Phantoms

wrong?”

Private Pascalli looked too young to be in the army — and very scared.

“Let's get him the hell out of there!” Bryce said.

“Can't! This fucker won't open!”

Inside the meat locker, the gunfire stopped.

The screaming began.

Pascalli wrenched desperately at the unrelenting handle.

Although the thick, insulated door muffled Harker's screams, they were nevertheless loud, and they swiftly grew even louder. Coming through the walkie-talkie built into Pascalli's suit, the agonized wailing must have been deafening, for the private suddenly put a hand to his helmeted head as if trying to block out the sound.

Bryce pushed the soldier aside. He gripped the long, leveraction door handle with both hands. It wouldn't budge up or down.

In the locker, the piercing screams rose and fell and rose, getting louder and shriller and more horrifying.

What in the hell is it doing to Harker? Bryce wondered. Skinning the poor bastard alive?

He looked toward the coolers. Tal had scrambled over the display case and was coming on the double. The general and another soldier, Private Fodor, were rushing through the gate. Frank had jumped onto one of the coolers but was facing out toward the main part of the store, guarding against the possibility that the commotion at the meat locker was just a diversion. Everyone else was still standing in a group, in the aisle beyond the coolers.

Bryce shouted, “Jenny!”

“Yeah?”

“Does this store have a hardware section?”

“Odds and ends.”

“I need a screwdriver.”

“Can do.” She was already running.

Harker screamed.

Jesus, what a terrible cry it was. Out of a nightmare. Out of a lunatic asylum. Out of Hell.

Just listening to it caused Bryce to break out in a cold sweat.

Copperfield reached the locker. “Let me at that handle.”

“It's no use.”

“Let me at it!”

Bryce got out of the way.

The general was a big brawny man — the biggest man here, in fact. He looked strong enough to uproot century-old oaks. Straining, cursing, he moved the door handle no farther than Bryce had done.

“The goddamned latch must be broken or bent,” Copperfield said, panting.

Harker screamed and screamed.

Bryce thought of Liebermann's Bakery. The rolling pin on the table. The hands. The severed hands. This was the way a man might scream while he watched his hands being cut off at the wrists.

Copperfield pounded on the door in rage and frustration.

Bryce glanced at Tal. This was a first: Talbert Whitman visibly frightened.

Calling to Bryce, Jenny came through the gate. She had three screwdrivers, each of them sealed in a brightly colored cardboard and plastic package.

“Didn't know which size you needed,” she said.

“Okay,” Bryce said, reaching for the tools, “now get out of here fast. Go back with the others.”

Ignoring his command, she gave him two of the screwdrivers, but she held on to the third.

Harker's screams had become so shrill, so awful, that they no longer sounded human.

As Bryce ripped open one package, Jenny tore the third bright yellow container to shreds and extracted the screwdriver from it.

“I'm a doctor. I stay.”

“He's beyond any doctor's help,” Bryce said, frantically tearing open the second package.

“Maybe not. If you thought there wasn't a chance, you wouldn't be trying to get him out of there.”

“Damn it, Jenny!”

He was worried about her, but he knew he wouldn't be able to persuade her to leave if she had already made up her mind to stay.

He took the third screwdriver from her, shouldered past General Copperfield, and returned to the door.

He couldn't remove the door's hinge pins. It swung into the locker, so the hinges were on the inside.

But the lever-action handle fitted through a large cover plate behind which lay the lock mechanism. The plate was fastened to the face of the door by four screws. Bryce hunkered down in front of it, selected the most suitable screwdriver, and removed the first screw, letting it drop to the floor.

Harker's screaming stopped.

The ensuing silence was almost worse than the screams.

Bryce removed the second, third, and fourth screws.

There was still no sound from Sergeant Harker.

When the cover plate was loose, Bryce slid it along the handle, pulled it free, and discarded it. He squinted at the guts of the lock, probed at the mechanism with the screwdriver. In response, ragged bits of torn metal popped out of the lock; other pieces rattled down through a hollow space in the interior of the door. The lock had been thoroughly mangled from within the door. He found the manual release slot in the shaft of the latch bolt, slid the screwdriver through it, pulled to the right. The spring seemed to have been badly bent or sprung, for there was very little play left in it. Nevertheless, he drew the bolt back far enough to bring it out of the hole in the lamb, then pushed inward. Something clicked; the door started to swing open.

Everyone, including Bryce, backed out of the way.

The door's own weight contributed sufficiently to its momentum, so that it continued to swing slowly, slowly inward.

Private Pascalli was covering it with his submachine gun, and Bryce drew his own handgun, as did Copperfield, although Sergeant Harker had conclusively proved that such weapons were useless.

The door swung all the way open.

Bryce expected something to rush out at them. Nothing did.

Looking through the doorway and across the locker, he could see that the outer door was open, too, which it definitely hadn't been when Harker had gone inside a couple of minutes ago. Beyond it lay the sun-splashed alleyway.

Copperfield ordered Pascalli and Fodor to secure the locker. They went through the door fast, one turning to the left, the other to the right, out of sight.

In a few seconds, Pascalli returned. “It's all clear, sir.”

Copperfield went into the locker, and Bryce followed.

Harker's submachine gun was lying on the floor.

Sergeant Harker was hanging from the ceiling meat rack, next to a side of beef-hanging on an enormous, wickedly pointed, two-pronged meat hook that had been driven through his chest.

Bryce's stomach heaved. He started to turn away from the hanging man — and then realized it wasn't really Harker. It was only the sergeant's decontamination suit and helmet, hanging slack, empty. The tough vinyl fabric was slashed. The plexiglass faceplate was broken and torn half out of the rubber gasket into which it had been firmly set. Harker had been pulled from the suit before it had been impaled. But where was Harker?

Gone.

Another one. Just gone.

Pascalli and Fodor were out on the loading platform, looking up and down the alleyway.

“All that screaming,” Jenny said, stepping up beside Bryce, “yet there's no blood on the floor or on the suit.”

Tal Whitman scooped up several expended shell casings that had been spat out by the submachine gun;