Walkers (46 page)

‘There’s one thing,’ Henry added, as
they turned down Prospect Street. ‘I don’t want you shooting your mouth off
about what we did today. It wasn’t exactly illegal, but it wouldn’t please the
police department if they happened to find out about it. What the police don’t
know, the police aren’t going to grieve over, if you get me.’

‘I get you,’ nodded Laurence.
‘Besides – to tell you the truth – I still don’t have the first goddamned idea
what you guys were actually doing.’

‘Good, let it stay that way,’ said
Henry, as Gil brought the Mustang to a halt outside the shell-store. He climbed
out of the car so that Laurence could struggle out of the back, heaving his
kitbag over his shoulder.

‘Hasta la vista,’
said Laurence, and disappeared inside his store, leaving the conch
shells swinging on the awning.

‘What do you think?’ asked Gil, as
they drove back to Del Mar. ‘Do you think you can trust him?’

‘Laurence?’ asked Henry. ‘No, I
don’t think so. But find me somebody else who could have done what he did
today.’

Gil said, There’s just one thing...
you kind of thought all of that acid thing up on your own.’

Henry glanced at him. ‘I know what
you’re going to say,’ he answered. ‘You’re going to say that I should have
involved you, right from the moment I first thought about it.

You’re going to say that two heads
are better than one, and that four heads are better than two. You’re also going
to say that because I’m older, I seem to have taken charge of the Night
Warriors, and that I expect all of you to do whatever I tell you.’

Gil thought about all that, and then
nodded his head. ‘Yeah, that’s pretty much it.’

‘Well,’ said Henry, ‘I’ve been
thinking about that as much as you have, and all I can say is that I’m sorry. I
should have discussed the idea with you earlier. I should have discussed the
idea with
all
of you. Being a
teacher, I’m used to being in control, and I guess I expect to have things my
own way automatically, without thinking. But from now on, I’ll try to give the
Night Warriors the benefit of my experience without the authoritarianism that
seems to come along with it.’

‘Henry,’ Gil told him, ‘I like you a
lot. Don’t misunderstand me.’

‘Well, I’m pleased about that,
because I like you, too.’

They returned to Henry’s cottage,
where Henry went through to the kitchen to make some bologna and pickle
sandwiches, while Gil called Susan’s house to see if she was back from the
hospital.

‘She’s back,’ said her grandmother,
‘but the doctors say that she has to rest for at least a week, and in three
days she has to go to the clinic for more tests.’

‘I’m really pleased she recovered,’
said Gil.

‘Thank you, Gil,’ said her
grandmother, and Gil could hear that her tone had softened. ‘We praise the Lord
that she’s well again.’

‘Is it possible I could talk to her,
just for a minute?’

‘I’m sorry. Maybe tomorrow.’

‘Okay, then. Could you please just
tell her –
eleven.’

‘Eleven?’

‘It’s just a little joke between us,
that’s all.’

‘All right, then. I’ll tell her
eleven, whatever that means.’

Henry came in with the sandwiches
just as Gil put the phone down. ‘Any luck?’ he asked. ‘How is she?’

‘She’s fine. She has to rest, but
she should be able to join us tonight.’

‘Excellent,’ said Henry. He took a
mouthful of sandwich, and passed the plate to Gil, saying, ‘Help yourself,’
with his cheeks crammed.

When he had eaten two sandwiches and
drunk a large glass of milk, Henry checked the time. ‘I want to get back to the
Scripps Institute before it closes. I’m afraid we’ll have to play this one by
ear, since we don’t know where they’re keeping the creature, or how well it’s
guarded.’

‘Do you have a gun?’ asked Gil.

Henry shook his head. ‘I used to
have a Japanese sword that my brother brought back from Tinian.’

‘My father has a gun, behind the
counter in the Mini-Market. A .357 Python.’

Henry thought about this, and then
slowly shook his head. ‘It’s too risky, carrying a gun. Far too risky.’

‘Well, how else are you going to
kill this creature? Chop its head off? An axe is going to be a whole lot more
conspicuous than a gun.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Henry agreed.
‘But the question is, how are you going to get hold of it?’

‘What’s today? Thursday, right?
Well, tonight’s the night my father goes off early, to his sports club meeting.
I can get in there and lift that gun and nobody will even notice.’

Henry picked up a slice of pickle
that had escaped from one of his sandwiches and popped it into his mouth.
‘Well... very much against my better judgement...’

‘There’s something else,’ said Gil.
‘Why don’t we get Lloyd in on this? He looks pretty athletic, and pretty
bright. I think we ought to involve him, too.’

‘Do we know where he lives?’ asked
Henry.

‘Not far, somewhere on Lomas Santa
Fe Drive, I think he said. I’ll look it up in the telephone directory.’

So it was that a little after five
they left Henry’s cottage and drove to the Mini-Market at Solana Beach, where
Gil handed over his Mustang to Henry, and went into the store. Henry then drove
alone over to Lomas Santa Fe Drive, pulling up just past the fire station at a
neat small white-painted house with a green roof and green shutters.

He made sure that nobody was looking
and then he hopped out of the Mustang without opening the door.

He walked up the short sloping
driveway and rang the chimes. He waited two or three minutes before a black
woman in a purple-and-white dress answered the door, and stared at him
suspiciously. ‘Yes?’ she asked him.

‘You’re Mrs. Curran?’ he smiled,
straightening his necktie.

‘That’s right. What do you-all
want?’

‘I’m looking for Lloyd Curran. My
name is Henry Watkins. I’m a professor at the University of California at San
Diego.’

‘What do you want with Lloyd?’ Mrs.
Curran demanded.

‘I was talking to him yesterday. We
were discussing educational prospects, university degrees, things of that kind.
I have some information he asked for, on university curricula.’

Mrs. Curran stared at Henry for a
very long time, without saying a word. Then she turned back into the house, and
called, ‘Lloyd! Some professor wants you!’

Lloyd came to the door wearing a
bright red tee-shirt, and smacking his fist into a catcher’s mitt. He didn’t
recognise Henry at first, but then Henry lifted his hand in the unique salute
of the Night Warriors, his hand raised, palm facing behind him, and Lloyd
suddenly understood that he was receiving a house call from Kasyx, the
charge-keeper.

‘Hey, come on in,’ he said, but
Henry could hear the sounds of television and rock music and arguing children
inside, and so he shook his head. ‘Just come out and sit in the car for a
minute. We can talk there.’

‘Well – okay,’ Lloyd agreed,
reluctantly. They walked down the path together and climbed into Gil’s Mustang.
Lloyd ran his fingers over the dashboard, cut out of machine-turned aluminium,
and the special sport steering-wheel, and said, ‘Are these
your
wheels, man?’

Henry shook his head. ‘I haven’t
driven my own car in years. Up until the time I was initiated into the Night
Warriors – well, I had a little drinking problem.’

Lloyd was obviously impressed by
Henry’s candour. He said, ‘I smoke a little ganja now and again – but, you
know, nothing heavy.’

‘When you’re a Night Warrior you
don’t need anything like that,’ said Henry. ‘The high comes with the power.
Your slide-boxing is something special.’

Lloyd said, ‘Can I tell you
something?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Last night, in that dream, I was
scared. I mean I was really truly scared.’

‘You had every right to be,’ said
Henry.

‘Well, I know that, man, but the
strange thing is, when I woke up this morning, I felt disappointed. I felt that
I wanted to be back there, where the action was. I couldn’t believe it, but
that was the way I felt. I was scared, but I loved it. I felt like I was really
somebody, doing something.’

Henry smiled, and nodded. ‘You
were,’ he said. ‘How about your ex-wife?’ asked Lloyd. ‘Are you going to try to
rescue her tonight?’

‘I’m going to try to rescue her
now,’ Henry told him. ‘In a minute, Gil and I are driving up to the Scripps
Institute to kill that creature we met in that dream last night. We were
wondering if you would care to come with us.’

‘You mean – without being a Night
Warrior? Just as me? No armour, no slide-boxing?”

‘Just as you,’ said Henry. ‘The only
weapon we’re going to take with us is a gun, and the sole purpose of carrying
that is for executing the creature, nothing else.’

Lloyd blew out his cheeks, and
rapidly drummed his fingers on his knee. ‘You’re talking about breaking the
law, man.’

Henry said, ‘Yes. But then again,
no. We – you and me and Gil and Susan – we are the only people who truly
understand the danger of what is going on here. For that reason, we have to
think of
ourselves
as being the law.
Vigilants, do you see, whose duty it is to protect the world from the Devil.’

Lloyd said, ‘We’re taking a gun?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And we won’t have none of the
armour, none of those special skills?’

Henry shook his head.

‘Okay then,’ Lloyd agreed. ‘You can
count me in. Just let me go tell my ma I’m going to be late.’

Henry waited in the car. There was some
argument between Lloyd and his mother, but eventually he came scuffling out,
and climbed into the car again.

‘Everything all right?’ asked Henry,
starting up the engine.

‘Ma thinks I’m a kid still. She
don’t like spooks, neither.’

Henry U-turned the car, and headed
back towards Solana Beach. ‘I don’t think anyone ever called me a spook
before,’ he said, with an odd sense of satisfaction.

They picked up Gil by the Santa Fe
railroad crossing. He was carrying a brown paper sack full of groceries. He
waved, and ran across the road to meet up with them.

‘Did you get the gun?’ asked Henry,
heaving himself uncomfortably back into the driver’s seat.

Oil lifted a box of Cheerios out of
the sack. ‘Right inside here,’ he smiled, triumphantly. ‘I told Mom I was staying
around your place another night to revise some English Literature, and we
needed some groceries.’

‘She doesn’t object to your
staying?’

‘Not at all,’ said Gil, steering the
Mustang across the highway. ‘Once I convinced her that you weren’t a faggot.’

‘Thanks for nothing,’ said Henry.

It took them another fifteen minutes
to reach the Scripps Institute. One of the police cars was still parked in the
lot, but apart from that the building and its grounds were almost completely
deserted. Henry told Gil to park the Mustang at the very far end of the
parking-lot, under the shadow of a cypress tree, where it would be out of sight
of the main entrance to the marine biology department.

‘I’ll walk in, and ask to speak to
my wife,’ said Henry.

‘Your ex-wife,’ Gil corrected him.

‘That’s right,’ said Henry. ‘Then
I’ll walk through to the marine biology laboratory, and as I pass by I’ll open
that emergency exit right there – that brown door, you see it? – from the
inside. As soon as you hear the door click open, you should get yourselves
inside as fast as you can, but don’t close it after you. I’ll go back to the
reception desk, say that I’ve finished talking to my... ex-wife, and sign out.
Then I’ll come round to the emergency exit and let myself back in.’

‘What do we do once we’re in there?’
asked Lloyd, apprehensively.

‘To your right, about thirty feet
along the corridor, there’s a broom closet. Hide in there until I join you.’

‘That emergency exit – it doesn’t
have an alarm on it, does it?’ asked Gil.

‘Not the last time I used it. Soon
after we were divorced, I snuck into the laboratory to steal back my gold
fountain-pen. Andrea never even realised it was me who took it.

She was always complaining how
dishonest the laboratory staff were.’

‘What about the gun?’ asked Gil.

‘You’re the gunner, you take it.
Tuck it into your belt, at the back, and just make sure you don’t sit down too
quick. The last thing I want is an ass less Warrior.’

It was seven minutes to six, almost
time for the marine biology department to close.

Henry marched straight inside, and
Gil and Lloyd watched him through the window as he spoke to the receptionist.
At first, the receptionist seemed reluctant to let him through, but then they
saw him sign the visitor’s book and make his way back towards the laboratory.
They loped over to the emergency exit, and waited beside it for Henry to open
it up.