Gremlins (20 page)

“How do I know that? What was you doin’ in there?”

Billy spotted a gleam of something shiny in the snowdrift. Reaching down, he pulled out his keys.

“Gotta go now,” he said. “Do you want to pat me down? It’s O.K., but be quick.”

He unbuttoned his coat and held his arms out straight, the better to facilitate Sodlaw’s frisking him.

The old man took a step forward, then shrugged. “Never mind,” he muttered. “I guess you’re all right. It’s just that you ran out so quick, like somethin’ awful happened or you stole somethin’.”

Billy was already in his car and grinding the engine to life. For a second he considered telling Sodlaw what had happened before speeding off; he rejected the notion instantly.

“Merry Christmas,” he said instead, roaring off as quickly as his fishtailing rear-engine car would allow.

After Lynn finished dodging the first barrage of expensive dishes, she had a brief respite in which to look at her attackers. One stood near the china cabinet in the dining room, giggling and searching about for new objects to throw. It eventually decided on a heavy punch bowl, tipping it off the shelf and roaring gleefully when it broke neatly in two.

The second Gremlin was busily going through Lynn’s pots and pans, tossing them underhanded and backward as it dug through the drawers. A third was in the pantry, systematically emptying the contents of every box and jar onto the floor. It took only a moment for Lynn to assimilate everything she needed to know about them—that they were powerful, ugly, destructive, and, most important, dangerous. Common sense indicated that she should run screaming from the house and summon help. Overriding that was a fierce anger that they were vandalizing
her kitchen.
An equally fierce determination to defend this precious, hard-won home prevented her from doing what was both safe and wise.

“Get out of my house!” she yelled.

She did not expect them to either understand or obey the order. What she was doing was serving notice, giving them one last opportunity to cease their depredations before
she
attacked
them.
It was, in effect, a declaration of war.

A chorus of glee, mixed with shattering dishes and crumpled boxes, was their answer.

“All right,” Lynn murmured, grasping the knife tighter and moving into the middle of the room.

It was not a good move in that she was vulnerable from bombardment from three sides instead of just one. Objects flew at her head, a plastic coffee mug striking her temple along with a cloud of pancake flour. Angered to the point of blind fury, Lynn lashed out at the Gremlin closest to her, which stood on the counter she had used only a few hours ago to make cookies. The blow struck home, the sushi knife’s diamond-sharp blade gouging a sizable portion from the Gremlin’s thigh. It roared furiously at Lynn, found another knife in the cabinet just above its head, and prepared to throw it.

Lynn let fly the coffee cup, causing the Gremlin to recoil and stumble backward. In so doing, it caught its clawed fist in the top of Rand’s patented orange juice maker.

Seeing that the animal was momentarily hung up in the machine, Lynn lurched forward and flipped the
START
switch. With a loud whirr, the device started, its powerful engine drawing the arm of the Gremlin in even farther. With a scream of agony it began to spin round and round, the arm disappearing up to the shoulder as a stream of greenish mush spewed out of the juice spout. Fascinated and horrified, Lynn watched as the entire Gremlin was sucked into the machine and regurgitated as pulp.

A barrage of bottles and cardboard startled her from her temporary paralysis. Timing their throws craftily so that a steady stream of debris fell on her, the two Gremlins left in the kitchen renewed their attack with even greater fury. Now they concentrated on heavy and sharp objects, a paring knife striking Lynn’s cheek and drawing blood. Terrified and furious, she lunged toward the closest Gremlin but in doing so slipped on the glop covering the kitchen floor.

Lying helplessly, she saw both of them crouch prior to leaping.

Billy had gone through several traffic lights, but at Granger Street a moving van backed out directly in front of him, causing him to jam on the brakes. The sudden action caused the car to do what he prayed it wouldn’t—stall.

Billy yelled, took a deep breath, and turned the ignition key. For a minute the grinding sounds, which gradually became weaker, told him the familiar story he had been plagued with so long. The carburetor was flooded.

Getting out, he shoved the VW as far off the road as he could and started running.

“Merry Christmas,” a few passersby shouted at him.

Even as she reached for the aerosol can of Raid lying inches from her face, Lynn wondered how long her luck was going to hold. A moment later she squirmed sideways to avoid one of the leaping Gremlins and let the other one, still airborne, have a heavy squirt of the vile-smelling chemical directly in its eyes. Temporarily blinded and infuriated, it crashed into the first Gremlin and, slashing wildly with its claws, tore several big chunks of flesh from its brother’s body.

Forgotten in the confusion, Lynn scrambled to her feet, still holding the aerosol can.

Backing toward the counter, she suddenly became aware of another presence in the kitchen. Whirling, she saw a third green monster poised to strike. Because it was standing on the counter, its horrible red eyes were on the same level as hers, a pair of mesmerizingly penetrating orbs that seemed to generate their own evil light from within rather than reflect outside illumination. Aiming the insect spray at it, she succeeded in forcing it to back into the corner just in front of the microwave oven. Then with a quick, almost spasmodic leap, she managed to push the Gremlin backward through the open door and into the oven.

Closing the door quickly, she set the temperature to maximum, turned the oven on, and leaned against the door so the thrashing beast could not get out. With the other hand she held the aerosol can in front of her to ward off the angrily circling Gremlins planning their next attack.

A minute later, as she heard popping, disintegrating sounds from the oven, an errant thought crossed Lynn’s mind. Thank God I listened to Rand for once, she thought, because he talked me into getting the oven with the big door.

Looking back and down through the glass into the oven, she could see that the Gremlin had been baked into a huge oozy green omelet, the evil red eyes now decorating the bottom portion of the lump like twin spurts of catsup.

No sense worrying about that one, she thought, making a sudden rush for the kitchen door and living room. Her quick lunge carried her past the Gremlins but they caught her near the Christmas tree, one tripping her low while the other landed on her back. Lynn screamed as the animal’s knifelike claws tore into her shoulder. Struggling wildly but futilely, she knew that it would be impossible for her to handle two of them. All she could do was make it as difficult for them as possible.

With that desperate strategy in mind, with one Gremlin clinging to her leg and another to her back, she closed her eyes and hurled herself into the twinkling Christmas tree.

As he broke from a fast trot into a desperate sprint, Billy wondered if anyone on earth had ever been forced to see what he had just seen.

Approaching his own home, he was impressed with how cheerful and peaceful it looked, the warm lights of the interior offering pleasant contrast to the snow-covered landscape outside. The centerpiece of the idyllic home scene was the large Christmas tree aglow with twinkling lights, a never-changing symbol of the holiday spirit, an emblem of peace and contentment.

Then, just as the image had finished registering on Billy’s mind, the tree fell completely out of sight.

“Holy—” he gasped as he began to sprint. “Please . . . don’t let it be too late . . .”

Running on the snow-covered street with its alternating layers of ice, soft snow, and car-created ruts was not easy; several times he fell, scraping his hands as he threw them forward to protect himself, but he never took his eyes from the picture window of the house. The silhouette he wanted to see, that of his mother, refused to appear and bring him a quick answer to the question that haunted him.

Stumbling up the front porch steps, Billy slammed into the house, reaching out automatically to grasp the wall sword he knew would be heading toward the floor momentarily. It did, almost providentially settling into the hand awaiting it just as Billy saw that Lynn was still alive but bleeding, her neck protected from the claws of one Gremlin by a tangle of Christmas tree limbs and ornaments.

Leaping forward, Billy swung the sword, missed, and swung again.

One of the Gremlins, the one with a mane of white fur, ducked the blows, but the second took the full force of Billy’s swing just above the shoulder. The edge of the sword dug into the armor plating, then gathered momentum as it reached the soft subcutaneous tissue, neatly severing the body from the Gremlin’s head, which rolled into the fireplace. Its expression, caught in a terrified leer, slowly melted to a grotesque frown as the head burned to a crisp.

As Lynn struggled to get to her feet, she and Billy heard a giggle from across the room. It was Stripe, his eyes aflame with anger and defiance.

For a moment Billy seemed about to go after him; then he turned his attention to his mother.

“Are you all right?” he asked, putting the sword down so he could assist her.

“I think so,” Lynn murmured. Ever practical, she added, “I think that’s the last one. Maybe you’d better get it.”

Billy picked up the heavy weapon and started after Stripe, but the Gremlin, now having realized that he was at a disadvantage, looked for a way to escape. Leaping onto a windowsill, he managed to avoid Billy’s first swing, which imbedded the sword in the molding. By the time Billy wrestled it free, Stripe had rolled himself into a ball and hurtled himself at the window, shattering the glass. He landed on the snow and scurried off into the night.

“Oh no!” Billy muttered.

He and Lynn took a moment to examine each other’s wounds, which were colorfully bloody but not severe.

“Where’s Gizmo?” Billy asked.

“In the basement. I think he must have jumped down the laundry chute when all this started.”

“Good.”

Lynn smiled, brushed a sweaty lock of hair from her forehead. “I nailed the door shut,” she said. “That was before I knew who was who.”

Picking his way through the kitchen debris, Billy paused a moment to look at the two Gremlins, one baked and the other blended, which his mother had dispatched.

“Boy,” he said, shaking his head. “You really are a tiger, aren’t you?”

“Let’s put it this way,” Lynn replied. “I’m not one to be leaned on.”

Descending into the basement, Billy found a claw hammer and pulled out the nail in the door of the clothes chute. He opened the door, looked inside.

“Gizmo,” he said. “You in there, pal?”

A rustle of material was followed by the gradual emergence of the two long triangular ears and soft furry head of Gizmo. Blinking nervously at the light, he soon broke into his familiar falsetto hum. When Billy reached out, he moved quickly into his hands to be lifted from the jumble of clothing.

“Hey, are you all right?” Billy asked.

Putting Gizmo on the top of the washer-dryer, he examined him for broken bones, noting where he had been cut in several places.

“Let’s go put some tape on those cuts,” he said, carrying Gizmo upstairs.

Lynn, beginning to straighten up the kitchen, stopped to pet Gizmo and compliment him on still being among the living. “I thought they’d killed you,” she said.

“Hey, Mom, look,” Billy said suddenly.

Gizmo’s eyes were wide as he stared at the remains of the two Gremlins in the kitchen. His expression seemed pleased but somewhat restless, his head swiveling nervously from side to side and off toward the living room.

Lynn looked at Billy blankly.

“Don’t you get it?” Billy said. “He’s wondering what happened to the other guys. He knows that two are down and wants to know about numbers three and four.”

Taking Gizmo into the living room, he showed him the Gremlin head in the fireplace and the ghastly looking body on the hearth. Gizmo grinned and then frowned.

“Yeah,” Billy said. “You’re right. One got away.”

Gizmo started to make anguished noises.

“What’s the matter?” Lynn asked.

“We have to get the last one, Mom,” Billy replied. “It’s no good unless they’re all caught or destroyed.”

“Well, there’s time enough for that,” she said. “We can call Sheriff Reilly and let him track it down.”

“You don’t understand. We don’t have much time. If that last one reproduces, it’ll start all over again.”

“You’ve got some bad cuts,” Lynn protested. “I’d rather you go see Dr. Molinaro.”

“Mine aren’t as bad as yours.”

“All right. We’ll both go.”

“Tomorrow.”

“After they become infected, you mean.”

Billy knew his mother was being logical, but he also felt that logic dictated a prompt hunt for Stripe. Although he usually obeyed his mother for the simple reason that she was often right, Billy shook his head. “I’m going now,” he said. “While his tracks are still fresh and before he has a chance to multiply.”

“All right then.”

He located Gizmo’s knapsack and put him inside. Hurrying upstairs, he pulled on a sweater for extra warmth. He ran back down to the hallway, and as he shrugged into his coat, he felt a cold metal object in his pocket.

Lynn watched as he pulled it out. It was a can of Raid.

“It’s my secret weapon.” she said. “You may be able to use it. And don’t forget your sword.”

Grabbing a flashlight and strapping Gizmo and the knapsack onto his shoulder, he kissed his mother and went out into the snowy night.

C H A P T E R
SIXTEEN

F
ew people needed or wanted to visit the formidable Mrs. Ruby Deagle at her home, and fewer still dared try bearding the lioness in her den. That was just the way Mrs. Deagle wanted it, of course. The fewer visitors, the better. Even her late husband, Donald, though a wealthy real estate dealer, had been a burden to her during his last few years. It wasn’t because he had a lingering illness; she just didn’t like having him around. He had served his purpose, after all, creating a financial empire that would enable her to live very well, so when he shuffled off it was more a relief to Ruby Deagle than a tragedy.