Passage Graves (6 page)

Chapter 12

SUNDAY 6:30 p.m.

Stenness, Orkney Island,
Scotland

Thatcher flinched as the airlock door slid shut behind her. She faced the man crouched in the corner and took a few steps forward.

Unshaven, staring blankly at the floor, the survivor
looked like he’d been to hell and back. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair disheveled.

How could one man survive?

She looked closely at his face, his ears and neck. There were no signs of trauma. At least no physical trauma, nothing related to subsonic noise. His knee was bandaged. He had stitches on his cheek. From what she understood, these were all injuries sustained after the fact.

“David Hyden?” Her voice sounded
inhuman through the hazardous materials suit.

He didn’t move
. He didn’t even blink.

She
squatted down, trying to meet his eyes. The body gear was too bulky.

“This is crap
,” she said. Sliding open the neckline lock, she pulled the helmet off her head.

Behind her, t
he NCEC pathologist pounded on the glass door.

Thatcher ignored him and brushed her hair away from her f
ace. “Dr. Hyden?” This time she met his eyes. “A simple hello will do.”

“‘Hello.
’” David’s monotone complemented his reclusive glare.

“I’m Dr. Brynne Thatcher,
a NATO Researcher and pathologist.” She opened his file. “I read through your report of the Stenness events. I can’t say it was entirely helpful.”

“I told you people everything I know,” he murmured. “I’m not sick. I’m not going to get sick.”

“That’s the problem.” She studied his body again for any evidence of exposure—not a single burst capillary. “You’re the anomaly.”

“I need to get back to Aberdeen
,” he said. “My class meets Monday.”

“That’s a bit unimportant, don’t you think? Especially after such an interesting turn of events?”

“Interesting?” He didn’t appreciate her choice of words.

“I find the facts rather remarkable.” She shuffled through his paperwork. “One, Stenness was a healthy, very much alive town. Two, it was visited by you. And three, every man, woman, and child is now dead—except fo
r you. You’re a scientist, Dr. Hyden. What’s the catalyst here?”

David stared down at the floor. “I didn’t kill them, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Explain to me why you’re the only survivor?”

He didn’t respond.

She looked back at the door. She knew Hummer was listening. “Can you describe your location last night?”

“McLeod’s Bed’n’Breakfast. On the north end of town.”

“Where was your room in relation to the town?”

David looked up at her with
mild interest. “I was on the second floor, facing east.”

“
Was anyone with you?”

“
Marta. Her room was directly below mine. She was in bed…when I found her.”

“Y
ou were alone upstairs?”

“No.”

During the debriefing, the pathologist insisted David had been alone. “There was someone else in your room?” she asked.

“My dog
,” he said. “But you’d know that if you’d actually read the report.”

Thatcher opened his file and found a photograph of the deceased dog. She
chewed on her bottom lip. She had hoped the location of his room might somehow explain why he was unaffected by the noise. Perhaps something had deflected the low frequency sound waves. But if the dog died in the same room…?

David
surviving was unexplainable.

She shut the file.

Although puzzling, he was far from contagious. All the other evidence pointed directly at Sonja. Hummer had no doubt. From this point on, David’s presence would only impede their investigation.

She s
tood up. “Well, I appreciate your cooperation. I’ll be in contact if I need to question you any further. Please don’t leave the country without authorization.”

David looked up
at her, blinking in disbelief.

Thatche
r offered him a warm smile. “I’ve given you a clean bill of health. Go back to Aberdeen, doctor.”

David’s
knees made a cracking noise as he got up. He cringed from the pain and hobbled behind her to the airlock door.

“I’d like to have my dog,” he
said.

“I’m sorry?” Thatcher was
caught off guard by the request.

“Darwin. I’d like to take her with me. Bury her.”

She couldn’t help but pity him. Imagine what he’d been through, waking up to find everyone dead. “I wish I could help you,” she said, “but everything has to stay in the area. That’s protocol.”

The first airlock door slid open and they stepped inside. Fans kicked on
overhead, cleansing them of microbes and bacteria.

“Can I ask what you were doing in Stenness?” she asked.

“Studying Maeshowe,” he spoke softly.

She shook her head, unfamiliar with the term.

“It’s a passage grave, an ancient megalithic ruin—like Stonehenge. But Maeshowe is a mound.”

“Hyden?” She knew she recognized the name
. “I read your work on the Dead Sea Scrolls. How they may prove the existence of a resurrected Christ.”

“That
was my father.” David frowned. “I research legitimate subjects.”

She tried to l
oosen him with a smile. “You don’t find biblical archeology interesting?”

“No.”

The fans clicked off and the doors slid open. Hummer and Bailey were waiting outside, standing in the underground corridor that led to the elevator. The last NCEC convoy had left the area, so everyone had removed their hazmat gear.

“Show him out, Golke,” Hummer said to Bailey.

Bailey scowled. He wouldn’t dare correct the Director on his name. He steered David toward the elevator.

David
turned back. “Dr. Thatcher, how do you know it wasn’t me who killed these people?”

“I
don’t…” She wished she could give him peace of mind. Something to calm survivor’s guilt. Especially since this was probably her team’s fault. “I’m sorry.”

The elevator door shut and ascended to
ward the surface.

Before the lift disappeared, Hummer
was barking orders. “Reexamine the bodies. I want to know how the hell we did this.”

Chapter 13

SUNDAY 7:15 p.m.

Orkney Island, Scotland

David drove
away from Stenness as fast as he could, trying to ignore the void in Darwin’s empty seat. The Jeep’s top cover had been removed during the investigation. He didn’t bother to replace it, even if it meant being exposed to the elements.

Stinging raindrops pricked his face. The smell of wet grass and decomposing sheep was thick in the air.
Rain clouds sank over the grasslands blending into gray fog too dense to rise above the atmosphere. It hovered over the village like a plume of pollution, trapping the heavy, unbearable stench that seemed imprinted inside his nose as a rancid, inescapable memory.

The
Jeep powered up the incline that led out of the valley.

Even though the dead were
far behind, he could smell them, feel them, and hear their silence. He stared at his rearview mirror until finally, the rain clouds submerged Stenness, and the barrage of white tents disappeared.

The world was
too quiet.

He fumbled with the radio, finding static and then the voices of BBC news. “…Scottish village of Stenness is in a state of disaster after an unknown biological toxin took the lives of 47 civilian—”

He flipped off the radio, his hands trembling.

They
didn’t even have the story right. There was no biological toxin. There was only him. And he was cause enough. Everyone he cared about died. Images of death bombarded his mind—Darwin, Marta, the young neighbor girl—three more lifeless faces joining the others who made his throat crack and his chest heave.

He
glanced at the rearview mirror again and was startled to see who stared back at him. It was a dead man, a ghost, comatose with empty, soulless eyes. Himself, the lone survivor. He envisioned the revolver back in his Aberdeen apartment, tucked under a phonebook in his kitchen junk drawer. Its black rubber grip stretched taut over the metal stock waiting for a tight embrace. The click of the hammer sounded in his mind. The barrel’s sultry eye stared back at him, promising a smoky kiss. Could that kill the lone survivor?

W
ould the paramedics shake their heads as they hauled his body away? Like the emergency crew who found him in Stenness, would they say, “God, what horror!”

A moan consumed him.

Rain pounded his face.

He gritted his teeth.
A monster of crystallized emotion was imprisoned deep within him. Stress had weakened the bars of its cage. Self-control was simply mind over matter—the matter being nothing more than chemical responses, motor neurons firing in his brain. He could control this. He could feel nothing.

Chapter 14

SUNDAY 9:48 p.m.

Stenness, Orkney Island,
Scotland

Florescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a bluish hue over Darwin. Thatcher snapped on rubber gloves and adjusted her goggles. She bit her lip and made the initial Y-incision, cutting carefully across the shoulders to the mid-chest and then down the abdominal region. The scalpel sliced easily through the chilled skin, making a clean cut. She placed the tool on the medical tray and reached for the rib cutters, noticing Hummer outside the Plexiglas partition with Lee.

Brilliant, an audience
.

She severed the cartilage be
tween the ribs and breastbone. Exerting too much pressure, she accidentally sliced through to the chest cavity. “Sorry,” she whispered to the dog. She was hoping to cause as little damage as possible so David could get her back for burial.

Outside
the room, Hummer folded his arms. His stoicism in the face of all this devastation was unnerving. He was certain this was their fault. Yet he seemed impervious to any guilt. In her gut, she knew better. After spending most of her teen years with him, she learned the only way he expressed emotion was by severe acid reflux. Judging by his subtle grimace, the Stenness situation was causing the worst heartburn known to mankind.

Thatcher steadie
d her hand and removed the rib section to examine the chest organs. Thousands of tiny hemorrhages plagued the tissue.

“
There are microlesions on the lungs and heart,” she spoke into the voice recorder. Bending over Darwin’s head, she examined her ears with an otoscope. Dried blood obstructed her view of the tiny, fragile inner organs. Thatcher removed the coagulation with tweezers and looked back inside the ear. “Severe perforation of the tympanic membrane and blood drainage throughout the auditory canal.”

The shattered remains of the middle-ear bones hung
loosely out of place behind the ruptured tissue. “Mid-ear bones are fractured. The cochlea is a battered mess.”

Organ microlesions, traumatized ear bones. That was two for three. The possibility of vindicating her team and making sense out of one man surviving looked grim. She c
ut an incision across the head and then opened the skull vault with a vibrating saw. She removed the cartilage, unveiling the brain.

Taking a tiny cross-section of the tissue, she placed the sample on a glass slide, clipped it under the microscope, and looked through the ocular piece.

It looked exactly like the birds.

“The brain cross section shows cavitation bubbles, severe inflammation, nerve irritation, and necrosis within the neuralgia cells.”

She slumped in a chair and rubbed her stinging eyes.

“Let’s be sure,” she whispered to herself.

Taking in a deep breath, she looked back into the microscope eyepiece and removed all doubt.

“I can’t explain why a d
og would die from subsonic noise in the same location where her owner survived,” she recorded, “but one thing is certain, cause of death is subsonic sound.”

Hummer faced her through the glass and raised his CB radio to his mouth. There was no need to hea
r her diagnosis, he had read the answer on her face.

Chapter 15

SUNDAY 10:43 p.m.

St. John’s Cathedral

Bathwick, England

Ian lifted the pewter candle snuff and dowsed another flame, darkening the library. The storm had caused a localized power outage, so St. John’s corridors and stairwells were lit with oil lamps instead of bulbs. The monastery was silent. All of the hallways were deserted. The rectory felt more like a dungeon prison than a place of worship.

As he dowsed the last oil lamp along the stairwell,
night enveloped him, encroaching upon everything but his candle. Ian shivered and pulled his cassock tighter around his frame. It didn’t help. The cold came from within.

There was no sleeping after his
meeting with Javan. A switch had turned on in his mind, an obsession was triggered. He felt ashamed that he couldn’t control it. The images and sensations shown to him of fire and starvation became a constant barrage against his thoughts. The experience consumed him. It was all he could think about. Most of what was said had been reduced to a jumble of senseless words, but these phrases kept him up all night.

Come…

Ian raised his light higher in the air. Something was odd and out of place. A whisper had formed near the back of his mind, but the voice did not belong to him.

Deformed by
the candlelight, sculptures of saints lining the walls appeared demonic. They had nebulous, blank expressions, flattened two-dimensional eyes vacant of pupils, teeth like fangs and pointy chins that dripped with shadow.

Ian stopped. He
stood very still.

Had he heard something?
It wasn’t his imagination.

His heart beat loudly in his ears. He clenched his jaw.

After everything he’d seen the night before… His mind was capable of conjuring anything. His subconscious couldn’t be trusted.

Ian
started forward.

The shadows on the statues seemed to be
nd toward the corner of the stairwell ahead.

“Who’s there?” he called out
. He wasn’t alone. He could sense it.

Goosebumps raised across his flesh.

Something flitted across the stairwell behind him. Certainly a bird or rat, some living creature trapped inside the building.

But
he heard it again, the unmistakable sound of bare feet shuffling across the stone floor. He stretched his light out toward the darkness and gripped the candle snuff like a weapon.

“Father Tracy?” Ian wiped sweat from his forehead.

He felt a breeze from the window an arm’s length away. The stairwell windows didn’t open. He moved the flame beside the glass. The stained glass was smashed inward. The artwork that had featured Jesus Christ’s condescension was a mangled monstrosity of iron frame and shards of broken, beveled glass. Disfigured panes melted inward, the pieces at the center altogether gone. The Lord’s form was missing. The edges of His exuding light were stretched into spider web wisps of prickly glass. God had been extracted, melted into oblivion.

The chill was so ta
ngible it spread outward from Ian’s body. He ran up the stairs.

A snarl rever
berated off the walls. It was the congested rattle of infected lungs.

Ian
’s candle flickered out. He tripped on one of the steps and caught himself along the wall. All he could hear was his pounding heart.

He searched through his cassock.

Somewhere there was a match. He pulled a stick from his pocket and struck it against the wall. He lowered the flame over the wick.

I
nches from his candle glowed two luminescent eyes.

The
captive had escaped. The hideous being was crouched on the floor in front of Ian as if ready to pounce.

“
Sheh-ole’ paw-gash
.”

Ian could see the old man’s
tongue curl behind rotted teeth. The captive repeated, “
Sheh-ole’ paw-gash
.”

The match
dropped to the floor.

The only light was the
old man’s eyes. Fluorescent jade, like two devilish orbs of swirling chaos, his eyes smothered warmth. Fire burst up from the floor, crackling around Ian. The vision replayed in Ian’s mind—his body black, shriveled and desiccated, the longing and hunger. The old man’s breath was cold on Ian’s face. The stench of rotted flesh was overwhelming.

Pain exploded
through Ian’s palm as the old man grabbed his hand. Agony zigzagged across his arm and then up and down his spine. Sparks burst over his eyes, covering the vision with popping blisters. Coldness whipped around his body and shouted in his ears.

Come!

The old man hissed.

Ian fell to the floor
.

T
he man let go of Ian’s hand and the vision vanished. The flames receded into the walls.

Ian could
hardly breathe. His heart slowed to its natural rhythm and his mind returned to the hallway. There was something wrong with his right hand. With numb fingertips, he dug through his pockets with his left hand for another match. He struck it against the floor.

The stairwell was empty.

There was a biting sting in his injured hand.

Five bloody symbols—
slanted at the edges from the sloped contour of sharp fingernails—were engraved into his flesh.

The demon had left a
message.