F. Paul Wilson - The Tomb

Jack will know what to do. Jack will help.

She forced her shaking index finger to punch in the numbers and got a busy signal. She hung up and dialed again. Still busy. She didn't have time to wait! She dialed the operator and told her it was an emergency and she had to break in on the line. She was put on hold for half a minute that seemed like an hour, then the operator was back on, telling her that the line wasn't busy—the phone had been left off the hook.

Gia slammed the receiver down. What was she going to do? She was frantic. What was wrong at Jack's? Had he left the phone off the hook or had it been knocked off?

She ran back to the bedroom and jammed her legs into a pair of jeans and pulled on a blouse without removing her pajamas. She had to find Jack. If he wasn't at his apartment, maybe he was at Abe's store—she was pretty sure she remembered where that was. She hoped she could remember. Her thoughts were so jumbled. All she could think of was Vicky.

Vicky, Vicky, where are you?

But how to get to Jack's… that was the problem. Finding a cab would be virtually impossible at this hour, and the subway, even if she could find a stop nearby, could be deadly to a woman alone.

The Honda keys she had seen earlier! Where had they been? She had been cleaning in the kitchen…

She ran over to the flatware drawer and pulled it open. There they were. She snatched them up and ran out into the hall. She checked the apartment number on the door: 1203. Now if only the car was here. The elevator took her straight down to the first floor and she hurried out into the parking lot. On the way in this afternoon she had seen numbers on the asphalt by each parking space.

Please let it be here ! she said to God, to fate, to whatever was in charge of human events. Is anybody in charge? asked a small voice in the back of her mind.

She followed the numbers from the 800's up to the 1100's, and there up ahead, crouched like a laboratory mouse waiting timidly for the next injection, sat a white Honda Civic.

Please be 1203! Please!

It had to be.

It was.

Almost giddy with relief, she unlocked the door and slid into the driver's seat. The standard shift on the floor gave her a moment's pause, but she had driven her father's old Ford pickup enough miles in Iowa as a teenager. She hoped it was something you never forgot, like riding a bike.

The engine refused to start until she found the manual choke, then it sputtered to life. She stalled twice backing out of the parking space, but once she got it rolling forward, she had little trouble.

She didn't know Queens but knew the general direction she wanted to go. She worked her way toward the East River until she saw a "To Manhattan" sign and followed the arrow. When the Queensboro Bridge loomed into view, she slammed the gas pedal to the floor. She had been driving tentatively until now, reining her emotions, clutching the wheel with white-knuckled intensity, wary of missing a crucial turn. But with her destination in sight, she began to cry.

24

Abe's dark blue panel truck was parked outside the Isher Sports Shop. The iron gate had been rolled back. At Jack's knock, the door opened immediately. Abe's white shirt was wrinkled and his jowls were stubbly. For the first time in Jack's memory, he wasn't wearing his black tie.

"What?" he said, scrutinizing Jack. "You run into trouble since you left me at the apartment?"

"What makes you ask?"

"Bandage on your hand and you're walking funny."

"Had a lengthy and strenuous argument with a very disagreeable lady." He rotated his left shoulder gingerly; it was nowhere near as stiff and painful as it had been back at the apartment.

"Lady?"

"It's stretching the definition, but yeah—lady."

Abe led Jack toward the rear of the darkened store. The lights were on in the basement, as was the neon sign. Abe hefted a wooden crate two feet long and a foot wide and deep. The top had already been pried open and he lifted it off.

"Here are the bombs. Twelve of them, magnesium compound, all with twenty-four-hour timers."

Jack nodded. "Fine. But I really needed the incendiary bullets. Otherwise I may never get a chance to set these."

Abe shook his head. "I don't know what you think you're going up against, but here's the best I could do."

He pulled a cloth off a card table to reveal a circular, donut-shaped metal tank with a second tank, canteen-sized, set in its middle; both were attached by a short hose to what looked like a two-handed raygun.

Jack was baffled. "What the hell—?"

"It's a Number Five Mk-1 flamethrower, affectionately known as the Lifebuoy. I don't know if it'll suit your purposes. I mean, it hasn't got much range and—"

"It's great!" Jack said. He grabbed Abe's hand and pumped it. "Abe. You're beautiful! It's perfect!"

Elated, Jack ran his hands over the tanks. It was perfect. Why hadn't he thought of it? How many times had he seen Them ?

"How does it work?"

"This is a World War Two model—the best I could do on such short notice. It's got CO at two thousand pounds per square inch in the little spherical tank, and eighteen liters of napalm in the big lifebuoy-shaped one—hence the name; a discharge tube with igniters at the end and an adjustable nozzle. Range is up to ninety feet. You open the tanks, point the tube, pull the trigger in the rear grip, and foom !"

"Any helpful hints?"

"Yeah. Always check your nozzle adjustment before your first discharge. It's like a firehose and will tend to rise during a prolonged tight stream. Otherwise, think of it as spitting: Don't do it into the wind or where you live."

"Sounds easy enough. Help me get into the harness."

The tanks were heavier than Jack would have wished, but did not cause the anticipated burst of pain from the left side of his back; only a dull ache. As Jack adjusted the straps to a comfortable fit, Abe looked at his neck questioningly.

"Since when the jewelry, Jack?"

"Since tonight… for good luck."

"Strange looking thing. Iron, isn't it? And those stones… almost look like—"

"Two eyes? I know."

"And the inscription looks like Sanskrit. Is it?"

Jack shrugged, uncomfortable. He didn't like the necklace and knew nothing about its origins.

"Could be. I don't know. A friend… lent it to me for the night. Do you know what the inscriptions say?"

Abe shook his head. "I've seen Sanskrit before, but if my life depended on it I couldn't translate a single word." He looked closer. "Come to think of it, that's not really Sanskrit. Where was it made? "

"India."

"Really? Then it's probably Vedic, one of the Proto-Aryan languages that was a precursor of Sanskrit." Abe tossed off the information in a casual tone, then turned away and busied himself with gently tapping the nails halfway back into the corners of the crate of incendiary bombs.

Jack didn't know if he was being put on or not, but he didn't want to rob Abe of his moment. "How the hell do you know all that?"

"You think I majored in guns in college? I have a B.A. from Columbia in Languages."

"And this is inscribed in Vedic, huh? Is that supposed to mean something?"

"It means it's old, Jack… O-L-D."

Jack fingered the iron links around his neck. "I figured that."

Abe finished tapping down the crate top, then turned to Jack.

"You know I never ask, Jack, but this time I've got to: What are you up to? You could raze a couple of city blocks with what you've got here."

Jack didn't know what to say. How could he tell anyone, even his best friend, about the rakoshi and how the necklace he was wearing made him invisible to those rakoshi?

"Why don't you drive me down to the docks and maybe you'll see."