They Thirst (53 page)

"No, we won't," she said. "Where's all this sand coming from?"

"Who knows?" He slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and backed down the driveway. He drove up to Sunset and turned west to pick up the San Diego Freeway. Occasional blasts of wind rocked the car, and Wes had to use the windshield wipers several times to clear away the sand.

"I was making something for you," Solange said after they'd left Bel Air. She reached into a pocket and brought out a little ball of something wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a rubber band. Wes caught the sharp odor of garlic.

"What is it?" he asked, taking it in the palm of his hand and sniffing it.

"A
resguardo.
A good-luck talisman to keep away evil. It hasn't been dipped into holy water or blessed at seven churches so it won't be as powerful as it should be. You must keep it in a pocket,
always."

Wes glanced at her, then looked back at the thing again. A few days ago he would've laughed at something like this. Now things were different, the spirits and amulets and Solange's spells didn't seem so far-fetched. In fact, he felt relieved to have her with him. "What's in it?"

"Garlic.
Yerbabuena, perejil,
and a touch of camphor." She squinted as more sand hit the windshield in front of her face. "I had to make it quickly so I don't know how long its positive influences will last. Don't lose it."

He nodded and slipped it into his jacket. "How about yours?" he asked her, and when she remained silent, he said, "You
did
make one for yourself, didn't you?"

"No. There wasn't time."

"Keep this one then." He started to dig it out, but she stopped him with a slight grip on his wrist. "No," she said, "That one won't work for me. It has a few strands of your hair in it. Watch where you're going."

Wes looked back to the boulevard and swerved away from the center line as a Porsche swept past, horn blaring. He reached the freeway ramp and turned up onto it, heading south toward the airport. The sky was a strange, dark gold color with grayish gold clouds racing from the east. Wes couldn't even tell where the sun was, and most of the cars on the freeway had already switched on their headlights. He heard a Bugs Bunny voice within him say,
Uhhhhh, ya wanna know what's up, doc? Dooooms-day!

He increased his speed, whipping around slower cars. Wind hit the Mercedes and pushed it several feet to the right. He had to fight the wheel for a minute to steady the car. As they passed over West L.A. they could see spirals of sand dancing ahead and sheets of it being blown across the freeway. Solange's heart was pounding. She sensed something dark at work, an unexpected hand that had tipped the balance of power in favor of the vampires.
Not much time left,
she thought suddenly.

He put a hand on her thigh. "We're going to be fine," he told her. "We'll get ourselves a room at the Sands and lay out in the sun for about a week."

"What's going to happen to these people?" she asked quietly. "The ones who can't get out?"

He pretended not to hear her. "I've got some friends at the Sands. Maybe I can work up a show two or three nights a week. Yeah, that would be great. Just a nice, light show to keep the gamblers happy. I wouldn't even have to work very hard . . ."

"Wes," Solange repeated. "What is going to happen to these people?"

He didn't answer for a moment. "I don't know," he said. "I just know I want us to get far away from here. . ."

"How will we know if any place is ever far enough away?"

He didn't answer, couldn't answer. He pressed his foot further down on the accelerator.

Wes took the ramp that swung traffic off toward LAX and almost immediately found himself in a jam of cars, vans, cabs, and buses. With horns blowing, the traffic slowly inched forward toward the main terminal. Wes hammered the steering wheel in his impatience, as Solange watched the residue of sand slowly growing at the bottom of the windshield. Up ahead there were a couple of cops in orange slickers trying to direct traffic and at the same time keep their balance against the wind. As Wes neared them, he thought he heard one of the cops shout something like "All flights grounded," but he couldn't be sure. He rolled down his window and instantly caught grit in his eyes. He rolled the window back up to a slit and shouted frantically to the nearest cop. "Hey! Aren't the planes flying?"

"You kidding, man?" The officer kept his hand up in front of his face to shield his eyes and nose. "They can't even get off the ground in this!"

"Shit!" Wes muttered and started looking for a way to get out of the airport lane. He pounded the horn and slid in front of a bus, trying to edge out before he was caught in the vortex of traffic that swirled in a circle in front of the terminal. He hit the horn again as a black limo squeezed past, scraping paint off his side of the car; he caught a glimpse of a man in the rear seat, whose eyes were wide with terror. Wes swerved in front of a cab, hearing the wail of brakes and the responding discordant chorus of blaring horns. Then the Mercedes was climbing up and over a concrete median strip, almost slamming into a mad pack of cars racing back from the airport. Wes heard one of the cops shout something at him, but he sank his foot to the floor, heading north again back toward the San Diego Freeway.

"Where are you going?" Solange said. "Maybe we should just wait at the airport for the weather to clear."

"And when might that be? Damn it, where'd this storm come from?" He switched on the windshield wipers to clear away the sand; the glass was pocked and scratched in long arcs. He could see tiny glints of bare metal showing through the paint on the hood. "A sandstorm? Christ!" He took the freeway ramp at fifty, tires screeching. Another blast of wind hit the car, almost wrenching the wheel loose from Wes's grip. The sky had turned amber.

Oh, God,
he thought,
night's coming fast!
"We're driving to Vegas," he said, trying to picture the serpentine twistings of the L.A. freeway system in his mind: Veer off onto the Santa Monica Freeway, curve north through the downtown district to the San Bernardino Freeway across East L.A. and Monterey Park, Interstate 15 out past Ontario. He'd drive to Vegas as if they were being chased by all the demons of Hell. Even Vegas might not be far enough away. Maybe they should just keep driving east and never look back.

Solange turned on the radio and searched for a station that wasn't drowned out by static. At the far end of the dial, she caught the faint sound of a newscaster's voice. "Today the president announced . . . gas rationing . . . members of Congress . . . denied . . . Los Angeles businessman . . . found guilty . . . tremor felt as far as . . . and registered four on the open-ended . . . the National Weather Service advises___"

"Turn that up," Wes said.

Solange did, but the crackle of static was overpowering. ". . . traveler's warnings extend as far north as Lancaster-Palmdale and to the south as . . . Weather Services advises all drivers . . ." Static squealed and chuckled, then the station was gone.

The Mercedes was rocketing through downtown L.A. Solange saw that the tops of several of the taller buildings —the Union Bank, the twin black Bank of America monoliths, the silver cylinders of the Bonaventure Hotel, the looming Arco Plaza—were shrouded in a shimmering golden mist. Sand was being blown in sheets back and forth ahead of them across the freeway; wind roared past the car. When she looked at Wes, she saw a slight sheen of sweat clinging to his face. He glanced at her and smiled grimly. "We'll be fine," he said, "as soon as we make it to Interstate 15 and start heading through the mountains. They'll cut this wind down to a. . ."

His eyes riveted on something in the road, and he slammed on the brakes. There were three cars locked together in the middle of the freeway. He felt the Mercedes begin to slip to the left and realized with a start of terror that the sand had covered the highway like ice. He quickly turned into the skid. The tangle of wrecked cars loomed up ahead, one of them with a red taillight still blinking. As the Mercedes swept past them, still skidding, Wes heard the loud grinding of metal, and the car pitched sideways, but then they were in the clear, and the car snapped itself steady. He increased the wiper speed, but now he could barely see where he was going. On the right side of the freeway, a car had smacked into the guardrail, and Solange thought she saw a body hanging out of the driver's door. But then they passed, and she didn't look back.

Not much time left,
she thought. And went cold.

They crossed the sand-glutted ditch of the Los Angeles River and began to pass over the crowded houses and buildings of Boyle Heights. Wes switched on the air-conditioner because the temperature had risen sharply in the last five minutes. The air was stifling, and it was hard to draw a breath without tasting grit. They passed an overturned car that was burning fiercely, the flames fanned by the sweeping wind.

And then a dark brown cloud that seemed to shake the earth with its fury filled the sky, rolling forward like the dust kicked up from the heels of an advancing army. It engulfed the Mercedes, completely blinding them and smothering the windshield with sand. The wipers died under its weight. Wes cried out and steered the car to the right, his heart hammering. A pair of headlights came flying from his rearview mirror, and then a car spun around and around in front of them and disappeared into the dense curtain of sand.

"I can't see, I can't see!" Wes shouted. "We're going to have to pull off and stop, but Jesus Christ, I don't even know where I am!" He tried to graze the right guardrail, but he couldn't even find it. The engine coughed and stuttered. "Oh, Jesus," Wes whispered. "Don't go out on me now! Don't!" Coughed again. He stared at the lurching rpms on his dash gauge. "Got enough sand in the engine to choke a fucking camel!" he said. He pumped the accelerator as the Mercedes gave a last gasp and went dead. It rolled perhaps ten yards and then stopped. Wes squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles cracked. "No!" he said. "NO!"

With the end of the air-conditioner, the air had instantly become as stale as the inside of a desert tomb. Wes turned on the ignition but the air that came through the vents was searing—it seemed to be sucking oxygen out instead of letting it in. Wes wiped his face with the back of his hand and stared at the shining beads of sweat. "So," he said quietly. "Here we sit."

They were silent for a long while, listening to the taunts of the storm and the dry rasp of sand on metal.

"What time is it?" Solange finally asked.

He was afraid to look at his watch. "Almost five," he said: "Maybe later."

"It's going to be dark soon . . ."

"I KNOW THAT!" Wes said sharply and was instantly ashamed. Solange looked quickly away from him out the window, but she couldn't see anything because the currents of sand were too thick. Wes switched on his emergency blinkers and prayed to God that any car coming up behind them would see the lights in time. The soft
click click click
sounded like a sepulchral metronome, ticking away the few breaths of air they had left. Wes could see Solange's profile—delicate, stoic, sad. "I'm sorry," he said softly.

She nodded but didn't look at him.

Hardy to Laurel: This is another fine mess you've got us into!
Wes felt a grim smile spread across his face, but it faded quickly. The car was still shuddering under riptides of wind, and now the windshield was almost completely covered. Wes could taste sand every time he inhaled; it gritted between his teeth. "We can't just sit here and . . ." he let his voice trail off. "We can't. But, Jesus! How long would we last out there?"

"Not very long," Solange said quietly.

"Yeah." He glanced at her and then away. "I guess those sheikhs who bought houses up in Beverly Hills feel right at home in this, huh? They can just open up their two-camel garages and hit the trail. If they can find the trail. Hmmm. I could do some material on that—a nice five- or six-minute bit about Arabs buying up Beverly Hills. I can see the signs on Rodeo Drive—Chez Saudi, serving camelburgers around the clock. If you can't eat 'em, we'll sew you a nice coat . . . oh, shit." He'd suddenly gone very pale; he'd felt the presence of Death every time he took a shallow breath and sucked more grit into his lungs. He gripped the door handle and barely managed to stop himself before flinging it open.
Uh-uh,
he told himself.
No way. I sure as hell don't want to die, but I'd rather go slow than fast any old day.
He forced himself to release his grip and sit back.

"I haven't been very good to you, have I?"

She said nothing.

"I'm a taker," he said, "just like all the rest of them. Shark, barracuda, piranha . . . all those predatory-fish metaphors apply. I think I just wear a slightly better mask than most of them. Mine doesn't slip often because wearing a mask is what I do for a living. It
has
slipped, though, and I don't like what lies under it. Maybe the cops'll be along pretty soon. Maybe we can get towed out of this mess, huh?"

Solange looked at him. There were tears in her eyes. "I've seen behind your mask. There's a Bantu saying: You are what you are when you awaken. Before you open your eyes, before you swim up out of sleep, that's the real person. Many mornings I've watched you, and I've seen you curl up like a little boy needing protection or love or just . . . warmth. I think that's all you ever really needed. But you mistrust it. You push it away and look for it somewhere else, and so you never really find it at all."