Dean Koontz - Tick Tock

They leaped over a low plum-thorn hedge that delin-eated another property line, squished through a muddy flower bed, crossed another patio behind a stone and mahogany house that seemed inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, and clambered over more plum-thorn that snagged at the legs of Tommy’s jeans, pricked through his socks to puncture the skin at his ankles.

As they headed west along the peninsula, sprinting past the back of a brooding Spanish colonial home with deep balconies on three levels, a formidable dog penned in a narrow run between houses began to bark savagely at them and throw itself against a restraining gate. The hound sounded as eager to rend and kill as any German shepherd or Doberman ever trained by the Gestapo’s. Ahead, still more barking arose from other dogs anticipating their approach.

Tommy didn’t dare look back, for fear that the Samaritan was at his heels. In his mind’s eye, he could see five fat fingers, as pale and cold as those of a corpse, reaching toward him, inches from the nape of his neck.

Behind a three-story ultramodern house that was all angled glass and polished-limestone cladding, blinding banks of floodlights came on, evidently triggered by motion detectors in a security system that was more aggressive than anything protecting the other houses. The shock of this sudden glare caused Tommy to stum-ble, but he kept his balance and maintained his grip on the shotgun. Gasping for breath, he plunged forward, with Del, across a massive cast-stone balustrade onto the unlighted patio of a Mediterranean-style house, where a TV glowed in the family room and where a startled old man peered out at them as they raced past.

The night seemed to be filled with uncountable barking dogs, all close but out of sight, as though they were falling with the rain, coming down through the black sky, soon to land in packs on all sides.

Three houses beyond the ultramodern pile with the floodlamps, the beam of a big flashlight suddenly speared out of the darkness and the rain, fixing on Del.

The man behind the light shouted, ‘Stop right there!’

Without any cry of warning, another guy erupted from the gloom and blindsided Tommy, as if they were pro-fessional football players and this were the Superbowl.

They both skidded and went down on the slick concrete decking, and Tommy landed so hard that his breath was knocked out of him. He rolled into some patio chairs that tumbled over with a tubular-steel ringing. Stars swarmed behind his eyes, and he cracked his left elbow squarely on the ulnar nerve - the ill-named funny bone - sending a disabling painful tingle the length of his arm.

To the man with the flashlight, Del Payne said, ‘Back off, you asshole, I’ve got a gun, back off, back off!’

Tommy realized that he had dropped the Mossberg. In spite of the numbing pain in his left arm, wheezing noisily as he struggled to get some air into his lungs, he pushed onto his hands and knees. He was desperate to find the weapon.

The foolhardy tackler was sprawled facedown, groan-ing, apparently in even worse shape than Tommy. As far as Tommy was concerned, the stupid son of a bitch deserved to have a broken leg, two broken legs, and maybe a skull fracture for good measure. At first he had assumed that the men were cops, but they hadn’t identified themselves as policemen, and now he realized that they evidently lived here and fancied themselves to be natural-born heroes ready to take on a pair of fleeing burglars.

As Tommy crawled past the groaning man, he heard Del say, ‘Get that damn light out of my eyes right now, or I’ll shoot it out and take you with it.’

The other would-be hero’s courage wavered, and so did his flashlight.

By a stroke of luck, the nervous beam quivered across the patio, revealing the shotgun.

Tommy crawled to the Mossberg.

The man who’d tackled him had managed to sit up. He was spitting out something - possibly teeth - and cursing.

Clutching at another patio table, Tommy pulled him-self to his feet just as Scootie began to bark loudly, urgently.

Tommy glanced to the east and saw the fat man two properties away, silhouetted against the bright backdrop of the floodlamps at the ultramodern house. As the Samaritan raced toward them, leaping a low fence into the property next door, he was no longer the least bit clumsy but as graceful as a panther in spite of his size, his raincoat billowing like a cape behind him.

Snarling fiercely, Scootie moved to intercept the fat man.

‘Scootie, no!’ Del shouted.

Assuming a shooter’s stance as naturally as if she had been born with a gun in her hands, she opened fire with the Desert Eagle when the Samaritan cleared a hedge and splashed onto this patio, where they were apparently going to be forced to make their last stand. She squeezed off three rounds with what seemed to be calm delibera-tion. The evenly timed explosions were so thunderous that Tommy thought the recoil of the powerful handgun would knock her flat, but she stood tall.

She was an excellent shot, and all three rounds appeared to hit their target. With the first boom, the Samaritan stopped as if he’d run head-on into a brick wall, and with the second boom, he was half lifted off his feet and sent staggering backward, and with the third, he spun and swayed and almost fell.

The hero with the flashlight had thrown it aside and had fallen to the deck to get out of the line of fire.

The tooth-spitter was still sitting on the puddled con-crete, legs splayed in an infantile posture, hands clasped to his head. He was apparently frozen in terror.

Edging away from the patio table, toward Del and Scootie, Tommy remained riveted by the wounded Samaritan who was turned half away from them, who had taken three rounds from the.44 Magnum, who swayed but did not drop, did not drop.

Did. Not. Drop.

The hood was no longer over the fat man’s head, but the darkness still masked the side of his face. Then he slowly turned toward Tommy and Del, and though his features remained obscure, his extraordinary eyes fixed on them and on the growling Labrador. They were radiant, green, inhuman eyes.

Scootie’s growl degenerated into a whimper, and Tommy knew exactly how he felt.

With admirable calm, made of sterner stuff than either Tommy or Scootie, Del squeezed off shot after shot with the Desert Eagle. The explosions crashed across the harbour and echoed off the far shore, and they were still echoing back and forth after she had emptied the magazine.

Every round appeared to hit the fat man, because he jerked, twitched, doubled over but then snapped upright as if in response to the impact of another slug, executed a limb-flapping marionette-like spin, and at last went down. He landed on one side, knees drawn up in the foetal position, and the frosty beam of the would-be hero’s flashlight, which lay discarded on the patio, illuminated one of the Samaritan’s white, thick-fingered hands. He seemed to be dead, but certainly was not.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Del said.

Scootie was already leaping across a hedge, into the backyard of the next house to the west.

The roar of the.44 Magnum had been so daunting that most of the barking dogs along the harbour had fallen silent, no longer eager to escape their pens.

In the silvery beam of the flashlight, the Samaritan’s plump white hand lay cupped, palm up, filling with rain. Then it spasmed, and the pale flesh grew mottled and dark.

‘Oh, shit,’ Tommy said.

Impossibly, the fingers metamorphosed into spatulate tentacles and then into spiky insectile digits with wicked chitinous hooks at each knuckle.

The entire shadowed mass of the fallen Samaritan seemed to be shifting, pulsating. Changing.

‘Seen enough, outta here,’ Del declared, and she hur-ried after Scootie.