Annie looked up from the paper. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “It took three hundred years to kill all the vampires, if I heard that one here correctly; why do you think you can get all the nightmare people in a week?”
“Because it’s still early,” he said, “They aren’t really established yet. And they aren’t vampires, anyway – they’re worse. If they can really double their numbers every month, they can take over the world in, I don’t know, a couple of years, probably. Say a hundred this month, two hundred the next, four hundred, eight, sixteen, thirty-two by January – three thousand two hundred, that’s half of Diamond Park. Six thousand in February, twelve thousand in March, a hundred thousand by next June, a million and a half by October of next year, six million by 1991 – Christ, we’re doomed if we don’t get them all now.”
“But they won’t really spread that fast,” Annie said. “After all, lots of things can breed at that rate – but they don’t. There are always limits, things that hold them back.”
“But these things… oh, I don’t know.”
“You don’t really need to kill them all right away,” she said, “Just stop them from breeding.”
“Yeah, we thought of that,” Smith agreed, “But how?”
“Well, if they breed by kissing, and only at the full moon, just keep them from kissing anybody then.”
“Fine, but how?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Annie said, flustered. “How do they get near enough to kiss anybody in the first place?”
“They just walk up, in disguise,” Smith said with disgust. “They’ll get all the friends and family of their original victims, I suppose – or maybe they’ll slip into bedrooms while people are asleep, the same as they did originally.”
Annie sipped tea again. “What if they didn’t have disguises, then? Or if nobody was asleep?”
“Sure, what if, but…” Smith’s voice trailed off, and his expression turned thoughtful.
“You know,” he said a moment later, “You might have something there.”
“Oh?”
“I think so, yes.” Smith was smiling thoughtfully.
“Would you care to explain that?” Annie asked sharply.
“Actually, Annie, no, I’d rather not,” Smith replied. “I need to think about it some more.”
She stared at him for a minute, then shrugged. “Have it your own way, Mr. Smith,” she said. She picked up the newspaper again.
“It’ll be easier if there aren’t as many of them by then, of course,” he said.
“Of course,” Annie said, without looking up. She drank down the rest of her tea.
“I’m not about to walk back into the apartment, though, where I’d be outnumbered a hundred to one.”
“Of course not.”
“I’ll need to get them alone, one by one.”
Khalil, still looking sleepy, entered at that point. He exchanged greetings with them both.
“Annie,” Smith asked, “May I use the phone?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Khalil, can you be ready to leave in ten minutes?” Smith asked. “I want to use what’s left of the daylight.”
Khalil nodded.
“Thanks,” Smith said. “Where’s the phone book?”
6.
“Hi, Walt? This is Jim. You remember, from work. Look, I’m having some trouble, and I need to talk to somebody. Could you meet me at that little bar on Townsend Road in about, oh, twenty minutes?”
The voice on the phone was puzzled. “I don’t know, uh, Jim; what’s up?”
“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone, Walt. Could you please come? I’ll be at the bar.”
“Oh, what the hell, sure, I guess. Twenty minutes? The bar on Townsend Road?”
“Yeah, you know the one, Carlie’s Nightside I think it’s called.”
“Okay. I’ll be there.”
Smith hung up and smiled at Annie and Khalil.
The thing pretending to be Walt Harris arrived right on time, but Smith and Khalil were not waiting at the bar. They were waiting in the parking lot behind the bar, which Smith had chosen because the lot backed up to a grove of trees and was not visible from the street or any neighboring buildings.
The only problem was muffling the screams; they used Khalil’s shirt for that, and Smith got a finger jabbed by one of the needle-sharp teeth while stuffing it in.
Khalil gagged repeatedly on the foul black lump, but gamely choked it all down. It didn’t stay down, of course, but once the thing had stopped moving and started to dissolve, they didn’t much care. Smith stood guard while Khalil heaved it all back up onto the grass beside the parking lot.
When he was done he looked at Smith. “You ate two of those?” he said.
Smith nodded. “And I’m going to eat another, just as soon as we can catch one. Then it’ll be your turn again.” He grimaced. “Who knows, maybe we’ll get used to it.”
They both thought of retrieving the skin, but looking at the stinking mess that lay beneath the trees, neither one could bring himself to touch it. Nor could they afford to wait around for the remains to finish dissolving. Someone, either human or nightmare person, might happen along at any time.
“We’ll get one another time,” Smith said, leading the way to his car.
“Who is Jim, that he thought he was meeting?” Khalil asked, as they headed back toward Topaz Court.
“Nobody,” Smith said, his eyes on the road. “I made him up.”
Startled, Khalil asked, “But how…”
“Their memories aren’t complete,” Smith explained. “It didn’t know whether the real Walt Harris knew someone named Jim who would want to meet him like that.”
“Ah,” Khalil said, nodding.
A moment later he added, “But that will not work with all of them, surely.”
“Surely,” Smith agreed, “But it’s a start.”
Khalil nodded again.
7.
The next ruse was a call from a veterinarian, to come and pick up a cat’s medicine. The false Attalla Sleiman knew that it had a cat in its care, and could not be sure that it was healthy; Smith’s mother had been through a bout of F.U.S. with her cat, years before, so Smith was able to fake the call quite convincingly, and to plead with the creature to come and get the diuretics and antibiotics quickly, because the cat would die without them. Wednesday, he said, was the only day they had evening hours at the clinic.
Sleiman’s replacement believed it; he came to the animal hospital on Longdraft Road, over in Gaithersburg, and Smith and Khalil dragged him behind the unused shed out back.
This time Smith had a Nerf ball for a gag, and used a stick to wedge it in.
It was full dark by then, and the nightmare people were stronger in the dark, so the struggle lasted for some time, but in the end numbers and the initial surprise were enough.
After that, the two of them were too battered and worn to tackle any more. They returned to Annie’s house, where they washed and rested.
They stood guard that night, while Annie slept; they made plans over the kitchen table, listing every resident of the Bedford Mills Apartments that Smith knew by name, writing down every deception they could think of that might draw nightmare people out alone.
“If they start travelling in pairs, we’re in trouble,” Smith remarked.
Khalil just nodded.
“Unless we recruit some more help, anyway,” Smith added a moment later.
Khalil looked up.
“When we started,” Khalil said, “There were four of us, even without Annie and Maggie. Now we are two.”
Smith nodded. “I know,” he said, “And I feel guilty about Elias and Sandy, too. All the same, we can’t do it all ourselves, not when there are a hundred and forty of them left, and they probably all know who we are.”
Reluctantly, Khalil nodded.
8.