Of course, Slater thought, echoing Kozak. It made perfect sense. Global warming might have loosened the hold of the soil, but it was the bedrock beneath that had been fractured already. No wonder that coffin had fallen into the sea.
But what would it mean in the epidemiological sense? What would it mean for the cadavers of flu victims? Would it have created an aerated or unstable ground environment, and if so, would that have contributed to the decay of the bodies and the dissipation of any viral threat? The state of the deacon’s body argued otherwise—he was frozen as solid as an ice cube when he’d been dug up—but he could prove to be an anomaly. The only way to know for sure was to exhume at least two or three more.
And to do it before this storm that was blowing in got any worse.
Slater had pretty much decided on which grave to excavate next. It was a dozen yards or so closer in from the cliffs, and if he followed that one up with the plot at the northwesternmost corner of the lot, he’d have a rough triangle that he could then work either in, or out, from, depending on the results he and Lantos were getting in the lab. By now, he figured, she had created a purified blood sample from the deacon, and might even have begun the live-animal trials. He was eager to find out how she was coming along.
“What do you say we pack it in then?” Slater asked.
But Kozak, rapt in the numbers that were scrolling down one side of his computer screen, simply grunted.
“Vassily?”
“You go; I want to study this more,” the professor said. “I will see you in camp.”
Slater knew enough not to disturb a fellow scientist when he was absorbed in his work—he himself had been known to fall asleep at his desk after ten or twelve straight hours of crunching data—so he clapped him on the padded shoulder of his parka and picked his way back through the graves. But he must have taken a slightly different route because suddenly his foot plunged through the snow and into a hole in the ground. The sole of his boot thumped on top of a creaking coffin.
How could he—and Kozak—have missed this on their general survey of the graveyard days ago?
Pulling his boot out, he got down on his knees and brushed the snow cover away. About two feet down, he saw a casket lid splintered as if it had been hit by an axe. Through a gaping hole in the wood, he saw the dark shadows of a corpse.
Jesus Christ. When had this happened? In the pale and failing light of the day, he couldn’t tell if the damage had been done recently, or if this was just an age-old accident that had been overlooked thus far.
Either way, it had to be contained, and immediately.
“What are you doing?” Kozak called out.
“There’s a hole in the ground here,” Slater hollered, “and a compromised burial plot.”
“That’s not possible,” the professor said, indignantly, heading in his direction. “I covered all the ground, and if there had been a hole of any kind—”
“It’s here,” Slater interrupted, “and don’t come any closer. We’ll have to seal this up right away.” He was already reformulating his exhumation schedule; this grave, and its dimly glimpsed occupant, would have to be the next one investigated. Grabbing up several of the pennant flags that marked the grid, he stuck them as firmly as he could in the snowy earth all around the perimeter of the grave. “Don’t come any closer than you already have,” he warned Kozak again, “and don’t let Rudy or Groves get any closer than this, either.”
He stood up, and looked all around for any sign of intrusion, but the fresh snow had covered any tracks that might have been there. None of this made any sense. If the hole had been made recently, who could have done it? Why would they have done it?
And could they possibly still be on the island somewhere?
“Keep an eye out,” he said ominously to the professor. “We might not be alone here.”
Even as the professor looked at him slack-jawed, Slater took off for the colony. He needed to put the word out that the cemetery was now completely off-limits to everyone—though it was Nika he had foremost in his mind. He could not risk her coming out here to perform some native ritual so long as an open grave posed any possible danger.
The matted pathway was slippery with snow and ice, and as he hurried down it he had to regain his balance once or twice by grabbing a light pole and holding on. The daylight was going fast. Running through the gates he heard a scream—unmistakably from Lantos in the lab.
What now?
Barreling up the ramp and into the tent, throwing all caution—and safety protocols—to the wind, he saw a black wolf leaping up at the plastic sheathing of the autopsy chamber. Lantos was inside, brandishing the Stryker saw and screaming for help. The plastic was already shredded in strips, but the wolf had not yet been able to claw its way through.
Slater’s eyes searched the lab for any kind of weapon, but all he saw were microscopes and vials and glass tanks of agitated white mice.
The wolf swiped at the plastic again, ripping another strip loose, then yanking at it with its jaws.