Dean Koontz - Tick Tock

‘We wouldn’t get far on foot before it caught us. I’m going to have to hot-wire this crate.’

Watching as Del groped blindly for the ignition wires under the dashboard, Tommy said, ‘You can’t do this.’

‘Keep a watch on my Ford.’

He glanced over his shoulder. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘Movement, a strange shadow, anything,’ she said ner-vously. ‘We’re running out of time. Don’t you sense it?’

Except for the wind-driven rain, the night was still around Del’s van.

‘Come on, come on,’ Del muttered to herself, fumbling with the wires, and then the Honda engine caught, revved.

Tommy’s stomach turned over at the sound, for he seemed to be sliding ever faster down a greased slope to destruction - if not at the hands of the demon, then by his own actions.

‘Hurry, get in,’ Del said as she released the hand-brake.

‘This is car theft,’ he argued.

‘I’m leaving whether you get in or not.’

‘We could go to jail.’

She pulled the driver’s door shut, forcing him to step back, out of the way.

Under the tall sodium-vapour lamp, the silent van appeared to be deserted. All the doors remained closed. The most remarkable thing about it was the Art Deco mural. Already its ominous aura had faded.

Tommy had allowed himself to be infected by Del’s hysteria. The thing to do now was get control of himself, walk over to the van, and show her that it was safe.

Del put the Honda in gear and drove forward. Quickly stepping in front of the car, slapping his palms down flat on the hood, Tommy blocked her way, forcing her to stop. ‘No. Wait, wait.’

She shifted into reverse and started to back out of the parking space.

Tommy ran around to the passenger’s side, caught up with the car, pulled open the door, and jumped inside. ‘Will you just wait a second, for God’s sake?’

‘No,’ she said, braking and shifting out of reverse. As she tramped the accelerator, the car shot forward across the parking lot, and the door beside Tommy was flung shut.

They were briefly blinded by the rain until Del found the switch for the windshield wipers.

‘You’re not thinking this through,’ he argued.

‘I know what I’m doing.’

The engine screamed, and great plumes of water sprayed up from the tires.

‘What if the cops stop us?’ Tommy worried.

‘They won’t.’

‘They will if you keep driving like this.’

At the end of the large building, before turning the corner, Del braked hard. The car shrieked, fishtailing as it slid to a full stop.

Studying her rear-view mirror, she said, ‘Look back.’

Tommy turned in his seat. ‘What?’

‘The van.’

Under the tall lamppost, falling rain danced on empty pavement.

For a moment Tommy thought he was looking in the wrong place. There were three other lampposts behind the bakery. But the van was not under any of those, either.

‘Where’d it go?’ he asked.

‘Maybe out to the alley, or maybe around the other side of the building, or maybe it’s just behind those delivery trucks. I can’t figure why it didn’t come straight after us.’ She drove forward, around the corner, along the side of the bakery, toward the front.

Bewildered, Tommy said, ‘But who’s driving it?’

‘Not a who. A what.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he said.

‘It’s a lot bigger now.’

‘It would have to be. But still-’ ‘It’s changed.’

‘And it got a driver’s license, huh?’

‘It’s very different from what you’ve seen before.’ ‘Yeah? What’s it like now?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see it.’ ‘Intuition again?’

‘Yeah. I just know... it’s different.’

Tommy tried to envision a monstrous entity, some-thing like one of the ancient gods from an old H. P. Lovecraft story, with a bulbous skull, a series of mean little scarlet eyes across its forehead, a sucking hole where the nose should be, and a wicked mouth surrounded by a ring of writhing tentacles, comfortably ensconced behind the steering wheel of the van, fumbling with a clumsy tentacle at the heater controls, punching the radio selector buttons in search of some old-fashioned rock-’n’-roll, and checking the glove box to see if it could find any breath mints.

‘Ridiculous,’ he repeated.

‘Better belt up,’ she said. ‘We might be in for a bumpy ride.’

As Tommy buckled the safety harness across his chest, Del drove speedily but warily from the shadow of the bakery and across the front parking lot. Clearly, she expected the Art Deco van to bullet out of the night and crash into them.

A debris-clogged storm drain had allowed a small lake to form at the exit from the lot. Leaves and paper litter swirled across the choppy surface.

Del slowed and turned right into the street, through the dirty water. Theirs was the only vehicle in sight.

‘Where did it go?’ Del Payne wondered. ‘Why the hell isn’t it following us?’

Tommy checked his luminous wristwatch. Eleven min-utes after one o’clock.

Del said, ‘I don’t like this.’

Ticktock.

Half a mile from the New World Saigon Bakery, in the stolen Honda, Tommy broke a three-block silence. ‘Where did you learn to hot-wire a car?’

‘My mom taught me.’

‘Your mom.’

‘She’s cool.’

‘The one who likes speed, races stock cars and motor-cycles.’

‘Yep. That’s the one. The only mom I’ve got.’ ‘What is she - a getaway driver for the mob?’ ‘In her youth, she was a ballet dancer.’ ‘Of course. All ballet dancers can hot-wire a car.’

‘Not all of them,’ Del disagreed. ‘After she was a ballet dancer‘ ‘She married Daddy.’

‘And what does he do?’

Checking the rear-view mirror for any sign of a pursuer, Del said, ‘Daddy plays poker with the angels.’

‘You’re losing me again.’

‘He died when I was ten.’

Tommy regretted the sarcastic tone he had adopted. He felt coarse and insensitive. Chastened, he said, ‘I’m sorry. That’s tough. Only ten.’

‘Mom shot him.’

Numbly, he said, ‘Your mother the ballerina.’

‘Ex-ballerina by then.’

‘She shot him?’

‘Well, he asked her to.’

Tommy nodded, feeling stupid for having regretted his sarcasm. He slipped comfortably back into it: ‘Of course, he did.’

‘She couldn’t refuse.’

‘It’s a marital obligation in your religion, is it? To kill one’s spouse upon request?’

‘He was dying of cancer,’ Del said.

Tommy felt chastened again. ‘Jesus, I’m sorry.’

‘Pancreatic cancer, one of the most vicious.’

‘You poor kid.’

They were no longer in an industrial district. The broad avenue was lined with commercial enterprises. Beauty salons. Video stores. Discount electronics and discount furniture and discount glassware stores. Except for an occasional 7-Eleven or twenty-four-hour-a-day coffee shop, the businesses were closed and dark.

Del said, ‘When the pain got so bad Daddy couldn’t concentrate on the cards any more, he was ready to go. He loved cards, and without them, he just didn’t feel he had any purpose.’

‘Cards?’

‘I told you - Daddy was a professional poker player.’

‘No, you said he now plays poker with the angels.’

‘Well, why would he be playing poker with them if he wasn’t a professional poker player?’

‘Point taken,’ Tommy said, because sometimes he was smart enough to know when he had been defeated.

‘Daddy travelled all over the country, playing in high stakes games, most illegal, though he played a lot of legal games in Vegas too. In fact, he twice won the World Championship of Poker. Mom and I went with him everywhere, so by the time I was ten, I’d seen most of this country three times or more.’