They Thirst (68 page)

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 shimmering pool on the floor at the foot of the first 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 shivered 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 God! 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 Pershing Square, tumbleweeds came flying out of nowhere, scraping across the windshield, 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
piéce de resistance
poured 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?

He thrust those fears aside, but they kept trying to gnaw their way back in like little ravenous weasels. He would have to deal with them later, but not now. Just looking at the fuel gauge told him they'd crossed the point of no return, probably way back when they'd come over the L.A. River. So there was nothing to do now but keep going, he thought, nothing to do now but give it the best shot Wesley Richer had ever given anything in his life. His palms were as cold and sweaty as the first night he'd stepped up on that stage at the Comedy Store, but this stage was a far more important one, and the hook that yanked you off would take you to your death . . . or worse.

But death wouldn't be so bad, he thought, not really, not when the alternative was to be like those things in the coffins. He'd already decided how to do it if that was the only way out—.45 barrel into the mouth and up, quick squeeze on the trigger, and
boom!
Jump the night train. Pull a Freddie Prinze. Hitchhike home in the hard rain. Suicide.

He only hoped he could take Solange with him.

Tommy's head was aching, and Palatazin had to stop to catch his breath. He sat beside the boy in the dark, foul clamminess of the tunnel while Ratty took the lantern and scuttled on ahead. In another few minutes they saw the light coming back, just a yellow dot at first and then a spreading beam. Ratty knelt down beside Palatazin. "We're almost under Hollywood Boulevard. You okay, little dude?"

"Yeah. I'm fine," Tommy said.

"How much further to Outpost Drive?" Palatazin asked him.

"Not far. Then we start climbing if the tunnel's big enough. And you got to remember, I can squeeze into a whole lot of places
you
can't. You two ready?"

"Ready," Tommy said and rose to his feet.

Since crossing under DeLongpre Avenue the water at the bottom of the tunnel had increased from a slow trickle to what now seemed like a thick, muddy creek. The tunnel that Ratty had said ran underneath Sunset Boulevard was large and high, and it had amazed Palatazin that the lantern picked out spray-painted graffiti on the walls. At their feet slow currents moved around islands of brown sludge. Now they came to two tunnels splitting off in opposite directions. Ratty paused for a minute, shining his light around, and chose the right one. The ceiling dropped dramatically here, and they moved on with their backs bent. Occasional currents swirled over their shoes; the odors of sewage were nothing short of gruesome. Ratty splashed through the mess like a trout fisherman. "Not far!" he called back, waiting for them to catch up. "It's just through here. Hey! Watch it, little dude!" He shone the lights at gray rats scurrying protectively around a nest in a crack between two sections of pipe just above Tommy's head. All but two or three of the largest rats squealed and ran; they stared back defiantly, their eyes pink pinpoints. "Sometimes they jump for your face," Ratty said when they'd gone on past. "They grab hold, you can't shake 'em off for shit. One time I woke up after I'd crashed on yellows and found two of the little bastards tryin' to dig a nest in my beard!"

Ratty stopped suddenly and sniffed the air. "That's it. The big one under Hollywood." They came to the end of the narrow tunnel and stepped out into another large one. At the bottom of this tunnel, the water was deeper, perhaps a foot or so, and swirled around every manner of dank, unidentifiable debris. Rats chittered in the darkness, and Palatazin could hear them splashing in the water like birds in a birdbath. Ratty sloshed forward without hesitation, aiming his light along the far wall; there were more tunnel entrances over there, each one bleeding out little streams of water. "Let's see now," Ratty said, narrowing his eyes in thought. The light moved from one tunnel to the next. "It's that one," he said, holding steady on the center entrance. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure."

Tommy said, "Don't you know?" His voice crackled with tension. Being down here reminded him of the movie
Them,
about the giant ants that had made a nest underneath L.A.

"Sure I know," Ratty replied and tapped his skull.

"Got the map right up in here. Just sometimes I tend to get a little confused, that's all." He giggled suddenly, his eyes burning like blue lamps from the pills he'd popped.

"Let's go," Palatazin said irritably. "Come on!"

Ratty shrugged and started forward. Tommy took three steps and felt his right foot slide over something softly hideous. He screamed and jerked his leg away, stumbling into Palatazin. "What is it?" Palatazin said sharply. Ratty turned and shone his light down. A man's corpse was being laboriously pushed along by the westward currents. The rats were astride it, leaping and nibbling. Palatazin took Tommy's shoulder and pulled him away. They crossed the tunnel, walking faster, and entered the tunnel opening Ratty had indicated.

The tunnel crooked to the right and grew steadily narrower. Palatazin walked bent over, his lungs rasping, and realized that Ratty's lantern was losing power. The beam of light had now dulled to a soft yellow. He could hear rats chittering behind them, closing up in their wake; he wondered how much more the boy could stand. But Tommy had made a man's choice, and now there was no turning back for him. More tunnels, some only holes a foot or less in diameter, branched off from the one they moved through. Water trickled and dripped, the echoes as disconcertingly loud as footsteps. They came to a metal-runged ladder. Ratty aimed the light up at a manhole cover perhaps twelve feet overhead. "I better go up to find out for sure where we are," he said, and gave Palatazin the lantern. Palatazin nodded, and Ratty scuttled up quickly, shoving the cover aside. A weak amber light came down from the opening, and then Ratty had disappeared into the storm.

After a few minutes Palatazin said, 'Tommy, I don't think we're going to make it before they start waking up. It's already very dark up there.
Too
dark. When the sun's rays get weak enough, I'm afraid they'll start . . . prowling again."

"We can't go back," Tommy said.

"I know."

"Will they all. . . wake up at the same time?"

Palatazin shook his head. "I'm not sure. Possibly not. There are so many things I don't know about them. The oldest ones may wake up first, or possibly the ones who are hungriest. My God, I hate to leave Jo unprotected . . ." He stopped suddenly because he thought he'd heard a sliding movement behind them. He shone the light in that direction. The light was too weak to reach very far, and the tunnel seemed layered with impenetrable shadows.

"What is it?" Tommy asked nervously, looking over his shoulder.

"I . . . don't know. I thought I heard something, but. .."

Ratty appeared overhead and came down quickly. "Okay," he said, breathing heavily, his beard and hair full of sand. "We're under Franklin Avenue, but we've got to go east a little ways to pick up the tunnel under Outpost. I'm not sure how big it's gonna be."

"Just get us there," Palatazin said and gave him back the lantern.

They moved on, the uneasy tick of time hammering at the back of Palatazin's skull. The tunnel crooked to the left, then to the right again, and grew narrower still. Seepage from the canyons sloshed noisily underfoot. Several times Palatazin said, "Wait," and they stood motionless while he listened. When Ratty aimed the light back, the tunnel was clear for as far as they could see.

They came to a metal screen blocking their way. Palatazin took the mallet from the pack and spent a few minutes hammering it to one side. Further on the tunnel began to angle upward perceptibly; it veered again to the right, then straightened out and seemed endless. The ceiling dropped once again, and now even Tommy walked bent over. Palatazin, his spine already aching, stepped carefully to keep from slipping in the morass at the tunnel's bottom as water and debris flowed over his shoes.

And now he heard that noise again and turned, straining to see through the utter darkness. He was quite sure this time that he'd heard the muffled noise of cold laughter, quickly fading away. He made Tommy walk between himself and Ratty. The hairs at the back of his neck were standing on end now, because he feared that there were vampires down here who were already awake, sealed off from any hint of the sun. Possibly they were terribly hungry, and their hunger had kept them from sleeping; possibly they roamed the sewers in packs looking for victims. He remembered the matches and the aerosol can in the pack and, as he walked, he slipped his hand in and touched the can. Ratty's lantern was getting steadily weaker.