In another three steps he tripped over something and fell to the ground. His legs had gotten tangled in the frozen arms of a dead woman, the flesh over her skull stretched as tight as old leather. Tommy kicked free and crawled away, tears stinging his eyes. Sleeeeep, the wind moaned. Close your eyes now, and sleep…
It was so tempting. Maybe I should, Tommy thought. Just for a little while. Close my eyes and rest, and when I get my strength back, I can keep on looking for him. Yeah. That’s the thing to do. He wondered if Mr. Palatazin was also sleeping somewhere, all curled up and comfortable. A yellow blanket began to drift over him.
And then he realized what he was doing and kicked off the blanket. He struggled to his feet, his heart pounding. I was lying down to die, he realized. Old Death almost got me that time, and it slipped up so softly… “NO, I WONT!” he shouted, though the words were ripped to shreds by the wind. He began to run again, past more stranded cars and half-covered things that were probably bodies, but he was afraid to look at them too closely. He ran past a street sign that said LaBrea Avenue, and now there were indentations on the ground that might have been scattered footprints or just deep-rippled places—he couldn’t tell. In the shadow of a towering dune, there was an imprint that might have been made by a falling body. Panic flared within him. He knew he had to hurry; he might already be too late.
Ahead, at the corner of LaBrea and Lexington avenues, Tommy saw Palatazin’s body sprawled in the windbreak of a stranded car. There was a long groove where the man had dragged himself for several yards.
Tommy ran to him and bent down. He could hear Palatazin’s tortured breathing. “Wake up!” Tommy said, shaking him. “Don’t go to sleep! WAKE UP!”
Palatazin moved, lifted a hand, and grasped his shoulder. He tried to focus on Tommy, but his eyes were bloodshot and watery. Sand had filled the cracks in his face, giving it the look of a dried-up riverbed. “Who…?” he whispered hoarsely. He let his head fall back. “Oh, God,” he breathed. “Go back…go back…”
“NO! YOU’VE GOT TO WAKE UP!”
“Can’t make it…too far…”
“We’ll find our way back together!” Tommy said, but he knew they couldn’t, not really. The man was too weak and so Was he, the wind too strong, the sand too dense. “Stand up! Come on!” He pulled at Palatazin’s arm with both hands; his unprotected face felt as if it was being flayed. Palatazin stirred and tried to rise, the effort showing in the grim set of his eyes, but he only got up on one knee and leaned against the car, his breath coming in heaving gasps.
“What are…you…doing out here?” Palatazin shouted at him. “I told you…told you to stay at the house!”
“Can you walk?” Tommy shouted back.
Palatazin tried to stand up again, but he didn’t seem to have any strength left in his legs. His heart was racing, his lungs pumping like bellows but only drawing in short, burning gasps of air. He felt dizzy and about to pass out, and he clung to the boy for support. “I guess…I’m not in as…good a shape as I thought I was. Lungs are hurting.”
“You have to stand up!” Tommy shouted. “I’ll help you! Hold onto me and—”
“No,” Palatazin said. “Just let me lie down and rest for a little while…just a little while…”
“YOU HAVE TO STAND UP!” Tommy shook him, but now the man was sliding down into the sand. His eyes were closing, and he was just a heavy mass of flesh without consciousness or will. And suddenly Tommy realized there was someone standing a few feet away from them, just behind his left shoulder. He whirled around to face a lean, leathery-looking man with long, grayish brown hair and a wild gray beard that flowed down over his chest in tattered, dirty strands. He wore filthy blue jeans and a yellow T-shirt that said Timothy Leary for President across the front under a picture of Leary sitting atop the White House and smoking a joint. Tommy was afraid to move. The man stared at him through keen electric-blue eyes, barely seeming to mind the storm. Then the man looked around quickly and fell to his knees beside Tommy. He oozed with the odors of grime, sweat, and sewage. “You’re not one of them, are you, man? I mean, you can’t be one of them because you’re out here in the daylight, aren’t you? I mean, what daylight there is, right? What’s ailing this dude?”
“He’s going to die!” Tommy shouted. “Help me make him wake up!”
The man dug a dirty hand into his pocket, fished around for a few seconds, and then brought out a clear plastic capsule and popped it open under Palatazin’s nose. Palatazin immediately sputtered and opened his eyes, and Tommy smelled the heavy odor of ammonia. “Peace, brother,” the man said, holding up two fingers in a V before Palatazin’s face.
Tommy realized the man had no protection, nothing to mask his face, not even a jacket. “Where did you come from?”
“Me? I come from everywhere, man! From under the hot earth where the cool streams run! From where the babbling brooks play in the concrete night! That’s where I live!” He pointed a skinny finger, and Tommy looked over his shoulder. He could see the open manhole.
“The vibes aren’t right up here, man! Not right at all! Gimme a hand and let’s get this dude downstairs!” The man started dragging Palatazin toward the open hole in the center of the street, and Tommy pulled as best he could. Palatazin was conscious but dazed, his breathing still forced and ragged. The bearded man clambered down a few metal rungs with familiar ease, then helped Palatazin down into the darkness. Tommy followed. At the bottom of the metal rungs, in a large, circular concrete tunnel with pipes and cables running along its sides, the man eased Palatazin to a sitting position, picked up a bull’s-eye lantern from the floor, and then scurried back up to pull the manhole cover into place. Tommy watched the daylight disappear and with it went the scream of the wind. When it was gone, the man switched on his lantern and climbed down again. He shone the light at Palatazin, who was weakly pulling the rest of the sheet away from his face. “You need another popper, man?”
Palatazin shook his head. “One’s enough.” His nostrils felt as if they were still on fire, but at least his brain was working again. Finding shelter from that savage wind was a blessing, no matter how foul the mingled odors of human excrement were down there.
“Damn straight.” The man sat on his haunches, his face whitened by the backwash of the light, and looked from Palatazin to Tommy with quick, animal-like jerks of his head. “Bad vibes up there these days,” he said finally, motioning with a tilt of his chin. “You want to be careful. Dig it!” He grinned, showing a mouthful of teeth that would’ve driven a dentist mad.
“Who are you?” Tommy asked.
“Me? I’m the Big R, the Hollywood Creeper. I’m Johnny Ratkins. My friends call me Ratty.”
“You…live down here?”
“No, man, not here!” He scowled and pointed a finger down. “Here!” Now he made a broad, expansive movement with the same hand. “Everywhere. This is my mansion, safe from all the bad vibes there ever was or ever will be. Got a million rooms down here, a million corridors. Got babbling brooks and sweet streams and lakes…yeah! Real lakes, man! If I could just figure out how to get a Chris-Craft through that little hole, I’d be one happy dude! Dig it! What are you two dudes doing out in those bad vibes?”
Palatazin coughed a couple of times, spat out phlegm thickened with sand, and said, “Trying to get across Hollywood. I thought I could make it, but…” He looked at Tommy. “Why did you leave the house? I told you to stay back there!”
“You’d be dead now if I had! I said I could help you, and I still can!”
“You’re a little fool!”
Tommy glowered at him, and when he spoke, his voice carried a cutting edge. “You’re not my father so don’t try to tell me what I can or can’t do.”
Ratty whistled through the nubs of his front teeth. “Heaaaavy! That’s the center, man. That’s Truth in a teacup!” He grinned at Palatazin. “The little dude’s telling it like it is. If I hadn’t heard him shouting, I wouldn’t have stuck my head out to see w
hat was going down. What was going down was you, man, so you’d better cool it.”
“I suppose I should say thank you for getting us out of that.”
“No need. Ratty does what he can. Oh, I’ve come across other folks like you two, stumbling around and lost with all those bad vibes sucking the air right out of their lungs. Some of them I helped.” His gaze darkened. “Some of them I couldn’t. The poppers wouldn’t even bring them around. You feeling okay now?”
“Better,” Palatazin said. What he was breathing was not the sweetest air possible, but at least he didn’t have to sift it through his teeth, and for that he was grateful. His lungs felt raspy and raw.
“You want something to pick you up?” Ratty dug into his jeans again and this time brought out a handful of ampules, pills, and capsules in a variety of colors. “I’ve got whatever you need. Speed, yellowjackets, reds…got a microdot here somewhere that’ll fuck up your head for a week!” He giggled and offered them to Palatazin.
“No, thank you.”
“How about some angel dust? Or…” He reached into another pocket and brought out a clear cellophane packet containing what looked to Palatazin like sliced mushrooms. Ratty gazed at it lovingly. “Magic,” he said.
Palatazin shook his head, and Ratty looked offended, as if his greatest offering had been refused. “What are you?” Palatazin asked him. “A dealer?”
“A dealer? Me? Listen, I’m an artist, man! Look at these!” He shook the packet in front of Palatazin’s face. “All meat and pure magic, the finest you can buy on the whole fuckin’ Coast! Magic mushrooms! No additives, no preservatives, just pure homegrown, farmed by yours truly using all natural elements in the sod…”
“That’s fine,” Palatazin said and waved the packet away.
“This other stuff is junk compared to my mushrooms,” Ratty said. He put the rest of his cache away, opened the packet, and sniffed at it. He closed his eyes and thrust the packet out toward Palatazin, who caught the heady odor of sewage. “I grow ’em down here,” Ratty said. “I just got to figure out a way to get rid of the smell, then I’ll be in the high cotton…”
Palatazin grunted and moved a few feet away from the man because he’d caught a whiff from him that was less than delicate. What kind of lunatic was this? he wondered. Some hippie holdover who’d been living in these sewers for years perhaps, happy just to pop pills and grow “magic mushrooms” on…God!…did he say “natural elements in the sod”? Surely he had to go out sometime, if just to get batteries for his flashlight. And what did he eat? His mind quickly shunted that thought away.
But then Ratty leaned forward and said, “Hey, what’s in the bag? You don’t have a can opener in there, do you? I sure could use one. I lost mine a couple of days ago. You don’t have a ham sandwich in there, do you?”
Palatazin unsnapped one of the pockets and brought out a stake. Ratty was immediately silent. He took it and shone the light on it as if it were some relic from a lost civilization. “What’s this for?” he said quietly. “The bloodsuckers?”
“The vampires.”
“Bad vibes. Baaaad vibes!” He handed the stake back and wiped his hand on the leg of his filthy jeans. “I’ve seen them, man. They’re everywhere, multiplying like flies on a fruitcake. You look in their eyes, and they get you—pow!—just like that.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Couple of them chased me last night. I broke into Hoffman’s Deli and got myself some food. On the way out there they were, right on the corner. I didn’t know what they were at first, but then one of them flashed his chompers and I said, ‘Uh-oh, old Ratty may have had some bad dreams in his time, but never like this!’ So I took off, and they came after me. I was flying high on speed, and I was making moves like O.J. Simpson, but I still couldn’t shake ’em. And all the time I was hearing these crazy voices, shrieking and screaming in my head.” A nervous grin flickered across his face. His eyes were bright, scorched blue. “They chased me down into the line that runs underneath Hollywood Boulevard. I tried to hide in the dark. They move so…quiet. They don’t even breathe. They can come up behind you, and you’d never know it until it was too late. I stayed where I was for a long time, until finally I heard somebody scream way on down the line. I figured there were other people hiding in the sewers too, and the vampires found them instead of Ratty. Lucky Ratty, huh?”
“Yes,” Palatazin said. “Very lucky.” But now a terrible uncertainty struck him—what if there were more vampires down here? Could they move around freely in this dark world, or would they still be bound by their unholy fear of sunlight? He wondered where the sun was now. God! he thought. What time is it? “We’ve got to hurry,” he told Tommy.
“How? We can’t go anywhere up there!”
Palatazin paused. He glanced at Ratty, then back at the boy. “You’re right. We…can’t go anywhere up there.”
“Huh?” Tommy said.
“How far do these sewers go?” he asked Ratty. There was an anxious excitement in his voice.
The man shrugged. “Everywhere. Across Hollywood, L.A., Beverly Hills, up into the canyons…” He stopped and narrowed his eyes slightly. “Where are you trying to get to?”
“Up above the Hollywood Bowl, just this side of Mulholland Drive…”
“Jesus! What’s this, an expedition?”
“Of a kind.”
“Yeah, well, too bad you didn’t bring your wadin’ boots,” Ratty said, “’cause you’d sure as hell need ’em! That’s a long way to go, man.”
“But could it be done?”
Ratty was silent. He sat on his haunches and seemed to be thinking it over for a few minutes. Then he said, “Where—exactly—do you want to go?”
“Across Hollywood to Outpost Drive, then up into the hills. There’s another road branching off from Outpost, up higher, but I doubt if a sewer runs underneath it.”
“I know where Outpost starts. On the other side of Franklin Avenue. Goes straight up the mountain, doesn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Means a lot of shit pouring down the line, too. Hard going. Be like climbing a mountain covered with ice. ‘Course now, not all the lines are the same size. Some of them you can walk in, some of them you crawl through, some of them…you hope you can get out of without gettin’ stuck tight as a cork. It’s about a three-mile hike from here to Franklin. You didn’t answer my question. Where do you want to go?”
“The Kronsteen castle. Do you know where that is?”
“Nope, but it sure as hell sounds like a place with bad vibes. You say it’s up close to Mulholland? You’re takin’ about another couple of miles almost straight up. If you can get through the tunnels. If you don’t take a wrong turn and get lost, because all the lines aren’t laid down exactly underneath the streets. I’ve got a nose for direction, man. I’ve been down here ever since I got back from Nam.” Something sharp and brittle passed across Ratty’s gaze. “I’d rather be down here where it’s safe. The world up there has gone nuts, you dig? Bad vibes all over the place! Anyway, I know the line system like you know the way back and forth from your boob tube to the john. But even I get lost sometimes, and there are a lot of places I ain’t been. Got the picture?”
“You’re saying it can’t be done?”
“Nope. I’m saying you can’t do it.”
“I know that,” Palatazin answered.
Ratty looked from him to Tommy and back again. Tommy could hear the muffled roaring of the storm through the manhole cover above his head; it sounded like some huge animal gnawing at the iron, trying to get in at them. “What’s the deal?” Ratty asked.
“We’re going after the vampires,” Palatazin said quietly. “At best we’ve got only four hours of real daylight left because when the sun drops low enough the storm cover will bring early darkness. We can’t make it to the castle up there. We could make it by using the sewers. Couldn’t we?”
“Maybe,” Ratty said. “Don’t like screwing with the bloodsuckers, man. That
gives Ratty the creeps. You…going up to this place to give them the shaft, huh?”
“That’s where their leader—their king—is sleeping. I think if I can destroy him, it might throw the rest of them into confusion…”
“Like Indians, huh? You get rid of the chief, and the rest of them are scared shitless?”
“Sort of like that, yes.”
“Yeah. I can dig that.” Ratty nodded and looked down into the stygian darkness of the tunnel. “I mean, this could be like…the end of the world or something, couldn’t it? Those bloodsuckers keep getting stronger all the time, more and more of them…less of us. Right?”
“Yes.” Palatazin held Ratty’s gaze. “I have to get up to that castle. We have to start now. Will you help me?”
Ratty chewed his fingernail for a minute. His eyes kept getting larger and larger. He giggled suddenly. “Why not, man? I’m a crazy patriot. Shit! Why not?” He grinned into the darkness with all the good humor and courage his pills could give him. Then he stood up, his knees popping, and shone the light ahead along what looked to be an endless tunnel. “This is the way.” He waited for Palatazin to stand and then start moving, his back seemingly permanently bent. Palatazin followed with Tommy bringing up the rear. The stink of sewage was getting stronger, but it was certainly preferable to the hellish wasteland above. Water trickled at their feet.
Time was their enemy now, and time lay on the vampires’ side. Palatazin felt freighted with responsibility, not only for Jo and Gayle and Tommy but for the hundreds of thousands of people still trapped in L.A. What might happen to them tonight and all the nights to come if the king vampire couldn’t be found? He felt as if he were going to do battle with an ancient adversary, a nightmare that had ripped away his childhood and plunged him into a world where all shadows were suspect, where every twilight was a terrifying reminder that somewhere the vampir were awakening.