Image of the Beast and Blown by Philip José Farmer Read Free Book Online Page B

frustrating the police?
    There were no clues, no leads, except the vampire
motif, which was nothing but a suggestion of a direction
to take. But it was the only handle to grasp, ectoplasmic
though it was, and he would try to seize it. At least, it
would give him something to do.
    He knew something about vampires. He had seen the
early Dracula movies and the later movies on TV. Ten
years ago, he had read the novel Dracula, and found
it surprisingly powerful and vivid and convincing. It
was far better than the best Dracula movie, the first;
the makers of the movie should have followed the book
more closely. He had also read Montague Summers and
had been an avid reader of the now-dead Weird Tales
    magazine. But a little knowledge was not dangerous; it
was just useless.
    There was one man he knew who was deeply inter-
ested in the occult and the supernatural. He looked up
the number in his record book because it was unlisted
and he had not called enough to memorize it. There
was no response. He hung up and turned on the radio.
There was some news about the international and na-
tional situations, but most of the broadcast was about
the exodus. A number of stalled cars on the freeways
and highways had backed up traffic for a total of several
thousand miles. The police were trying to restrict passage
on the freeways to a certain number of lanes to permit
the police cars, ambulances, and tow trucks to pass
through. But all lanes were being used, and the police
were having a hell of a time clearing them out. A number
of fires had started in homes and buildings, and some
of them were burning down with no assistance from the
firemen because the trucks could not get through. There
were collisions all over the area with no help available,
not only because of the traffic but because there just
was not enough hospital and police personnel available.
    Childe thought, to hell with the case! I'll help!
    He called the LAPD and hung on for fifteen minutes.
No luck. He then called the Beverly Hills Police Depart-
ment and got the same result. He had no more luck
with the Mount Sinai Hospital on Beverly Boulevard,
which was within walking distance. He put drops in his
eyes and snuffed up nose drops. He wet a handkerchief
to place over his nose and put his goggles on top of his
head. He stuck a pencil flashlight in one pocket and a
switch-blade knife in another. Then he left the apartment
building and walked down San Vicente to Beverly Boul-
evard.
    In the half hour that he had been home, the situation
had changed. The cars that had been bumper-to-bumper
curb-to-curb were gone. They were within earshot; he
could hear the horns blaring off somewhere around
Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega, but there was not
a car in sight.
    Then he came across one. It was lying on its side. He
looked down into the windows, dreading what he might
see. It was empty. He could not understand how the
    vehicle had been overturned, because no one could
have gone fast enough in the jam to hit anything and be
overturned. Besides, he would have heard the crash.
Somebody—somebodies—had rocked it back and forth
and then pushed it over. Why? He would never know.
    The signal lights at the intersection were out. He
could see well enough across the street to make out the
thin dark shape of the pole. When he got to the foot of
the light pole on his corner, he saw broken plastic, which
would have been green, red, and yellow under more
lightened circumstances, scattered about.
    He stood for a while on the curb and peered into the
sickly gray. If a car were to speed down the street with-
out lights, it could be on him before he could get across
the street. Nobody but a damned fool would go fast or
without lights, but there were many damned fools driv-
ing the streets of Los Angeles.
    The wailing of a siren became stronger, a flashing red
light became visible, and an ambulance whizzed by. He
looked up and down the street and dashed across, hoping
that the light and noise would have