Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight (2 page)

The sun was becoming a memory now as darkness settled in deeper. Sitting in the soft glow of assorted dash lights, his mirror sunglasses reflecting green squares, Bob lifted his deputy’s hat for a moment and scratched at his bushy hair. He dropped it back on his head and checked his watch. Ten-thirty almost, just about time for the teeny-bopper crowd from Lost Mesa to roar out of the hamburger joints there and hightail it to Avery, where half-a-dozen bars rarely checked for ID and the other half-dozen
never
did. Deputy Martel knew very well that if he had the patience, these same kids would roar from Avery back to Lost Mesa drunk off their asses, and he could hand out DWIs like Christmas candy.

But he couldn’t wait. His shift ended at midnight tonight, and Sheriff Tupper, the human whale that was Bob’s boss, would take over the reins of duty. This was the part of the job that galled Bob Martel so much: he was young and physically fit, could walk on his freaking
knuckles
faster and farther than Sheriff Tupper could ever walk on his big flat feet, but the son of a bitch outranked him and got all the choice missions and the choice perps.

But not tonight.

It was almost eleven when the first true speeder swooshed past the billboard where Martel was lurking. It was a dark and shiny Pontiac Firebird convertible with the top folded all the way down and the driver’s foot crushed to the floor so hard his heel was digging up asphalt. Deputy Martel, his nerves already humming with anticipation, grinned as his hand jerked to the dashboard and flipped the switch that made his overhead bar of reds, whites, and blues flash on. This guy had to be doing eighty or ninety, a hundred even; he had nearly sucked the Holiday Inn advertisement off the billboard with such speed. He was now demoted from the rank of driver to the rank of perp, and Deputy Martel had every happy intention of catching him and making him regret every inch of this felonious highway misuse.

Martel slapped his hand to the official key stuck in the column, cranked it, and popped the headlights fully on. He slammed the gearshift from Park into Drive and crunched the gas pedal down, already spinning the steering wheel hard to the right. The phrase “Yee-hah!” leapt out of his mouth. Bouncing up and down on the seat in his brown and yellow uniform, his cop-lights making colored flashes in the dark, he poured on the speed and gave chase.

He thought.

It took a second. His elbows stopped flapping and his grin faded into a confused frown. He looked up, he looked down. He looked at the disappearing taillights of the Pontiac, looked at the glowing instrument panel, which made his tight little face look Martian green.

“Bitch!”

He cranked the key again, this time listening to hear if the Ford’s motor wanted to start or not. It did, then quit, then ran again. Strange activities took place under the hood, knocks and groans and steamy things that hissed and quit, then hissed again and smelled, to Deputy Martel, like the mentholated steam he’d had to inhale as a child because of asthma.

“Junkyard pile of shit!” he screamed when everything died again. He pounded the steering wheel with his open hands. “Run, bitch,
run!
The perp is halfway to Albuquerque already! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeze?”

Chugga-chugga-chugga. Boom-rattle-die.

He could have wept.

Until the next car roared past. The Holiday Inn sign seemed to suck inward as the noise came; when the black Cadillac shot past with a breathy roar the sign puffed out and wobbled on its posts, threatening to fall over. Deputy Martel hauled in a wondering breath while the car’s taillights painted thin red streaks across the lenses of his sunglasses. Major perps here, folks. Someone needed a ticket in a very bad way.

Martel was reaching to try the key again when the Firebird’s wheels locked up and it went into a long, tire-burning skid. The headlights lurched into view, were replaced by the taillights as the car spun, then came into view again, filtered through dense blue tire-smoke. It screamed to a stop, blocking both lanes of the highway.

Martel bleated and groaned as the old Ford’s engine cranked and cranked without coming fully to life. He watched in helpless fascination as the black Cadillac bore down on the Firebird, its headlights piercing the night in two jittering cones that winked and flashed off the Firebird’s dusty hide. Rather than slowing, the Cadillac seemed to be speeding up, probably going better than eighty now, maybe ninety.

Martel’s police cruiser jumped to sudden life. He smashed the shift lever down with his fist and gave the old Ford a big new dent under the gas pedal. Tires spun and cooked as two huge founts of gravel and dirt shot from the wheels to clatter against the Holiday Inn sign. Fishtailing crazily, Martel found the road and gave chase. He saw the door of the Firebird hinge open. He saw the barrel of some kind of gun, a rifle maybe, that a dark figure levered upward. Flame popped out of it once, twice. The windshield of the Cadillac imploded yet still it gained speed. Martel thought—but could not be sure at this insane pace—that he saw the dark figure leap from the open Firebird and somersault away from it, down into the ditch beside the road. At perhaps one hundred miles per hour now, the Cadillac closed the last few yards. The head of the driver was very visible in Martel’s headlights, a driver making no move to slow down or swerve or do
anything
to avoid a collision.

The two cars met. The explosion as they were welded to each other was huge and bright, making Martel cross his arms over his eyes and reminding him very much of the artillery range at Fort Sill, where he had humped bombs for so long. The noise was gigantic, a tremendous
kawhoom!
that nearly blew his hat off his head. He mashed both feet onto the brake pedal and sent the Ford into a long, loping curve that nearly ended in the ditch. Burning junk and drops of molten metal rained down, cracking his windshield and utterly ruining the wax job he had given the Ford not a week ago with his own elbow grease.

It did not concern him for long. White and yellow flames geysered into the black sky, lighting the entire area and throwing long, twisting shadows across the desert floor and its collection of sagebrush. He grabbed for the radio mike, missed it, tried again.

“Mavis? You there?”

He waited. Mavis Dornberry was not famous for staying awake during the night shift.

“Mavis! Come in, dammit!”

The radio crackled. Her tired voice came through as grumpy and lifeless as a yawn: “Yeah, Bob, what now?”

“Get Sheriff Tupper. Get him fast. There’s been a humongo car crash out here on forty-seven just outside of town.”

“Bag the perp yet?” she asked with infinite sarcasm.

Martel noticed that his hands were shaking. Hell,
all
of him was shaking. “Cut the crap, Mavis, I’m not in the mood for it. Rattle Tupper’s chain and get his big fat ass out here
now.
Got me?”

“You’re got,” she replied nastily. “Out.”

Martel swung his door open and stepped out, covering the top of his head with his arms, wary of the ashes and debris that were still pattering down. The heat from the burning cars kept him at a respectful distance. He looked over to the ditch where he thought the man had landed after piling out of the Firebird, but it was a long strip of burning gasoline no one could have survived. Besides, the explosion alone probably did him in; no one could have been within fifty yards without getting his arms and legs blown off by the concussion.

He skirted the wreck. Acrid smoke burned his nostrils, smelling mostly of fried paint and cooked foam rubber. Doubtless the guy in the Cadillac was in there deader than dogshit and burning like a torch, but he decided that the drunken bastard probably deserved it. Both of them did, for speeding like that.

He stepped back to the cruiser, which was now idling quite nicely with no hint at having been asleep on duty. Scowling, he launched a flat-footed kick at the passenger door that left a respectable dimple in the aging sheet metal. See if
he
would ever wax the renegade son of a bitch again.

Something tapped his shoulder then. He brushed quickly at it, cringing in case it was something on fire.

It was. The tall man standing behind him had wisps of smoke drifting from tattered holes in his suit. Part of his hair was smoldering. His face was streaked with soot and his tie had been burnt all the way up to the knot at his neck.

“Yeeks!” Martel exclaimed, for lack of anything better.

“Pardon me,” the man said. “Did you happen to see which way that other fellow went?”

“Hubba,” Martel informed him stupidly. “Dubba-hubba.”

“Please try to think,” the burning man said. “I simply must find him.”

Martel raised an arm and pointed to the wreckage. “Dat.”

“East? That way?”

He nodded, shook his head, nodded again. At any moment now, he assumed, he would wake up and find he had dozed off behind the Holiday Inn sign.

“Very well,” the man said. He primly flicked a fallen ash off the back of his hand. Martel saw a very nice gold watch around his wrist. The glass crystal was milky white from having melted recently. In the other hand he held a small leather case that looked just as bad. The man sketched a brief salute. “You’ve been too kind, and I am very sorry about the mess.”

He started away. Martel found his mind at last. “But how?” He flapped his hands, pointed at the wreckage. “How did? . . .”

The man smiled. “Airbags. You just gotta love them. Wonderful safety device. Ingenious discovery. Stupendous invention. Seat belts help a lot, too. Now let me be the first to say goodbye.”

He walked away. Martel found himself waving bye-bye like an idiot. “Wait!” he called, but already the man had vanished into the desert.

2

D
anny Long was only eight years old, but he felt like eighty tonight. During the years the little town called Wormwood died its slow death, he had seen friends and classmates leave the place in droves, along with their mommies and daddies, of course. Now Wormwood was officially dead: there was nothing left here anymore but a boarding house and one tired old gas station, and even they were about to go belly-up. His mother and father owned and operated the Eureka Cafe on the edge of town, which was kept alive only by the handful of tourists who would bumble in sometimes, asking directions to Albuquerque or the like, and wind up staying for chow. Even the school had closed its doors, and Danny was tutored at home by Cordelia Jackson, the town’s only whore. Life was odd in Wormwood. It was about to get odder.

He was sitting in the dark on the old wooden porch of the Eureka Cafe, killing time while his mom and dad cleaned up for the night. His dad, Homer, was currently putting all the chairs onto the red-and-white checkered tables so his mom could mop the floor, complaining all the while. Her name was Wanda, so Danny had a crew of oddballs named Homer and Wanda for parents: Homer the clown, and Wanda the Wicked Witch of the West. Added also to the roster of names was a certain fellow named Roach, who did some cooking and some cleaning in exchange for free food and a couple of dollars a day. This dowdy existence and these dowdy people formed the sight and sound of Danny’s life: Homer, Wanda, and Roach. And, of course Cordelia Jackson, the jaded former schoolteacher turned prostitute.

Who wouldn’t be sick of it? Dullsville all the way, even for an eight-year-old.

And now, inside the cafe as it settled down for the night, his mom and dad began the usual late-night arguing. Danny considered covering his ears, but he knew the routine almost by heart.

“Come on, Homer, get a move on! The way you’re moving it’ll be dawn before we’re done!” That would be Wanda.

This would be Homer: “You know, if you ever got off of your fat ass and helped, we might get home a little faster!”

After a bit of this, Roach chimed in: “Jeez, put a lid on it, willya? I got a date tonight!”

And on, and on. Dullsville all the way. Nothing ever happened at the Eureka Cafe except lousy food and loud bickering. Nothing.

Danny Long was almost dozing in the dark when crunching footsteps made themselves known on the pot-holed street. A shadow loomed in the moonlight, thick and distorted, bobbing to its owner’s footfalls. Then the footsteps grew slower, quieter: somebody was trying to be sneaky all of a sudden, Danny guessed, and doing a bad job of it. Directly in front of him sat two elderly cars gleaming mellowly under the moonlight, the ailing family Bronco and the truck that Roach liked to tool around in like some kind of big shot. Beyond them lay the rest of the town, where only a few houses cast any kind of light through their windows and the rest were boarded up.

The owner of the footsteps crept into view, a man with his shoulders hunched quite criminally and his head swiveling from side to side in the dark. As he moved, his face caught a wedge of moonlight and held it a moment. Danny, crunching himself a little tighter as he sat in the safety of the dark, took mental notes: a stranger about as old as his father, kind of tall and kind of thin. Weeds and pieces of sagebrush stuck out of his hair. His skin was shiny with sweat and his eyes gleamed like big black olives.

The stranger edged closer. Something flashed in his hand briefly, just long enough for Danny to see: a knife with a long chrome blade and big neat holes in the folding handles. Danny’s friend Mark Oleson had found one like that out by the highway a few years back, just before he moved away, but his dad made him throw it away. Besides, it was all bent and rusty. But not this one, the one the stranger was advancing with. The man stopped at the passenger door of the Bronco, eyeballed things for a bit, then went to work trying to jimmy the lock. Metal crunched and squealed in tiny spurts of sound.

Though Danny’s heart had slipped into a higher gear, he felt no fear at all. This dark man attacking the door of the Bronco was interesting as hell, far more interesting than what Wormwood usually had to offer. Yet he felt compelled to speak; it was, after all, his dad’s only set of wheels.

“So like, whatcha doing?” he offered into the silence.

The stranger became a motionless block of darkness. A bit of moonbeam gleamed on the topmost part of his head, where a small twig of tumbleweed stuck up out of his hair like a blond cowlick.