using long-handled bone cutters, severed McAffey’s spine with a single snap.
“There!” Declan announced, a look of satisfaction passing as quickly as it had arrived. “I was… .was afraid for a moment we’d have to turn him over and open him up from the posterior.”
Declan seems a natural at this, thought Ransom, while Thomas appears queasy, but who am I to talk? Ransom felt on the verge of losing his last meal. While Alastair had been to countless autopsies and inquests back in Chicago, none were anything like this; nothing so putrid smelling as the gases emanating from McAffey’s leathery corpse.
“I’ve seen a lot of things in my sixty some odd years on the planet, lads, but never what’s been done to these men. It leaves me speechless.”
“Why’s it necessary, Declan,” pressed Thomas again, looking over his glasses, “to-to sever the spine?”
Declan answered not with words but by holding the end of the severed section of the spinal cord up to their eyes. “What’s missing from this picture? Thomas, what do you see? Answer me.”
“Dry as bone inside—not a drop of spinal fluid… .”
“As I suspected—somehow the spinal fluid and even the bone marrow… it’s just gone, but by what power?”
“Why take a man’s spinal fluid?” asked Thomas.
Declan shook his head. “Somehow this thing robs a man of every ounce of fluid in the body.”
“But down to a man’s spine!”
“Empty as a beer keg,” agreed Ransom, eyes wide.
“All of it gone, but how? Sucked from the bones do you think?” If Thomas had looked unnerved before, he looked doubly so now.
“Thomas, hold yourself together, man. We have two more bodies to open up.”
“To what bloody end? We damn well know the others’ll be identical to McAffey, Declan.”
“We can’t know that unless we put eyes on it.”
“It’s bloody obvious they suffered the same fate.”
Ransom held back to allow the young doctors to settle this.
Declan got nose to nose with his friend. “And suppose O’Toole lived longer than McAffey, and your uncle even longer? Suppose it’s obvious one of them had put up a better fight than did McAffey?”
“We’d be well informed to know as much, yes.” Thomas stepped back half a foot.
“If that’s so, Tommie, we have to determine how the one may’ve fought it off, don’t you see?”
“To affect a cure, of course… I realize but are we up to it, Declan? I mean, we’re just a couple of medical students at best.”
“We’re up to it.”
“It’s not as if we’re the best equipped for the job!”
“Dr. B and the dean surely are not up to it, Thomas, and so If not us, then by God who will step into the breach?”
Ransom placed his bear-like paw onto Thomas’ shoulder to steady the young man. Thomas looked from Declan to Ransom and nodded. “All right. All right but we may well be doomed before we’ve begun; there isn’t the time.”
“Close up Mr. McAffey for me then, Thomas, and I’ll start on O’Toole, unless you wish to do the honors.” Declan held up the scalpel for Thomas, but he declined it.
“Perhaps I’ll… I’ll open up Uncle Anton.” Thomas held a quivering chin high, his eyes challenging now.
“That’s not going to be easy, Thomas. Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything—not a single bloody thing. Are you?”
“To be honest, no!” Declan saw his gritted teeth reflected in Thomas’ glasses.
“All right, give it to me.” Thomas held his hand out for the scalpel that Declan had earlier offered. “I’ll do O’Toole and leave Uncle Anton in your hands.”
“Well played, Thomas.” Declan reached for a scalpel that Thomas had laid out for his own use, and he handed it to Thomas.
Ransom had come to admire the young interns for their care with one another and their obvious, powerful bond, not to mention their concern for the general population. He paid little attention as Declan sewed up McAffey with the medical string—cat gut— binding the skin together in a way that made him think of a popular book he’d read entitled Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, wife to the famous English poet. He felt a chill run through him on recalling the account of the hybrid thing brought back from the dead. The unnatural condition of these bodies brought the imagery full on within his mind.
Ransom struggled to banish the bad thoughts from his mind’s eye. Ironically, the only thing that managed it in the least was to look over Thomas’ shoulder as the lad now opened up O’Toole. It always had fascinated Alastair to watch a good medical man at his surgical task. Back in Chicago, during times when not too busy, he’d sit in on dissections at the great theater built for students of the famous Dr. Christian Fenger to observe and learn. He’d also seen his lover, Dr. Jane Tewes in action there—her deft hands like a butterfly one moment, like a strong machine the next.
He longed to see Jane again, to be with her, imagined what she might look like after so many years, how she had gotten on without him any longer in her life. Perhaps she’d wisely moved on. Perhaps she’d found a good man. Jane remained his greatest loss on having to leave, or rather escape Chicago. How often had he wanted to send her and Gabrielle a letter, reveal where he was, pray that mother and daughter would join him, perhaps in Paris? His damnable logical side had always stopped him, asking what kind of life could he provide for her and Gabby so long as he remained a fugitive on the run?
Ransom had learned a good deal over the years about autopsies, and he suspected should Thomas falter or faint out, that he could in a pinch, take over for the boy—but only if need be.
The dead Mr. O’Toole’s facial features, like those of McAffey, had coalesced into a sickening grin, a gut- wrenching grimace. Still this gargoyle’s grimace gave Ransom a mild comfort in that at least this was, oddly enough, something familiar to him; familiar in so many corpses. ‘Death’s Smile’ as some called it so often accompanied the end right alongside the rattle of a final breath.
“Holy Mother of God!” Thomas erupted as a foamy, bubbling material rose from the cut he made at O’Toole’s chest, making a gurgling noise and sending Thomas backing into Ransom which caused him another start, and one hand landed in the soupy, brown matter oozing from O’Toole. The only saving grace was the glove running up Thomas’ arm and his matching leather apron. “The man has some strange fluid here like ichor… color of black tea…”
Declan joined them, and all three stared at the ooze bubbling up from the Y incision begun by Thomas. “Maybe there’s something to your theory, after all, Declan. I mean if this—O’Toole’s got some residual fluid— whatever it is.”
“Residual fluid, yes. Whatever’s devastated McAffey, O’Toole lasted longer. He managed to get out of the mine… was found behind a bulkhead in the ship. Perhaps something in his makeup, resisted the disease more vigorously than did McAffey.”
“Something in his blood perhaps?” asked Thomas.
“Blood is not the answer to every bloody question,” countered Declan.
“What about the heart? The other organs?” asked Ransom. “Are they in any better shape than McAffey’s?”
Declan shook his head. “No… wish we had time to look at the brain, eh, Thomas?”
“No time as it is.”
“Do be careful not to touch the leaking fluid to your exposed skin, Thomas.” Declan had taken a step toward his friend to emphasize the danger.
“Thank God I used the leather gloves.” Thomas had backed off, not wanting to get even the odors bubbling up from the body in his nostrils. Still, he returned to his surgical instruments and continued his incision while suddenly ordering Declan around. “Keep calm, Declan and don’t snatch away those gloves you have on.” He indicated the elbow-length gloves on Declan’s forearms and hands.
“You too, Detective Wyland.” Declan tossed Alastair a pair. “I refuse to bury you, too.”
Alastair willingly took the tight-fitting surgical leather gloves that went up and over the forearms. He’d seen similar gloves used by cattle butchers in Chicago, and while they did encumber the fingers of a surgeon, they were
