Innocent Blood

by Graham Masterton

  But the driver kept the engine running, and both he and the girl went on staring at Bill through the windshield and smiling that same vacant smile. Bill did the twisting gesture again but the driver simply shrugged.

  ‘Sir! Will you please switch your engine off and get out of the vehicle?’

  Still no response. Although he was always easy-going, Bill was beginning to get irritated.

  ‘Joan!’ he called. ‘Come around here! I think I got me a couple of zombies!’

  Joan came around the corner and said, ‘What?’

  ‘These two are just sitting there. Won’t kill the engine, won’t get out.’

  Joan climbed on to the step below the passenger door and tapped on the window with her wedding ring. ‘Excuse me, sir, miss – security. Will you switch off your engine, please, and climb down out of the cab?’

  They didn’t even turn to look at her. She tried the door handle but it was locked.

  ‘What the hell do they think they’re playing at?’ Bill demanded.

  Joan climbed down from the step and unhooked her r/t. ‘Gate? Hi, Kevin, this is Joan. We have a catering truck down here at Studio V. A Movieble Feast. That’s right. They checked out OK, did they? That’s fine, but they’ve parked their vehicle around the back of the studio building and they’re not making any attempt to get out of it and make their delivery.’ She nodded, and nodded again, and then said, ‘Repeat that, please.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Bill.

  Joan clipped her radio back in her pocket. ‘We have to get the hell out of here,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have to go into the studio and evacuate it right now, and move everybody as far away as possible.’

  Bill stared up at the truck driver and his passenger. The driver gave him another wave, and although there was a diagonal reflection of clouds across the windshield, he thought he could see the girl laughing. ‘You start the evacuation,’ he said. ‘I’ll deal with these two clowns.’

  ‘Bill, they specifically said to get the hell out.’

  ‘Do like I told you, Joan. I was a cop for twenty-eight years and I never let nobody get away with nothing.’

  Bill unfastened his holster and pulled out his .38. Joan hesitated, but he pushed her shoulder and said, ‘Go! OK? Get those people out of there!’

  Joan ran off around the corner. Bill lifted up his revolver in both hands and cocked it. ‘OK! Do you understand this? Comprende? I’m asking you to switch off the engine and get out of the truck. I’m asking you nicely.’

  Tuesday, September 28, 3:52 P.M.

  Joan pushed her way through the swing doors and into the carpet-tiled reception area, which was lined with blown-up photographs of Garry Sherman and Lauren Baker and Whitney De Lano. The receptionist was painting her fingernails and chatting to a friend on the phone.

  Joan went up to the counter and snapped, ‘Put me through to the producer! Now!’

  ‘Say what? I can’t do that, we’re right in the middle of a show.’

  ‘It’s an emergency; do it now.’

  ‘Emergency? What kind of emergency? Mr Kasabian will kill me!’

  ‘Just do it, will you? Or else everybody’s going to get killed!’

  Flapping one nail-polished hand, the receptionist did as she was told and handed over the phone.

  ‘Mr Kasabian?’ said Joan. ‘This is Joan Napela from Studio Security. Yes, Studio Security. I’m sorry, Mr Kasabian, but we have a security situation directly outside the studio and we have to evacuate everybody immediately. Yes, sir, everybody. No, sir, I can’t tell you the exact nature of the situation but we have been advised to clear the building as quickly as we can.’

  She listened for a moment, and then she said, ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I’ll come into the studio right now and help to usher people out. If you can try to reassure them that there isn’t any cause for alarm.’

  As she handed the phone back, the receptionist stared at her wide-eyed. ‘What is it? What’s happening?’

  ‘Possible bomb,’ Joan told her. ‘Just get out of here.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ cried the receptionist, and started to gather up her nail polish and her combs and her magazines.

  ‘I said bomb,’ said Joan in disbelief.

  She crossed the reception area and pushed open the double doors to the studio. The main lights had just been switched on, and Milo Kasabian was halfway through making his announcement.

  ‘If you would all please make your way to the exit doors on either side of the podium, as quickly and as quietly as you can. Once you’re outside, follow the directions given to you by our security staff. Don’t be alarmed, this is only a precautionary measure.’

  Garry Sherman was standing up and waving to his audience to come down out of their seats. ‘I knew it! I knew they’d interrupt us once we started talking dirty! That’s right, everybody, head for the doors! No need to panic, they’re only doing it because we’re steaming up their monitors!’

  The audience started to file down to the floor of the studio, jostling and laughing. Joan stood by the doors and beckoned them to hurry.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked an elderly man in a bright-pink polo shirt.

  ‘Probably a false alarm,’ said Joan. ‘But once you’re out of the studio, turn right, OK, and keep on walking as fast as you can.’

  ‘Do we still get pizza?’

  ‘Sure, you still get pizza. Now get going.’

  Joan unhooked her radio and said, ‘Bill? We’ve made a good start on clearing the studio. How’s it going with our friends out there?’

  ‘They’re still not responding. Schaefer’s on his way down here, and he’s called the bomb squad, too.’

  ‘Bill, why don’t you back off and let the police deal with this?’

  ‘I am the police.’

  ‘You were, Bill. Not anymore. This isn’t worth the risk. Come and help me get these people out of here.’

  ‘Don’t you worry; I can handle a couple of pointy-headed specimens like these two.’

  ‘Bill? Bill, are you listening to me? Back off – you don’t know what the hell they’re planning to do!’

  There was no reply. Joan kept on tugging at people’s sleeves as they shuffled past her, trying to hustle them out of the studio. But Garry had told them that there was no need to panic, and panicking they weren’t. Some of them said, ‘Hey, relax,’ when she caught hold of them, and others were even waiting by the doorway so that their friends could catch up with them.

  ‘They’ll still serve us pizza?’ asked a large black woman in a spotted turquoise dress. ‘I only come here for the pizza.’

  Joan was about to say, ‘Yes, you’ll still get your pizza, but for God’s sake get moving.’ But then the world split open with the most devastating bang that she had ever heard. She was hurled backward through the open doors, colliding with ten or eleven other people, hitting the reception desk at a sharp angle and breaking her neck. More people were thrown out of the studio on top of her, heaps of them – thud, thud, thud, thud – most of them legless or armless or headless.

  The explosion blew away the entire back wall of the studio, bringing down the roof. Dozens of people were buried as masonry fell like thunder and scaffolding jangled like the bells of hell. Garry Sherman half-turned away from the blast with his left arm lifted. His arm was ripped out of its socket and the flesh on the left side of his face was blasted off, right to the cheekbone. One middle-aged woman was jammed between the side of Garry Sherman’s podium and the low wall that led to the exit, so that she was shielded from the bouncing lumps of cinder block. But as she tried to climb to her feet, a DeSisti studio light fell from its rigging and dropped on top of her – over fifty pounds of metal at sixty degrees. She lay on her back with this monster in her arms, crushed and burning, and she screamed for nearly five minutes without stopping.

  Her screams were joined by scores of others, as well as sobbing and moaning and coughing. Studio V was open to the sky now, but it se
emed like twilight because of the dust and the thick black smoke. It was almost unrecognizable as a television studio. There were mountains of rubble everywhere, as well as tiers of collapsed seats and twisted scaffolding. Bodies lay everywhere – bodies and pieces of bodies, some of them barbecue black and others red raw. And everything twinkled and glittered, because all of this carnage was strewn with shattered glass.

  Eleven

  Wednesday was gray and chilly. The wind had a nasty saw-toothed edge to it and rain was forecast for later in the day. More than sixty guests came to St Luke’s for Danny’s funeral service, including Frank’s father and mother; Margot’s mother; Carol and Smitty; Mo and Sherma; Lizzie Fries and her partner, Walford; Joe Peruggio, their executive producer, and his wife, Sharleen; Rick and Lynn Ashbee, as well as Frank’s agent Nero Tabori and most of the cast of Pigs. Frank and Margot sat together but they didn’t touch each other or exchange more than two or three words, even though Frank could feel the pew shaking as Margot sobbed. She wore a black hat with a black veil. Frank couldn’t help thinking that she looked like a grieving widow in a Charles Addams cartoon.

  Reverend Trent climbed into the pulpit, thirtyish but pinkly bald, with circular glasses, so that he looked like the boy at school who always went home in tears.

  ‘We have all shed tears for young Daniel today, but none grieves as sorely as Christ, our Lord, who always weeps when one of his little ones falls asleep and never re-awakens.

  ‘We saw only the early morning of Daniel’s life, and we shall never know what he could have become if he had reached his noonday hour. But I can tell you this: he would have shined as brightly as the sun high above, and the world will be a dimmer place without him.’

  Before he finished, Reverend Trent said a prayer for the hundred and six victims of the bomb that had demolished Studio V at Panorama-TV, and condemned Dar Tariki Tariqat. ‘A group of people are terrorizing our community – a group who have acted without pity and without remorse. They are slaughtering our friends and our loved ones without discrimination. They took young Daniel away from us, and his schoolmates, and his teachers, and yesterday they took away over a hundred more innocent lives.

  ‘We pray for the souls of all of those lost, that they may find eternal peace and happiness in Heaven. In spite of our anger, we also pray for all of those misguided people who have conspired in these terrible outrages, that they may look into the mirror and see how evil they have become, and what misery and anguish they have caused, and repent.’

  He hesitated, and then he said, much more quietly, ‘I hold out very little hope, however, that they will.’

  There was an even longer pause, as if he were trying to make up his mind if he really ought to say any more. But eventually he lifted his head and took off his glasses, his lower lip trembling with passion. ‘If it were possible for us to ask the Lord our God to act on our behalf as a vengeful God, and to show no mercy to those who have broken his Commandments, then I have to confess that I, for one, would ask Him now.’

  They stood under the overcast sky and Danny’s casket was lowered in the ground. Frank threw a handful of crumbly soil on to the lid, and then Margot did the same.

  ‘So that’s that, then,’ she said.

  He looked at her, but the smokescreen of her veil made it impossible for him to see the subtleties of her expression. Did she mean that this was the end of their life as parents, as Danny’s dad and mom – or that this was the end of their marriage altogether? He didn’t know how to ask her, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to.

  Without another word, Margot walked off and linked arms with Ruth. Frank was left alone by the graveside. He stared down at the casket and thought of what Francis Bacon had written: ‘Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark.’ Now Danny was in the dark, forever. Frank knew that Danny hadn’t forgiven him, but he prayed that he wasn’t afraid.

  Somebody came and stood close beside him. When he turned around, Frank saw that it was Nevile Strange, wearing a black shirt and a black necktie and a very long black overcoat, and carrying a black Homburg hat.

  ‘Very moving service,’ said Nevile.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I like a clergyman who can show some genuine Old Testament wrath once in a while. Nothing like an occasional smite to keep the sinners shaking in their shoes.’

  Frank took a last look down at Danny’s casket, and then he turned away. ‘We’re having a few drinks back at the house. Are you going to join us?’

  Nevile replaced his hat. ‘Actually, I need to talk to you, but this may not be the time for it.’

  ‘Why not? Things can’t get very much worse than they are already.’

  ‘Oh, you mean the séance. That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. It didn’t turn out to be very helpful, did it? Not as far as your marriage is concerned.’

  ‘Not only the séance.’ Frank told him about the graffiti that had been smeared over Margot’s paintings. ‘I even began to believe that maybe I did do it, that I drove back home from my sister’s house and ruined her paintings in my sleep.’

  Nevile laid his hand on Frank’s shoulder. ‘It wasn’t you, Frank; that’s for certain.’

  ‘Oh, no? If I didn’t, who did?’

  ‘Well . . . there’s a remote possibility that Margot did it herself, so that she could blame you for it, as a way of conceptualizing her anger toward you. But personally I very much doubt it. I suspect that there are other forces involved here.’

  ‘When you say “other forces,” you mean what? Like, spirits?’

  Nevile shrugged. ‘We can always discuss this another time.’

  ‘Nevile, I know what I saw on the patio, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it really was Danny. A friend of mine . . . well, you may think this is offensive, but a friend of mine even suggested that you rigged it somehow – that it wasn’t really a spiritual manifestation at all, but some kind of optical illusion.’

  ‘And what do you think about that?’

  ‘If it was an optical illusion, I don’t see how you could have found the time to set it up, to be honest. Or why. My friend said you might have done it for the money – you know, to induce me to pay for more séances. But I can’t believe you would go to those lengths just for five hundred bucks.’

  Nevile smiled. ‘Your friend is perfectly entitled to have doubts, Frank, especially about this particular séance. This was the very first time that anyone apart from myself was actually able to see a spirit, as well as hear it. So believe me, I think it could have been a fake, too. Not a fake in the sense that your friend obviously means – not a con-trick with lights and mirrors. But a spiritual impersonation. Another spirit, pretending to be Danny.’

  ‘When you first walked into the house, you sensed another presence, didn’t you? That little girl, maybe.’

  ‘That’s true, but she was only eighteen months old, wasn’t she, when she died? Far too young to stage an elaborate deception like this. Children who pass over, you see, they never grow older. In fact nobody who passes over grows older.’

  They had reached Nevile’s shiny old Mercedes, which was already speckled with rain. ‘No,’ said Nevile, as he took out his keys, ‘I think we’re talking about an adult spirit here. It was the way Danny spoke, mostly. He said something like, “You didn’t care . . . you took away my whole life because you didn’t care . . . and not caring is the greatest sin of all.”’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Don’t tell me Danny ever spoke like that. I didn’t know him, Frank, but he was only eight years old, wasn’t he? I don’t think I’ve heard any eight-year-olds speak like that.’

  Frank thought about it. ‘I guess you’re right. It didn’t hit me before. I couldn’t think about anything else except how much Danny hated me, and was never going to forgive me.’

  ‘Mull it over, Frank. It could be very important. If it wasn’t Danny, then we should try to find out who he was, and why he went to such lengths to decei
ve you.’

  Margot approached them. She had lifted her veil and draped it over her hat. Her eyes were reddened but her lips were thin and tight and she wore no lipstick.

  ‘I’ve asked Nevile back to the house,’ Frank told her.

  ‘I suppose I can’t stop you.’

  ‘I’ve asked him as our guest, Margot.’

  ‘All right. So long as he doesn’t conjure up Danny’s ghost again. I don’t think our friends would find it very amusing.’

  ‘Margot, we just buried him.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she said, and walked away.

  Nevile watched her go, and then he said, ‘Listen, I think it would be more diplomatic if I didn’t come. Let me meet you later. Where are you staying?’

  Frank lay on his bed at the Sunset Marquis with a cold bottle of Molson, watching the television news. Outside his window, three girls were screaming and laughing as their boyfriends threw them into the pool. It was late afternoon already, over twenty-four hours since all of those people had been killed at Panorama-TV, and soon it would be Thursday, and then Friday, and then a week.

  It was already a week since Danny had died, but he would always be stuck at Wednesday, September 12, like a small boy who has missed the bus home, gradually receding out of sight, and one day, out of mind.

  On the news, the anchorwoman was saying ‘. . . killing one hundred and six people and seriously injuring a further seventy-three, including TV personality Garry Sherman, who lost an arm and was badly disfigured by the blast.

  ‘However it was confirmed less than an hour ago that the FBI anti-terrorist task force has positively identified the truck driver. He was named as Richard Haze Abbott, twenty-seven years old, an unemployed construction worker from Simi Valley.’

  A blurry color photograph appeared on the screen of a grinning young man with a red baseball cap and a sunburned nose, with his arms around a black and white mongrel. Frank narrowed his eyes to focus on him. He certainly didn’t look like an Arab terrorist. More like one of those spotty kids who flipped burgers at MacDonald’s.

  ‘If you recognize Richard Abbott, or ever knew him, or have seen or talked to him recently, FBI agents and police would very much like to hear from you. The numbers are—’