David Morrell - The Totem

The start of treatment didn't calm his sorrow either. He was thinking of the boy lying on the table in the autopsy room, of how he should have had the foresight not to give him the sedative. Those parents. How could he absolve himself? He could still hear the mother shrieking. Well, he meant to find out everything he could about this thing. When he was finished, he would know this virus more than any other he had ever worked on. He had once been famous as an expert in pathology. So now he would discover just how much an expert he could be. That's right. You think you know so much. Get moving. Now's the time to prove it.

So he pulled his pants up, buckled them, and thinking of the tests he would perform, he turned and started from his office. Owens would be here soon with the dog's brain to compare what he had found with what the medical examiner would find inside the boy downstairs. Meanwhile, he himself would use the simple test for Negri bodies. He would also use a more elaborate test in which a brain smear was treated with fluorescent antirabies serum and examined underneath an ultraviolet microscope. To watch the symptoms of the virus, he'd inject a half dozen newborn mice with portions of the boy's brain. He would also want a picture of the virus using the electron microscope. Whatever this thing was, he meant to have a look at it, and when he opened that body, he would understand why the paralysis occurred so quickly, why it worsened with sedation.

As he walked along the corridor, he saw the nurses staring at him. Word had gotten around, all right, and fast as only people in a hospital could spread it. They were looking at a man whose error had been fatal to a patient. Then he told himself to get control. They maybe were just frightened by a thing they didn't understand. Or maybe they were startled by the grim way he was walking. Well, he didn't plan to ask them, and if they knew what was good for them, they'd stay away from him.

He reached the door down to the basement. He thought of Slaughter who would need injections, and the mother and the man who had been bitten, and the man who owned the dog. There were too many details he had not attended to. What was more, he needed sleep. And food, he hadn't eaten since this morning. Well, he would do this and take care of everything. With Owens here to help him, he could find the time to call those people, get them down here for their shots. But he knew what he really wanted-to learn what had killed this boy.

The medical examiner reached the bottom of the steps and went through to the corridor. He came to the far end of the hallway and entered the morgue. In the anteroom, he washed his hands and put on a lab coat, a cap, a mask, and rubber gloves. Just to be exact and avoid contaminating his samples, he even stepped inside protective coverings for his shoes, and then with nothing further to detain him, he pushed through the door and he was in the autopsy room.

Green tile on the walls reflected the glare of fluorescent lights in the ceiling. A counter with steel sinks and trays of instruments was flanked by three tables, each with gutters and a drain for blood. The tables were arranged sideways as he faced them, one behind the other, and the third was where his eyes were focused, on that tiny lump beneath the sheet. He walked with slow determination toward it, breathing through the clinging vapor that collected on the inside of his face mask. Then he paused and gently pulled the sheet back, staring at the naked body on the table. So small, so battered, all those bruises from the fury it had been through. There was caked blood on the lips which swollen, slightly parted, showed some damage to the front teeth. But these details weren't important. Even with them, the boy was striking. Blond, angelic, innocent. This was the first time that the medical examiner had worked on someone he'd observed in life, the first time he had done this to a patient. But then that was just the point. He never had a patient. That was why he'd become a medical examiner-to keep these feelings of regret away from him, to shun these awful obligations to the memory of the living. Well, he'd brought this on himself. He had become responsible, and he paused to eliminate emotion before reaching for the scalpel that he would use to peel the hair away. He took a breath and didn't want to do this, but he leaned close to select his point of contact while the eyes flickered suddenly below him and then stared at him, but they were purged of any innocence, as old and stark as any eyes he'd seen, and they kept staring. When the boy's hand came up, the room appeared to swivel, and his own hand to his mouth beneath his face mask, the medical examiner stumbled backward, screaming.

Marge had stayed on duty at the police station until everything was finished at the mansion. There was nothing she could do up there to help, but she could free a man from night shift on the radio while he went up to lend a hand, and Slaughter needed every officer in town. So she had gotten the news in bits and pieces from the radio, and when she'd found out what at last had happened, she had done her best to keep from crying. Slaughter didn't need the people he depended on to break down when he most required them. Marge couldn't help it, though, and she had sat there, wiping at her tears, relaying messages. She knew the mother and the father. She had gone to school with older sisters in the mother's family. She had known this woman since the woman was a baby. Why, the woman lived just two blocks down from Marge's house, and Marge had often gone to visit, to see the boy, to bring him presents. Now the boy was dead, and partly out of sympathy for what the parents must be feeling, partly out of sorrow for the boy, she wept. But she did her job, and when the man she had relieved came back to resume his shift, she tried to hide that she'd been crying. All the same, the man had noticed, and he sat with her a while until he felt that she could drive. "You need a little sleep is all," he told her, but they both knew that it wouldn't be that easy. There were many people now who wouldn't get much sleep tonight, and she had thanked him, walking to her car. He'd asked if he should walk outside with her, but she had thought about the radio, with no one to attend to it, and she had told him that he really didn't have to. Anyhow, from five years of work with Slaughter, she had learned the value of control, and she was certain she'd be fine.

So she had gone out to her car and driven from the parking lot. Almost midnight on a Saturday. She normally would have expected lots of movement in the streets, especially outside the bars, young trail hands come in for a weekend's fun, but she was not surprised when she saw little action. A few cars and pickup trucks, a couple of men who stood outside a bar and sipped from beer cans. But in contrast with a normal weekend, this was more like a quiet Tuesday, and she wondered if the word had spread, or if ranchers, losing stock, had stayed home watching for some trouble with the cattle. But no matter what the reason, things were quiet, and that bothered her. As she drove through the outskirts, she saw lots of houselights on, and that was hardly normal either. She wished that she'd had the chance to talk to Slaughter, but he'd been so busy, and she didn't want to stay at home alone, so she drove past her house, went two more blocks, and if there were lights on, she meant to go in and console the mother and the father There were lights on for sure, the whole house both in front and back. She saw the plumber's truck, the car before it. Both the mother and the father must be home then, and she parked her car, wondering if she would be intruding. Well, she'd come this far, and after all it was her duty, so she got out, locked her car, and started up the sidewalk. She could hear the crickets screeching. She was peering toward the lights in all the windows, wondering if anybody else had come to visit, when she heard the voices. Loud: two men it seemed, and they were shouting. Then they were screaming. Marge was paralyzed. The cool night air was still, the crickets silent now, as someone ran out onto the porch as if for help, a man she once had met from two doors down, and he was staring at her. "Jesus, she's gone crazy."