They Thirst Part 35

1 he vampires.

"Bad vibes. Baaaad vibes!" He handed the stake back and wiped his hand on the leg of his filthy jeans. "I've seen them, man. They're everywhere, multiplying like flies,on a fruitcake. You look in their eyes, and they get you-powl-just like that." He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Couple of them chased me last night. I broke into Hoffman's Deli and got myself some food. On the way out there they were, right on the corner. I didn't know what they were at first, but then one of them flashed his chompers and I said, 'Uh-oh, old Ratty may have had some bad dreams in his time, but never like this!' So I took off, and they came after me. I was flying high on speed, and I was making moves like O.J. Simpson, but I still couldn't shake 'em. And all the time I was hearing these crazy voices, shrieking and screaming in my head." A nervous grin flickered across his face. His eyes were bright, scorched blue. "They chased me down into the line that runs underneath Hollywood Boulevard. I tried to hide in the dark. They move so ... quiet. They don't even breathe. They can come up behind you, and you'd never know it until it was too late. I stayed where I was for a long time, until finally I heard somebody scream way on down the line. I figured there were other people hiding in the sewers, too, and the vampires found them instead of Ratty. Lucky Ratty, huh?"

"Yes," Palatazin said. "Very lucky." But now a terrible uncertainty struck him-what if there were more vampires down here? Could they move about freely in this dark world, or would they still be bound by their unholy fear of sunlight? He wondered where the sun was now. G.o.d! he thought. What time is it?

"We've got to hurry," he told Tommy.

"How? We can't go anywhere up there!"

Palatazin paused. He glanced at Ratty, then back at the boy. "You're right. We .

. . can't go anywhere up there." "Huh?" Tommy said.

"How far do these sewers go?" he asked Ratty. There was an anxious excitement in his voice. The man shrugged. "Everywhere. Across Hollywood, L.A., Beverly Hills, up I -into the canyons . . ." He stopped and narrowed his eyes slightly. "Where are you trying to get to?"

"Up above the Hollywood Bowl, just this side of Mulholland Drive . . ."

"Jesus! What's this, an expedition?" "Of a kind." "Yeah, well, too bad you didn't bring your wadin' boots," Ratty said, "'cause you'd sure as h.e.l.l need 'em! That's a long way to go, man." I"But could it be done?" Ratty was silent. He sat on his haunches and seemed to be thinking it over for a few minutes. Then he said, "Where-exactly-do you want to go?" "Across Hollywood to Outpost Drive, then up into the hills. There's another road branching off from Outpost, up higher, but I doubt if a sewer runs underneath it."

"I know where Outpost starts. On the other side of Franklin Avenue. Goes straight up the mountain, doesn't it?"

"That's right."

"Means a lot of s.h.i.+t pouring down the line, too. Hard going. Be like climbing a mountain covered with ice. 'Course now, not all the lines are the same size. Some of them you can walk in, some of them you crawl through, some of them . .

you hope you can get out of without gettin' stuck tight as a cork. It's about a three-mile hike from here to Franklin. You didn't answer my question. Where do you want to go?"

"The Kronsteen castle. Do you know where that is?"

"Nope, but it sure as h.e.l.l sounds like a place with bad vibes. You say it's up close to Mulholland? You're takin' about another couple of miles almost straight up. If you can get through the tunnels. If you don't take a wrong turn and get lost, because all the lines aren't laid down exactly underneath the streets.

I've got a nose for direction, man. I've been down here ever since I got back from Nam." Something sharp and brittle pa.s.sed across Ratty's gaze. "I'd rather be down here where it's safe. The world up there has gone nuts, you dig? Bad vibes all over the place! Anyway, I know the line system like you know the way back and forth from your b.o.o.b'tube to the John. But even I get lost sometimes, and there are a lot of places I ain't been. Got the picture?"

"You're saying it can't be done?"

"Nope. I'm saying you can't do it."

"I know that," Palatazin answered.

Ratty looked from him to Tommy and back again. Tommy could hear the m.u.f.fled roaring of the storm through the manhole cover above his head; it sounded like some huge animal gnawing at the iron, trying to get in at them. "What's the deal?" Ratty asked.

"We're going after the vampires," Palatazin said quietly. "At best we've got only four hours of real daylight left because when the sun drops low enough the storm cover will bring early darkness. We can't make it to the castle up there.

We could make it by using the sewers. Couldn't we?"

"Maybe," Ratty said. "Don't like s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with the bloodsuckers, man. That gives Ratty the creeps. You . .. going up to this place to give them the shaft, huh?"

"That's where their leader-their king-is sleeping. I think if I can destroy him, it might throw the rest of them into confusion . . ."

"Like Indians, huh? You get rid of the chief, and the rest of them are scared s.h.i.+tless?"

"Sort of like that, yes."

"Yeah. I can dig that." Ratty nodded and looked down into the stygian darkness of the tunnel. "I mean, this could be like . . . the end of the world or something, couldn't it? Those bloodsuckers keep getting stronger all the time, more and more of them . . . less of us. Right?"

"Yes." Palatazin held Ratty's gaze. "I have to get up to that castle. We have to start now. Will you help me?"

Ratty chewed his fingernail for a minute. His eyes kept getting larger and larger. He giggled suddenly. "Why not, man? I'm a crazy patriot. s.h.i.+t! Why not?"

He grinned into the darkness with all the good humor and courage his pills could give him. Then he stood up, his knees popping, and shone the light ahead along what looked to be an endless tunnel. "This is the way." He waited for Palatazin to stand and then start moving, his back seemingly permanently bent. Palatazin followed with Tommy bringing up the rear. The stink of sewage was getting stronger, but it was certainly preferable to the h.e.l.lish wasteland above. Water trickled at their feet.

Time was their enemy now, and time lay on the vampires' side. Palatazin felt freighted with responsibility, not only for Jo and Gayle and Tommy but for the hundreds of thousands of people still trapped in L.A. What might happen to them tonight and all the nights to come if the king vampire couldn't be found?

He felt as if he were going to do battle with an ancient adversary, a nightmare that had ripped away his childhood and plunged him into a world where all shadows were suspect, where every twilight was a terrifying reminder that somewhere the vampir were awakening.

He saw something move out of the corner of his eye, an indistinct shape touched briefly by the lantern's backwash. His first thought was that a vampire had gotten Tommy and was now coming up behind him, but when he looked over his shoulder, there was nothing there and Tommy was fine. And then he heard the faint whisper of a remembered voice brus.h.i.+ng past his ear. He was quite sure of what it said. Andre, I wont leave you . . .

That made him feel better. But there was such a long way to go, and nothing could stop the relentless descent of the sun.

TEN.

The Crab had slowed to a crawl. Brooklyn Avenue at Soto Street in the center of Boyle Heights was blocked by towering dunes that had built up around a horirendous traffic accident, nine or ten cars slammed together right at the intersection. Wes stopped the Crab. The visibility was so bad now that even the high-intensity y headlights couldn't pierce the dark amber gloom, and he had to drive as slowly as possible without stalling the engine to avoid cras.h.i.+ng into a dune or a twisted, wrecked car. The worst of the storm, he knew, had hit yesterday at rush hour, so there would be thousands of wrecked and stranded cars-all of them now sc.r.a.p metal for the dunes to grasp and grow over like pregnant yellow leeches. He wondered what had happened to the drivers of these cars. Had they found shelter before they suffocated? Or had the vampires found them first? "Dead end," he said to Silvera. "We can't get around that." "Turn right on Soto. There's a Hollywood Freeway entrance ramp about eight blocks ahead."

Wes was relieved to find that the ramp was clear; but when the Crab had crested it, the headlights picked out one wrecked or stalled car after another. The dunes s.h.i.+fted restlessly, threatening to spill over and bury the Crab. There were many corpses caught in the airless cars and many who had been caught out in the open as well. Some of them looked as if they were simply sleeping; others had died in agony, eyes and mouths filled with sand. Wes felt his nerve breaking. The Crab made it about fifteen yards before it was halted by another ma.s.s of sand and metal. The wind sucked and pulled wildly at the vehicle.

"Back down the ramp," Silvera said tersely. He reached back and leaked some oxygen into the cab. "We'll have to find another way."

"THERE'S NOT ANOTHER WAY!" Wes shouted. "Jesus Christ! Everything's blocked!" Silvera waited for him to calm down and said, "Take it easy. That's not going to solve anything and it's sure as h.e.l.l not going to get us across L.A." Wes was trembling. If he'd ever needed a joint or a plain old cigarette before, this was the time, but he had neither and there was no air to spare, anyway. Do you want to give up? he asked himself. No.' I can't! Like the priest says, we'll have to find another way . . .

"Back up," Silvera said.

"I can't see a thing." The rear winds.h.i.+eld was layered with sand, and he could envision backing into one of those huge dunes. It would be good-bye with a slither and a moan. The engine kicked a couple of times, and Wes's heart started to pound.

"All right." Silvera got one of the oxygen masks from the rear compartment and slipped it on. The second of the oxygen tanks was in a backpack carrier that would allow it to fit right between the shoulder blades. Silvera fumbled for a moment while he attached the rubber line from the mask into the tank's small feed-out nozzle; there was a soft click as the male and female joints connected. He turned on the oxygen and took a breath of sweet, cold air, then shrugged the backpack over his shoulders. "I'll go out to guide you down," he said, his voice m.u.f.fled by the mask. "I'll be right behind you. I'll slam on the right side when I want you to turn right, left for left. Got that?"

"Yeah," Wes said. "For Christ's sake be careful!" Silvera stepped out and the wind almost threw him to the ground. He moved like an astronaut in an alien atmosphere, cabled to his life-support system. There were two half-obscured corpses right beside the Crab, a woman clutching a little girl. He s.h.i.+vered and went around to the back as Wes put the Crab into reverse and started moving. Several times Silvera had to hammer against the sides to keep Wes from backing into either a dune or a wrecked car. When they reached the ramp, cold sweat clung to his face, and he was dizzy from hyperventilating. He quickly climbed in, took his seat, and removed the mask.

"You're clear," he said. "But I think we can rule out the freeways from now on."

They pa.s.sed under the freeway and turned left on Marengo, moving past the dark buildings of the County General Hospital complex, where a doctor named Doran had told Silvera he was dying. Now he wondered if Doran had beat him there, or whether the good doctor might now be making a totally different kind of midnight house call. They curved slowly around the complex to North Main Street, which Silvera knew would take them across the river and through downtown L.A.

The Crab was almost across the North Main bridge when its headlights picked out the monstrous cl.u.s.ter of yellow dunes blocking their way. Rats in a maze, Wes thought as he braked the Crab. That's what we are. The headlights gleamed off the grillwork of a Cadillac caught under a mountain of sand. The dunes loomed up like the mountains of the moon.

"Back up," Silvera said, tension crackling in his voice. His face had turned the color of dried clay.

It took them over another hour of starts and stops at the dead ends of mangled wreckage and blowing dunes before they found a clear way across the river at 7th Street, more than five miles south of the place where they'd first tried to cross. Factories and warehouses stood on the other side of the river, all of them dead and dark. Chain-link fences had been blown down, and they lay tangled across 7th Street like barbed wire. About a block farther was an overturned truck in the center of the street.

Wes slowed and turned right, driving along a narrower street with warehouses on each side. He thought he knew where he was now. Downtown L.A. lay just a few streets over, and from the center of town he could wind his way up into Hollywood. It would be a fearful trip, but nothing compared to what might be waiting for them in Kronsteen's old fortress. The Crab still seemed to be in pretty good shape, though the engine continued to sputter. Wes figured it had been built for rough duty, though, and probably had a system of air filters that trapped most of the sand. Still, he recalled that it had been traveling very close behind the ma.s.sive troop carrier, presumably so that the bigger vehicle would take the brunt of the storm. The Crab might shudder and die at any minute, or it might carry them all the way without a whimper. He just didn't know.

Suddenly Silvera looked at him oddly. "Stop," he ordered.

"What?" Wes said. "Stop where?"

"Here."

Wes braked the vehicle; it slid a couple of feet and then halted. "What is it?"

"I don't know. I ... thought I saw something back there. We pa.s.sed a warehouse on the right about fifty feet. I don't know what it was I saw, but . . ." He looked back over his shoulder but couldn't see anything. "Caskets," he said softly. "I think there were caskets stacked on that loading dock." Wes put the Crab into reverse. The dark outline of a metal-walled warehouse came up into Silvera's window. The remnants of a chain-link fence stuck up out of the sand like picket-fence slats on a New England beach. There was a break in the blowing grayish-yellow sheets, and through a clear hole they both saw a row of big trucks lined up before a long loading dock, and on that dock something covered over with a dark green tarpaulin. The tarpaulin fluttered and fell back once, then again. The second time Silvera said, "There!" and Wes could see the oblong brown boxes, stacked in neat rows as if awaiting s.h.i.+pment.

Silvera said, "I'm going out." He put on the oxygen mask and the tank and left the Crab, walking hurriedly and at an angle against the wind. Wes worked with the other mask and tank for a few minutes, finally got them together, and slipped the tank into another of the backpack carriers. The mask clung as tight as a second skin, but the goggle lenses gave him a wide-angle view, and the first breath of air he drew was deliciously sweet. He got out of the vehicle and followed Silvera, climbing up the dunes and stepping over the collapsed fence.

On the loading dock Silvera pulled off the tarpaulin and let the wind whip it away. Then he opened the lid of a coffin and peered inside. It was filled with dirt, but there was no one in it, not even the impression of a body. As Wes struggled up onto the dock and walked along it, he realized the warehouse was at least as long as a football field, possibly longer; its far end disappeared in whirling yellow. He looked into the empty coffin, then at Silvera. He had to shout to make himself heard. "What did you expect to find in there?"

"I'm not sure." Silvera opened the next coffin and the next one after that. They were all filled with dirt, but no vampires. Why would they be? he asked himself suddenly. The vampires wouldn't sleep exposed to the weather; they'd sleep enclosed. His gaze fell upon a large sliding door set in the wall. He went over to it and slid it back several feet. A wave of rancid chill came rolling out of the warehouse; it was the same feeling he'd had in the Dos Terros tenement.

Silvera glanced at Wes, his eyes wary behind the mask, before he stepped through the opening.

At first he couldn't see a thing. Then he gradually made out high crisscrossed metal rafters, rows of fluorescent lights, metal rungs leading up to a catwalk that stretched the length of the building, a few electric carts and yellow forklifts. But then he saw what lay before him, what lay all around him, what lay in neat rows from wall to wall and on out of sight. He caught his breath with shock.

The warehouse was filled with what must have been over a thousand coffins. They were all lying closed on the concrete floor, and Silvera realized why those caskets had been left stacked on the loading dock. There was simply no more room in this huge warehouse.

"Jesus Christ!" Wes said softly, standing behind the priest.

"This is where they sleep," Silvera heard himself say. "Not all of them . . . not anywhere near all of them, but... my G.o.d! Every warehouse in the entire industrial district may be full of them!" He took a tentative step forward, then leaned down and opened the coffin nearest him.

On its bed of brown California soil, a young male vampire wearing a light blue s.h.i.+rt spotted with blood lay with its arms crossed over its chest. The eyes seemed to be staring right through the milky lids with a dull, hateful gaze. Those lids, Silvera realized, were very similar to those found in most reptiles; they would be natural protection against the sand. The vampire lay still, a killing machine awaiting full darkness. Silvera stared at the thing and thought he heard in his brain a soft, terrible whisper-Lean over here, man, just a little bit closer... He quickly closed the coffin lid with his foot and stepped around it carefully, his own breathing suddenly too loud and harsh within the mask.

He opened the next coffin and found a little black girl-her flesh faded to a sick, pasty gray-lying there. He sensed her longing for his blood even in sleep.

She s.h.i.+fted suddenly, and the movements made Silvera step back a few paces. She gripped the casket's sides, then lay still again. He closed the lid, a chill skittering up his spine.

Wes walked along the first row of coffins. He opened one of them, his hands shaking. A small boy-no more than four or five-lay there. As Wes watched, stunned, the child's hand slowly lifted, fingers grasping at air, and then fell back on his chest. The mouth opened, a red slash in the yellowish face, and the fangs clicked together like the snapping of a bear trap. Was it dreaming? Wes wondered. Of what? Seeing me in its dreams, and dreaming that it's sinking its fangs into my throat? He leaned forward to close the casket, and a s.h.i.+mmering little child's voice wafted through his brain-Danny don't want you to go . . .

Danny want you to stay here for always. Wes paused, his head thundering. Silvera leaned across him, closed the lid quickly and pulled him away.

"Thanks," Wes said, blinking. "They're strong even when . . . they're sleeping."

"Help me drag that one out into the light," Silvera said. He gripped the edge of the first casket he'd opened. Wes got on the other side, and together they pushed and pulled the thing out onto the loading dock into the murky light.

"I'm going to open it now," the priest said. Before Wes could respond, he did, then backpedaled away several feet, ready for anything.

The vampire instantly started writhing, clawing at the coffin's sides, its mouth opening in a grimace. The fangs clicked together with terrible force. Wes saw awareness and pain flood into the eyes, then pure agony. The vampire screamed, an unearthly wail that was unlike anything Wes had ever heard. Then the thing sat up violently, flinging clumps of dirt from the coffin. Its murderous gaze fell upon Silvera, and it started to rise, its head twisted at an angle away from the sunlight.

Silvera knew it was going to try to get back inside the warehouse into the cool darkness. He shoved Wes through the doorway, leapt inside, and started sliding the door shut as the vampire hurtled forward, screaming in rage and pain. As the door closed, the vampire flung itself frantically against the metal. Both men together could hardly hold it shut. The door shuddered as the vampire hammered on it, then began to scratch at it like a mindless animal. Wes held back a scream; he was standing in total darkness with a thousand or more vampires at his back, and one outside trying to get in. He thought he heard furtive movement behind him, the creaking of a few hundred casket lids. Then the clawing noises stopped.

Silvera waited a moment more, then started to pull the door open. "It's a trick!" Wes shouted. Silvera opened the door a few inches and peered out. The coffin on the loading dock was closed again. When Silvera opened the door wider, Wes heard quick scuttling sounds behind him, lids being closed hastily. Silvera stepped out onto the dock, leaned down slowly, and threw back the lid again.

The vampire-now hideously bloated like a three-day-old corpse-sat up and snapped at Silvera's face; the fangs sank into the rubber mask, then withdrew. Before Silvera's eyes, fluids bubbled up beneath the thing's flesh, the arms, legs, and face blowing up like the sausage appendages of a freakish carnival fat man. The blue s.h.i.+rt stretched, b.u.t.tons popping off; fluids leaked from the mouth, nostrils, and eyes, pooling around the head. Then rapidly, the form shriveled into something as thin and frail as a dead leaf; the gums sank, the eyes fell inward and seemed to melt away, the nose flattened and collapsed. The vampire curled up into an S, s.h.i.+vered violently, and then was still. Now it looked like a month-old corpse, which, Silvera realized, it probably was. Wes barely got his mask off before his stomach heaved. After he was finished, his ribs hurt as if Satan himself had kicked them with his cloven hoof.

"Wait here," Silvera said, and walked quickly along the dock back toward the Crab. Wes put his mask back on and sat down far away from the dead vampire. There are too many of them! he thought. Thousands! His mind slipped back to Solange; surely she was one of them by now. He couldn't bear to think about that, not just yet.

The priest came back carrying the gasoline can and the ceramic crucifix. The .45 was jammed down in his waistband. He gave Wes the crucifix and then went back into the warehouse. Wes followed, his legs unsteady. Silvera uncapped the gasoline can and started dousing as many caskets as he could. The three gallons didn't stretch very far, though, and Silvera poured the last quarter gallon or so in a s.h.i.+mmering pool on the floor at the foot of the few caskets. Then he flung the can away and walked back to the door. Taking the .45, he unclicked the safety and aimed at the puddle of gas. The shot sounded like a cannon going off.

Wes saw sparks fly. The puddle burst into blue flames and started crawling in snakelike tendrils across several coffins, following the gasoline trails. In another moment they started charring, and black smoke whirled. Reflections and shadows glimmered off the metal walls. A few of the coffin lids s.h.i.+vered and started to open. Silvera said tersely, "Get out! Hurry!" Before they slid the doorway shut completely, Silvera took the crucifix from Wes and jammed it at an angle through the inside door handle. Then they ran. In the Crab they took off their gear. Wes started the engine. Above the shriek of the wind, he heard other screams that made him want to clap his hands to his ears. "Drive. Fast," Silvera said. Wes pushed the vehicle through a small dune that had built up in front of the Crab during the time they'd been gone. When they had left the warehouse district behind, Wes said, "Do you think they'll all burn?"

"No. But some of them will. The inside of that place, with those metal walls, will get hot pretty quickly, and the crucifix may keep them away from the door.

If they get out, the sunlight will kill them. But I don't think all of them will burn, no."

"My G.o.d! I didn't know there were ... so many . . ."

"And many thousands more than those, I'm sure." Silvera laid the .45 back on the floorboard. He squeezed his hands into fists to try to stop their trembling.

Fear had filled him up as if he were an old cracked jug, and it was beginning to leak out. Suddenly he realized that he couldn't tell where the sun was anymore.

The entire sky seemed the same dirty brown color, streaked with gray and yellow.

"What time is it?" he asked.

Wes glanced at his watch and thanked Rolex for their airtight, shockproof cases.

"Almost three." He took off his watch and laid it on the dashboard so they could both see it.

"We have to hurry," Silvera said quietly. A voice within him shrieked, TOO

LATE!.

TOO LATE! IT'S GOING TO BE DARK SOON AND IT'LL BE TOO LATE!.

The towers of L.A. loomed up out of the murky sky like tombstones in a graveyard for giants. Then they were gone, obscured by new curtains of sand. Before Wes's face the wipers shuddered and groaned. The Crab's engine stuttered, gasping for air. Darkness seemed to be creeping in all around them, brown veined with gray.

Near the white, drift-covered plain of Pers.h.i.+ng Square, tumbleweeds came flying out of nowhere, sc.r.a.ping across the winds.h.i.+eld, and were gone. Wes came to one blocked street after another, having to back up carefully and retrace his path.

The gas gauge's needle was beginning to fall, the engine temperature gauge at the danger line.

L.A. could have been a ghost town chewed to shreds by the ravaging Mojave, Wes thought. A bright and glittering Xanadu laid to waste, a city of dreams gone bad, a stately pleasure-domed place that the desert and Evil had finally marched upon in tandem to conquer and destroy. Evil had always lived here, Wes knew, in the back rooms, in the sweltering tenements, in the meeting rooms and palaces. It had always watched and waited, using a Manson here, a Hillside Strangler there, a Roach thrown in for good measure, like hideous ingredients in a dreadful cauldron brew. And now this perhaps was Evil's main course, the piece de resistance poured ym out of that cauldron like a stew of rattlesnake heads and human blood. When darkness fell, the dinner bell would start ringing again.

And Evil would shout through a hundred thousand unholy, triumphant throats, Feast! Feast! For the banquet is spread and we are so very hungry . . . Wes realized that they had little to fight the vampires with now, just some water in a vial, the guns, and that switchblade. What good would bullets and a knife be? Wes had hoped for some kind of protection from the crucifix, but now that they'd left it behind, they'd have to go on with what remained. He still had the little ball of stuff Solange had made for him; it had worked against the bikers, but what protection would the priest have?