by Dean Koontz
Faraway in China,
the people sometimes say,
life is often bitter
and all too seldom gay.
Bitter as dragon tears,
great cascades of sorrow
flood down all the years,
drowning our tomorrows.
Faraway in China,
the people also say,
life is sometimes joyous
if all too often gray.
Although life is seasoned
with bitter dragon tears,
seasoning is just a spice
within our brew of years.
Bad times are only rice,
tears are one more flavor,
that gives us sustenance,
something we can savor.
—The Book of Counted Sorrows
1
Now they know.
He is a good dog, good dog, good.
They are all together now. The woman and the boy, the stinky man, the not-so-stinky man, and the woman without a boy. All of them smelling of the touch of the thing-that-will-kill-you, which is why he knew they had to be together.
They know it, too. They know why they are together. They stand in front of the people food place, talking to each other, talking fast, all excited, sometimes all talking at once, while the women and the boy and the not-so-stinky man are always sure to keep the stinky man up-wind from them.
They keep stooping down to pet him and scratch behind his ears and tell him he’s a good dog, good, and they say other nice things about him that he can’t really understand. This is the best. It is so good to be petted and scratched and liked by people who will, he is pretty sure, not set his fur on fire, and by people who do not have any cat smell on them, none.
Once, long after the little girl who called him Prince, there were some people who took him into their place and fed him and were nice to him, called him Max, but they had a cat. Big cat. Mean. The cat was called Fluffy. Max was nice to Fluffy. Max never once chased Fluffy. In those days Max never chased cats. Well, hardly ever. Some cats, he liked. But Fluffy did not like Max and did not want Max in the people place, so sometimes Fluffy stole Max’s food, and other times Fluffy peed in Max’s water bowl. During the day when the nice people were gone from their place to some other place, Max and Fluffy were left alone, and Fluffy would screech, all crazy and spitting, and scare Max and chase him around the place. Or jump off high things onto Max. Big cat. Screeching. Spitting. Crazy. So Max understood that it was Fluffy’s place, not Max’s and Fluffy’s place, just Fluffy’s, so he went away from the nice people and was just Fella again.
Ever since, he worries that when he finds nice people who want to take him into their place and feed him forever, they will have cat smell on them, and when he goes to their place with them and walks in the door with them, there will be Fluffy. Big. Mean. Crazy.
So now it is nice that none of these people has any cat smell, because if one of them wants to be a family with him, he will be safe, and he won’t have to worry about pee in his water bowl.
After a while, they are so excited talking to each other that they aren’t petting him so much and saying how good he is, so he gets bored. Yawns. Lies down. Might sleep. He is tired. Busy day, being a good dog.
But then he sees the people in the food place, looking out the windows of the food place. Interesting. At the windows, looking out. Looking at him.
Maybe they think he is cute.
Maybe they want to give him food.
Why wouldn’t they want to give him food?
So he gets up and pads to the food place. Head high. Prance a little. Wag the tail. They like that.
At the door, he waits. Nobody opens it. He puts one paw on it. Waits. Nobody. He scratches. Nobody.
He goes out where the people at the window can see him. He wags his tail. He tilts his head, pricks up one ear. They see him. He knows they see him.
He goes to the door again. Waits. Waits.
Waits.
Scratches. Nobody.
Maybe they don’t know he wants food. Or maybe they’re scared of him, think he’s a bad dog. He doesn’t look like a bad dog. How could they be scared? Don’t they know when to be scared, when not? He would never jump off high places on top of them or pee in their water bowls. Stupid people. Stupid.
Finally he decides he’s not going to get any food, so he goes back to the nice people he brought together. On his way he keeps his head up, prances, wags his tail, just to show the people at the window what they’re missing.
When he gets back to the women and the boy and the stinky man and the not-so-stinky man, something is wrong. He can feel it and smell it.
They are scared. This is not new. They have all been scared since he first smelled each of them. But this is a different scared. Worse scared.
And they have a little trace of the just-lie-down-and-die smell. Animals get that smell sometimes, when they’re old, when they’re very tired and sick. People, not so often. Though he knows a place where people have that smell. He was there earlier in the night with the woman and the boy.
Interesting.
But bad interesting.
He is worried that these nice people have even a little bit of the just-lie-down-and-die smell. What is wrong with them? Not sick. Maybe the stinky man, sick a little, but not the rest of them. Not old, either.
Their voices are different, too. A little excited, not so much as before. Tired, a little. Sad, a little. Something else… What? Something. What? What?
He sniffs around their feet, one at a time, sniffs sniffs sniffs sniffs, even the stinky man, and suddenly he knows what’s wrong with them, and he can’t believe it, can’t.
He is amazed. Amazed. He backs away, looks at them, amazed. All of them have the special smell that says do-I-chase-it-or-does-it-chase-me?-do-I-run-or-do-I-fight?-am-I-hungry-enough-to-dig-something-out-of-its-hole-and-eat-it-or-should-I-wait-and-see-if-people-will-give-me-something-good? It is the smell of not knowing what to do, which is sometimes a different kind of fear smell. Like now. They are afraid of the thing-that-will-kill-you, but they are also afraid because they don’t know what to do next.
He is amazed because he knows what to do next, and he is not even a people. But sometimes they can be so slow, people. All right. He will show them what to do next. He barks, and of course they all look at him because he’s not a dog that barks much.
He barks again, then runs past them, downhill, runs, runs, and then stops and looks back and barks again. They stare at him. He is amazed.
He runs back to them, barks, turns, runs downhill again, runs, runs, stops, looks back, barks again.
They’re talking. Looking at him and talking. Like maybe they get it.
So he runs a little farther, turns, looks back, barks. They’re excited. They get it. Amazing.
2
They did not know how far the dog was going to lead them, and they were agreed that the five of them would be too conspicuous on foot, as a group, at almost two o’clock in the morning. They decided to see if Woofer would be as eager to run ahead and lead the van as he was to lead them on foot, because in the vehicle they would be considerably less of a spectacle.
Janet helped Detective Gulliver and Detective Lyon quickly take the Christmas-tree lights off the van. They were attached with metal clips in some places and with pieces of masking tape in others.
It seemed doubtful that the dog was going to lead them directly to the person they were calling Ticktock. Just in case, however, it made a lot of sense not to draw attention to themselves with strings of red and green lights.
While they worked, Sammy Shamroe followed them around the Ford, telling them, not for the first time, that he had been a fool and a fallen man, but that he was going to turn over a new leaf after this. It seemed important to him that they believe he was sincere in making a commitment to a new life—as if he needed other people to believe it before he would be convinced himself.
“I never really th
ought I had anything the world really needed,” Sammy said, “thought I was pretty much worthless, just a hype artist, smooth talker, empty inside, but now here I am saving the world from an alien. Okay, not an alien, actually, and not saving the world all by myself, but helping to save it damn sure enough.”
Janet was still astonished by what Woofer had done. No one was quite sure how he knew that the five of them were living under the same bizarre threat or that it would be useful for them to be brought together. Everyone knew that animals’ senses were in some respects weaker than those of human beings but in many respects stronger, and that beyond the usual five senses they might have others that were difficult to understand. But after this, she would never look at another dog—or any animal, for that matter—in quite the same way that she had regarded them before.
Taking the dog into their lives and feeding him when she could least afford it had turned out to be perhaps the smartest thing she had ever done.
She and the two detectives finished removing the lights, rolled them up, and put them in the back of the van.
“I’ve quit drinking for good,” Sammy said, following them to the rear door. “Can you believe it? But it’s true. No more. Not one drop. Nada.”
Woofer was sitting on the sidewalk with Danny, in the fall of light under a streetlamp, watching them, waiting patiently.
Initially, when she learned that Ms. Gulliver and Mr. Lyon were police detectives, Janet had almost grabbed Danny and run. After all, she had left a dead husband, killed by her own hand, moldering on desert sands in Arizona, and she had no way of knowing if the hateful man was still where she had left him. If Vince’s body had been found, she might be wanted for questioning; there might even be a warrant for her arrest.
More to the point, no authority figure in her life had been a friend to her, with the possible exception of Mr. Ishigura at Pacific View Care Home. She thought of them as a different breed, people with whom she had nothing in common.
But Ms. Gulliver and Mr. Lyon seemed reliable and kind and well-meaning. She did not think they were the type of people who would let Danny be taken away from her, though she had no intention of telling them she’d killed Vince. And Janet certainly did have things in common with them—not least of all, the will to live and the desire to get Ticktock before he got them.
She had decided to trust the detectives largely because she had no choice; they were all in this together. But she also decided to trust them because the dog trusted them.
“It’s five minutes till two,” Detective Lyon said, checking his wristwatch. “Let’s get moving, for God’s sake.”
Janet called Danny to her, and he got into the back of the van with her and Sammy Shamroe, who pulled the rear door shut after them.
Detective Lyon climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and switched on the headlights.
The rear of the van was open to the front compartment. Janet, Danny, and Sammy crowded forward to look over the front seat and through the windshield.
Serpentine tendrils of thin fog were beginning to slither across the coast highway from the ocean. The headlights of an oncoming car, the only other traffic in sight, caught the lazily drifting mist at just the right angle and created a horizontal ribbon of rainbowlike colors that began at the right-hand curb and ended at the left-hand curb. The car drove through the colors, carrying them off into the night.
Detective Gulliver was still standing out on the sidewalk with Woofer.
Detective Lyon released the handbrake and put the van in gear. Raising his voice slightly, he said, “Okay, we’re ready.”
On the sidewalk, Detective Gulliver could hear him because the van’s side window was open. She talked to the dog, made a shooing motion with her hands, and the dog studied her quizzically.
Realizing that they were asking him to lead them where he had wanted to lead them just a couple of minutes ago, Woofer took off downhill, north along the sidewalk. He ran about one-third of a block, stopped, and looked back to see if Detective Gulliver was following. He seemed pleased to discover that she was staying with him. He wagged his tail.
Detective Lyon took his foot off the brake and let the van drift downhill, close behind Detective Gulliver, keeping pace with her, so the dog would get the idea that the vehicle was also following him.
Though the van was not moving fast, Janet gripped the seat behind Detective Lyon’s head to steady herself, and Sammy clutched the headrest behind the empty passenger seat. With one hand, Danny held fast to Janet’s belt, and stood on his tiptoes to try to see what was happening outside.
When Detective Gulliver had almost caught up with Woofer, the dog took off again, sprinted to the end of the block and stopped at the intersection to look back. He watched the woman approaching him, then studied the van for a moment, then the woman, then the van. He was a smart dog; he would get it.
“Wish he’d just talk to us and tell us what we need to know,” Detective Lyon said.
“Who?” Sammy asked.
“The dog.”
After Detective Gulliver followed Woofer across the intersection and halfway along the next block, she stopped and let Detective Lyon catch up to her. She waited until Woofer was looking at her, then opened the passenger door and got into the van.
The dog sat down and stared at them.
Detective Lyon let the van drift forward a little.
The dog pricked up his ears lopsidedly.
The van drifted.
The dog got up and trotted farther north. He stopped, looked back to be sure the van was still coming, then trotted farther.
“Good dog,” Detective Gulliver said.
“Very good dog,” Detective Lyon said.
Danny said proudly, “He’s the best dog there is.”
“I’ll second that,” said Sammy Shamroe, and rubbed one hand on the boy’s head.
Turning his face into Janet’s side, Danny said, “Mama, the man really stinks.”
“Danny!” Janet said, appalled.
“It’s okay,” Sammy said. He was inspired to launch into another of his earnest but rambling assurances of repentance. “It’s true. I stink. I’m a mess. Been a mess for a long time, but that’s over now. You know one reason I was a mess? Because I thought I knew everything, thought I understood exactly what life was about, that it was meaningless, that there was no mystery to it, just biology. But after this, after tonight, I have a different view on things. I don’t know everything, after all. It’s true. Hell, I don’t know diddly-squat! There’s plenty of mystery in life, something more than biology for sure. And if there’s something more, who needs wine or cocaine or anything? Nope. Nothing. Not a drop. Nada.”
One block later, the dog turned right, heading east along a steeply rising street.
Detective Lyon turned the corner after Woofer, then glanced at his wristwatch. “Two o’clock. Damn, time’s just going too fast.”
Outside, Woofer rarely turned his head to glance at them any more. He was confident that they would stay with him.
The sidewalk along which he padded was littered with bristly red blooms from the large bottlebrush trees that lined the entire block. Woofer sniffed at them as he proceeded east, and they made him sneeze a couple of times.
Suddenly Janet thought she knew where the dog was taking them. “Mr. Ishigura’s nursing home,” she said.
Detective Gulliver turned in the front seat to look at her. “You know where he’s going?”
“We were there for dinner. In the kitchen.” And then: “My God, the poor blind woman with no eyes!”
Pacific View Care Home was in the next block. The dog climbed the steps and sat at the front door.
3
After visiting hours, no receptionist was on duty. Harry could look through the glass in the top of the door and see the dimly lit and totally deserted public lounge.
When he rang the bell, a woman’s voice responded through the intercom. He identified himself as a police officer on urgent business, a
nd she sounded concerned and eager to cooperate.
He checked his wristwatch three times before she appeared in the lounge. She didn’t take an extraordinarily long time; he was just remembering Ricky Estefan and the girl who had lost an arm at the rave, and each second blinked off by the red indicator light on his watch was part of the countdown to his own execution.
The nurse, who identified herself as the night supervisor, was a no-nonsense Filipino lady, petite but not in the least fragile, and when she saw him through the portal in the door, she was less sanguine than she had been over the intercom. She would not open up to him.
First of all, she didn’t believe he was a police officer. He couldn’t blame her for being suspicious, considering that after all he had been through during the past twelve or fourteen hours, he looked as if he lived in a packing crate. Well, actually, Sammy Shamroe lived in a packing crate, and Harry didn’t look quite that bad, but he certainly looked like a flophouse dweller with a long-term moral debt to the Salvation Army.
She would only open the door the width of the industrial-quality security chain, so heavy it was surely the model used to restrict access to nuclear-missile silos. At her demand, he passed through his police ID wallet. Although it included a photograph that was sufficiently unflattering to resemble him in his current battered and filthy condition, she was unconvinced that he was an officer of the law.
Wrinkling her cute nose, the night supervisor said, “What else have you got?”
He was sorely tempted to draw his revolver, shove it through the gap, cock the hammer, and threaten to blow her teeth out through the back of her head. But she was in her middle to late thirties, and it was possible that she had grown up under—and been toughened by—the Marcos regime before emigrating to the US, so she might just laugh in his face, stick her finger in the barrel, and tell him to go to hell.
Instead, he produced Connie Gulliver, who was for once a more presentable police officer than he was. She grinned through the door glass at the pint-sized Gestapo Florence Nightingale, made nice talk, and passed her own credentials through the gap on demand. You would have thought they were trying to get into the main vault at Fort Knox instead of a pricey private nursing home.
He checked his watch. It was 2:03 A.M.
Based on the limited experience they’d had with Ticktock, Harry guessed that their psychotic Houdini required as little as an hour but more commonly an hour and a half of rest between performances, recharging his supernatural batteries in about the same amount of time that a stage magician needed to stuff all the silk scarves and doves and rabbits back up his sleeves to get ready for the late show. If that was the case, then they were safe at least until two-thirty and probably until three o’clock.
Less than an hour at the outside.
Harry was so intently focused on the blinking red light of his watch that he lost track of what Connie said to the nurse. Either she charmed the lady or came up with an incredibly effective threat, because the security chain was removed, the door was opened, their ID wallets were returned to them with smiles, and they were welcomed into Pacific View.
When the night supervisor saw Janet and Danny, who had been out of sight on the lower front steps, she had second thoughts. When she saw the dog, she had third thoughts, even though he was wagging his tail and grinning and, quite clearly, being intentionally cute. When she saw—and smelled—Sammy, she almost became intractable again.
For policemen, as well as for house-to-house salesmen, the supreme difficulty was always getting through the door. Once inside, Harry and Connie were no easier to dislodge than the average vacuum-cleaner salesman intent on scattering all