Tick Tock

by Dean Koontz

  “He eat cheeseburgers?”

  “Two of them.”

  “Stupid boy. No dating?”

  “Tommy and me? No, we’ve never dated.”

  “Good. Don’t. Here, turn right.”

  “Where are we going?” Tommy asked.

  “Hairdresser.”

  “We’re going to the hairdresser? Why?”

  “You wait, you see,” said his mother. Then to Del: “He bad boy, break your heart.”

  “Mom!” he said, mortified.

  “Can’t break my heart if I don’t date him,” Del said.

  “Smart girl.”

  Scootie squeezed past Tommy and thrust his big head into the front seat, sniffing suspiciously at the new passenger.

  Turning in her seat, Tommy’s mother met the dog face to face.

  Scootie grinned, tongue lolling.

  “Don’t like dogs,” she said. “Dirty animals, always licking. You lick me, lose tongue.”

  Scootie still grinned at her and slowly eased his head closer, sniffing, surely on the verge of licking.

  Baring her teeth at the Labrador, Tommy’s mother made a warning sound low in her throat.

  Startled, Scootie twitched, drew back, but then bared his teeth and growled in response. His ears flattened against his skull.

  Tommy’s mother bared her teeth further and issued a growl meaner than the dog’s.

  Whimpering, Scootie retreated, curling up in a corner of the backseat.

  “Turn left next block.”

  Hoping to ingratiate himself, Tommy said, “Mom, I was so sorry to hear about Mai. What could’ve gotten into her, running away with a magician?”

  Leaning sideways to glower at Tommy in the rearview mirror, she said, “Brother was bad example. Young girl ruined by brother’s bad example, future destroyed by brother’s bad example.”

  “Which brother would that be?” Del asked teasingly.

  Tommy said, “Mom, that’s not fair.”

  “Yeah,” Del said, “Tommy’s never run off with a magician.” She glanced away from the street, at Tommy. “Er…have you, tofu boy?”

  Mother Phan said, “Marriage already arranged, future bright, now good Vietnamese boy left without bride.”

  “An arranged marriage?” Del marveled.

  “Nguyen boy, nice boy,” said Tommy’s mother.

  “Chip Nguyen?” Del wondered.

  Tommy’s mother hissed with disgust. “Not silly detective chases blondes, shoots everyone.”

  “Nguyen is the Vietnamese equivalent of Smith,” Tommy told Del.

  “So why didn’t you call your detective Chip Smith?”

  “I probably should have.”

  “I’ll tell you why you didn’t,” Del said. “You’re proud of your heritage.”

  “He piss on heritage,” Tommy’s mother said.

  “Mom!”

  Tommy was so shocked by her language that his chest tightened, and he had to struggle to draw a breath. She never used foul words. That she had done so now was proof of an anger greater than she had ever displayed before.

  Del said, “Actually, Mrs. Phan, you misunderstand Tommy. Family is very important to him. If you’d give him a chance—”

  “Did I say don’t like you?”

  “I believe you mentioned it,” Del said.

  “More you talk, less I like.”

  “Mom, I’ve never seen you be rude to anyone before—anyone not in the family.”

  “Just watch. Turn left, girl.” As Del followed instructions, Tommy’s mother let out a quavery sigh of regret. “Boy for Mai not silly Chip Nguyen. This Nguyen Huu Van, family in doughnut business, have many doughnut shops. Perfect for Mai. Could have been many grandchildren pretty as Mai. Now strange magician children.”

  “Isn’t that what it’s all about?” Del asked.

  “What you say?”

  “Strange magician children. If there are three words that sum up what life should be all about, it’s strange magician children. Life shouldn’t be too predictable. It should be full of chance and mystery. New people, new ways, new hopes, new dreams, always with respect for the old ways, always built on tradition, but always new. That’s what makes life interesting.”

  “More you talk, less I like.”

  “Yes, you said.”

  “But you not listen.”

  “It’s a fault of mine,” Del said.

  “Not listening.”

  “No, always talking. I listen but I always talk too.”

  Tommy curled up in the backseat, in the corner opposite the dog, aware that he could not compete in this conversation.

  His mother said to Del, “Can’t listen if talk.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You bad news.”

  “I’m the weather,” Del said.

  “What say?”

  “Neither good nor bad. Just there.”

  “Tornado just there. But bad.”

  “I’d rather be weather than geology,” Del said.

  “What mean?”

  “Better to be a tornado than a mountain of rock.”

  “Tornado come and go. Mountain always there.”

  “The mountain is not always there.”

  “Mountain always here,” Mother Phan insisted.

  Del shook her head. “Not always.”

  “Where it go?”

  With singular élan, Del said, “The sun explodes, goes nova, and the earth blows away.”

  “You crazy woman.”

  “Wait around a billion years and see.”

  Tommy and Scootie locked eyes. Only minutes ago, he wouldn’t have believed that he could ever have felt such a kinship with the Labrador as he felt now.

  Del said to Tommy’s mother, “And as the mountain blows away, there will be tornadoes of fire. The mountain will be gone, but the tornadoes still whirling.”

  “You the same as damn magician.”

  “Thank you. Mrs. Phan, it’s like the rock-and-scissors game writ large,” Del said. “Tornadoes beat rock because tornadoes are passion.”

  “Tornadoes just hot air.”

  “Cold air.”

  “Anyway, air.”

  Glancing at the rearview mirror, Del said, “Hey, guys, we’re being followed.”

  They were on a residential street lined with ficus trees. The houses were neat but modest.

  Tommy sat up and peered out the rear window of the teardrop-shaped sports car. Looming behind them was a massive Peterbilt tractor-trailer, like a juggernaut, no more than twenty feet away.

  “What’s he doing in a residential neighborhood at this hour?” Tommy wondered.

  “Killing you,” Del said, tramping on the accelerator.

  The behemoth of a truck accelerated to match their pace, and the yellow glow of sodium-vapor streetlamps, flickering across its windshield, revealed the portly Samaritan behind the wheel, his face pale and his grin broad, although they were not close enough to see the green of his eyes.

  “This can’t be happening,” Tommy said.

  “Is,” Del said. “Boy, I wish Mom were here.”

  “You have mother?” Tommy’s mom asked.

  “Actually,” Del said, “I hatched from an insect egg. I was a mere larva, not a child. You’re right, Mrs. Phan—I had no mother.”

  “You are smart-mouth girl.”

  “Thank you.”

  “This is smart-mouth girl,” Tommy’s mother told him.

  Bracing himself for impact, he said, “Yes, I know.”

  Engine shrieking, the truck rocketed forward and smashed into their rear bumper.

  The Jaguar shuddered and weaved along the street. Del fought the steering wheel, which wrenched left and right, but she maintained control.

  “You can outrun him,” Tommy said. “He’s a Peterbilt, for God’s sake, and you’re a Jaguar.”

  “He’s got the advantage of being a supernatural entity,” Del said. “The usual rules of the road don’t apply.”

  The Peterbilt
crashed into them again, and the rear bumper of the Jaguar tore away, clanging across the street into the front yard of a Craftsman-style bungalow.

  “Next block, turn right,” Tommy’s mom said.

  Accelerating, briefly putting distance between them and the Peterbilt, Del waited until the last possible moment to make the turn. She slid through it, entering the new street back end first, tires screaming and smoking, and the car went into a spin.

  With a sharp little yelp better suited to a dog one-quarter his size, Scootie shot off the backseat and tumbled onto the floor.

  Tommy thought they were going to roll. It felt like a roll. He was experienced in rolling now and knew what that penultimate angle felt like, just before the roll began, and this sure felt like it.

  Under Del’s guidance, the Jaguar held the pavement tenaciously, however, and it shrieked to a shuddering halt as it came out of a complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin.

  Not a stupid dog, wanting to avoid being pitched off the seat again, Scootie waited on the floor until Del jammed her foot down on the accelerator. Only after the car rocketed forward did he scramble up beside Tommy.

  Looking out the rear window, Tommy saw the Peterbilt braking aggressively on the street they had left. Even the superior driving skills of a supernatural entity—did they have highways in Hell where demons with Los Angeles–area assignments were able to practice?—couldn’t finesse the huge truck into making such a sharp and sudden turn. Basic physics still applied. The Samaritan-thing was trying only to bring the vehicle to a stop.

  With its tires locked, the Peterbilt shot past the intersection and disappeared into the next block.

  Tommy prayed that it would jackknife.

  In the front seat, as the Jaguar accelerated to seventy, Mother Phan said, “Girl, you drive like crazy maniac detective in books.”

  “Thank you,” Del said.

  Mother Phan withdrew something from her purse.

  Tommy couldn’t quite see what she held in her hand, but he heard a series of telltale electronic tones. “What’re you doing, Mom?”

  “Calling ahead.”

  “What’ve you got there?”

  “Cellular phone,” she said blithely.

  Astonished, he said, “You own a cellular phone?”

  “Why not?”

  “I thought cellular phones were for big shots?”

  “Not any more. Everybody got one.”

  “Oh? I thought it was too dangerous to use a phone and drive.”

  As she finished punching in the number, she explained: “I not driving. Riding.”

  Del said, “For heaven’s sake, Tommy, you sound as if you live in the Middle Ages.”

  He glanced out the rear window. A full block behind them, the Peterbilt reversed into sight on the street that they had left. It hadn’t jackknifed.

  Someone must have answered Mother Phan’s call, because she identified herself and spoke into the telephone in Vietnamese.

  Less than a block and a half behind them, the Peterbilt swung through the intersection.

  Tommy consulted his watch. “What time’s dawn?”

  “I don’t know,” Del said. “Maybe half an hour, maybe forty minutes.”

  “Your mom would know to the minute, to the second.”

  “Probably,” Del agreed.

  Although Tommy couldn’t understand more than an occasional word of what his mother was saying, he had no doubt that she was furious with the person on the other end of the line. He winced at her tone and was relieved that he wasn’t on the receiving end of her anger.

  Behind them, the Peterbilt was gaining. It had closed the gap to only a block.

  Tommy said worriedly, “Del?”

  “I see it,” she assured him, checking her side mirror and then accelerating even though they were already traveling dangerously fast through this residential neighborhood.

  With a final burst of invective in Vietnamese, Tommy’s mother switched off the cellular phone. “Stupid woman,” she said.

  “Give it a rest,” Del advised.

  “Not you,” said Mother Phan. “You bad news, wicked, dangerous, but not stupid.”

  “Thank you,” said Del.

  “I mean Quy. Stupid woman.”

  Tommy said, “Who?”

  “Mrs. Quy Trang Dai.”

  “Who’s Quy Trang Dai?”

  “Stupid woman.”

  “Aside from being a stupid woman, who is she?”

  “Hairdresser.”

  Tommy said, “I still don’t understand why we’re going to the hairdresser.”

  “You need a trim,” Del told him.

  The Jaguar engine was roaring so loudly that Mother Phan had to raise her voice to be heard. “She not only hairdresser. She friend. Play mah-jongg with her and other ladies every week, and sometimes bridge.”

  “We’re going for breakfast and a nice game of mah-jongg,” Del told Tommy.

  Mother Phan said, “Quy my age but different.”

  “Different how?” Tommy asked.

  “Quy so old-fashioned, stuck in ways of Vietnam, can’t adjust to new world, never want anything to change.”

  “Oh, I see, yes,” Tommy said. “She’s utterly different from you, Mom.”

  He turned in his seat to peer anxiously out the rear window. The truck was bearing down on them, perhaps two-thirds of a block away.

  “Quy,” said Mother Phan, “not from Saigon like our family, not born city person. She from sticks, nowhere village on Xan River near borders Laos and Cambodia. All jungle out there on Xan River. Some people there strange, have strange knowledge.”

  “Sort of like Pittsburgh,” Del said.

  “What strange knowledge?” Tommy asked.

  “Magic. But not magic like stupid Roland Ironwright pulls rabbits from hats and Mai thinks clever.”

  “Magic,” Tommy said numbly.

  “This magic like making potion to win love of girl, making charm to succeed in business. But also worse.”

  “Worse how?”

  “Talking to dead,” Mother Phan said ominously, “learning secrets about land of dead, making dead walk and work as slaves.”

  The Peterbilt was half a block behind them. As it approached, the roar of its engine was growing louder than that of the Jaguar.

  Del pushed the Jaguar as hard as she dared, but she continued to lose ground.

  Tommy’s mother said, “Xan River magic bring spirits from dark underworld, put curse on sorceror’s enemies.”

  “This Xan River is definitely a part of the planet that’s under the influence of evil extraterrestrial powers,” Del declared.

  “Quy Trang Dai know this magic,” said Mother Phan. “How to make a dead man dig up out of his grave and kill who told to kill. How to use frog gonads in potion to make enemy’s heart and liver melt into mud. How to put curse on woman who sleep with your husband, so she give birth to baby with human head, dog body, and lobster hands.”

  “And you played mah-jongg with this woman!” Tommy demanded, outraged.

  “Sometimes bridge,” said Mother Phan.

  “But how could you associate with this monster?”

  “Be respectful, boy. Quy your elder by many years, earn respect. She no monster. Aside from this stupid thing she do with rag doll, she nice lady.”

  “She’s trying to kill me!”

  “Not trying to kill you.”

  “She is trying to kill me.”

  “Don’t shout and be crazy like maniac drunk detective.”

  “She’s trying to kill me!”

  “She only trying to scare you so you maybe be more respectful of Vietnamese ways.”

  Behind them, the Samaritan-thing blew the Peterbilt’s air horn: three long blasts, gleefully announcing that it was closing in for the kill.

  “Mom, this creature murdered three innocent bystanders already tonight, and it sure as hell will kill me if it can.”

  Tommy’s mother sighed regretfully. “Quy Trang Dai not al
ways as good at magic as she think.”

  “What?”