Suddenly, the light went out and they were back again, looking atBudler and the woman from the side. The two were on the bed, she face-down andher arms to one side and her buttocks raised by a pillow under her stomach. Hewas straddling her, one knee between the legs, and rocking back andforth.
Suddenly, so suddenly that Childe gasped and thought his heartwould stop, the woman became a female wolf. Budler was still astride her and pumping slowlyaway when the transformation took place. (A trick of photography, ofcourse. A trick involving drugs, surely, because Budler acted as if the womanhad metamorphosed.) He stopped, raised his hands, and then sat up, hispeniswithdrawing and beginning to droop. He looked shocked.
Snarling, the wolf turned and slashed.
It happened so quickly that Childe did not understand immediatelythat the powerful jaws had taken the penis off close to the root.
Blood spurted out of the stump and over the wolf and the bed.
Screaming, Budler fell backward. The wolf bolted the organ downand then began biting at the man's testicles. Budler quit screaming. His skinturned blue-gray, and the camera left the wounds where the genitals had beenand traveled up to show his dying face.
There was the tinny piano music again, Dvorak's Humoresque. TheDracula burst through the curtains with the same dramatic gesture of the capethrown aside to reveal his face. The camera traveled down then and verified what Childe thought he had seen when the man entered but had riot been certainabout. The Dracula's penis, a very long and thin organ, was sticking out of thefly. TheDracula cackled and bounded forward and leaped upon the bed andgrabbed the wolfby the hairs of its flanks and sank his penis into it from behind.
The wolf yowled, its mouth open, a piece of testicle falling out. Then, asthe Dracula rammed it, driving her forward and inching along on hisknees, thewolf began tearing at the flesh between the legs of Budler.
Fadeout. TO BE CONTINUED: in blazing white letters across thescreen. End of film.
Childe became sick again. Afterward, he talked with theCommissioner, whowas also pale and shaking. But he was not shaky in his refusal totake anyaction about Igescu. He explained (which Childe knew) that theevidence was too slight, in fact, it was nonexistent. The "vampire" angle, the wolveson the estate, the (supposed) drugging of him by Igescu's secretary, thewolf hairs found in Budler's car, the wolf in the film, all these certainlywould make investigation of Igescu legitimate. But Igescu was a very rich andpowerful manwith no known criminal records or any suspicions by the authoritiesof criminal connections. If the police were to do anything, and he did not seehow theycould, the Beverly Hills Police would have to handle theinvestigation.
The essence of his remarks was what Childe had expected. He wouldhave to get more conclusive evidence, and he would have to do it without anyhelp fromthe police.
Childe drove back through a darkening air. The weird white lightwas slowlyturning green-gray. He stopped at a service station to fill his tankand also to replace the broken headlamp. The attendant, after stamping the formfor his credit card, said, "You may be my last customer. I'm taking off justas soon as I get the paperwork out of the way. Getting out of town, friend. Thisplace hashad it!"
"I may follow you," Childe said. "But I got some unfinishedbusiness to attend to first."
"Yeah? This town's gonna be a ghost town; it's already on theway."
Childe drove into Beverly Hills to shop. He had a difficult timefinding aparking space. If it was going to be a ghost town, it did not seemthat it would be so soon. Perhaps most of the people were getting supplies for thesecond exodus or were stocking up before the stores were again closed. Whatever the reason, it was two and a half hours before he got all he wanted, andit took a half-hour to drive the mile and a half to his apartment. The streetswere againjammed with cars. Which, of course, only speeded up the poisoning ofair.
Childe had intended to drive out to Igescu's at once, but he knew that he might as well wait until the traffic thinned out. He spent an hourreviewingwhat he meant to do and then tried to call Sybil, but the lines werebusy again. He walked to her apartment. He was goggled and snouted with a gasmask he had purchased at a store which had just gotten a shipment in. So manyothers were similarly masked, the street looked like a scene on Mars.
Sybil was not home. Her car was still in the garage. The note hehad left in her apartment was in the exact position in which he had placed it. Hetried to get a long-distance call to her mother put through but had enoughtrouble getting the operator, who told him he would have to wait for a longtime. She had been ordered to put through only emergency calls. He told her itwas an emergency, his wife had disappeared and he wanted to find out if shehad gone toSan Francisco. The operator said that he would still have to wait, notellinghow long.
He hung up. He walked back to his apartment and re-checked theautomatic recorder with the same negative results. For a while he watched thenews, mostof which was a repetition or very slight up-dating of accounts of thesmog andthe emigration. It was too depressing, and he could not getinterested in the only non-news program, Shirley Temple in Little Miss Marker. He triedto read, but his mind kept jumping back and forth from Budler to his wife.
It was maddening not to be able to act. He almost decided to buckthe traffic, because he might, as well be doing something and, moreover, once off the main roads, he might be able to travel speedily. He looked out atthe street, packed with cars going one way, horns blaring, driverscursing out theirwindows or sitting stoic, tight-lipped, hands gripping the wheels. Hewould not be able to get his car out of the driveway.
At seven, the traffic suddenly became normal, as if a plug hadbeen pulledsome place and the extra vehicles gulped down it. He went into thebasement, drove the car out, and got into the street without any trouble. A fewcars drove down the wrong side, but these quickly pulled over into the rightlane. He gotto Igescu's before dusk; he had had to stop to change a flat tire. The roads were littered with many objects, and one of these, a nail, had driveninto his left rear tire. Also, he was stopped by the police. They were lookingfor a service station robber driving a car of his make and color. Hesatisfied them that he was not a criminal, not the one they were looking for, anyway, andcontinued on. The fact that they could concern themselves- with amere holdup atthis time showed that the traffic had eased up considerably, in thisarea, atleast.
At the end of the road outside Igescu's, he turned the car aroundand backed it into the bushes. He got out and, after removing the gas mask, raised the trunk and took out the bundle he had prepared. It took him some timeto carrythe cumbersome load through the thick woods and up the hill to thewall. Here he unfolded the aluminum ladder, locked the joints, and, with the packon his back, climbed up until his head was above the wire. He did not intend tofind out if the wire was electrified. To do so might set off an alarm. He pulledup the longrubberized flexibile tunnel, a child's plaything, by the rope tiedaround its end.
He hoisted it until half its length was over the wire and thenbegan theunavoidably clumsy and slow maneuver of crawling, not into it butover it. His weight pressed it down so that he had a double thickness between himand the sharp points of the wire. He was able to turn, straddling the wire, and pull theladder slowly up after him with the rope, which he had taken from thetunnel and tied to the ladder. He was very careful not to touch the wire withthe ladder.
He lifted it up and turned it and deposited its end upon theground on theinside of the wall. Once his feet were on the rungs, be lifted up thetunnel and dropped it on the ground and then climbed down. He repeated thisprocedure atthe inner wall up to the point where he reached the top of the wall. Instead of climbing on over, he took two large steaks from his backpack andthrew them as far as he could.. Both landed upon leaves near the foot of a largeoak. Then he pulled the tunnel back and retreated down the ladder. He sat with hisback against the wall and waited. If he did not succeed with this stepwithin two hours, he would go on in, anyway.