They Thirst

by Robert R. McCammon

  “What’d you want, buddy?” the old man said. As Kobra turned slowly to face him, the old man’s eyes widened slightly, as if he’d recognized the presence of walking death.

  “You Millie?” Kobra asked quietly, reaching for a greasy menu.’

  “That’s my wife.” He tried to laugh, but it came out in a croak. “Everybody asks that.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, Millie, how about some ham and eggs and a cup of black coffee? Make ’em sunny-side-up.”

  The old man nodded and moved away quickly. He took the burgers back to Mutt and Jeff, then scraped charred bits of beef off the grill with a spatula and broke a couple of eggs onto it. Kobra watched him work, then took a glazed doughnut out from under a clear plastic cover on the counter and ate it greedily; the doughnut crunched between his teeth and tasted like plaster. And while he was chewing, he thought about the voice he’d heard, the single powerful command that had almost split his head in two. He could still see that blue-glowing cathedral, as if it had been seared into the back of his brain. What the fuck was that? he wondered. Road fever? Or the voice of Fate calling to him from the west? Was it the same voice he’d heard whispering through the still, humid Mexican night? Through the heavy air that hung around the bar on that Texas desert highway? Something was here for him in L.A.; he felt certain of it, at least as certain as anything he’d ever seen or felt or known in the twenty years of a life that had thrown him in with biker gangs, dope dealers, and murderers from California to Florida. Or maybe, he reasoned, it wasn’t Fate calling at all. Maybe—and he smiled thinking about this—it’s Death calling. Plugging in the phone line that led to Kobra’s brain, dialing his number with a finger of bone, whispering for him, “Got something for you to do out here in California, Kobra. Got something big for you, something I can’t trust anybody else with. Want you to pack your chopper and come on out, maybe throw me a little scrape along the way. I’ll be expecting you.”

  Yeah, maybe so. But fuck, what’s the difference between Fate and Death anyway? They both take you to the same hole in the ground.

  The old man slid Kobra’s coffee across the counter, his hand trembling. Kobra looked up into his face with the stare of Medusa and froze him. “Hey, old man,” Kobra said, “I’m looking for a place, might be around here, might not. It’s real big, could be a church or something. Got towers and stained-glass windows, and…I don’t know…seems like it’s on a cliff maybe. Any place around here look like that?”

  “Presbyterian church three blocks west got stained-glass windows,” he said. “Got a steeple. I don’t know.” He shrugged, his eyes suddenly zigzagging to the left. Kobra, still smiling, began to unzip his jacket because he felt those two bastards coming up behind him. He slipped his hand in and got hold of the grip, eagerness rushing through him like sweet, fiery cocaine.

  “What’d you say, man?” a voice behind him asked.

  Kobra turned. It was the redheaded one who had spoken; there were pieces of bread and hamburger in his beard. His eyes were deep-set and black and fixed somewhere on Kobra’s forehead. The bald biker—an older guy, maybe in his forties or so—stood beside his friend, a rod of flesh beside a cannonball The bald dude’s gaze was vacant, as if speed had burned out his brain.

  “I don’t recall saying anything to you,” Kobra said.

  “Hey now,” Millie’s husband said, “let’s don’t have no trouble. I run a…”

  “Shut your fuckin’ face.” The bald dude spoke hoarsely, like somebody had tried to slash his throat but only gotten a hunk of vocal cords.

  “I asked you a question, whitey. Let’s hear it.”

  Kobra almost squeezed the Mauser’s trigger then, having gotten the gun twisted in its holster, but he paused with a quarter of an ounce of pressure left to go. “I’ll tell you what you’re going to hear, you big piece of shit You’re going to hear a couple of Mauser slugs sizzle your face off—DON’T MOVE!—’cause that’s what I got my finger on right now. Want to test me?”

  “Please…” the old man whimpered.

  The bearded dude stared at Kobra for a few seconds and then smiled, showing a mouthful of broken teeth. The smile widened until it seemed about to crack his face. “Hot shit!” he growled through an explosion of laughter. “I knew it was you when you walked in! Hell, I ain’t never seen anybody looked like you before, so I knew it had to be! Kobra, right?”

  “That’s my handle.” He kept his finger on the trigger.

  “What’s wrong? You don’t recognize me? Well, I guess not I growed this beard and belly a couple of years ago after that little la-de-dah between the Angels and the Headhunters up in Frisco. I’m Viking, man! Don’t you remember?”

  “Viking?” The name rang a faraway note in his head, but he connected it with a Hell’s Angel who was slim and wiry and carried a pair of pliers around to yank out teeth with. Still, it seemed that Viking had been red-haired and could put away a couple of six-packs of Bud before you could crack your third. Of course he remembered the showdown between Angel and Headhunter troops because then he was eighteen and ready to burn his name into Angel history. He’d sent two Headhunters to hell with a Luger and kicked the nuts off another one in that empty lot in the middle of the night with the chains and the knives swinging. “Viking?” Kobra said again and realized that he’d been ready to waste a brother. He took his finger off the trigger. “Christ! Viking? Man, you carrying a horse inside there?”

  “Old brew kinda caught up with me,” he said, affectionately patting his stomach. “Hey, I want you to meet my ridin’ buddy, Dicko Hansen. Dicko, this albino sonofabitch here can catch bullets between his teeth and fire ’em out his ass!” He laughed long and loud; Kobra and Dicko shook hands, grasping each other’s thumbs palm-to-palm and squeezing so hard the knuckles cracked. “Jesus Jumpin’ Christ!” Viking said. “Where you been keeping yourself?”

  Kobra shrugged. “Around. Been doing some traveling.”

  “I heard a few months ago you were ridin’ with the Lucifer Legion, got yourself wasted in a little fracas down New Awleens way.”

  “Nope. It was me did the wasting. That’s why I’ve been in Mexico for a while.”

  The old man behind the counter was now as pale as Kobra. He slinked away trembling and hoped they’d forget about him.

  “Bring this man’s food back to the booth,” Viking called after him, making him flinch. “Come on, bro, we got a lot to catch up on.”

  Kobra ate his ham and eggs, listening to Viking talk; Dicko sat beside Kobra because Viking took up most of one side of the booth. “Me and Dicko ride with the Death Machine now,” he was saying between swigs of beer. “I had to change the way I look, see, ’cause the cops were after my ass. A lot of brothers split from the Angels, formed their own clubs or joined up in other states. Shit! The Angels ain’t like they used to be, Kobra. They’re respec-table, can you dig it? They wear fuckin’ suits and take up donations for fuckin’ orphans! Makes you sick to your stomach to see them old boys kissin’ cop ass! I don’t know.” He tilted his bottle and drank it dry, smacking his lips noisily at the end. “Those old days, they were good, weren’t they? Hundreds of Angels out on a run, takin’ up the whole highway, and nobody darin’ to pass us! And God, did the booze and brew and high times flooooow! Those Angel bashes up in Frisco would keep your hair curled for weeks, man. Aw, shit.” He uncapped another bottle and started in on it. “Well, times change don’t they? It ain’t like it used to be. People too interested in boogie and hard cash to think about how it feels to ride at the front of the pack, to feel that good, raw wind across your face at ninety miles an hour. And territory? Nobody cares about territory. Bunch of Chicano and nigger punks fight over some dry chunks of cee-ment up in L.A., but nobody carves out land like we used to.” He pulled at the beer again, and droplets of foam glittered in his beard. “Nobody gives a shit about nothin’. Except the Death Machine, o’ course. Now there’s a good bunch of brothers. Old Dicko and me just got back from a San Diego run. You shoulda been there a
nd seen the looks on these fucker’s faces when thirty Death Machiners come runnin’ right through their campground, scatterin’ picnic baskets and tables all to hell and back. Yeah, it was alllllright. Wasn’t it, Dicko?”

  “Sure was.”

  “So what about you, Kobra? What’s the story?”

  “Nothing much to tell,” Kobra said. “I hooked up with the Nightriders up in Washington for a while, started getting road fever, and moved on. I guess I’ve ridden with nine or ten clubs since I left the Angels.”

  Viking leaned closer, his eyes glimmering with low, beer lights. “Hey,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Who’d you waste in New Awleens? What was the action?”

  “Couple of Dixie Demons trashed a buddy of mine. I killed ’em as a favor.”

  “How’d you do it? Fast or slow?”

  Kobra smiled. “The first one I shot in the kneecaps. Then the elbows. And I tossed him into the mighty Mississippi. Fucker flopped around like a frog for a while before he went under. The second one I caught in a gas station toilet. I made him lick the johns clean and then…pow!…right through the old beanbag. Bled like a swamp.” His gaze clouded slightly. “Too bad he was working with the cops, about to turn state’s evidence on some Demon dirt. All kinds of pigs were hunting me from FBI on down. That’s the luck of the draw, right?”

  “Right.” Viking leaned back and let out a satisfied belch.

  Kobra drank his coffee and felt it roiling around in his stomach. He could feel Dicko’s stare on him, like a leech clinging to the side of his face. “Viking,” Kobra said after another moment, “is there any action going on in L.A. I might be interested in? Anything big? You know, maybe some down-and-dirty, or somebody in bad need of an out-of-town shooter?”

  Viking looked at Dicko and then shook his head. “Don’t hear anything. Well, the Knights and the Satan Stompers are having a little war over in La Habra, but it’ll blow over in a few days. Why?”

  “A feeling I’ve got. Like something’s about to break.”

  Dicko’s ferret eyes gleamed. “What kind of feeling? Sorta weird, like you can feel power hummin’ inside you?”

  “Yeah. Sort of like that. Only it’s getting stronger all the time, and a little while ago I thought I heard…you guys know of a place something like this—real big, maybe on a cliff, and it’s got high towers and stained-glass windows, could be a church?”

  Dicko looked startled. “Uh…on a cliff? Way up over L.A.? Jesus! A castle, maybe?”

  Kobra nodded.

  Viking barked out a laugh. “A fuckin’ castle? Sure, old Dicko knows it! You talkin’ about the Kronsteen place? That’s where Dicko and a bunch of freaks stoned out of their gourds on LSD and mesc had a party about…”

  “Eleven years,” Dicko said quietly. “It was eleven years ago we did that.”

  “Did what?” Kobra asked. “What’re you talking about?”

  “You want to go up there?” Dicko’s gaze was dead again. “Why?”

  Kobra said, “Maybe it’s not the place I want to go. I don’t know. But I’d like to see it. How far is it from here?”

  “It’s way up in the Hollywood Hills. But we could make it before sunrise if you want to see it. I hear somebody’s moved in up there.”

  “Who?” Kobra asked. How do you like that, he said to himself. A castle, not a church.

  Dicko shrugged. “Some foreign fucker. There was a piece in the paper about a month ago. I saved it.”

  “Okay. What the hell, I got nothing better to do. Let’s burn on up to this joint and take a look at it.” Kobra was suddenly eager to get under way. Is my trip over? he wondered. Or has it just started? His blood seemed to be boiling in his veins.

  “Let’s git gone!” Viking said and shoved his bulk away from the booth.

  THREE

  Out of the dead, blue darkness, three moons rose in the hills above the Hollywood Bowl. Kobra rode on Dicko’s left flank, following the twistings of the road with an almost extrasensory knowledge. They had made good time from Millie’s, even though Viking—riding on Dicko’s right, his bike wheezing like an old, used-up horse—had to stop and take a beer piss every few miles. Now they were climbing at an incredible angle, their engines cracking the silence with pops and growls. Dicko made a quick turn onto a narrower road lined with hundreds of dead trees. They continued to climb, the wind swirling like whirlpools around them.

  And then they came to a chain across the road with a sign on it. PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING.

  “We’ll see about that,” Kobra said; he got off his chopper and moved toward a tree on the left side of the road. The chain had been wrapped around the trunk and secured with the kind of padlock you couldn’t even shoot through. Kobra touched the chain and pulled at it. It was tighter than a cock ring, and there was no way to go around it either—the left side of the road pitched off into empty space, while the right was blocked by a boulder as big as a house. “Gonna have to walk the rest of the way,” Kobra said and started to step over the chain. He heard a sudden, faint click, and the chain slithered to the road.

  “Alllllright!” Viking said, revving his engine. “How’d you do that?”

  “I…I don’t know.” He backed away a pace and bent to look at the open prongs of the lock. They were polished and new. “Rusty lock,” he said and rose to his feet. What’s waiting for me up there, Fate or Death? He went back to his bike and stepped on, his knees beginning to shake a little but damned if he was going to show it.

  “You sure you want to go up there?” Dicko asked him; in this faint light there were deep, blue hollows beneath his eyes, and his mouth was twisted like a gray worm.

  “Yeah. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Roads tricky as hell higher up. I ain’t been here in a long time. I hope I don’t take us right over the edge and down to L.A.”

  “You want to turn back, Dicko?” Viking asked with a soft laugh, his eyes mocking.

  “No,” Dicko said quickly. “I’m able. But…you know…I think about that night a lot. It was a freak named Joey Tagg did the cutting.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” Viking said, but then he kept quiet. Dicko roared on across the chain, and Kobra followed closely. Higher up they had to swerve around slabs of rock that had fallen from ledges just above their heads. The road turned at an eighty-degree angle as they neared the top, and through a cut in the trees Kobra could see the whole glittering valley below from Topanga Canyon to Alhambra.

  And then there it was, perched at the top like a stone vulture. The thing was enormous, much larger than Kobra had envisioned. He felt doused with ice water. This was the place, no doubt about it Black towers jutting into the sky, high pointed roofs like dunce caps, the soft glimmer of a blue window sixty feet off the ground. The whole place was surrounded by a ten-foot-high stone wall with coils of barbed wire strung along the top. The huge wooden slab of a gate hung wide open, and Kobra could see along a weed-infested driveway that led across a barren courtyard to a series of stone steps. At the top of the steps was a front door as big as a drawbridge. Should have a moat with fucking crocodiles, Kobra thought. “Who built this bastard?” he asked Dicko.

  Dicko cut his engine, and the others did the same. In the silence they could hear the wind rippling through the foliage below them; the wind touched Kobra’s face like cold fingers exploring his features. “Crazy old movie star name of Kronsteen,” Dicko replied softly, getting off his bike and letting it rest on its kickstand. “He brought this thing over from Europe piece by piece. You ever seen any of his flicks?”

  Kobra shook his head.

  “Monster flicks,” Dicko went on, his gaze following the sharp angles of towers and parapets. “They drove the old dude crazy, I guess. You see all those dead trees we passed? Kronsteen hired a bunch of guys to spray them with black paint, just covered ’em with the shit, like something from a horror flick set.”

  “How long’s it been here?” Kobra asked, stepping off his chopper.

  “A long tim
e. I think he built it back in the forties. But it’s old. It must’ve been in Europe for hundreds of years.”

  “But old Kronsteen wasn’t near as rich as you dudes thought he was, huh?” Viking asked, grinning; he belched and muttered.

  Dicko didn’t answer for a long time. Then he said, “Hardly had a stick of furniture in there. Wasn’t no gold statues, wasn’t no chests full of money. Wasn’t nothing but a lot of empty rooms.” He turned to Kobra. “You’ve seen it. Let’s go.”

  Kobra had taken a few steps along the driveway, gravel crunching under his feet. “Wait a minute.” What’s here? he wondered. What called me?

  “Come on, bro,” Viking said. “Let’s git…HEY! YOU SEE THAT?” He pointed, and Kobra looked up to the right.

  In one of the tower windows a candle was flickering, the light made orange by the stained glass. From the corner of his eye, Kobra saw another candle begin to burn off to the left behind another window. And now there were more candles glittering, from almost every window in the place. The tiny flames glowed green, blue, and white behind colored glass, candles burning like lanterns to welcome the hunter home.

  The front door silently opened. Kobra felt a surge of joy and fear course through him, like a charge between opposite poles. His legs moved slowly, as if he were crawling across flypaper. “Where you going?” Viking called behind him. “Kobra? What you doin’, man?”

  “It wants me,” he heard himself say and looked back at Viking and Dicko standing at the far end of the driveway. “Come on,” Kobra said, a wild grin rippling across his face. “Come on with me. It wants us all.”