Firewalk

by Chris Roberson

“I’m afraid so,” Izzie answered.

  “Look,” Patrick began, “I know it sound crazy but …”

  “Hang on,” Joyce interrupted, holding up a hand to silence him. “Let me think this through.” She turned and took a few steps away, head down, eyes on the floor, lost in thought. “Maybe …” She glanced back over her shoulder at the dead man on the autopsy table. She shook her head. “No, can’t be.”

  “What?” Patrick asked.

  “And you guys swear this isn’t some kind of gag?” Joyce had turned and was walking back towards them. “I once heard about a sheriff’s office that managed to convince their county coroner that they had a vampire infestation on their hands. The poor sap never lived it down.”

  “I’m telling the truth, I swear on my life,” Izzie answered. “But there was more, that I bet Chavez didn’t include. I don’t know if anyone but Patrick and I were in a position to see it.”

  Joyce raised an eyebrow, quizzically.

  “While he was coming after me,” Izzie went on, “he started getting these weird black bruises or lesions all over his body.”

  “Like the kind that Ink users get?” Joyce asked. “What do the cops call them, Patrick? ‘Blots’?”

  Patrick nodded, a sour expression on his face.

  “Right, the same kind.” Izzie nodded, remembering the two shamblers the night before last. “Well, they spread in just a matter of seconds, until there was hardly any unaffected skin left. Like he was just one big bruise. But after he died … well, after he stayed dead, anyway, after I hit him with the door ram … they all completely faded. By the time that Chavez and the others got to the body, it was like they were never there at all.”

  “And you saw this, too?” Joyce looked to Patrick, who nodded. She put a hand on her chin, mulling it over. “Eyewitness testimony is often unreliable, as I’m sure you both know. But with the event this fresh in memory, and both of you on hand to witness it … I mean, it’s possible that there’s some connection, but …”

  “A connection with what?” Patrick asked.

  Joyce sighed. “Come with me.” She turned and headed towards her office. “I need to show you something.”

  Izzie caught Patrick’s eye as they followed behind, but could tell that he didn’t have any more idea what Joyce intended to show them than she did.

  “First, take a look at this,” Joyce said as she folded herself into the swivel chair. With one hand she slid a folder across the surface of her desk to them.

  Patrick flipped the folder open and found printouts of MRI scans within.

  “That’s the brain of Malcolm Price. There’s evidence of blunt force trauma, either from the impact of the fall or the battering ram, but that’s not the interesting bit. See anything familiar?”

  Izzie leaned over to look past Patrick’s shoulder at the image. There were many of the same shadowy dots that they had seen in the brain of Tyler Campbell, the drug dealer whose death had brought Izzie to Recondito.

  “What’s interesting is where these are grouped,” Joyce explained, while typing on her computer’s keyboard. “See, they’re all in the frontal lobe.” She used her mouse to open a folder on the desktop. “Take a look at these.”

  A selection of other brain scans filled the computer screen like a tiled mosaic.

  “These are the scans of Nicholas Fuller’s victims from five years ago. In every one of these, the vacuoles are most highly concentrated in the front lobe, just like in Malcolm Price’s brain. But in this one …” She brought up a new image. “This is Tyler Campbell’s brain, and here they’re more evenly distributed.”

  “So?” Patrick asked.

  “Well, the frontal lobe is responsible for a lot of different functions, including conscious thought, voluntary movement, and even our individual personality characteristics. With such extensive degradation to that region, the subject’s brain would be incapable of performing those functions.”

  “They’d stop being themselves, then?” Izzie asked.

  “They’d stop being much of anything,” Joyce answered. “Their personality would be gone, sure, but they’d be pretty much incapable of independent thought, or of moving of their own volition.”

  “But they were moving around, obviously.” Patrick leaned forward, hands on the desk. “They were alive when Fuller killed them. Just like Malcolm Price was alive when he jumped out that window.”

  “Right,” Joyce said, stretching out the word suggestively. “But my point is that from a medical standpoint, they couldn’t have been the ones making those decisions. They no longer had the biological capacity to do so.”

  “What are you saying?” Izzie was afraid that she knew.

  “What I’m suggesting,” Joyce said, reluctantly, “is that maybe someone—or something—was making those decisions for them. It’s almost as if the subjects were no longer behind the wheels in their own bodies, but that someone else was controlling the steering wheels.”

  “Like something was riding them.” Izzie’s voice was scarcely above a whisper.

  “Sure, that’s an apt analogy, I guess. Riding, driving, either way.” Joyce looked back at the screen. “So my point is, maybe it’s not crazy that Malcolm Price gets up and walks around after he is most obviously dead. If his nervous system and major muscle groups are still operational, then whoever or whatever is controlling them could still make the body move around. For a while at least.”

  “Like a puppet on a string.” Patrick turned to Izzie. “Or your Haitian zombies.”

  Izzie could feel a ball of ice growing in the pit of her stomach. “Like they were being ridden …”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “You realize all of this sounds totally crazy, right?” Izzie could still smell the mentholated rub in her nostrils, though she’d tried repeatedly to wash it off before they left the morgue.

  “You don’t have to remind me,” Patrick said, sipping his coffee.

  “Just because something sounds crazy doesn’t mean it can’t be true.” Joyce looked up at the cloudy skies above. “Have you guys ever read much about quantum mechanics, string theory, higher dimensional space? Because that stuff sounds crazy, but it’s just science.”

  Izzie turned to look past Patrick at Joyce on the far end of the bench. It had been her idea to get some air, and so the three of them had left the morgue and the Hall of Justice behind, picked up coffee in to-go cups from Holy Grounds—a coffee shop housed in a converted chapel, of course—and parked on a bench at the Founder’s Square park. It was chilly out, but not uncomfortably so, and being out in the open under the wide, gray sky was somewhat comforting after being underground with the dead people for so long.

  “It’s funny you should mention that,” Patrick said. “Izzie and I were just talking to a physics professor at Ross University about that kind of stuff yesterday.”

  Joyce raised an eyebrow, giving him a look of mock astonishment. “Why, Lieutenant Tevake, are you considering a career change? Going to chuck the law enforcement gig to go off and study the mysteries of the universe?”

  Izzie chuckled, and Patrick glanced in her direction before answering.

  “It’s tempting.” He smirked. “But then I wouldn’t have an excuse to visit Miss Ghoul here in the morgue.”

  “That’s Doctor Ghoul to you, buster.” Joyce nudged him. “I didn’t spend six years in evil medical school to be called ‘Miss,’ thank you very much.”

  “But seriously, you’re a doctor,” Izzie broke in. “You studied science. How can you justify thinking that some unknown agency is manipulating people’s brains, and even controlling their bodies after death? That kind of supernatural stuff is just superstitious nonsense.” Though her tone was somewhat argumentative, it was really herself that she was trying to convince.

  “I think it’s a question of Occam’s Razor, isn’t it,” Joyce answered.

  “Is that the one that goes, ‘When you’ve eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be true’?
” Patrick asked.

  “That’s Sherlock Holmes, actually,” Joyce said. “It’s from a story written by Arthur Conan Doyle.”

  “Um, I’m pretty sure it was Spock who said that.” Patrick scratched his chin. “I remember it from a Star Trek movie.”

  “Of course you do.” Joyce shook her head, and turned back to Izzie. “But it’s the same basic idea. Occam’s Razor is the principle that the simplest solution is usually the right one. Or, to put it another way, you shouldn’t make more assumptions than is absolutely necessary.” She rolled her eyes towards Patrick as she took a sip of her coffee. “That’s the basic tenet of detective work, isn’t it? The simplest theory that fits the available facts is the right one?”

  Patrick shrugged. “Usually. Ninety percent of the time, maybe. But lots of times new evidence comes along that blows the old theories out of the water.”

  “Sure,” Joyce agreed. “And that happens in science, all the time. But even then, whatever new theory you come up with would be the simplest one to fit. The most elegant, you could say.”

  “Okay, I buy that.” Patrick nodded.

  “But magic?” Izzie pressed on. “How is that the simplest solution to anything?”

  “I didn’t say ‘magic’ exactly,” Joyce replied. “But that’s just a question of terminology really, right? What is magic except affecting change in the world around us? We don’t think it’s strange to turn on a television with a remote control, but that’s because we have a basic understanding of infrared technology and that kind of stuff. If a primitive person saw you do that, they’d be convinced they were witnessing an act of sorcery.”

  “Cargo cults.” Patrick lowered his cup.

  Izzie and Joyce both looked in his direction, curious.

  “That’s how they got started,” Patrick said. “You guys have heard about cargo cults, surely.”

  He glanced from one woman to the other, seeing blank stares.

  “They cropped up all over the South Pacific during the Second World War,” he explained. “There was even one on Kensington Island. The US military used the island as a staging ground for operations in the Pacific Theater, and the Te’Maroans watched as sailors talked into little boxes and then ‘metal birds’ come down out of the sky and unload boxes of food, metals, and supplies. Most of the islanders didn’t think too much about it, but there was one guy who was convinced it was all magic, and that the senior officer on the site was some kind of supernatural being. And when the US Navy left after the end of the war and the planes stopped showing up, he cleared trees for ‘landing strips,’ built ‘transmitters’ out of bamboo and coconut shells, and tried to call ‘Capten Kole’ to bring cargo back to the people. He convinced a handful of others to help out in the cause, and by the time he died the Church of Capten Kole, Sky Navigator was still out there in the jungle, trying to call the metal birds to come back.”

  He shook his head.

  “I went to school with a kid whose parents were devout members of the Church of Capten Kole. We all thought he was bonkers, but he was a true believer, man.”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to judge,” Joyce said. “I think that’s just human nature. It’s just Clarke’s Law. ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ It’s all a question of how advanced the technology is compared to your level of understanding.”

  “So you’re saying that’s what we’re dealing with here?” Izzie was skeptical. “Some kind of technology?”

  “Not necessarily,” Joyce answered. “Just that there might be a rational explanation that we don’t understand, and so we call it ‘magic’ or ‘supernatural.’ And primitive people aren’t stupid, remember. Think about ancient astronomers, right? They didn’t have the first clue about stellar formation or gravity on a galactic scale or anything like that, but they built incredibly sophisticated models that predicted the movements of the stars across the skies. They might have even believed they were seeing literal gods and monsters and demigods moving around up in the sky, but they still knew just where to look for any given constellation in the heavens at any given time of the year. Their explanations for what was happening might have been totally wrong, but their observations about what they were seeing were spot on.”

  Izzie thought about the protective sigils that Patrick’s great-uncle had inscribed all over the southwestern corner of the Oceanview, and the various rituals that her grandmother used for protection against spiritual threats. Were they like the bamboo transmitters and coconut shell headphones that those islanders used out in the jungle? Except, maybe, sometimes they worked?

  And were the tohunas of Kensington Island and the mambos of Louisiana—and who knows how many other shamans and priestesses and witch doctors throughout different cultures and times—were all of them like those ancient astronomers? Doing their best to describe something that was really happening, but limited by the terms and concepts they had at their disposal?

  When Patrick glanced over in her direction, she could see by the expression on his face that he was wondering much the same thing.

  “So what are we seeing, do you think?” Izzie asked the medical examiner, pointedly. “You’ve suggested that something is making up for the loss of brain tissue in these suspects, taking over the faculties that they biologically wouldn’t be able to perform anymore. But is that what’s causing those parts of their brains to go missing? Or is the causal relation going the other way, and something is taking advantage of a situation that was caused by other factors?”

  Now it was Joyce’s turn to shrug. “No idea. We still don’t understand the pathology behind the vacuoles, or how it’s being transmitted. The early subjects all were down in that mine shaft at one point or another, and might have been exposed to something there, but with Tyler Campbell and Malcolm Price … ? There’s no indication that either of them ever went down there.”

  “Maybe we should approach this like profilers,” Izzie offered. “Looking at what we know to be true, and then extrapolate from there. Forget any possible connections between Fuller’s victims five years ago and the two dead men right now. What characteristics or qualities do Campbell and Price share? Maybe that’s a better place to start, since they’re right in front of us.”

  “Well, obviously,” Joyce answered, “both of them have the vacuoles in their brains, though in Price’s brain they’re primarily concentrated in the frontal lobe, and in Campbell’s they’re more dispersed.”

  “And they both are involved in the Ink trade,” Patrick added.

  “Is there any reason to rule out the possibility that both men were users of Ink, as well?” Izzie asked. “Price at least exhibited the signature lesions on his skin. Could Campbell have taken the drug, too, instead of just selling it?”

  “It’s possible,” Patrick answered.

  “Since we don’t have any way of testing for the presence of Ink in the body,” Joyce said, “we can’t prove that it’s there. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so yeah, it’s definitely a possibility.”

  “So …” Izzie was feeling her way towards something. “Is it also possible that the Ink itself caused the vacuoles to form in their brains?”

  “But Fuller’s victims died before Ink was even …” Patrick began, but Izzie silence him with a quick motion of her hand.

  “Forget about five years ago for the moment,” she said. “I’m talking about right now. And do we know of any other thing that Campbell and Price shared in common other than the strong possibility that they took Ink?”

  Patrick and Joyce exchanged a glance, then he turned back to Izzie, shaking his head. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “So wouldn’t Occam’s Razor say that the most likely reason that both of these men had holes in their heads was because they both took the drug?”

  Patrick was silent, thinking it over.

  “That would make the most sense, yeah,” Joyce answered, after a brief moment’s consideration. “And if I hadn’t known anything a
bout Fuller’s victims from before, I’m sure that would have been my immediate conclusion when I scanned Campbell’s brain the other day. It’s the connection to the earlier subjects that complicates matters.”

  “Yeah,” Patrick said, paradoxically shaking his head while saying so. “There’s just no way. Ink didn’t start showing up on the street until way after Fuller was dead. I can’t see that there’s any connection between his victims and these two.”

  “But maybe you’re looking in the wrong place for the connection.” Izzie scratched the scar on the back of her hand, absently.

  “The only thing that Fuller’s victims had in common was that they had all worked with the Undersight project down in that mine shaft,” Patrick objected.

  “Right,” Izzie said. “So maybe the connection isn’t between these two dead men now and the people that Fuller killed five years ago. Maybe …” She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Maybe the connection is between the drug Ink itself and whatever the hell happened down in that mine shaft.”

  “But then …” Patrick pulled out his phone and gestured at the screen. “That could mean …”

  Izzie knew that he was referencing the article about the Eschaton Center murders, which had mentioned the mines. “And maybe there are connections we hadn’t even thought about before.”

  “I’m sorry, guys, you lost me,” Joyce said, while Izzie and Patrick were sharing a significant glance.

  “It’s this article that Izzie sent me this morning,” Patrick started to explain, turning to Joyce. But before he could continue his phone chimed that a text message had just arrived. He swiped the screen, reading quickly.

  “What is it?” Izzie could see the concerned expression on his face.

  “We’ve got to go,” he said, getting to his feet. “Chavez says there’s something at Fayed’s apartment that he wants me to see.”

  Joyce was using her cane to lever herself up off the bench. “I need to get back, myself. The cadavers get lonely when I’m gone for too long.”

  Before turning to walk away, she looked over at Patrick and Izzie.