by James Dixon
BLOOD RED BIRTHDAY
In the whole terrified city of Los Angeles no one could explain the Davis baby.
No reason was apparent for the infant’s monstrous strength, its animal cunning, its hideous appearance. Ripped from the womb it came killing into the world—and was soon destroyed without understanding.
Some believed it was on evil aberration, a creature sent from Hell they prayed would never come again. Others felt it was the next step in man’s evolution and there would be more like it. No one could yet be certain.
But in the city of Tucson the Scott family was having a baby shower . . .
WATCH OUT FOR IT . . .
IT LIVES
AGAIN!
THE AIR HUMMED WITH A DEAFENING SILENCE.
Frank Davis knew so well what the man and woman were feeling now. Eugene Scott, only moments before a proud and happy father-to-be. Jody Scott, a radiant expectant mother, stunned by the dreadful implications of what they had just heard.
Davis finally broke the silence. “I wish there was some other way I could have done this to make it less painful for you, but we haven’t that much time. You said you were due in a week or ten days. But if it is one of these children, it’ll come early, unexpectedly. They’re prepared for that. The team arrived the day before yesterday.”
Scott was puzzled. “What team?”
“Specialists,” Frank replied.
Scott looked quickly at his wife who sat there breathless, staring, then back at the grim Frank Davis.
“Are you saying people came down for the specific purpose of killing our baby?”
“If it’s like mine when it’s born,” he answered, “. . . yes!”
Warner Bros.
A Warner Communications Company
presents
A Larco Production
IT LIVES AGAIN
A Larry Cohen Film
Starring
FREDERIC FORREST • KATHLEEN LLOYD
JOHN P. RYAN as Frank Davis
JOHN MARLEY
EDDIE CONSTANTINE
ANDREW DUGGAN
TECHNICOLOR®
Written, Produced and Directed by
Larry Cohen
Copyright © 1978 by Larry Cohen
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Ballantine Books of Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.
ISBN 0-345-27693-0
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: June 1978
CHAPTER ONE
It was July. Tucson, Arizona. Beautiful skies. A city of almost perpetual sunshine where one beautiful day follows another. A place where people vacation in order to escape the winters or the humidity back East. Or, if they’re really lucky, they pick up and move there, just like that.
Jody Scott was just such a person. Jody, young, lovely, and talented, was first violinist with the Tucson Symphony. She and her husband, Eugene, an attorney and partner in his own law firm, Foster and Scott, moved to Tucson from Chicago two years ago, and now they felt as if they had never lived anywhere else.
In their home just outside Tucson, tastefully furnished in Spanish decor, twenty or so friends of the enormously, first-time pregnant Jody Scott were giving her a surprise baby shower.
Throughout the Scotts’ living room were scattered open boxes from the best stores of Tucson and Phoenix. Jody, in the middle of all this, was opening the last of the presents.
At the same time a tall, nervous-looking woman was busy apologizing as Jody took off the last of the wrapping. Obviously the present was from her.
“I really couldn’t think what to get since I didn’t know if it’d be a boy or a girl,” she fussed.
Another woman, fat, drinking wine, as were all the women at the shower, shouted, “Yeah, well, listen, Myra, we were all in the same fix,” evoking a chorus of laughs from the rest of the women.
Jody now had the box undone, and from the look on her face she just loved the present. Carefully she picked it out of the box—a tiny violin.
“Oh,” the women gushed. One of them, her voice almost a shriek, cried, “He’s going to be another Heifetz, I just know it!”
“Oh, thank you,” Jody said, “thank you.”
She tried to get to her feet; no luck. She was too big to manage it easily.
“Here we go.” A dozen helping hands lifted her up.
“Thank you,” she said again, smiling. “Oh, I must show Eugene.”
Jody waddled off across her lovely living room and headed for her husband.
Eugene Scott, dark, handsome, stood talking with two men by the bar. There were a few other men scattered throughout the room, most of them anxiously waiting for their wives to give them the signal to leave.
“Eugene,” she said, “look what Myra gave us!”
“That’s great, honey, great,” he said, pulling her close, and brushing up against her ear, he whispered, “When are they going to leave?”
Jody kissed him back. She whispered in his ear, “I know, I know.”
The Scotts were not well acquainted with baby-shower protocol, certainly not Tucson, Arizona, baby-shower protocol, because if they had been, they could have rested easy. As soon as the last gift was opened, the pacesetters among the women were rounding up their purses and their husbands and shouting their delighted “Oh, we had a wonderful time, hope you have another one real soon” and making their hasty way toward the door.
Several lagged behind for one last drink or another piece of cake, for which Jody was just as well pleased; after all, what was she going to do with all that food? The way the baby was kicking, she might be in the hospital any time now.
“Doesn’t anybody want some of this cake?” Jody pleaded. “It’s just a shame to waste it.”
The fat woman piped up, downing still more wine, “I’ll take the cake if you throw in those little sandwiches there, too.”
Jody laughed. “It’s a deal. I’ll put them in a little bag.”
“No, no,” the woman protested. “Leave them right there, I’ll take them right on the plate. That way I’ll wash the dish for you, save you all kinds of work.”
Jody laughed. She’d had some wine herself. “You’re a genius, you know that?”
“You know,” said the woman, “I think you’re right. Abner,” she called. An austere-looking gentleman with a beaming red face appeared at her elbow. “We’re taking these,” the fat woman instructed him.
Without a word the man picked up the tray of tiny sandwiches and the plate with the remaining cake and started for the door. His wife followed closely behind, making sure he didn’t miss anything.
All this just about convulsed Jody as, holding on to the table for support, she tried to get her husband’s attention. “Eugene, look!” she called.
When she reached the door, the fat woman turned around and called back into the room, “So long, Eugene, don’t forget to call us as soon as she goes into labor.”
Her husband, almost out the door, leaned back into the room, as if this were his parting joke. “We’ll meet you at the hospital. Who knows, it might even be a baby,” he laughed.
That said, he and his wife were out the door.
Jody was still laughing, looking around to see if Eugene had caught any of this. Eugene, however, was having problems of his own. Another woman, feeling very little pain, insisted on kissing the father-to-be good-bye while her husband stood there telling Eugene that in no time at all Jody would be back with the orchestra and he’d be doing diapers instead of filing briefs.
Eugene laughed dutifully at the man’s little joke, at the same time bending to be ki
ssed by the gushing wife. Will this ever end? he moaned to himself. Jody, seeing his discomfort, smiled gently in his direction.
Happily now, everyone had just about left, except Lydia, of course. Lydia was Jody’s best friend. She planned the baby shower, making sure Jody was out of the house all day so that the food could be brought in and everything could be made ready to surprise her when she came home.
Besides Lydia, there was still one other guest. Or was he a guest? He seemed to be going nowhere, as if he were lingering. During the party no one seemed to know him. A quiet man who somehow projected a feeling of danger, he watched everybody, especially Jody, but talked to no one.
Lydia, the friendly neighborhood divorcée, who considered every unescorted male up for grabs, had tried to speak to him earlier, but this strange man had deliberately crossed the room to get away from her.
Now Lydia was ready to leave, kissing Jody fondly on the cheek.
“Oh, Lydia,” said Jody, really appreciative, “thank you. Really. How can I ever thank you enough?”
“We did it, didn’t we?” Lydia said, including Eugene, who had come to join them. “We really surprised you, didn’t we, Jody?”
“You sure did,” said Jody, “you sure did.” Jody would never admit to her dying day that two weeks ago she had picked up the phone and heard Eugene, on the extension, making out the guest list with Lydia. Consequently, today she practically had to fall down on the floor in mock surprise when she walked in and all those people started jumping out from behind every available piece of furniture, yelling, “Surprise!”
“We got you, honey,” said Eugene. He gave Jody a big hug. “God, I thought they’d never leave.” Then, remembering Lydia, “Of course, I didn’t mean you,” he added gallantly.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Lydia. “Now that I have a few drinks in me, I thought I’d try that new singles joint in the shopping mall everyone’s talking about.”
“Good idea,” said Eugene. “I’ll get my coat.”
“Funny,” said Jody scornfully, giving him a friendly whack.
“I thought I’d latch on to that friend of yours over there,” said Lydia. She gestured toward that same man, who now stood silently by the front window. “But he avoided me like the plague.”
Eugene looked over at the man, noticing him really for the first time.
“Who is he, anyway?” Lydia continued.
Jody and Eugene exchanged questioning glances.
“Well, anyway, find out if he’s queer. I’d just like to know.” Lydia smiled.
“Can’t stand rejection, huh?” Jody laughed.
“That’s just about it,” Lydia answered with a fake pout as she started off with a flounce, down the front walk.
Lydia gone, Jody and Eugene turned to face the man, standing in the corner of their living room. He was now nervously smoking a cigarette.
“Who is that guy?” Eugene asked, thinking out loud, as if he should know him from court; from somewhere.
“Damned if I know,” said Jody. She turned from closing the door and squinted through the semidarkness of the late-afternoon light at the man.
“Well, there’s only one thing to do, go and ask him,” said Eugene, turning to Jody with a tight smile. “After all, this is our house, right?”
Jody smiled back. “You’re absolutely right. Besides, I never heard of a party crasher at a baby shower, anyway.”
Just as they started to cross the living room to the stranger, who really seemed to be waiting for them, another woman, who had been, undoubtedly, in the bathroom, struggled toward them, dragging her six-year-old child behind her. The child, on the verge of tears, was whining at his mother.
“Leggo!”
“When I get in the car, I’ll let go, and put that down,” his mother screamed back. In his hand the child held a smeary fistful of chocolate mints.
Jody tried to intercede. “It’s all right, he can have them,” she said, trying to be helpful.
“Oh, sure,” snapped the woman. “And let him be sick all over the car? Boy, are you lucky,” she added as she dragged the child closer to the front door. “You don’t have to worry for another five years. When they go to school, that’s when they turn rotten. Dirty mouths and drugs. You’ll see!”
While Jody was leading the distraught woman and the child to the front door, agreeing with her all the way, Eugene approached the uninvited guest who seemed to have crashed, of all things, their baby shower.
Closer, Eugene peered at the man in the fading light, asking himself whether he just didn’t recognize him.
“Hi!” Eugene smiled, hoping that might trigger something from the man.
“Hello,” said the man, not giving Eugene much help.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk,” Eugene continued, feeling him out.
“I didn’t want to interfere. You have so many good friends.” The man smiled. The smile was an effort on the severe, gaunt face.
“Yes, we do. This is kind of embarrassing,” answered Eugene, sure now that he didn’t know this man, “but could I ask what you’re doing here?”
By way of an explanation, the man looked at Eugene with sad dark eyes and said, “I flew down from Los Angeles.”
Eugene nodded, not sure what that had to do with anything.
“I’m sorry,” the man continued, “my name is Frank Davis.”
Eugene nodded again, still lost as to who this man might be.
The man looked at Eugene, unbelieving. “You mean you’ve never heard of me?” he asked.
“Should I have?” Eugene shrugged, suddenly weary of this game.
Mr. Davis looked over Eugene’s shoulder. Eugene followed his gaze. Jody had entered the living room, and under the guise of picking up a few dishes and stacking them, was trying to listen to the conversation.
Eugene, a bit annoyed at his wife’s obvious deception, called over to her, “Honey, this is Mr. Davis from Los Angeles.”
Jody, only too willingly, came over to join the conversation as Eugene asked, almost irritably, “I hope, after all this, you’re not selling insurance or encyclopedias, Mr. Davis, or anything like that.”
“No, Mr. Scott,” said Davis evenly. “I’m not trying to sell you anything, believe me.”
Eugene turned to his wife, who stood there still holding two soiled dishes in her hand. “Look, honey,” he said, “why don’t you take care of what you have to in the kitchen? We’ll work this out.”
Jody gave him a look, telling him what she thought of that suggestion, and stated simply, “The kitchen can wait. I’d like to hear what the gentleman has to say.”
“It’s about your baby,” said Davis, jumping in before Eugene could respond, addressing the remark to Jody, as if trying to convince her she must stay.
When he said, “It’s about your baby,” a sudden chill passed right through Jody’s body. The way he said it. The way he’d been looking at her. She had seen him looking at her during the baby shower. But with all the confusion, all the activity going on, she had just let it pass, forgotten about it. Now she must face it and she couldn’t; she wanted to change the subject. “Would you like coffee or something?” she asked, in a tone her mother would have been proud of.
“Come on,” said Eugene, annoyed at this sudden civility toward this man, “let’s stop this playing-hostess nonsense. This man barges in here and waits around all afternoon, and now he won’t tell us what he wants.”
Frank stood his ground, as if he’d been through this before. “I have told you,” he insisted.
“Will you let him speak?” cried Jody, for some inexplicable reason suddenly on this stranger’s side.
Eugene, not quite understanding what had come over his wife, reacted sharply. “Who’s stopping him?” he almost shouted. “And what’s got into you?” he asked his wife.
“Look,” said Jody, ignoring her husband. She looked squarely at Frank Davis, as if convinced now that she must face it, whatever it was. “If there’s something abo
ut my baby, then go ahead and tell me. You’re making me very nervous, Mr. Davis.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Scott,” said Frank. “Really, I am.”
“Just tell me what it is,” said Jody, close to tears for some reason, “just tell me what it is.”
Frank steadied himself. All business, he looked straight at Jody Scott. “Your obstetrician is Dr. Fairchild—Edward Fairchild of this city?”
“Yes,” said Jody.
“Oh, come on,” interrupted Eugene. “We know her doctor is Dr. Fairchild.”
“Please, Gene,” his wife pleaded, not taking her eyes off Frank Davis. “Go ahead, Mr. Davis.”
“I don’t know if you’re aware, Mrs. Scott,” said Frank, “that doctors all over the country have been alerted by the federal government and asked to report what they consider to be any abnormal pregnancies.” Turning to Eugene, Davis asked, “Were you aware of that, Mr. Scott?”
“No, I wasn’t,” answered Eugene coldly. “Besides, that hasn’t anything to do with us. Jody has had a very uneventful pregnancy. Everything’s perfectly normal.”
Frank looked again at Jody. “Didn’t your doctor, Dr. Fairchild, put you through an extensive series of tests just last week?” he asked.
Jody nodded. “Yes, yes, he did.”
Eugene looked at her questioningly. “You didn’t tell me anything about any new tests.”
Jody, as if she hadn’t heard her husband, looked at Frank Davis, puzzled by something he’d said earlier. “You said abnormal pregnancies?”
Frank nodded. Then, compassionately, “The baby’s very large, isn’t it?”
“Oh, my God,” Jody moaned. She knew now! “Wait a minute,” she gasped. She turned to her husband. “I know who he is!” she cried. “You remember? We read about it, last year in some magazine! Time, I think, and even the newspapers—the newspapers had pictures of him and his wife! Frank Davis!”
Eugene stared at her, still not connecting the name.
“Frank Davis,” Jody repeated. “The Davis baby? They even had that thing on CBS, that special news program!” She turned to Davis. “You wouldn’t let yourself be interviewed, isn’t that right?”