They Thirst Part 27

d.a.m.n IT!.

... one more drink, amigo, that's all I'm asking . . ." Just before dawn the old man had opened his eyes and turned his head to look at the boy sitting beside him. He'd stared at Silvera for a long time with the whiskey-swollen slits he had for eyes. He coughed several times violently, and Silvera saw the flecks of blood on his lips. The old man had reached out and gripped his hand with a leathery, four-fingered paw.

"Padre," the old man had whispered. "Help me . . . make it easy for me . . . please . . ."

"I ... ain't a priest," he'd said. The grip had tightened.

"Padre . . . I'm a sinner ... I don't want to die!" A tear squeezed from one eye and trickled down through the dark folds of his face. "Help me . . ."

"How? I can't ... do anything."

"Yes, you can. You can. Say something for me . . . some words . . ." The man's grip was about to crush Silvera's hand. His eyes glistened, but the spark of life within was rapidly dying. "Please," the old man whispered. Me pray to G.o.d? the boy had asked himself. s.h.i.t, that's a laugh! Me on my knees like a peon, simpering and crying? But the old guy was almost dead, he was drying up right there, so maybe he should at least try. But how to do it? What to say?

"Uh, G.o.d," he said softly, "this man . . . uh, what's your name?"

"Gulf Star," he whispered, ". . . sailed on the Gulf Star . . ."

"Uh, yeah. G.o.d, this man sailed on the Gulf Star and I ... guess he's a pretty good man." His knuckles cracked under the pressure of the man's grasp. "I don't know anything about him, but he's . . . uh, sick and he wanted me to say some words for him. I don't know if I'm doing this right or not, or if You're able to hear me. This man is really in bad shape, G.o.d, and I think he's going to ...

awwww, this is a lousy place for any man to be. A lousy place to die, G.o.d. s.h.i.t, what am I doing talking to myself!"

"Go on . . ." the man insisted. "Please, padre."

"I told you I ain't no f.u.c.kin' priest!" he said sharply, but he knew the man hadn't heard. He was smiling, muttering some kind of prayer over and over again.

"Okay," Silvera went on, looking at the ceiling. "If this man's got to die in this place, make it easy for him, G.o.d. I mean, don't let him suffer or anything like that, all right? Just ... lay him down easy." He looked down at the old man. "That's all. I don't know anything else to say." The old man was silent.

From across the cell his friend Chico lifted his head. "Hey, Ramon? Who you talkin' to, man?"

Father Silvera finished his prayer for Palatazin and then crossed himself. "I hope you're wrong," he told the cop. "But if you're not, G.o.d go with you."

"And with you," Palatazin said quietly. He got up, opened the door for the priest, and watched as Silvera walked to his Rambler. Silvera did not look back, and Palatazin noticed that he was trembling. He heard the rush of wind along the street and saw Silvera's coat flutter. The sky looked strange, pregnant with storm clouds. He'd never seen the sky over L.A. like that before.

Silvera was almost knocked down by the wind. He felt sharp grit strike his face and, as he climbed into his car, he noticed the residue of sand along the bottom of his windshield. He turned the key in the ignition and drove away, speared by shame.

Palatazin closed the door. "I have to go, Miss Clarke," he said, turning to Gayle. "Will you write the story for me?"

"Yes," she said as she got to her feet. "But I'd like to go with you."

"Why?" he asked her. "If Father Silvera wouldn't go, why should you?"

"Let's say a ... combination of professional and personal interests and leave it at that."

"No," Jo said suddenly. "If anyone is going to go with you, it must be me."

"You're staying here," he told her. He glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch. "It's almost four. We'll have to hurry, Miss Clarke. Did your friend ever tell you how he got up to Kronsteen's castle?"

"Not exactly, but I remember something about Outpost Drive."

"We could lose more than an hour trying to find the way," Palatazin said grimly.

"If we're there when the sun goes down-"

Jo said, "You didn't hear me, did you? I said I was going. Whatever happens to you happens to me-"

"Don't be foolish, Jo!"

"Foolish? I'm not staying in this house by myself! If you want to argue about it and waste more time, then that suits me fine, too." She stared at him, her eyes defiant and sure.

He met her gaze, then reached for her hand. "Gypsies!" he said with mock disgust. "You had to come from a family of them! All right. We'll have to hurry.

But I warn both of you-this is not for the weak-hearted. Or the weak-stomached.

When 1 ask for your help, you'll have to give it. There'll be no time for squeamishness. Understood?"

"Understood," Jo agreed.

"All right then." He leaned over and hefted the cardboard box full of stakes.

"Let's go."

NINE.

The h.e.l.l's Hole Hilton was trembling. Boards squealed as the wind, which had risen to almost forty miles an hour in the last thirty minutes, swept across the mountains from the east. The gla.s.s rattled in the window frame, and Bob Lampley could see handfuls of sand hitting it like buckshot. The eastern sky was veined with gold and gray, the clouds swirling together and breaking apart like fast-moving armies. Lampley felt his heart hammering. The wind-speed indicator was still climbing, pa.s.sing forty now and rising to forty-two. The Hilton seemed to lurch suddenly on its rock and concrete base. Jesus! Lampley thought, his brain buzzing. This whole place is going to give if the winds keep building!

He'd made his last call to National less than an hour before. L.A. was getting twenty-five and thirty-five-an-hour winds all the way from the San Fernando Valley south to Long Beach, and blowing sand had even been reported in Beverly Hills. The National Weather forecasters were going crazy trying to figure out what had kicked up this storm. It had started right in the middle of the Mojave and seemed to be moving in a direct line toward Los Angeles. The black telephone rang. Lampley picked it up, trying to make out the tinny voice on the other end over the cracklings of electrical interference. Hal from Twenty-nine Palms was saying something about radar.

"What is it?" Lampley shouted. "I can't hear you, Hal!" The message was repeated, but Lampley could grasp only fragments ". . . wind speed is up to ...

emergency procedure . . . watch your radar!" Wood cracked, the sound loud in Lampley's ear. Hal's voice was frantic, and it scared the s.h.i.t out of Lampley. Radar? he thought. What the h.e.l.l's he talking about? He glanced quickly at the sky and saw the undulating golden tendrils of sand whipping through the higher pines. He saw a tree branch crack and go tumbling away. The sand was beginning to build like a snowfall, covering every crevice of bare rock. "Hal!" he yelled.

"What's your wind speed down there?"

The answer was a high, shrieking garble that was cut off in mid-sentence. The phone shrilled and crackled like mad laughter. Lines down, Lampley figured. That's it, sure. Lines down between here and Twentynine Palms. The Hilton lurched again, and now he seemed to be able to taste sand as it found its way through the c.h.i.n.ks between the boards. Better get my little a.s.s out of here before this whole d.a.m.ned place caves in! He checked his wind-speed indicator again. Forty-eight. The pressure gauge was going crazy, too. It would fall fast and rise, again and again. Right now it was taking a long, terrible tumble. He went quickly to the red phone and plucked it off the wall. He could hear the tones clicking like a combination lock. Then a familiar voice garbled slightly by static said, "National Weather, L.A."

"Eddie? This is Bob Lampley at . . ." And then he couldn't find his voice because he'd glanced down at the radar screen.

It was showing something that he just couldn't believe, as intensely as he examined it. The screen indicated a huge ma.s.s coming up from the east, bigger than anything Lampley had ever seen before. It seemed to be ... rolling.

"What's that?" he said, his voice choked with fear. "What's that?"

"Bob? What . . . you . . . showing?" Static crackled and squealed. Lampley dropped the phone and leaned over the radar screen. Whatever it was, it stretched for miles. His eyes almost bugged out of their sockets. His panic was complete when he saw the barometer hit rock bottom and hang there. The wind had stopped. He could hear the Hilton resettling, like broken bones meshing again.

He stepped to the window and looked out.

Very high up the clouds were still racing. The light had turned a murky gold, the color of p.i.s.s after an all-night drunk. Around the Hilton the trees were so still they could've been painted against the stone. A vacuum, he thought, it's as still as a vacuum out there. He glanced back at the ma.s.s on the radar screen and froze with the realization that something huge was sweeping in to fill that vacuum.

Lampley looked back out the window.

"Oh ... my G.o.d . . ." he whimpered.

He could see it now, filling up the whole eastern horizon, churning and rolling and thrashing but still terribly silent. It was the Lucifer of sandstorms, a troubled monster of nature. Lampley couldn't see the ends of it at the north and south, but the radar indicated it was at least thirty miles thick. Lampley, his brain clutching at the edge of rational thought, estimated its speed at between forty and fifty miles an hour. It seemed as large as the Mojave itself, now screaming toward him on tortured winds with the mingled colors of white, gray, and yellow.

He stood transfixed as the thing rolled forward. In another moment he could hear a faint, terrible hissing.

The sound of bark and leaves being stripped from trees. In the wake of that storm, he knew, the earth would be skeletal.

Sand spattered against the window, streaming down to the sill with little rattlesnake hisses. Off to the right he saw the ranger tower consumed, as if into the maw of a grinning yellow beast. He backed away from the window, b.u.mped into the desk and knocked the pictures of his wife and child onto the floor. He caught a glimpse of the barometer; its needle was quickly rising. Then he was gripping the red phone again, placing the receiver to his ear. The line squealed with scrambled circuits.

Lampley looked back over his shoulder and saw with growing horror the storm about to descend upon the Hilton. There was no time to waste. He ran out the door into a hot and dry atmosphere-the breathable air thinned to a gasp-and out the fence toward his green International Scout. Sand ground beneath his boots and spun past him in dust-devil spirals twice as tall as himself. There was a light sheen of sand on the Scout, covering his windshield. He was six feet away from the door when he heard a thunderous freight-train roar and felt the first stinging lash of heavy sand. It whipped into his eyes, blinding him, and as he opened his mouth to cry out in pain, the sand was sucked into his lungs. He felt the hot weight of the storm pressing close, closer, closer. As he groped wildly for the door's handle, a furnace-blast of wind hit him, slamming him to his back. A yellow shadow fell upon him, and as he screamed with the agony of sand flailing the skin off his body, a torrent of sand filled his mouth and eyes and nostrils, choking him to death in less than a minute. The Hilton, all its white paint sc.r.a.ped off to bare wood, sagged and caved in under the next barrage of winds. Lampley's Scout was reduced to scarred metal.

The storm churned on toward Los Angeles, leaving the mountains little more than sand-heaped piles of bare rock. Like the vampires it was meant to shield, the storm was ravenous.

TEN.

Outside his house on Charing Cross Road, Wes Richer was throwing suitcases into the trunk of his silver-blue Mercedes. He was aware of the building winds and the occasional sting of sand on his cheek, but time was his primary concern. He and Solange had to catch a Delta jet to Las Vegas at four-fifty. They'd spent most of the day in police stations or being shuttled back and forth between them. Jane Dunne had cursed like a sailor when she was informed by the police that she couldn't leave L.A. yet, then asked if she would be so kind as to stop fighting the cops who were attempting to lift her out of the wheelchair and into their prowl car? Wes and Solange had seen her briefly at midmorning, being wheeled along a corridor at the Beverly Hills police station, loudly demanding a drink. Wes figured her brain was so scorched she wasn't even frightened of what might happen to her if she found herself face-to-face with vampires again.

Wes and Solange had been taken into separate rooms at the Beverly Hills station and were patiently questioned by a couple of solid cops who tried to make them realize the difference between real vampires-ha-ha-and kids who might belong to some kind of weird vampire cult. Wes's interrogator was a chunky officer named Riccarda, who chained-smoked Salems and kept saying, "Fangs? You're trying to tell me you really saw fangs, Wes? Well, you're a comic, right?" But Wes thought the cop believed him because he seemed to be just going through the motions and his eyes did look scared. Wes had seen a few people walking around the corridor in pajamas, robes, and slippers; they seemed sh.e.l.l-shocked, their eyes unfocused and blank. When Wes started asking one of them some questions, Riccarda came over and guided him away. There were a few reporters running around, too, and one of them got a picture of Wes before the film was yanked out of his camera. The rest of the newsmen were herded into a room, and that was the last Wes saw of them. Then Wes and Solange were put in a van with some more people and shuttled over to Parker Center, where they were slipped in through a rear entrance. In the elevator a young girl from Beverly Hills suddenly began babbling about a Camaro that her mother had bought her and how she and her mother were going to fly down to Acapulco. But as she talked, her face grew paler and her voice higher until she was almost shrieking about how her mother had come home last night with her new boyfriend, Dave, and how Dave had said he wanted to kiss her good night.

Then she'd seen the fangs, and her mother's face had been fish-belly white, the dark eyes gleaming. She had run out of the house and just kept on running. When the elevator doors opened, two cops took the girl away into a room where Wes could still hear her screaming.

Wes and Solange were left in a room together, and finally another cop came in to ask them basically the same questions they'd been asked in Beverly Hills. At the end of an hour, the cop, who looked like he could take on three or four Marines with no sweat, stood up from his chair and leaned over toward Wes.

"You saw what were members of a vampire cult, didn't you, Mr. Richer?" he said quietly, but his voice was not very steady, and the lines in his forehead had deepened into trenches.

"We both know what we saw," Wes told him. "What's with this cult bulls.h.i.t?"

"You saw kids who were dressed up as vampires, didn't you?" the cop said.

"Like I said, a cult. That's what you saw. Isn't it?"

"s.h.i.t," Wes muttered. "Okay, okay. A cult, for Christ's sake! Now can we get out of here?"

The cop didn't reply for a while, but then he said simply, "I'll have an officer drive you home." And that was it.

Cult my a.s.s, Wes thought as he slammed down the trunk. I know what I saw, and by G.o.d I'm getting us out of this town right now! What's taking Solange so long to get ready for Christ's sake? He was exhausted, but there would be time to grab some sleep on the plane. He was afraid of the nightmares he knew he was going to have for a long time to come-the way that vampiric ambulance attendant had grinned, those fangs glistening, and Jimmy's agonized scream piercing the night.

He couldn't think of those things without feeling a little insane. He looked at his Rolex. It was almost four-fifteen.

"d.a.m.n it, Solange!" he said, and started walking back to the house. She stepped out the front door then, wearing a long white coat with a hood. She locked the door, glanced up at the sky, and hurried to the car. "What's the problem?" he asked her as she slipped into the pa.s.senger seat. "We're going to miss the plane."

"No, we won't," she said. "Where's all this sand coming from?"

"Who knows?" He slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and backed down the driveway. He drove up to Sunset and turned west to pick up the San Diego Freeway. Occasional blasts of wind rocked the car, and Wes had to use the windshield wipers several times to clear away the sand.

"I was making something for you," Solange said after they'd left Bel Air. She reached into a pocket and brought out a little ball of something wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a rubber band. Wes caught the sharp odor of garlic.

"What is it?" he asked, taking it in the palm of his hand and sniffing it.

"A resguardo. A good-luck talisman to keep away evil. It hasn't been dipped into holy water or blessed at seven churches so it won't be as powerful as it should be. You must keep it in a pocket, always."

Wes glanced at her, then looked back at the thing again. A few days ago he would've laughed at something like this. Now things were different, the spirits and amulets and Solange's spells didn't seem so far-fetched. In fact, he felt relieved to have her with him. "What's in it?"

"Garlic. Yerbabuena, perejil, and a touch of camphor." She squinted as more sand hit the windshield in front of her face. "I had to make it quickly so I don't know how long its positive influences will last. Don't lose it." He nodded and slipped it into his jacket. "How about yours?" he asked her, and when she remained silent, he said, "You did make one for yourself, didn't you?"

"No. There wasn't time."

"Keep this one then." He started to dig it out, but she stopped him with a slight grip on his wrist. "No," she said, "That one won't work for me. It has a few strands of your hair in it. Watch where you're going." Wes looked back to the boulevard and swerved away from the center line as" a Porsche swept past, horn blaring. He reached the freeway ramp and turned up onto it, heading south toward the airport. The sky was a strange, dark gold color with grayish-gold clouds racing from the east. Wes couldn't even tell where the sun was, and most of the cars on the freeway had already switched on their headlights. He heard a Bugs Bunny voice within him say, Uhhhhh, ya wanna know what's up, doc? Doooomsday!

He increased his speed, whipping around slower cars. Wind hit the Mercedes and pushed it several feet to the right. He had to fight the wheel for a minute to steady the car. As they pa.s.sed over West L.A. they could see spirals of sand dancing ahead and sheets of it being blown across the freeway. Solange's heart was pounding. She sensed something dark at workman unexpected hand that had tipped the balance of power in favor of the vampires. Not much time left, she thought suddenly.

He put a hand on her thigh. "We're going to be fine," he told her. "We'll get ourselves a room at the Sands and lay out in the sun for about a week."

"What's going to happen to these people?" she asked quietly. "The ones who can't get out?"

He pretended not to hear her. "I've got some friends at the Sands. Maybe I can work up a show two or three nights a week. Yeah, that would be great. Just a nice light show to keep the gamblers happy. I wouldn't even have to work very hard . .."

"Wes," Solange repeated. "What is going to happen to these people?" He didn't answer for a moment. "I don't know," he said. "I just know I want us to get far away from here . . ."

"How will we know if anyplace is ever far enough away?" He didn't answer, couldn't answer. He pressed his foot farther down on the accelerator.

Wes took the ramp that swung traffic off toward LAX and almost immediately found himself in a jam of cars, vans, cabs, and buses. With horns blowing, the traffic slowly inched forward toward the main terminal. Wes hammered the steering wheel in his impatience as Solange watched the residue of sand slowly growing at the bottom of the windshield. Up ahead there were a couple of cops in orange slickers trying to direct traffic and at the same time keep their balance against the wind. As Wes neared them, he thought he heard one of the cops shout something like "All flights grounded," but he couldn't be sure. He rolled down his window and instantly caught grit in his eyes. He rolled the window back up to a slit and shouted frantically to the nearest cop. "Hey!

Aren't the planes flying?"

"You kidding, man?" The officer kept his hand up in front of his face to shield his eyes and nose. "They can't even get off the ground in this!"

"s.h.i.t!" Wes muttered, and started looking for a way to get out of the airport lane. He pounded the horn and slid in front of a bus, trying to edge out before he was caught in the vortex of traffic that swirled in a circle in front of the terminal. He hit the horn again as a black limo squeezed past, sc.r.a.ping paint off his side of the car; he caught a glimpse of a man in the rear seat, whose eyes were wide with terror. Wes swerved in front of a cab, hearing the wail of brakes and the responding discordant chorus and blaring horns. Then the Mercedes was climbing up and over a concrete median strip, almost slamming into a mad pack of cars racing back from the airport. Wes heard one of the cops shout something at him, but he sank his foot to the floor, heading north again back toward the San Diego Freeway.

"Where are you going?" Solange said. "Maybe we should just wait at the airport for the weather to clear."

"And when might that be? d.a.m.n it, where'd this storm come from?" He switched on the windshield wipers to clear away the sand; the gla.s.s was pocked and scratched in long arcs. He could see tiny glints of bare metal showing through the paint on the hood. "A sandstorm? Christ!" He took the freeway ramp at fifty, tires screeching. Another blast of wind hit the car, almost wrenching the wheel loose from Wes's grip. The sky had turned amber. Oh, G.o.d, he thought, night's coming fast! "We're driving to Vegas," he said, trying to picture the serpentine twistings of the L.A. freeway system in his mind: Veer off onto the Santa Monica Freeway, curve north through the downtown district to the San Bernardino Freeway across East L.A. and Monterey Park, Interstate 15 out past Ontario. He'd drive to Vegas as if they were being chased by all the demons of h.e.l.l. Even Vegas might not be far enough away. Maybe they should just keep driving east and never look back. Solange turned on the radio and searched for a station that wasn't drowned out by static. At the far end of the dial, she caught the faint sound of a newscaster's voice. "Today the President announced . . . gas rationing . . . members of Congress ... denied ... Los Angeles businessman ... found guilty ...

the tremors were felt as far as Sacramento . . . and registered four on the open-ended . . . the National Weather Service advises . . ."