by C. C. Mahon
I tried very hard not to imagine. “I think the bacteria only settles in dead bodies,” I said.
“The hospital is not far from the morgue, and people die there all the time.”
“You say that like it’s a serial killer’s lair.”
“I don’t like hospitals…”
“I know, their coffee is terrible.”
She let out a little laugh, nervous and close to exhaustion.
“Okay,” I said. “What time do we meet?”
As she started protesting, I reminded her that Dale had also put me on the case.
“Eight o’clock,” she said.
“What? But that’s in three hours!”
“Then I suggest you sleep quickly,” Lola said.
I grumbled back to the club and saw Johnny as he was about to go home.
“I just closed,” he said. “I left the money in the cash drawer since I don’t have the key to the safe. Is everything all right?”
“The morgue residents have turned into zombies, and I have three hours to sleep before I get back on track.”
I guess I wasn’t very coherent. Johnny gave me a worried look, wished me a good day, and left without further ado.
11
EVEN DURING THE day and without zombies, the morgue was not quiet.
I had expected deserted corridors, sanitized autopsy rooms, and of course, a dead silence.
Instead, early in the morning, Lola and I discovered a hive in the middle of a revolution. Dozens of ambulances lined up in the parking lot. In the corridors, uniformed and plainclothes cops jostled employees in white coats. They questioned each other, argued, asked questions that no one bothered to answer. Lola dragged me along the corridors to an office. On the door, a plaque read, “Coroner.”
Lola raised her hand to knock. At the same time, the door opened, revealing a woman in her forties, her brown hair cut short, her phone glued to her ear. As the woman was focused on the bundle of papers she was holding in her hand, she did not immediately notice our presence. She hit Lola head-on, looked up, and glared at us. “What is it now?”
“Detective King, Las Vegas Police Department…”
“Your colleagues have already asked me. I don’t know who stole our bodies.”
“That’s not why we’re here,” I said.
“If it’s about an autopsy report, you’ll have to make an appointment. We’re a little busy right now.”
“We are investigating possible bacterial contamination of your facility,” said Lola.
The woman froze. “What are you talking about?”
“The bodies that disappeared last night are believed to carry a rare and contagious bacterium,” I said.
“And you think I made them disappear to hide the problem?”
“No,” I said. “But we need to know how they were contaminated.”
“Contamination is impossible,” the woman decreed. “Examination rooms and equipment are disinfected after each autopsy. We never had any problems at all.”
“There is a first time for everything,” Lola replied dryly.
“The contamination would have occurred forty-eight hours ago,” I said. “Did something special happen two days ago?”
The woman shook her head. “Where do you get your information from?”
“Confidential,” I said.
“Two days ago, I was at a symposium. Check with Milton. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have about thirty bodies to receive.”
“The bodies were brought back to you,” cried Lola.
“No,” said the woman dryly, “these are brand new. There was a pileup during the night. A crazy backhoe loader went up the highway in the wrong direction. The fire brigade spent hours removing the bodies from the cars. We’re gonna have some fun.”
She forced the way, effectively ejecting us from the threshold of her office, and walked furiously along the corridor.
“I guess we should find Milton,” I whispered, contemplating the chaos around us.
“Why two days?” asked Lola.
“Hmm?”
“You said the contamination occurred forty-eight hours ago. How do you know that?”
“I made a phone call to Britannicus this morning. He says it takes the bacteria an average of two days to resuscitate a dead body.”
“Did he tell you where this bacterium came from?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“That would be convenient to know, though.”
“Why? Do you know where the flu comes from?”
“The flu is a virus, not a bacterium.”
“What I mean is that there are a lot of little critters out there in the world that we don’t really know where they come from.”
“I would like them to avoid resuscitating dead bodies,” Lola said.
“Why? Don’t you want to come back after death?”
“Not as a zombie. And then I like things to stay in order and the dead to stay dead. I already have enough work with the living.”
I grabbed a guy in a white coat and asked him where to find Milton.
“He should be in room three. But he doesn’t look well this morning.”
“Why?”
The guy shrugged and got out of the way.
Lola led me to the part of the complex dedicated to examination rooms. There were five of them, each with its number painted large on the door. I stopped in front of number three.
“Shall we knock?” I said.
“It’s more polite,” Lola said.
So I knocked then opened without delay.
The stench seized me by the throat. It smelled like old meat, feces, and chemicals. I wavered for a moment on the threshold, but Lola stepped into the room.
A lean silhouette in a white coat, its back turned on us, was folded in half over a stainless steel table. Lola patted his shoulder, and the figure jumped.
“Milton?” said Lola.
“Milton, yes, it’s me,” the man stammered.
“Detective King. We’ve worked together before.”
“Oh? Yes, yes, of course. Sorry, my head’s elsewhere.”
I took it upon myself to join them in the center of the room.
Milton was skeletal, with a face as long as a month of Sundays, crossed by big, black bushy eyebrows. He seemed a little sick: more than pale, almost greenish. But with the smell of the place, I wouldn’t look any better than him.
“The coroner sent us,” Lola said again.
“I was about to start my autopsy,” said the man, pointing to the pale, naked body waiting on the table.
His voice was also pale. Monotone, almost mechanical. I guessed the morgue wasn’t the happiest of places.
“We just have a few questions,” Lola said. “Were you here two days ago?”
“I work here, you know.”
“We are looking for the origin of the contamination,” Lola said coldly.
Milton opened his eyes wide, but his tone remained monotonous when he replied, “Contamination? Good heavens, what are you talking about?”
“The bodies that disappeared last night were contaminated with a rare bacterium,” I said. “We need to know how that happened.”
Milton frowned, his big eyebrows lowering. “All of them?” he asked.
“All those who have disappeared,” I said.
His gaze was lost in the void. His lips moved soundlessly, and his long fingers began to dance in the air. Then he shook his head and said, “I don’t see how your bacteria could have infected all our residents. There is not a single place where all the corpses would pass through. Or it could be generalized contamination of the site, but no employees are sick…”
“Except you,” I said.
“A mild flu, nothing bacterial.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I’m a doctor, you know.”
Milton wasn’t aggressive, but he made me uncomfortable. More than the room with the white tiles, the stainless steel worktops, and the presence of a stripped co
rpse did. More, even, than the horrible smell that surrounded us. If I hadn’t been a Valkyrie, I would have said I was scared.
“Any idea about the origin of the contamination?” I said.
“The fridge?” suggested Lola.
“The drawers are disinfected after use,” Milton said.
“And the ventilation of the fridge?” I said.
“It operates in a closed circuit with an integrated disinfection system.”
“Breakdowns happen,” I said. “Maybe it’s worth a look?”
Milton looked with regret at the waiting body, sighed, and covered the corpse with a sheet before saying, “Come with me, please.”
12
THE DOORS OF the “fridge” had been open all night, and the room was at an invigorating temperature.
A few technicians were leaning over the doors, drawers, and other parts of the fridge, brush and fingerprint powder in hand. Lola noticed a young brunette woman.
“Hello!” Lola greeted. “How does it look?”
The young woman lifted her head up and smiled as she recognized Lola. “Well, hello there! So far, it’s not going very well. There are fingerprints everywhere, and it’s going to take us a long time to eliminate the staff’s.”
“Were the doors forced?” I asked.
The brunette made a funny face. “Why? They don’t lock. You just have to use the handle.”
From the outside, yes. But when you wanted to open it from the inside, as a freshly resuscitated zombie would do, it was another story.
I let Lola and the brunette talk in a low voice and approached the doors in question. They seemed to be in good condition, indeed. Although…I looked with great care and noticed that several doors were slightly dented on the inside. Like someone kicked them. Milton joined me without a word.
“Have you ever noticed these dents?” I asked.
He examined them before shaking his head.
“Any idea what might have caused them?” I asked again.
“The vandals who stole the bodies may have kicked them,” he suggested. “It looks like elbow blows.”
“Or heel?”
He raised one of his massive eyebrows, looked at the doors, and shrugged. “For a karate champion or a French cancan dancer, maybe. You still have to lift your leg to reach the top doors…”
“Yes, of course. What about this whole bacterial thing?”
“I’ll take some samples as soon as our technicians are finished.”
“How long before we get the results?”
“We need time for cultures to develop. At least a few days.”
“And in the meantime, you’re going to keep putting dead bodies in there?”
He considered the wide-open doors and the myriad of black powder-covered fingerprints, pouted, and said, “After a good cleaning, yes. But since you suspect our refrigeration system, I’ll ask the company to come and check it out. Satisfied?”
I nodded, thanked Milton, and joined Lola. She had finished her conversation and led me into the hallway.
“This Milton guy gives me the creeps,” I said. “Are we sure he’s not a zombie, too?”
“I’ve known him for years; he’s a good guy.”
“He seems…absent,” I said.
Lola nodded and got closer to whisper, “He lost his daughter some time ago. It left a deep scar on him. That doesn’t make him a zombie.”
“No,” I said, “of course not. And you, did you learn anything?”
“Some water cooler gossip and what the night shift saw yesterday.”
“Let me guess: zombies.”
“There was a technician and two night guards. From what they said, they were in the break room, having coffee—and probably playing cards—when they heard some noise. They came out of the room, and in the hallway, they discovered our zombies. From what they told their colleagues, it was a raging horde rushing at them to devour their brains.”
“They panicked and ran away?”
“Yep.”
She gave me a look that was half amused, half exasperated. We had seen the zombies, and they didn’t look like a horde hungry for brains. They were more like a group of senior nudists who may have gotten lost in the neighborhood.
“And these witnesses,” I said, “where are they now?”
“At the police station. Dale said he was going to limit the fallout, although I don’t know what that means.”
“I guess he’ll convince them that the zombies were students who put on some makeup and came to steal the bodies for a stupid bet. We can’t let the public discover the existence of real zombies.”
“The famous ‘Great Secret’ that surrounds the supernatural,” groaned Lola.
“Don’t you agree?”
She slowly walked towards the exit of the institute, her face worried. I followed in her footsteps. Once in the parking lot, I started it again. “You didn’t answer me about the secret surrounding the supernatural world.”
“That’s because I don’t know what to tell you. I guess people would panic a little, but on the other hand, I don’t like to know my citizens are exposed to a threat they know nothing about. Not to mention colleagues, who may face a vampire or whatever and have no idea of the danger. And then there are the customers of the Boccanegra casinos, who get their emotions siphoned off in addition to their money…” She leaned against her car, and I did the same.
“If the public knew,” I said, “it would start a war: humans against the supernatural. Supernaturals are fewer in number, but they have resources. And most of them can pass for humans. Can you imagine the result? Anti-supernatural terrorism, widespread suspicion, guerrilla warfare on the streets of your city?”
Lola groaned and finally let go. “You’re right. But I don’t like it.”
I thought about what we had learned at the forensic institute. All the bodies had come to life at the same moment, suggesting contamination at the same exact time.
“It must be sabotage,” I said.
“The bacteria?”
“Yes. For it to take effect at the same time, all the bodies had to be contaminated at the same time. But if a contaminated corpse had infected the others…”
“It would have come to life at least two days before the others,” said Lola. “So it was probably someone who put the bacteria in the fridge. Do you think it’s this Marcellin?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know him. But there’s something else that bothers me.”
“More than knowing that someone’s having fun making zombies by the dozen?”
“Someone opened the doors for them,” I said. “In the fridge.”
“The person who infected them came back to get them,” Lola said.
“Except that this mysterious person didn’t take them with her,” I said. “And then, what, he or she would have waited in the room for the zombies to wake up? From what Britannicus said, it doesn’t seem very precise, this story of forty-eight hours of incubation. Especially in a refrigerator. But I saw marks caused by blows. The zombies kicked the doors a few times, and then they were opened shortly afterward.”
“And we know that it was not the employees of the institute who opened the door to them…” said Lola.
The spring sun shone in a cloudless sky. Almost cloudless: a low pollution fog seemed to be stagnating over the city. Strange pollution, shimmering in the sun, and turning from pale pink to green, like neon casino lights.
“Do you see that fog up there?”
Lola looked up. “No, the sky is clear. What are you talking about?”
“It’s magic,” I said. “It’s all over the city now.”
“Is anyone doing anything to fix this leak?”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said.
Back in my loft, I decided to go back to bed. I had barely managed to fold the duvet over my damn wings when my phone rang. I stretched out my arm, found the object on the bedside table, and brought it back under the duvet.
Britannicus wan
ted news of “my” zombies.
“They’re not my zombies,” I said. “They’re Marcellin’s. Let him deal with it.”
“He admitted to creating them?”
“No, he says…well, his ‘mirror’ says he had nothing to do with it. But the bacterium has to come from somewhere.”
“Hmm…”
“Hmm?”
“I have checked,” said Britannicus, “and it turns out that the waiting list to join Marcellin’s team is quite impressive.”
“There’s a waiting list to be zombified?”
“Oh yes. The bacterium brings considerable intelligence to its host and guarantees a great career in new technologies.”
“Wait, we’re talking about zombies here: walking corpses that decompose and lose bits on the way.”
“This is why they rarely leave their air-conditioned offices and work in IT. I even suspect them of having invented air conditioning and computers for their personal comfort.”
I hadn’t slept enough for my mind to process this kind of information.
“Brit, what exactly are you calling me about?”
“To ask if you found the source of the contamination.”
“Not yet. The working hypothesis is that someone introduced the bacteria into the morgue fridge and came back two days later to open the doors.”
“Hmm,” Britannicus said again.
“You don’t seem convinced.”
“Such a person must know the bacteria very well to calculate the speed of action in a refrigerated environment and come back at the right time. I wonder if this person is trying to create a team that competes with Marcellin’s.”
“What’s this about the ‘team?’” I mumbled. “We’re talking zombies, not football.”
“They have their own vocabulary,” said Britannicus in a cheerful voice.
“Great,” I said. “But now I have to sleep. Goodnight.”
I hung up, rolled into a ball, and fell into a sleep full of zombies in football jerseys.
13
THE ALARM CLOCK woke me from a deep sleep. I turned around and grinned. I had slept on a wing, and it was all numb.
