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—
Martha figured outthe machine in a couple minutes, did some practice runs, and then built a pile of yellow dirt on top of Callister’s body, three feet high and eight feet wide, all around.
“Best we can do,” Letty told Rocha and Dyer. “I’ll have the cops watch it until we can figure out something permanent.”
“We need to get down to…Lam-ee?…and look at that body,” Rocha said.
“If there is one,” Letty said. “And I think it’s Lay-me.”
Rocha and Dyer took off. Letty, Hawkins, and Cartwright talked to the Santa Fe chief, and Letty made a quick recorded statement for him, taking responsibility for the shooting of Callister. There was some shouting and harsh words—the airport manager warned that an American Airlines plane was coming in, and if the people at the end of the street were not allowed to board the plane, there would be hell to pay.
Letty said, “Read my lips: Fuck American Airlines.”
—
In the end,it was two hours before the three of them got back to the hotel, picked up the second SUV, and made it to Lamy, bringingwith them the full panoply of McDonald’s junk food for Jerry Wright, who had remained on guard at what might be a grave site.
When they arrived, Rocha and Dyer were standing in a hole where the rebar had found soft dirt, and Wright was sitting on the hood of his car, watching them from a respectful distance. When Letty, Hawkins, and Cartwright pulled in, Hawkins gathered up the sack of junk food and carried it over and handed it to him.
He said, “Ah, the breakfast of champions,” and to Cartwright, “I’ve heard about you.”
“I hope it was complimentary.”
“A little scary, and they didn’t mention how gorgeous you are.”
“Keep talking, I can handle it,” Cartwright said.
Letty: “If we could break up the lovefest, Jerry…what happened here?”
“We dug down two feet and hit plastic. We all agreed that’s a bad sign.”
Dyer, thirty feet away, overheard that, turned and said, “It is a sure thing that we’ve got a burial. Of somebody, or something. Or both.”
“Both what?” Hawkins asked.
“Both a body and medical equipment, whatever Scott would have used in his…experiment. We hit something that wentclink.”
—
Dyer and Rochahadn’t sealed themselves into their suits, because it was already getting warm, the suits were stifling, and they hadn’t yet seen anything apparently dangerous.
“Any virus in there is dead,” Rocha explained, adding, “We hope.”
“Gotta be,” Dyer said.
They scraped and shoveled and scooped down another six inches,then had to lengthen the entire hole by a foot, eventually exposing a long wad of plastic in the shape of a huge cigar, or perhaps an insect pupa. The plastic was thick, crinkly, originally translucent but now stained with earth colors, mostly yellow.
When they’d cleared the length of the plastic, Dyer knelt on it, bent over it, and said, “Yeah, it’s a body. I can see an ankle and a blue sock.”
“Now we need the suits,” Rocha said.
Rocha and Dyer got out of the hole, got bottles of water and drank, and then sealed themselves into their isolation suits. Dyer dug around the plastic wrap until it was all clear, then he and Rocha both worked their hands under the body, picked it up and lifted it out of the grave. They laid it clear of the excavated dirt.
Rocha got a kit from their car and they made a series of tiny cuts through the plastic, using a scalpel, and began taking slices of body tissue and placing them in individual sealable glass dishes. Samples were taken from several areas on the exterior of the body, and deep samples were taken from the liver, kidneys, intestines, and lungs with what looked like large syringes. An ordinary battery-operated electric drill was used to open holes in the skull, and brain tissue was sampled. Each opening in the plastic was resealed with antiviral tape. All of the gathered tissue samples were further isolated in metal containers, labeled, and placed in one of the metal boxes.
“On its way to the fort,” Rocha said. She nodded at the still-wrapped body, and asked Letty, “What do we do with that?”
“You’re the experts, but I’d put it back in the grave and cover it up until we can figure out something permanent,” Hawkins said.
