The beach town of Venice was striving to hold on to its reputation for funkiness — a laid-back community where nobody got hassled and everybody did his own thing. It was a losing battle. With Santa Monica in the grip of rent-control laws, developers and builders focused their attention on Venice, just to the south. High-rise, high-priced apartments and condos were rapidly pushing out the beach cottages and boardwalk hustlers.
Mac Fain drove past Violet Street the first time, missing the street sign in the lowering fog and under the old-fashioned incandescent streetlight. He found it on the way back and drove slowly up to the lone cottage.
He parked out in front, and his flesh tightened as he saw the lights on and the front door standing open. Not a good omen. He got out and looked around carefully. Nothing stirred in the misty night. Moving cautiously, he walked up the path to the front door and looked in.
Ivy Hurlbut, what was left of her, lay against the far wall. Her head was turned toward the door, giving Fain a look he would never forget. Her throat and the upper part of her body had been torn away. The tiny living room was awash with her blood.
Fain backed away from the scene, fighting down an impulse to be sick. He stumbled back to his car, got in, slammed and locked the door.
It could have been some doped-up crazies. They were not unknown in the new Venice. Or a robbery. Sure. And it could have been a band of maurading nuns. Quit kidding, Fain told himself. He knew who had destroyed Ivy Hurlbut. He had been warned. It was his people. The terrible walking-dead ones he had brought back. Unable to reach him, they had struck out at someone they saw as his friend. Ivy had written about him; she had been present when he revived Miguel Ledo. Darcia’s words — his mother’s words — echoed in his head. “Your friends will suffer too.”
He had to bring this to an end before someone else was struck down. Jillian. If they found Ivy, they could find Jillian. Maybe she had escaped tonight only because she was not home. Or was she lying there now, ripped apart like Ivy Hurlbut, her answering machine giving out its bland reassuring message? Fain got into his car and headed for Studio City, ignoring all speed limits.
• • •
It was after eleven when he pulled up in front of the building where Jillian had her studio apartment. He went in through the nonsecure entrance and thumped up the stairs. Jillian’s door was locked. He banged on it until a woman came out of an apartment across the hall, wearing a chenille robe and a scowl.
“What the hell’s the idea? You want to wake the whole building?”
“I’ve got to see Jillian Pappas. Family emergency.”
The woman’s scowl lightened up. “Oh. Well, she’s out to rehearsal. Goes every night.”
“Do you know where she’s rehearsing?”
“No, I don’t pay any attention. She’ll prob’ly be home pretty soon, though.”
“Thanks.” At least she wasn’t in there like Ivy.
Fain checked his watch. Eleven-thirty. He sat in his car out in front of the building and waited.
The shadows of the night seemed filled with moving shapes as Fain sat watching. He lit one cigarette after another and, coughing, snapped them though the window, sending little spinning red arcs to the asphalt.
He tried to make some sense out of what was happening and figure out a plan. So many questions. What were the chances that the dead ones were nearby? How quickly could they have got here from Ivy Hurlbut’s cottage in Venice? They certainly couldn’t have beaten him. But why couldn’t they have split up?
He ticked them off on his fingers, beginning with Leanne Kruger and ending up with tragic Ada Dempsey, the hit-and-run victim. Nine. Nine dead people brought back to life. More accurately, brought part of the way back. Now existing in what Darcia called a “living hell.” They might have split up. Some to Venice for Ivy, some here to Studio City. And the rest out in the night, looking for him.
He renewed his scrutiny of the block where Jillian lived. Apartment buildings. Quiet, innocent. Ordinary, comfortable lives going on behind their curtained windows. Would he, Fain wondered, ever live such a life again?
There were few cars and fewer pedestrians. Fain studied each of the passersby carefully. They appeared normal enough, but would he recognize the dead ones in the dark?
And what if they had already found Jillian, wherever she was? The vision of poor torn Ivy Hurlbut swam before him, with Jillian’s face superimposed. The waiting became agony.
At a quarter to one a familiar little Mustang rounded the corner and parked across the street. When he saw Jillian get out, Fain all but collapsed with relief. He leaped from the car and sprinted across to reach her as she was locking the door. He swept her into his arms.
She gasped in surprise. “Mac? What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”
He held her tight, and she yielded to the urgency of his embrace. All the things they had not said to each other for months were spoken through their bodies.
“Thank God you’re all right.”
“Sure I’m all right.” She drew back enough to look up into his face. “But you’re not, are you.”
“Do you trust me, Jill?”
“Well …”
“I mean, if it were something really important.”
“I guess so.”
“Would you do something crazy if I told you it was a matter of life and death?”
“Is this a big joke of some kind?”
“Believe me, it is no joke.”
“What crazy thing do you want me to do?”
“Come away with me right now.”
“Come away with you? Wait a minute; you’re not proposing marriage, are you?”
“Hell, I don’t know. What difference does that make?”
“Quite a lot of difference, mister. I have a life of my own going, you know, and if you think I’m going to chuck everything and go bucketing off with you on a moment’s notice, you can just fleeping forget it.”
She turned and started toward the apartment building. He followed.
“Wait, Jill. I’ll marry you in a minute if you’ll have me. I love you, damn it.”
She kept going. “Oh, sure, when all else fails, they offer marriage.”
“Listen to me, Jill. Ivy Hurlbut’s dead. You’re in danger.”
She whirled and faced him. “Ivy’s dead? When?”
“Tonight. In a way it’s my fault. I don’t want it to happen to you.”
Jillian looked up at him. Her tears glittered in the street lamps. “Darn it, Mac, I didn’t want to have anything more to do with you. I don’t know what you’ve got yourself into, but the things I’ve been reading are just terrible. I wish I knew what to do. I … I … oh, shoot!”
She pushed open the door to her building and walked in. Fain caught it before it closed and ran after her. She climbed quickly up the steps to her apartment, turning there to face him.
“You’d better leave now. I don’t think I want to talk anymore.”
“Jill, don’t — ”
She opened the door and reached in to flip the wall switch. As Fain put out a hand to stop her, she was jerked away from him and pulled into the darkened room.
Fain stumbled in after her. He groped for something to hang on to, found only air, staggered and barely kept his balance.
The door slammed shut behind him.
“Jill!” he called.
“Something grabbed me,” she said out of the darkness.
He banged into the wall and scrabbled along it, looking for a light switch. He stumbled over an electric cord, followed it until he found a lamp, and switched it on.
Jillian was crouched against the far wall next to where the little kitchen alcove was. Standing in front of her was a tall figure, long arms outstretched to seize her. Its head turned to look at Fain.
“Holy Christ!”
Kevin Jackson was still recognizable, although the gleaming ebony skin was turned a mottled gray, with oozing cracks beginning to open. The eyes had a milky film, but there was a fire within. He took a step toward Fain.
“Stop!”
Kevin, or the thing he was now, shook his head. “Look what you done to me, man. Look what I am. This what you did to all of us. Now you gon’ die.”
He lunged forward and reached for Fain. Fain ducked and chopped at one of the outstretched arms. It was like slamming his hand into a tree branch. He staggered back; Kevin swiped at him with one hand and hit him a glancing blow. Fain went to his hands and knees on the floor. Fireflies buzzed around the darkness in his eyes. He wanted to go to sleep.
The crash of breaking glass brought him out of it. Jillian stood holding the handle of a heavy glass pitcher. The rest of it was on the floor in fragments. There was a dent in the side of Kevin’s head, but he seemed otherwise unaffected by the blow. He came toward Fain.
Fain scrambled to his feet and backed toward the wall. He raised one hand above his head, looked up at it, and seemed to snatch something out of the air. For a second Kevin followed the misdirection. Fain opened the hand and a shower of coins spilled to the floor.
Using the distraction, he lowered his head and charged. The top of Fain’s head hit Kevin Jackson just below the breastbone. The impact carried both of them across the room. A window shattered, and Fain clutched the sill for support as a cool wind blew in his face. Below him outside there was a soft thump, a grunt, and the scrape of feet on concrete.
Fain pushed himself back from the window and spoke to Jillian, still holding the glass pitcher handle. “What’s down there?”
“Courtyard,” she said. “He’ll have to go out through the alley.”
“Come on; we can get to the car.”
He took Jillian’s hand, and they ran together across the room to the door. Fain yanked it open and they took one step into the hallway. Then stopped. Standing between them and the stairway was what looked like a badly made female dummy. The shoulders were uneven, a hand was mashed into hamburger, and one leg hung useless. The face was a mass of old bruises and congealed blood. One eyes was closed, and the other blinked incessantly. From the mouth came a soft whimpering sound.
“Mac, what is it?” Jillian said.
He did not answer, but he recognized this ruin of a woman as Ada Dempsey.
“Go for the car,” he said to Jillian, and used both his hands in an attempt to sweep the woman aside.
The broken body offered little resistance, but her one good hand fastened onto his forearm like a steel clamp. He tried to pry the fingers loose, but they would not give a millimeter. Death grip floated in and out of his mind as he clawed to free himself.
In desperation he reached into his pocket and pulled out the cheap butane lighter he had bought when he started smoking again. He flicked up the flame and held it under the wrist of the ruined woman. He smelled the flesh burning and heard the sizzle, but the twisted face of the woman showed nothing.
There was a sudden pop as a tendon in the wrist gave way. One of the clutching fingers went dead. Fain dropped the lighter, and using all the strength terror could summon, clawed free of the wounded hand.
He sprang for the stairway and went down it, barely touching the treads. He could hear the woman bumping and flopping down behind him. Out in the street he bolted across to his car where, thank God, Jillian was waiting for him. Someone else was running for it in long, loping strides from the end of the street. Kevin Jackson.
Jillian pushed open the door, and he jammed himself in behind the wheel. He fired the engine, and they peeled away. Fain did not slow down until many miles separated them from the ghoulish things back at Jillian’s apartment.
• • •
The rest of the night they drove the freeways. It was said you could drive for weeks on the Los Angeles freeway system without ever driving over the same patch of pavement twice. Fain was ready to believe it.
Jillian dozed fitfully with her head on his shoulder while he worked out a plan. His overpowering instinct was to point the car in one direction, away from Los Angeles, and drive like hell. But you can’t run forever, Darcia had said. And when he stopped, they would be there. These walking-dead things were his responsibility, and he had to deal with them here and now.
By the time the eastern sky faded from black to charcoal, he knew what he was going to do.
Jillian awoke and made little mewing sounds as the charcoal sky turned pearl gray.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m going to drop you somwhere where you’ll be safe today; then I’m going to go and finish this business. Is there a friend you can stay with?”
“I don’t want to stay with a friend. I’m with you.”
“Come on, honey; you saw what we’re fighting.”
“You said ‘we.’”
“Slip of the tongue.”
“Phooey. Besides, I’m reponsible for you now.”
He glanced over at her. “How do you figure that?”
“When I hit that mother with the pitcher, it might have slowed him down just enough to let you get out of the way. Saved your life. Now I’m responsible.”
“Seems I heard that somewhere else not long ago. You can’t fight Oriental philosophy.”
“By the way, what was that business with the coins? I never saw you do that one.”
“An improvised variation of the Miser’s Dream. Old trick but effective.”
“Thank goodness.”
“And amen.”
“So where are we going?”
“We’ve got several stops to make, and I want to have everything ready by nightfall. First, how would you like to go to a motel?”
“At a time like this?”
“That later,” he said. “I’ve got some things in a place on Sunset I’m going to need.”
He swung off the Hollywood Freeway on Sunset and turned toward Western. The sun was up now. Another beautiful California day.