Dean Koontz - Tick Tock

As he and Del passed the coolers and storerooms, heading toward the back of the building and the door through which they had entered, she said, ‘Well, thanks for preparing me.’

‘For what?’

‘For the glorious reception I received.’

‘I told you how it was with me and the family.’

‘You made it sound strained between you and them.

It’s more like the Capulet’s and Montague’s and the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s all thrown together and named Phan.’

‘It’s not that dramatic,’ he disagreed.

‘Seemed pretty dramatic to me, quiet but dramatic, like both of you were ticking and liable to explode at any second.’

Halfway across the room from the shift manager’s office, Tommy stopped, turned, and looked back.

Gi was standing at one of the big windows in that managerial roost, watching them.

Tommy hesitated, raised a hand, and waved. When Gi didn’t return the wave, the bakery stench seemed to intensify, and Tommy walked faster toward the rear exit.

Lengthening her stride to keep up with him, Del Payne said, ‘He thinks I’m the whore of Babylon.’

‘He does not.’

‘Yes, he does. He disapproves of me even if I did save your life. Severely disapproves. He thinks I’m a succubus, a wicked white temptress who’s leading you straight into the fiery pit of eternal damnation.’

‘Well, you’re lucky. Just imagine what he’d think if you’d worn the Santa hat.’

‘I’m glad to see you still have a sense of humour about this family stuff.’

‘I don’t,’ he said gruffly.

‘What if I was?’ she asked.

‘Was what?’

A wicked white temptress.’

‘What are you talking about?’

They reached the rear exit, but she put a hand on Tommy’s arm, halting him before he could open the door. ‘Would you be tempted?’

‘You are nuts.’

She pretended to pout as if hurt. ‘That’s not as flattering a response as I’d hoped for.’

‘Have you forgotten the issue here?’

‘What issue is that?’ she asked.

Exasperated, he said, ‘Staying alive.’

‘Sure, sure. The doll snake rat-quick little monster thing. But listen, Tommy, you’re a pretty attractive guy in spite of all your glowering, all your deep angst, all your playing at being Mr. Mysterious East. A girl could fall for you - but if she did, would you be available?’

‘Not if I’m dead.’

She smiled. ‘That’s a definite yes.’

He closed his eyes and counted to ten.

When he was at four, Del said, ‘What’re you doing?’

‘Counting to ten.’

‘Why?’

‘To calm down.’

‘What number are you at?’

‘Six.’

‘What number now?’

‘Seven.’

‘What number now?’

‘Eight.’

When he opened his eyes, she was still smiling. ‘I do excite you, don’t I?’

‘You scare me.’

‘Why scare?’

‘Because how are we going to manage to keep this supernatural thing from killing us if you keep acting this way?’

‘What way?’

He took a deep breath, started to speak, decided there was no adequate reply, exhaled explosively, and said only, ‘Have you ever been in an institution?’

‘Does the post office count?’

Muttering a curse in Vietnamese, the first words he had spoken in that language in at least twenty years, Tommy pushed open the metal door. He stepped into the skirling wind and the rain - and he immediately regretted doing so. In the bakery heat, he had gotten warm for the first time since scrambling out of the wrecked Corvette, and his clothes had begun to dry. Now he was instantly chilled to the marrow once more.

Del followed him into the storm, as ebullient as any child. ‘Hey, did you ever see Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain?’

‘Don’t start dancing,’ he warned.

‘You need to be more spontaneous, Tommy.’

‘I’m very spontaneous,’ he said, tucking his head down to keep the rain out of his eyes. He bent into the wind and headed toward the battered, mural-bright van, which stood under a tall lamppost.

‘You’re about as spontaneous as a rock.’

Splashing through ankle-deep puddles, shivering, poised at the slippery slope of self-pity, he didn’t bother to answer.

‘Tommy, wait,’ she said, and grabbed his arm again. Spinning to face her, cold and wet and impatient, he demanded, ‘Now what?’

‘It’s here.’

‘Huh?’

No longer flirtatious or flippant, as alert as a deer scenting a wolf in the underbrush, she stared past Tommy: ‘It.’

He followed the direction of her gaze. ‘Where?’

‘In the van. Waiting for us in the van.’

Oil-black rain briefly blazed as bright as molten gold, down through lamplight, drizzled over the van, and then puddled black again around the tires.

‘Where?’ Tommy asked, blinking rain out of his eyes, studying the murkiness beyond the van’s windshield, searching for some sign of the demon. ‘I don’t see it.’

‘Neither do I,’ she said. ‘But it’s there, all right, in the van. I sense it.’

‘You’re psychic all of a sudden?’

‘Not all of a sudden,’ she said, her voice thickening, as though sleep was overcoming her. ‘I’ve always had strong intuition, very reliable.’

Thirty feet away, the Ford van was exactly as it had been when they had left it to go into the bakery. Tommy didn’t feel what Del felt. He perceived no sinister aura around the vehicle.

He looked at Del as she stared intently at the van. Rain streamed down her face, dripped off the end of her nose and off the point of her chin. Her eyes weren’t blinking, and she seemed to be sinking into a trance. Her lips began to move, as though she were speaking, but no sound escaped her.

‘Del?’

After a moment her silently moving lips produced a wordless murmur, and then she began to whisper:

‘Waiting... cold as ice... dark inside... a dark cold thing... ticktock… ticktock...’

He shifted his attention to the van again, and now it seemed to loom as ominously as a hearse. Del’s fear had infected him, and his heart raced as he was overwhelmed by a sense of impending assault.

The woman’s whisper faded into the susurration of the raindrops dissolving against the puddled pavement. Tommy leaned closer. Her voice was hypnotically porten-tous, and he didn’t want to miss anything that she said.

Ticktock… so much bigger now… snake’s blood and river mud… blind eyes see… dead heart beats… a need… a need… a need to feed….

Tommy wasn’t sure which frightened him more at the moment: the van and the utterly alien creature that might be crouching within it - or this peculiar woman.

Abruptly she emerged from her mesmeric state. ‘We have to get out of here. Let’s take one of these cars.’

‘An employee’s car?’

She was already moving away from the van, among the more than thirty vehicles that belonged to the workers at New World Saigon Bakery.

Glancing warily back at the van, Tommy hurried to keep up with her. ‘We can’t do that.’

‘Sure we can.’

‘It’s stealing.’

It’s survival,’ she said, trying the door of a blue Chevrolet, which was locked.

‘Let’s go back into the bakery.’

‘The deadline is dawn, remember?’ she said, moving on to a white Honda. ‘It won’t wait forever. It’ll come in after us.’

She opened the driver’s door of the Honda, and the dome light came on, and she slipped in behind the steering wheel. No keys dangled in the ignition, so she searched under the seat with one hand to see if the owner had left them there.

Standing at the open door of the Honda, Tommy said, ‘Then let’s just walk out of here.’