Dean Koontz - Whispers

Frank had been shot twice. He was badly hurt. Maybe dying. Maybe dead.

No!

Tony tried to push that thought out of his mind as he cast about for a way to seize the initiative from Bobby.

In the kitchen Bobby began to scream in genuine terror. "Hay muchos cocodrilos!"

Tony translated: There are many crocodiles!

"Cocodrilos! Cocodrilos! Cocodrilos! Ah! Ah! Ahhhhh!"

His repeated cry of alarm swiftly degenerated into a wordless wail of agony.

He sounds as if he's really being eaten alive, Tony thought, shivering.

Still screaming, Bobby rushed out of the kitchen. He fired the .32 into the floor, apparently trying to kill one of the crocodiles.

Tony crouched behind the chair. He was afraid that, if he stood up and took aim, he would be cut down before he could pull the trigger.

Doing a frantic little jig, trying to keep his bare feet out of the mouths of the crocodiles, Bobby fired into the floor once, twice.

Six shots so far, Tony thought. Three in the kitchen, three here. How many in the clip? Eight? Maybe ten.

Bobby fired again, twice, three times. One of the bullets ricocheted off something.

Nine shots had been fired. One more to go.

"Cocodrilos!"

The tenth shot boomed deafeningly in the enclosed space, and again the bullet ricocheted with a sharp whistle.

Tony stood up from his hiding place. Bobby was less than ten feet away. Tony held the service revolver in both hands, the muzzle lined up on the naked man's hairless chest. "Okay, Bobby. Be cool. It's all over."

Bobby seemed surprised to see him. Clearly, he was so deeply into his PCP hallucinations that he didn't remember seeing Tony in the kitchen archway less than a minute ago.

"Crocodiles," Bobby said urgently, in English this time.

"There are no crocodiles," Tony said.

"Big ones."

"No. There aren't any crocodiles."

Bobby squealed and jumped and whirled and tried to shoot at the floor, but his pistol was empty.

"Bobby," Tony said.

Whimpering, Bobby turned and looked at him.

"Bobby, I want you to lay face-down on the floor."

"They'll get me," Bobby said. His eyes were bulging out of his head; the dark irises were rimmed with wide circles of white. He was trembling violently. "They'll eat me."

"Listen to me, Bobby. Listen carefully. There are no crocodiles. You're hallucinating them. It's all inside your head. You hear me?"

"They came out of the toilets," Bobby said shakily. "And out of the shower drains. And the sink drain, too. Oh, man, they're big. They're real big. And they're all trying to bite off my cock." His fear began to turn to anger; his pale face flushed, and his lips pulled back from his teeth in a wolflike snarl. "I won't let them. I won't let them bite off my cock. I'll kill all of them!"

Tony was frustrated by his inability to get through to Bobby, and his frustration was exacerbated by the knowledge that Frank might be bleeding to death, getting weaker by the second, in desperate need of immediate medical attention. Deciding to enter into Bobby's dark fantasy in order to control it, Tony spoke in a soft and reassuring voice: "Listen to me. All of those crocodiles have crawled back into the toilets and the drains. Didn't you see them going? Didn't you hear them sliding down the pipes and out of the building? They saw that we'd come to help you, and they knew they were outnumbered. Every one of them has gone away."

Bobby stared at him with glassy eyes that were less than human.

"They've all gone away," Tony said.

"Away?"

"None of them can hurt you now."

"Liar."

"No. I'm telling the truth. All of the crocodiles have gone down the--"

Bobby threw his empty pistol.

Tony ducked under it.

"You rotten cop son of a bitch."

"Hold it, Bobby."

Bobby started toward him.

Tony backstepped away from the naked man.

Bobby didn't walk around the chair. He angrily pushed it aside, knocked it over, even though it was quite heavy. Tony remembered that a man in an angel dust rage often exhibited superhuman strength. It was not uncommon for four or five burly policemen to have difficulty restraining one puny PCP junkie. There were several medical theories about the cause of this freakish increase in physical power, but no theory was of any help to an officer confronted by a raging man with the strength of five or six. Tony figured he probably wouldn't he able to subdue Bobby Valdez with anything less than the revolver, even though he was philosophically opposed to using that ultimate force.

"I'm gonna kill you," Bobby said. His hands were curled into claws. His face was bright red, and spittle formed at one corner of his mouth.

Tony put the big octagonal coffee table between them. "Stop right there, dammit!"

He didn't want to have to kill Bobby Valdez. In all his years with the LAPD, he had shot only three men in the line of duty, and on every occasion he had pulled the trigger strictly in self-defense. None of those three men had died.

Bobby started around the coffee table.

Tony circled away from him.

"Now, I'm the crocodile," Bobby said, grinning.

"Don't make me hurt you."

Bobby stopped and grabbed hold of the coffee table and tipped it up, over, out of the way, and Tony backed into a wall, and Bobby rushed him, shouting something unintelligible, and Tony pulled the trigger, and the bullet tore through Bobby's left shoulder, spinning him around, driving him to his knees, but incredibly, he got up again, his left arm all bloody and hanging uselessly at his side, and, screaming in anger rather than agony, he ran to the fireplace and picked up a small brass shovel and threw it, and Tony ducked, and then suddenly Bobby was rushing at him with an iron poker raised high, and the damned thing caught Tony across the thigh, and he yelped as pain flashed up his hip and down his leg, but the blow wasn't hard enough to break bones, and he didn't collapse, but he did drop down as Bobby swung it again, at his head this time, with more power behind it this time, and Tony fired up into the naked man's chest, at close range, and Bobby was flung backwards with one last wild cry, and he crashed into a chair, then fell to the floor, gushing blood like a macabre fountain, twitched, gurgled, clawed at the shag carpet, bit his own wounded arm, and finally was perfectly still.

Gasping, shaking, cursing, Tony holstered his revolver and stumbled to a telephone he'd spotted on one of the end tables. He dialed 0 and told the operator who he was, where he was, and what he needed. "Ambulance first, police second," he said.

"Yes, sir," she said.

He hung up and limped into the kitchen.

Frank Howard was still sprawled on the floor, in the garbage. He had managed to roll onto his back, but he hadn't gotten any farther.

Tony knelt beside him.

Frank opened his eyes. "You hurt?" he asked weakly.

"No," Tony said.

"Get him?"

"Yeah."

"Dead?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

Frank looked terrible. His face was milk-white, greasy with sweat. The whites of his eyes had an unhealthy yellowish cast that had not been there before, and the right eye was badly bloodshot. There was a hint of blue in his lips. The right shoulder and sleeve of his suit coat were soaked with blood. His left hand was clamped over his stomach wound, but a lot of blood had leaked from under his pale fingers; his shirt and the upper part of his trousers were wet and sticky.

"How's the pain?" Tony asked.

"At first, it was real bad. Couldn't stop screaming. But it's starting to get better. Just kind of a dull burning and thumping now."

Tony's attention had been focused so totally on Bobby Valdez that he hadn't heard Frank's screams.

"Would a tourniquet on your arm help at all?"

"No. The wound's too high. In the shoulder. There's no place to put a tourniquet."