Plague of the Dead

by Z. A. Recht

  Fifty yards further, four more people had appeared and were walking steadily towards the group on the runway. Mbutu grimaced, holding the radio microphone to his lips.

  “Got four more coming your way out of the trees, security. What is this, a party? Over.”

  “We see ’em.”

  One of the security vehicles peeled off from the other, heading towards the four new figures. Behind it, the lone trespasser was being placed in handcuffs. He wasn’t resisting.

  Mbutu watched the other vehicle as it pulled to a stop in front of the four figures. He saw the two guards climb out of the truck. They held up their hands, pointing at the woods, ordering the trespassers to go back the way they came. However, the trespassers continued to advance.

  Mbutu saw one of the guards take a step back, shaking his head in disbelief as he drew his pistol. The other guard soon did the same. Though Mbutu couldn’t hear the words being spoken, he imagined one of the four trespassers had made a threat or two.

  The gunshots—unlike mere spoken words—were easily audible, echoing across the runway. Mbutu saw the flashes of fire as the guards fired their pistols, then saw the sprays of blood popping from the backs of the victims.

  Then his jaw dropped open in awe.

  The four trespassers kept coming.

  The guards were firing quickly now. Mbutu saw one of them drop an empty magazine to make room for a fresh one. One of the trespassers took a round to the forehead and dropped to the ground, twitching. The other three were almost on top of the guards, who had backed up against their own truck, cut off from escape.

  Mbutu saw the trespassers encircle the guards, and then lost sight of the action, blocked from view by the security vehicle. He cursed and tossed away the binoculars.

  “Call the police!” he shouted to his co-workers.

  One of them had already picked up the telephone. “This is Mombasa Air Traffic Control, reporting shots fired on the runway. We’ve got trespassers—definitely dangerous, probably armed!”

  The other security vehicle had motored over to the group of trespassers, the original lone man still handcuffed in the back seat. The guards climbed out, weapons already drawn and primed. Mbutu watched carefully. The guards down there had a much better view than he did, and they obviously didn’t like what they saw behind the captured truck. They opened fire.

  In the distance, Mbutu heard the sirens of the approaching police. There was always a detachment on hand somewhere at the airport and their quick response was welcome in situations like this one.

  By the time the police cruiser had arrived at the scene, the security guards had put down the trespassers. The police looked over the bodies, took photographs, and were in the process of booking the handcuffed man when Mbutu made it to the scene on foot.

  “What happened?” he asked, slightly out of breath from the run.

  One of the cops answered him. “Don’t know for sure, yet,” he said. “From their clothes they look like rebels, but it’s way out of character for them to come into a town like this. Quite a distance to travel, too. No weapons either. Probably some cannibals, the sick bastards. Wish they would stay out in the wild.”

  He pointed at the bodies of the two security guards.

  Mbutu looked, then wished he hadn’t. Chunks had been torn from the flesh of the guards. Raking wounds from teeth and fingernails scarred the corpses and both lay in pools of blood.

  “Dear God,” he uttered. “What brought them to this?”

  “Hungry maybe,” one of the cops replied. “With the ban on cannibalism and the population situation in the jungle, it’s no wonder they tried to get a meal in town.”

  Mbutu looked sick. “How can you joke about it?”

  “Who’s joking?” said the officer. “We’ve been seeing those tribes in town more and more often lately. They’re protesting the prohibition, chanting about how they need to eat too.”

  “Here comes the coroner,” said the officer’s partner, gesturing into the distance. An ambulance was trundling down the runway, lights and siren off. After all, there was no real rush when all the patients were already dead.

  “Here! Back her up here!” directed the officer, waving the ambulance into position. The back doors swung open as it came to a stop, and white-coated medics climbed out, dragging stretchers behind them.

  “How many?” they asked.

  “Six,” said the officer.

  “Holy shit,” one of the medics breathed, spotting the bodies. “What happened?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the officer told him. “Just get ’em out of here. There’s a flight waiting to land.”

  Mbutu felt his lip curl at the officer’s apparent disregard for the lives that had been ended, but said nothing. Here, as in many places on Earth, life was cheap.

  The medics loaded the corpses onto the stretchers, zipping them into dark plastic body bags and stacking them like so much cordwood in the back of the ambulance.

  “We’ll be sure to let you know what we figure out,” the officer told Mbutu before climbing into his squad car to follow the ambulance.

  “Right,” Mbutu said under his breath as the cars receded into the distance. He was left standing alone in the hot sun on the runway, the only evidence of the recent violence a few smears of blood on the edge of the pavement. “You do that, officer. You do that.”

  Mombasa Hospital

  December 09, 2006

  2013 hrs_

  Dr. Klaus Mayer was a general surgeon on staff at Mombasa Hospital. He was in his mid-thirties and had traveled to Africa from his home in Austria to do a year of pro-bono work. He felt he was able to make a real impact here. He saw evidence of this every day when patients thanked him or when he would see a nurse using one of the techniques he’d been teaching.

  Tonight he was pulling morgue duty. The hospital was severely understaffed and all the doctors took turns filling in the vacant positions. Dr. Mayer was sitting at the check-in desk in front of the morgue’s double swinging doors, scratching notes into a patient’s file. He was expecting a visit in a few minutes from the police. They were bringing him six bodies. Apparently there had been an incident at the airport. The police had refused to give him any details.

  Like that’s going to matter, he mused. I’ll find out when I do the autopsies.

  He sighed, tapping the pen against the file. This was one of his tougher cases. An older woman had come down with a case of malaria, and her immune system was having a tough time fighting back the disease. She had nearly recovered twice now, but relapsed both times. She had two daughters, each with their own families, and they were destitute. The extended family relied on the income she made as a seamstress. Even with all the adults and some of the children working full-time at whatever odd jobs they could find, they barely made ends meet. They simply couldn’t afford to lose their mother, as cold as that sounded.

  But I’ve become used to these kinds of things, Dr. Mayer thought. I don’t know if that’s comforting or frightening.

  He heard the chime of the elevator bell down the hall, then heard the doors slide open. He lifted his eyes and saw uniformed officers exiting, accompanied by paramedics. They pulled gurneys between them.

  “Ah, sehr gut,” Dr. Mayer said, standing and switching to the local dialect as the officers approached. “Bring them right inside, please. Do you have any specific time you would like the autopsies finished?”

  “As soon as possible,” said one of the officers, (the same that had talked with Mbutu on the landing field.) He didn’t elaborate, and Dr. Mayer didn’t ask him to. Here, it was best to let the officials go about their business, and mind your own.

  “Please leave them here,” Dr. Mayer instructed, leading the police and medics into the morgue. The room was cool and sterile and smelled of antiseptic. There were two stainless steel autopsy tables in the center of the room, with light fixtures perched overhead. As they entered, Dr. Mayer flicked a switch on the wall and the lights hummed to life. One of the
bulbs flickered on and off, buzzing quietly.

  The medics wheeled the gurneys against the far wall and handed Dr. Mayer a clipboard. He let his eyes scan over it, then pulled his ballpoint from his chest pocket and swiftly gave his signature, adding a flourish under the Y in his last name. The police didn’t bother to tell him anything else, but he overheard them talking about taking a prisoner up a few levels to be treated for wounds.

  Dr. Mayer knew what was expected of him and didn’t press the issue.

  “You might get a bit of a shock when you open ‘em up,” one of the medics said as the police were leaving. He spoke conspiratorially, glancing over his shoulder at the officers to make sure they weren’t watching. “Cops think its cannibals or rebels. Heard ‘em talking.”

  “Thanks,” Dr. Mayer said, eyeing the medic. For a man who had seen all manner of injuries on the streets of Mombasa, he seemed unusually shaken. Dr. Mayer was now hopelessly curious as to what he was going to find.

  Once his company had departed, Dr. Mayer got down to business. He snapped a pair of latex gloves over his hands and pulled a surgical mask over his face, adjusting his glasses around the rubber straps. He rolled a cart of instruments up to one of the shining tables and retrieved a blank file and pocket tape recorder from his desk. Finally he pulled the first gurney alongside. Ideally one other person would have helped him lift the body from the gurney to the autopsy slab, but he made do by shifting the head and shoulders over, then moving to the other end of the corpse and pulling the legs onto the table as well.

  Dr. Mayer clicked the tape recorder on as he stood over the dark body bag. The writing on the black plastic bag said that this was one of the perpetrators of whatever crime had occurred at the airfield.

  “First subject, received December the ninth at eight-twenty p.m.,” he narrated, pulling back the zipper on the bag. He flipped the plastic back and raised his eyebrows. “Subject is an adult male, estimate between twenty-five and thirty years of age. Appears to have been in moderately healthy shape. Some signs of malnutrition are apparent. Two lateral scars on the upper left thigh. Wounds appear to be old.”

  Dr. Mayer lifted the body’s head in his gloved hands, turning it gently under the bright white light of the fluorescents. The bulb that was shorting out continued to buzz and crackle as it flickered.

  “Cause of death appears to be from trauma to the skull. One, maybe two gunshot wounds, entering through the frontal lobe and exiting through the rear. Skull appears to have shattered, most likely due to calcium deficiency.”

  Dr. Mayer halted here, frowning beneath his mask.

  “Interesting.”

  He pulled a long-necked cotton swab from a jar on the instrument tray and dabbed it at a wide slash on the body’s shoulder. It came away covered in black, syrupy blood that had congealed on the skin around the wound.

  “Subject appears to have suffered wounds from an animal. Pattern suggests biting, perhaps a monkey. The blood surrounding the wound implies it was pre-mortem. It doesn’t appear to be either life-threatening or infected.”

  Dr. Mayer let his eyes roam to the corpse’s chest. Here he found his most confusing item yet.

  “Three gunshot wounds to the chest,” he said for the benefit of the tape recorder, but then his voice trailed off. He stared at the wounds for a moment, then grabbed the corpse firmly by the shoulder and lifted it up on its side. He inspected its back and found two exit wounds. One of the bullets had lodged inside the man somewhere. But the wounds themselves were not what interested him—it was the lack of blood surrounding them.

  He coughed, clearing his throat.

  “Gunshot wounds to the chest appear to be post-mortem,” he said, again letting his voice trail off. After a moment he reached over and switched off the tape recorder.

  “This is strange,” he said to himself, eyes on the corpse. “Why shoot a man in the chest when you’ve already killed him with a shot to the head?”

  Dr. Mayer seemed to ponder this for a minute, and then seemed to throw the thought away. He clicked the tape recorder back on.

  “Moving forward, I’m going to open the first subject for confirmation on cause of death,” he said, pulling a scalpel from the instrument tray. He lowered the blade over the corpse’s chest, and then stopped just inches from the flesh. Along with the bullet wounds, there were other puncture marks on the man’s chest. These were smaller, neater, and also bloodless.

  Dr. Mayer had seen these types of wounds before. In Europe, they might be associated with a stabbing wound from a stiletto or other thin, cylindrical blade. Here in Africa, there were certain rural tribes which used a lightweight hunting spear. He didn’t know what they were called or how they were made, only that they were of a thin, flexible wood that reminded him of the branches of weeping willows. Occasionally he would get a case where a tribesman had been speared on accident while hunting—or intentionally by a rival tribe. The wounds he saw on his current subject were identical.

  This presented Dr. Mayer with a riddle within a riddle. This man had been stabbed and shot after he was killed—but Klaus Mayer knew for a fact that the police here in Mombasa went better armed than their rural counterparts. They had no such spears to stab this man with. And why would they even want to after they had already killed him?

  The answer was simple enough, though it still made little sense: this man had been attacked by tribesmen after he was dead, and then had somehow found his way to the airfield, caused trouble and had been gunned down—all while already being dead.

  “There must be some rational explanation,” Dr. Mayer said. He looked over at the tape recorder and realized he had broken his continuity. “Located small puncture wounds in the chest of the first subject that appear to have been caused by a stabbing weapon, not a firearm. These wounds are also post-mortem. I cannot explain how these wounds occurred.”

  Dr. Mayer was already thoroughly frustrated and he hadn’t even begun the meat of the autopsy procedure.

  Hopefully some of the other bodies would shed some light on the matter.

  2234 hrs_

  Dr. Mayer had completed three of his six autopsies. He still felt discouraged. He had found similar post-mortem wounds on two more of the attackers. Some were gunshot wounds, others inflicted by spear. He’d moved on to one of the dead security guards, hoping that maybe one of the victims of the attack would have some new evidence for him.

  “Fourth subject is male, early to mid-thirties, in good condition. No noticeable identifying marks.”

  Dr. Mayer examined the guard’s wounds. As he did, his eyes grew wide. These guards were wearing the uniforms of the airfield security details. Obviously the crime in question was the murder of these two men by the other four that had been brought in with them. The method of the murder, however, was grisly and revealing.

  “Cause of death seems to be loss of blood, or shock trauma. Too early to tell. Wounds are apparent in the neck, shoulders, and forearms. Subject appears to have attempted to defend himself from the attack that killed him. Wound patterns are similar to those found on three previous subjects. They appear to be bites.”

  Dr. Mayer rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and took another look. He rose to his feet, walked over to the desk and lifted the telephone from the cradle. He dialed.

  “It’s Dr. Mayer down in the morgue,” he said. “Are my x-rays ready yet?”

  He listened.

  “Good. Could you have someone send them down as soon as possible?” A moment passed. “As soon as possible, I said. The police want their autopsy reports.”

  And I want them too, he thought.

  He hung up the phone and returned to the stool by the autopsy table. Using a small camera and a tape measure, he took the dimensions of the bite marks on the security guard’s shoulder. There was one very clear imprint he focused on, simple blackened tooth marks in a nearly perfect bite pattern. He was planning on using those marks to verify his hypothesis.

  As he was jotting the measurements
onto a legal pad with his ballpoint pen, the attending nurse pushed open the swinging morgue doors and handed him two thick manila envelopes. He thanked her before she left, then unwound the string from the tab of the folders. He got up and shuffled over to the wall, pulling the black and gray x-rays from the envelope. He popped them onto a dark screen. He chose one from both folders, and then dropped the envelopes into one of his voluminous coat pockets.

  Dr. Mayer ripped the sheet of measurements from the legal pad and stuck those to the screen as well before turning on the light behind it. It flickered to life after a few seconds. He leaned over it, comparing the x-rays of the attacker’s jaws to the bite marks on the guard’s shoulder.

  He mumbled to himself, scratching figures and notes onto his pad as he looked back and forth at the images, recording the width of both jaws, the shape of the teeth, and which teeth were missing or damaged.

  “Looks close,” he commented, eyes darting back and forth between the photos and the notepad sheet. “Could be human. Maybe the final subject has the correct jaws.”

  Behind him, the arm of the security guard seemed to shift. Dr. Mayer glanced at the table, but the body was motionless. He went back to his x-rays.

  “Wait,” he said, pulling one of the x-rays loose. He laid it out on the desk and plucked the notepad sheet down. He carefully compared a slight gap between the left canine mark on the guard with one on the x-ray. “They match. They match!”

  The guard on the autopsy table had slowly turned his head away from Dr. Mayer. His eyes were now open, but glazed and lifeless. Dr. Mayer still sat with his back to the table as he looked at the papers in his hands with a furrowed brow.

  The guard slowly and silently pulled himself upright. He sat for a moment and tilted his head back to look up at the light hanging overhead. It was the fixture in the light that was shorting; it flickered on and off, bathing the guard’s face in a kind of greenish quasi-strobe. He seemed captivated by it.