They Thirst (24 page)

He looked up suddenly, his eyes glowing. He thought he'd heard a faint whisper coming in through a crack in the window, filling the room. He stepped to the window and put his palms against the glass, staring out into the darkness. He listened, his head cocked to one side. The Master was going to need another one tomorrow night. Now he wanted Roach to sleep, to forget all the bad things, to think only of tomorrow and the new kingdom that was to be.

Roach pressed his forehead against the glass for a few minutes and then went to turn out the lights. When he was in bed again, he picked up his handgrips from the floor beside him and began to squeeze them, squeeze . . . hold . . . release, squeeze . . , hold . . . release. He would do that twohundred times before he went to sleep. In the darkness the springs sounded like the rubbing of hungry mandibles.

It was twelve minutes before three in the morning. Noel Alcavar had his feet propped up on his desk, and beside him a transistor radio blared Latin disco loud enough to wake the dead.
No, not quite,
Alcavar mused as he slid his gray cap forward over his eyes.
At least the stiffs out there weren't sitting up in their graves yet,
he thought.
If they did, I'd kick 'em in their asses and send 'em back to Hell.
Ai-yi-yi,
what a job this was!
He closed his eyes and moved one foot to the disco beat, trying to forget that there were about fifty stiffs lying out in the darkness under huge, gnarled trees filled with the green drip of Spanish moss.

For the last five nights Alcavar had been covering for his brother Freddie, who held the dubious title of Head Watchman for the Ramona Heights Cemetery in the Highland Park district, dubious because Freddie Alcavar was the only real full-time watchman, and he held rank over one skinny Chicano kid who was mentally retarded but smart enough to play sick most of the time. And now Freddie had been hit by a virus that kept him in the bed between dashes to the toilet, and the doctor had told him to stay home and rest. So Noel was helping out, playing loud disco so he could imagine that he was boogying with the foxes at the Disco 2000 on North Broadway. Freddie had told him he was supposed to take his flashlight, leave the green-painted shelter, and stroll through the cemetery every half-hour or so. Noel had done it twice since he'd gotten here at ten, and that had been enough to leave him with a lingering case of the chills. In every whisper of wind he thought he heard the icy tinkle of ghostly laughter, and every mound of grass seemed to be pressing upward, about to split open for a skeletal hand covered with mold.
This ain't a job for a young man,
Noel had told himself as he hurried back to the shelter and turned the latch on the door.
Bet old Freddie's fakiri. Bet he's at home laughin' his ass off right this minute!

If he hadn't felt sorry for Freddie because of the
way
his ex-wife had treated him during the divorce, Noel would never have volunteered for this graveyard shift. But as it was, he was going to be stuck with it until Freddie was back on his feet, which might be another day or two. Noel shivered when he thought about that and turned the radio a bit louder.

He was about to close his eyes again and drift into the spin of Disco 2000 dancers when he saw the two headlights right up against the front gate about thirty yards away. Noel straightened up in his chair and peered out the window.
Now who the hell is that?
he wondered.
High school kids parkin', maybe? Doin' a little drinkin' or dope-smokin'? No, they wouldn't have their lights shining like that.
He stood up, moving to the window. In the dim backwash of the lights, he could see that it was a large vehicle, some kind of truck with markings on it. The thing was just sitting there, and now Noel could see a couple of shadowy figures moving alongside the gate. One of them stopped and looked in through the bars.
What is this?
he asked himself and quailed at the thought—
Trouble? No way!
He remembered what Freddie had said just before he made a flying leap into the bathroom, "Is easy job, Noel. No trouble, nobody bothers you. You jus' make your rounds and look like you know what you're doing. Everything is okay. No trouble."

Now both figures were standing at the gate, peering through the bars; the headlights made their shadows thin and gigantic on the cemetery drive. They seemed to be waiting, taking their time. But suddenly one of them rattled the gate, and Noel felt his stomach roil.

He took his flashlight from atop the desk and went outside, the single thought,
no trouble, no trouble,
repeating over and over like an incantation against harm. He neared the gate, the headlights blinding him, put a hand over his eyes, and switched on his own light. The large vehicle was a U-Haul truck, and the two figures were kids younger than he, maybe in their late teens. One was
a
black dude wearing a headband, the other was white with shoulder-length brown hair; he was wearing a T-shirt that bore a cartoon, a Big Daddy Roth beach bum smoking
a
bomber joint over the message King Kahuna Wants You! Noel moved uneasily toward them and saw that they were both smiling. But their smiles hardly made him feel better because their eyes were as cold as those of a dead fish. Noel stopped and shone his light in their faces. "Cemetery's closed," he said stupidly.

"Yeah,
amigo,"
the white one said. "We see that." He reached over, pulled at the gate's padlock, and grinned. "You got the key to this?"

"No." The key was in his breast pocket, but he didn't want these two to know. Somehow he didn't feel safe, not even with the gate between them.

"Yes you do," the black dude said very quietly, his gaze boring into Noel's skull. "You got the key, don't you? Got it right. . . right in your pocket. Yeah."

"No, I don't. I don't . . . uh . . . have . . . a key. . ."

"Open the gate." The black dude coiled his fingers around the bars. "Come on . . . Noel? Open the gate, Noel."

Noel shook his head.
My name? How does . . . he . . . know . . . my name?
He thought he could hear the blood rushing through his head; he felt dizzy, weak, confused.
What would be the harm in opening the gate, anyway?
he asked himself, and a smaller voice shouted,
You're not supposed to do that, no trouble, no trouble. . . .

"Noel, we don't have much time, man. Step on over here . .

His right foot moved. He blinked, his brain full of disco thunder.

". . . let us in, okay?"

For an instant he thought he was strutting on the Disco 2000 dance floor with the foxiest chick there—Dianna Valerio maybe—and the mirrored ball at the ceiling reflected a thousand different colors, all as electric bright as exploding novas. The music stopped with a quiet
click!

"That's good, man," the black dude said as he stepped through the opening gate. He gripped Noel's wrist with freezing fingers and took the key. "Who gets him?" he asked the white boy.

"The new girl's thirsty," he replied, and they led Noel around the rear of the truck, unlocked the doors, and lifted him up. Noel's face was frozen with a crazy, crooked grin, his heart about to beat its way through his chest. He thought it was quitting time, six
A.M., and he was on the way home.
Made it through another night,
he told himself.
Wasn't so bad.

"For the girl only," someone said.

The doors slammed shut behind him.

There were five or six people in the darkness, and one of them—a slender wraith of a thing—took his hand. He felt like he'd stepped into a meat locker. Then there were arms around him, enfolding him closer toward the heart of the chill. He stumbled over something—a pickaxe— and then a freezing mouth kissed his lips, darting tongue forcing its way in; the mouth kissed his cheek, his chin, his throat.

And became hideous.

In the darkness someone sighed and whimpered.

The truck's engine rumbled to life, and it moved through the opened gate into the Ramona Heights Cemetery while the boy in the Kahuna T-shirt stood watch on the quiet street. Deep within the cemetery it stopped. The rear doors were opened again, and now the figures came out—five of them because the girl was filled and lazy— carrying shovels and pickaxes. They scattered out beneath the trees and set to work on the graves, digging like well-oiled machines without pause. When the first coffin was struck, two others stopped their work to help; they dug it free in less than a minute and heaved it out of the ragged hole. Inside there was a skeleton in a black suit and yellowed shirt. The casket was quickly turned over to dump out the bones, then shoved into the rear of the U-Haul. There was a faint
clang!
as another coffin was struck. This one was small, cradling the brittle bones of a child. The bones were spilled to the ground and cracked underfoot like twigs as the coffin was loaded into the truck.

At the end of an hour almost thirty coffins were stacked in the rear of the U-Haul. Mounds of dirt and scattered bones littered the cemetery, and the clothes and faces of the exhumers were filthy. But still they worked on, until finally the black with the headband straightened up from the empty hole below him and said quietly, "Enough."

They returned their tools to the truck. The figures climbed in and the doors were locked. The truck backed up across the bone-littered grass and turned toward the gate, where the lookout was picked up. Then gathering speed, the truck pulled out of the cemetery and turned right along Aragon Avenue toward the commercial district of L.A.

Gayle Clarke, squinting in the bright, early morning sunlight. pulled her red Mustang into a public parking lot off Pico Boulevard and walked half a block to a small, gray building that had been, in previous incarnations, a karate school, a health club for overweight housewives, a Zen Buddhist temple, and a health food store specializing in varieties of kelp. Now the legend painted across the plate-glass window in bold, blue, scrolled letters said THE LOS ANGELES TATTLER. WE PRINT IT AS WE HEAR IT. WE PRINT IT AS WE SEE IT. There was what looked like a virgin in a tacky long dress beneath the words holding a flaming torch.
The ethics of corn,
Gayle told herself as she went through the front door.

Inside six desks were scattered across the room in various stages of disarray; there were stacks of old copies of the
Tattler
and other newspapers and magazines on the floor, a battery of dented file cabinets bought at a warehouse fire sale, a bookcase crammed full of decaying dictionaries and reference books either copped from the library or bought at flea markets. Across one wall was an air-brushed mural left from the kelp store days—spouting whales, sea otters playing happily in the kelp beds, the sun shining on a beach full of perfect, healthy bodies. She hated that mural because every time she went on a binge of Twinkies and Oreos, she had to come in on Monday morning and look at those disgustingly
healthy
figures. Holly Fortunato, wearing her usual skin-tight black dress, looked up from the reception desk which was about ten feet away from the closed door with the plaque that read,
Harry Tracy, Editor.
She smiled, "Hi, Gayle. Have a goooood weekend?"

"Same as usual," Gayle said tonelessly, ready for the next line in the ritual.

"I had a kinky weekend," Holly breathed. She was wearing glittery eye shadow, and her breasts heaved like black melons. "Kay-ink-key! I was just telling Max . .

"Hi, Max," Gayle said to the studious-looking young man at the nearest desk. He looked up from his typewriter and smiled, the braces on his teeth showing. Then he went back to work without a word, and Gayle sat down at her own desk in the back beneath the precariously leaning bookcase. She hung her purse over the back of her chair and began straightening a morass of papers and magazines so she could have a clear shot at her typewriter, an old gray Royal with a mind of its own, usually malevolent.

"I met this guy at a party down at Marina del Rey," Holly was saying. "And you know what? He was a
director.
He did a movie a year ago called
Free 'n Easy . . ."

"Sounds like porno," Gayle said.

"Oh, no! It was about a couple who meet in a nudist camp!"

"That's what I said," Gayle replied. "Porno." She crossed the room and poured herself a cup of coffee. She could hear Trace muttering through the tissue-thin wall.

"Anyway, it had a limited release, but he said he was working on another one, and he'd like for me to . . ."

Gayle tuned her out and nodded whenever she felt she should. In the meantime Bonita Carlin, a thin girl with crimped, red hair who favored punk outfits and covered what she called "the world of rock 'n roollll," came in carrying an armload of
Rolling Stones,
and immediately Holly began at the beginning with "Hi, 'Nita. Have
a
goooood weekend?"

"Shitty," Bonita said.

Gayle sipped her coffee and checked the assignment board. Beneath each name printed with a Flair pen on pieces of colored cardboard were index cards with the details of their stories for the week. She glanced over each one in turn to get an idea of what next week's
Tattler
was featuring: "Biology professor at UCLA—Dr. Peter Willingham—says eating eggs can cause sterility. Call 345-4949 ext. 7"; "Rod Stewart—Do married blonds have more fun?"; "Could Kim Novack cop this year's Oscar for Best Supporting? Her agent wants to talk"; "CHiPs may be Dips—motorist group charges Highway Patrol with reckless driving. Call Mrs. Jordan, 592-7008."