Phantoms

locker,” Tal said. “He could’ve opened the door earlier and shouted out into the alley. As quiet as this town is, we’d have heard him all the way over at the Hilltop.”
    “Maybe he’s been unconscious until now,” Copperfield said.
    Harker and Pascalli were moving past the worktables and the electric meat saw.
    Jake Johnson called out again: “Is someone… coming? Is someone… coming now?”
    Jenny began to raise another objection, but Bryce said, “Save your breath.”
    “Doctor,” Copperfield said, “can you actually expect us to just ignore the man’s cries for help?”
    “Of course not,” she said. “But we ought to take time to think of a safe way of having a look in there.”
    Shaking his head, Copperfield interrupted her: “We’ve got to attend to him without delay. Listen to him, Doctor. He’s hurt bad.”
    Jake was moaning in pain again.
    Harker moved toward the meat locker door.
    Pascalli dropped back a couple of paces and over to one side, covering his sergeant as best he could.
    Bryce felt the muscles bunching with tension in his back, across his shoulders, and in his neck.
    Harker was at the door.
    “No,” Jenny said softly.
    The locker door was hinged to swing inward. Harker reached out with the barrel of his submachine gun and shoved the door all the way open. The cold hinges rasped and squealed.
    That sound sent a shiver through Bryce.
    Jake wasn’t sprawled in the doorway. He wasn’t anywhere in sight.
    Past the sergeant, nothing could be seen except the hanging sides of beef: dark, fat-mottled, bloody.
    Harker hesitated—
    (Don’t do it! Bryce thought.)
    —and then plunged through the doorway. He crossed the threshold in a crouch, looking left and swinging the gun that way, then almost instantly looking right and bringing the muzzle around.
    To his right, Harker saw something. He jerked upright in surprise and fear. Stumbling hastily backwards, he collided with a side of beef. “Holy shit!”
    Harker punctuated his cry with a short burst of fire from his submachine gun.
    Bryce winced. The boom-rattle of the weapon was thunderous.
    Something pushed against the far side of the meat locker door and slammed it shut.
    Harker was trapped in there with it. It .
    “Christ!” Bryce said.
    Not wasting the time it would have taken to run to the gate, Bryce clambered up onto the waist-high cooler in front of him, stepping on packets of Kraft Swiss cheese and wax-encased gouda. He scrambled across and dropped off the other side, into the butcher’s area.
    Another burst of gunfire. Longer this time. Maybe even long enough to empty the gun’s magazine.
    Pascalli was at the locker door, struggling frantically with the handle.
    Bryce rounded the worktables. “What’s 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, lever-action 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