It's Alive! Read online

  A BUNDLE OF DREAD!

  Lenore and Frank Davis and their young son were a devoted loving family, looking forward eagerly to the new baby.

  Then one night the baby arrived—a grotesque mutation—a tiny rampaging aberration that, in the moment of its birth slaughtered all the doctors and nurses in the delivery room and disappeared into the dark.

  Death followed death in a wave of bloody terror. Somewhere in the streets of the city a baby was trying to find its mother . . .

  IT’S FRIGHTENING . . . IT’S DEADLY . . .

  IT’S ALIVE!

  A FATHER’S TORMENT . . .

  He looked at the outline of bushes. Privacy. A hiding place. Crazy. Last place in the world that thing would be, if it had a brain, was here. And if it was just sneaking around aimlessly, chances were one in a million that it’d end up here.

  It could be anywhere.

  Everywhere.

  It. The thing. The Infant. The animal. The killer. Whatever it was, he wished they would stop calling it “his baby.” They wanted to blame him. Stick him with it. It came from Lenore, for chrissake, and maybe his sperm didn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe some tumor. Some weird growth.

  Warner Bros.

  A Warner Communications Company

  presents

  A Larco Production

  IT’S ALIVE!

  A Larry Cohen Film

  Starring

  JOHN RYAN ● SHARON FARRELL

  ANDREW DUGGAN ● GUY STOCKWELL

  JAMES DIXON ● MICHAEL ANSARA

  Music by

  Bernard Herrmann

  TECHNICOLOR®

  Written, Produced and Directed by

  Larry Cohen

  Copyright © 1977 by Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Ballantine Books of Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

  ISBN 0-345-25879-7-150

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition: April 1977

  Frank Davis straightened his tie and brushed off his herringbone suit and smoothed his short, sandy hair. Then he stepped from the elevator into the carpeted hallway. He nodded to the receptionist at his left, then to an assistant secretary on his right, and strode briskly into his office suite.

  Once past his own secretary, in the anteroom to his office, and inside and protected from view, he slumped down into his swivel chair, rubbed his eyes, and stared at his uncluttered desk top for a few moments. Then he cleared his throat, picked up the phone, and pushed the intercom button.

  “Mary, ask Buck if he can see me right now, okay? I’ve got some new ideas on the Marcus account that I’d like to run past him.”

  “I know he’s got an appointment at ten, Mr. Davis.”

  She would have been advised of that sometime late last night. Old Buck. “Tell him I need five minutes. And coffee, black.”

  “Sugar?”

  “No.” Every day she asked, every day he said no.

  “Surely.”

  He sighed, pulled open a file drawer, and took out the manila folder marked “Marcus Toys.”

  His secretary rapped lightly at the door and came in, carrying a large brown mug on which was a red heart enclosing, in black letters, “Frank.” She put it carefully on the desk, then stepped back primly to the door. “Mr. Clayton can see you now,” she said.

  She leaned back against the door, smiling, her hands behind her, her chest out.

  Frank brushed by her, chuckling to himself at her pose. With the detachment of a man about to become a father for the second time, he admired her looks and enjoyed how coyly she deployed her body. Like so many of the young broads out there, she wanted to keep her job, that’s all. Keep her job just long enough to find somebody to marry; then retire from all this flirtation and have babies of her own. Buck would not be the one. That’s why she still posed for the field.

  He walked into Buck Clayton’s office without knocking, dropped the folder on the broad leather-topped desk, and sank into the soft, black-leather chair. “Whew.”

  Clayton turned slowly from the expanse of window overlooking Beverly Hills. “Already whew? At 9:30?” He smiled broadly as he seated himself on the edge of his desk and folded his strong arms.

  Buck Clayton, the president, was a bachelor with the husky build of a football player—broader and shorter than Frank’s slim 6'2"—and was dressed in a style Frank thought of as “careful casual.” He wore a flowered shirt open a couple of buttons at the top, a wide white belt with a huge brass horseshoe buckle, tight white flared slacks, black Guccis. “You look tired, old man.”

  Frank felt like an old man, especially today, but always in the company of Clayton. Both were thirty-five, but Clayton managed somehow to make Frank feel old. Because Clayton was a bachelor and Frank a family man. And Frank always had to wear a suit and tie. Public relations was for suits and ties. Except for the president.

  “I am, Buck. Lenore was up most of the night. She’s really uncomfortable. She’s almost due, you know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought the second one would be easier.”

  “Yeah. Any problems with Marcus?”

  “No, no, not at all. I just had a couple new ideas, looking ahead to the Christmas season, and I thought I’d better check them with you. For example, in October I thought we could plant a couple of stories about new toy safety, and set up interviews with old man Marcus himself to explain to what lengths they had gone in research and—”

  Buck shook his head. “No problem, no problem. Frank, anything you want to do is fine by me. You’re never wrong. You know how I feel about your judgment. Just go ahead.”

  “I just thought you’d—”

  “Nobody in this firm is more responsible than you, Frank, or has better ideas. You’re my ace. On your accounts, you’re the boss.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I was also going to bring up the Sturbridge Electronics account.”

  “Same deal. Whatever you think. Unless there’s a problem.”

  “No problem.”

  “Terriffic. Nothing’s wrong with Lenore, I hope.”

  “No, no, I guess not. The doctor says everything’s fine. Just sleepless nights.”

  “Your son’s okay?”

  “Sure. Chris is fine.”

  “Good, good.” Clayton stood up, slapped Frank on the shoulder, and went back behind his desk. “Glad everything’s shipshape, Frank baby. I’ve got a couple guys coming in, so I better get back to work.”

  “Sure, right.” Frank started for the door. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  “No need. You’re the perfect man for toys, right? I’ll watch for the articles.”

  “I meant about Lenore, when the baby comes.”

  “Oh yeah, right.”

  Frank went back to his office and took out a yellow pad and began jotting down notes for the stories he would propose to the press. New West magazine might even go for something. They would be having a special section on toys. Or if they weren’t, he would suggest it.

  Yes, he was tired. Poor Lenore. Chris had been easy, but that was eleven years ago. They probably shouldn’t have waited so long this time. If you could call it waiting. A truth they had never spoken about—wouldn’t even think about now—was that they hadn’t wanted their first child so soon, and definitely didn’t want a second on the heels of the first. So right after Chris was born came birth-control pills. For too many years. Lenore hadn’t felt well when she took them, her face got splotchy. So she stopped, on doctor’s advice. But they wanted two children anyway, eventually, and after a few years went by it seemed that they’d bette
r hurry—the age difference would already be a lot. But nothing happened. Then she took fertility pills for a few months, until some magazine articles about that scared them both, and she stopped those pills too.

  And six months after she stopped, she got pregnant. What wonders awaited the pill-takers! All those years and all those pills, and the result was you had one child too early, and one too—no, it wasn’t too late.

  And this time Lenore was a lot more uncomfortable. The whole term had been rough, but especially the last couple of months. Lenore had been scared by so many stories that she would not now take any more pills, not for anything, not even to relax and sleep. But the doctor was not worried. Everything seemed to be fine. Some people have discomforts, he said. No two children develop the same way, no mother can expect the same feelings every time. Everything was okay.

  The only startling thing was that the doctor said the baby seemed to have grown unusually fast in the last couple of weeks. Any day now.

  Frank spent the day roughing out the proposals for story ideas that he would suggest to various newspapers and journals. The key was to develop himself the questions they might ask, and the kinds of answers they might get—statistics, points of view, possible people to interview—stressing the importance of the subject The key was, in fact, to do most of the work himself. The press looked fondly on stories taking minimal effort. And the main thing for the public-relations executive to do was to give them good (good = positive) ideas, accurate information, and quick accessibility to the subject.

  A good public-relations man knows that the press is lazy. Everybody is lazy. That’s why they take pills—the quick fix.

  Frank had been able to capitalize on that fact in the campaign a year ago for Liebreich Pharmaceuticals. You couldn’t say that people who took Liebreich drugs were lazy, of course. Nor did you lie. You simply stressed the positive side which every controversy has, and is easy enough to accept if you don’t think too much about it.

  The controversy had involved a lot of current articles suggesting that our society was too dependent upon drugs. Other drug companies ran and hid from the press. Liebreich did not. It was Frank’s genius to have them volunteer for a story. The key to the press was this: Lock your door to them and they will kick it down to expose your sins; open your door and they will look for nothing, so pleased are they for easy entrée. Closed is open, open is closed.

  So Frank had Liebreich open up to them, which meant the company showed them nothing, and the lambs of the press sat at the feet of the executive vice-president, nodding in friendship and respect, as he said: “I see no particular value to society in having busy, productive people waste time feeling lousy.”

  One of Frank’s better lines. The resulting stories identified Liebreich Pharmaceuticals with candor, warmth, and concern for improvement of the human condition; while other companies, in comparison, seemed somehow related to the secretive, street-corner profiteers bent on doping our society to death.

  None of this was clear in the articles, of course. Images, in public relations, are not black and white, but pleasant, suggestive fogs.

  Once in a while, quite divorced from that account, Frank thought about pills. Didn’t worry, just thought. Everybody lived on pills. Got through their days and nights by fooling their bodies with capsules. Frank didn’t take pills. Never. If he was going to take pills, he would have done it playing guard on the basketball team at City College, when he had to play tired or hurt. Everybody on the team took them except him. Painkillers of various types, and ups—mostly Dexes—to keep them going at full speed through four quarters of fast breaks. The center died from a liver ailment when he was thirty-three. Frank was as healthy as Jack LaLanne.

  Lenore’s combination of birth-control pills and fertility pills seemed like a joke. What would now be the result of such a comic mix? The result, he thought, chuckling, was that after all those contradictory tablets, you just proceeded to have a normal baby, like anybody else. Pointless. Like vitamins. You felt however you thought you felt.

  Which caused him to have some impatience with Lenore. Her mother had taken twenty different vitamins and pills every day. It took him some time to convince Lenore that pills were worthless, or even dangerous. Early in the marriage she had taken ups for energy and downs for sleep. He got her to stop that. But then, in the after-Chris panic about family planning, she had taken up the quick-fix stuff again.

  Frank’s thoughts returned to his work.

  “Ask Marcus if he has ever manufactured a dangerous toy.” The press would love it. The good public-relations man knows that you can sell a story to the press if you seem to be on their side, suggesting a way to controversy—while you know, privately, that it can be neatly resolved to the client’s benefit. And old man Marcus, well briefed by Frank, would have a splendid answer. He would welcome the question, shake his head and mutter something off-the-record about irresponsible toy manufacturers, and take the issue head-on. He would be concerned. He would give the press some pithy quotes, which Frank would compose. Something like: “My own grandchildren use my toys. I would no sooner give my granddaughter a dangerous toy than I would hand her a loaded gun.”

  Grandpa would sell a lot of toys.

  Lenore would be a lousy public-relations person. She fretted. She worried. Most important, she made people around her nervous.

  She was afraid the baby wouldn’t be perfect. Who gives a goddam? If Frank were going to be a mother, he’d relax and let nature take its course. The public-relations approach would be: “Our babies are always fine, because we care, and so we take every precaution in the manufacture.”

  She fretted. Why does he kick so hard?

  Because he’s strong as an ox, like Chris.

  Why is he suddenly so big?

  Babies always feel big, near the end.

  Why do I feel so strange, this time?

  You’re going to have a baby, Lenore, that’s all, and the second is not the first. We’re going to have a baby. You feel strange because you think you feel strange. You seem fine to me, Lenore. Why do you look at me like that?

  The day passed quickly. Frank worked into the evening, and arrived home at 8:30.

  For a while he sat in his tan Cadillac and looked at the house. He thought briefly about his secretary, Mary, how good she was looking to him lately, how available. But he knew why he was thinking like that: the last couple of months are always a bit rough, wife-wise.

  The Marcus account had kept him late again. Lenore would wish he had been home earlier. But it was things like the Marcus account that got them this house, what they had always wanted, split-level colonial with a trim yard and a kidney-shaped swimming pool, all rimmed with thick bushes on a nice, quiet street in suburban Westwood. Good place for kids to grow up.

  Of course, Lenore worked too, sometimes, substitute-teaching in kindergarten at the nearby Darwin Public School. She sure did like kids. If it had been up to her, they might have had a dozen. But they had always been in agreement, really, on spacing. Always.

  The only light turned on was in the kitchen, which meant perhaps that Lenore was feeling better, and was waiting to have supper with him. A good sign.

  Frank believed in signs—not omens, exactly, but signs—which he called, in his best public-relations style, indications. He acted on them. That’s what first attracted him to Lenore. Something in her eyes. Strange, large, beautiful eyes. An indication. A sign nobody else would recognize. They both had it: something in their blood, as shown in their eyes, indicating, mysteriously, that they belonged together, like a species. Chris had it too, in his eyes.

  Frank could swear to have seen it in her eyes again the day she became pregnant—this time. He didn’t know it at the time, of course. But deep in her eyes, he recalled later, had been the announcement: at this moment she had conceived a child for them, another of their own, their blood.

  This new child too would have that look in his eyes. Did he think, “his”? So big, so active, had to be a boy
.

  The light in the kitchen was a good indication. And so he went in cheerfully.

  Lenore lay in bed, her hands lightly on the nightgown covering her swollen belly. She didn’t care what anybody said, this time she felt different. It, the baby, felt different. What nobody seemed to understand was that she didn’t feel so much worried as weird. It kept her awake nights, caused her mind to wander during the days.

  She was sorry it kept Frank from sleeping too. But he was just going to have to get used to the idea that having a baby was a family affair. It was not, after all, just her baby, but theirs—just as Chris had been. He had been angry, or at least annoyed, when she became pregnant with Chris. As if she’d done it all by herself.

  When their first baby was born, Frank quite naturally loved it. “I.” Or “her baby.” In time, however, Chris became “his son,” revealing quickly the same strengths and cat-like quickness of his father, with his father’s eyes.

  But they could as well have been her eyes. All three had the eyes of the Davis family—large, round, dark. A look some people called “intimidating” or “piercing,” others described as “searching.” With them, there would never be a question of parentage; their eyes gave them away. Handsome family. She combed her wavy blond hair with her fingers.

  She knew he was working late on the Marcus account. That was fine. He needed to work, loved it. She did not, as he sometimes did, see public relations as a clever game. She thought it was important. Marcus was important, because toys were important. They had kept all of Chris’s baby toys, which were good ones, and had them ready now, in the crib room, for the new arrival. Because she thought toys were so important, she had even managed to convince the school administration to stock the kindergarten at Darwin with similar toys—solid-wood toys or simple, colorful windups. No cheap metal with dangerous edges, or plastic so fragile that it cracked if you sat on it. Toys that allowed children’s imaginations to roam. So successful had she been in arranging for toys that the kindergarten room resembled the room with Chris’s toys here at home.