Gremlins (27 page)

He broke off then, frowning.

“Yes?” Billy urged. “Go on.”

“Never mind, it’s too unpleasant. All I can say is that Mr. Corben didn’t want to go along with the little people. Of course, he’s quite old and set in his ways. That’s why he didn’t understand their needs. But I did. So they established me as first president of their bank.”

“Just as I thought,” Kate whispered. “He’s as soft as a nickel cantaloupe.”

Gerald Hopkins fixed Billy with a gaze that was somehow both intense and vacant. “You can be my head teller if you promise to be respectful to the little people,” he said. “Your name escapes me, but I remember your face.” With that, he threw his head back and giggled in a way that was eerily close to that of the Gremlins. “Yes, but I’ll let you work for me . . . Minimum wage, naturally.”

“I can’t believe this,” Kate breathed, shaking her head. “I told you terrible things always happen at Christmas time.”

“It’s not the holiday’s fault,” Billy murmured.

“Now if you’ll pardon me, I have a lot of work to do,” Gerald said in a more formal tone. “People who will be investing in the new bank are coming soon, so I have to be ready.”

“Would you like us to see if we can get the door open?” Billy asked.

“No, it’s perfectly all right. Good day.”

He smiled blandly but with a certain finality and returned to the inside of the vault. Taking a seat at the small desk inside, he began writing with an instrument that if not imaginary was invisible to Kate and Billy.

“When the Gremlins raided this place and attacked Mr. Corben, I guess it was just too much for him,” Billy said. “His mind must have gone. At first I thought he was putting on an act for us, but now . . . Poor guy.”

“Well”—Kate shrugged—“at least he’s got his own bank now. That seems to have made him happy.”

As Gerald continued working at the desk, Kate and Billy quietly left the room.

“What next?” Kate asked.

“I don’t know.”

A moment later they stood at the entrance of the bank, staring out at the deserted streets of Kingston Falls.

“Where do you suppose everybody is?” Kate murmured.

The town seemed like an old movie set, no sign of life intruding on its eerie serenity. A few small lights glowed in houses but that was all.

“Everybody must be hiding in their basements or attics until help comes,” Billy suggested. “Either that or they got in their cars and left.”

He looked at his watch. It was four o’clock. “Not very long until daybreak,” he added. “I wonder what the Gremlins will do when the sun comes out.”

“Probably find a dark place and hang out until night again,” Kate said.

“Yeah.”

“I think we should find a radio and see what’s going on. If they haven’t destroyed the station, we might find out something.”

“Good idea,” Billy seconded. “Suppose we were the only ones left in town because the government decided to nuke the whole place. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

“Hilarious.”

“I think there’s a radio in Mr. Corben’s office.”

“Yes.”

They went back into the bank and rooted through the debris. Mr. Corben’s desk radio had been smashed and its cord chewed to a frazzle, but in one drawer they found some small transistor radios the bank used as gifts for new accounts. One of them still worked.

—peat, stay in your homes until the official all clear is given. Lieutenant General David Greene of the United States Marine barracks at Phoenix is here now and has agreed to take a valuable minute of his time in order to explain what his troops, who are already standing by near Kingston Falls, are going to do. General Greene . . .

Thank you, Harman. First of all, we’re urging everyone to stay indoors. That will make our job a whole lot easier. You see, we don’t really know what these small creatures are, having only just arrived and having nothing but reports to go on. Now, they could be masqueraders or a new form of life from an alien galaxy. That’s a long shot but we like to be flexible. That’s why we’re not coming into your town with flamethrowers and machine guns and rocket launchers. We don’t want to destroy property or endanger lives and we do want to take these animals or people alive.

That sounds like a good juggling act, General Greene. How do you plan to do that, sir?

Well, we hope to literally flush these invaders or troublemakers into the open. You see, rather than rely on weaponry, we’ve procured and brought with us several huge portable pumps and fire hoses. What we’ll begin doing in about thirty minutes, as soon as our pumps are loaded, is go from building to building looking for these . . . things. When we find them, instead of firing on them or taking a chance on having them injure our men, we intend to turn the hoses on and round them up that way. You know, there’s a lot you can do with a heavy stream of water directed the right way.

That sounds like a terrific plan, General Greene . . .

“Terrific!” Billy exploded. “It’s terrible! If they come here with hoses and spray a lot of water around, we’ll have millions of Gremlins instead of a few hundred.”

“Then we’ve got to head off those soldiers,” Kate said calmly. “Talk them out of it.”

“Have you ever tried to talk a general out of a plan he’s devised?”

“No. Have you?”

“No. But in the movies it never works.”

“Maybe this time it will be different. After all, Billy, you know more than they do.”

“Yeah, I know,” Billy said. “It
is
my fault. I’m to blame for this whole mess.”

“There’s no time to worry about blame now. If you’re going to talk these troops out of using water, maybe you should have a better plan for how to round up the Gremlins.”

Billy sighed, nodded.

They were at the entrance of the bank again. Billy looked both ways on Main Street, scratched his head thoughtfully.

“Wait a minute,” he said finally. “Where are the Gremlins, anyway?”

“The same as before, I suppose,” Kate replied. “Going from building to building.”

“But there’s nothing moving. I don’t see or hear anything, do you?”

“No, now that you mention it.”

Billy hopped off the sidewalk and began walking quickly in the direction of Dorry’s Pub. Kate followed.

“Where are you going?” she asked when she caught up with him. “Not back in the pub, I hope.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Just a hunch.”

Her features reflecting her anxiety, Kate trailed behind him. She had no desire to return to Dorry’s if those creatures were still inside. On the other hand, if he had an idea how to get rid of the greenies and needed her help, she had no alternative but to go along with him. And despite the perils she had been through, there was still something in her that rose to the challenge when her courage was tested.

“Do you have a flashlight in your car?” she asked.

“Good idea,” Billy said.

The battered VW was still there at curbside, looking worse than ever as the centerpiece of the garbage shower hurled at it from the pub. Billy reached inside the car and found the flashlight on the seat, which glowed yellowishly.

“I’d estimate we have less than a minute’s life left in that thing,” Kate predicted.

“That may be just enough,” he said.

Billy in the lead, they edged their way into the foyer of the pub. Every second Kate expected to be engulfed by either a new barrage of missiles or by the Gremlins themselves, their claws flashing. She doubted that the flashlight would be much help in deterring a Gremlin attack, its weak beam projecting only a few feet into the darkness. When no assault came, she began to feel better, especially when they turned the corner and moved into the main lounge area. There, by the subdued indirect lighting of that room, they saw wreckage and destruction of monumental proportions, but there wasn’t a single Gremlin in sight.

Billy looked around, whistled softly as his eyes took in the wall-to-wall panorama of vandalism.

“Poor Dorry,” he said sadly.

“What do you mean, ‘Poor Dorry’?” Kate protested with a bit of a laugh. “It was almost ‘Poor me.’ But for the grace of God, I could be one of those piles of trash.” Squeezing his arm, she added quickly, “And thanks to you, of course.”

Billy’s expression was a mixture of pleasure and mild embarrassment.

They stood silently for a moment. Finally Billy said, “Well, where do you suppose they all went?”

“Beats me.” Kate shrugged.

They walked back outside, stood on the sidewalk, and continued their puzzled surveillance of Kingston Falls’s forsaken town square area.

Billy wondered how long it would be before the marines showed up with their fire hoses. Perhaps they were already inspecting homes and buildings at the far end of town. Still hoping to first locate the Gremlins and then find a way of dealing with them, he closed his eyes, straining his mind to think, think, think.

“Where would I go if I were a Gremlin?” he said aloud.

“A Gremlin who’s afraid of bright light, with sunrise on the way,” Kate added.

“Good,” he said. “That’s important. I guess, putting myself in their place, I’d try to find a building, a big building with no windows so I could hide . . . You know, they tend to stick together. I’ll bet if we can find one of them, that’s where all of them will be.”

“So how many buildings can there be without windows?” Kate asked.

“Just two. And they’re both at the end of the next block.”

Billy started to run, then spun and hopped into the VW, giving the key a turn just on the off chance the engine would turn over.

It did. Kate hopped in beside him.

A minute later he slowed the car as they moved through the intersection of Main and Garfield. On one corner was the Colony movie theatre, its marquee still advertising NOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. On the adjacent corner was the Montgomery Ward department store. One of the entrance doors to Montgomery Ward hung open as evidence of the fact that sometime during the night some Gremlins had found a way inside.

Billy parked the car and got out. He was frankly undecided as to which building to try first, until he noticed that Gizmo’s head was completely out of the knapsack, his nose twitching nervously.

“Which one, Giz?” Billy asked.

Gizmo peered anxiously but meaningfully at the movie theatre.

“Then let’s go,” Billy said.

It soon became evident that Gizmo’s nose was working well, for as they neared the theatre they saw countless Gremlin clawprints in front. Other evidence of the devilish creatures’ presence could be seen in the numerous bits of vandalism—broken glass, a door hanging askew from a single hinge, three-pronged scratches along the wails.

“I guess this is the place, all right,” Kate said, surveying the damage.

Gizmo waved his arms, put one paw over his mouth, and cocked an ear.

From inside the theatre auditorium emanated a continuous rush of sound made up of giggles, yelps, and conversational jabber, in more or less equal parts.

“Sounds loud enough to be all of them,” Billy said hopefully.

“Well, now that we’ve found them, what do we do about it?” Kate asked.

“I’m thinking.”

Negotiating their way between bits of glass and overturned lobby furniture and ashtrays, they moved quietly into the deserted lobby, the floor of which was littered with crumpled wads of popcorn and torn candy wrappers.

“They sure are sloppy eaters,” Kate observed. “Of course, it must be hard to eat popcorn with fangs like theirs that are so far apart. It keeps falling out the spaces. Another thing I noticed about them—”

As Kate’s voice grew in volume, Billy looked at her a bit sharply.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I guess I’m rambling on because I’m nervous. Just the thought of those guys coming at me again gives me the creeps.”

Billy nodded. “I understand.”

“I’ll be quiet,” she promised.

Huddled near the back of the lobby, the three listened to the babble of Gremlin voices for a long moment. Kate wondered if they were involved in a heated discussion of some issue or just conversing idly. From her previous experience with them she knew they were intelligent creatures, diabolically so. Did they know now that they faced a crisis with the approach of dawn? If so, were they working up a plan of action in the event they should be discovered and attacked? At that moment Kate would gladly have given a month’s pay to understand what they were saying, but that was impossible, of course.

“Couldn’t we just bolt the doors or nail them shut?” she finally whispered to Billy. “That would keep them inside until help came.”

“It’s an idea, but I don’t think it’ll work,” he replied. “Some doors are off the hinges; the glass is cracked or broken. If we tried to fix that, we’d be discovered before we finished. But there is one possibility—”

Grabbing her suddenly by the arm, Billy pulled Kate around the corner of a vending machine and put his finger to his lips.

Clawed feet could be heard scratching on the tile floor of the lobby. But it was only one set, Billy noted thankfully, hoping the thump of his beating heart didn’t carry across the room.

A moment later, when the sound of the footsteps stopped, Billy and Kate peeked around the edge of the machine. The Gremlin with the flowing white mane was scooping up the last of the popcorn from the front and corners of the glass display case, slurping noisily as he shoveled pieces into his mouth. After a gigantic belch, he shuffled back into the auditorium.

“That was Stripe,” Billy said. “He’s the smartest of the bunch and probably their leader, unless I miss my guess.”

“Now what was the other possibility?” Kate asked.

“Blowing them up,” Billy replied.

“With what? Do you happen to have a few sticks of dynamite in the car?”

Billy shook his head. “Maybe something better. I used to work in this theatre just after high school. If it still has the same boiler problems, we may be in business.”

“I don’t get you.”

“The boiler kept building up pressure,” Billy explained. “But the fella who owned the place was too cheap to install a new one. Instead, he put on this release valve that we had to check at least three times a day to make sure it was still working. He kept saying that if anything happened to that valve, we’d all be blown to kingdom come.”