You and me both, babes, Dees thought.
When he came into the clear again, he could see the lights of Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach clearly.
Yes, sir, the fatties who shop at 7-Eleven are gonna love this one, he thought as lightning flashed on the port side. They’re gonna pick up about seventy zillion copies of this baby when they go out for their nightly ration of Twinkies and beer.
But there was more, and he knew it.
This one could be . . . well . . . just so goddam good.
This one could be legitimate.
There was a time when a word like that never would have crossed your mind, ole buddy, he thought. Maybe you are burning out.
Still, big stacked headlines danced in his head like sugarplums. INSIDE VIEW REPORTER
APPREHENDS CRAZED NIGHT FLIER. EXCLUSIVE STORY ON HOW BLOOD-DRINKING NIGHT FLIER WAS
FINALLY CAUGHT. ‘NEEDED TO HAVE IT,’ DEADLY DRACULA DECLA RES.
It wasn’t exactly grand opera — Dees had to admit that — but he thought it sang just the same.
He thought it sang like a boid.
He picked up the mike after all and depressed the button. He knew his blood-buddy was still down there, but he also knew he wasn’t going to be comfortable until he had made absolutely sure.
‘Wilmington, this is N471B. You still got a Skymaster 337 from Maryland down there on the ramp?’
Through static: ‘Looks like it, old hoss. Can’t talk just now. I got air traffic.’
‘Has it got red piping?’ Dees persisted.
For a moment he thought he would get no answer, then: ‘Red piping, roger. Kick it off, N471B, if you don’t want me to see if I can slap an FCC fine on y’all. I got too many fish to fry tonight and not enough skillets.’
‘Thanks, Wilmington,’ Dees said in his most courteous voice. He hung up the mike and then gave it the finger, but he was grinning, barely noticing the jolts as he passed through another membrane of cloud. Skymaster, red piping, and he was willing to bet next year’s salary that if the doofus in the tower hadn’t been so busy, he would have been able to confirm the tail-number as well: N101BL.
One week, by Christ, one little week. That was all it had taken. He had found the Night Flier, it wasn’t dark yet, and as impossible as it seemed, there were no police on the scene. If there had been cops, and if they had been there concerning the Cessna, Farmer John almost certainly would have said so, sky-jam and bad weather or not. Some things were just too good not to gossip about.
I want your picture, you bastard, Dees thought. Now he could see the approach lights, flashing white in the dusk. I’ll get your story in time, but first, the picture. Just one, but I gotta have it.
Yes, because it was the picture that made it real. No fuzzy out-of-focus lightbulbs; no ‘artist’s conception’; a real by-God photo in living black-and-white. He headed down more steeply, ignoring the descent beep. His face was pale and set. His lips were pulled back slightly, revealing small, gleaming white teeth.
In the combined light of dusk and the instrument panel, Richard Dees looked quite a little bit like a vampire himself.
3
There were many things Inside View was not — literate, for one, over-concerned with such minor matters as accuracy and ethics, for another — but one thing was undeniable: it was exquisitely attuned to horrors. Merton Morrison was a bit of an asshole (although not as much of one as Dees had thought when he’d first seen the man smoking that dumb fucking pipe of his), but Dees had to give him one thing – he had remembered the things that had made Inside View a success in the first place: buckets of blood and guts by the handful.
Oh, there were still pictures of cute babies, plenty of psychic predictions, and Wonder Diets featuring such unlikely ingestibles as beer, chocolate, and potato chips, but Morrison had sensed a sea-change in the temper of the times, and had never once questioned his own judgement about