They Thirst Part 21

She watched him, dumbfounded, as he stepped back to the counter and reached into the bag again. Oh, my G.o.d, she thought suddenly as she looked into his face. He looked just like his mother did just before she went into the rest home. His eyes held that same fanatical, crazed gleam; his jaw was set with an unyielding determination. "Andy," she whispered as he took several heads of garlic from the bag and laid them on the counter.

"We'll slice these and smear all the windowsills with them," he said. "Then we'll chop some into pieces and spread them on the front lawn. Mama said it would help keep the vampir away because their sense of smell is so strong and the odor reminds them of death." He turned toward her and saw her face as pale as chalk. "Oh, I see. You think I'm crazy, too, like everyone else, don't you?"

"Send me a postcard from Vegas," Garnette said as Palatazin stepped through the door. The captain's shoulders were slumped forward and he carried himself as if he'd just taken a hard blow to the stomach. Garnette started to say, "I'm sorry," but then the door closed. G.o.d.' Garnette thought, I hope two weeks makes a difference! If not. . . well, let that take care of itself. But anybody who wanted to burn bodies found in an East L.A. tenement-who demanded that they be cremated-was obviously in need of a long rest. Poor guy, Garnette mused, and then forced himself to concentrate on other matters.

"I think . . . Andy, you're not in Hungary now! This is a different place, a different time-"

"There's no difference!" he objected sharply. "The vampir doesn't care what place he attacks so long as there's an abundance of food! And time to his kind means nothing! I tell you the vampir is here in this city! And someone has got to find the Master, the king vampir, before it's too late!"

"You don't mean . . . Andy, what's come over you?"

"The truth," he said quietly. "Jo, I want you to leave. I want you to take the car and drive as far away from here as you can. Go east across the mountains. Will you do that for me?"

She took a step toward him and clutched his arm. "We'll both go," she said.

"We'll make a real vacation out of these two weeks! We'll pack and leave in the morning, all right? We can drive down to San Diego or-"

"No. It has to be far from this city because when they start spreading out, there will be no stopping them. I want the mountains between you and L.A., and I want you to leave now."

"I can't go without you," she told him, tears of despair welling in her eyes.

"I won't, d.a.m.n it! No matter what you say!"

He took her shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. "When they come, Jo-and they will come, it's only a matter of time-I won't be able to save you. I probably won't be able to save myself. But I have to stay here, I have to try to ... do something! Running doesn't do any good. They just advance, and sooner or later all of humanity will be pushed together in a tiny pocket, and the vampir will come and then . . . that will be the end, don't you see? The vampir will eventually destroy themselves, but only after all of humanity is bled dry.

Someone has got to at least try to stop them!"

"You? Of all the people in the world, why you?"

"Because," he said quietly, fixing her with his gaze, "I'm here. And I know their ways. Who else is there?"

"Let the police do it!"

"The police? Ah, yes. I know firsthand how efficient the police can be. No, it has to be me. Alone, if that's the will of G.o.d. Now go upstairs and pack your things." He turned back to the paper bag.

Jo did not move. "I won't leave," she protested. "You can't make me."

"You're a fool," he said.

"I love you."

Palatazin looked at her and grunted. "Twice a fool then. Haven't you understood a word I've said?"

"I understand my place is with you. I'm not leaving." He stared at her for a silent moment, and she could feel the heat of his gaze. She returned it stubbornly. "All right," he said finally, "if you're going to stay until morning, you can help me prepare for them. Cut the garlic into pieces." As she moved to get a knife, he reached into the bag and brought out a can of black spray (???) The last bell had rung at Fairfax High School. The cla.s.srooms and halls were emptying rapidly. Toyotas and Triumphs squealed out of the parking lot onto Fairfax Avenue and left trails of rubber aimed toward the nearest McDonald's. (???) paint. She didn't want to ask him what he was going to do with it. He walked to the front of the house, shaking the spray paint, and opened the door. On the wood he sprayed a large black crucifix and beneath it the Hungarian word OVAJODIK.

Beware.

Tommy Chandler, one of the few eleven-year-old freshmen who had ever walked the not-so-hallowed halls of Fairfax High, carefully dialed the combination of his Yale lock, pulled it open, then opened his locker. Inside there were the usual American history, algebra, and Latin textbooks, a pack of Bic pens, and a few Nifty notebooks. Taped to the inside of the locker was a picture of Orion Kronsteen in his Jack the Ripper makeup from London Screams, clipped reverentially from an old Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. There was a picture of Raquel Welch in a bikini, too, but that took a lower place of honor.

Tommy took out his history and algebra books and the corresponding notebooks. Mr. Kitchens would probably throw a sneak history quiz at the cla.s.s first thing in the morning, and Tommy wanted to do some advance reading in algebra because what they were covering now was just plain booooring. Across the locker room Jim Baines and Mark Sutro were discussing the physical attributes of Melinda Kennimer, head majorette for the Fairfax High Marching Band and an untouchable but deliciously stacked senior. .

"I saw her in the hall today, fifth period," Mark was saying as he gathered up a biology text and a geometry notebook. "G.o.d, I almost creamed my jeans! She smiled at me. Actually smiled for G.o.d's sake! She's got a smile like Farrah Fawcett."

"Better than Farrah Fawcett," Jim said. "More like Go Derek. G.o.d, what a bod!

I hear she's going with Stan Perry, the lucky a.s.shole! Last week at the pep rally when she flashed those thighs and the drum corps was putting down a jungle beat, I thought I was going to shoot to the moon. It's unnatural for a girl to look so good. I'll bet she's got a mean streak in her."

"Who cares? I like 'em mean. Have you got a date for Homecoming?"

"Not yet. I'm going to ask Ronni McKay."

"Ha!" Mark slammed his locker door and spun the lock. "Too late! Johnny Jackson already asked her, and she said yes."

"What? Keerist! I had my lines all ready for her! d.a.m.n! Who are you asking, Selma Verone?"

Mark made a sickened face. "Are you kidding? Old Pizza Cheeks Verone? I'd rather go stag." He nudged Jim in the ribs with an elbow and motioned toward Tommy. "Bet Selma would go with Chandler if he'd ask her." Here it comes. Tommy thought. Hurry and get it over with.

"Hey, Chandler!" Mark called to him across the aisle. "Why don't you ask Selma Verone to go to Homecoming with you? You like monsters so much, she'd be perfect for you!"

"I doubt it," Tommy mumbled. He heard the locker room door open and close, but he was concentrating on what the next jibe would probably be, so he didn't notice who came in. Tommy closed his locker, spun the dial, and turned right into a slab of beef wearing an Aerosmith T-shirt. A hand shot out, catching Tommy on the collarbone, and shoved him back against the lockers. He hit his head on metal, and his ears rang like a fire drill alarm. His eyegla.s.ses dangled from one ear, but he didn't need to see to know who it was. He heard the raucous laughter like the snorting of pigs. Jim Baines and Mark Sutro were as quiet as the dead.

"You're in my way, f.u.c.kface!" the slab of beef growled. Tommy adjusted his gla.s.ses. There were three boys standing before him, Jules "Bull" Thatcher with his usual entourage of Buddy Carnes and Ross Weir. Thatcher's faces was broad and ugly, as cratered and hostile as the surface of the moon. He had shoulder-length brown hair, a scar through one thick eyebrow, and black ferret eyes that radiated hatred. He towered over Tommy. Bull had been a pretty fair running back on the freshman football team until Coach Maxwell had caught him selling 'ludes in the parking lot about two weeks before. He should've been a junior, but the sixth and eighth grades had been beyond his capacity. Now he mostly cheated to squeak by. His eyes gleamed with bloodl.u.s.t as he stared at Tommy. His face was slashed by a cruel, thin-lipped mouth, and Tommy could well believe the stories he'd heard about Bull's love of pure violence. It was his misfortune to have been a.s.signed the locker right next to Bull.

"I said you're in my way . . . f.u.c.kface!" Bull said grimly, his hands on his hips.

"Uh . . . sorry," Tommy said, rubbing his collarbone. "I was just leaving."

"He was 'just leavin','" Ross Weir mimicked Tommy's high, childish voice. "He sounds like a fairy. You a fairy, punk?"

"Don't you guys know?" Buddy Carnes said. "This here's the little brain. He's in my algebra cla.s.s, gets A's on every G.o.dd.a.m.n test and f.u.c.ks up the curve for everybody else. He's the reason I'm flunkin' my a.s.s off!"

"Oh yeah?" Bull said quietly. "A brain, huh?"

"Looks like a fairy to me," Weir said, and cackled. Baines and Sutro tried to slip past the Unholy Three, but suddenly Bull's head turned, and Tommy saw his eyes gleam like Gort the robot's power blast from The Day the Earth Stood Still. "Where do you think you're going'?" Bull said ominously.

"Nowhere . . ." Mark stammered. "We're just . . . nowhere . . ."

"Better not be!" Bull said, and turned his attention back to Tommy. Ah, yes, Tommy thought. He needs an audience for his performance. Over Bull's ma.s.sive shoulders his cohorts' faces looked like the half-human animals from The Island of Lost Souls. Tommy could feel his heart thumping against his thin rib cage. The "flight or fight" instinct was pumping adrenaline through his body-his head said fight, but his feet said flight.

Bull stepped closer and shoved Tommy against the lockers again. "You think you're smart, don't you? Don't you?"

"Not particularly, no."

"You callin' Bull a liar?" Ross Weir snarled.

Tommy thought. Caught by the deadly triangle! His face flushed with a mixture of anger and fear. Bull reached out and plucked off Tommy's gla.s.ses.

"Hey, don't!" Tommy said. "Those are expensive!"

"Oh yeah? You want 'em back? Come take 'em!"

"You're about three guys bigger than me."

"He's a chickens.h.i.t fairy, too," Weir said.

Bull narrowed his eyes into fierce slits. "I've seen you in here before, kid. You got the locker next to mine, don't you? I'm going to give you some advice. I find you in here tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to smear your little fairy a.s.s up and down Fairfax Avenue, you got that?"

"Just give me back my . . ." Tommy began, but in the next instant a ma.s.sive hand had grabbed his collar and was choking him.

"Maybe you didn't hear me," Bull said evenly. "I don't want to see you in here"

again. Understand?" He shook Tommy like a dog shakes a bone. "UnderSTAND?"

"Yeah," Tommy said, tears beginning to swim in his eyes. He felt more rage than fear, but he knew if he swung a blow, Bull would probably snap his arms out of their sockets. "Yeah, I understand."

Bull laughed, blowing fetid breath in Tommy's face. He flung Tommy back" and sneered at Baines and Sutro. "You want some of it, too?" he growled. Their heads shook in unison.

"Huh?" Bull glowered at him and then smiled. "Sure, kid." He held them out and dropped them to the floor as Tommy reached for them. "Sorry," Bull said.

"I'll '" get 'em." He placed his boot on a lens and ground down on it. The crack sounded as loud as a gunshot. Buddy Carnes howled with laughter. "There you go, kid," Bull said, bending to pick up the gla.s.ses and then handing them to Tommy.

"Put 'em on and let's see how they look."

Tommy was looking through one clear lens and one crisscrossed with cracks. The damaged side kept slipping off his ear, and he had to hold it in place.

"Looks real good," Bull said. His face contorted viciously. "Now get out of here, f.u.c.kface! And you don't come back, you got it?" Tommy slipped past Bull and started for the door. He was almost there, thinking he was really going to make it, when Ross Weir stuck a leg in his path and pushed him. He went down in a tangle of arms and legs, his books falling everywhere. Laughter exploded as he gathered up his books again and hurried out of the locker room, leaving Jim Baines and Mark Sutro to their own unfortunate fates. Tommy walked across the empty parking lot and turned south on Fairfax, heading toward Hanc.o.c.k Park. His knees were trembling, and within him there was a great urge to turn around and shout, "BULL THATCHER SUCKS!" as loud as he could. But what good would that do? He'd only end up with a busted head and a mouthful of loose teeth. Soon he'd left Fairfax High behind and was out of shouting range.

He wished he had muscles like Hercules; he wished he could deliver a flying kick like Bruce Lee. Then the Bull Thatchers of the world-and there were so many of them-would think twice before they bothered him. Ah! The perfect fate for Bull Thatcher. He imagined the boy running through the fog-shrouded streets of old London, fear glistening in his eyes beneath the whale oil lamps as he heard the approaching footsteps. Orion Kronsteen's Ripper was afoot in the darkness, his three-foot sickle seeking new victims to behead. The Ripper's eyes would look like black holes behind a mask of gray cloth, and as those eyes made out the running figure of Bull Thatcher, the thin mouth would twitch into a cunning smile. There's nowhere to run, boy! The Ripper would call out. There's nowhere to hide! Come, let Mary Death take a taste of your blood!

Of course, he'd catch Bull Thatcher, and then . . . h.e.l.l, h.e.l.l, h.e.l.lI Tommy caught the smell of oranges and cloves in the breeze. It was the deceptively fruity smell which had lured thousands of prehistoric saber-toothed tigers, giant ground sloths, and mastodons into the clinging trap of Hanc.o.c.k Park, Tommy liked to roam around over there on Sat.u.r.days when his dad was working at the Achilles Electronics plant in Pasadena and his mom was out making telephone calls for whatever volunteer group she'd hooked up with this month. Last month it had been the Society to Aid Cambodian Orphans. Now it was the Save the African Elephant bunch. While his mother crusaded, Tommy would sit beneath a tree in the park and watch the roller skaters or read H.P. Lovecraft. He was accustomed to being alone.

He turned onto Lindenhurst Avenue, across from the park, and walked along a street lined with Spanish stucco houses that seemed to stretch on out of sight, hundreds of houses that looked similar except for the different colors of paint and different cars in the driveways. But, Tommy had noticed, there was even a pattern to the cars. Most of them were imports or economy cars, including his dad's Pacer and his mother's Toyota Celica. There were a few Porsches and Mercedes Benzes sitting around, too, but most of these were inconspicuously driven and usually covered over with protective canvas. It was a firmly middle-cla.s.s neighborhood, complete with Boy Scout troop meetings and backyard barbecues on weekend evenings. It was quite similar to the neighborhood Tommy and his parents had lived in when his dad was working at the Achilles plant in Scottsdale, Arizona; and about the same as the one in San Antonio, Texas; and almost identical to the old neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. Actually they'd lived in a small town just outside Denver, and that place had been Tommy's favorite-streets lined with elm trees and white picket fences, chimney smoke stirring in a crisp northerly breeze, people wearing sweaters and raking leaves into orderly piles. That had been a really neat place. California was different.

Everybody was wacky, everybody had ulterior motives. It wasn't the moving that bothered Tommy so much because he knew his father was being promoted gradually through the Achilles corporation. It was changing schools so much and leaving behind whatever few friends he'd managed to make. In his experience real friends were few and far between. But there was one definite advantage to L.A., though. So many monster flicks were shown on the tube! Almost every weekend on "Creature Features" or "Horror Hotel," he got to see an Orion Kronsteen, Vincent Price, or-very rarely-a Todd Slaughter flick. At the end of the summer, he'd helped his dad attach a gizmo to the TV antenna that pulled in a couple of Mexican stations, and down there they really made creepy horror movies. So all in all, it wasn't too bad.

His heart suddenly gave a kick. A silver Vega was parked in the driveway of the house across the street from his. Her silver Vega. Her name was Sandy Vernon, the daughter of Pete and Dianne Vernon, and she was a soph.o.m.ore at UCLA.

Tommy had fallen in love with her while watching her mow the lawn on a Sunday afternoon, clad in tight denim cutoffs and a dark blue halter. She was tanned and blond and . . . stacked! She made Melinda Kennimer, Farrah Fawcett, Go Derek and Raquel Welch look like Selma Verone. He'd melted into a little puddle, like the goo the comes out of a chocolate-covered cherry, when he'd seen the tight muscles of her thighs and b.u.t.tocks as she shoved a sputtering red Toro mower back and forth across the lawn. He would have offered to help, but then he would've been deprived of watching that heavenly body. So he'd sat on the front steps, leafing through an ,, jl Eerie magazine and not making a bit of sense out of the stories.

And when she'd finished, she'd cut the mower and then turned toward him, that mane of blond hair flowing like hair does in shampoo commercials. Even from across the street Tommy had seen that her eyes were a bluish violet.

"Hi there," she'd said, and smiled.

"That's a pretty neat lawnmower you've got there," was the only thing he could manage to say.

She'd smiled wider as if she could read the thoughts-STUPID! a.s.sHOLE! STUPID!

a.s.sHOLE.'-that were battering against the walls of Tommy's brain. "Thanks. It's my dad's. What they need to invent is one that does all the work by itself."

"Uh . .. yeah. I think somebody's come up with a robot mower. It runs along a wire you put down in the gra.s.s. My name's Tommy Chandler."

"I'm Sandy Vernon. Your folks just moved in?"

"Since July."

"That's nice. What grade are you in?"

"Uh . . . I'll be a freshman at Fairfax High. In September. You sure did a good job on that lawn." STUPID! a.s.sHOLE! STUPID!

"Thanks, I'll be seeing you, Tommy." And she'd pushed the mower away, her cute little behind moving as if on ball bearings.

Tommy's body, in the bewildering throes of change, was never quite the same after that Sunday afternoon meeting. Once he woke up in the middle of the night, looked down at his pajama bottoms, and almost pa.s.sed out thinking he had some hideous kind of VD. But that was impossible since he'd never had the opportunity to dabble in the mysteries of the opposite s.e.x, and he decided that it was one more of nature's tricks to make sure he was ready for manhood. Now, as he stood in front of his house and looked across Lindenhurst at the silver Vega that meant she was home, he saw a collie sitting on the steps in front of the Vernons' door. Whose dog is that? he wondered. Maybe the Vernons bought it in the last couple of days? It was a large, beautiful dog, and right now it seemed to be sleeping. Tommy strolled out into the street and said, "Hi, boy! Hi there, fella!"

The dog didn't move.

What's wrong with it? he wondered. Is it sick? He crossed the street and stood on the sidewalk. "Hi, fella!" He clapped one hand against his leg, but the collie didn't react. When Tommy placed one foot on the Vernons' lawn, the dog's head came up, the eyes staring blankly at him. "Hi, boy!" Tommy said.

"Whose dog are you, huh? Are you Sandy's dog?" Dogs have all the luck! he thought. He took another step closer, and the collie bared its teeth, growling very softly.

Tommy froze. The collie slowly rose to its feet but didn't move from in front of the door. A drop of saliva fell from its lower lip and spattered onto the walkway. Tommy backed away, very carefully, and the collie immediately curled up again. On the other side of the street, Tommy stopped and stared across, knowing that Bull Thatcher was going to growl like that when he stepped into that locker room again tomorrow afternoon. It was either that or carry all his books around all day. He wondered if a kid could buy a can of Mace. Funny the way that dog acted, he thought. I always heard that collies were friendly. Well, after all, I guess I was invading his territory or something. And then he remembered that "The Invaders" was on television in fifteen minutes, so he dug the key out of his pocket and hurried inside so he wouldn't miss the first part, where the saucer comes down.

FOURTEEN.

Darkness, Twenty minutes before eight o'clock.

Paige LaSanda cursed as her pale blue Mercedes crashed over yet another pothole on serpentine Blackwood Road. G.o.d! she thought. Why did I ever tell that Falco character Yd come up this mountain in practically the middle of the night? Why didn't I make him send a car to pick me up and take me back home?

If that Prince whatever-his-name-is can afford to rent that castle, then by G.o.d he could afford to send a limo to pick me up! She could hear the wind whining through the dead trees out there, so she turned on her radio and searched for music. She came across the tail end of a newscast from KMET. ". .

. registered 3.4 on the open-ended Richter scale, but San Diego residents did suffer some broken windows in a series of aftershocks . . ." Another earthquake, she thought. Christ! If it's not forest fires or mudslides, it's earthquakes! She turned the dial and found a song she liked, the new Rory Black single."... I'm not the kind of guy who gets a second chance with pretty girls like you . . ."

She was wondering what this Prince what's-his-name would look like when she realized that there was something out there in the dark, running alongside her car.

A couple of dogs, caught in the backwash of the headlights, were running on either side like royal escorts.

She shivered, wondering what dogs were doing way up here, and accelerated to leave them behind. In another few minutes she turned a corner, and there was the ma.s.sive hulk of the Kronsteen castle. There were candles in some of the windows, shining with different colors. She had to admit that if the place was not, quite attractive, then at least it was mysteriously appealing. She drove through the open gate, parked her car in the driveway, and walked up the stone stairs to the front door. She was wearing a sleek black dress and a silver necklace with diamond stars cl.u.s.tered around a gleaming half-moon, and she knew she looked stunning. She was going to knock the prince's socks-or whatever they called them in Hungary-off tonight. She knocked on the front door and waited.

It opened almost immediately, and standing there was a young Chicano girl in a long white gown. "Hi," Paige said. "I'm Miss LaSanda, and Prince Vulkan expects me." The girl nodded and motioned for her to enter. She stepped across the threshold. The door was closed behind her. She followed the servant girl-her makeup is atrocious, Paige thought-under a chandelier studded with gleaming candles. Paige glanced up at it, realizing that it was where the cops had found Orion Kronsteen's headless body. It was as cold as a refrigerator inside the place, and above her head Paige could hear the whine and moan of conflicting winds across the high ceilings. They moved down a long hallway lit by more candles, then up a curved, stone stairway that had no banister. On the second ,} floor the servant girl motioned Paige through a rough-hewn door into a huge room with two roaring fireplaces on either side of a highly polished, gleaming black dining table. More candles guttered from a chandelier overhead and the two silver candelabra set equidistantly on the table. There was only one place setting, at the head of the table, with a silver dish and gleaming silverware. A crystal decanter half-filled with red wine and a single goblet were set beside the dish, both catching golden light from the fireplaces. "Where's Prince Vulkan?" Paige asked the servant girl as she sat down.

The girl poured a gla.s.s of wine for Paige but didn't answer. Then, without a word, she moved like a wraith to the door and vanished.

What's this guy going to do? Paige wondered. Make a grand entrance or something?