Tick Tock

grip.
    The Desert Eagle bucked in her hands—once, twice, three times, four times—and the roar echoed back at them out of the stairwell, like cannon fire.
    Squealing, spitting, hissing, the creature crashed down to the afterdeck again.
    To Tommy, Del shouted, “Go, damn it, go!”
    He stumbled across the open top deck to the port stairs farther forward, beside the helm station.
    More gunfire erupted behind him. The beast had come back at her faster this time than before.
    Clutching at the railing, he descended the open portside stairs, up which he had climbed earlier. At the bottom, the narrow railed passway led forward to the bow but didn't lead back toward the stern, so there was no easy route by which the Samaritan-thing could make its way to him directly from the afterdeck—unless it broke into the enclosed lower deck, rampaged forward through the staterooms, and smashed out at him through a window.
    More gunfire crashed above and aft, and the hard sound slapped across the black water, so it seemed as though Newport had gone to war with neighbouring Corona Del Mar.
    Tommy reached the bow deck, where only a few minutes ago he'd taken a stand against the Samaritan-thing when it had first tried to board the vessel.
    In the night ahead, Balboa Island loomed.
    “Holy shit,” Tommy said, horrified by what was about to happen.
    They were approaching Balboa Island at considerable speed, on a line as direct and true as if they were being guided by a laser beam. With the wheel locked and the throttles set, they would pass between two large private docks and ram the sea wall that surrounded the island.
    He turned, intending to go back to the helm and make Del change course, but he halted in astonishment when he saw that the aft end of the yacht was already ablaze. Orange and blue flames leaped into the night. Shimmering with reflections of the fire, the falling rain looked like showers of embers from a celestial blaze.
    Scootie padded along the port-side pass way and onto the bow deck.
    Del was right behind the Labrador. “The damn thing's in the stairwell, burning in ecstasy, like you said. Creepy as hell.”
    “How did you set it on fire so quick?” Tommy demanded, half shouting to be heard above the drumming rain and the engines.
    “Diesel fuel,” she said, raising her voice as well.
    “Where'd you get diesel fuel?”
    “There's six hundred gallons aboard.”
    “But in tanks somewhere.”
    “Not any more.”
    “And diesel fuel doesn't burn that fiercely.”
    “So I used gasoline.”
    “Huh?”
    “Or napalm.”
    “You're lying to me again!” he fumed.
    “You're making it necessary.”
    “I hate this crap.”
    “Sit on the deck,” she instructed.
    “This is so nuts!”
    “Sit down, grab hold of the railing.”
    “You're some crazy gonzo Amazon witch or something.”
    “Whatever you say. Just brace yourself, 'cause we're going to crash, and you don't want to be thrown overboard.”
    Tommy looked toward Balboa Island, which was clearly defined by the streetlamps along the seawall and the dark shapes of houses beyond. “Dear God.”
    “As soon as we run aground,” she said, “get up, get off the boat, and follow me.”
    She crossed to the starboard flank of the bow deck, sat with her legs splayed in front of her, and grabbed hold of the railing with her right hand. Scootie clambered into her lap, and she put her left arm around him.
    Following Del's example, Tommy sat on the deck, facing forward. He didn't have a dog to hug, so he gripped the port railing with both hands.
    Sleek and swift, the yacht cruised through the rainy darkness toward doom.
    If Del had set the fuel tanks on fire, the engines wouldn't be running. Would they?
    Don't think, just hold on.
    Maybe the fire had come from the same place as the seething flock of birds. Which was—where?
    Just hold on.
    He expected the boat to explode under him.
    He expected the flaming Samaritan-thing to shake off its rapture and, still ablaze, leap upon him.
    He closed his eyes.
    Just hold on.
    If he had just gone home to his mother's for com tay cam and stir-fried vegetables with Nuoc Mam sauce, he might not have been home when the doorbell rang, might never have found the doll, might now be in bed, sleeping peacefully, dreaming about the Land of Bliss at the peak of fabled Mount Phi Lai, where everyone was immortal and beautiful and deliriously happy twenty-four hours every day, where everyone lived in perfect harmony and never said one cross word to anyone else and never suffered an identity