basement morgue, everything appeared to be in order, from the clean autopsy tables to the countertops, scales, and measuring devices. No vandalism here. Dr. Mirnstein led the way to the walk-in refrigerator and waited for Eph, Nora, and Director Barnes to join him.
The body cooler was empty. The stretchers were all still there, and a few discarded sheets, as well as some articles of clothing. A handful of dead bodies remained along the left wall. All the airplane casualties were gone.
“Where are they?” said Eph.
“That’s just it,” said Dr. Mirnstein. “We don’t know.”
Director Barnes stared at him for a moment. “Are you telling me that you believe someone broke in here overnight and stole forty-odd corpses?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Dr. Barnes. I was hoping your people could enlighten me.”
“Well,” said Barnes, “they didn’t just walk away.”
Nora said, “What about Brooklyn? Queens?”
Dr. Mirnstein said, “I have not heard from Queens yet. But Brooklyn is reporting the same thing.”
“The same thing?” said Nora. “The airline passengers’ corpses are gone?”
“Precisely,” said Dr. Mirnstein. “I called you here in the hopes that perhaps your agency had claimed these cadavers without our knowledge.”
Barnes looked at Eph and Nora. They shook their heads.
Barnes said, “Christ. I have to get on the phone with the FAA.”
Eph and Nora caught him before he did, away from Dr. Mirnstein. “We need to talk,” said Eph.
The director looked from face to face. “How is Jim Kent?”
“He looks fine. He says he feels fine.”
“Okay,” said Barnes. “What?”
“He has a perforation wound in his neck, through the throat. The same as we found on the Flight 753 victims.”
Barnes scowled. “How can that be?”
Eph briefed him on Redfern’s escape from imaging and the subsequent attack. He pulled an MRI scan from an oversize X-ray envelope and stuck it up on a wall reader, switching on the backlight. “This is the pilot’s ‘before’ picture.”
The major organs were in view, everything looked sound. “Yes?” said Barnes.
Eph said, “This is the ‘after’ picture.” He put up a scan showing Redfern’s torso clouded with shadows.
Barnes put on his half-glasses. “Tumors?”
Eph said, “It’s—uh—hard to explain, but it is new tissue, feeding off organs that were completely healthy just twenty-four hours ago.”
Director Barnes pulled down his glasses and scowled again. “New tissue? What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I mean this.” Eph went to a third scan, showing the interior of Redfern’s neck. The new growth below the tongue was evident.
“What is it?” asked Barnes.
“A stinger,” answered Nora. “Of some sort. Muscular in construction. Retractable, fleshy.”
Barnes looked at her as if she was crazy. “A stinger?”
“Yes, sir,” said Eph, quick to back her up. “We believe it’s responsible for the cut in Jim’s neck.”
Barnes looked back and forth between them. “You’re telling me that one of the survivors of the airplane catastrophe grew a stinger and attacked Jim Kent with it?”
Eph nodded and referred to the scans again as proof. “Everett, we need to quarantine the remaining survivors.”
Barnes checked Nora, who nodded rigorously, with Eph on this all the way.
Director Barnes said, “The inference is that you believe this … this tumorous growth, this biological transformation … is somehow transmissible?”
“That is our supposition and our fear,” said Eph. “Jim may well be infected. We need to determine the progression of this syndrome, whatever it is, if we want to have any chance at all of arresting it and curing him.”
“Are you telling me you saw this … this retractable stinger, as you call it?”
“We both did.”
“And where is Captain Redfern now?”
“At the hospital.”
“His prognosis?”
Eph answered before Nora could. “Uncertain.”
Barnes looked at Eph, now starting to sense that something wasn’t kosher.
Eph said, “All we are requesting is an order to compel the others to receive medical treatment—”
“Quarantining three people means potentially panicking three hundred million others.” Barnes checked their faces again, as though for final confirmation. “Do you think this relates in any way to the disappearance of these bodies?”
“I don’t know,” said Eph. What he almost said was, I don’t want to know.
“Fine,” said Barnes. “I will start the process.”
“Start the process?”
“This will take some doing.”
Eph said, “We need this now. Right now.”
“Ephraim, what you have presented me with here is bizarre and unsettling, but it is apparently isolated. I know you are concerned for the health of a colleague, but securing a federal order of quarantine means that I have to request and receive an executive order from the president, and I don’t carry those around in my wallet. I don’t see any indication of a potential pandemic just yet, and so I must go through normal channels. Until that time, I do not want you harassing these other survivors.”
“Harassing?” said Eph.
“There will be enough panic without our overstepping our obligations. I might point out to you, if the other survivors have indeed become ill, why haven’t we heard from them by now?”
Eph had no answer.
“I will be in touch.”
Barnes went off to make his calls.
Nora looked at Eph. She said, “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” She could see right through him.
“Don’t go looking up the other survivors. Don’t screw up our chance of saving Jim by pissing off this lawyer woman or scaring off the others.”
Eph was stewing when the outside doors opened. Two EMTs wheeled in an ambulance gurney with a body bag set on top, met by two morgue attendants. The dead wouldn’t wait for this mystery to play itself out. They would just keep coming. Eph foresaw what would happen to New York City in the grip of a true plague. Once the municipal resources were overwhelmed—police, fire, sanitation, morticians—the entire island, within weeks, would degenerate into a stinking pile of compost.
A morgue attendant unzipped the bag halfway—and then emitted an uncharacteristic gasp. He backed away from the table with his gloved hands dripping white, the opalescent fluid oozing from the black rubber bag, down the side of the stretcher, onto the floor.
“What the hell is this?” the attendant asked the EMTs, who stood by the doorway looking particularly disgusted.
“Traffic fatality,” said one, “following a fight. I don’t know … must have been a milk truck or something.”
Eph