It's Alive! (10 page)

Upstairs, Nurse Gray pushed the door open quietly, and, seeing that Lenore was awake, put the tray down on the bed beside her.

“How are you feeling, Mrs. Davis?”

“Fine. More pills?”

“To relax you. Dr. Norten’s prescription.”

“Okay, I guess.” She swallowed one pill from each bottle, and drank some water.

“Would it help you to talk about anything, Mrs. Davis? Anything that happened?”

“No . . . I don’t think so.”

“Sometimes it helps, you know, to talk to somebody in a professional capacity.”

“I don’t remember much, which is just as well.”

“Try, Mrs. Davis, it’ll do you good. Are you sure you didn’t see it? Even get one little look?”

“No, I’m sure. I told everyone, I passed out. I guess I did. I don’t remember anything.”

“Perhaps you’re trying to freeze it out of your mind. It must have been awful. Some people say it has teeth and claws. Did you know that?”

“Why would I know that? I haven’t heard anybody say that.”

“Did you know that it’s killed more people than just those doctors and nurses? Were you aware that it killed a musician in an alley? And a waitress behind her house? They say it was a dog, but I believe it was your child.”

“No, I don’t believe it.” Lenore’s eyes widened, her face paled. “Why are you telling me these things?”

“Oh, there’s no doubt about it, in my mind. The same kind of wounds as the poor doctors and nurses suffered in your delivery room.”

“I—I—” Lenore started to cry. “What do you want me to say?”

“Say anything you feel, Mrs. Davis, and cry too, that’s good for you. Get it all out. Tell me everything. Take your time.”

“But please, I—” She leaned toward the nurse, and in so doing put her hand on the tray, on the towel. She snapped back her hand as if burned, staring at the towel. “What have you got under there? What is that?” She ripped the towel away. A tiny tape recorder hummed with reels spinning.

Lenore sat bolt upright, trembling, pulling the covers tight around her throat. She stared in shock and confusion at the nurse. “Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“I’m your nurse, you can tell me anything.” She backed away a step.

“Who are you really working for? I want my husband—”

“Oh, I’m a registered nurse, all right,” she smoothed her dress casually, “but I also do some writing now and then, on the side. Dr. Norten—” She stopped herself.

Lenore sank deep into the covers. “You’re not writing about me! Frank! I want my husband!”

“I only wanted the woman’s angle on this,” Nurse Gray said, now showing some nervousness. “The public’s entitled to know how you feel. Don’t you want them to understand? It’s a public service.”

“Frank! FRANK!”

Lenore moved to get out of bed. Nurse Gray pushed her back, quite frightened now herself. “Will you shut up, Mrs. Davis? I was only trying to get some information. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

“F-R-A-N-K!”

Frank burst through the door.

“She’s a reporter!” Lenore whimpered. “Please make her go away.”

Frank looked at his wife, then at the nurse. “What the hell’s going on?”

Nurse Gray took the tray and started marching stiffly toward the door.

“Recorder. Frank, she’s got a tape recorder.”

Frank whirled to the tray, grabbed the tape recorder, and smashed it against the wall. “Get OUT!”

Nurse Gray trotted out, terrified, stumbled her way down the stairs and out the front door.

Frank knelt beside the bed. “Lenore, Lenore, god I’m sorry! What was that all about? What was she recording?”

“She wanted to know everything. She wanted me to talk.”

“But why? For who?”

“She didn’t say.” Lenore cried quietly.

“Lie down now, please, just try to calm down. She’s gone. It’s okay.”

“I don’t want anyone else in here,” she sobbed, “no one in the house but you. And Chris. Just our family.”

“Just us, sweetheart. Just relax now.”

“And Chris.”

“Chris has gone fishing with Charley, to the lake. He’ll be back tomorrow or day after. He’s fine. Then we’ll all be together.”

“Nobody but our family.”

“Nobody. I don’t understand what happened with that nurse. I can’t trust anybody. You had your pills? Good. Sleep now, darling. Just go to sleep.”

With Frank caressing her forehead, Lenore gradually fell asleep.

Frank went downstairs and slumped into his chair in the den. He needed to sleep too. My god, that such a thing should happen to Lenore! Like everyone was against them. She was on the ragged edge already, he feared. No one to turn to. Thank god for Charley. He wished he could go to work tomorrow. But even if he could, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t leave Lenore alone all day.

They needed the three weeks, anyway. They needed to get away—would, in fact, to St. Thomas, just as soon as she was able.

A bright new day. The driver stopped his white Homes Dairy truck at the curb and went around to the back and opened one of the loading doors. Bottles and cartons in crates were stacked nearly to the roof. He whistled cheerfully as he clanked through the bottles, picking one from here, one from there, and filling his hand-carrier.

Still whistling, he strode up the sidewalk toward the porch of the ranch-style house. A breeze riffled through the hedge to his left.

Except that there was no breeze.

On the porch was a row of empty bottles, a note protruding from the top of one. The milkman set down his carrier and pulled out the note and read it.

The breeze seemed to move along the hedge, toward the milk truck.

The driver nodded, folded the note, stuck it in his pocket, took out four of the eight bottles that were in his carrier, and left them on the porch. Then, resuming his whistle, he headed back toward the truck. At the sidewalk he paused to adjust a trash-can lid that was only half on. Then he stepped into his truck, started the engine, and moved off down the road.

The bottles clinked behind him as he rolled to a stop sign. There, with the truck standing still, the bottles continued to rattle.

The driver knitted his brow. He pulled on the brake, stood and turned to lean in the small door behind the driver’s seat, and adjusted the position of the nearest crates. Still the bottles farther back continued their glassy tinkling. He scratched his ear. Then he leaned far in, bending over the nearest crates to reach the farther ones, standing on his tiptoes.

He froze. “My GOD!” Suddenly his feet left the floor. He had no time to scream. A gurgle came from his throat. He saw only the narrow, long, clawed fingers that flashed toward him, digging into his neck and back and hauling him through the small door.

Bottles crashed. Out of the rear door, milk trickled, then poured in a flood, washing down over the bumper; a river of fresh white milk flowed down the gutter and disappeared into a storm drain.

Fresh white milk until it mixed with red.

Detective Lieutenant Perkins was quite irritated indeed by the presence of State Police Captain Sanford and his Troopers. He didn’t like them butting in. Perkins and Captain Sanford and a handful of officers under the command of each stood near a wall over which was spread a huge map of the western parts of the city. Jutting from the map were five stickpins, four with tiny blue banners on them, one with red.

Captain Sanford peered at the map, and Perkins chewed a cigar and peered at him.

“Well,” said the captain, “throw out the first pitch, get the ball rolling, everybody out of the trenches, let’s get this show on the road. This is serious.”

“We’ve
been
serious,” Perkins drawled, “for three days now, captain.” He stepped to the map. “The red pin is the hospital where the first attacks occurred. The four blue pins represent the locations of the subsequent attacks.”

“Four? I understood there were only three others.”

“A motorist stopped out in the canyon to fix a flat. Found him in a ditch beside the road. Few hours ago. That makes four.”

The captain squinted at the map, extending a thumb and forefinger, rotating his hand and sighting over them. “There’s no pattern here, no angles, no coordinates. The thing just moves around from one place to another, killing wantonly.”

“Actually,” piped up one of Perkins’s officers, “we think it may be heading—”

Perkins held up a palm quickly, and scowled at his junior man, chomping vigorously on his cigar. Then he turned to the captain. “You didn’t expect it to have some kind of master plan, did you? After all, it’s only three days old.”

“Three days is too much . . . too much,” Sanford said somberly, shaking his head. “I guess that’s why we were called in.”

“I would imagine,” Perkins said.

“Manpower,” the captain snapped up straight, “and clout. Equipment, personnel, entrée to the governor. We got all that. That’s some kid out there.” He stuck out his lower lip. “Could have used this kid in Vietnam. Appetite for combat. Guerrilla warfare. Heh-heh. Now then,” he rapped on the map with his knuckles, “we could just flood the whole area with Troopers, scour it from top to bottom, flush the bugger out that way.”

“I’m afraid we’d end up shooting each other,” Perkins said.

“Leadership and discipline would correct that. Or, we could just slip a few plainclothesmen into the area, like ordinary citizens, you know, have them leaning on lamp posts, strolling on side streets, sitting on park benches.”

“I don’t think we need decoys,” Perkins said. “Our problem ain’t that kind of problem. We just need a careful, intelligent search.”

“Choppers and binoculars. Hover all over the area, keeping eyes peeled.”

“Helicopters wouldn’t help us much at night, which is half our problem.”

“Gas, smoke, bring him out coughing like crazy, ready to quit.”

“This is a heavily populated residential area, captain. Excuse me, but I’d like to suggest that we gotta just be quiet and careful and fast. We been using a tactical quick-strike mobile force, on the road round-the-clock, coordinating with foot patrols. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Time, time, TIME! This thing is killing people! If only I could see what this thing looks like, just once, get a peg onto it, get my hooks into it!” He jabbed his finger into Perkins’s chest. “Before it gets its hooks into
you
. Heh-heh. Listen, the orders are pretty simple. Kill the goddam thing, right?”

“Right.”

“No arrest, no reading the rights.”

“Nope.”

“That shouldn’t be hard.”

“Finding it is the hard part.”

“We’ll do ’er, we’ll do ’er. Now, you say this thing—what should we call it? You got a better name? We ought to put a code on it.”

“ ‘Thing’ ” is okay. We know what you mean.”

“Now, you say it’s larger than a baby, but smaller than an adult?”

“Judging by the hole it got out through, right.”

“But stronger than either?”

“Well, it jumped straight out that hole, in my opinion.”

“Christ, must have thighs like Jim Brown. And what else?”

“We figure it must have claws of some sort, from the wounds. Beyond that, we got a blank on it. Seems like it drinks milk, like from the milk truck. Cries sometimes—some people claim to have heard it, before it killed. We don’t know for sure. We know it moves around, we don’t know how. Like a mole, maybe. That’s about it.”

“Does it bleed?”

“Who knows?”

The captain snickered. “Oh, it’ll bleed all right. Wait’ll it gets a taste of my magnum hollow-tips.”

“We just figure it’s like an animal, captain. Approach it that way. Like a very dangerous, unpredictable animal.”

“Like your damn DOG!” Captain Sanford belched laughter.

“Just to keep people from panicking, captain.”

“What’s the difference, get chewed up by a mad mutt, or ripped apart by some two-headed dwarf? Dead’s dead.”

“Well, I think word has gotten around anyway that it wasn’t a dog, captain. You can’t fool all of the people too long.”

“Let’s not let politics creep into this,” the captain said sternly. “Job is tough enough. Straight ahead with it. We’ve got to act before more innocent people die.”

“Right.”

“So,” Sanford pulled a large note pad from his inside jacket pocket, squatted, flipped it open on the floor, and began to sketch on it, “I’ve got a plan. A whole bunch of tactical mobile patrols, coordinated with foot patrols, a whole bunch of telephone operators sending important messages instantly to the field. When that pint-sized terrorist shows its hand—or claw or whatever the hell it shows—we’ve got it!”