It Lives Again (17 page)

“Who are you?” said a voice. It was Perkins with several other policemen.

“I’m Mrs. Scott,” she said, and then, “Where’s my husband?”

“At UCLA Emergency Hospital. He’s all right. Where are the other two?” Perkins asked.

“You know about them?” asked Jody, obeying Frank’s instructions to stall them.

“Please, ma’am,” said Perkins, “don’t waste time.”

“Haven’t you forced me to do enough already?” Jody retorted angrily. “You turned them against me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Perkins, shaking his head. He knew he was not about to get any help from this woman. What’s the matter with these people? he thought. Her husband mauled, almost killed, and still they lie, they’ll do anything to save these things. Am I crazy or are they crazy? It’s got to be one or the other.

“All right,” he said to his men, “take her downstairs.”

“Yes, sir,” said two of his men, who guided the young woman down the stairs.

“Please,” Jody cried, unable to stop herself, “don’t hurt him.”

Perkins watched her go, then turned and saw the steep hillside leading up and into the woods. With his flashlight he followed an imaginary path from the woods back again down to the terrace. At the terrace’s edge, he saw something else: sprinkles of fresh dirt, fresh from the side of the hill.

Suddenly a voice, almost hysterical, deep within the house cried, “There it is, there it is!” A shot rang out.

Perkins, his men following, moved quickly for the door. Inside, another shot rang out. More yells and the sound of men running echoed through the old house as if these men were chasing one of those creatures down the maze of corridors, firing at it as at some cornered game.

Perkins and his men moved from one deserted room to another, searching, the sounds of the hunt getting closer and closer. Then, coming out of one deserted room and into another corridor, Perkins saw it! It scurried down a hall, Mallory and two policemen after it, shooting wildly in its direction. Then it went into a room with Mallory and the two policemen close behind it. Then shots, a barrage of them, rang out deafeningly.

Perkins, running, reached the room. He looked in. He saw two policemen, then Mallory, all holding smoking guns still aimed at the body of the dead baby as if they meant to fire again.

“Hold it,” said Perkins.

Mallory turned, smiling. He was really enjoying himself, Perkins thought.

“Well, that’s two,” said Mallory.

“Boy, you should have seen it,” said Haskins. “I coulda sworn it was trying to say something just before we shot it.”

“Shut up!” said Mallory. “Somebody cover it,” he shouted.

One of the officers pulled a drape down from the wall—a dusty old drape—and tossed it over the lifeless form.

“Let’s find the other one,” said Mallory. “Anyone seen Davis?”

No answer. Everyone was strangely quiet all of a sudden, watching the officer adjusting that old, filthy drape over that tiny figure.

Mallory asked the question again, this time directed to Lieutenant Perkins. “You seen Davis, Lieutenant?”

Perkins shook his head.

“We find Davis, we’ll find the third,” Mallory said. “You got any ideas where he is?”

Perkins didn’t answer him, but he remembered something. He remembered that fresh dirt on the edge of the terrace leading up into the woods.

CHAPTER TEN

It was still dark. Even if it hadn’t been, no one could easily have seen Frank Davis. He was running through very thick woods in the Santa Monica Mountains. With every step, he gasped tortuously for breath. He couldn’t stop now, though; he knew he had to take advantage of his lead. It wouldn’t be long before it was dawn, before the Los Angeles police had their helicopters out here, surveying these mountains. Suddenly he heard something, or thought he heard something. Yes, he had. A sound up ahead. Then a set of headlights swept across the deep woods and was gone.

“A road,” whispered Frank Davis. “Of course, that’s it.” It would be easy to stop a car with a baby.

He fought his way out of the thicket of trees and stood on the macadam road listening in one direction, then the other, for the sound of an approaching car.

A moment later he heard it, the sound of a car engine farther up the hill. As the sound grew louder and louder, Davis stood in the middle of the narrow two-lane road, adjusting the blanket, making sure the infant was completely hidden from view.

Then the headlights appeared around the curve, bearing down on Frank Davis and his bundle.

Davis, boldly holding his ground, held the blanket-covered infant in plain view in front of him. “Stop,” he shouted, “stop!”

A screeching of brakes and the car, a compact, stopped a few yards from Frank and the baby.

Frank ran around to the passenger-side window, already opened by the man, fiftyish—a nice man, but a little scared—who had leaned across the front seat to roll the window down.

“Jesus, I almost didn’t see you,” he said. “What’s the trouble?”

“Car broke down back there,” said Frank. “My baby’s sick.” He indicated the blanket. “Gotta get to the hospital.”

Frank had said the magic word. “A baby,” the man said. “Hop in.” He was sure now he had done the right thing in stopping for this stranger in the middle of the night.

The man smiled. Frank got in. He sat as far away as he could—not that far in a compact car—the blanket still completely covering the infant.

The man started the car. “Maybe we should go back and see if we can get your car started,” he suggested. “I’m pretty good at that sort of thing. Where is it?”

“No, no,” protested Frank. “I’ll get it tomorrow. I’ll have a friend of mine help me tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said the man, “have it your own way. What’s the matter with the baby?”

“I don’t know,” answered Frank, too tired to think up a lie.

But the man continued talking—he was a real talker, this man—without hearing what Frank had said.

“Oh, it’ll be all right,” he said jovially. “My kids were the same way. Mother and I had them to the emergency room all the time. You know, cuts, bruises, broken bones, burns. They threatened to name a wing of the hospital after us.” The man laughed, appreciating his own joke.

Frank peered out into the darkness, trying to get his bearings.

“What hospital you going to?” the man asked, taking a hairpin turn with relative ease, obviously accustomed to the winding road.

“Oh . . . I don’t know.” Then, covering himself, “I’m not familiar with the hospitals around here.” The baby was still quiet under the blanket.

“Oh, just moved in.” The man smiled taking another sharp curve easily. “A lotta new people moving in. Too many if you ask me.” The man smiled again.

“Right,” said Frank, smiling back.

“Well, there’s the Sherman Oaks Hospital in Sherman Oaks. There’s the Van Nuys Community in Van Nuys. They’re both good. Then there’s the Kaiser, too. Are you a member of Kaiser?” the man asked.

“No,” said Frank. Doesn’t he ever stop talking? Frank wondered.

“No. Well, then there’s St. Joe in Burbank, real fine hospital. My youngest, my daughter, was born there. What’s yours, a boy or—”

Before Frank could do anything, say anything, the man reached over—a short distance, really, in the small car—and flicked off the blanket to get a look at the baby.

“—or a girl,” he finished.

Then he saw it!

Enough of it, including a claw, to see how hideous it was.

He screamed! And then he screamed again, almost out of his mind. He lost control of the car! The car careened from side to side down the narrow canyon road, punctuated by the sounds of the man’s screams.

“Help, help! Oh, Jesus, help!” the man screamed.

The baby was scared now, growling. Frank didn’t know whether to hold the baby or to try to get the car under control. Clumsily he did a little of both.

For some reason the car slowed, running off the road into the low brush.

Still the man screamed as Frank struggled to control the baby. It was now completely out of its blanket, squirming in Frank’s arms, its claws, its fangs, there for the man to see.

The car had almost stopped. Somehow Frank got the door open and, holding the baby, jumped clear of the car.

Frank and the baby, with the blanket somewhere between them, landed, rolling, in some soft leaves. Behind them the man continued to scream as the car pounded slowly into a soft bank. Frank picked himself and the baby up and plunged deep into the thick woods.

Frank ran. He kept on running through those dark woods—he couldn’t tell for how long. All he knew was that he must stop. He must rest somewhere.

Suddenly the woods ended.

What’s this? Frank wondered, stopping, wary of leaving the cover of the trees.

The baby growled.

“Shush,” Frank said.

He inched forward. He saw a clearing and then the moon, what was left of it, reflecting off a body of water.

“Of course,” said Frank. “The reservoir! There’s got to be something, a shack, anything. A place where I can rest.”

Quickly he made his way across the clearing, coming now to a high wire fence. He moved along the fence, looking down occasionally at the moon-dappled water. He saw the first of several warning signs: RESERVOIR—LOS ANGELES COUNTY WATER SUPPLY
—KEEP OUT.

Frank stopped. There it was beyond the fence, a road and a small pickup truck waiting for the taking!

“The keys are in it,” said Frank. “I know they are,” he insisted, convincing himself. He looked at the fence. “I can do it,” he said. “Even with the baby I can get over it.”

He started to climb, cautiously, one-handedly, the baby in the other hand, hidden by the blanket. With great difficulty he reached the top.

Smiling, congratulating himself, he pulled himself over and started down the other side. Then it happened! His coat got caught in the fence. He pulled; nothing; he was stuck. The baby growled.

“Easy, baby, easy,” he said.

He pulled again, frantic. The coat ripped. He was free!

Silently he descended and then, finally down, he started across the cindered ground toward the pickup.

“Who’s there?” a voice snapped suddenly from the pickup truck, hoarse from its owner’s sitting in the cold night air guarding the city’s water supply.

Frank Davis stopped. He held the baby tight. “It’s all right,” he whispered, “it’s all right.”

“Who’s there?” the voice demanded again, moving closer.

It was an old man, his body bent with age, moving closer and staring through the darkness with rheumy eyes at this intruder.

“Who’s there?” he asked a third time, reaching for something.

Davis felt it. The baby was panicked. It was growling continuously now, growing angrier. It suspected a trap. A light came on, hitting it flush in the face.

“It’s not the police . . . it’s a watchman,” he pleaded with the baby, and then louder, calling to the watchman, “Please, sir, please put out that light.”

“I said who’s there?” yelled the watchman. “You better answer.”

A ferocious growl, and suddenly the baby sprang out of Frank’s grasp onto the ground, leaving Frank with no more than the empty blanket. Quickly it advanced on the old man.

“No!” cried Frank. “No!”

The infant was right at the watchman’s feet now, ready to attack.

The watchman, adjusting his flashlight, saw it for the first time crouched at his feet.

“Jesus!” he screamed.

“No!” yelled Frank. He ran forward and jumped on the infant, who sprang into the air, going for the old man!

The infant felt itself being grabbed, pulled to the ground by a heavy weight. It turned, terrified, doing the only thing it knew how to do, claw! Clawing away at this thing—Davis—that was restraining it. In no time it had clawed its way through the blanket. Blood gushed instantly as Frank fell back against the fence, and the infant, in the beam of the old man’s flashlight, attacked again and again, clawing its way into Frank Davis’s throat.

Then a scream, the old man’s scream, the crash of the flashlight falling to the ground. Then the old man running, the pickup truck starting up, moving quickly away. Then silence, except for the sound of the infant scurrying away into the brush.

Eugene Scott was thankful he was alive. He sat on the edge of a hospital bed in the UCLA Emergency Hospital in Los Angeles, watching a nurse, young but skillful, change the bandages on his hands. She had already changed the bandages on his arms and back.

“Finished,” she said, the first word she’d said since she came into the room. She knew who Eugene was; everybody did. She knew how he got those wounds. Eugene had watched curious heads appear at his door all morning, then disappear when they saw he was watching them.

“There are some men waiting for you outside,” the nurse said, turning toward the door.

“Who?”

“Police, I think.” she said as she went out.

“Naturally,” said Eugene. “Who else?”

Perkins, followed closely by Mallory as if afraid he’d miss something, appeared at the hospital-room door.

“Mr. Scott,” said Perkins formally, moving closer to the bed.

“Mr. Perkins,” said Eugene just as formally.

“We made some reservations for you and your wife on the five o’clock for Tucson.”

“If I were you I’d keep us around for bait,” said Eugene, smiling.

“So you heard about it,” said Mallory.

“Heard what?” asked Eugene.

“Davis got killed,” said Mallory, almost gleefully.

“No, I didn’t,” said Eugene.

“Well, don’t feel bad about it,” said Mallory. “If there was ever somebody looking for it, he was the guy.”

“Was it the baby?” asked Eugene.

“ ’Course it was the baby. What else?” snickered Mallory.

Eugene got up. Will this nightmare ever end? he wondered. With some difficulty he moved across the room toward the window. God, I hate that guy, he thought. He stopped, looking out the window, and began to speak. “Davis told us these infants have a homing instinct. They manage to find their way to their parents. Well, my baby just might like to come back and get me.”

“You’d help us?” asked Mallory anxiously.

Eugene turned. “I’m responsible for this. I suppose a few people would be alive today if I hadn’t cooperated . . .”