Coma

The shadowy figure of a man entered. She could barely see him. But she was dressed in the white nurse’s uniform and she feared that she was more easily visible. She slowly crouched down behind a row of seats, but the backs of the chairs only rose eight to twelve inches above the level she was on. The man stopped and did not move. Susan guessed that he was trying to scan the room. She carefully lay down on the floor. She could see between the backs of two of the seats. The man walked over to the podium and seemed to be searching. Of course. He was searching for the lights! Susan felt panic again take control. Ahead of her, about twenty feet away, was a door to the hall on the second floor. Susan prayed that the door would be open and not locked. If it were locked she would have to try to make it to the door on the opposite side of the amphitheater. That would take about as long as it would take D’Ambrosio to get from the pit up to her level. If the door ahead of her was locked, she was lost.

There was a snap of a light switch and the lamp on the podium went on.

Suddenly and eerily D’Ambrosio’s horrid pockmarked face was illuminated from below, casting grotesque shadows and making his eye sockets appear like burnt holes in a ghoulish mask. His hands groped along the side of the podium, and the sound of a second switch reverberated in Susan’s ears. A strong ray of light sprang from the darkened ceiling, illuminating the pit in a brilliant beam. Now Susan could see D’Ambrosio clearly.

She crawled forward as rapidly as she could toward the door. Another light switch snapped and a bank of lights lit up the blackboard behind D’Ambrosio. At that point D’Ambrosio noted the switches for the room lights to the left of the blackboard. As he walked over to the switches, Susan got up and broke for the door. She turned the knob as the lights went on in the room. Locked!

Susan stared down into the pit. D’Ambrosio saw her and a smile of anticipation came to his thin, scarred lips. Then he ran for the stairs, taking them in twos and threes.

Susan shook the door in despair. Then she noted that it was bolted from within. She threw the bolt and the door opened. She flung herself through it and slammed the door behind her. She could hear D’Ambrosio’s deep breaths as he neared the top row of seats.

Directly across from the second-floor amphitheater door was a CO2

fire extinguisher. Susan ripped it from the wall and turned it upside down. She spun around, hearing the metallic click of D’Ambrosio’s shoes coming closer and closer, and got set just as the knob turned and the door swung open.

At that instant, Susan depressed the button on the fire extinguisher.

The sudden phase change and expansion of the gas caused an explosive noise that shrieked and echoed in the silence of the empty building as the spray of dry ice caught D’Ambrosio full in the face. He reeled backward and tripped over the upper row of seats, his big body teetering, then crashing sideways onto the second and third rows. A seat back dug deeply into his side, snapping his left eleventh rib. His arms flew out to protect himself, grabbing at the seat backs as his feet continued over his head. He fell lengthwise facedown into the fourth row, stunned.

Susan herself was amazed at the effect and stepped into the amphitheater, watching D’Ambrosio’s fall. She stood there for an instant, thinking that D’Ambrosio must be unconscious. But the man drew his knees up and pulled himself into a kneeling position. He looked up at Susan and managed a smile despite the intense pain of his broken rib.

“I like ’em ... when they fight back,” he grunted between clenched teeth.

Susan picked up the fire extinguisher and threw it as hard as she could at the kneeling figure. D’Ambrosio tried to move, but the heavy metal cylinder struck his left shoulder, knocking him down again, and forcing the upper part of his body to fall over the backs of the seats of the next row down. The fire extinguisher bounced down four or five more rows with a terrific clatter, coming to rest in the eighth row.

Slamming the door to the amphitheater shut on her pursuer, Susan stood panting. My God, was he superhuman? She had to find a way to detain him. She knew that she had been unbelievably lucky in injuring him, but plainly he was not out of the picture. Susan thought of the large deep-freeze in the anatomy room.

The hall was dark except for the window at the far end, which provided a paltry amount of pale light. The entrance to the anatomy room was at the very end of the hall near to the window. Susan ran for the door. As she reached it, she heard the door from the amphitheater open.