“The passengers from the plane,” said Setrakian. “The dead have risen.”
Eph did not know how to answer that. He couldn’t say. He wouldn’t say.
“There is much you will need to let go of, Dr. Goodweather,” said Setrakian. “I understand that you believe you are taking a risk in trusting the word of an old stranger. But, in a sense, I am taking a thousandfold greater risk entrusting this responsibility to you. What we are discussing here is nothing less than the fate of the human race—though I don’t expect you to quite believe that yet, or understand it. You think that you are drafting me into your cause. The truth of the matter is, I am drafting you into mine.”
Knickerbocker Loans and Curios, East 118th Street, Spanish Harlem
Eph put up his EMERGENCY BLOOD DELIVERY windshield placard and parked in a marked loading zone on East 119th Street, following Setrakian and Nora one block south to his corner pawnshop. The doors were gated, the windows shuttered with locked metal plates. Despite the tilted CLOSED sign jammed in the door glass over the store hours, a man in a tattered black peacoat and a high knit hat—like the kind Rastafarians liked to wear, except that he lacked the ropy dreadlocks to fill it out, so it sagged off his head like a collapsed soufflé—stood at the door with a shoe box in his hand, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Setrakian came out with keys dangling from a chain, busying himself with the locks up and down the door grates, making his gnarled fingers work. “No pawns today,” he said, allowing himself a sidelong glance at the box in the man’s hand.
“Look here.” The man produced a bundle of linen from the shoe box, a dinner napkin he unwrapped to reveal nine or ten utensils. “Good silverware. You buy silver, I know that.”
“I do, yes.” Setrakian, having unlocked the grate, rested the handle of his tall walking stick against his shoulder and selected a knife, weighing it, rubbing the blade with his fingers. After patting his vest pockets, he turned to Eph. “Do you have ten dollars, Doctor?”
In the interest of hurrying this along, Eph reached for his money clip and peeled off a ten-dollar bill. He handed it to the man with the shoe box.
Setrakian then handed the man back his utensils. “You take,” he said. “Not real silver.”
The man accepted the handout gratefully and backed away with the shoe box under his arm. “God bless.”
Setrakian said, entering his shop, “We’ll soon see about that.”
Eph watched his money hustle off down the street, then followed Setrakian inside.
“The lights are right on the wall there,” said the old man, pulling the gate ends to meet again, locking up.
Nora threw all three switches at once, illuminating glass cabinets, display walls, and the entrance where they stood. It was a small corner shop, wedge-shaped, banged into the city block with a wooden hammer. The first word that came to Eph’s mind was “junk.” Lots and lots of junk. Old stereo systems. VCRs and other outdated electronics. A wall display of musical instruments, including a banjo and a Keytar guitarlike keyboard from the 1980s. Religious statues and collectible plates. A couple of turntables and small mixing boards. A locked glass countertop featuring cheap brooches and high-flash, low-quality bling. Racks of clothes, mostly winter coats with fur collars.
So much junk that his heart fell a little. Had he entrusted this precious time to a crazy person?
“Look,” he told the old man, “we have a colleague, we believe he is infected.”
Setrakian passed him, tapping his oversize walking stick. He lifted the hinged counter with his gloved hand and invited Eph and Nora through. “We go up here.”
A back staircase led to a door on the second floor. The old man touched the mezuzah before entering, leaning his tall stick against the wall. It was an aged apartment of low ceilings and worn-out rugs. The furniture hadn’t been moved in perhaps thirty years.
“You are hungry?” Setrakian asked. “Look around, you’ll find something.” Setrakian lifted the top of a fancy pastry container, revealing an open box of Devil Dogs. He lifted one out, tearing open its cellophane wrapper. “Don’t let your energy run down. Keep up your strength. You’ll need it.”
The old man bit into the crème-filled cake on his way to a bedroom to change clothes. Eph looked around the small kitchen, and then at Nora. The place smelled clean despite its cluttered appearance. Nora lifted, from the table with only one chair, a framed black-and-white portrait of a young raven-haired woman in a simple dark dress, posed upon a great rock at an otherwise empty beach, fingers laced over one bare knee, pleasant features arranged in a winning smile. Eph returned to the hallway through which they had entered, looking into the old mirrors hanging from the walls—dozens of them, of all different sizes, time-streaked and imperfect. Old books were stacked along both sides of the floor, narrowing the passageway.
The old man reappeared, having changed into different articles of the same sort of clothing: an old tweed suit with vest, braces, a necktie, and brown leather shoes buffed until thin. He still wore wool tipless gloves over his damaged hands.
“I see you collect mirrors,” Eph said.
“Certain kinds. I find older glass to be most revealing.”
“Are you now ready to tell us what is going on?”
The old man dipped his head gently to one side. “Doctor, this isn’t something one simply tells. It is something that must be revealed.” He moved past Eph to the door through which they had entered. “Please—come with.”
Eph followed him back down the stairs, Nora behind him. They passed the first-floor pawnshop, continuing through another locked door to another curling flight leading down. The old man descended, one angled step at a time, his gnarled hand sliding down the cool iron rail, his voice filling the narrow passageway. “I consider myself a repository of ancient knowledge, of persons dead and books long forgotten. Knowledge accumulated over a life of study.”
Nora said, “When you stopped us outside the morgue, you said a number of things. You indicated that you knew the dead from the airplane were not decomposing normally.”
“Correct.”
“Based upon?”
“My experience.”
Nora was confused. “Experience with other aircraft-related incidents?”
“The fact that they were on an airplane is completely incidental. I have seen this phenomenon before, indeed. In Budapest, in Basra. In Prague and not ten kilometers outside Paris. I have seen it in a tiny fishing village on the banks of the Yellow River. I have seen it at a seven-thousand-feet elevation in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia. And yes, I have seen it on this continent as well. Seen its traces. Usually dismissed as a fluke, or explained away as rabies or schizophrenia, insanity, or, most recently, an occasion of serial murder—”
“Hold on, hold on. You yourself have seen corpses slow to decompose?”
“It is the first stage, yes.”
Eph said, “The first stage.”
The landing curled to an end at a locked door. Setrakian produced a key, separate from the rest, hanging from a chain around his neck. The old man’s crooked fingers worked the key into two padlocks, one large, one small. The door opened inward, hot lights coming on automatically, and they followed him inside the humming basement room, bright and deep.
The first thing to catch Eph’s eye was a wall of battle