Wilson, Paul - The Tomb (Repairman Jack)

When the platform stopped, Jack stepped off and looked around. The floor here was a mess. Like a garbage dump. He’d have no problem finding hiding places for the rest of his bombs among the debris. He wanted to create enough of an inferno in here to spread to the aft hold, trapping the rakoshi between the forward and stern explosions.

He stifled a cough. The odor here was worse than anything he’d encountered before, even in the other hold. He tried mouth breathing, but the stench laid on his tongue. What made it so bad here?

He looked down before taking his first step and saw that the floor was cluttered with the broken remains of countless rakoshi eggs. Among the shell fragments were bones and hair and shreds of clothing. He felt his foot against what he thought was an unhatched egg; he rolled it over with the tip of his sneaker and found himself staring into the empty eye sockets of a human skull.

Repulsed, he looked around…and found he was not alone.

Everywhere he looked he saw immature rakoshi in a variety of sizes…most of them curled on the floor, asleep. One near him was awake and active—leisurely teething on a human rib. He hadn't noticed them on the way down because they were so small..

...Kusum's grandchildren...

They seemed to be as unaware of him now as their parents in the other hold had been last night.

Stepping carefully, he made his way toward the opposite corner. There he set and armed a bomb and shoved it beneath a pile of bones and shell fragments. Moving as swiftly and as carefully as possible, he picked his way toward the middle of the stern wall. Halfway there he heard a squeal and felt a sudden, knifing, tearing pain in his left calf. He spun and looked down, reflexively reaching toward the pain. Something was biting him—it had attached itself to his leg like a leech. He pulled at it but succeeded only in making the pain worse. Gritting his teeth, he tore it loose amid a blaze of pain: a walnut-size piece of his leg had come away with it.

He had a squirming, writhing, fifteen-inch rakosh by the waist. Must have kicked it or accidentally stepped on it in passing and it had lashed out with its teeth. His pants leg was torn and soaked with blood from where the thing had bitten him. He held it at arm's length while it kicked and clawed with its tiny talons, its little yellow eyes blazing fury at him It held a piece of bloody flesh—Jack's flesh—in its mouth. Before his eyes, the miniature horror stuffed the piece down its throat, then shrieked and snapped at his fingers.

He hurled the squealing creature across the room. It landed in the debris on the floor among the other sleeping members of its kind.

But they weren't sleeping now. The baby rakosh's screeching had awakened others in the vicinity. Like a wave spreading from a stone dropped in a still pool, the creatures began to rustle about him, the stirrings of one disturbing those around it, and so on.

Within minutes Jack found himself facing a sea of immature rakoshi. They couldn't see him, but the little one's alarm had alerted them to the presence of an intruder...an edible intruder.

The rakoshi milled about, searching. They moved toward where they’d heard the sound—toward Jack. Maybe a hundred of them, converging in his direction. Sooner or later they’d stumble upon him.

The second bomb was in his hand. He quickly armed it and slid it across the floor toward the wall of the hold, hoping the noise would distract them and give him time to get the flamethrower's discharge tube into position.

Didn't work. One of the smaller rakoshi blundered against his leg and squealed its discovery before biting into him. The rest took up the cry and surged toward him like a foul wave. They leaped at him, their razor-sharp teeth sinking into his thighs, his back, his flanks and arms, ripping, tearing at his flesh. He stumbled backward, losing his balance, and as he began to go down beneath the furious onslaught he saw a full-grown rakosh, probably alerted by the cries of the young, enter the hold through the starboard passage and race toward him.

He was falling.

Once down he'd be ripped to pieces in seconds. Fighting panic, he twisted and pulled the discharge tube from under his arm. As he landed on his knees he pointed it away from him, found the rear grip, and pulled the trigger.

The world seemed to explode as a sheet of yellow flame fanned out from him. He twisted left, then right, spraying flaming napalm in a circle. Suddenly he was alone in that circle. He released the trigger.

He’d forgotten to check the nozzle adjustment. Instead of a stream of flame, he’d released a wide spray. No matter—it had been disturbingly effective. The rakoshi attacking him had either fled screaming or been immolated; those out of range howled and scattered in all directions. The adult had caught the spray over the entire front of its body. A living mass of flame, it lunged away and fled back into the connecting passage, the little ones running before it.

Groaning with the pain from countless lacerations, ignoring the blood that seeped from them, Jack struggled to his feet. He had no choice but to follow. The alarm had been raised.

Ready or not, it was time to face Kusum.

34

Kusum quelled his frustration. The Ceremony of Offering was not going well. It was taking twice as long as usual. He needed the Mother here to lead her younglings.

Where was she?

The Westphalen child stood quietly, her upper arm trapped in the grip of his right hand, her big, frightened, questioning eyes staring up at him. He could not meet her gaze—she looked to him for succor and he had nothing to offer but death. She didn't know what was going on between him and the rakoshi, did not comprehend the meaning of the ceremony in which the one about to die was offered up in the name of Kali on behalf of the beloved Ajit and Rupobati.

Tonight’s ceremony was especially important. The last of its kind—forever. The Westphalen line would be extinct after tonight. Ajit and Rupobati would finally be avenged.

As the ceremony finally approached its climax, Kusum sensed a disturbance in the forward hold—the nursery—off to his right. A female rakosh turn and moved down the passage. Good. He hadn't wanted to interrupt the nearly stagnant flow of the ceremony at this point to send one of them to investigate.

He tightened his grip on the child's arm as he raised his voice for the final invocation. Almost over...almost over at last...

Suddenly the eyes of the rakoshi were no longer on him. They began to hiss and roar as their attention shifted to his right. Kusum glanced over and watched in shock as a screaming horde of immature rakoshi poured into the hold from the nursery, followed by a fully grown rakosh, its body completely aflame. It tumbled in and collapsed on the floor near the elevator platform.

And behind it, striding down the dark passage like the avatar of a vengeful god, came Jack.

Kusum felt his world constrict around him, closing in on his throat, choking off his air.

Jack...here...alive! Impossible!

That could only mean that the Mother was dead! But how? How could a single puny human defeat the Mother? And how had Jack found him here? What sort of a man was this?

Or was he a man at all? He seemed more like an irresistible preternatural force the gods had sent to test him.

The child began struggling in his grasp, screaming, "Jack! Jack!"

35

Jack froze in disbelief at the sound of that familiar little voice crying his name. And then he saw her.

"Vicky!"

She was alive! Still alive!

Jack felt tears pushing at his eyes. For a second he could see only Vicky. Then he saw that Kusum held her by the arm. As Jack moved forward, Kusum pulled the squirming child in front of him as a shield.