They Thirst (69 page)

The tunnel angled upward sharply. They started climbing.

The house was filling up with darkness. It had come insidiously, relentlessly, and early. It was the hazed light that frightened Jo so much because she was so uncertain of when the vampires would awaken and from where they'd attack—the little house across the street? the one next to that? Over an hour earlier she and Gayle had heard the man next door crying out garbled prayers, then there'd been a long silence broken by a single shot. After that they didn't hear him anymore.

Now Jo sat in a chair away from the window, her face a grim mask. Her fingers moved around the small crucifix that hung from her neck, the gift from Andy. Gayle had pulled the curtains closed, but every few minutes she would interrupt her nervous wandering around the room to peer out at the thickening gloom. Sand scraped the glass like fingernails across a blackboard. Gayle kept Palatazin's .38 close at hand. "Going to be dark soon," she kept saying as if forcing herself to accept that inevitability. Every time she pulled back the curtains to look out, she steeled herself to expect a pallid, grinning face looking in.

Jo found herself drifting into memories—she could recall the first time she'd met Andy's mother, on their third date the night after a St. Stephen's Day festival. The woman had been friendly enough, but so quiet and withdrawn; her eyes had seemed washed-out and blank, and they'd seemed to stare right through Jo at something coming up from behind. Now she understood why.

And then something knocked at the door.

Gayle's heart leaped. She grasped the .38 and pulled it out of the shoulder-holster. She stared at Jo, her eyes widened into fearful circles.

The knock came again, two fast raps on the door.

"Don't answer it!" Jo whispered. "Don't make a sound!"

"It might be Palatazin!" Gayle said and turned toward the door, one hand going out for the knob and the other gripped white-knuckled around the gun.

"NO!" Jo said. "DON'T!"

Silence but for the hissing of the wind. Gayle slowly unlocked the door, turned the knob, and opened it enough to look out. At first she couldn't see a thing, so she opened the door a little wider.

And then something from a Jules Verne nightmare stepped in front of her, a green-garbed monstrosity with huge bug eyes and a hoglike snout. Gayle cried out and brought the gun up to fire, but the thing reached in and grasped her wrist. "Whoa, Miss!" the thing said with a pronounced Texas drawl. "I'm Corporal Preston, US Marines. I'd take it kindly if you'd remove your finger from that trigger."

Relief flooded through her, weakening her knees. She realized the man was wearing an oxygen mask and goggles, and as he stepped into the house, she could see the tank on his back. The man closed the door behind him and pulled his mask up. He was just a kid, really, with a lantern jaw and acne scars on his cheeks. He nodded toward Jo, who'd risen to her feet in amazement. "How many people you got in here, Miss?" he asked Gayle.

"Two. Just us."

"Okay. There's a unit vehicle about three blocks from here. We're going to be getting you out. I couldn't find anybody in the house next door. Anybody live over there?" He motioned toward the madman's house.

"No," Gayle said. "Not anymore."

"Okay. You two ladies just hang on awhile longer, you'll hear the truck coming. You want to watch where you point that pop gun, Miss." He slid his mask back down and started for the door, taking a small can of orange Day-Glo paint from the inside of his jacket.

"We can't leave!" Jo said suddenly. "We're . . . waiting . . .

The marine studied her through his goggles. "Ma'am," he said patiently, "everybody who can git is already gone, making tracks to high ground. I've got orders to evacuate all the folks I can find, and let me tell you, I can't find very many of 'em. What are you waiting for?"

Gayle said, "There are two more of us. A man and
a
boy."

"Oh. They went out in this storm, did they?"

Gayle nodded. Jo's eyes were reddening.

"I wouldn't worry," Preston said. "They probably got picked up by another unit by now. The trucks are all over the area. And nobody could get very far out there without . . . uh . . ." He trailed off. "The truck'll be here in a few minutes."

He opened the door, letting in a hot swirl of wind and sand. On the outside of the door he sprayed a large numeral two, glaring orange against the bare, pocked wood. "You ladies just sit tight for a while," he called over his shoulder before he shut the door. Struggling against the wind, he went on to the next house. The fire tracks where Royce had taken the Crab on up ahead were already gone. Preston could look back and see the faint yellow glow of the tractor's high-intensity headlights approaching.
At least,
he thought,
most of these folks have already gotten out one way or another. Nobody answered their doors, so they must've gotten to safety.
But he wondered how, since there seemed to be a lot of abandoned cars, all of them covered over with blowing dunes. He was following orders, though, and searching door-to-door, and he didn't have time to think about anything else. Nobody answered next door so he went on. His spray can hadn't seen much use today.

It was almost five o'clock when Wes found the turnoff onto Blackwood Road. The sky had turned the texture of hard leather, as dull brown as the ox-blood shoes the pimps used to wear as they watched their low-rent merchandise parade on Whore's Walk. It seemed low enough to scrape across the Crab's roof. On either side of the road, trees bent and shivered, limbs ripping away and flying off down the hillside. The Crab's tires fought for a sure purchase on the incline; it seemed to slip three feet for every two it gained. The wheel shuddered in Wes's grip.

"This is the way up?" Silvera asked him. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

Silvera could only see walls of blowing sand all around them. Still, he had a
feeling
that the castle was somewhere close, looming overhead like a huge stone Vulture hanging to the cliff. Fear had coiled in his belly, a cold serpent undulating as it crawled up to enclose his heart in a freezing grasp. His nerve was slipping as badly as the Crab's tires. But there was no turning back now, there had never been. He saw his way clearly and knew he was following it as it had been laid down, stone for stone, all the way from the Dos Terros tenement he'd gone into with Rico Esteban. It was meant for him to be here, as surely as Wes was meant to commandeer this vehicle. This moment had been ordained for him during the tick of the clock in which Dr. Doran had told him he was dying. It was all part of the mysterious jigsaw puzzle that, when viewed close up, seemed to be nothing but meaningless colors and angles of movement. But when viewed from far away, perhaps over the shoulder, it became as tightly constructed and meaningful as the stained-glass window in his own church. He didn't know what the future would bring; he dared not guess. But neither would he let fear strangle him.

A howling gust of wind hit the Crab, almost tearing the wheel out of Wes's hands. The engine whirred as sand shifted beneath the wheels, and the Crab hung motionless for a few seconds. The tires gripped and pulled, then lost traction again. Wes looked at Silvera.

"The road's too steep! Tires can't get a . . .
Christ!"
The Crab skidded sideways toward a dropoff on the left side of the road. Wes pumped the brakes frantically, but the vehicle was being pushed by the wind faster and faster, as if shoved by a Satanic hand. "We're going over!" he shouted, twisting the wheel.

The rear slipped over, tires spinning in empty air. Wes glanced to the left, saw dashing currents and a shrub-stubbled ravine forty feet below. For an agonizing few seconds he felt the Crab tipping. He sank his foot to the floorboard; the front tires dug down through shifting sand. The Crab suddenly lurched as the right front tire scrabbled across concrete. It leaped away from the dropoff and met another wailing torrent of wind head-on. Then it was thrown to the side like a roller coaster that had jumped the tracks.

It crashed into a tree at the edge of the road and hung there, perhaps six feet away from the dropoff. The wind whirled past, roaring in fury. The Crab's engine gave a little moan and died. Wes stared straight ahead, afraid to move for fear of rocking the vehicle over. His eyes were glassy, his lips as white as newly-cut marble.

"We're okay," Silvera said shakily. "The wind's got us pinned against that tree. We're not going anywhere."

"God," Wes breathed. "I thought . . . we were . . . it's a hell of a long way down . . ." When he forced himself to let go of the wheel, the blood came back into his fingers with a tingling rush.

"We're going to have to make it on foot the rest of the way. How far up is it?"

"I don't know. It's right at the top, but . . . I don't know."

"You all right?"

"Yeah. Will be. Just give me a minute."

Silvera reached back for his gear. "I don't know how much air we've got left in these, but it'll .have to be enough."

"Listen, if that fucking wind could throw a car over the cliff, it could pick us up and toss us right onto that spindle on top of the Capitol Records building!"

"Yes, I know. So we'll have to be careful, won't we? The wind may be worse higher up. Now
you
listen to me. We're going to have to move damned fast out there, and we'll have to be lucky. I don't know how we're going to get inside that place yet, and I really don't know what we
can
do when and if we do get in. I feel like I . . . have to go. You don't. You can stay here if you like."

"Stay here?" Wes frowned, gazed out at the storm for a few seconds, and then back to Silvera. "No. I'm scared so bad I'm about to piss nickels, but I've come too far to stay here. Solange is up there somewhere. I want to find her."

"You may not be able to. And what you find may not be the person you knew."

"I understand that," Wes said quietly.

"Then you also understand that once we get in there, we may not be coming out?"

Wes nodded.

"I want you to do what I say when I say it," Silvera said. "No balking." He reached down to the floorboard for the guns, handed Wes the .45, and slipped the .22 into his own waistband. He touched the small bottle of holy water in his side coat pocket. "I don't know much about these things," Silvera said. "The water may not have any effect. Neither may the guns, but aim for their eyes. That should make them think twice."

"Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes, huh?" Wes said nervously.

"I don't think I'd wait that long. Once we get inside, I'm going to be searching for one in particular, and
I
pray to God that the water has some effect on him. Or the bullets. And . . ." He took out the switchblade. "If he's sleeping I'm going to cut out his heart with this. Now you'd better get ready."

Wes geared up. Silvera slipped his oxygen mask on, and then it was time to go.

Silvera had to push to get the door open. He squeezed out, and Wes followed him out the passenger's side because the driver's door was jammed against that tree. They began to climb the road, their feet slipping and sinking. Occasional strong blasts of wind staggered them, pushing them dangerously close to the rock-rimmed dropoffs on the left side of the road before they could regain their balance. It was almost fully dark now, and Silvera knew that if the vampires weren't already prowling they soon would be. The road stretched up into whirling black, as if it led over the edge of the world and when they fell, they would keep falling through the dark forever.

They had been walking for perhaps fifteen minutes when Silvera saw something move ahead—a quick, furtive movement, something that seemed smaller than a man but still indistinguishable in the gloom. It seemed to vanish, sucked up by the storm. He had the feeling they were being watched by something coming up fast from behind. He slid the gun out and whirled around. Nothing there but darkness, ghostly patterns of sand hissing and dancing and breaking apart, whirling out over the great dark plain where a glittering city had once been. He kept moving, keeping right beside Wes. Now there was another quick movement off in the thick shrubs to the left at the road's edge. Then another on the right.

He couldn't tell yet what they were, but they disappeared as quickly as he saw them.

And then from out of the storm curtain that fluttered in their faces leaped a huge reddish brown mongrel, its eyes burning like yellow lamps.

Silvera saw the bared teeth. He lifted his arm and fired but never heard the two shots. The dog leaped past his shoulder, almost knocking him to the ground, and was swallowed up in the darkness. Silvera didn't know whether he'd hit it or not.

Another dog, smaller than the first one but coal black so they didn't see it until it was right there at their feet, jumped for Wes's face, jaws snapping shut as Wes shouted and dodged. The dog tensed for another leap, but Silvera stepped forward and kicked it in the ribs. It howled and whirled, snapping at the priest's leg. Wes fired a shot; the bullet splintered the dog's skull and flung it away like a rag. Something struck at the back of Silvera's knees, staggering him. He felt teeth ripping into his right calf, gnawing for the bone. He twisted and wrenched his leg away and, as the collie came at him again, he shot it between the eyes. The collie fell, kicked a few times, and then was still. "I'll watch the rear!" Silvera shouted. His leg was bleeding, but he barely felt the pain. Now there seemed to be a hundred shapes all around them, leaping and feinting, coming in to draw their shots before darting away. Silvera held his fire, but twice Wes shot at shadows. "Save it!" Silvera told him. "Make it count!"