Chapter Seventeen
Jim had been driving for just under two hours when the road started to shake. He jumped on the clutch with his left foot, moving his right from the gas to the brake, slowing the speeding car. They were half a minute off Highway 1, less than five minutes from Tampico.
“ What is it?” Glenna asked.
“ Don’t know. Flat maybe.” He maneuvered the car to the side of the road. The road continued to shake.
“ Earthquake,” Glenna said.
Without a word they hopped out of the car and moved away from it. They were both Californians and earthquake-wise. If possible, get away from buildings, cars, electric wires, anything that could become a large falling object.
She lost her footing and fell.
“ Shoes too tight,” she said, but he knew it was more than shoes, because he was having a hard time keeping his footing himself. He offered her a hand, started to pull her up when a strong tremor shook the earth and he found himself on the road beside her. They rode out the quake like that, sitting in the middle of the road, in the dark, hands, feet and buttocks on the pavement, clawing for balance.
“ The big one?” she asked, when the shaking had stopped.
“ I don’t think so.” All Californians lived in the shadow of the big one.
She scooted next to him and he put his good arm around hers. It was over as suddenly as it had begun and the night was quiet again. The only sound, the purring of the Miata’s engine. The only light, the twin beams shooting off the headlights into the black. Then the Miata’s cat-like engine was drowned out by a great rumbling scream, followed by a bellowing hiss that sent shockwaves to their souls, dwarfing the terror caused by the earthquake. Together, their eyes followed the beams of light and like macabre spotlights they landed on the reptile thing that had been with them since Collinga.
The lights seemed to dance over it as it twisted and thrashed in obvious pain. Only one radioactive eye reflected the Miata’s light back at them and it wasn’t as bright as before. Its slimy green surface was covered in sticky bright blood. A darker kind of blood oozed around its mouth, hiding most of its teeth and filtering a kind of blue smoke that carried a carrion smell and a sense of impending death.
It marked them with its one eye and wailed into the night. Glenna screamed. He held her tighter. It started to come for them. The guns were in the car. They were powerless, paralyzed, at its mercy. It closed half the distance between them with a slow deliberate movement, half crawl, half slither, wheezing and coughing blood, the blue smoke with its powerful smell of death engulfing them.
It moved directly into the light, between the beams, toward the front of the car. They were in the center of the road, behind and to the left of the Miata, witnessing the slow movement. It inched its front legs forward, trying to sink its claws into the black top, fighting for a purchase, squirming, twisting and clawing, closer, ever closer.
It stopped five feet from the front of the car, bathed in the headlights. It fixed them in its eye and was quiet. It raised its great head and turned it slightly to the right, almost as if it knew something was coming and in the distance, behind the beast, Jim Monday saw the high beams of an approaching car, speeding toward them, the sweet sound of its high performance engine, cutting through the night.
The sight of the car snapped Jim out of his paralysis and he pulled Glenna out of the center of the road as the speeding car bore down on them. He turned back to stare at the beast and gasped as it let loose a gut wrenching roar, followed by spitting blood and blue steam. Then the oncoming car was on them, the bright lights momentarily blinding them. When the car passed, the beast was gone. Almost like it had been sucked up into the exhaust of the gray Mercedes.
And the night was silent and dark.
“ Is it gone?” She wrapped her arms around him and held tightly.
“ I don’t know.” He listened to the night and the soft purr of the Miata’s engine. He heard an owl off in the distance. A cricket chirped and was answered. “Yeah, I think it’s gone.” He got up, dusted off, offered her his hand and helped her up.
“ Did you see it? It looked like it had been in a fight. It looked hurt.”
“ Good,” he said and started for the car.
Fifteen minutes later, after filling the tank at an all night service station, he asked the night clerk for directions to Dr. Kohler’s.
“ Just follow Kennedy out to Mountain Sea Road and turn left. Big gray house on the right. Bars on all the windows, you can’t miss it. No point going by though, he ain’t home,” the youth said.
“ How do you know?”
“ Cuz he just gassed up, not ten minutes ago. In a hurry. And he didn’t head home. He was going out of town and he was going fast.”
“ You sure it was him?”
“ You don’t forget a man like that. You had to have passed him coming in. Big gray Mercedes.”
“ Was he alone?” Jim asked. “Was there a woman with him?”
“ Hard to see through those tinted windows, but I think he was alone.”
“ How do you know?”
“ Cuz he pumped his own gas.”
Jim thanked him and paid him.
“ Do we take off after the Mercedes or do we check out his house?” Glenna asked after they were back in the car.
“ The way he was driving, he’s on Highway 1 by now. We’d never catch him.”
“ Do we go by the house now or later, when it’s light?”
“ We know he’s not there now. Besides, I’d like to see my wife as soon as possible and make sure she’s all right. And I have to tell her about her sister.”
“ Do you want to go alone? Should I wait in a motel?”
“ No, we’re still looking for your father. And if he’s any kind of father at all, he’d never forgive me if I left you alone after everything that’s happened. We stay together till we find him.”
He stopped before turning onto Mountain Sea Road.
“ When we get there,” he said, “we’re not going to be as stupid as we were back there.” He reached behind her seat and picked up both laundry bags. He reached into hers and withdrew the forty-five and handed it to her. “One for you,” he said, “and one for me.” He withdrew the second pistol and set it on his lap.
“ You think we might need these with Kohler gone?”
“ I wasn’t thinking about Kohler.”
“ Oh yeah, our yellow-eyed friend might still be lurking around.”
“ Right.” He tossed the bags back behind her seat, turned onto Mountain Sea Road and headed up toward Kohler’s house. It had been a long night and daylight was still over three hours away. He downshifted into third as they approached the house.
“ Look, it’s my father’s car!” She pointing to an antique Chevrolet parked in the driveway. Monday continued on, slowing, but not stopping. He pulled over when he was safely past the house and parked.
“ Come on, let’s go! My father is back there.”
Jim grabbed one of the forty-fives, got out of the car and started for Kohler’s at a run.
“ You die, motherfucker!” a voice boomed out as he was going up the porch and Jim knew someone had a gun pointed at him.
But before the man pulled the trigger, a skinny man came running out the front door. “It’s gonna blow,” he shouted, and the night was rocked by an explosion coming from the back of the house and the place erupted in flames.
Jim knew there wasn’t enough time to bring his own gun to bear on the man behind him, but he had to try.
Another blast lacerated the night. Jim turned and saw a big man jerk forward his finger squeezing the trigger, sending still another explosion out into the dark, the shot going wild.
Glenna stepped out of the thicket, a look of horror on her face as she watched the man jerk and dance, a
