Dracula Unbound (27 page)

Bodenland checked his watch and began to walk briskly toward the door of the administrative wing. He said, rather absently, “You'll soon get used to it. People themselves are just the same as in your time.”

“Not if they understand fractals they aren't, my boy!”

Bodenland took Stoker and Spinks up in the elevator to his suite. Rose Gladwin almost collapsed at the sight of Bodenland.

After all her cries of welcome were finished, Bodenland handed his friends over to her care, giving her strict instructions to see that they were taken to the best hotel in Dallas, given a bank account, and looked after. While he was dialing his doctor regarding treatment for Stoker's illness, Rose hurried into the adjoining office to phone Waldgrave.

“How do I tell Joe about what's happened to Mina?”

“I've known him longer than you, Rose. I'll come and break the news to him.”

“Max—it's going to bring him down hard.”

“I know it.”

Larry was out on the grounds of Gondwana with Kylie, flying one of his model planes. His father appeared in the Suzuki station wagon. He dropped the radio control and ran to welcome him back home.

But Joe was in a storm of fury and sorrow such as Larry had never encountered in him before. He fell back before the first wave of it. Why, Bodenland wanted to know, why had Larry not protected his mother? Why had she been allowed to die? Kylie clung to him but he pushed her away. Why the violence in the mortician's? Why, above all, why had she become Dracula's victim?

Under the barrage of questions, Larry commenced his own monologue, timidly at first, then more forcefully. Mina had insisted on being alone. They hadn't been told she was going skydiving. They had known nothing of her movements until too late. As for the stake through her heart—that needed courage—that was for her sake—that was for his father's sake. Everything he did was for his father's sake. He had gone into groceries so as not to compete with his father.

“You drink for my sake, too?” asked Bodenland.

“That is unfair and stupid, Joe,” Kylie said. “Larry certainly drinks
because
of you. Maybe we were not able to protect Mina—but where were you when it came to protecting your woman? Don't try to shift your guilt.”

It was Joe's turn to be silent under her eloquence.

Her pretty face was now alight with spirit. She was just as responsible for the stake as Larry. They had had to kill the evil thing in Mina to save her immortal soul—in which she at least believed. If evil survives, good perishes.

“I agree with that, Kylie,” Joe said. “If evil survives, the good perishes.”

“And yet with no evil in the world, good has no reason to exist. Which is why the Lord permitted sin to enter the Garden of Eden.”

“Maybe in the end you'll convert me to the Christian faith.”

“No, Joe. I don't know whether you're cut out for the Christian faith. It might make you even more difficult than you are.”

It was not a remark he would have taken from many people, but her smile disarmed him. For a moment he thought of Bram Stoker's description of Ellen Terry as embodied sunshine. Here was another similar case.

“At least I believe that Mina had an immortal soul.” He turned to his son and held out his hand. “I should not have turned on you. Forgive me. It was my anguish speaking.”

Then he explained to Larry how he planned to rescue his mother from the dead.

Mina walked in her green coveralls over to the motel room window and opened it. Dusk was falling. As she gazed out over the car park, the neon sign lit with the words
MOONLITE MOTEL
.

She turned away, shucked off all her clothes, and stepped into the shower.

Afterward, dressed in a toweling robe, she mixed herself a margarita and tried to write a letter.
Joe you bastard
—it began, and got no further. She mixed herself a second drink and started to phone around. By now, night was setting in over Enterprise. She was phoning her sister in Paris, France, when a bat flew in at the window. “Oh, god, sorry, Carrie, I've got a bat in my room. I can't take bats.”

She put the phone down and stood up, watching the flying thing. It changed as she watched, turning into a suave man in evening dress, his hair brushed back and gleaming. Transfixed, she allowed her robe to fall open, revealing her naked body. But his avid gaze was fixed on the whiteness of her throat as he advanced.

“Hi,” she said. “Like a drink? I was just getting stewed on my ownsome.”

“Thanks, no,” he said. “Not alcohol.”

As he was approaching her, the door burst open. Bodenland ran in, holding Kylie's little gold crucifix before him. He thrust this at the suave man's eyes. The man screamed with pain, instantly falling back, dwindling, smoking, turning into bat-form again. Bodenland struck at it, slammed the window shut, beat at the creature savagely as it sped trapped about the room. Snatching up a magazine, he knocked the bat into a corner. As it fell, he jumped on it, pounding it underfoot until it spurted blood and died.

Then Bodenland turned to Mina.

After they had embraced and kissed and both shed tears, he took her back in the time train to Dallas, only a few days in the future.

Here was another strange reunion, Mina with Larry and Kylie. Larry squirmed a little as he embraced the mother he had last seen in her coffin.

Later still, they were introduced to Stoker and Spinks. Spinks was resplendent in a new bomber jacket. Stoker was under doctor's orders and receiving treatment.

Stoker's eyes gleamed when he saw Kylie. He clutched her hand longer than was necessary, and loaded her with such compliments as he deemed suitable for a seductive young lady of the future.

“It happens I'm reading your novel at present, Mr. Stoker—and it terrifies me. I don't know how you think of such terrible events. Though I suppose we should pity the poor vampires, doomed to such a miserable existence. They're really one more oppressed minority, aren't they?”

“Er, well, my dear young lady, I hadn't thought of them in that regard. I simply thought of them as a bad lot—a disease, in short.”

“May I ask if you believe in Heaven and Hell?”

Stoker looked about rather helplessly and said that after all he'd been through he ought to have a ready answer to that question.

Kylie smiled and said, “I see you believe that if a thing shouldn't exist it doesn't exist, Mr. Stoker. That's why all of us have trouble believing in the fact of Dracula or the Devil. Yet Dracula must be the invention of an Almighty God along with everything else.”

He pulled at his hairy cheek and said to Bodenland, “This pretty daughter-in-law of yours raises questions which never entered my mind. I'll need a little time to think about the matter. My brain doesn't seem to work too well in 1999.”

“How is your hotel?” asked Mina, coming to the rescue. “You must find everything very odd, after what you've been used to. We've all been turned upside-down recently.” She laughed with some uncertainty, giving Kylie a sidelong look.

“It's a pleasant hotel, for sure,” Stoker said, in answer to Mina's question. “The ice machine is a remarkable invention. But I miss the friendly attentions of servants such as we have at home. One thing I do enjoy is your clever cards instead of money. Abolishing money is the finest idea I ever heard of.”

“What have you bought?”

Stoker looked cautious. “Well, I discovered magazines with pictures of pretty girls divested of every last stitch of clothes. And we took the liberty of buying a nice pair of coffins we saw in Nieman Marcus—a His and Hers—you know, for the remains of Bella and that driver of yours. And we shall have a capital Christian burial of their remains in the cemetery the day after tomorrow.”

“Fine idea, but there's no time for that,” said Bodenland briskly. “You can have your fun later, Brain. This very night we're leaving again in the time train. You know why, and I think you know where.”

The immensities of the Mesozoic plains. A broken line of hills and cliffs lay to the south. From their skirts the land rolled northward, to dense forests of deciduous trees. A river had once meandered through the plain, and died, leaving a series of oxbow lakes. Otherwise, no landmarks stood out. Tall grasses grew, interspersed here and there with clumps of small white daisies.

One particular area of this plain, between two lakes, was becoming crowded with figures. They were dwarfed by the great landscape which contained them, and by the cumulus clouds piling up on the horizon.

These figures walked like men. They were dressed in black garb, and closely resembled men. Others circled overhead, flying on widespread leathery wings. And with these fliers went others who accompanied and in some ways resembled them. But these others had more distinctively reptilian faces, with long cruel mouths filled with sharp teeth.

They were watched with eager fascination by the hidden human viewers on the ground. This was the first time the humans had seen any prehistoric creatures, except for Joe Bodenland, whose untimely excursion to the Carboniferous, when he had lost Clift's body to the amphibian, remained in his mind.

The time train was concealed under low palm trees growing in a depression on the crumbling hills which terminated the great plain. Standing outside it, and watching the gathering ahead of them, were Joe, Mina, Kylie, and Bram. Nearby, Larry was giving Spinks a hand to bury the two coffins, and grumbling at the task.

“Why don't we just junk them? There's nothing sacred about burial in the Cretaceous, even in a Nieman Marcus coffin.”

“Master Larry,” said Spinks gravely, “time makes little difference to a corpse. The important thing for all concerned is that they get a proper burial.”

“What, vampires? That's rubbish.”

Spinks continued stolidly to dig.

“They may be vampires, and that's why I have carved the vampire sign on both coffins, but they've paid for their crimes. They were human once, don't forget, Master Larry. There's still a right and a wrong, even in this outlandish dump.”

“Don't preach to me!”

“The intention behind preaching, Master Larry, if you excuse me saying so, is to do someone good in the spirit.”

“God!” exclaimed Larry. He hurled down his spade, threw up his hands, and walked away. In any event, the coffins were never buried, for Bodenland called everyone over to witness a strange phenomenon.

The sky was changing hue, the cloud layers were congealing. The masses of vapor curdled and writhed as if in pain.

It was evident this peculiarity had been observed by the population on the plain.

Until now, the Un-Dead had been busily driving herds of hadrosaurs and other related genera across the wastes and into pens of thorn. The duckbilled monsters went docilely enough, though their melancholy hoots filtered up even to the distant viewers. The reason for this docility could be discerned; one or two of the lead dinosaurs had been saddled and domesticated and were being used as bellwethers which the rest of the great reptiles followed.

Some of the Un-Dead were already in the pens, feasting on their captives.

Now the feasting was over and the herding ceased. Every being on the plain became immobile, gazing upward. Stoker crossed himself. “Faith, it's like the Second Coming and all,” he exclaimed.

“Don't forget He hasn't come the first time yet,” said Mina, dryly. “The Mesozoic wasn't exactly Jesus territory.”

All six crouched in their place of concealment and peered at the clouds on the distant horizon. The clouds were moving rapidly together, growing darker as they went, while lightning curdled their stomachs. The sky itself grew dim with an ocher light as the cloud mass rose to obscure the sun.

A great pillar of shadow fell across the plain. And the pillar became a ramp, on which was seen the figure of Count Dracula, descending.

Dracula alighted on the plain, took on almost human form, and raised his arms. The hordes on the plain began to converge slowly toward him, obedient to his sign.

“Okay,” Bodenland said. “Their conference is going to start. I want us to hold a quick conference too.”

His face was lined and drawn as he looked from one to the other.

“You're all very dear to me. I know I've been autocratic in the past. The family has its troubles—which I hope to remedy. Now here's a momentous issue and I want us all to be in on it together—”

Stoker snorted with disgust. “Come on, Joe. The Duke of Wellington didn't write his wife a sonnet on the battlefield at Waterloo.”

“Just a minute, Bram. There's more responsibility here than I can shoulder alone. You all have to be a part of this. We hold here an F-bomb, the greatest destructive force we know of, and the possibility exists to drop it on Dracula and his cohorts. We think that will finish him off once and for all. I need your agreement. Do we drop the bomb?”

“That's what we've come to do,” said Stoker at once. “Let's get on with it, Joe. This destruction is foretold in the Scriptures.”

“But by so doing, we also become mass killers. We become no better than the other side. I have found before now that if you kill someone you are destined to take his place. What do the rest of you think?”

The two women spoke together. Kylie smiled at her mother-in-law, nodding to her to go ahead. “I say you should not drop it, Joe, since you are asking,” Mina said. “For a simple practical reason. The vampires are not going to be destroyed. You told me that they faded out as a reproductive species long before mankind came on the scene—Bernard's two graves are their only memorial we've found—”

“Well?” he said impatiently.

“Well, the F-bomb won't work. It's untested. You drop it, then Dracula knows we are here, and we all get killed.”

“No, Birdie, the F-bomb will work.”

“You don't know that, Joe.”