Reprisal

Re

"Yo! Dr. Stein. We got ourselves a little problem in here."

Re

"Where is he? What's he doing?"

The tech was a ski

"Who? The patient? He ain't doing nothin', man. Be cool. It's the computer. It's puttin' out some weird shit."

As Stein followed the tech into the control room he glanced back over his shoulder at Re

"Coming?"

Re

"Yeah, sure. Why not?"

He followed them to the control console with its rows of monitors. He watched Stein lean forward and stare at one of the screens, saw his face go slack and fade to the color of the eggshell wallpaper behind him.

"You're kidding, right?" Stein said. "This is bullshit, Jordan. If you think this is fu

"What's wrong?" Re

"Hey, man," the tech told Stein. "If I could make it show that kinda shit just for fun, you think I'd be workin' this shift?"

"What the hell's wrongT' Re

Stein sagged into the chair before the console.

"That's Mr. Lom's head," he said, pointing to the screen before him. "A side view. A sagital cut through the center of his head and neck, top to bottom, right between his nostrils."

Re

"Looks like one of those sinus medicine commercials," Re

Stein laughed. The sound had a slightly hysterical edge to it.

"Yeah. His sinuses look fine. But something's missing."

"What?"

Stein tapped the screen with the eraser end of a pencil, indicating the big empty space behind the nose and sinuses.

"There's supposed to be a brain here."

That cold hand did an encore down Re

"And there's not?"

"Not according to this. No sign of a spinal cord either."

"Then your machine's fucked up! He'd—he'd be dead!"

"Tell me about it," Stein said, and turned to the technician. "Slide him farther in and get the chest cavity."

The tech nodded and threw some switches. Before too long, an empty circle lit on the screen.

Jordan the technician said, "Shit, man! Where's his lungs? Where's his fucking heart?'

"That's what I said when I saw these," Stein said, handing Jordan the X rays he'd been carrying. "I was trying to tell myself they'd pushed the tube too high but I didn't really believe it."

"Shit!" Jordan said as he held the X rays up to the recessed fluorescents overhead.

"What's wrong?" Re

Jordan held the films up for him. Re

"What?"

"Empty, man," he said. "The guy's whole chest is fucking empty!"

"Aw, come on!" Re

"He's not kidding," Stein said. "Just for the hell of it, Jordan, let's get a look at the abdomen."

Jordan did some more fiddling at the console and soon another image filled the screen. Stein stared at it, then rotated his chair to face Re

"He's hollow!" he said. "No brain, no heart, no lungs, no liver, no intestines! He's completely hollow! A walking shell!" He started to laugh.

Re

"Hey, easy, Doc."

"Easy my ass! We're talking about some sort of zombie here! It can't be! It's crazy! It can't fucking be!"

The monitoring room was silent as the three of them sat and stared at each other.

"What we go

"He's a murder-one suspect," Re

Jordan smiled. "Try him and fry him."

"Not in this state. Besides, with all the bullshit that's going down here tonight, he might walk."

The thought of that twisted Re

"He's not walking anywhere tonight," Stein said. He turned to Jordan. "Wheel him out of there. I'm taking him back to the ER and no one—" He glared at Re

As long as Loin remained in custody, Re

Like, where was Mrs. Lorn?

The waiting jvas killing Bill. The waiting and the incredible story Da

He shuddered. What was happening here? This kind of brutal crime wasn't supposed to make sense, but what had been done to Da

Poor Da

Why didn't you come, Father Bill? You said you'd come if I called. Why didn't you come?

"I did come, Da

And then the phone rang. One ring that wouldn't stop. He'd never heard a phone ring like that. Was that the way hospital phones worked? On and on it went. Bill looked around, wishing someone would answer it. But he was alone in the doctors' lounge, as he had been all night.

And then it occurred to him that maybe it was for him. Maybe Da

No matter. He had to stop that ringing. He crossed the room and lifted the receiver.

"Doctors' lounge."

There was a child on the line, a small boy, his voice pitched somewhere between a scream and a sob. Bill recognized it immediately.

Da

"Father, please come and get me! Pleeeeease! Father, Father, Father, I don't want to die. Please come and get me. Don't let him kill me. I don't want to die!"

"Da

The voice started again.

"Father, please come and get me! Pleeeeease! Father, Father, Father, I don't want to die. Please come and get me . . ."

Bill tore the receiver away from his ear. The horror of the call was submerged in an almost overwhelming sense of deja vu. And then he remembered that this wasn't the first time for this call. Da

…just before Herb had—

Bill couldn't finish the thought. He slammed the phone down and headed for the door to the hall. Some sick bastard had recorded the call and was playing it back. Someone in the hospital. That could be only one person.

The cop named Kolarcik was sitting outside. He jumped to his feet as Bill stepped out in the hall.

"Whoa, Father! You can't leave the lounge, not until the sarge says so."

"Then find him! I want to go see Da

As the cop fumbled for his walkie-talkie he glanced up the hall.