by James Dixon
“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 instinc
t. 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 . . .”
“Okay,” said Perkins, “I’ll cancel the reservations!” As Perkins left, Mallory stood there smiling at Eugene.
“There’s no reason to look so smug about it, Mr. Mallory. I’m a funny guy. Show me a couple of murders and suddenly I get the point,” Eugene said facetiously.
“Listen, Mr. Scott, we all went through the same thing.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you did,” said Eugene, suddenly very angry. He had to tell this bastard, once and for all, what he thought of him.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Mallory. You might have had me on your side a long time ago if you didn’t take such obvious pleasure in killing these creatures, these babies, whatever the hell they are.”
Mallory was about to retort, but then he stopped. He turned to face the wall, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Eugene when he told him the truth.
“My real name is Preston,” he began slowly. “The one that was born in Seattle two years ago . . . it was mine. It killed my wife in childbirth . . . tore her apart. I came home, found it in the apartment standing over her. I knew it would kill me. I was a cop then, too. I had my service revolver. That was it. I killed it.”
“And then you made a profession out of it,” Eugene said. “If you were right, you had to keep proving it over and over again.”
Mallory turned. “I was right,” he said evenly. “They don’t belong on this earth. But they’ll keep coming, and as long as there are guys like Davis, they’ll survive. They’ll destroy us all. They’ll take over.”
“Listen,” said Eugene. “If you believe in God, you’ve got to believe they’ve been put here for a reason.
“Yeah, sure, just like plane crashes. Well, I don’t believe in God, Mr. Scott. I don’t believe in God any more. And you want to know the day I stopped? The day I came home and found that thing standing over my wife’s body.”
Later that afternoon, in one of those expensive houses lying flush up against the hills, a birthday party was in progress on the patio behind the house.
Balloons and streamers were everywhere, and the mother, health-club thin, was marching triumphantly from the kitchen carrying an enormous, made-to-order, bakery-shop cake, complete with ten burning candles.
“Here we are,” she said. “Here we are, Cindy.”
Cindy, the birthday girl, ten years old, turned shrewdly, appraising the cake, making sure it was as big as or even bigger than her sister Val’s, whose birthday had taken place last month.
It was.
“All right, make a wish,” cried the mother. “Make a wish!”
A pause, and then Cindy, an old hand at this sort of thing, blew out the candles. No problem.
A big cheer from the grown-ups who surrounded the table. The youngsters sat there bored, wondering why adults went crazy when some child blew out birthday candles. What were you supposed to have at ten years old, emphysema or something?
The father appeared, beaming through the open patio door. “I mixed a fresh pitcher of martinis,” he said, addressing the adults. “The little monsters can take care of themselves.”
Another big cheer from the adults as they filed into the house, leaving the children to their cake.
Val, Cindy’s older sister, looked distastefully at her piece of cake. “Ugh, this cake is terrible,” she moaned.
“Oh, shut up,” said Cindy.
Val jumped up from the table. “Let’s play hide-and seek,” she said. “You’re it, Cindy!”
“I don’t wanna be it,” Cindy pouted.
“Oh, no,” said Val, teasing her, “it’s your party and you gotta be it.”
“That’s right,” shouted the other children, agreeing with Val.
“Oh, all right,” said Cindy, getting up from the table with the others, the large cake with elaborate decorations forgotten.
Cindy, against a pole, covered her eyes with her forearm and started to count.
“No cheating,” called Val, watching Cindy peeking out from under her arm.
Cindy ignored her and continued her methodical drone, “Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,” as Val led the other children up into the brush-covered hills.
Reaching a small rise a little way up the hill, Val turned again to check on her sister. “No peeking, Cindy,” she screamed down at her.
Cindy just kept on counting, “Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four . . .”
A little boy, not so sure this was a good idea, approached Val. “What if there’s rattlesnakes up here?” he asked.
“Oh, don’t be chicken, Alex,” said Val, running off into the deeper brush with some of the bigger children.
Alex turned. He saw a small dog that had decided to follow them up the hill. He picked it up, figuring he’d like to have the dog along when he hid in the brush.
“If you bark, I’ll kill you,” the boy threatened as he went off carrying the little dog.
Cindy had mysteriously gone from “thirty-six, thirty-seven” to “ninety-eight, ninety-nine, a hundred.” She opened her eyes. “Anyone near my base is it,” she said, spinning around. “Ready or not, here I come.”
Cindy started up the steep hill. The dry earth slid under her feet, getting into her shoes. She reached the same small rise as the other children had before her and stopped, looking farther up into the hills.
“Here I come,” she repeated.
“Here I come,” called back a voice, her sister Val, mimicking her.
Then all the children took it up. “Here I come,” they yelled, shaking the bushes they were hiding behind, giggling down at the birthday girl.
Cindy began climbing again, higher, more dirt getting into her shoes. “Ouch!” she said, taking off her shoe, emptying it, and starting again. She was quickly getting tired of this game.
Suddenly she heard a rustling sound and turned quickly. The bushes moved; somebody was in those bushes.
“Okay,” yelled Cindy, “somebody’s behind that bush. You’re it.”
There was no response . . . just the sound of something crawling!
“No fair!” cried Cindy impatiently. “Is that you, Val? Come on out . . .”
No answer.
Cindy stepped forward to break a long branch off a dead tree, then she approached the bushes ready to strike with it.
“Okay for you, Val,” she said. “It’s my birthday and you’re ruining it. Come on out!”
She shoved the long branch into the bushes and, really angry now, she screamed, “And I don’t want your present, either! You didn’t even buy it with your own money.”
As Cindy poked the stick into the bushes, the rustling noise seemed to be getting louder—until suddenly it became a roar!
Val and the rest of the youngsters farther up the hill looked skyward. A police helicopter was coming over the hill.
Below, the pilot saw the children hiding in the brush. He grabbed his loudspeaker and shouted down at them over the roar of his engines.
“Clear this area. Go back to your homes. Repeat,” he said, “clear this area now!”
Confused and frightened, the children left their hiding places. They clustered around Val and started down the hillside as the shadow of the helicopter swept over them, going off to warn the other hillside residents.
Farther down the hill, Cindy had heard the roar, seen the helicopter, but had not heard the warning, so obsessed was she with what was behind those bushes. “Come on out,” she cried, poking even more violently. “You really are a bitch, Val!”
Suddenly her childish features contorted in terror! She tripped and tumbled to the ground among the dead leaves! She screamed again, looking at the thing that was coming at her. The rustling grew louder as it cleared the bushes, about to strike. It was a .
. . rattlesnake!
She screamed again! And then heard an explosion of gunshots.
The children above scampered, crawled, and ran down the hill to see policemen, their guns smoking, standing over the dead rattlesnake.
Cindy lay sobbing on the ground. The officers helped her up. “Run on home and stay there,” an officer told her.
The other children were all around Cindy now, looking down with disgust at the dead rattlesnake. Val grabbed her sister and started off down the hill.
“I’ll never be mean to you again,” she sobbed.
“Oh, Val,” Cindy said, more controlled now than Val, “I really liked your present, really I did.”
The two went off, helping each other down the hill as the rest of their friends stumbled after them.
As they reached the bottom of the hill, Alex, still holding the dog for protection, saw something up by the house.
“Look!” he screamed.
The children followed his gaze.
The cake, the decorations, all the paper goods were ripped apart.
The children moved closer, looking especially at the cake.
“Look,” said Val in horror. “There’s claw marks all over the cake. Mommy!” she cried. “Mommy!”
The mother appeared at the patio door, carrying a martini glass.
“Dear,” she admonished, “I’ve told you never to scream like that.”
“Look, Mommy,” Val cried again, “look!”
Her mother finally looked. “Oh, my God!” she moaned, dropping her glass. She whirled back into the house. “Dave!” she cried. “Dave!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
An unmarked police car moved quickly along the narrow roads up by the reservoir, its very speed signifying it had come this way before; sure of the way.
Mile after mile of brush-filled terrain sped by, and then suddenly, amid all this dryness, the man-made lake appeared, glistening in the late-afternoon sun, its banks completely symmetrical.
The road followed it for a stretch, rutted, wash-boardy, then it veered off into a deep wood, getting even bumpier until it ended abruptly in front of a smallish, two-story house.
The house surprised people used to southern California. Buried there deep in the woods, it looked like a farm house one would find off the main roads in Missouri.