They Thirst (67 page)

"Dead end," he said to Silvera. "We can't get around that."

"Turn right on Soto. There's a Hollywood Freeway entrance ramp about eight blocks ahead."

Wes was relieved to find that the ramp was clear, but when the Crab had crested it, the headlights picked out one wrecked or stalled car after another. The dunes shifted restlessly, threatening to spill over and bury the Crab. There were many corpses caught in the airless cars and many who had been caught out in the open as well. Some of them looked as if they were simply sleeping; others had died in agony, eyes and mouths filled with sand. Wes felt his nerve breaking. The Crab made it about fifteen yards before it was halted by another mass of sand and metal. The wind sucked and pulled wildly at the vehicle.

"Back down the ramp," Silvera said tersely. He reached back and leaked some oxygen into the cab. "We'll have to find another way."

"THERE'S NOT ANOTHER WAY!" Wes shouted. "Jesus Christ! Everything's blocked!"

Silvera waited for him to calm down and said, "Take it easy. That's not going to solve anything and it's sure as hell not going to get us across L.A."

Wes was trembling. If he'd ever needed a joint or a plain old cigarette before, this was the time, but he had neither and there was no air to spare, anyway.
Do you want to give up?
he asked himself.
No! I can't! Like the priest says, we'll have to find another way . . .

"Back up," Silvera said.

"I can't see a thing." The rear windwhield was layered with sand, and he could envision backing into one of those huge dunes. It would be good-bye with a slither and a moan. The engine kicked a couple of times, and Wes's heart started to pound.

"All right." Silvera got one of the oxygen masks from the rear compartment and slipped it on. The second of the oxygen tanks was in a backpack carrier that would allow it to fit right between the shoulder blades. Silvera fumbled for a moment while he attached the rubber line from the mask into the tank's small feed-out nozzle; there was a soft
click
as the male and female joints connected. He turned on the oxygen and took a breath of sweet, cold air, then shrugged the backpack over his shoulders. "I'll go out to guide you down," he said, his voice muffled by the mask. "I'll be right behind you. I'll slam on the right side when I want you to turn right, left for left. Got that?"

"Yeah," Wes said. "For Christ's sake be careful!"

Silvera stepped out and the wind almost threw him to the ground. He moved like an astronaut in an alien atmosphere, cabled to his life-support system. There were two half-obscured corpses right beside the Crab, a woman clutching a little girl. He shivered and went around to the back as Wes put the Crab into reverse and started moving. Several times Silvera had to hammer against the sides to keep Wes from backing into either a dune or a wrecked car. When they reached the ramp, cold sweat clung to his face, and he was dizzy from hyperventilating. He quickly climbed in, took his seat, and removed the mask. "You're clear," he said. "But I think we can rule out the freeways from now on."

They passed under the freeway and turned left on Marengo, moving past the dark buildings of the County General Hospital complex where a doctor named Doran had told Silvera he was dying. Now he wondered if Doran had beat him there, or whether the good doctor might now be making a totally different kind of midnight house call. They curved slowly around the complex to North Main Street, which Silvera knew would take them across the river and through downtown L.A.

The Crab was almost across the North Main bridge when its headlights picked out the monstrous cluster of yellow dunes blocking their way.

Rats in a maze,
Wes thought as he braked the Crab.
Thats what we are.
The headlights gleamed off the grillwork of a Cadillac caught under a mountain of sand. The dunes loomed up like the mountains of the moon.

"Back up," Silvera said, tension crackling in his voice. His face had turned the color of dried clay.

It took them over another hour of starts and stops at the dead-ends of mangled wreckage and blowing dunes before they found a clear way across the river at 7th Street, more than five miles south of the place where they'd first tried to cross. Factories and warehouses stood on the other side of the river, all of them dead and dark. Chain link fences had been blown down, and they lay tangled across 7th Street like barbed wire. About a block further was an overturned truck in the center of the street.

Wes slowed and turned right, driving along
a narrower street with warehouses on each side. He thought he knew where he was now. Downtown L.A. lay just a few streets over, and from the center of town he could wind his way up into Hollywood. It would be a fearful trip, but nothing compared to what might be waiting for them in Kronsteen's old fortress. The Crab still seemed to be in pretty good shape, though the engine continued to sputter. Wes figured it had been built for rough duty, though, and probably had a system of air filters that trapped most of the sand. Still, he recalled that it had been traveling very close behind the massive troop carrier, presumably so that the bigger vehicle would take the brunt of the storm. The Crab might shudder and die at any minute, or it might carry them all the way without a whimper. He just didn't know.

Suddenly Silvera looked at him oddly. "Stop," he ordered.

"What?" Wes said. "Stop where?"

"Here."

Wes braked the vehicle; it slid a couple of feet and then halted. "What is it?"

"I don't know. I . . . thought I saw something back there. We passed a warehouse on the right about fifty feet. I don't know what it was I saw, but. . . . something was stacked on the loading dock and . . ." He looked back over his shoulder but couldn't see anything. "Caskets," he said softly. "I think there were caskets stacked on that loading dock."

Wes put the Crab into reverse. The dark outline of
a
metal-walled warehouse came up into Silvera's window. The remnants of a chain link fence stuck up out of the sand like picket-fence slats on a New England beach. There was a break in the blowing, grayish-yellow sheets, and through a clear hole they both saw a row of big trucks lined up before a long loading dock, and on that dock something covered over with a dark green tarpaulin. The tarpaulin fluttered and fell back once, then again. The second time Silvera said. "There!" and Wes could see the oblong, brown boxes, stacked in neat rows as if awaiting shipment.

Silvera said, "I'm going out." He put on the oxygen mask and the tank and left the Crab, walking hurriedly and at an angle against the wind. Wes worked with the other mask and tank for a few minutes, finally got them together, and slipped the tank into another of the backpack carriers. The mask clung as tight as a second skin, but the goggle lenses gave him a wide-angle view, and the first breath of air he drew was shockingly sweet. He got out of the vehicle and followed Silvera, climbing up the dunes and stepping over the collapsed fence.

On the loading dock Silvera pulled off the tarpaulin and let the wind whip it away. Then he opened the lid of a coffin and peered inside. It was filled with dirt, but there was no one in it, not even the impression of a body. As Wes struggled up onto the dock and walked along it, he realized the warehouse was at least as long as a football field, possibly longer; its far end disappeared in whirling yellow. He looked into the empty coffin, then at Silvera. He had to shout to make himself heard. "What did you expect to find in there?"

"I'm not sure." Silvera opened the next coffin and the next one after that. They were all filled with dirt, but no vampires.
Why would they be?
he asked himself suddenly. The vampires wouldn't sleep exposed to the weather; they'd sleep enclosed. His gaze fell upon a large sliding door set in the wall. He went over to it and slid it back several feet. A wave of rancid chill came rolling out of the warehouse; it was the same feeling he'd had in the Dos Terros tenement. Silvera glanced at Wes, his eyes wary behind the mask, before he stepped through the opening.

At first he couldn't see a thing. Then he gradually made out high, crisscrossed metal rafters, rows of fluorescent lights, metal rungs leading up to a catwalk that stretched the length of the building, a few electric carts and yellow forklifts. But then he saw what lay before him, what lay all around him, what lay in neat rows from wall to wall and on out of sight. He caught his breath with shock.

The warehouse was filled with what must have been over a thousand coffins. They were all lying closed on the concrete floor, and Silvera realized why those caskets had been left stacked on the loading dock. There was simply no more room in this huge warehouse.

"Jesus Christ!" Wes said softly, standing behind the priest.

"This is where they sleep," Silvera heard himself say. "Not all of them . . . not anywhere near all of them, but . . . my God! Every warehouse in the entire industrial district may be full of them!" He took a tentative step forward, then leaned down and opened the coffin nearest him.

On its bed of brown California soil, a young male vampire wearing a light blue shirt spotted with blood lay with its arms crossed over its chest. The eyes seemed to be staring right through the milky lids with a dull, hateful gaze. Those lids, Silvera realized, were very similar to those found in most reptiles; they would be natural protection against the sand. The vampire lay still, a killing machine awaiting full darkness. Silvera stared at the thing and thought he heard in his brain a soft, terrible whisper—
Lean over here, man, just a little bit closer. . . .
He quickly closed the coffin lid with his foot and stepped around it carefully, his own breathing suddenly too loud and harsh within the mask.

He opened the next coffin and found a little black girl—her flesh faded to a sick, pasty gray—lying there. He sensed her longing for his blood even in sleep. She shifted suddenly, and the movement made Silvera step back a few paces. She gripped the casket's sides, then lay still again. He closed the lid, a chill skittering up his spine.

Wes walked along the first row of coffins. He opened one of them, his hand shaking. A small boy—no more than four or five—lay there. As Wes watched, stunned, the child's hand slowly lifted, fingers grasping at air, and then fell back on his chest. The mouth opened, a red slash in the yellowish face, and the fangs clicked together like the snapping of a bear trap.
Was it dreaming?
Wes wondered.
Of what? Seeing me in its dreams, and dreaming that it's sinking its fangs into my throat?
He leaned forward to close the casket, and a shimmering little child's voice wafted through his brain—
Danny don't want you to go . . . Danny want you to stay here for always.
Wes paused, his head thundering. Silvera leaned across him, closed the lid quickly and pulled him away.

"Thanks," Wes said, blinking. "They're strong even when . .. they're sleeping."

"Help me drag that one out into the light," Silvera said. He gripped the edge of the first casket he'd opened. Wes got on the other side, and together they pushed and pulled the thing out onto the loading dock into the murky light. "I'm going to open it now," the priest said. Before Wes could respond, he did, then backpedaled away several feet, ready for anything.

The vampire instantly stared writhing, clawing at the coffin's sides, its mouth opening in a grimace. The fangs clicked together with terrible force. Wes saw awareness and pain flood into the eyes, then pure agony. The vampire screamed, an unearthly wail that was unlike anything Wes had ever heard.

Then the thing sat up violently, flinging clumps of dirt from the coffin. Its murderous gaze fell upon Silvera, and it started to rise, its head twisted at an angle away from the sunlight.

Silvera knew it was going to try to get back inside the warehouse into the cool darkness. He shoved Wes through the doorway, leaped inside, and started sliding the door shut as the vampire hurtled forward, screaming in rage and pain. As the door closed, the vampire flung itself frantically against the metal. Both men together could hardly hold it shut. The door shuddered as the vampire hammered on it, then began to scratch at it like a mindless animal. Wes held back a scream; he was standing in total darkness with a thousand or more vampires at his back, and one outside trying to get in. He thought he heard furtive movement behind him, the creaking of a few hundred casket lids.

Then the clawing noises stopped.

Silvera waited a moment more, then started to pull the door open. "It's a trick!" Wes shouted. Silvera opened the door a few inches and peered out. The coffin on the loading dock was closed again. When Silvera opened the door wider, Wes heard quick, scuttling sounds behind him, lids being closed hastily. Silvera stepped out onto the dock, leaned down slowly, and threw back the lid again.

The vampire—now hideously bloated like a three-day-old corpse—sat up and snapped at Silvera's face; the fangs sank into the rubber mask, then withdrew. Before Silvera's eyes, fluids bubbled up beneath the thing's flesh, the arms, legs, and face blowing up like the sausage appendages of a freakish carnival fat man. The blue shirt stretched, buttons popping off; fluids leaked from the mouth, nostrils, and eyes, pooling around the head. Then rapidly, the form shriveled into something as thin and frail as a dead leaf; the gums sank, the eyes fell inward and seemed to melt away, the nose flattened and collapsed. The vampire curled up into an
S,
shivered violently, and then was still. Now it looked like a month-old corpse, which, Silvera realized, it probably was.