Dean Koontz - Tick Tock

While Del made the rain shield, Tommy worked around her to purge the front seat of water and sparkling fragments of tempered glass. As he worked, he told her what had happened from the moment when the mini-kin had shorted-out the office lights until it had erupted from the burning Corvette.

‘Bigger?’ she asked. ‘How much bigger?’

‘Almost double its original size. And different. The thing you saw clinging to the van window... that’s a hell of a lot weirder than it was when it first began to emerge from the doll.’

Not one vehicle drove through the underpass as they worked, and Tommy was increasingly concerned about their isolation. Repeatedly he glanced toward the open ends of the concrete shelter, where heavy rain continued to crash down by the ton weight, bracketing the dry space in which they had taken refuge. He expected to see the radiant-eyed demon - swollen to greater and stranger dimensions - approaching menacingly through the storm.

‘So what do you think it is?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where does it come from?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What does it want?’

‘To kill me.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘There’s a lot you don’t know.’

‘I know.’

‘What do you do for a living, Tuong Tommy?’

He ignored the purposeful misstatement of his name and said, ‘I write detective stories.’

She laughed. ‘So how come, in this investigation, you can’t even find your own butt?’

‘This is real life.’

‘No, it’s not,’ she said.

‘What?’

With apparent seriousness, she said, ‘There’s no such thing.’

‘No such thing as real life?’

‘Reality is perception. Perceptions change. Reality is fluid. So if by “reality” you mean reliably tangible objects and immutable events, then there’s no such thing.’

Having used two rolls of paper towels to clean the passenger’s seat and the leg space in front of it, heaping the last of them on the sodden little pile that he had created against the wall of the underpass, he said, Are you a New Age type or something - channel spirits, heal yourself with crystals?’

‘No. I merely said reality is perception.’

‘Sounds New Age,’ he said, returning to watch her finish her own task.

‘Well it’s not. I’ll explain someday when we have more time.’

‘Meanwhile,’ he said, ‘I’ll wander aimlessly in the wilderness of my ignorance.’

‘Sarcasm doesn’t become you.’

Are you about finished here? I’m freezing.’

Del stepped back from the open passenger-side door, the roll of plumbing tape in one hand and the razor blade in the other, surveying her work. ‘It’ll keep the rain out well enough, I guess, but it’s not exactly the latest thing in aesthetically pleasing motor-vehicle accessories.’

In the poor light, Tommy couldn’t clearly see the elaborate Art Deco, jukebox-inspired mural on the van, but he could discern that a substantial portion of it had been scraped off the passenger side. ‘I’m really sorry about the paint job. It was spectacular. Must have cost a bundle.’

‘Just a little paint and a lot of time. Don’t worry about it. I was thinking of redoing it anyway.’

She had surprised him again. ‘You painted it your-self?’

‘I’m an artist,’ she said.

‘I thought you were a waitress.’

‘Being a waitress is what I do. An artist is what I am.’

‘I see.’

‘Do you?’ she said, turning away from the door.

‘You said it yourself earlier - I’m a sensitive guy.’

On the freeway overhead, the airbrakes of a big truck screeched like the fierce cry of a scaly behemoth raging through a Jurassic swamp.

Tommy was reminded of the demon. He glanced nervously at one end of the short concrete tunnel, then at the other end, but he saw no monster, large or small, approaching through the rain.

At the back of the van, Del handed one of the two twelve-ounce bottles of orange juice to Tommy and opened the other for herself.

His teeth were chattering. Rather than a swig of cold orange juice, he needed a mug of steaming coffee.

‘We don’t have coffee,’ she said, startling him, as though she had read his mind.

‘Well, I don’t want juice,’ he said.

‘Yes, you do.’ From the two vitamin bottles, she counted out ten one-gram tablets of C and four gelatine capsules of B, took half for herself, and handed the rest to him. ‘After all that fear and stress, our bodies are totally flooded with dangerous free-radicals. Incomplete oxygen molecules, tens of thousands of them, ricocheting through our bodies, damaging every cell they encounter. You need antioxidants, Vitamins C and B as a minimum, to bind with the free radicals and disarm them.’

Though Tommy wasn’t much concerned about main-taining a healthy diet or vitamin therapy, he remem-bered having read about free-radical molecules and antioxidants, and there seemed to be medical validity to the theory, so he washed down the pills with the orange juice.

Besides, he was cold and weary, and he could save a lot of energy by cooperating with Del. She was indefatigable, after all, while he was merely fatigued.

‘You want the tofu now?’

‘Not now.’

‘Maybe later with some chopped pineapple, mara-schino cherries, a few walnuts,’ she suggested.

‘That sounds nice.’

‘Or just a slight sprinkle of shredded coconut.’

‘Whatever.’

Del picked up the red-flannel Santa hat with the white trim and white pompon, which she had found in the display of Christmas items at the supermarket.

‘What’s that for?’ Tommy asked.

‘It’s a hat.’

‘But what are you going to use it for?’ he asked, since she’d had such specific uses for everything else they had picked up at the market.

‘Use it for? To cover my head,’ she said, as if he were daft. ‘What do you use hats for?’

She put it on. The weight of the pompon made the peak of the cap droop to one side.

‘You look ridiculous.’

‘I think it’s cute. Makes me feel good. Puts me in a holiday mood.’ She closed the back door of the van.

‘Do you see a therapist regularly?’ he asked.

‘I dated a dentist once, but never a therapist.’ Behind the wheel of the van again, she started the engine and switched on the heater.

Tommy held his trembling hands in front of the dashboard vents, relishing the gush of hot air. With the broken window covered, he might be able to dry out and get warm.

‘Well, Detective Phan, do you want to start this inves-tigation by trying to find it?’

‘Find what?’

‘Your butt.’

‘Just before I totalled the Corvette, I’d decided to go see my brother Gi. Could you drop me off there?’

‘Drop you off?’ she said disbelieving.

‘It’s the last thing I’ll ask you for.’

‘Drop you off - and then what? Just go home and sit and wait for the doll snake rat-quick little mon-ster thing to come tear out my liver and eat it for dessert?’

Tommy said, ‘I’ve been thinking-’

‘Well, it doesn’t show.’

‘-and I don’t think you’re in any danger from it-’

‘You don’t think I am.’

‘-because, according to the message that the thing apparently typed on my computer, the deadline is dawn.’

‘How exactly am I to take comfort from this?’ she asked.

‘It’s got until dawn to get me - and I’ve got until dawn to stay alive. At that point the game ends.’

‘Game?’

‘Game, threat, whatever.’ He squinted through the windshield at the silvery skeins of rain falling beyond the underpass. ‘Could we get moving? Makes me nervous to sit here so long.’

Del released the handbrake and put the van in gear. But she kept her foot on the brake pedal and didn’t drive out from under the freeway. ‘Tell me what you mean - game.’