Ken McClure - Wildcard

‘How far in is it?’ asked Laarsen impatiently.

‘Ten centimetres, not more,’ replied the man.

‘That’ll do,’ said Laarsen. ‘Up you come.’

The two men clambered out of the grave and secured the top ends of the cables to the digger’s shovel.

‘As smoothly as you can please, Mr Frost,’ said Inspector Jordan, but there was no way that the hydraulics of the small digger would permit completely smooth movement. There was a sharp intake of breath all round when the casket was jerked off the bottom of the grave. ‘Steady, steady!’ cautioned Jordan as it rose slowly from the grave. ‘Let’s have some help here.’

He put his hands on the lid of the casket to minimise the swing as it cleared the lip of the grave, and Laarsen’s men stepped forward to provide stability at either end. ‘It’s clear,’ said Jordan.

The digger driver took this as his cue to start swinging the casket round with a view to lowering it to the ground beside the grave. Suddenly a jerk in the hydraulics made the cable at the less-secured end slip free, and the casket slipped out of the loop and crashed down on the leg of the man at that end. The snap of bones sounded clearly above the noise of the machinery; as did the scream that followed.

There followed an anxious few minutes, which must have seemed like hours to the injured man, while the cable was once more looped under the casket by nervous helpers. Their fingers turned to thumbs in their haste and unease at having to use the small space between the base of the coffin and the ground, created by its resting on the man’s broken limb. The cable was at last secured and the digger lifted the casket off the trapped leg. Steven tended to him and made him as comfortable as possible while they waited for the ambulance the inspector had called. He could not help but think that this was the last sort of thing any of them wanted at the start of an operation like this. It was going to put everyone on edge.

Laarsen was clearly upset and guilty about his error over the cable’s security. Jordan felt bad about being ultimately responsible for the whole mishap. The digger driver felt guilty about his handling of the controls, and everyone else felt bad by association. There was a general surge of relief when the ambulance arrived and removed the accusing presence of the injured man.

The casket was secured to the digger’s shovel and transported slowly over the ground at a height of only a few inches to the mobile lab, where it was manhandled with some difficulty into the facility. Steven decided not to involve himself in the opening of the casket and removal of the body. Instead, he used the time to walk up and down outside, calming himself and once again running through in his mind what he was going to do.

‘All yours,’ said Laarsen, emerging from the lab. ‘We’ve put her on the table but we didn’t take her out of the bag. Maybe you won’t want to do that, either?’

‘Maybe not,’ agreed Steven. There was no need to have the corpse totally exposed as if for full post-mortem examination. Exposing the chest area should be sufficient, and the less handling of a filovirus-infected body the better. Steven did up the seals on his suit and lowered his hood and visor. Laarsen himself checked him over thoroughly, giving his approval with a tap on the shoulder.

Steven entered the lab through the plastic-walled airlock and sealed himself inside. He was suddenly very aware of the silence. The digger’s engine had stopped and even the generator for the lights could not be heard in the inner compartment. Mary Xavier’s body lay in its sealed bag on the examination table.

Steven removed the seal over the zip and started to undo it. It stuck after the first inch and refused to budge. He cursed as he struggled with it, thinking that this might have been an ill-fated venture from the outset. He recognised the danger of such a negative train of thought and took a moment to compose himself before looking around for some mechanical assistance. He found a pair of Spencer Wells forceps and slipped them through the loop on the zip so that he could apply strong downward pressure with both hands. He managed to move the zip down a few more inches but it was a struggle; and so it continued until it was at last fully open. Inside his helmet his breathing sounded as though he was running a marathon.

Steven checked his gloves and cuffs yet again, making sure no cuts had arisen during the struggle with the zip, then donned the chain-mail gauntlet before opening the bag to expose the body. The weather had been cold so decomposition was minimal but the blue/grey skin was distended around the chest area, which started alarm bells ringing in his head. It was almost certainly due to an accumulation of body gases which had failed to dissipate. They would escape when he made the first incision, bringing with them a cloud of filovirus particles.

‘Shit,’ he murmured, wondering what to do. He could feel the pulse beating in his temples as he sought inspiration. He removed the chain-mail gauntlet and looked through the equipment cupboards. What he found there sparked off an idea of how to divert the gases. He rigged up a two-way plastic syringe to a length of clear plastic tubing, one end of which he immersed in a beaker full of Virkon disinfectant. He fitted a large-bore needle to the barrel of the syringe and checked all the joints. The plan was to insert the needle into Mary Xavier’s chest cavity and release the gas. It would flow through the tubing into the disinfectant, which would kill the virus but allow the gas to bubble to the surface.

There was a moment when Steven experienced for the first time in his life what he thought afterwards must have been stage fright. He found himself unable to do anything but stand there motionless for a few moments. He was imagining what would happen if the condition of Sister Mary’s skin turned out to be so bad that the needle had the same effect as on an inflated balloon.

The seconds passed until, calling on every reserve of courage he could muster, he pushed the needle into the grey skin. To his enormous relief, the puncture site held its integrity and the disinfectant in the beaker started to bubble violently as the escaping gas passed through it. For an awful moment he thought the beaker might up-end and spill over, allowing the gas to escape directly into the atmosphere, but, as he stared at the shuddering beaker, the flow lessened and eventually the bubbles stopped coming.

He removed the needle, put the chain-mail gauntlet back on and selected a suitable knife for the first incision. He murmured an apology to Sister Mary as he opened her up, and got on with the business of removing her heart without further incident. When he had dissected out the mitral valve and it was safely stored in the high-security container, he sewed up the chest incision with large stitches and sluiced disinfectant liberally over the area before re-zipping the bag. He had just as much trouble with the zip as before and was sweating with the effort before the seal was complete and he could wipe down the outside of the bag with yet more disinfectant. He placed all the instruments and equipment he had used in steel security containers for autoclave sterilisation later, and proceeded to sluice down the entire lab.

One of Laarsen’s men was waiting for him when he emerged from the lab, and he stood still while the man sprayed his suit with disinfectant. When he’d finished, Steven removed his hood and visor and took deep breaths of the night air. It didn’t matter that it was cold and damp. It tasted oh so sweet.

‘How did it go?’ asked Laarsen.

‘I got it,’ said Steven.

‘Can we put her back?’ asked Jordon.

Steven nodded and gave a simple, ‘Yes.’ He didn’t feel communicative. He was no longer running on adrenalin and all he could think about was writing to Jenny. He wanted to tell her that he was thinking about her and that he hoped she would have a lovely Christmas.