“Where did you get the neat coat?” Jillian asked.
Fain ran a hand over the down-padded jacket. “Thrift shop. You like it?”
“I guess it goes with the funky baseball cap and the cheap shades.
“Thank you. I figured it would come in handy.”
“I saw your picture on television,” she said.
He made a last sweep of the motel room to be sure they had left nothing. “How did I look?” he said.
“You looked like somebody in trouble. Do you know there are a lot of people after you?”
Fain lowered the drugstore sunglasses and peered at her over the lenses. “Tell me about it.”
“Did you really try to rob a bank this morning?”
“That’s an exaggeration. All I wanted to do was cash a check.”
“Do you think you ought to explain that before the police blow you away?”
Fain put both his hands on her shoulders. “Honey, if you were somebody in authority and I walked in and gave you my explanation of what’s been going on, would you believe me?”
She shook her head. “I’d lock you up.”
“The defense rests.” He pulled off the shades and got serious. “Jill, are you sure you want to be a part of this?”
“Are we always going to be fugitives?”
He shrugged. “For a while, anyway. But after tonight we won’t have to worry about the walking dead anymore.”
“Can you guarantee that?”
“No, but I’m going to give it my best shot.”
“Call me crazy, but that’s good enough for me, Mac Fain. I’m in.”
“I’m relieved to hear that,” he said, “because what I have worked out couldn’t be done without you.”
“Are you saying you need me?”
“I need you.”
“I’ve waited a long time to hear that. Lead on, O Master of the Occult.”
• • •
He needed the headlights for the drive up into the Hollywood Hills. The sky was still light in the west, but the shadows were deepening. He pulled to a stop at the gate before the private road leading to Eagle’s Roost.
“It looks locked,” Jillian said.
“Did locks stop Houdini?”
Fain got out of the car and worked over the padlock with a slim, saw-toothed pick. In less than a minute the shackle popped free. He opened the gate and returned to the car with a triumphant grin.
They drove slowly up the narrow, twisting road. An errant wind rustled the tree branches above them.
Jillian said. “How can you be sure they’ll come tonight? The dead ones?”
“Some things a man just knows,” he said. “My mother could probably explain it.”
She looked at him curiously but said nothing more.
Fain parked in front of the big stone house and had the front door open in a few seconds. He was relieved to find that Federated Artists had not turned off the electricity. The night’s work would be unpleasant enough without having to do it in the dark.
He walked through the house, turning on lights in all the rooms that were unsealed. He made sure the floodlights in front illuminated the approach up the road through the trees.
“I’m cold,” Jillian said.
“All the rooms have fireplaces,” he said. “Pick one where you want to wait and I’ll start a blaze.”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “They all look like something from a Christopher Lee movie.”
Fain chose a room on one side of the house that was smaller than the rest. It had a high black-beamed ceiling, a curtained French window, heavy plush furniture, and a walk-in fireplace. Using wood from a supply stacked on the hearth, he soon had a crackling fire going.
He carried in the plastic bucket and the rest of his paraphernalia from the car. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go over what we’re going to have to do tonight.”
“Do we get a rehearsal?” Jillian asked.
“Sorry, but due to the nature of the performance, it’s strictly a one-shot. Now listen carefully.”
• • •
Twenty minutes later he concluded, “So that’s it. Any questions?”
She stared at him for a moment, then said, “Are you out of your mind?”
“I won’t count that one.”
“Mac … all that blood!”
“Honey, there isn’t any other way. If there were, believe me, I’d take it.”
“Jeepers!”
Fain took her in his arms and hugged her tightly. “If there wasn’t another reason in the world, I think I’d love you just because you can use an expression like ‘Jeepers.’”
“Are you sure it will work?” she asked, her mouth against his.
“No, but when you consider the alternative, I’d say it’s worth a try.”
He took his other purchases from the plastic bucket and emptied the contents of several bottles back into it. The mixture bubbled and steamed.
“Is it all right to mix that up beforehand?” Jillian asked.
“Yeah, except for the bl — ” He saw her shudder.
“The crucial ingredient. That’s the one they have to see go in.”
“Sounds crazy to me.”
“The workings of the world of magic are not for mortals to understand.”
“Phooey.”
“Let’s go pick a good spot out in front to set up the show,” he said. “We want something where we can see in all directions, and with an emergency escape route down the hill.”
They walked out together into the chill night.
Fain paced back and forth in front of the house until he found a location off to the left of the entrance that satisfied him. It afforded a good view of the floodlit road and the edge of the surrounding wood. An unbroken stone wall would protect their backs.
“This will get it,” he said. “We’ll lay the hair rope down here in a half circle to make us a little stage.”
“I’ll go in and get it,” Jillian offered.
The wind shifted subtly. Both of them sniffed the air.
Jillian made a face. “Wow, is something dead?” She covered her mouth as she realized what she had said.
“We’d better hurry it up,” Fain said quietly.
As Jillian hurried inside, Fain reached into one of the jacket’s deep pockets and pulled out the package he bought at the medical supply house. He unwrapped the package and checked its contents. A scalpel, surgical clamp, two feet of clear plastic tubing …
Glass crashed inside the house.
Jillian screamed.
“Mac, they’re in here!” she cried.
He started toward the door but pulled up suddenly when a figure stepped between him and the entrance. A big man with a terrible wound in the front of his head. John Corely, the murdered policeman. Fluids from the bullet wound oozed down his face. He reached out for Fain and started forward.
“Jill!” Fain shouted. “Use the rope. Block yourself in a corner. They can’t cross it.”
He held the scalpel before him and feinted from side to side as the hulk of a policeman advanced. At the edge of his vision he could see other figures moving out of the trees.
Nice going, Fain, he told himself grimly. Preparation is ninety percent of a performance.
He ducked suddenly and tried to dash by under the policeman’s outstretched arm. He was too slow. A hand, cold and leathery, clamped onto his face. The grip was like steel, and Fain thought his cheekbones would crack at any moment.
Fain bit at one of the fingers that was fastened across his mouth. He gagged as dead flesh came away with his teeth.
Unable to see, he gripped the scalpel and slashed blindly at the arm. He prayed that he would sever some vital muscle before the others reached him or before this one cracked his skull like an egg.
The hand went limp for a moment as his blade found nerve tissue. The fingers flexed for a renewed purchase on his head. Jerking free, Fain broke past the policeman and into the house.
He found Jillian in the room where they had built the fire. God bless her, she had stretched the silvery rope across the floor as he had told her, closing in a safe corner on the side of the room away from the fireplace. Inside the rope with Jillian was one tall-backed chair and, bless her again, the bucket of formula.
Fain sprinted past two foul-smelling creatures and joined her in the corner.
“Are you all right?” he panted.
“For the moment. What happened to your face?”
“It’ll heal. Let’s get set up.”
He took a moment to look at the menacing figures that faced them across the rope. One was, or had been, female. Thick blond hair, now matted and tangled, framed the face on which flesh sagged from the wide-spaced cheekbones. Paula Foster, the movie star, let a few wrinkles take her to surgery, and to death. The other was old friend Kevin Jackson, his black face mottled with something like gray mold.
One by one the others came in the door and approached. Barney Quail, the transient, his toothless mouth a black hole in the dead stubbly face. John Corely the policeman, seemingly unaware that the flesh of his right arm hung in shreds. Glenn Meiner, the brave young fireman. One empty eye socket squirmed with maggots. Ada Dempsey, the shattered hit-and-run victim, flopping her pitiful remains across the floor. Sharon Isaacs, the teenage suicide, swollen tongue coming out of her mouth like a dead white sausage. And finally, the most ravaged of all — a mass of putrescent flesh hanging loose in spots to reveal greasy yellow fat and pale bones. Leanne Kruger.
The two living people in the room were almost relieved when the lights suddenly went out. In the glow of the fire across the room, shadows leaped and danced like tormented things, but the loathsome details of decay in the walking dead were mercifully blurred.
“Here goes,” Fain muttered to Jillian. He extended his arms to the sides and faced the misshapen figures that crowded the rope barrier, chattering and hissing at him. In a voice as strong as he could muster, he commanded, “Mauvais nâmes … m’ecoutez!”
The restless movement of the dead ones slowed. Fain continued with the words he had memorized from Le Docteur’s incantation. The pronunciation he entrusted to the memory of his high school French.
“Regardez! Ce soir je vous renvois. Je vous delivre. Regardez!”
The only sound now was the crackle of the flames and the sigh of wind through the broken window.
“What did you say?” Jillian asked in a whisper.
“I told them the show was about to begin,” Fain whispered back. In truth, he had only a general idea of the words’ meaning, but they had the desired effect of quieting the dead ones. At least temporarily.
“Now comes the hard part,” he said through gritted teeth. “Look away if you feel faint.”
“I can take it if you can,” she said.
Fain sat down slowly in the heavy chair. He positioned himself facing his grisly audience, with the steaming bucket of formula at his feet. Moving deliberately, he drew the scalpel and held it poised in his right hand. He inserted the point of the blade in the fabric of his left jacket sleeve, halfway between the shoulder and elbow, and slit the material cleanly all the way down through the cuff. Wisps of down floated in the air as the quilted fabric parted.
He pulled the sleeve apart, exposing his bare arm, and laid the scalpel blade across the median cephalic vein. He glanced up at Jillian. Her eyes were large and luminous in the firelight. Fain winked at her, then sliced into his vein with the scalpel.
Jillian quickly handed him the plastic tubing and clamp. He had some difficulty attaching the tube to the open vein, once dropping the clamp while the loose jacket sleeve flapped over the wound. When he had the tube properly inserted, he held the open end up for the watchers to see as the crimson liquid quickly filled it.
“Avec le sang de mon coeur je vous renvoie!”
He dipped the open end of the tube toward the bucket. The dark scarlet blood flowed out, making a soft splash in the silent room.
With Jillian at his side, watching anxiously, Fain settled slowly in the chair as blood drained steadily into the bucket. She laid a hand on his shoulder. From time to time he looked up at her with a shadowed smile.
After many minutes, Fain raised his right hand. The small gesture cost him an effort. In a voice that had lost its timbre he said, “Mauvais names! Ne marchez pas jamais! Avec le sang de ma vie je vous renvois à travers la barrière!”
McAllister Fain’s eyes slid out of focus, and his head dropped forward as the blood continued to dribble from the tube into the bucket. Jillian clamped her teeth together, dipped her hands into the viscous red mixture, and splashed it out at the dead creatures beyond the rope.
The effect was instantaneous. The scarlet fluid spattered across the decaying flesh with the hiss of a virulent acid. The moldering faces sizzled and smoked. The poor ruined bodies thrashed about in a grisly dance, their ruined mouths agape in screams long delayed.
Jillian dipped her hands again and threw the fluid outward, trying not to think about what was happening.
They writhed now on the floor, their cries growing fainter. And fainter. At last, at long, long last, they were still.
Jillian, her hands red and dripping, sank slowly to the floor beside Fain’s chair.