Reprisal

"Hey, here he comes now."

Bill saw Sergeant Augustino and two other men, one white, one black, wheeling a fourth down the hall on a gurney. Their expressions were grim and their eyes held a strange look. As he started toward them Bill wondered what could have happened to make all three men look so strained.

"Sergeant, I want to—"

And then he saw who was on the gurney. It was the filthy, perverted son of a bitch who'd mutilated Da

Herb Lom.

Rage like a cold black flame blasted through him, igniting him, consuming him. There was no control, not the slightest consideration given toward control. Bill just wanted to get his hands on Lom. He lunged forward.

"You bastardV

He heard shouts, cries of surprise and warning, but they might as well have been coming from the moon. Kolarcik, Augustino, the two men with him, they had disappeared as far as Bill was concerned. There was only Bill, the hallway, and Lom. And Bill knew just what he was going to do: yank Lom from the gurney, pull him to his feet, and slam him against the nearest wall; and when he'd bounced off that wall he'd fling him across the corridor against the opposite wall, and then he'd do it again and again until there was nothing left of either the walls or Herb Lom, whichever went first. Somehow, it was a beautiful thought.

With his fingers hooked into claws he brushed off the hands that tried to stop him and dove at Lom, reaching for the front of his mint-green hospital gown. His hands slammed down against Lom's chest—

—and kept on going.

With a sickening crunch Lom's chest cavity gave way like weak plaster and Bill's hands sank to their wrists in the man's chest cavity.

And good God, it was cold in there. Far colder than ice… and empty.

Bill yanked out his hands and backpedaled until he hit the wall where he stood and stared at Herb Lom's chest, at the concavity in his hospital gown that dipped deep into it. He glanced around at Sergeant Augustino and the two men with him. They too were staring at Lom's chest.

"My God!" Bill said. His hands were numb, still aching with the cold.

Kolarcik skidded to a halt beside him and gaped at the gurney, gasping.

"Father! What did you do?"

And then Lom's body started to shake. Little tremors at first, as if he had a chill. But instead of subsiding they became steadily more pronounced, growing until his whole body was spasming, shaking, convulsing so violently that the gurney began to rattle.

Then Lorn seemed to collapse.

Bill noticed it first in his chest wall. The depression in the hospital gown began to widen as more of the green material fell into his chest cavity like Florida real estate dropping into a giant sink hole. Then the rest of his body began to flatten under the gown—his pelvis, legs, arms. They all seemed to be melting away.

Good Lord, they were melting away. A thick brown fluid was begi

As he turned away, gagging, Bill saw Lom's head collapse into a mahogany puddle on the pillow and begin to stream toward the floor.

EIGHTEEN

Three days in hell.

That poor kid had spent the three days since Christmas Eve in unremitting agony, writhing and turning in his bed. His voice was gone but his open mouth, tight-squeezed eyes, and white, twisted features told the whole story of what he was feeling.

A story Re

But the priest, Bill Ryan—Father Bill as Re

"They say his mind's gone," Father Bill told Re

This fellow Nick, late twenties and homely as all hell, was some sort of scientific professor at Columbia. He'd been in and out, hanging with the priest since Christmas night. Re

The three of them were sipping coffee in the parent lounge of the pediatric wing where Da

"I'm not surprised," Nick said. "And your mind'U be gone soon as well if you don't get some rest."

"I'll be okay."

"He's right, Father," Re

The priest shrugged. "I can always catch up. But Da

Re

And Re

Re

And no matter who he talked to he couldn't get an explanation. None of the docs in this entire medical center could make any sense out of the MR images or the chest X ray, or what had finally happened to Lom's body. In fact there seemed to be a kind of doublethink going on. Since they couldn't explain it, they were sweeping it under their mental rugs. He'd overheard one of the medical bigwigs saying something like: Well, since what they say happened is obviously impossible, their memories of the incident must be faulty. How can we be expected to come up with a rational explanation when the primary data is faulty and anecdotal?

It was a different story up at the 112. The precinct had transferred a suspect to Re

So: Joa

Re

"Are they saying Da

"Not so much crazy as shutting down parts of his mind. The human mind can experience only so much trauma and then it begins to draw the blinds. The doctors say he's not really experiencing pain on a high level of consciousness."