master don't want 'em old, you dig?

You find some old coots, just do us all a favor and fling 'em out in the wind, okay? Yeah! Dig it!"

"Christ! What's . . . what's that idiot talking about?" And then something stepped through the open doorway into the bedroom. It was" Mr. Vernon. His eyes shone in a ghastly chalk-white face. He was wearing a dirty white s.h.i.+rt and dark trousers, and even in the dim candlelight Tommy could see the brownish spots on his collar. Tommy's heart leapt into his throat, almost choking him. His mom gave out a little scream, and his dad whirled around so fast his gla.s.ses almost flew off. "Pete!" his dad said in a trembling voice.

"What are you ... I mean . . . why are . . .?"

"I've come to visit," Pete Vernon said in a soft hiss of a voice. "Oh, listen to that wind. Isn't it wonderful?"

"How did you . . . get in?"

"The front door, of course. As any visitor would enter. I've brought my wife with me. Dianne?"

And then she was there, too, both of them blocking the doorway, both of them pale and grinning.

"Don?" Tommy's mom said softly to his dad. Her face had gone white, her eyes swimming with fear.

"Don," Dianne Vernon whispered, gripping her mouth around the name. Her eyes s.h.i.+fted very slowly and stared into Tommy's face. Her gaze burned like h.e.l.lfire.

Then she grinned and opened her mouth wide, and Tommy's brain screamed with the terrible word-VAMPIRE-he'd heard in a thousand monster movies-VAMPIRE when he was sitting in a safe chair at a safe distance-VAMPIRE-in his own safe, private little world, but now this was real-VAMPIRE-real, real, real . .

"No!" he tried to shout, but it came out as a croak. Mrs. Vernon swept past him like a gray wind, moving inexorably upon his father. He cried out, "NO," and grasped at her, trying to hold her back. She hissed and twisted, and in the next instant Mr. Vernon's freezing hands were on him, flinging him like a sack of rags out into the hallway. He smacked against the wall hard and slid to the floor, his brain reeling with pain and terror. He heard his mother scream, then there was a high peal of wicked laughter that was so terrible Tommy thought he would go crazy before it stopped. But when it did stop, the sucking sounds began, and those were much, much worse.

And then a beautiful, terrible voice whispered, "Tommy?" He looked up, cold sweat breaking out on his face.

It was her, mounting the stairs now and coming down the hallway toward him with slow, supple steps. He could see the long golden hair splashed over her bare shoulders. She was wearing a violet halter, the deep dish of her navel exposed over tight denim cutoffs decorated with different-colored patches-one showed Snoopy reclining atop his doghouse, another said Have a Nice Day! Her thigh muscles tensed as she neared him, and in the darkness he could see the awful sheen of her eyes. That beautiful flesh would never again be touched by the sun.

"Tommy?" she whispered, and when she smiled, she was still so pretty, even like this. She held out one graceful hand to him. "How's about you and me gettin' it on, huh?" she said softly.

"You're . . . dead!" Tommy said, the effort to speak making sweat run down his face in rivulets. "You're not Sandy Vernon anymore. You're not human . . ."

"You're wrong, Tommy. I'm still Sandy. And I know how much you want me, Tommy. I could always tell. That's why I liked to tease you and show off my legs for you.

I want you, too, Tommy. I want you reeeeeeal bad . . ." She stepped forward, about to touch him. Her eyes blazed with wicked and soul-shaking promises. He felt all on fire and yet so cold, as if he stood facing an inferno while a blizzard raged at his back. His mind slipped toward her, and he began to envision all the wonderful possibilities, how he could just put his hand into hers-NO!-and she would guide him right into his own room to the bed-NO! YOU CAN'T-and then it would be better than anything he'd ever known, better than a Mexican horror film festival-SHE'S IN YOUR MIND, GET HER OUT.'-or even three Orion Kronsteen films right in a row, all he would have to do would be to lie back and let her-GET HER OUT, SHE'S COMING CLOSER.'-do everything to him, everything, everyth"GET OUT!" he shrieked. "GET OUT!" He twisted away from her grasp, from the fangs that were coming down out from under her full, luscious lips, and raced back along the hallway. He burst through a door into the bathroom and locked it just before the beautiful vampire started battering on the wood. "Let me in!"

she shrieked in a frenzy. "You little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, let me in right now.'" There was a tremendous blow, and the door shuddered; wood began to split. The blows followed one after the other very rapidly now, and Tommy thought that Mr.

and Mrs. Vernon were probably out there, too, helping to batter the door down. A great crevice suddenly appeared in the wood; the door started to cave in. Tommy realized he was still gripping the pack of matches. But what good were they? What could he do with them? He couldn't think; the noise outside was too loud. Then he flung open the medicine cabinet and was sweeping aside bottles of vitamins, cough medicine, and cold capsules. There was nothing he could use.

Suddenly the door shattered, and they were on him, all three of them ravenous and fighting over him, trying to tear him to pieces. They started to drag him out of the bathroom.

His hand clutched a can of his mom's hair spray, which was sitting on the sink.

As Mr. Vernon's grip closed on his throat, he shook a match into his hand and flailed out, trying to sc.r.a.pe it across the wall. He missed, and now Sandy was trying to grasp his arm, screaming shrilly, "HE'S MINE! HE'S MINE! IT'S NOT FAIR!".

Tommy reached out, almost popping his shoulder out of the socket, and dragged the match across plaster. It sputtered and flared, illuminating the sudden burst of fear in the vampire's eyes. Tommy knocked the cap off the hair spray can, got his thumb on the b.u.t.ton, and pushed. Immediately he could smell sweet flowers, and the image of his blood-drained mother lying in the next room streaked through his head. He held the match up in front of the spray just as Mr. Vernon made a guttural animal noise and leapt for his throat. A two-foot jet of flames shot out of the spray can. He heard Mrs. Vernon scream, and he stuck that blue torch right in her husband's face. Mr. Vernon roared in agony as the flame hit his eyes. He staggered back out of the bathroom, he and Sandy fighting for an instant as they jammed into each other in the doorway. Tommy charged them, keeping his thumb pressed down. The vampires stumbled over each other, trying to get away. "Come on back and fight!"

Tommy screamed at them. "Come on, you dirty b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" He forgot and released his thumb. The flame instantly went out. Sandy's eyes gleamed, and she started back along the hallway for him. Tommy raced back to the bathroom, where the matches lay scattered on the floor. He struck another one and lit his torch again; this time he kept more matches clutched in his hand. Sandy stopped just beyond the bathroom door and immediately backed away. "We'll get you!" she promised from the head of the stairs. "We'll come back for you, you'll see!" And then they were gone, sweeping down the stairs and away. Tommy couldn't lift his thumb for another minute. The flame went out, and he stood in the midst of a stinking swirl of smoke. He was trembling, but he was afraid to cry because he knew if he started to, he couldn't stop. He was sure those things meant what they said-they would be back.

It was a long time before he could make himself go into his parents' bedroom. On the floor Tiger Eddie's voice still growled from the transistor radio. "Oh yeaaaaah, brothers and sisters, got some real fine news for you if you happen to be huntin' out Santa Monica way. Seems there's a whole bunch of'em stuck out at the Santa Monica Airport waitin' on planes that never took off, can ya dig it?