They Thirst (58 page)

Less than a half-block from the church, he saw a corpse lying in the middle of the street. He was almost around it when the corpse's hand shot out, grabbing his ankle and almost tumbling him to the ground. The man raised his sand-caked face and whispered, "Help me . . ."

Tommy Chandler stirred uneasily. The last bell was ringing, echoing down the long, silent halls of Fairfax High School. He was running and trying to hold onto his books. When he looked back, he could see the shadow that followed him relentlessly, its long arms swinging like the orangutan's from "Murders in the Rue Morgue." And he heard the guttural loathsome voice rolling down on him like a tidal wave.
"I told you not to come back, fuckface . . . told you not to . . . told you not toooooo . . . !"

"Go away!" Tommy shouted, his voice cracking. "Leave me alone!" And then he dropped his books all over the hallway, which suddenly started changing shape, elongated to incredible dimensions like a set from
The Thousand Fingers of Dr. T.
He stopped to gather up his books, but they kept slipping away from him, and he could hear the muffled
boom boom boom
of Bull Thatcher's combat boots coming up fast behind him. A shadow fell upon him like a winter storm, and he looked up in terror . . .

. . . at the clock beside his bed. He could hear the alarm ringing, and he reached out to shut it off. But before he could grasp it, the ringing stopped. He heard his father's voice say, "Who is this? Why don't you say something? Damn it, Cynthia, either someone's making crank phone calls or. . ."

Tommy sat up in bed and fumbled for his extra pair of eyeglasses on the table beside his bed. He put them on and looked at the clock; it was a windup and hadn't gone off at nine-forty when the electricity had died. It was five minutes after midnight.
Who could be calling now?
he wondered. The wind was still screaming at his window, punctuated by the scatter-shots of sand on glass. Before the television had gone black, the special KABC weather report had said to expect winds of between thirty-five and fifty miles per hour. And then the TV and lights had flickered out.

The telephone was ringing again. Tommy heard his father's muffled curse as he picked up the receiver.

Tommy had walked home from school that afternoon buffeted by hot western winds. He could look at the sky and tell a storm was coming because the clouds were thickening and cartwheeling for as far as he could see. He'd never seen anything quite like it before, not even in Denver. But the freak storm wasn't anything as incredible as the miracle at school yesterday. Of course, he'd had to return to the locker room, and as he was hurrying to gather up his books and get out, Mark Sturo told him not to worry, that Bull Thatcher and Ross Weir hadn't come to school, so he was safe. Buddy Carnes did come in while he was still at his locker, but Carnes hadn't even given him a sidelong glance. Now there might not even be any school today. That would be great, he thought, then he could watch Flash Gordon and Thriller on the Mexican stations . . . if the electricty came back on.

He got out of bed. From one wall a poster of Orlon Kronsteen, resplendent in his
King Vampire
makeup, glowered down at him. He went out into the hall and knocked on his parents' door. His father, a thin, pale man with thick eyeglasses like his son's, looked out.

"What are you doing out of bed, Tommy?"

"Woke up. Heard the phone ringing." He yawned, lifted his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. "Who's been calling?"

"I don't know. Some idiot who won't answer. I can hear a lot of static, but no voices. Why don't you try to go back to sleep?"

"The storm's still pretty bad, isn't it, Dad?"

"Yes. It is." He paused for a few seconds and then opened the door wider. "You want to come in and talk for a while?"

Tommy's mother, a sharp-chinned Radcliffe grad with dark, intense eyes, was sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, making a mountain out of the covers. She was staring at the pale green curtains drawn across the window, watching them tremble every time an errant whisper of wind slipped through the casement. She looked at Tommy and smiled her tight, crooked smile. "Can't sleep either, huh?"

"Nope."

"Sounds like a hurricane, doesn't it? Gosh, who ever heard of a hurricane in California?"

"It's not as bad as it was a little while ago," his father said quietly. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the telephone. "I wonder who the hell that was? Somebody playing a joke?"

"Not very funny," Cynthia said.

Tommy stepped to the window, pushed aside the curtain, and looked out. For an instant he could've sworn he was back in Denver—
there was snow all over the place out there! Heaps and heaps of it, even beginning to cover over cars!
But then he saw a felled palm tree, all its fronds stripped away to leave a bare, ugly nub, and then he remembered this was California so that couldn't possibly be snow. It was sand, hot and thick, slowly piling up into mountainous dunes. "Where did all this sand come from, Dad?" he asked. His heart was beating a little faster.

"The Mojave Desert. The wind just carried it right over the mountains. That would be
our
luck, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah," Tommy said. "It sure would be." He strained his eyes to see across the street through the swirling, yellow sheets to the Vernon house.

"I never wanted to come to California," Tommy's father was saying. "I told Mr. Oakes I was an Achilles man all the way and, of course, I wanted the promotion, but . . ." He looked at his wife. "I wish we could've stayed in Scottsdale. That was a really beautiful city, and you didn't have to worry about traffic jams or smog or some crazy murderer running loose . . ."

"Dad." Tommy said very quietly. He wasn't sure what he was seeing, wasn't sure at all, but he thought he should say something.

"Now this," his dad said. "Christ! No electricity, no . . . where's that transistor radio, Cynthia?"

"Dad," Tommy said. "There's . . ."

"The one you bought at K-Mart? I think it's still packed away in a box, honey. Probably out in the hall closet. I doubt if the batteries are still working."

"I'll try to find it. Tommy, why don't you scare up some candles and matches if we're going to stay up? Okay?"

Tommy nodded and looked back out the window. What he thought he'd seen—a figure standing amidst the sand drifts on the Vernon's front yard, staring across at his house and seemingly right at him—was no longer there now. He craned his neck to either side but could see no one out there, if he had actually seen anyone at all. Still, a shiver ran up his spine. He went to get the candles and matches, passing his dad rummaging through the hall closet and feeling his way down the stairs to the kitchen. The wind shrilled and whistled around the house, trying to suck it off its foundations, but at the house's center there seemed to be a hole of unearthly darkness and silence, the stuff that had crept in when the electricity had gone. Tommy started opening drawers. He found a couple of candles and now he needed matches. He searched on a shelf above the sink and from the corner of his eye saw something move near the window that looked out over their tiny backyard. He wasn't sure what it was, but it had looked like someone . . . running. He stared out, his heart pumping ice water. "Hey, Mom!" he shouted. "Where are the matches?"

"Look under the sink!" she called down to him.

He opened a couple of cupboards down there and finally found a large pack of Fire Chiefs, the kind you could strike anywhere. And suddenly from the front of the house, there came an ugly-sounding
whump
and he could hear things crashing around in the living room. A whirl of wind and sand hit him as he raced out of the kitchen to the stairs. He could see the front door hanging on one hinge, and a coffee table had gone flying against a wall. His dad called out from upstairs, "Tommy? What was that?"

"Door's open!" he said. "The wind knocked it loose . . . I guess."

"Christ! If that sand gets inside . . . Tommy, can you prop it shut?"

"I'll try!" He moved across the room against the wail of wind and dragged a chair over to secure the door. It held, although the whistlings through the doorjamb had grown savage. Then he hurried upstairs, the flesh at the back of his neck beginning to creep.

His father had found the transistor radio and tuned it to KALA. A rock song was playing, the singer wailing something about everybody being part of a food chain. Tommy lit the candles and placed one on either side of the bed. The gruff-voiced dj came on after the song had ended, his patter garbled by static. "Yeaaah! That was Tonio K. and 'Life in the Foooooodchain!' Thass what it's all about now, ain't it, brothers and sisters? Lemme reeeelay to you what the scouts are tellin' old Tiger Eddie. Got a whole lot of fine young ones trapped up in the Hollywood Recreation Center on Lexington Avenue. You get yourself up there early for the best pickin's, you dig? Got a few scattered all along Rosewood Avenue, you just got to keep knockin' on them doors 'till you get lucky . . ."

"What's he talking about?" Tommy's dad asked nervously, looking at his son.

". . . old Tiger Eddie's gonna be with you right up 'til night-night time about five-thirty this morning. Here's a little note to make your mouths water. There are sixty —count 'em, sixty—holed up over at the Westside Jewish Center between Olympic and San Vicente. Just a reminder—the Master don't want 'em
old,
you dig? You find some old coots, just do us all a favor and fling 'em out in the wind, okay? Yeah! Dig it!"

"Christ! What's . .. what's that idiot talking about?"

And then something stepped through the open doorway into the bedroom.

It was Mr. Vernon. His eyes shone in a ghastly chalk-white face. He was wearing a dirty white shirt and dark trousers, and even in the dim candlelight Tommy could see the brownish spots on his collar. Tommy's heart leaped into his throat, almost choking him. His mom gave out a little scream, and his dad whirled around so fast his glasses almost flew off. "Pete!" his dad said in a trembling voice. "What are you . . . I mean . . . why are . .. ?"

"I've come to visit," Pete Vernon said, in a soft hiss of a voice. "Oh, listen to that wind. Isn't it wonderful?"

"How did you . . . get in?"

"The front door, of course. As any visitor would enter. I've brought my wife with me. Dianne?"

And then she was there, too, both of them blocking the doorway, both of them pale and grinning.

"Don?" Tommy's mom said softly to his dad. Her face had gone white, her eyes swimming with fear.

"Don,"
Dianne Vernon whispered, gripping her mouth around the name. Her eyes shifted very slowly and stared into Tommy's face. Her gaze burned like hellfire. Then she grinned and opened her mouth wide, and brain screamed with the terrible word—
VAMPIRE—
he'd heard in a thousand monster movies—
VAMPIRE
—
when he was sitting in a safe chair at a safe distance
—
VAMPIRE
—
in his own safe, private little world, but now this was real—
VAMPIRE
—
real, real, real. . .

"No!" he tried to shout, but it came out as a croak. Mrs. Vernon swept past him like a dry wind, moving inexorably upon his father. He cried out, "NO," and leaped for her, trying to hold her back. She hissed and twisted, and in the next instant Mr. Vernon's freezing hands were on him, flinging him like a sack of rags out into the hallway. He smacked against the wall hard and slid to the floor, his brain reeling with pain and terror. He heard his mother scream, then there was a high peal of wicked laughter that was so terrible Tommy thought he would go crazy before it stopped. But when it did stop, the sucking sounds began, and those were much, much worse.

And then a beautiful, terrible voice whispered, Tommy?"

He looked up, cold sweat breaking out on his face.

It was
her,
mounting the stairs now and coming down the hallway toward him with slow, supple steps. He could see the long, golden hair splashed over her bare shoulders. She was wearing a violet halter, the deep dish of her navel exposed over tight denim cutoffs decorated with different-colored patches—one showed Snoopy reclining atop his doghouse, another said Have a Nice Day! Her thigh muscles tensed as she neared him, and in the darkness he could see the awful sheen of her eyes. That beautiful flesh would never again be touched by the sun. 'Tommy?" she whispered, and when she smiled, she was still
so
pretty, even like this. She held out one graceful hand to him. "How's about you and me gettin' it on, huh?" she said softly.

"You're . . .
dead!"
Tommy said, the effort to speak making sweat run down his face in rivulets. "You're not Sandy Vernon anymore. You're not human . . ."

"You're wrong, Tommy. I'm still Sandy. And I know how much you want me, Tommy. I could always tell. That's why I liked to tease you and show off my legs for you. I want you too, Tommy. I want you reeeeeeal bad . . ." She stepped forward, about to touch him. Her eyes blazed with wicked and soul-shaking promises. He felt all on fire and yet so cold, as if he stood facing an inferno while a blizzard raged at his back. His mind slipped toward her, and he began to envision all the wonderful possibilities, how he could just put his hand into hers—NO!—and she would guide him right into his own room to the bed—NO,
YOU CAN'T!—
and then it would be better than anything he'd ever known, better than a Mexican horror film festival—
SHE'S IN YOUR MIND, GET HER OUT!—or
even three Orlon Kronsteen films right in a row, all he would have to do would be to lie back and let her—
GET HER OUT, SHE'S COMING CLOSER!
—
do everything to him, everything, everyth . . .