They Thirst Part 29

"Mrs. Rodriguez, the'Caracas, Mr. and Mrs. Mendoza, Mr. Melazzo, maybe thirty more."

My G.o.d! Silvera thought. What would happen to the hundred of others trapped in those flimsy tenements as the sand whipped through empty window frames and cracks that should've been repaired years ago? They would slowly suffocate if they couldn't find a better refuge! Silvera paused, then made his decision.

"Leon, you know where the staircase to the bell tower is, don't you?"

"Si. Through that door over there."

"That's right. Now listen to me carefully. I want you to climb to the tower and crack open the shutters up there; you'll see the handles. The wind may get bad after that so you'll have to be very careful. Then I want you to take the rope that hangs down and pull on it as hard as you can. The bell may lift you off your feet, but that's all right, you'll come down again. Just don't let go of the rope, and keep ringing the bell. Can you do that?" Leon nodded, his eyes bright with the importance of his mission.

"Good." Silvera squeezed his shoulder. Now he needed something to cover his face. As Leon scurried back through the door, Silvera took a towel from his bathroom and jammed most of it down into his coat so he could press the other end of it against his lower face and not worry about the wind carrying it away.

As he approached the sanctuary door, he heard the first clear peal of Mary's Voice. It was an urgent, warning sound, metallic and determined. The bell's movement made the tower groan over Silvera's head, and he could envision Leon's little body being jerked upward. Silvera put his hand against the door and then he stepped out. The wind screamed in his ears.

Sand ripped into his face and hair. He was almost flung to the ground, but he fought for his balance by leaning against the wind. He could see absolutely nothing; the darkness had conspired with the storm to isolate him inside a well with spinning black walls. He struggled on across the street, hearing tattered fragments of Mary's Voice-it alternately pealed and moaned overhead. Slowly, the line of buildings emerged from the murk. He was gasping for a full breath by the time he reached the door of Leon's building. Sand covered the towel, and some of it had slipped through into his mouth and nostrils. His face felt as if it were shredded. Shattered gla.s.s from the building's door lay about his feet as he stepped into the front corridor. He could hear tortured winds wailing along the stairs, and they tried to pull him in all directions at once.

He tried to breathe without the protective sieve of the towel; his nostrils and lungs instantly flamed.

He knocked on the first door he came to, and Carlos Alva peered out, his dark eyes bugging above the gritty handkerchief he had pressed to his face.

"Carlos!" Silvera shouted, though he stood less than a foot away from the man.

"Get your wife and children! You're going to have to come to the church with me!" Alva didn't seem to understand, so Silvera put his mouth next to the man's ear and shouted again. Alva nodded and disappeared into the room for his family.

Silvera moved on to the next door.

It took him more than forty-five minutes to get them all gathered together on the first floor-thirty-three people not counting the infants in their mother's arms. Silvera had planned on getting them out in a human chain, hand-to-hand, but the infants created a problem.

"Listen to me, all of you!" Silvera shouted at them. "We're going to have to make it to the church! Can you hear the bell ringing?" Now it sounded distant and m.u.f.fled, and Silvera knew that Leon's arms would be about ready to rip from their sockets. "We're going to follow that sound!" he yelled, pointing in the direction of the church. "Everyone clasp the shoulder of the person in front of you and hold on tightly! I don't want the women to carry their babies. Give them to your husbands! The wind's very strong out there so we've got to walk carefully." He saw frightened eyes everywhere around him. There were cries for G.o.d and muttered prayers.

"We're going to be all right! Don't be afraid, just hold on! Be sure to cover the infants' faces! Is everyone protected? All right! Are we ready?" Someone started sobbing. Carlos Alva, holding his baby son in one arm, gripped Silvera's shoulder. Silvera took a breath of flaming air and moved out into the street, the people trailing behind him.

He couldn't hear the bell for a few seconds. Keep ringing it, Leonl he called out mentally. Then he heard it, wailing for the lost. Behind him the human chain flailed against the wind, some of them falling and having to be helped up. The street had never seemed so wide or so wicked. Silvera felt he'd reached the middle of it because he couldn't see either side, but he couldn't be certain.

Suddenly he heard a piercing scream behind him that went on and on. It reached a high crescendo and then rapidly faded. "What is it?" Silvera said over his shoulder to Alva. "Who screamed?"

Alva sent the question back. In another moment he told the priest, "Mrs. Mendoza is gone! Something pulled her out of the chain!"

"WHAT?" Silvera shouted. "STAY WHERE YOU ARE!" He felt his way back to the hole where Mrs. Mendoza had been between her husband and Mr. Sanchez.

"What happened to her?" he asked her husband, whose face was pallid with shock.

The man couldn't answer; he was muttering "Maria, Maria, Maria . . ." over and over again. Silvera looked around for her but couldn't see a thing. He peered at Sanchez. "What happened?"

Sanchez's teeth were chattering. "I don't know, Father!" he shouted. "She was holding on to my shoulder one second, then . . . she wasn't there! I heard her scream, and when I looked around, I thought I saw ... I thought I saw . . ."

"What? What was it?"

"Something ... a man maybe . . . dragging her off . . ." Silvera stared into the darkness, sand slithering down his neck. There was nothing out there, nothing at all. He heard himself say, "Close the hole," and then he felt his way back to the front of the chain. His heart was thundering, his stomach roiled with fear. Alva clutched his shoulder again, and they started off. Within ten seconds there was another scream, fading into the distance.

Silvera's head whipped around. "Felizia!" he heard a woman wail. "What happen'

to my little girl? FELIZIAAAAAH! The woman started to leap out of the chain, but Silvera shouted, "HOLD ON TO HER! WE KEEP MOVING!" A figure suddenly ran in front of him, and then was quickly engulfed in the storm. He stopped so abruptly he could feel the entire chain b.u.mp together. He'd gotten the impression of a young boy in a black jacket, grinning out of a silver-eyed skull. Sweet Jesus, protect us! he thought. Please help us get to that door! PLEASE! He began walking again; Alva's hand dug into his shoulder. There was a scream from far behind, almost at the end of the chain. "KEEP MOVING!" he shouted, though he knew they couldn't possibly hear him back there.

He hoped they'd close the gap and stagger on. And now he seemed to be aware of movement all around him-figures darting back and forth, shadowy shapes made formless by the blowing sand. He stepped onto the opposite curb. The church door was only a few feet away at the top of five steps.

"WE'RE HERE!" he shouted, and realized at the same instant that Alva's hand was gone. When he looked back, he saw that both the man and his wife had been taken out of the chain, leaving only their small daughter frozen with terror, her hand outstretched where she'd been clutching her mother's dress. Silvera grasped her hand. The bell sang out furiously overhead. Silvera threw open the church door and stood there, quickly herding them in whiled he counted them. Of thirty-three who'd left the building, twenty-six had made it. When the last one had stepped across the threshold, Silvera slammed the door shut and leaned against it, the breath rasping through his lungs. Several people fell down before the altar and began to pray; there were shrieks and sobs, a wild tumult of noise.

He hadn't believed in vampires; he wasn't sure now if he did or not, but he knew one thing for certain-whatever could exist in that storm wasn't human. He touched Juan Romero on the shoulder. "Go up to the tower and take over the bell from Leon," Silvera said. "Keep ringing it until I send someone else up. Hurry!"

Juan nodded and moved away. If anyone could hear that bell, Silvera reasoned, then maybe they could reach the church and safety. He put his face in his hands and prayed for strength. He was going to have to go back out there, into the dozens of other buildings that surrounded the church, to help as many people as he could find. He was afraid there would not be very many. But this time he wouldn't go out unprepared.

He walked to the altar and picked up the heavy bra.s.s crucifix; it caught the golden candlelight and s.h.i.+mmered. But it was so cold. Though it was a symbol of hope, he felt full of dark, bleak hopelessness. He gripped his hands around the crucifix's sharp edges, aware of how many eyes were watching him. He could use this to break into a grocery store for canned goods and bottled water. The stained-gla.s.s image of Jesus, occasionally shuddering with the violent wind, stared down at him through stern gray eyes. You're dying anyway, Silvera told himself, so why should you be so afraid? Why should you want to cling to life like an old woman wringing drops out of a dishrag? Your days are numbered. Make them count.

Then he gripped the crucifix, adjusted the towel over his face, and stepped back out into the maelstrom.

THIRTEEN.

"Reminds me of the blizzards we used to have back home," Wes said softly, watching as the last clear square on the winds.h.i.+eld was covered over. Now he and Solange sat in darkness. She had pressed against him, leaning her head on his shoulder, and though it was terribly hot, Wes didn't mind and neither did she.

It was better somehow to be near one another. "One day Winter Hill would be a study in golds and browns, then when the storm pa.s.sed through during the night and you looked out the window in the morning, the world would be white right up to the horizon. Trees, houses, fields . . . everything. People ride sleighs in Winter Hill when the snow falls like that, no kidding. Did I ever tell you I know how to snowshoe?"

"No," Solange whispered.

"What'd I say I know how to do?"

"Snowshoe."

"Louder."

"Snowshoe!"

"Gesundheit! Now, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, about the sleighs. They were a terrific way to get around. The last time I went home for Christmas, everybody was using those d.a.m.ned snowmobiles. Progress, right? Well . . ." He decided he'd better shut up because he suddenly realized he couldn't breathe worth a d.a.m.n. He finally managed to find a gulp of air. He wanted to comfort Solange, though, because when they were silent for too long she began to cry. Out of all the thousand or so jokes he had told before audiences in L.A., Las Vegas, and San Francisco he couldn't seem to remember a single one, just fragments of comedy bits that didn't make sense-What's big, stiff, and belongs to Roy Rogers? Trigger. What'd the hung over angel who'd visited earth overnight say to a furious St. Peter?

Sorry, Peter, but I left my harp in Sam Frank's disco. Missionary in Africa's out walking one day and comes face-to-face with a lion. He sinks down to his knees and starts to pray for his life when the lion gets down on its knees beside him. "Dear brother lion," the missionary says, "how wonderful it is to see you joining me in Christian prayer when just a moment ago I feared for my life . . ." And the lion growls, "Don't interrupt while I'm sayin' grace!" Praying, Wes thought. Now that might be an idea. What should I say? G.o.d please get us the h.e.l.l out of here? G.o.d don't give up on old Wes and Solange just yet?

G.o.d whose side are you on anyway? The answer to that seemed painfully clear. I've come a long way to die in a f.u.c.king sandstorm, Wes thought. From frat parties to bars to the Comedy Store to the big time, more or less, and all of it could now be just so much s.h.i.+t in a totebag. No agent to get the jobs now, no accountants to find the tax loopholes and the shelters, no fan mail pouring into the slot. n.o.body saying how good I was and how much money I was going to make and that I was going to be King of Comedy Hill for a long, long time . .

n.o.body now but me and Solange.

Well, he thought, that would have to be enough.

His brain felt feverish. Where the h.e.l.l are we? Sitting on the freeway, maybe right in the middle of it, somewhere over East L.A. Probably no shelter for blocks; the Mercedes stalled in what looked like a Sahara Desert sand dune. And vampires out there somewhere. Jimmy dead. Screaming in agony before he died. A bell ringing. Ambulance sirens wailing, lights flas.h.i.+ng across a wide green lawn. A bell ringing. , Crazy old lady in a wheelchair, grabbing my arm scaring s.h.i.+t out of me. Blackberry brandy. Police car coming. A bell ringing. Parker Center, and a girl cracking up in the elevator. A bell. . . RINGING . .

He opened his eyes, hadn't even felt himself starting to slip away. What was that noise? Wait a minute, wait a minute! WAIT A MINUTE! A bell's ringing out there somewhere! Or is it my imagination? He thought he heard it again, a soft distant moan that had a musical note to it, not like the shrill hissings of the wind at all. But now it was gone, if it had ever been there to begin with. He gently shook Solange. "What is it?" she said thickly, her breathing hoa.r.s.e and uneven.

"Listen. Wait a minute . . . there! Did you hear that? A bell ringing?" She shook her head. "No. It's the wind." Her eyes dropped, and she laid her head back on his shoulder.

"Don't go to sleep!" he said. "Wake up and listen! I'm telling you that's a bell ringing out there!"

"Bell . . . what bell . . .?"

And now he heard it again, a distinct, low, musical note through the harsh discord of the storm. He thought it was coming from somewhere to the right, but he couldn't tell how far away. "Solange," he said, "I think maybe we're closer to shelter than we thought! We can make it there, I think! It won't be too far away!"

"No," she whispered. "I'm sleepy. We can't make it . . ."

"We can!" He shook her again, harder, trying to stave off the long dark rolling waves that were beginning to spread through his body. "We're going to have to try, at least! Here, put your hood up. Cup your hands in front of your face to keep the sand out of your lungs. Can you do that?"

"I don't know ... I'm so tired . . ."

"Me too, but we can't stay here if there's a safe place so close! We can sleep when we get there, okay? Come on. Put your hood up and try to s.h.i.+eld your face with it." He did it for her. "There you go. Okay, I'm going to get out first and come around for you. Take a couple of deep breaths." When she tried, she winced with the effort; there was barely any air left to breathe. Wes's head was buzzing fiercely, the dark waves closing in. "I'm opening the door now. You ready?"

She nodded.

Wes pushed against the door and found it jammed shut. Panic exploded in his stomach. He shoved harder, the muscles in his shoulder straining. Sand began to stream off the window in thick rivulets, and it slithered into the car as Wes pushed. Then he'd opened it wide enough for them to slip out. He took Solange's hand as she slid across the seat and stepped out into a blinding flurry of sand.

A wall of sand came sliding over him, and as he tried to fight free of it, he almost lost Solange's grip. But then his face was clear, and he wrenched Solange after him through what he now realized had been a sand dune heaped up against the Mercedes's side.

It was dark now, and through the twisting currents of wind, he could see faint sparkles of light from across the river in downtown L.A. Behind him, East L.A. and beyond lay in utter darkness. The wind seemed to have lessened somewhat since Wes had stopped the car; at least he could stand without having to struggle for balance. Sand still stung his face like h.e.l.lish nettles and flamed the air he tried to draw between his teeth. There was air, though, and he found he could breathe fairly well if he kept his teeth gritted and remembered to spit every minute or so to clear his mouth. Above him he could hear howling currents of air; the worst of the storm seemed to have risen and was now circling relentlessly over the city. Wes saw that the Mercedes was stripped of all its paint. There were more cars scattered on the freeway up ahead, all of them scoured down to s.h.i.+ning metal. Dunes six and seven feet high had heaped up around them, collapsing over hoods and roofs. Most of the sodium-vapor lights along the freeway had gone out, but those few that remained cast a cold bluish glow down upon a scene of desolation that again reminded Wes of the aftermath of a blizzard. One of the lightposts had gone down just ahead and lay stretched across the freeway, its bulb crackling like a dying meteor.

Wes heard the moaning of that bell again way off to the right. Somewhere down in the darkness of East L.A. He spat sand out of his mouth, s.h.i.+elding his eyes with one hand. "You okay?" he asked Solange, having to shout. She answered with a slight squeeze of his hand, and he began moving toward the nearest off-ramp, his shoes sinking into a couple of inches of sand. They pa.s.sed a car with several bodies tumbling out of it, as if they'd died trying to dig their way out. Solange caught sight of one staring, blue-fleshed face and quickly looked away. Farther on they came to a corpse, half-buried in the sand, that grinned up at them through a twisted death rictus; Wes could envision that thing sitting up, sand streaming off its body, and whispering, "See? I got away from them. Oh, no, I wouldn't let them take me, so I just laid down and went to sleep. That's what you should've done, too. It would have been so much easier . . ."

The sound of that bell seemed nearer. Wes thought he saw an off-ramp just ahead under the pale glow of a sodium-vapor lamp. "You still with me?" he said.

"I'm fine! Don't worry about me!"

Wes almost stepped on two bodies, a man and a woman holding hands. He guided Solange around them, his nerve about to break.

They had started down the off-ramp when Wes heard a distant rumbling. He looked back over his shoulder and saw headlights moving quickly toward them from the west. Motorcycles, about fifteen or twenty of them. His heart stuttered-highway patrol cops! He let go of Solange and started waving his arms, shouting, "Hey!

Over here! Over here!"

"Wes," Solange said. "Wait ... I don't think . . ." The motorcycles curved toward them, sending up spinning tails of sand. Wes saw the face of the lead rider, white-fleshed and skeletal, red eyes burning with hunger. The thing grinned, then opened its mouth wide and motioned for the others to hurry. The fangs glinted with ghostly blue light. Wes turned in horrid slow-motion and reached for Solange, but suddenly his vision was filled with a blinding white light, and the stuttering roar of the motorcycles bore down on him. He was struck in the side by a booted foot. Pain shot through him as he fell to the pavement. He hung motionless for a few seconds over a dark void and then slowly, slowly tumbled head-over-heels into its maw. From its center he heard the shrilling of wind, cracking and popping motorcycle exhaust, laughter, and Solange calling to him. Her screaming soon stopped. "Good-lookin' b.i.t.c.h ... so good, so fiiine," someone said, the voice echoing in Wes's head. "You can have what's left of him, Viking. Oh yeah, baby, you're gonna be so gooood to Kobra . . ."

The throbbing of his ribs roused Wes. He was being turned over by rough, freezing hands. Through a mist of pain Wes saw the face over him-broad and bearded, pallid and vampiric. "He's alive," the biker said. "Ain't much to him, but I figger he's worth a couple of swigs . . ."

"You said I could take the next one, man!" someone else called out.

"Viking rates over you, d.i.c.ko," the one called Kobra said. "Let him feed. You'll take the next one."

"s.h.i.+t!" d.i.c.ko said. "Ain't nothing but dead meat around here!"

"Take it easy, man. When we hook up with those Ghost Riders and the rest of the Death Machines, we'll flush 'em out like rats. Be plenty for everybody." Viking bent over Wes, his mouth slowly opening. Wes could see the bursts of silver in his eyes, and his own face reflected in the merciless mirrors.

"Git some, Viking!" one of the others called out, and laughed. Suddenly Viking blinked and jerked his head back. "s.h.i.+t! Burnin' my eyes!" He scrambled up and away from Wes, his large belly shaking as his body trembled.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d's got somethin' in his clothes. Kobra! Got something that burns my eyes!" He rubbed at them and backed away.

Kobra shoved him aside and towered over Wes; he leaned down, staring balefully at Wes, and seemed to be sniffing the air. Almost instantly his eyes squeezed shut with pain, and he scrambled away.

"What's he got, Kobra, huh?" Viking said. "What's he got, what's he got?"

"Shut up!" Kobra rubbed his eyes and then glared at Wes. "Don't matter what he's got. b.a.s.t.a.r.d's ribs are caved. When the wind blows up again, he'll be lying under about two feet of sand. Forget about him." Viking scooped up a handful of sand and flung it at Wes. "You're gonna die, motherf.u.c.ker!" he said savagely. "And death is cooolllddd . . ."

"Come on." Kobra moved past him and out of Wes's field of vision. "I'm taking your black b.i.t.c.h with me, mister. She'll be nice and warm up at the castle, old Kobra'll see to that. You just lay there and think about that, okay?" Engines revved. Wes tried to pull himself to his feet, but pain exploded along his left side, where he'd been hurt in the crash of Jimmy's Cadillac. He fell back, panting. The motorcycles swept past him, roaring like wild animals.

"Solange!"

he tried to shout, but the name came out as a whisper.

And then they were gone, the sound of their cycles rapidly fading.

"Solange ..." he whimpered, and curled up to die. Around him the wind began to chuckle.

The bell was still ringing, but now it seemed a world away. Anger ached within him. "Can't die!" he shouted at himself. "Got to find Solange! Can't let her be . . . like them!" He lifted his head and whispered, "I'll find" you!" After a while he turned on his belly and started to crawl, sliding with the agonized movement of a crushed jackrabbit. He thanked G.o.d for the amulet Solange had given him; he didn't know how it had worked, but it had kept the vampires from biting him.

Now he counted the tolling of that bell to keep himself from slipping into darkness. "One . . . two . .. three . . . four . .. five .. ." Anger carried him along, and just behind him off in the shadows, he felt the presence of some grinning, scabrous thing with a vaudeville stagehook, trying to catch hold of him and drag him back. He kept crawling.

FOURTEEN.

Lights glowed dimly from the ceiling of a concrete-walled factory in Highland Park. Every so often they flickered out and, when they were gone, the conveyor belt would stop, too, and the workers had to pull the coffins along in the dark.

But so far the electricity had been weak but fairly constant; the conveyor belt hummed, gears mes.h.i.+ng perfectly. The gleaming coffins pa.s.sed one after the other, faster and faster. Figures with shadowy faces grinned and nodded, pleased with their work. Soon they would be allowed to go out and feed, and another s.h.i.+ft would take over. From now on, according to the Master, the factory would work from dusk until dawn, electricity or no. If the buzz saws went out, there were always hand saws and plenty of files and planes and other necessary tools.

At the end of the conveyor belt, where the big tractor-trailer trucks were lined up at the loading docks, there was a huge mound of sandy brown California soil the dump trucks had brought. Before the coffins were sealed and shoved into the trucks, the workers would lay down a good bed of dirt inside each of them. Then they were ready to go.

One of the workers, known as Mitch.e.l.l Everett Gideon in his previous life, leaned on his shovel and waited for the next coffin to come down the line. His face was streaked with dirt, his eyes dark and sunken. He was cold with hunger but rea.s.sured by the knowledge that the plant whistle would blow in about an hour, and then he'd be allowed to feed. He wouldn't even have to spend time hunting, for one of the tractor-trailer trucks was loaded with humans, the Master's reward for work well done.

The next coffin came. He filled the bottom of it, pressed the dirt down with his shovel, and then it was carried away to a truck. Trucks were always coming and going, and it pleased him to see such efficiency. He was an important part of the machine now, much more important than he'd ever been in his life. He'd even met the Master and had told him everything he knew about the factory, about casket making, about getting the best possible effort out of a work crew. The Master was pleased and had asked Gideon if he could rely on him for help and suggestions. Gideon said yes, of course.

Another coffin came. Gideon filled it, working with a newfound strength, and watched it being carried away. Another truck moved out of its slot on the docks, and another backed in. He was ecstatically happy, ecstatic with his love for the Master. He had been granted the gift of eternal life . . . eternal youth.

It was all a dream come true.