Pullet shrieked, “You can’t kill it! For God’s sake, it won’t die!”
Hesitantly, Skrolnik approached the creature, his gun Tengu held out in front of him. He fired two more shots, from pointblank range. One of the bullets went right through the Tengu’s stomach and exited from its back. The other hit it in the chest.
Neither bullet seemed to make any impression at all, except that the fires which flared around the Tengu’s shoulders seemed to roar and grow fiercer.
Skrolnik, sickened and scared, but high on the adrenalin of sheer danger, tried to reach out and seize the monster’s arm. But with a sideways chop, the Tengu knocked him aside, so that he collided heavily with the opposite wall of the corridor and twisted his ankle.
With six or seven splintering blows, the Tengu tore down Admiral Thorson’s door and stepped into the dimly lit room. Skrolnik, wincing with agony in the corridor, knew now that there was absolutely nothing he could do. He also recognized that for the first time in his life he was up against something completely unstoppable; something which refused to obey any of the laws of nature, or at least the laws by which Sergeant Skrolnik organized his life and his police work.
This thing, whatever it was, was supernatural, a ghost or a ghoul or a zombie, a thing that was undead and couldn’t be killed by any conventional weapons, or defeated by any conventional prayers. Skrolnik knew that for certain: his brain had been spinning with frenzied appeals to the Lord his God ever since the Tengu had burst through the glass door.
“Pullet!” shouted Skrolnik. “Break open that fire cabinet down there! Get me that fire ax!”
Through the doorway, Skrolnik could see the Tengu approaching Admiral Thorson’s bed; standing there, headless, swaying slightly as if it were recovering from a great and painful effort of will. The blue flames still jumped and blazed around it, but now it appeared to have a dark glow of its own, a frightening and almost visible aura, like a torturing iron that has just lost its red-hot radiance but is still capable of searing a man’s flesh.
“Admiral!” bellowed Skrolnik. “Admiral, if you can manage it, get the hell out of there!”
Skrolnik limped on his one good ankle to the torn-apart doorframe. Now he could see Admiral Thorson sitting up in bed, his face papery and wrinkled, his sunken eyes bright with fear.
“Admiral!” shouted Skrolnik.
But the admiral’s eyes were on the Tengu alone. The Tengu took one shuffling step nearer after another, until it was standing right up against the admiral’s bed. Knut Thorson stared at it in horror and recognition.
“I never believed it could be real,” he whispered. “Not even then.”
Skrolnik said, in a determined hiss, “Admiral, I want you to roll off that bed, roll away from the monster onto the floor. Then dive right under the bed and leave the rest to me. Pullet, where the fuck’s that fire ax? For Christ’s sake, move your ass.”
Whether he had heard Skrolnik or not, the admiral stayed where he was, propped up on his pillows, his monitoring equipment betraying every overstimulated beat of his heart, every jump of fear in his brain. He gave no indication that he had understood a single word, nor that he was going to try to save himself. But just then, Pullet came jostling up with the fire ax and handed it clumsily to Skrolnik, as if it were the baton in an amateur relay race.
“Stand back,” grunted Skrolnik, and took one limping step forward into Admiral Thorson’s room, swinging the long-handled ax in both hands.
Admiral Thorson shouted, “Mary at the top of his quavery voice, and then Skrolnik whirled the ax around and chopped it deep into the Tengu’s severed neck, splitting its breastbone with an audible crack. Skrolnik stumbled backward on his twisted ankle, toppling Pullet over as well, but there was nothing they could do to save Admiral Thorson now. With the ax handle still sticking out from its back, the Tengu seized Admiral Thorson by the neck and wrenched him out of his bed, half lifting him in the air. Admiral Thorson hung in the headless creature’s powerful hands, awkward and powerless; his Tengu cafdiopulmonary monitor giving one last screech as the monster wrenched the wires loose.
With one flailing tear, the Tengu ripped off the admiral’s hospital nightgown, baring his scrawny, ribby body; then, without hesitation, it plunged its fist through the flesh of the admiral’s stomach, in a spattering welter of blood and fluid, and seized the admiral’s backbone as if it were grasping the skeleton of a snake. Soundlessly, wordlessly, because it could never speak, or hear, or see–because whatever it could do, it could do only through the possession of the ancient demon Tengu–it pulled the admiral’s spine right out through his torn-open belly, virtually turning his body inside out.
Skrolnik was utterly unable to speak, or even to think. All he knew was that the headless Tengu with the ax still stuck between its shoulders was throwing the admiral’s gory corpse aside, so that nerves and intestines and tendons slid in bloodstained strings onto the floor, and that now it was turning toward him.
“Pullet,” he said. “I do not want to be here.” Together, they scrambled to their feet, and with Skrolnik leaning his weight on Pullet’s shoulders, they hopped and hobbled and half ran down the corridor to the hospital lobby, closing and locking the last door behind them. A crowd was already gathering there–nurses and medics and police, including a furiously disgruntled-looking Harry Calsbeek.
“Why do you foreigners always bring trouble?” he snarled. “What’s going on here?”
Skrolnik caught Calsbeek’s sleeve and pulled him aside, shoving away an inquisitive reporter from the Encino Star. “What I’m going to say I’m only going to say once,” he told Calsbeek, scarcely opening his mouth as he spoke. “That creature you shot last night is still alive, and still walking around. It’s just burst into Admiral Thorson’s room and tore the poor old guy to very messy shreds. I don’t know how it can still be alive. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s all just a nightmare. But if it is, then you’re in it too, and you’re going to have to act accordingly. My best suggestion is that you go get a couple of cans of gasoline, and as soon as the creature appears, we set fire to it.”
“We can shoot it, can’t we?” asked Calsbeek. Then, “What am I talking about? I don’t even believe you. Are you off your head or something? What’s going on here?”
He was answered almost immediately. There was a screech of tearing wood and ripped-off hinges. Then a massive smash, and a low moan of fright among the hospital staff and patients gathered in the lobby. One of the nurses screamed, and then another, and then everybody was rushing for the main doors, jostling and pushing and knocking over potted plants.
“Don’t panicl” yelled Skrolnik, the veins standing out on his neck. “Don’tpanic, or somebody’s going to get crushed.’’
Calsbeek said, “Oh, my God.”
The door to the lobby came sailing over their heads, tumbling and turning, to crash noisily into the ornamental pool. Dark, and yet still radiating that awesome aura, the headless Tengu stood in the open doorway, the ax protruding from its neck, its scarred and mutilated chest rising and falling with the breath of one of man’s oldest and most terrible enemies, a devil even more vicious than Lucifer.
Skrolnik said, “Now will you get the gasoline?”
“Evans!” bellowed Calsbeek. “Guttierez! Get out to the wagon and bring in those spare cans of gas, and do it so damn fast I don’t know you’ve gone!”
Calsbeek’s two officers elbowed their way as quickly as they could through the last stragglers pushing each other to get out of the hospital, while Skrolnik and Calsbeek and Pullet retreated toward the reception counter, drawing their revolvers and watching the Tengu warily. For a while, the Tengu stayed where it was, in the doorway, no flames dancing around its shoulders at the moment, no movement to suggest what it might be considering next. But as Evans and Guttierez came clanging back with their heavy cans of gasoline, the Tengu took one clumsy step forward and raised both arms as if it were feeling its way across the lobby, sensing the presence of vu
lnerable humans through the nerves in the palms of its hands.
To Skrolnik, the Tengu looked like a bloody carcass of beef, headless and gutted; or the hideous human corpse in Goya’s painting of Saturn devouring his children. The body was human, but the missing head had taken away all its identity, all its humanity.
“Get your men to splash as much gas on that thing as they can,” said Skrolnik. “Just tell them to keep out of its way. Once it gets hold of you, you’re dead beef.”
Calsbeek gave the order, and Evans and Guttiercz opened up two of the gasoline cans and began circling the Tengu cautiously, swinging the cans back so that they could slosh as much fuel over the creature as possible. The Tengu didn’t even flinch, but kept walking slowly and deliberately across the lobby toward the reception counter. Skrolnik and Calsbeek retreated from the counter, and climbed clumsily around the edge of the ornamental pool to keep as much distance between themselves and the Tengu as they possibly could.
The Tengu hesitated for a second or two, confused by their movement.Then Skrolnik saw the tiny foxfires glittering around its severed neck again, and it swung toward them, its hands still extended, a grisly caricature of Frankenstein’s monster. Skrolnik thought, I’m going to wake up in a minute. I’m going to wake up and find that I’m late for breakfast. Oh, holy Jesus, please let me wake up in a minute. Or preferably sooner.
Pullet reached across to the low coffee table in the middle of the waiting area and picked up a copy of Los Angeles magazine. He attempted to rip it in half, but because this was August, it was the 404-page restaurant-guide special, and he couldn’t do it. “For Christ’s sake,” said Skrolnik. “Tear out individual pages, roll them up, make a torch.”
Step by step, they backed off toward the open hospital door. Evans and Guttierez splashed the last of the third can of gasoline over the Tengu, until the creature was so drenched that it gave off rippling fumes. Pullet had made his torch now, and was lighting it with a book of matches.
The paper flared up. The Tengu suddenly made a volent and unnervingy accurate rush toward them. The ghostly blue fires around its shoulders roared up like a locomotive roaring through a tunnel. Calsbeek said, “Oh, shit,” and collided with the doorframe as he tried to scramble his way out. Skrolnik yelled, “Throw the goddamned torch, PulletV
Pullet threw it. It fell immediately to pieces and fluttered into separate blazing pages. Skrolnik thought for one dreadful second that Pullet had missed altogether, but then a wayward draft from the open door blew one of the burning pages up against the Tengu’s chest.
The Tengu stumbled toward them, arms outstretched, groping for them, but then the burning paper ignited the gasoline on its chest and fanned a pattern of orange flames across its ribcage.
There was a dull, breathy, thumping noise, and the gasoline that Calsbeek’s two officers had splashed into the Tengu’s lungs and stomach through its wide-open neck exploded, and blew chunks of flaming flesh across the hospital patio.
The Tengu staggered, burning fiercely from thighs to shoulders. It took one slow step forward, then another, even though Skrolnik could see right through its charred ribs to where the fire was blazing inside its chest, and its bones were crackling and popping with heat.
Unnerved, Calsbeek fired off two shots, but they made no impression on the Tengu at all. It stood where it was, fiery and defiant, a walking corpse that refused to bow down, even to immolation. It was only when the flesh of its thighs had actually burned through to the femur that it spun around and collapsed onto the paving stones with a noise of flaring fat.
Skrolnik limped closer, and stood over the guttering body with horror and relief. As the flesh burned away from the neck and upper cheset, the ax blade suddenly dropped onto the patio with a clunk, and he jerked back in involuntary shock.
Calsbeek was calling harshly on his radio for reinforcements, so that the hospital could be screened off. The hospital administrator, with a great deal of shouting and bustling about, had already arranged for the patients to be moved to different rooms, away from the intensive-care unit where Admiral Thorson had been murdered. The night was echoing with whooping choruses of sirens, and the trees around the hospital were alight with the flashing of red-and-white police beacons.
At last Calsbeek came over and stood beside Skrolnik with an expression that put Pullet in mind of a cartoon bulldog who has discovered that bones can fly. “I don’t know how the hell I’m going to report this,” he said. “I’ve already filed a memorandum saying the guy’s dead. Now I’ve got to file another one saying he came to life again, and we killed him for a second time.”
Skrolnik watched the Tengu’s corpse sputter and glow, and the ashes blow away in the evening wind.
“Shit,” he said, and limped back to his car, followed by a silent Pullet.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Los Angeles Times carried the headline ADMIRAL slain by ‘dead’ killer–assassin, ‘fatally’ shot by POLICE, REVIVES TO FINISH OFF THWARTED MURDER mission.
Mack Holt read the story carefully, sniffing from time to time, and then passed the newspaper back to Jerry Sennett with a shrug. “I agree with you. It sounds like this Tengu stuff is all true, and it’s happening here.
But what am J supposed to do about it? I cared for Sherry, you know that. I really cared about her a lot. But it’s not my responsibility, any of it. I mean, what moral justification can there possibly be for me to attack some farm somewhere, out at Pacoima, and start shooting up a whole lot of Japanese I’ve never even met?”
Jerry pointed to the penultimate paragraph in the news story. “Sgt. Skrolnik revealed that certain Japanese artifacts, including two samurai swords, had been discovered close to the scene of the crime. He expressed the opinion that they were directly linked to the murder of Admiral Thorson, although he was not yet prepared to say how or why.’’
Mack settled back on his saggy sofa and crossed his ankles. Olive was sitting beside him in a yellow UCLA T-shirt and nothing else, idly scratching and stroking at the blond curls at the back of his neck with her clawlike fingernails.
Jerry said empthatically, “The only two people the Tengus have tried to kill so far are Admiral Thorson– who’s dead, at the second attempt–and me. As far as I know, Admiral Thorson and I were the only two surviving servicemen left in the entire United States who knew right from the very beginning, what the whole Appomattox mission was all about. And even / didn’t know everything that was going on until the A-bomb had actually been dropped. There must be plenty of senior officers in the Naval Intelligence Command today who have access to the files on Appomattox; and I’m sure that successive Presidents have been alerted to what went on. But, as of last week, only two people in the whole damned country could have known immediately what was happening if they heard on the news about Japanese killers who were impervious to bullets, and had the strength of five men put together. Me, and Admiral Thorson. And that must be why they went for us.” Tengu “I still don’t understand,” said Olive, running a nail around Mack’s earlobe. “Why should they want to kill you or something which happened such a long time ago? Supposing you did find out that someone had been making these Tengu-people? So what?”
“I don’t know,” said Jerry. “All I can guess is that they’re intending to use the Tengus for something really spectacular. A bank robbery, maybe. Or maybe they want to assassinate the President. The President’s supposed to be taking a vacation at Rancho Cielo next month, isn’ he?
Maybe it’s some kind of weird retaliation against American trade restrictions on Japanese cars. I just don’t have any idea. All I knnow is that they wanted both me and Admiral Thorson dead, presumably so that we couldn’t tell any tales.”
“Didn’t Crowley know what was going on?” asked
Mack.
Jerry shook his head. “He suspected there was more to the Tengu program than building up a team of bodyguards, but he didn’t have any coherent ideas about what it might be.”
“You believe
him?”
“I don’t think I have much choice.”
Mack said, “You really want us to help you break into that place, and rescue your son?”
Jerry pulled a noncommittal face. “I can’t force you to help me.”
“But that’s really dangerous, man,” said Olive. “Any one of you could get killed.”
Jerry said, “It’s a risk I’ve got to take. My son’s in there and I’ve got to get him out. I can’t see that I have any choice.”
‘‘You won’t be much good to your son if you’re dead,’’ said Olive.
“No, I won’t,” Jerry agreed. “But the way Crowley sees it, they’re intending to kill me anyway, and David, too, no matter what I do.”
“You trust Crowley? The same guy that actually kidnapped your son?”
Jerry raised both hands in a gesture of mute acceptance.
Mack, with his arm around Olive, shook his head in disbelief–more at the fact that he was sitting here listening to what Jerry had to say, than at the absurdity of Japanese samurai possessed by ancient devils. “This whole thing’s insane, you know. What can you possibly do about it, as a defenseless, untrained, private citizen? Your best choice is to call the police, and you know it. I mean, that’s my advice, and you know what / feel about the police.”
“Crowley said that David wouldn’t stand a chance if I called the police.”
“Kidnappers always say that,” said Mack dismissively.
“How many kidnappings have you been involved in?” Jerry demanded.
“Well, none.”
“Let’s take this particular kidnapping on its own particular merits, then, shall we?” asked Jerry.
“Crowley is my only contact; and whether he’s lying to me or not, he’s the only person who’s suggested a way in which I might conceivably get David back unharmed.”
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