Declan nodded. “We follow the strictest sterile procedures. I’m calling the local Haz-Mat guys to deliver us a couple of their decon suits and masks.”
Hal sat and settled back in his chair. “Good. Time to finish my coffee.” The milky liquid sloshed as his hand shook.
Declan made the call, then stared through the glass window between him and the body on the tray and hoped to hell that whatever killed Carter Shippey wasn’t airborne. Because if it was, a whole lot of people were in trouble.
Chet Metz, of the island’s fire department, showed up twenty minutes later with two gray-blue decontamination suits. Santz Martina’s Haz-Mat team had never been called out before, as far as Declan knew. The island had the usual small-town collection of hazardous materials: dry cleaning fluids, petroleum products, fertilizers, insecticides. The fire department maintained a team for the sake of preparedness.
“So what’s going on?” Chet wanted to know as he helped Hal and Declan into the suits. He was a beefy man in his early thirties, with steady gray eyes and a thick head of hair.
“I just don’t want to take any chances,” Declan said.
“Chances, huh?” Chet looked him straight in the eye. “Must be a big chance.”
“Don’t say anything.”
“You know I won’t, Dec. Okay, let’s tape you in.”
Chet wound yellow duct tape around their ankles and wrists, making airtight seals for their rubber boots and gloves.
As they hefted their masks, Chet said, “You know, there’s no way to decontaminate you here after you’re done. Not if it’s a biological hazard.”
“There’s a shower in there,” Declan said. “And plenty of bleach. We’ll wash down.”
“If you think that’s enough. I’ll wait.”
Declan nodded at him. “Thanks, Chet.”
Biohazards were part of hospital life and of autopsies in particular. Ordinary care was usually enough: rubber gloves, a face shield to protect the eyes, nose and mouth from any kind of spray from the victim, Tyvek gowns over scrubs. But Declan wasn’t going to be happy with ordinary precautions this morning. He was very, very nervous about what was inside the body.
Once the masks were in place, he and Hal were breathing the purest air in the world. The micron filters would capture even the smallest virus.
“That’s as good as we can do,” Chet said. “I hope to God it’s not airborne.”
“If it is,” Dec said, “we’re all already dead.”
“Oh, cripes, thanks,” Hal muttered.
If Carter Shippey had died from an airborne infection, the chances were high that dozens of other people had already been infected. Carter, after all, was active in the Rotary and his church, and volunteered in the high school shop classes.
Declan and Hal walked into the autopsy room and faced one another across the body. Metz was watching from the other side of the glass, and when Declan glanced up briefly, their eyes met.
Hal picked up the camera he brought to every autopsy and began shooting from every angle, even climbing on a ladder to shoot from above. No step of this process would be overlooked.
The first task, after initial photos, was to remove the victim’s clothes intact. The job proved nearly impossible with a body that sagged formlessly. They managed it, though, and after examining each piece of Carter’s clothing, they put all the pieces into red biohazard bags.
“Nothing,” Declan remarked. Nothing other than the usual loss of bodily control at death. No blood. Not a smidgen anywhere. Nor did an examination of the body itself, now little more than a fluid-filled sack, reveal any sign of wound or blood.
“Well,” Declan said, “it’s not Ebola or Marburg. Or any other known hemorrhagic fever.”
“Thank God for small mercies,” Hal muttered.
“I’m not sure that’s a mercy,” Declan said. “Those take time to kill you, and with proper treatment a lot of people can survive. This was fast. His wife said he was okay when she left for her bridge club and dead when she came home.”
“And it’s still working,” Hal said. “He didn’t look like this last night, did he?”
“Hell no.” Declan picked up a scalpel. He wouldn’t need a bone saw. Nor did he want to make a large incision into this body until he knew what might come out.
His hand paused over what had once been a man’s abdomen. He looked toward the glass.
“Chet? This island has to be quarantined immediately.”
Chet didn’t answer for several seconds. His gaze was fixed on the body on the tray as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Uh…can I do that? I don’t have authority.”
“I do,” Declan said. “It’s under my emergency powers. Call the Emergency Management Office and tell them. I want this island shut down. No one in, no one out, until we find out what the hell did this.”
Chet nodded.
“Then get back here,” Declan said. “Because after I open up this body and take some samples, and Hal and I hose each other off, I’m sure as hell going to need help getting out of this monkey suit.”
“Right.”
Looking green, Chet turned and disappeared.
Hal didn’t look too much better. “Do we have to open him?” he asked. “It’s obvious something’s eating his insides. I mean…what if it explodes all over us?”
“We’re covered,” Dec said, refusing to admit that he had any qualms. “Look, Hal, we’ve got to do it. We’ve got to find out what did this before somebody else dies.”
Hal nodded. He drew an audible breath. “Okay. I’m documenting.”
Declan made the first cut with his scalpel.
Carter Shippey hadn’t rotted. He had liquefied inside his own skin. There were no identifiable organs left to remove, and what remained of the bone had become rubbery, almost like cooked cartilage. Declan saved as many samples as he thought would be useful, telling Hal to freeze them all.
Carter Shippey’s brain and spinal cord were the only parts still intact, though they showed violent hemorrhaging. More samples were frozen.
Declan sewed up his incisions as quickly as possible and put the body back in the cooler. He didn’t allow himself to think much about what he’d just seen, beyond the clinical notes he’d dictated to Hal. Interpretation would come later. Right now, he was simply collecting evidence.
Inside, deep inside, some quiver of unease refused to be silent, though. It wouldn’t let him completely ignore what faced him. What might face the entire island.
Dec and Hal scrubbed the entire autopsy room, then poured bleach over each other and took turns under the overhead high pressure shower. When they were done with the shower, they hosed each other and the entire room. The water and the contaminants flowed down a drain into a deep septic tank where hazardous waste was chemically treated and could decompose safely.
Out in the antechamber, Chet helped strip them out of the suits. For the first time, Declan realized that sweat had plastered his clothes and hair to him.
“What did they say?” he asked Chet, when at last he could sag into his chair. His legs felt weak, as if he’d just run ten miles. His hands were shaking, an old and familiar reaction.
“Well,” Chet said, “they weren’t happy about it. But I told them if they’d seen what I saw, they wouldn’t