Dragon Tears

by Dean R. Koontz

  Harry picked up his brandy snifter and finished the last of his cognac in one swallow.

  “Did you get his name?” Connie asked.

  “No. I screwed up. I handled it badly.”

  In memory, he saw himself grabbing the kid, shoving him across the sidewalk, maybe hitting him and maybe not — had he jammed a knee into his crotch? — jerking and wrenching him, bending him double, forcing him under the crime-scene tape.

  “I was sick about it later,” he said, “disgusted with myself. Couldn’t believe I’d roughed him up that way. I guess I was. still uptight about what had happened in the attic, almost being blown away by Ordegard, and when I saw that kid getting off on the blood, I reacted like… like…”

  “Like me,” Connie said, picking up her burger again.

  “Yeah. Like you.”

  Although he had lost his appetite, Harry took a bite of his sandwich because he had to keep his energy up for what might lie ahead.

  “But I still don’t see how you can be so damn sure this kid is Ticktock,” Connie said.

  “I know he is.”

  “Just because he was a little weird—”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “A hunch?”

  “A lot better than a hunch. Call it cop instinct.”

  She stared at him for a beat, then nodded. “All right. You remember what he looked like?”

  “Vividly, I think. Maybe as young as nineteen, no older than twenty-one or so.”

  “Height?”

  “An inch shorter than me.”

  “Weight?”

  “Maybe a hundred and fifty pounds. Thin. No, that’s not right, not thin, not scrawny. Lean but muscular.”

  “Complexion?”

  “Fair. He’s been indoors a lot. Thick hair, dark brown or black. Good-looking kid, a little like that actor, Tom Cruise, but more hawkish. He had unusual eyes. Gray. Like silver with a little tarnish on it.”

  Connie said, “What I’m thinking is, we go over to Nancy Quan’s house. She lives right here in Laguna Beach—”

  Nancy was a sketch artist who worked for Special Projects and had a gift for hearing and correctly interpreting the nuances in a witness’s description of a suspect. Her pencil sketches often proved to be astonishingly good portraits of the perps when they were at last cornered and hauled into custody.

  “—you describe this kid to her, she draws him, and we take the sketch to the Laguna police, see if they know the little creep.”

  Harry said, “What if they don’t?”

  “Then we start knocking on doors, showing the sketch.”

  “Doors? Where?”

  “Houses and apartments within a block of where you ran into him. It’s possible he lives in that immediate area. Even if he doesn’t live there, maybe he hangs out there, has friends in the neighborhood—”

  “This kid has no friends.”

  “—or relatives. Someone might recognize him.”

  “People aren’t going to be real happy, we go knocking on their doors in the middle of the night.”

  Connie grimaced. “You want to wait for dawn?”

  “Guess not.”

  The band was returning for their final set.

  Connie chugged the last of her coffee, pushed her chair back, got up, took some folding money from one coat pocket, and threw a couple of bills on the table.

  “Let me pay half,” Harry said.

  “My treat.”

  “No, really, I should pay half.”

  She gave him an are-you-nuts look.

  “I like to keep accounts in balance with everyone. You know that,” he explained.

  “Take a walk on the wild side, Harry. Let the accounts go out of balance. Tell you what — if dawn comes and we wake up in Hell, you can buy breakfast.”

  She headed for the door.

  When he saw her coming, the host in the Armani suit and hand-painted silk tie scurried into the safety of the kitchen.

  Following Connie, Harry glanced at his wristwatch. It was twenty-two minutes past one o’clock in the morning.

  Dawn was perhaps five hours away.

  8

  Padding through the night town. People in their dark places all drowsy around him.

  He yawns and thinks about lying under some bushes and sleeping. There’s another world when he sleeps, a nice world where he has a family that lives in a warm place and welcomes him there, feeds him every day, plays with him anytime he wants to play, calls him Prince, takes him with them in a car and lets him put his head out the window in the wind with his ears flapping — feels good, smells coming at him dizzy-fast, yes yes yes — and never kicks him. It’s a good world in sleep, even though he can’t catch the cats there, either.

  Then he remembers the young-man-bad-thing, the black place, the people and animal eyes without bodies, and he isn’t sleepy any more.

  He’s got to do something about the bad thing, but he doesn’t know what. He senses it is going to hurt the woman, the boy, hurt them bad. It has much anger. Hate. It would set their fur on fire if they had fur. He doesn’t know why. Or when or how or where. But he must do something, save them, be a good dog, good. So…

  Do something.

  Okay.

  So…

  Until he can think what to do about the bad thing, he might as well look for some more food. Maybe the smiling fat man left more good scraps for him behind the people food place. Maybe the fat man is still there in the open door, looking this way and that way along the alley, hoping to see Fella again, thinking he would like to take Fella home, give him a warm place, feed him every day, play with him anytime he wants to play, take Fella for rides in cars with his head sticking out in the wind.

  Hurrying now. Trying to smell the fat man. Is he out in the open? Waiting?

  Sniffing, sniffing, he passes a rust-smelling, grease-smelling, oil-smelling car parked in a big empty space, and then he smells the woman, the boy, even through the closed windows. He stops, looks up. Boy sleeping, can’t be seen. Woman leaning against door, head against window. Awake, but she does not see him.

  Maybe the fat man will like the woman, the boy, will have room for all of them in his nice warm people place, and they can play together, all of them, eat when they want, go for rides in cars with their heads sticking out windows, smells coming at them dizzy-fast. Yes yes yes yes yes yes. Why not? In the sleep world, there is a family. Why not in this world, too?

  He is excited. This is good. This is really good. He feels the wonderful thing around the corner, wonderful thing coming that he always knew was out there somewhere. Good. Yes. Good. Yes yes yes yes yes.

  The people food place with the fat man waiting is not far from the car, so maybe he should bark to make the woman see him, then lead her and the boy to the fat man.

  Yes yes yes yes yes yes.

  But wait, wait, it could take too long, too long, getting them to follow him. People are so slow to understand sometimes. The fat man might go away. Then they get there, the fat man is gone, they’re standing in the alley, and they don’t know why, they think he’s just a stupid dog, stupid silly dog, humiliated like when the cat is up in the tree looking down at him.

  No no no no no. The fat man can’t go away, can’t. Fat man goes away, they won’t be together in a nice warm place or in a car with the wind.

  What to do, what to do? Excited. Bark? Don’t bark? Stay, go, yes, no, bark, don’t bark?

  Pee. Got to pee. Lift the leg. Ah. Yes. Strong-smelling pee. Steaming on the pavement, steaming. Interesting.

  Fat man. Don’t forget the fat man. Waiting in the alley. Go to the fat man first, before he goes inside and is gone forever, get him and bring him back here, yes yes yes yes, because the woman and the boy are not going anywhere.

  Good dog. Smart dog.

  He trots away from the car. Then runs. To the corner. Around. A little farther. Another corner. The alley behind the people food place.

  Panting, excited, he runs up to the door where
the fat man gave out scraps. It is closed. The fat man is gone. No more scraps on the ground.

  He is surprised. He was so sure. All of them together like in the sleep world.

  He scratches at the door. Scratches, scratches.

  The fat man doesn’t come. The door stays closed.

  He barks. Waits. Barks.

  Nothing.

  Well. So. Now what?

  He is still excited, but not as much as before. Not so excited that he has to pee, but too excited to be still. He paces in front of the door, back and forth across the alley, whining in frustration and confusion, beginning to be a little sad.

  Voices echo to him from the far end of the alley, and he knows one of them belongs to the stinky man who smells like everything bad at once, including like the touch of the thing-that-will-kill-you. He can smell the stinky man really well even from a distance. He doesn’t know who the other voices belong to, can’t smell those people so much because the stinky man’s odor covers them.

  Maybe one is the fat man, looking for his Fella.

  Could be.

  Wagging his tail, he hurries to the end of the alley, but when he gets there he finds no fat man, so he stops wagging. Only a man and a woman he’s never seen before, standing near a car in front of the people food place with the stinky man, all of them talking.

  You really cops? says the stinky man.

  What’d you do to the car? says the woman.

  Nothing. I didn’t do anything to the car.

  There’s any crap in this car.; you’re a dead man.

  No, listen, for God’s sake.

  Forced detox, you scumbag.

  How could I get in the car, with it locked?

  So you tried, huh?

  I just wanted to nose around, see were you really cops.

  I’ll show you are we really cops or not, you hairball.

  Hey, let go of me!

  Jesus, you stink!

  Let me go, let me go!

  Come on, let him go. All right, easy now, says the man who isn’t so stinky.

  Sniffing, sniffing, he smells something on this new man that he smells on the stinky man, too, and it surprises him. The touch of the thing-that-will-kill you. This man has been around the bad thing not long ago.

  You smell like a walking toxic waste dump, says the woman.

  She also has on her the smell of the thing-that-will-kill-you. All. three of them. Stinky man, man, and woman. Interesting.

  He moves closer, sniffing.

  Listen, please, I’ve got to talk to a cop, says the stinky man.

  So talk, says the woman.

  My name’s Sammy Shamroe. I got a crime to report.

  Let me guess — somebody stole your new Mercedes.

  I need help!

  So do we, pal.

  All three of them not only have the touch of the bad thing on them, but they smell of fear, the same fear he has smelled on the woman and the boy who call him Woofer. They are afraid of the bad thing, all of them.

  Someone’s going to kill me, says the stinky man.

  Yeah, it’s gonna be me if you don’t get out of my face.

  Easy. Easy now.

  The stinky man says, And he’s not human, either. I call him the ratman.

  Maybe these people should meet the woman and the boy in the car. All of them afraid separately. Together, maybe not afraid. Together, all of them, they might live in a warm place, play all the time, feed him every day, all of them go places in a car — except the stinky man would have to run behind unless he stopped being stinky enough to make you sneeze.

  I call him the ratman ‘cause he’s made out of rats, he falls apart and he’s just a bunch of rats running everywhichway.

  But how? How to get them together with the woman and the boy? How to make them understand, people being so slow sometimes?

  9

  When the dog came sniffing around their feet, Harry didn’t know if it was with the bum, Sammy, or if it was just a stray on its own. Depending on how obstreperous the vagrant became, if they had to use force with him, the dog might take sides. It didn’t look dangerous, but you never could tell.

  As for Sammy, he appeared to be more of a threat than the dog. He was wasted from life on the street and from whatever had put him there, worse than skinny, spindly, Salvation Army giveaway clothes hanging so loosely on him that you expected to hear bones rattling together when he moved, but that didn’t mean he was weak. He was twitchy with excess energy. His eyes were so wide open, the lids seemed to have been stretched back and pinned out of the way. His face was tight with tension lines, and his lips repeatedly skinned back from his bad teeth in a feral snarl that might have been meant to be an ingratiating smile but was alarming instead.

  “The ratman, see, is what I call him, not what he calls himself. Never heard him call himself anything. Don’t know where the hell he comes from, where he’s hiding his ship, he’s just all of a sudden there, just there, the sadistic bastard, one scary son of a bitch—”

  In spite of how weak he appeared to be, Sammy might be like a robotic mechanism receiving too much power, circuits overloading, on the trembling verge of exploding, disintegrating into a shrapnel of gears and springs and burst pneumatic tubes that would kill everyone within a block. He might have a knife, knives, even a gun. Harry had seen shaky little guys like this who looked as if a strong gust of wind would blow them all the way to China; then it turned out that they were stoned on PCP, which could transform kittens into tigers, and three strong men were required to disarm and subdue them.

  “—see, maybe I don’t care if he kills me, maybe that would be a blessing, just get totally drunk and let him kill me, so wasted I’d hardly notice when he does me,” Sammy said, crowding them, moving to the left when they moved in that direction, to the right when they tried that way, insisting on a confrontation. “But then tonight, when I was deep in the bag, sucking down my second double liter, I realized who the ratman has to be, I mean what he has to be— one of the aliens!”

  “Aliens,” Connie said disgustedly. “Aliens, always aliens with you dim bulbs. Get out of here, you greasy hairball, or I swear to God I’m gonna—”

  “No, no, listen. We’ve always known they’re coming, haven’t we? Always known, and now they’re here, and they’ve come to me first, and if I don’t warn the world, then everyone’s going to die.”

  As he took hold of Sammy’s arm and tried to maneuver him out of their way, Harry was almost as leery of Connie as he was of the bum. If Sammy was an overwound clockwork mechanism ready to explode, then Connie was a nuclear plant heading for a meltdown. She was frustrated that the vagrant was delaying them from getting to Nancy Quan, the police artist, acutely aware that dawn was rushing toward them from the East. Harry was frustrated, too, but with him, unlike with Connie, there was no danger that he might knee Sammy in the crotch and pitch him through one of the nearby restaurant windows.

  “—don’t want to be responsible for aliens killing the whole world, I’ve already got too much on my conscience, too much, can’t stand the idea of being responsible, I’ve let so many people down already—”

  If Connie thumped the guy, they would never get to Nancy Quan or have a chance to locate Ticktock. They would be tied up here for an hour or longer, arranging for Sammy’s arrest, trying not to choke to death on his body odor, and struggling to deny police brutality (a few bar patrons were watching them, faces to the glass). Too many precious minutes would be lost.

  Sammy grabbed at Connie’s jacket sleeve. “Listen to me, woman, you listen to me!”

  Connie jerked loose of him, cocked her fist.

  “No!” Harry said.

  Connie barely checked herself, almost threw the punch.

  Sammy was spraying spittle as he ranted: “—it gave me thirty-six hours to live, the ratman, but now it must be twenty-four or less, not sure—”

  Harry tried to hold Connie back with one hand as she reached for Sammy again, while simultaneously pushing Sammy
away with the other hand. Then the dog jumped up on him. Grinning, panting, its tail wagging. Harry twisted away, shook his leg, and the dog dropped back onto the sidewalk on all fours.

  Sammy was babbling frantically, now clutching with both hands at Harry’s sleeve and tugging for attention, as if he didn’t have it already: “—his eyes like snake eyes, green and terrible, terrible, and he says I got thirty-six hours to live, ticktock, ticktock—”

  Fear and amazement quivered through Harry when he heard that word, and the breeze off the ocean seemed suddenly colder than it had been.

  Startled, Connie stopped trying to get at Sammy. “Wait a minute, what’d you say?”

  “Aliens! Aliens!” Sammy shouted angrily. “You’re not listening to me, damn it.”

  “Not the aliens part,” Connie said. The dog jumped on her. Patting its head and pushing it away, she said, “Harry, did he say what I think he said?”

  “I’m a citizen, too,” Sammy shrieked. His need to give testimony had escalated into a frenzied determination. “I got a right to be listened to sometimes.”

  “Ticktock,” Harry said.

  “That’s right,” Sammy confirmed. He was pulling on Harry’s sleeve almost hard enough to tear it off. ” ‘Ticktock, ticktock, time is running out, you’ll be dead by dawn tomorrow, Sammy.’ And then he just dissolves into a pack of rats, right before my eyes.”

  Or a whirlwind of trash, Harry thought, or a pillar of fire.

  “All right, wait, let’s talk,” Connie said. “Calm down, Sammy, and let’s discuss this. I’m sorry for what I said, I really am. Just get calm.”

  Sammy must have thought she was insincere and merely trying to humor him into letting his guard down, because he didn’t respond to the new respect and consideration she accorded him. He stamped his feet in frustration. His clothes flapped on his bony body, and he looked like a scarecrow shaken by a Halloween wind. “Aliens, you stupid woman, aliens, aliens, aliens!”