They Thirst Part 28

"Turn that up," Wes said.

Solange did, but the crackle of static was overpowering. "... traveler's warnings extend as far north as Lancaster-Palmdale and to the south as... Weather Services advises all drivers . . ." Static squealed and chuckled, then the station was gone.

The Mercedes was rocketing through downtown L.A. Solange saw that the tops of several of the taller buildings-the Union Bank, the twin black Bank of America monoliths, the silver cylinders of the Bonaventure Hotel, the looming Arco Plaza-were shrouded in a s.h.i.+mmering golden mist. Sand was being blown in sheets back and forth ahead of them across the freeway; wind roared past the car. When she looked at Wes, she saw a slight sheen of sweat clinging to his face. He glanced at her and smiled grimly. "We'll be fine," he said, "as soon as we make it to Interstate 15 and start heading through the mountains. They'll cut this wind down to a . . ."

His eyes riveted on something in the road, and he slammed on the brakes. There were three cars locked together in the middle of the freeway. He felt the Mercedes begin to slip to the left and realized with a start of terror that the sand had covered the highway like ice. He quickly turned into the skid. The tangle of wrecked cars loomed up ahead, one of them with a red taillight still blinking. As the Mercedes swept past them, still skidding, Wes heard the loud grinding of metal, and the car pitched sideways, but then they were in the clear, and the car snapped itself steady. He increased the wiper speed, but now he could barely see where he was going. On the right side of the freeway, a car had smacked into the guardrail, and Solange thought she saw a body hanging out of the driver's door. But then they pa.s.sed, and she didn't look back.

Not much time left, she thought. And went cold.

They crossed the sand-glutted ditch of the Los Angeles River and began to pa.s.s over the crowded houses and buildings of Boyle Heights. Wes switched on the air-conditioner because the temperature had risen sharply in the last five minutes. The air was stifling, and it was hard to draw a breath without tasting grit. They pa.s.sed an overturned car that was burning fiercely, the flames fanned by the sweeping wind.

And then a dark brown cloud that seemed to shake the earth with its fury filled the sky, rolling forward like the dust kicked up from the heels of an advancing army. It engulfed the Mercedes, completely blinding them and smothering the winds.h.i.+eld with sand. The wipers died under its weight. Wes cried out and steered the car to the right, his heart hammering. A pair of headlights came flying from his rearview mirror, and then a car spun around and around in front of them and disappeared into the dense curtain of sand.

"I can't see, I can't see!" Wes shouted. "We're going to have to pull off and stop, but Jesus Christ, I don't even know where I am!" He tried to graze the right guardrail, but he couldn't even find it. The engine coughed and stuttered.

"Oh, Jesus," Wes whispered. "Don't go out on me now! Don't!" Coughed again. He stared at the lurching rpms on his dash gauge. "Got enough sand in the engine to choke a f.u.c.king camel!" he said. He pumped the accelerator as the Mercedes gave a last gasp and went dead. It rolled perhaps ten yards and then stopped. Wes squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles cracked. "No!" he said.

"NO!".

With the end of the air-conditioner, the air had instantly become as stale as the inside of a desert tomb. Wes turned on the ignition but the air that came through the vents was searing-it seemed to be sucking oxygen out instead of letting it in. Wes wiped his face with the back of his hand and stared at the s.h.i.+ning beads of sweat. "So," he said quietly. "Here we sit." They were silent for a long while, listening to the taunts of the storm and the dry rasp of sand on metal.

"What time is it?" Solange finally asked.

He was afraid to look at his watch. "Almost five," he said. "Maybe later."

"It's going to be dark soon . . ."

"I KNOW THAT!" Wes said sharply, and was instantly ashamed. Solange looked quickly away from him out the window, but she couldn't see anything because the currents of sand were too thick. Wes switched on his emergency blinkers and prayed to G.o.d that any car coming up behind them would see the lights in time.

The soft click click click sounded like a sepulchral metronome, ticking away the few breaths of air they had left. Wes could see Solange's profile-delicate, stoic, said, "I'm sorry," he said softly. She nodded but didn't look at him.

Hardy to Laurel: This is another fine mess you've got us into! Wes felt a grim smile spread across his face, but it faded quickly. The car was still shuddering under riptides of wind, and now the winds.h.i.+eld was almost completely covered.

Wes could taste sand every time he inhaled; it gritted between his teeth. "We can't just sit here and . . ." He let his voice trail off. "We can't. But, Jesus! How long would we last out there?"

"Not very long," Solange said quietly.

"Yeah." He glanced at her and then away. "I guess those sheikhs who bought houses up in Beverly Hills feel right at home in this, huh? They can just open up their two-camel garages and hit the trail. If they can find the trail. Hmmm.

I could do some material on that-a nice five-or six-minute bit about Arabs buying up Beverly Hills. I can see the signs on Rodeo Drive-Chez Saudi, serving camel burgers around the clock. If you can't eat 'em, we'll sew you a nice coat... oh, s.h.i.+t." He'd suddenly gone very pale; he'd felt the presence of Death every time he took a shallow breath and sucked more grit into his lungs. He gripped the door handle and barely managed to stop himself before flinging it open. Uh-uh, he told himself, No way. I sure as h.e.l.l don't want to die, but I'd rather go slow than fast any old day. He forced himself to release his grip and sit back.

"I haven't been very good to you, have I?"

She said nothing.

"I'm a taker," he said, "just like all the rest of them. Shark, barracuda, piranha ... all those predatory-fish metaphors apply. I think I just wear a slightly better mask than most of them. Mine doesn't slip often because wearing a mask is what I do for a living. It has slipped, though, and I don't like what lies under it. Maybe the cops'll be along pretty soon. Maybe we can get towed out of this mess, huh?"

Solange looked at him. There were tears in her eyes. "I've seen behind your mask. There's a Bantu saying: You are what you are when you awaken. Before you open your eyes, before you swim up out of sleep, that's the real person. Many mornings I've watched you, and I've seen you curl uplike a little boy needing protection or love or just . . . warmth. I think that's all you ever really needed. But you mistrust it. You push it away and look for it somewhere else, and so you never really find it at all."

He grunted and came up with a line from "Sheer Luck." "Elementary, Dr. Batson. Deucedly clever, what? s.h.i.+t! This f.u.c.king storm's not going to stop. I've never seen so much sand without a bottle of Coppertone in my hand and a transistor radio beside the chair." He told himself to start taking shallower breaths, maybe then she could get more air that way. "That's where I'd like to be right now. The beach at Acapulco. How'd you like that?"

"It would be ... very nice."

"d.a.m.n straight. That's what we'll do when we get towed in. We'll make reservations at the Royal Aztec . . ." He stopped speaking as the car shuddered again.

"You're the best of them all," Solange said. "No one was ever any better to me than you are. I will take care of you-if I can." Then she hugged herself close to him, and he held her very tightly. He kissed her forehead, tasting her honey-pepper flavor, then listening to the moaning winds. He was starting to strain his breath through his teeth.

And around the stranded car the wind whispered like the voice of a little girl in a dream Wes had had a couple of nights ago. Come out. Come outside and play with me. Come out, come out . . .

... or I'll come in ...

ELEVEN.

Palatazin brought the Falcon to a halt. "Wait a minute," he said, staring up through the winds.h.i.+eld; the wipers were turned to full-speed, the headlights on bright. "I thought I saw something." What he thought he'd seen was a huge dark shape up there amidst the rocks and trees through a quick break in the swirling amber clouds. Now there was nothing, just sand spinning against the gla.s.s.

"What was it?" Gayle leaned forward from the back seat. "The castle?"

"I'm not sure. I just saw it for a second before the clouds closed up. I couldn't tell very much except that it was big and way up on the mountain. It might've been a couple of miles from here, I don't know. Wait! There!" He pointed. The clouds had broken again, and for an instant they all could see it quite clearly, its high turrets standing against a darkening gold sky. From this distance it looked to Palatazin much like the ruins atop Mount Jaegar. Yes, he thought. That's the place. That's where he's hiding. At that height the vampire king would have an un.o.bstructed panorama of L.A.; he could gloat as the lights went out in house after house. The castle looked as st.u.r.dy and impregnable as any fortress Palatazin had ever seen in the mountains of Hungary. Seeing it was one thing, he thought, reaching it was quite another thing entirely. The cold knot of tension that had formed in his stomach suddenly expanded, sending out chill tendrils into his arms and legs. He felt pitifully weak and frightened out of his wits.

"The wind's getting worse," Jo said in a tight, strained voice.

"Yes, I know." Sand had been spinning across the road for fifteen minutes now, and Palatazin could see piles of it collecting in pockets between rocks. Higher up the clouds tumbled over each other like great yellow dogs hearing the dinner whistle. They closed again, sealing off the Kronsteen castle. The Falcon's engine gave out a sudden wheeze and a tremble, and Palatazin revved it a couple of times. He looked at his watch and saw with horror that it was twenty minutes after five. With these thick clouds rolling in, darkness would fall within thirty minutes. The nagging thought that they would not make it to the castle in time now rang out in his brain like a clear clarion of warning.

"We're going to have to turn back," he said finally. There were no objections. Now the trick was finding a place to turn around. He drove on, conscious of the aged engine's sputtering. Suddenly a wall of wind came roaring through the scrub trees to the right, parting them like a comb through hair. It hit the car like a bulldozer, forcing it toward the rocky lip of the road. Palatazin fought for control. Jo screamed as the car shuddered to the left-hand shoulder and started to totter over the edge; she could see toy houses with their red roofs below and toy cars scattered on black and gold ribbons. Nothing moved down there for as far as she could see. Palatazin slammed the gears.h.i.+ft into first and wrenched up the parking brake. The wind roared on, carrying wild, twisting coils of sand down into Hollywood. Very carefully Palatazin put the Falcon in reverse and backed away from the edge, slowly releasing the brake.

"We'll have to go up to find a place to turn," he heard himself say. His voice was dry and thin. "Neither one of you should've come. I was a fool to let you."

He climbed farther, looking for a cut in the trees or rocks that he could back the Falcon into. The storm was steadily worsening; another quarter-mile up the terrain was completely covered with blowing sand. It reminded him of the blizzards that had roared through Krajeck, particularly the storm that had been moaning outside the night his father had come home. A thought struck him like a blow to the temple, Did the vampires have any measure of control over the weather? If they did, this freak sandstorm would be an effective way to immobilize the city's population.

It would cut people off from each other, keep them confined to homes or offices.

Planes wouldn't be flying, and the sea would be thrashed into a frenzy as well.

And driving? Palatazin realized they might not get down off this mountain alive.

If the winds didn't take them cras.h.i.+ng over the edge, if the sand didn't choke off the engine, if darkness didn't fall too soon ... He could feel the castle crouched above them, perhaps less than a half-mile away along this twisting, sand-slick road.

Something huge and gray suddenly bounded up onto the hood, its snarling face pressed close to the gla.s.s. Gayle said "Jesus!" and Jo grasped Palatazin's arm.

The thing looked more wolf than dog, but he could see the nail-studded collar and the tags around its neck. Its thick coat was full of sand, its eyes yellow and fierce. Over the sound of the wind, Palatazin could hear its low, menacing growls. The message was obvious. Palatazin saw other dogs slinking on the road ahead-a boxer, an Irish setter, a few mutts. They all shared the same glazed expressions of ferocity. So, he thought, the vampire king has made sure his fortress is well protected. Even if we could reach the castle, we'd be mangled by these dogs when we got out of the car. When Palatazin slowly drove on, the wolf-dog howled with rage and started scratching at the gla.s.s; it snapped repeatedly, as if trying to bite Palatazin's hands on the steering wheel. In another moment he saw a s.p.a.ce on the right large enough to turn the Falcon around in. The wolf-dog stayed crouched on the hood, its baleful eyes glowering into Palatazin's until the car was turned back down the mountain. Then it jumped off and disappeared with the rest of the pack. The Falcon chugged like a weary locomotive, winds buffeting it from all directions. Once the engine rattled and quit, and they were rolling down to Hollywood, but Palatazin kept trying the key and finally it caught again, wheezing like an old man with emphysema. He raced the darkness back toward Romaine Street, threading his way across Hollywood and Sunset boulevards-both dotted with stranded cars-and finding some streets blocked by wrecks or dunes. The Falcon crossed a deserted Santa Monica Boulevard and made it about three more blocks before it staggered and stopped dead. Palatazin tried the engine several times, but now the battery was groaning. Sand filled the engine. They were stranded almost five blocks from the house, and night was falling fast. The interior of the car was already stifling. "Can we run for it?" Gayle asked softly.

"I don't know. It's five blocks. Not so far maybe. Maybe too far." He looked at Jo and then quickly turned away. Sand was already covering the winds.h.i.+eld, sealing them in. It was as if they were being buried alive. "It's a long way," he said finally.

"What about these other houses?" Gayle asked. "Can't we ask for shelter?"

"We could, yes. But do you see any lights? Any life? How do we know we won't be stepping into a nest of vampires? How do we know some other poor souls won't mistake us for vampires and try to kill us? My house is protected with the garlic and the crucifixes. These are just . . . waiting for invasion."

"So what do we do? Sit here and suffocate?"

". . . or suffocate out there?" Palatazin pointed out. "The wind will slow us down. You'll get more sand into your lungs than air, just like this car did. Just like all these other cars did. But no. We definitely cannot stay here. The vampires won't be hampered by the storm because they don't breathe. So . .

." He looked at Jo again and smiled weakly. "Shall we flip a coin?"

"h.e.l.l no!" Gayle said. "I'm not staying here!" Jo shook her head. "We try to make it back."

"All right then." Five blocks, he thought. G.o.d, what a distance! He was going to have to leave the stakes, mallet, and holy water in the trunk; there would be no way to carry them. No, he had to have the holy water at all costs. He took the keys out of the ignition and shrugged out of his coat, handing it to Jo. "Keep that up to your face," he told her. "Both of you, remember to breathe through your mouth with your teeth gritted. I'm going to get something out of the trunk.

When I knock on your window, Jo, I want you to step out and grasp my hand. When you touch me, knock on Miss Clarke's window, and she'll take hold of your shoulder. Then we'll start to move. I doubt if we'll be able to see very far out there. If one of us loses the others, don't move from where you are. Just keep shouting and cover your face with your hands. Okay?" They nodded.

He started to open the door and then stopped. The car vibrated with the force of the wind. He got the trunk key in position so he wouldn't waste precious seconds fumbling. "All right," he said. "I'm going." He sat there for a few more seconds, then he stepped out of the car.

A blast of oven-hot wind seemed to suck him out. He got the door closed and pulled himself along the side of the car, his lower face tucked into the crook of his left arm. He couldn't even take a fraction of a breath without sucking in sand. A crosscurrent of wind hit him behind the knees, knocking him to the ground. He began to crawl, his face flayed raw. He pulled himself around to the trunk, got the key in, and twisted. The trunk shot open. He found the cloth-wrapped vial and used the cloth to s.h.i.+eld his mouth and nose, putting the vial in his back pocket. Then he struggled around to the other side of the car.

The wind and sand nearly dragged him down.

When he rapped on the gla.s.s, Jo stepped out and almost fell, crying out as their hands slipped. When she was ready, she knocked on the gla.s.s behind her and Gayle came out. She grasped Jo's shoulder like a vise. The short human chain started off, being whipped and shoved along the street. In another moment Palatazin felt Jo's hand grinding his fingers together, and he knew she couldn't get a breath.

"NOT FAR!" he shouted, instantly choking. She nodded, her slitted eyes weak and glazed. All he could see of Gayle was a faint dark shape. Jo fell. As he helped her to her feet, dark motes spun before his eyes, and he knew they were all slowly suffocating to death. They weren't going to make it; there were still three blocks to go. "COME ON!" he shouted, and pulled them toward the gray shapes on the right-hand side of the street. The shapes slowly materialized into wood-framed, two-storied houses not much different in design from his own. They were all terribly dark, and Palatazin was afraid of what they might be holding. He tripped over something that lay on the sidewalk, half-covered with sand. It was the corpse of a young man, a bullet hole in his cheek. Palatazin stared dumbly at the body for a few seconds and felt the hot waspish buzz pa.s.s his face before he heard a m.u.f.fled crack! He looked up in time to see the orange flash of the second shot fired from an upstairs window in the house that stood before him. The corpse at his feet shuddered. A man's voice rose to a frenzied wail, "Get away, ye heathen things of Satan! G.o.d Almighty shall strike you DEAD! And DEAD! And DEAD!" Palatazin pulled Jo after him, running toward the next house. The front door, its paint scoured down to the bare wood, was closed but unlocked. Palatazin plunged inside as the madman's shrieking turned into a sob of anguish.

When Gayle was through the door, Palatazin slammed it shut and bolted it. The air within the house was stale and heavy, but at least there were no torturing winds here. His face and hands felt raw, and he could see that Gayle's eyes were terribly bloodshot. Jo was gagging; she still held on to his coat, and sand was slithering off it to the floor. He helped Jo over to a chair and wiped the beads of cold sweat off her face with his cloth. Her eyes were dark and vacant; she didn't seem to know where she was. "Jo?" he said. "We're all right now. We're safe." She began to cry very softly. Through the wind's howl Palatazin could hear the madman's scream. "... show yourselves! I know you're hiding in there, ye foul Satan sp.a.w.n!" He began to sing in a high, croaking voice, "Shall we gather at the riiiiiiver, the beautiful, the beautiful riiiiiiver . . .?"

Palatazin shut him out. Now he was wondering if they were alone in this house. The idea of being locked in there with an armed maniac filled him like sour wine. He was glad to have the rea.s.suring weight of the .38 in its shoulder holster, though from the size of the bullet hole in that corpse's face the man next door had to have a high-velocity rifle.

Gayle had the same idea at the same time. "What if we're not alone here?" she whispered.

"Anyone home?" he called out. There was no answer. Palatazin took his gun out of its holster and released the safety. He walked through the neatly furnished living room and into a short hallway where a flight of stairs led up to the second floor. "Anyone here?" he said, watching for the slightest movement. "We won't hurt you! We just wanted to get out of the storm!" He waited another moment, but there was still no reply. He put his gun away and went back to the living room. "I think we're alone," he told Gayle. "Maybe they got out before the storm hit."

Gayle looked around. There was a circular red-and-blue braided rug on a hardwood floor, a large, comfortable-looking sofa with scrolled arms and legs, a dark-stained coffee table where a few copies of Antique Monthly, National Geographic, and Horizon magazines were neatly arranged, a couple of overstuffed chairs with clear plastic on the arms; and a brick fireplace over which hung an upside-down horseshoe. She could see ashes being stirred in the hearth by the wind's force.

There were framed sepia-tone prints on the walls and on the fireplace mantel a grouping of color photographs-a middle-aged couple smiling and hugging each other, kids and dogs at play.

The madman next door brayed with laughter.

"Jesus!" Gayle said softly. "That b.a.s.t.a.r.d tried to blow our heads off." Palatazin nodded and stepped over to Jo, who'd regained at least some of her color. "You're better now?"

"Yes," she said, and smiled weakly. "Better."

"Night's falling," Gayle said. "Very soon now." She pulled aside a curtain to look out at the street and could see very little but the swirling sand. The darkness was creeping. She turned and stared at Palatazin. "This storm will. .

keep them away, too, won't it?"

"No. They don't breathe, and they have some kind of transparent eyelids that will keep the sand out. They have us where they want us."

"And where it that?" she asked.

"Trapped. All of us. Everyone in this city. No way out." He held her gaze for a moment and then looked away quickly because he'd realized they were in an unprotected house-no garlic smeared on the windowsills, no crucifixes on the doors and windows. He dropped his hand to his pocket to touch the bottle of holy water there; it seemed terribly small. "I'm afraid," he said softly, "that it's much too late for your story to do any good. The balance has s.h.i.+fted in their favor. They hold the power-"

"No!" she said. "There's still something we can do! We can call somebody, the police or the National Guard or ... somebody-" She was silenced by the sand that spattered up against the window, hissing like hot fat at the bottom of a frying pan.

"I think you know better than that. I doubt if the phones are working. I'd try the lights if I wasn't afraid we'd stand out like a neon sign over a vampire diner. The air's none too good in here, is it?"

Gayle put her head in her hands. "s.h.i.+t," she said in a faraway dreamer's voice.

"All I ever wanted to do was ... be a good writer. That's all. Was that too much to ask?"

"I don't think so."

"I wanted to leave my mark. I wanted to ... do something important. Be somebody important instead of a n.o.body . . . which-let's face it-I am." Her voice cracked a little bit, but she quickly cleared her throat, and then she was okay. "All mouth and fake guts," she said. "Will . . . what they do ... be fast or slow?"

Palatazin pretended not to hear her.

The night closed in.

Father Silvera had reached his church before the worst of the storm hit, and now he opened the front door a crack and peered out. The street was deserted and already heaped with small sand drifts. There were no lights in any of the tenement windows simply because there was no electricity. Silvera had turned on the sanctuary lights for perhaps fifteen minutes before they flickered several times, dimming steadily with each flicker, and then went out. Darkness was filling up the church, deepening every minute. He looked out for a while longer, narrowing his eyes against flying grit, then went back to his room. He found several candles, meant for either weddings or funerals, tucked away in a drawer, and he lit all of them, dripping wax onto saucers and sticking the candles into the hardening puddles. He took the candles out into the sanctuary and placed them around the gleaming bra.s.s crucifix on the altar. Looking at the Cross shamed him. He prayed that Palatazin would be safe in his journey and that when he found that castle, there would be no master there, no vampires there at all.

He prayed that Palatazin was wrong, that he was suffering from fatigue or overwork. But at the back of his brain a shadow had begun to stir, and he was trying very hard to keep it from fully awakening. He had recalled something that an older priest had told him during his education in Mexico: "Some men are prisoners of rational thought." Perhaps he had been seeing the world through bars for a long time.

The sanctuary door creaked open. Silvera looked up from the altar, to see a small figure come staggering out of the storm, whirlwinds of sand spinning around him. It was Leon LaPaz. Before Silvera could reach him, he fell, coughing violently, to the floor. Silvera helped him up onto a pew and then used all his strength against the door to keep the sand out.

"Are you all right, Leon?" he asked the boy, kneeling down beside him. Leon nodded, but he was pale and there were tear tracks down his cheeks. "I'll get you some water," Silvera said. He hurried back to his room, took a gla.s.s from a shelf over the sink, and turned on the cold water tap. The pipes stuttered for a few seconds, then let out a thin trickle of brownish water. d.a.m.n it!

Silvera thought. The sand's even getting into the water! He sipped it, then spat it into the sink. The stuff was undrinkable.

"I'm sorry, Leon," he said when he went back out to the boy. "The water's going to have to wait." He put a finger under Leon's chin and tilted his face up. The boy's lips were wind-chapped, pulped, and swollen. "What were you doing out in that? You could've died out there!" Then he suddenly asked, "Where's Sandor? You father hasn't come home yet?" Leon shook his head, his eyes glimmering with tears. He was still breathless, and it was difficult for him to speak. "No ... a man ... came ... a little while ago ... for my sister . . ."

"A man? What man?"

"A ... black man," Leon said. "To the apartment. He was tall and . . . mean and ... he told me to come tell you . . . 'Cicero remembers' . . ."

"Cicero?" Silvera remembered the name of the black heroin dealer he'd stuffed into a garbage can. "When was this?"

"Maybe . . . maybe ten minutes." Leon gripped the priest's arms with small, trembling hands. "He took Juanita, Father! He said for me to come tell you he remembered and then he ... took my sister and left! Where'd he take her, Father?

What's he going to do to her?"

Silvera was stunned. What was Cicero doing in this neighborhood during a raging sandstorm? Perhaps he'd been selling more horse and had been caught by the winds, unable to get out? And now that he had four-year-old Juanita, what would he do to her?

"There are other people in my building, Father," Leon said. "A lot of the windows are broken, and the sand's getting in. They can't breathe too good."

"How many others?"