Immortal

2

‘Okay, who’s tonight’s lucky contestant?’

Medical Investigator Lillian Cruz strode down a corridor toward the morgue with a practiced stride. Tall and proud-looking, Lillian had worked in the morgue for as long as anyone could remember. She was leading the night shift, as she did twice a week. If working the small hours virtually alone in a morgue had ever bothered her, she couldn’t recall. In contrast her assistant, Alexis, was new to the facility and looked nervous, her squeaky student voice mildly irritating Lillian as she filled her in on the details of the night’s first autopsy.

‘White male, approximately sixty years of age, died from a single gunshot wound to the head fired in self-defense by Lieutenant Enrico Zamora, state PD. The trooper reported that the victim seemed to be suffering from some kind of wasting disease.’

Lillian frowned. Probably a drunk who had got himself injured, or some loser strung out on peyote buttons or crack who fancied himself attacking Injuns and heading them off at the pass out Glorietta way. In her many years as a medical investigator, Lillian had seen just about everything.

‘When did he die?’ Lillian asked as they turned the corner and approached the morgue.

‘Yesterday afternoon, time of death called in by the response team as 3.45 p.m. Victim’s been on ice since 4.20 that afternoon.’

Ten hours then. Lillian led the way into the morgue to where a steel gurney awaited them, the contents concealed by a blue plastic ziplock bag speckled with smears of fluid. Lillian checked the door was closed behind them before donning gloves, plastic face-shield and tying her surgical gown.

‘Okay, let’s get started, shall we?’ Lillian spoke loudly enough to be heard by the recorder sitting on the worktop nearby. She picked up a clipboard, ready to make notes, as Alexis grabbed a digital camera to document their findings. On cue, Alexis reached forward over the gurney and with a single smooth movement unzipped the plastic bag.

‘Jesus!’

Lillian stared at the gurney as Alexis stifled a tight scream, one gloved hand flying to her mouth. Overcoming a momentary revulsion, Lillian took a cautious pace forward and peered into the depths of the plastic bag as Alexis began taking photographs.

The body that lay within seemed as though it had been stripped of its skin, the internal organs were exposed and decayed, the slack jaw only held in place by frayed tendons and muscles that had either contracted into tight bands or fallen off the body altogether to coil like snakes beneath the corpse. The eyeballs had shriveled and sunk deep into their sockets, and what skin remained drooped in leathery tatters from the bones. Tentatively, Lillian reached out and touched a piece of skin. It felt brittle, like a leather rag left too long in the desert sun. Specks of material crumbled beneath her touch to lightly dust the steel surface of the gurney.

‘He’s mummified,’ she murmured.

Alexis shook her head as if to rouse herself from a daze.

‘That’s not possible. He died yesterday,’ she insisted. ‘The rangers and the police independently verified his age, and there are photos taken at the scene by state troopers. He’s been on ice ever since. He had papers on him too.’

Alexis handed Lillian an evidence form that listed the deceased’s name and social security number: Hiram Conley, born Las Cruces, New Mexico, 1940. She then handed her the photographs taken by the troopers. Lillian looked at the images of the elderly man killed at the scene of the crime, and then at the decomposed and desiccated remains before her.

‘There’s got to be a reason for this. Let’s see you make the case.’

Lillian started making notes and drawings of the observations as Alexis led the autopsy.

‘Weight at time of death, approximately one hundred forty pounds. Some evidence of malnutrition and exposure prior to desiccation. Victim had applied field dressings to numerous wounds around the area of the chest, right shoulder and left arm consistent with… er… some kind of gunshot injuries.’ Alexis hesitated before continuing. ‘Victim is clothed in what appears to be some kind of fancy dress or memorial attire, consistent with Civil War era. Note: attire may provide evidence of cause or location of death.’

Lillian set her clipboard down and took another long, hard look at the body as Alexis carefully undressed the corpse. With the broad-shouldered jacket and baggy pants gone the body looked entirely skeletal, a bone cage from which hung shriveled tissue and muscle, but this was not what shocked Lillian the most. The remaining tatters of skin on the man’s chest bore multiple lesions, deep pits of scar tissue peppering the surface.

‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ Alexis asked.

‘Smallpox.’ Lillian nodded, noting the position of the lesions before examining the remains more closely. The body was a silent witness to more scars and lesions than Lillian had seen in her many years working in New Mexico. Barely an inch of his body seemed clear of damage, and even the bones bore testimony to breaks, cut marks and disease.

‘This guy looks like he’d lived a hundred lives,’ Alexis remarked in wonderment.

‘And all of them violent,’ Lillian agreed.

‘Most of his teeth are missing,’ Alexis said, ‘and his gums are heavily receded. Could be the mummification, but it could also be scurvy.’

Lillian stood back from the body and shook her head.

‘Doesn’t explain the mummification,’ she answered. ‘Smallpox was eradicated in the late 1970s and scurvy disappeared over a century ago.’

Alexis peered into Hiram Conley’s sightless eyes and examined the strange blue-gray irises.

‘Odd,’ she said. ‘Looks like extensive cataracts, but the cataract cortex hasn’t liquefied. This guy should have been blind as a bat by now.’

Lillian leaned over for a closer look as Alexis shot more photos.

‘Long-term ultra-violet radiation exposure,’ she identified the cause of the cataracts, ‘denaturation of lens protein. But you’re right; they should have blinded him by now.’

‘And they’re an odd color,’ Alexis continued, ‘blue-gray. It’s like the proteins were constantly being repaired, fending off the liquefaction.’ Alexis gestured to Hiram Conley’s recently removed clothes, now lying nearby in an evidence tray. ‘And he was wearing clothes that look a hundred years old.’

Lillian stared blankly at her assistant.

‘Where are you going with this? You think this guy walked out of a wormhole to the past or something? This isn’t Star Trek, Alexis. We need to keep our brains engaged here.’

‘I’m not saying anything like that,’ Alexis said quickly, reddening. ‘You ever heard of that Japanese guy, Hiroo Onoda? He was a soldier during World War Two who was on operations in the Philippine jungles when the war ended. He didn’t believe the leaflets dropped on the jungles to inform soldiers of the end of the war, thinking it was propaganda. He only surrendered when his former commanding officer came to get him after he was spotted by a traveler in the region.’

‘When was that?’

‘1974,’ Alexis said. ‘He held out for thirty years. My point is, what if this guy’s part of some family out in the Pecos who’ve just kept on going as they were? The Amish have been doing it for long enough. It explains the injuries, the disease, the old-style uniform. Bad water and improper sanitation can cause dysentery and exposure to the elements frequently leads to pneumonia. Typhoid fever, chicken pox, whooping cough, tuberculosis — I bet if you screen for them half will turn up.’

Lillian shook her head.

‘It still doesn’t explain the mummification, especially not when it’s occurred overnight. This isn’t somebody who’s walked out of an Amish town. The only explanation is that this is absolute desiccation — the body has dried out in a matter of hours.’

Lillian was about to continue when a metallic sound echoed through the morgue, as though someone had dropped a coin into one of the steel sinks and it was rolling round and round toward the plughole. She looked at Alexis, who stared back before glancing down at Hiram Conley’s remains. The metallic sound stopped, and then something fell with a sharp crack onto the tiles of the floor. From beneath the gurney rolled a small, dark sphere no bigger than an acorn. Lillian squatted down and picked the object up in her gloved hands.

‘That’s a musket ball,’ Alexis said in surprise. ‘It must have dropped out of him and rolled down the blood-drainage chute.’

Lillian turned to Conley’s remains, moving slowly across to where the crumpled, emaciated flesh was dropping in clumps from the very bones themselves.

‘He’s still decaying,’ Alexis gasped.

Lillian shook her head slowly. ‘He’s not decaying,’ she said. ‘He’s aging.’