Phantoms Part 39

COLI IN BOWEL - CONTAMINATE SAMPLE.

CLOSTRIDIUM GENUS.

FORMS PRESENT:.

NO FORMS PRESENT.

NOTE: ABNORMAL DATA.

NOTE: IMPROBABLE VARIANT- NO ANIMATE C.

WELCHII IN BOWEL - CONTAMINATE SAMPLE.

PROTEUS GENUS.

FORMS PRESENT:.

NO FORMS PRESENT.

NOTE: ABNORMAL DATA.

NOTE: IMPROBABLE VARIANT - NO ANIMATE P.

VULGARIS IN BOWEL - CONTAMINATE SAMPLE.

The print-out continued to list bacteria for which the computer and Dr. Bettenby had searched, all with the same results.

Jenny remembered what Dr. Yamaguchi had said, the statement that she had wondered about and about which she had wanted to inquire: neither benign bacteria nor otherwise. And here was the data, every bit as abnormal as the computer said it was.

"Strange," Jenny said.

Bryce said, "It doesn't mean a thing to me. Translation?"

"Well, you see, a cadaver is an excellent breeding ground for all sorts of bacteria-at least for the short run. This many hours after death, Gary Wechlas's corpse ought to be teeming with Clostridium welchii, which is a.s.sociated with gas gangrene."

"And it isn't?"

"They couldn't find even one lonely, living C. welchii in the water droplet that had been contaminated with bowel material. And that is precisely the sample that ought to be swimming with it. It should be teeming with Proteus vulgaris, too, which is a saprophytic bacterium."

"Translation?" he asked patiently.

"Sorry. Saprophytic means it flourishes in dead or decaying matter."

"And Wechlas is unquestionably dead."

"Unquestionably. Yet there's no P. vulgaris. There should be other bacteria, too. Maybe Micrococcus albus and Bacillus mesentericus. Anyway, there aren't any of the microorganisms that're a.s.sociated with decomposition, not any of the forms you'd expect to find. Even stranger, there's no living Escherichia coli in the body. Now, d.a.m.n it, that would've been there, thriving, even before Wechlas was killed. And it should be there now, still thriving. E. coli inhabits the colon. Yours, mine, Gary Wechlas's, everyone's. As long as it's contained within the bowel, it's generally a benign organism." She paged through the report. "Now, here. Here, look at this. When they used general and differential stains to search for dead microorganisms, they found plenty of E. coli. But all the specimens were dead. There are no living bacteria in Wechlas's body."

"What's that supposed to tell us?" Bryce asked. "That the corpse isn't decomposing as it should be?"

"It isn't decomposing at all. Not only that. Something a whole lot stranger. The reason it isn't decomposing is because it's apparently been injected with a ma.s.sive dose of a sterilizing and stabilizing agent. A preservative, Bryce. The corpse seems to have been injected with an extremely effective preservative."

Lisa brought a tray to the table. There were four mugs of coffee, spoons, napkins. The girl pa.s.sed coffee to Dr. Yamaguchi, Jenny, and Bryce; she took the fourth mug for herself.

They were sitting in the dining room at the Hilltop, near the windows. Outside, the street was bathed in the orange-gold sunlight of late afternoon.

In an hour, Jenny thought, it'll be dark again. And then we'll have to wait through another long night.

She s.h.i.+vered. She sure needed the hot coffee.

Sara Yamaguchi was now wearing tan corduroy jeans and a yellow blouse. Her long, silky, black hair spilled over her shoulders. "Well," she was saying, "I guess everyone's seen enough of those old Walt Disney wildlife doc.u.mentaries to know that some spiders and mud wasps-and certain other insects-inject a preservative into their victims and put them aside for consumption later or to feed their unhatched young. The preservative distributed through Mr. Wechlas's tissues is vaguely similar to those substances but far more potent and sophisticated."

Jenny thought of the impossibly large moth that had attacked and killed Stewart Wargle. But that wasn't the creature that had depopulated Snowfield. Definitely not. Even if there were hundreds of those things lurking somewhere in town, they couldn't have gotten at everyone. No moth that size could have found its way into locked cars, locked houses, and barricaded rooms. Something else was out there.

"Are you saying it was an insect that killed these people?" Bryce asked Sara Yamaguchi.

"Actually, the evidence doesn't point that way. An insect would employ a stinger to kill and to inject the preservative. There would be a puncture wound, however minuscule. But Seth Goldstein went over the Wechlas corpse with a magnifying gla.s.s. Literally. Over every square inch of skin. Twice. He even used a depilatory cream to remove all the body hair in order to examine the skin more closely. Yet he couldn't find a puncture or any other break in the skin through which an injection might have been administered. We were afraid we had atypical or inaccurate data. So a second postmortem was performed."

"On Karen Oxley," Jenny said.

"Yes." Sara Yamaguchi leaned toward the windows and peered up the street, looking for General Copperfield and the others. When she turned back to the table, she said, "However, everything tested out the same. No animate bacteria in the corpse. Decomposition unnaturally arrested. Tissues saturated with preservative. It was bizarre data again. But we were satisfied that it wasn't atypical or inaccurate data."

Bryce said, "If the preservative wasn't injected, how was it administered?"

"Our best guess is that it's highly absorbable and enters the body by skin contact, then circulates through the tissues within seconds."

Jenny said, "Could it be a nerve gas, after all? Maybe the preservative aspect is only a side effect."

"No," Sara Yamaguchi said. "There aren't any traces on the victims' clothes, as there would absolutely have to be if we're dealing here with gas saturation. And although the substance has a toxic effect, chemical a.n.a.lysis shows it isn't primarily a toxin, which a nerve gas would be; primarily, it's a preservative."

"But was it the cause of death?" Bryce asked.

"It contributed. But we can't pinpoint the cause. It was partly the toxicity of the preservative, but other factors lead us to believe death also resulted from oxygen deprivation. The victims suffered either a prolonged constriction or a complete blockage of the trachea."

Bryce leaned forward. "Strangulation? Suffocation?"

"Yes. But we don't know precisely which."

"But how can it be either one?" Lisa asked. "You're talking about things that took a minute or two to happen. But these people died fast. In just a second or two."

"Besides," Jenny said, "as I remember the scene in the Oxleys' den, there weren't any signs of struggle. People being smothered to death will generally thrash like h.e.l.l, knock things over-"

"Yes," the geneticist said, nodding. "It doesn't make sense."

"Why are all the bodies swollen?" Bryce asked.

"We think it's a toxic reaction to the preservative."

"The bruising, too?"

"No. That's ... different."

"How?"

Sara didn't answer right away. Frowning, she stared down at the coffee in her mug. Finally: "Skin and subcutaneous tissue from both corpses clearly indicate that the bruising was caused by compression from an external source; they were cla.s.sic contusions. In other words, the bruising wasn't due to the swelling, and it wasn't a separate allergic reaction to the preservative. It seems as if something struck the victims. Hard. Repeatedly. Which is just crazy. Because to cause that much bruising, there would have to be at least a fracture, one fracture, somewhere. Another crazy thing: The degree of bruising is the same all over the body. The tissues are damaged to precisely the same degree on the thighs, on the hands, on the chest, everywhere. Which is impossible."

"Why?" Bryce asked.

Jenny answered him. "If you were to beat someone with a heavy weapon, some areas of the body would be more severely bruised than others. You wouldn't be able to deliver every blow with precisely the same force and at precisely the same angle as all the other blows, which is what you would've had to've done to create the kind of contusions on these bodies."

"Besides," Sara Yamaguchi said, "they're bruised even in places where a club wouldn't land. In their armpits. Between the cheeks of the b.u.t.tocks. And on the soles of their feet! Even though, in the case of Mrs. Oxley, she had her shoes on."

"Obviously," Jenny said, "the tissue compression that resulted in bruising was caused by something other than blows to the body."

"Such as?" Bryce asked.

"I've no idea."

"And they died fast," Lisa reminded everyone.

Sara leaned back in her chair, tilting it onto its rear legs, and looked out the window again. Up the hill. Toward the labs.

Bryce said, "Dr. Yamaguchi, what's your opinion? Not your professional opinion. Personally, informally, what do you think's going on here? Any theories?"

She turned to him, shook her head. Her black hair tossed, and the beams of the late-afternoon sunlight played upon it, sending brief ripples of red and green and blue through it the same way that light, s.h.i.+mmering on the black surface of oil, creates short-lived, wriggling rainbows. "No. No theories, I'm afraid. No coherent thought. Just that ..."

"What?"

"Well ... now I believe Isley and Arkham were wise to come along."

Jenny was still skeptical about extraterrestrial connections, but Lisa continued to be intrigued. The girl said, "You really think it's from a different world?"