He took the preloaded .38 revolver from the shelf.
Irregular thumps—Charlie stumbling—echoed across the room. Luis hurried. The gun was so heavy he imagined the floor cracking under its weight, the building’s concrete foundation pebbling, the earth crumbling as humanity fell. He blinked the vision away along with sweat as he turned. Charlie, gaze fixed to the floor, had retreated from the corpse, which, pursuing, had become entangled in computer cords. John Doe bit at the wiring, raking incisors down a printer cable hard enough to peel the plastic coating.
Next to Charlie, Luis took the safety off the revolver and pointed it at John Doe’s head. It was the right thing to do, yet he expected Charlie to stay his hand. She did not. Luis focused on the crenellations of the trigger instead of the whisper at the back of his brain that this was the wrong response to the Miscarriage and that, once done, there could be no going back.
He shot, and for the second time that day, John Doe died.
Sixty-Four Floors
The corpse’s skull broke into irregular pieces scattered across John Doe’s back and legs. Pink-gray matter, once the brain of someone who’d mattered, splattered across tile. The dull light that had animated John Doe’s white eyes dimmed. The body sagged to the floor, limp as a steak, except for the head, which was still noosed in computer cables. Bloody drool, the last thing John Doe would ever offer, skimmed down a power cord.
Luis slumped against the counter. Charlie slumped against him.
They panted until their pounding chests synchronized.
“The fuck, right?” Charlie rasped.
“That’s right,” Luis said, “The fuck.”
Luis surveyed across the lab. Blood and fluid, red and yellow, smeared everywhere. Autopsy tools displaced, as if by explosion. An overturned stool. A prone body, dead from a bullet he’d fired—he, Luis Acocella, assistant medical examiner of San Diego, had shot someone, What would local media make of that? He felt the gun in his hand and hissed like it was hot. He looked about, wishing for a supernatural vortex to whisk it away, and settled for putting the safety back on and placing it carefully into the pocket of his scrubs.
Charlie audibly swallowed. “Wireless signals, Batteries. Whatever. Something made his brain send signals to his limbs. To his … mouth.”
“With rigor mortis setting in? Cut up all to hell?”
Charlie shivered against him. He felt her bring individual muscles into military formation before using the counter to guide her toward the office phone. She barked a laugh, “Who do I even call?”
“My father told me God takes people when it’s their time.”
“Don’t start talking God shit.”
“He said God’s plan takes centuries to unfold.”
“Acocella, look at me. I can’t have you having a spiritual crisis right now.”
Despite feeling any movement would make him vomit, Luis rotated his head. Charlie stood by the phone. Her familiar pugnacious expression saturated Luis with gratitude.
“What have you always told me?” she asked.
Luis shrugged through exhaustion the weight of chain mail. “Smoking. Quit smoking.”
“You told me this job isn’t about the dead, It’s about the living. What just happened—I know it’s hard to think. I feel that way too. But we need to tell people. We need to tell them right away. I know you were an altar boy, Acocella, but this is science. Not God shit.”
He peered into the table’s polished steel. A gorgon doppelgänger stared back. Luis nodded in agreement with Charlie; his twin’s gesture was less conclusive.
“Good,” Charlie soothed. “Now tell me who to call.”
There was no protocol for this, which meant the emergency call list was one name long. Luis inhaled sharply. He had to be the one to make the call, so he’d better do as Charlie said and piece his shit together, The process was like puzzling extracted organs back into their home cadaver.
Fighting dizziness, he went the long way around the corpse, passing the glutinous ring of bio-matter where John Doe first hit the floor, the upset tray of instruments, the muculent trail of the corpse’s progress. He avoided bits of skull and brain as he dislodged his phone from its charger.
Messages awaited. A lot of them. He flicked his thumb and a train of notifications scrolled by, all voice mails from Rosa, caboosed by a single text: CALL ME, Annoyance flickered. She’d bombed his phone like this before, once when a broken pipe flooded the kitchen, once when a squirrel had gotten inside the house. Whatever her current emergency was, it would have to wait.
He tapped over to his favorites, though conversing with Jefferson “JT” Talbot could hardly be considered a favorite task. While JT’s phone rang, Luis stared at the bottoms of John Doe’s feet. It didn’t matter who you were, captain of industry or homeless beggar, the soles of your feet returned you to the infant you once were, the baby-fat wrinkles, the knobby little piggies.
You didn’t kill something defenseless, he told himself. This wasn’t a miscarriage.
JT picked up on the fourth ring.
“Acocella,” he said.
JT had a vivacity Luis coveted, along with the ability to adapt to his surroundings, to deploy gayness or blackness or concerned professionalism as needed, Tonight, Luis encountered a JT he’d never met before, empty and lumpen of tongue. Luis hesitated, wondering if somehow his smartphone, not so smart after all, had dialed incorrectly or if he’d woken JT from sleep. Impossible: it was midnight in Vegas, equivalent to six o’clock anywhere else, especially for a night prowler like JT.
“I know it’s late,” Luis said. “I’m putting you on speaker.”
He set the phone alongside the bowl of intestines.
“Why?” JT’s spike in caution was a sign of life. “Who’s there?”
“Just Charlene Rutkowski. My diener.”
“I can’t—Acocella, I can’t do it. No speaker.”
Luis and Charlie stared at each other. Both knew Jefferson Talbot rarely turned down an audience, and when he did, he let the excluded know damn well why they were being excluded. This was, again, out of character for their boss.
“All right,” Luis lied, “You’re off speaker. What’s wrong?”
JT laughed—a goblin’s cackle. “You tell me, Acocella. It’s your name on my phone.”
“You don’t sound so good, JT. Is there something we need to know about?”
JT was silent. Luis detected voices in the background, and not the boisterous discord of the casino or private-suite soirée JT would have sought out. These were unpleasant rumbles, terse officials in a closed environment.
“You had a body revive,” JT said, almost sadly. “Am I close?”
If the lab could get any colder, it did. Luis felt a Y cut unzipping his torso; everything inside collapsed outward, leaving him as weightless as an empty body bag. Luis mourned his thoughts of only minutes ago, when he’d believed the horror of what they’d witnessed could be contained, disinfected, burned, whatever it took. But JT already knew about it. Which meant it was bigger. Luis felt his femurs and tibias pop from his decomposing legs. He was going down, They were all going down.
“JT…?” It came out like a plea, lackey to boss man.
“How long since ETD?” The query sounded programmed.
“Four and a half? Five? JT, he got up. He came after us.”
“Après la mort,” JT chuckled direly, “Am I right?”
“You gotta tell us what you know,” Luis said.
The background discussions grew louder. Sharp thumps shot through the audio, the sound of a phone being jostled, perhaps moved to a stealthier position. JT’s voice resumed in a louder, more sibilant rasp, likely amplified by a cupped hand.
“I’ve heard shit,” he hissed, “There’s a couple guys here who work at the—I can’t talk about it.”
“Who?” Luis demanded. “Where are you?”
“A party?” JT said, then laughed again, another crazed sound. “Talk to me, Acocella, Because those
men, they’re looking at me. I can’t say the words I want to say.”
Luis’s fantasy of a desperate JT had come to pass, but he couldn’t relish it. He felt he’d do anything to resurrect the haughty, self-centered Jefferson Talbot. He looked to Charlie for help, but she shook her head. She’d removed her hairnet, and her python curls swayed over a heaving chest. Luis cleared his throat.
“We had a … John Doe.”
“SDPD?”
“Yeah.”
“I knew that’s why you were there so late. You guys cut him?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Head case?” JT asked. “Tell me about the brain.”
Luis recalled the .38’s puff of smoke. He didn’t want to admit he’d shot John Doe. Not to JT, and not to himself either.
“There was no reason to examine the brain,” he said carefully.
JT’s exhale crackled the phone speaker.
“Same. Damn. Thing.” His voice hardened. “You send in anything yet?”
Luis looked at Charlie. Her thumbs-up injected him with a few cc’s of confidence.
“Yes, sir,” he replied. “Local and VSDC.”
“Oh, shit, man!” The sanguine voice that held so many state workers in thrall went squeaky. “Every single VSDC record is going to get combed through. Call them. Do it now. Retract the report. Mark my words, Acocella. Shit is going to rain down, and the storm is headed straight our way.”
Confusion was as thick as viscera; Luis tried to wipe it away.
“What was I supposed to do? JT, what am I supposed to do?”
JT’s audio was overwhelmed with basso tones, Whoever was in the room with JT had come closer. Luis heard his boss talking to the other person and angled his head to hear better. Charlie came closer, toeing around John Doe’s hog-tied head. The deep voice was a subaudible rumble. JT returned, the phone crackling like a cleared throat.
“Acocella. You’re still in the autopsy suite?”
“Yes. But—”
“I need you to stay put. Stay with the body, We’re going to … send help.”
Charlie gestured fiercely for Luis to end the call. He felt trapped, light-headed.
“Who’s we?” Luis managed.
“Just do it, Luis,” JT whimpered, “It’s all about to … there’s nothing you or I—”
“Don’t call me Luis. You’ve never called me Luis in your life. I’m bowled over you even know my name.”
“Kill the call,” Charlie hissed.
“Please,” JT begged, “How long have we been friends?”
“Since never!”
JT’s voice splintered. “Listen to me, you wetback little shit! You stay right fucking there where I told you to stay! Don’t you move one fucking muscle!”
“Fuck you, queen!” Luis shouted.
“Disobedient spic motherfucker!” JT fired back.
“House negro company-man fairy!”
“Kill the call!” Charlie yelled.
A strange gurgling bubbled from the phone, like the brook of blood that poured from a fresh cadaver after he incised a major vein. Luis half expected blood to spurt from the phone’s speaker. After a moment, he identified the dreadful sound as soft, weeping laughter.
“Yes, Luis, I know your name. Always have. Even when we both ran for office. I always liked you. I don’t expect you to believe that, You’re good at what you do. All I’ve got is … what? A nice smile?
“I’m sorry, Luis. I’m not in control, Do you understand? I’m not in any kind of … control here. And I’m so sorry. For all of us, man. For all of us.”
There was no mistaking it: this was goodbye. Charlie waved her arms in semaphore, sliced a finger across her throat, anything to get Luis to hang up. Her pantomime was useless. A good doctor didn’t hang up on a man this despondent, even if it was Jefferson Talbot.
“JT. Stay with me.”
The reply was a series of hard thumps—the sound of a phone being dropped. In most cases, said phones were picked up. Who willingly abandoned the device linking them to the wider world? In this instance, however, Luis heard receding footsteps. He never could have foreseen the sudden, acute concern he felt for his boss.
“JT!” His shout vibrated a hanging scale, “Get out of there! Get out!”
Luis snapped his mouth shut; he sounded hysterical. He and Charlie stared at each other for one minute, maybe two. He expected Charlie to shout that, like JT, they needed to run. He anticipated his reply: that there were protocols, always protocols.
The speaker rustled as someone picked up JT’s phone.
The voice was so deep as to be almost bottomless.
“Who’s there? Acocella, I think he said?”
Who’s there indeed, Luis’s head spun with possibilities. All sorts of power brokers frequented Las Vegas; no place was better at keeping secrets, Anyone could be in that room, from any level of government. On their orders, there could be FBI agents racing toward the Balboa Park morgue right now, sirens screaming. Or, if they preferred, in predatory silence.
“Who is this?” Luis asked back.
“Lindof.” The man said it with mild surprise, like Luis should have recognized his voice. Luis tried to think. Was there a Lindof in the California governor’s office? Was there a Lindof in Homeland Security? He didn’t think so, but everything in his head was static.
“Good for you,” Luis said. “Put JT back on.”
“Sorry, baby. Doesn’t look possible.”
“Listen here, Mr. Lindof, You fetch Jefferson Talbot and put him back on this phone, his phone, or my next call is going to be to The New York Times.”
“Oh yeah? What are you going to tell them? How would you pitch it?”
The man’s playfulness was maddening. But he had a point. There was nothing Luis could tell a reporter that wouldn’t get him shunted to the voice mail oblivion reserved for crackpots.
“Is this your fault?” Luis asked, “The government?”
Lindof chuckled, “What makes you think I work for the government?”
“Maybe you don’t. But you know whose fault this is, don’t you?”
Expensive fabric rustled in a shrug. “Not really.”
“Then why the fuck are you wasting time talking to me? Start figuring this shit out!”
“You sound like you’re panicking.”
“Fucking-A right I’m panicking! What do you think the mood is over here right now? We’re not sitting around playing UNO!”
“We?” Lindof paused. “You got someone else there, Acocella?”
Luis glanced at Charlie, ready to lie, but she nodded.
“That’s right,” he said, “We.” Charlie beamed. “And we can be out of here in thirty seconds. You want to talk about panic? We can spill what happened here to the first guy we pass on the street. You know how fast photos can spread? You know how many we can take before we leave? We’re scramming, gringo, unless JT tells me why we shouldn’t.”
“Interesting stuff,” Lindof said. “But I’m afraid Mr. Talbot is gone.”
“Get him back.”
“No can do. We’re on the top floor of Trump International Hotel in Vegas. And I think your buddy Mr. Talbot just took a swan dive off the balcony. Jesus Howard Christ, That’s sixty-four floors.”
The silence that descended over Autopsy Suite 1 reminded Luis of the time he and Rosa had vacationed in Colorado and stepped outside one morning to find a world gone mute with five feet of new-fallen snow.
Jefferson Talbot, medical examiner, dead? That figure of such brio and panache, perhaps duplicitous, perhaps promiscuous, but luminous with life, splashed across some gold-painted terrace? Luis’s unraveling reached completion, With JT gone, was he in charge? Hadn’t that been what he’d always wanted? In the suite’s suffocating silence, he rejected not only the promotion but everything toward which his career had headed.
But the silence wasn’t silence. Metallic pinging sounds Luis had attributed to air circulation vents began to grow. The sounds were bein
g duplicated, not with the uniformity of rain against windowpanes but with the irregularity of palms slapping against a locked door.
Charlie acknowledged the noise seconds later. Both assistant ME and diener gazed with trepidation at John Doe, tensed for some grotesque new evolution, but the sounds came from elsewhere, Together—as if joint movement made it less frightening—they looked toward the source.
Often called a freezer or refrigerator, the staff here preferred the hipper, jail-cell connotations of cooler. Supermarket-style automatic doors provided easy passage for workers pushing gurneys into the temperature-controlled room, where metal shelving held bodies for initial examination, family identification, autopsy, or upcoming legal orders. Two battery-charged hydraulic lifts allowed bagged cadavers to be placed on or removed from the highest shelves. Right now, more than a hundred corpses lay in the cooler, in all states of decay.
From the sound of it, They had begun to awake.
The pinging became thumping, the thumping a banging. The details of the cooler shelves presented themselves to Luis. Metal stoppers prevented trays from shifting. But nothing strapped the bodies to the trays. There was no need to restrain a corpse. A thin gong sounded; Luis and Charlie flinched at the unmistakable sign of a head butting the shelf above it. Another gong, then another, each corpse picking up the cue. At last came a sloppier, awfuller sound: a series of heavy, loud slaps, along with the sharp crackling of body bags.
Corpses were rolling Themselves off shelves and onto the floor.
Luis would have to use the .38 again, on himself this time, to stop the spiraling visions. He imagined dozens of body-bag lumps worming along the cooler floor like eyeless newts, If he and Charlie could stay quiet, he thought, those horrors might wander blind for a long time.
“Hello? Acocella? You still out there?”
Lindof’s voice was startling. Luis dropped his phone, like JT. Unlike JT, he caught it.
“My condolences for Mr. Talbot,” Lindof said. “He seemed like a fun little gay guy.”
Luis saw black, He had to hold it together. He thought back, as he often did, to the time an imperious staff physician had discounted Luis, back then an idealistic resident, as lacking “the stuff.” An insult, but the physician had nevertheless taught Luis a lasting lesson.
The Living Dead Page 6