The Tomb (Repairman Jack)

missing. He pulled his head away.

'And listen,' he said, feeling a sudden urge to throw his weight around—after all, he was a patient here. 'Tell them out there I don't want no more cripples coming in here.'

In the darkness, Ron thought he detected a smile on the face above him.

'Certainly, Mr. Daniels. I shall see to it that your next attendant is quite sound of limb.'

'Good. Now take off, geek.”

'Very well.'

Ron decided he liked being a patient. He could give orders and people had to listen. And why not? He was sick and—

'Help me!'

If only he could order Tommy to stop.

The junk the geek’d given him didn't seem to be helping his pain. Only thing to do was try to sleep.

He thought about that bastard cop who'd busted up his hands tonight. Said it was private, but Ron knew a pig when he saw one. Swore he'd find that sadist bastard even if he had to hang around every precinct house in New York until winter.

And then Ron would follow him home. He wouldn't get back at him directly—Ron had a bad feeling about that guy and didn't want to be around if he ever got real mad.

But maybe he had a wife and kids...

Ron lay there in a half doze for a good forty-five minutes planning what he'd do to get even with the pig. He was just tipping over the edge into a deep sleep, falling...finally falling...

'Help me!'

Ron jerked violently in the bed, pulling his right arm out of the sling and knocking it against the side rail. A fiery blast of pain shot up to his shoulder. Tears squeezed out of his eyes as breath hissed noisily through his bared teeth.

When the pain dropped to a more tolerable level, he knew what he had to do.

That old fucker had to go.

Ron pulled his left arm out of its sling, then eased himself over the side. The floor was cold. He lifted his pillow between his two casts and padded over to Tommy's bed. All he had to do was lay it over the old guy's face and lean on it. A few minutes of that and poof, no more snores, no more yells, no more Tommy.

He saw something move outside the window as he passed by it. He looked closer. A shadow, like somebody's head and shoulders. A big somebody.

But this was the fifth floor.

Had to be seeing things. That stuff in the cup must have been stronger than he thought. He bent closer to the window for a better look. What he saw there held him transfixed for a long, long heartbeat.

A face out of a nightmare, worse than all his nightmares combined. And those glowing yellow eyes...

A scream started in his throat as he lurched backward. But before it could reach his lips, a taloned, three fingered hand smashed through the double pane and clamped savagely, unerringly, around his throat. The rough flesh was cool and damp, almost slimy, with a rotten stench. He caught a glimpse of smooth dark skin stretched over a long, lean, muscular arm leading out through the shattered glass to...what?

And then Ron felt excruciating pressure against his windpipe, crushing it closed against his spine with an explosive crunch! He arched his back and clawed at the imprisoning fingers, but they were like a steel collar. As he struggled vainly for air, his vision blurred. And then, with a smooth, almost casual motion, he felt himself yanked bodily through the window, felt the rest of the glass shatter with his passage, the shards either falling away or raking savagely at his flesh. He had one soul-numbing, moon-limned glimpse of his attacker before his oxygen-starved brain mercifully extinguished his vision.

And back in the room, after that final instant of crashing noise, all was quiet again. Two of the remaining patients, deep in chemical dreams, stirred in their beds and turned over.

Tommy, the closest to the window, shouted 'Help me!' and then went back to snoring.

Chapter Two

Bharangpur, West Bengal, India

Wednesday, June 24, 1857

It's all gone wrong. Every bleeding thing gone wrong!

Captain Sir Albert Westphalen of the Bengal European Fusiliers stood in the shade of an awning between two market stalls and sipped cool water from a jug freshly drawn from a well. It was a glorious relief to be shielded from direct attack by the Indian sun, but he could not escape the glare. It bounced off the sand in the street, off the white stucco walls of the buildings, even off the pale hides of those nasty hump-backed bulls roaming freely through the marketplace. The glare drove the heat through his eyes to the very center of his brain. He dearly wished he could pour the contents of the jug over his head and let the water trickle down the length of his body.

But no. He was a gentleman in the uniform of Her Majesty's army and surrounded by heathens. He couldn't do anything so undignified. So he stood here in the shade, his high-domed pith helmet square upon his head, his buff uniform smelly and sopping in the armpits and buttoned up tight at the throat, and pretended the heat didn't bother him. He ignored the sweat soaking the thin hair under his helmet, oozing down over his face, clinging to the dark mustache he had so carefully trimmed and waxed this morning, gathering in drops at his chin to fall off onto his tunic.

Oh, for a breeze. Or better still, rain. But neither was due for another month. He had heard that when the summer monsoon started blowing from the southwest in July there would be plenty of rain. Until then, he and his men would have to fry.

It could be worse.