It Lives Again Read Free Page B

peered out into the street. “There’s a man named Mallory across the street. He’s watching this house. It’s just like a job to them; they change shifts every eight hours. All except Mallory. He’s always there, it seems.”
    Eugene, not believing any of this, moved quickly across the room to see.
    “No, he’ll see you,” Frank warned. “Is there another window?”
    “Over there,” said Jody, pointing to a smaller window that sat on an angle to the street.
    “Perfect,” said Davis, moving to that window, Eugene and Jody joining him.
    Outside, it was almost dark. There was a late-model station wagon, a big one, a Chrysler or a Buick, parked across the street. A cold-looking man in a short-sleeved shirt, impervious to the night air, stood by the car, his arms crossed, making no pretense about it. Whatever he was doing out there, one thing was clear: it had to do with their house.
    “That’s him,” said Frank. “That’s Mallory.”
    Eugene sighed. Convinced before that this Davis was crazy, one thing was certain to him now: that man across the street, whoever he was, was watching his house. “I saw them earlier. I thought they were surveying, or something,” he said. “I thought they were going to build something.”
    “And Dr. Fairchild’s part of all this?” Jody asked, still not able to grasp the situation fully.
    “Yes.” Frank nodded slowly.
    “Oh, God,” said Jody, going back toward the couch. Eugene and Frank followed her. Eugene turned to Frank as they went.
    “These men, they know you?” he asked.
    “They know me,” said Davis. “But they don’t know I’m in Tucson. I came in here with the other guests for the shower. I don’t think they recognized me.”
    After seating Jody on the couch, Eugene asked Davis, his lawyer’s mind racing, “How many are there on this team, would you say?”
    “Four of them,” Frank answered.
    “You know where they’re staying?”
    “At the Sunset Inn. That’s the closest place to the hospital.”
    “They know our hospital, too?” questioned Eugene.
    “Mr. Scott,” said Frank, “they know it all. They even know you’re an attorney, which might complicate things, as far as the law is concerned. They took all that into consideration, and they still know one other thing: they’re still going to do it.”
    Eugene sighed. Suddenly he crossed the room to the bar. Davis, sensing that Scott wanted to talk to him alone, followed.
    At the bar, Eugene poured himself a straight vodka, and as Davis joined him, he asked, “You want one?”
    Frank shook his head.
    Eugene then picked up his drink, at least two fingers, and downed it in one full gulp. Finished, he whirled angrily back at Davis. “If it’s going to be a monster, why not kill it? Why save it, for Christ’s sake?”
    Frank answered calmly, academically. He and others had thought this all out; they knew the answer, and the reason why.
    “Everyone uses that word so easily, Mr. Scott. ‘Monster.’ It’s even in the textbooks. The new medical textbooks they’re putting out have a section on the Davis Monster Syndrome. Syndrome, they call it, as if it were a disease, because it’s different.”
    Jody, refusing to be left out, had come up behind them. Vaguely, she asked, “They didn’t show any pictures of your baby in that magazine I read. What did it look like?”
    “Honey, please,” said Eugene, not at all approving of the way this discussion was going. Next Davis would be taking snapshots out of his wallet, passing them around. He looked at Davis. “How many people did it murder?”
    Frank returned his look. “Murder?” he asked. “Mr. Scott, you above all, as a lawyer, should know the definition of murder. In the delivery room they tried to suffocate it, and it fought back.”
    “You know that for a fact?” questioned Jody, inching closer.
    “I know it,” Frank replied. “I’ve asked people, different people. It’s pretty well documented they tried to kill it as soon as