They Thirst (50 page)

Lampley sat down at his desk and dialed Twentynine Palms Weather on the black phone. In the distance he could see a ranger tower that looked like a spindly War of the Worlds Martian machine. "Hal?" he said when the phone was picked up about forty-five miles away. "This is Bob up at the Hilton. What are you showing down there?"

Hal's voice was weakened not only by the distance but also by the strange weather. "Still got some high winds on the Play . . .
crackle squeal . . .
Bob. Wait a sec. Let me check the figures. Okay. West and southwesterly . . .
squealllll .
.
.
from thirty to forty miles per hour, gusting to forty-five. Air pressure's dropped from . . .
crackle-crackle
. . . in the last ninety minutes. What do you have up there?"

"Cloud city," Lampley said. "Pressure's still hanging steady, though. I'm picking up some kind of electrical interference on this end, so you'll have to speak louder."

"What?" Hal said. "I didn't. . . all of that. . ."

'Talk louder!" he said. "I don't understand what's going on. Did a pressure drop creep in on us or what?"

"Not from Canada it didn't. Funny. Vegas weather . .. clear and sunny, high in the mid-eighties . . ."

"So whatever's happening is right over the Mojave?"

"Sorry . .. didn't hear . .."

"I guess we've got a bad connection. Listen, I'll call you back around two. If those winds build anymore, give me a call."

"Sure thing. Talk . . . later . . ."

Lampley hung up and looked at the red phone on the wall. He'd feel like a fool calling L.A. National about some desert winds, no matter how hard they were gusting.
So it was an infant sandstorm, so what? LAX Weather would keep the planes out of trouble, and the mountains would take the brunt of the winds. Sooner or later the storm would spin itself out.

But what if it doesn't? What if this bastard gets so big and wild it whirls all the way across the mountains and into L.A.?

Impossible,
he reassured himself.
Los Angeles might get a little grit, but they needed the winds to blow off their smog cover anyway. Nothing to worry about.

He stared at that phone for a few seconds more, looked out the window at the lizard-hide sky, and returned to the Mike Shayne mystery he'd been reading before he'd heard the grate of sand against glass.

Gayle Clarke pulled her Mustang up to the curb on Romaine Street and stared at the house with the black crucifix painted on the front door. There was a word written underneath it in a foreign language. Some of the windows were painted with crosses, too—the house looked like some kind of weird church. She glanced at the mailbox: Palatazin. Reluctantly she got out of her car and walked up the porch steps to the door. The black paint was new; she could see where it had dripped. She knocked on the door and waited.

It was almost one o'clock. It had taken her two hours to get out of her apartment, then she'd driven over to Pancho's and forced herself to eat two tacos before driving up through Hollywood. She wore clean denims and a light blue blouse; her face was scrubbed and, if not exactly infused with a pink glow, much healthier-looking than it had been this morning. There was still a glassy, shocked look in her eyes that wouldn't go away. Behind her, wind swirled through the trees and hedges along Romaine, making a noise like barely restrained laughter.

The door opened, and Palatazin looked out at her. He nodded and without a word stepped back to allow her in. He was wearing gray slacks and a white pullover shirt that showed his belly in its full splendor; he looked oddly vulnerable, just another human being when not seen from the other side of a captain's desk at Parker Center. His eyes were dark and troubled, and when they locked with hers, she felt the skin at the back of her neck prickle.

He closed the door, locked it, and motioned toward the sofa. "Please sit down. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Maybe a Coke?"

She could still taste the tacos, and now her stomach was doing flipflops. "Uh . . . a Coke would be fine."

"All right. Just make yourself comfortable." He disappeared toward the rear of the house, and she sat looking around, her purse in her lap. It seemed to be a cosy house, much warmer than she would have thought. It smelled vaguely of onions and potatoes; probably some kind of foreign dish he favored, she guessed. There was a rusted metal box on the coffee table in front of her.

"So you're Gayle Clarke," someone said, and Gayle looked up into the icy eyes of a gray-haired woman who stood gazing at her from across the room. She was pretty with high, sharp cheekbones, but now the flesh was stretched tight to give her face a hard, masklike appearance. "You're the one who wrote such awful things about my husband."

"I didn't write anything . . ."

"Are you denying your trashy paper said he ought to be fired?" Her eyes flared.

"Maybe it did, but I don't write editorials."

"Oh. Of course you don't," Jo said with a bitter edge. "Do you realize the strain you've put on my Andy? You and all the rest of the filthy papers in this city?" She came forward a few steps, and Gayle tensed. "Well, you got what you wanted. You can be happy now." Her lower Up was trembling, and now tears of anger were beginning to dance in her eyes. "Why did you want to hurt him?" she said quietly. "He never did anything to you. . ."

"What's this?" Palatazin said, coming into the room with Gayle's drink. He looked at Jo in bewilderment, then at Gayle. "What's going on?"'

"Nothing," Gayle said. "Your wife and I were just getting . . . acquainted."

He handed her the glass and picked up the morning
Times
from where it lay in a chair. "Have you seen this, Miss Clarke?"

"No." She took it from him and looked at the front page. The headline was about the Mid-East situation, the talks breaking down again. But another story just above the fold caught her eye. The headline said "Bats Kept Coming," Says Shaken Officer. There was a shorter kicker line above it, Six Die At Parker Center. "What's this?" she said, looking up at Palatazin.

"Read it." He sat down in the chair and folded his hands before him. "Those men who were killed were my friends." His eyes seemed almost black. "When you're finished with that, I'd like you to look through the clippings in that box on the table."

Gayle read the article, feeling Jo Palatazin's gaze burning into her skull. "This says a suspect in the Roach killings got away. Is that right?"

"Yes."

"A suspect? Or the Roach himself?"

"It was him," Palatazin said quietly.

"My God!" She looked up sharply. "What is this all about? What's with the crosses scrawled on your doors and windows?"

"In time," he said. "There's someone else coming to join us. He should be here soon."

"Who?"

"A priest from East L.A. named Silvera."

"A priest? What's this going to be, a confession?"

Jo said coldly, "I think you're the one who has sins to confess . .."

"Please," Palatazin said and touched his wife's arm. "She's a guest in this house, and she was very kind to come."

Gayle opened the metal box. When she saw what the clippings were about, she felt as if she'd been kicked in the head. She looked through them for a few minutes, her hands beginning to tremble.

There was a knock at the door. Palatazin answered it, and Father Silvera stood there staring darkly at the crucifix painted on the front window. "Come in, Father," Palatazin said. When Silvera entered the house, he instantly caught the same odor Gayle had smelled. He recognized it as the aroma of garlic. Palatazin introduced Jo and Gayle, and Silvera sat down on the sofa.

"Thank you for coming, Father," Palatazin said. "I appreciate your driving all this distance. Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"Yes, please. Cream and sugar."

"I'll get it," Jo said; she glared once more at Gayle before leaving the room.

"Did you bring what I asked, Father?" Palatazin asked quietly, leaning forward in his chair.

Silvera nodded and reached into his coat. He brought out something wrapped in white cloth and handed it to Palatazin. "Just as you asked," he said. "Now I'd like to know what you need it for, and why you called me since there are maybe thirty Catholic churches within a five-mile radius of this house."

Palatazin was stripping away the white cloth. Inside was a small, corked bottle holding about two ounces of clear liquid. "I called you," he said, "because I thought you would understand the . . . gravity of the situation. You were in that tenement building in East L.A. You saw the bodies being carried out. I hoped you'd . . ."

"I see," the priest said. "So that's what this is all about —your belief in vampires. That's why you've painted crosses on your doors and windows. That's why you felt you needed a vial of holy water. Mr. Palatazin, I don't wish to seem . . . condescending, but I'm afraid vampires should be the least of this city's concerns. I still don't know what was wrong with those people, but I'm sure it's strictly a medical question and not one of vampirism." He glanced at the girl beside him, who was going through some clippings from a metal box. Her eyes were glazed, and she didn't even seem to realize he was sitting there.
Did I break my gasoline budget for the week for this?
he asked himself.

"I suppose you've called Mercy Hospital to check on those people?"

"Yes, I have."

"Then let me tell you what you found out. Absolutely nothing. I called Mercy this morning, and I was shuffled around from doctor to doctor until a press relations man told me no information was being given out about these cases. Is that what you were told?"

"Roughly," Silvera said. "But what does that prove?"

"This is not a matter of proof!" Palatazin said, his face flushing with sudden anger. "This is a matter of
knowing!
I
know,
Father! I've spent my entire life in their shadow, and now that shadow has fallen over this city!"

Silvera nodded and rose to his feet. "If you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my parish."

"No! Wait, please! You can't stand there and tell me you didn't feel the presence of evil in that tenement! You're shutting your mind to it, Father! You don't want to believe because you know that if you do, you'll realize how nearly hopeless this situation is and that perhaps you're not strong enough to face it!"

Silvera looked at him sharply. "There are many evils in this world, Mr. Palatazin. The heroin pusher, the child-beater, the homicidal maniac, the killer . . . as you well know. I think we both have enough work to do without . . . inventing more evils." A chill suddenly rippled through him as he remembered the blood-written graffiti on the tenement walls and the strange, almost transparent eyelids of those stricken people.
Can you really— logically—explain those?
he asked himself.

Gayle was fixedly staring at Palatazin. She looked up at the priest. "Father," she said, "he's . . . he's right."

"What?"

"I've seen them. He's right. They do exist, and they're here in L.A." She told them about the Sandalwood Apartments, the figure squirming beneath the bed, the dark things in the courtyard, and her own narrow escape. When she had almost finished, her voice cracked like a thin pane of glass. "I was afraid," she said. "I was . . . scared to death, so I locked myself in my apartment, and I didn't want to come out. I think I knew it would just be a matter of time before they found me . . ." She looked up. Jo was standing behind her husband, holding a cup of coffee on a tray. Gayle's eyes were wide and fearful. "They
are
here," Gayle told the priest.

Silvera's mouth had tightened; he seemed to have aged ten years in the last few minutes. He glanced over his shoulder through the window at his car. Wind stirred the trees across the street. How easy it would be to leave this house, get in the car, and drive back to East L.A., pretend he'd never heard any of this, pretend he hadn't walked into that tenement with its living corpses jammed under beds and in closets. Pretend this evil did not exist. Easy? No. He felt himself poised on the point of an irrevocable decision. Slowly he looked back into Palatazin's face.

"Sit down," the policeman said. "Please."

Silvera took the coffee from Jo and drank most of it down in one swallow, wishing it were laced with whiskey. Jo pulled a chair up close beside her husband and sat down, as did the priest.

"How could you be so sure?" Silvera asked. "How did you know?"

"Because my . . . father is one of them," Palatazin said with an effort. "No, not my father. What used to be my father. I was born in a village called Krajeck in northern Hungary. There the people recognize and fear the
vampir.
They don't fully understand how the
vampir
comes to be, or why God allows such an evil to walk the face of the earth, but they know enough to mark their houses with crucifixes and garlic. They know that Satan gives power and unholy life to the
vampir,
just as God gives life to all the good things of this world. The
vampir
can never be satisfied. They will forever be thirsty, not only for human blood but also for land. Possessions. Power. They want to rule the earth, and I'm afraid that if this city falls, they will be well on their way to amassing an army large enough to take it. I'm not talking about three or four or fifty or even a thousand vampires, Father. I'm talking about
millions
of them. If Los Angeles falls to them, they will have increased their army by more than
eight million.
And no country on earth can withstand a force like that. You ask me how I can be so sure? I was given the . . . opportunity to see them at work. I know their signs, their track. I see them on the move everywhere now, and very soon they'll attack in earnest, going from house to house, street to street, all across L.A. Krajeck fell to them when I was a child, and I've seen the same things happening here that prefaced that terrible night." He looked at Gayle. "That wave of vandalism in some of the cemeteries, for instance. The
vampir
needed those caskets in which to sleep, and they needed native soil. They must sleep secure from all sunlight when the transformation from corpse to living dead is complete . . ."