Half-Off Ragnarok
Page 44

“I noticed those during the initial examination,” I said, moving to stand beside her. From here, we had a perfect angle on the wound: two messy punctures, each a little less than five millimeters in diameter, surrounded by a thin ring of petrified flesh followed by a thick ring of bruised and damaged tissue. The marks were spaced about as far apart as a human’s canine teeth, although whatever made them was clearly longer and thinner than a human tooth. I looked at them for a long moment, frowning. Finally, without moving, I said, “Put the table down now, Grandpa. We need to get started.”
“What did she find, Alex?” asked my grandmother.
“Those puncture wounds are petrifying.”
The table hit the floor with a “thump,” and Grandpa frowned at me across the body. “Cockatrice don’t inject venom into their prey.”
“No,” I said. “They don’t.” But lesser gorgons did. So did Pliny’s gorgons. Oh, hell, Dee, I thought. What did your people do?
Grandma opened the autopsy kit as the rest of us moved to put our smocks and gloves on. And then, with no further discussion, we got to work.
As dates go, “come join me and my family in dismantling the man who used to live next door” ranked high in memorability, and low in normalcy. Shelby proved to be as well-trained as she’d claimed to be, and didn’t even wince when my grandfather used the rib spreaders to crack Mr. O’Malley’s chest, revealing the half-petrified surface of his heart. The arteries connecting it to the rest of his body were an equal mix of flesh and stone, striated almost like the bands of fat in bacon. Cutting it loose would have been a difficult, time-consuming process, and so we didn’t bother. Instead, we simply took samples from the heart tissue and the equally damaged lung tissue, placing them in sealed vials for later study.
Since we already had cause of death—petrifaction—we were able to skip several of the standard autopsy steps, such as weighing the individual organs and examining the contents of Mr. O’Malley’s stomach. Grandpa did make some disparaging comments about wasting good organs, and Shelby somehow managed to keep herself from asking for details about how he would have used them. It was almost peaceful by the time we were ready to devote more attention to the puncture marks behind Mr. O’Malley’s knee.
The ring of stone around the wounds had expanded during our examination. I frowned as I uncapped a venom extraction syringe and fitted it over the first puncture wound. Shelby frowned too, catching my expression.
“What’s wrong now?” she asked.
“The wounds imply a venom-based petrifactor, but the progression in the eyes, throat, and internal organs implies a glance-based petrifactor,” I said, pulling back the plunger. The suction this created would pull any remaining venom from the wound, allowing me to analyze it at my leisure. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Not unless you’ve got one of each, like a sine and a cosine,” said a dreamy voice from the doorway. We all turned to see Sarah standing there, one hand grasping the doorframe, the other pushing her hair out of her eyes. “I woke up and I didn’t know who I was, so I came down here so I could find me.”
“Angie . . .” said Grandpa.
“I’m on it.” Grandma set down the pan she’d been holding and shucked off her gloves, dropping them onto the counter before she rushed to put an arm around Sarah’s shoulders. “Come on, sweetheart. You need to get back to bed.”
“Will you tell me a bedtime equation?”
“Sure, honey. Sure.” Then they were gone, allowing the kitchen door to swing closed behind them. I sighed. Shelby turned to look at me.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“So are the rest of us,” I said, and moved the venom extraction syringe to the other puncture. “I’ll compare these wounds to the field guide after we dispose of the remains.”
“Right—body disposal.” Shelby looked briefly unsure. “How were we going to manage that, exactly?”
Despite my distress over Sarah, and the whole situation, I smiled.
Breaking into the zoo after hours was surprisingly easy: I had a key card, and there were no guards on duty this late at night. The security camera next to the south employee gate had been broken for months, and so there wouldn’t even be a tape to destroy. Grandpa carried the plastic garbage bag of what had been Mr. O’Malley, before his body met a bone saw and a deadline. Shelby followed him, and Grandma brought up the rear, having finally talked Sarah into going back to bed. We’d need her if anyone found us before we were finished.
Sometimes it’s a little depressing to realize how simple it is to make a person disappear. I tried not to dwell on that as we walked across the deserted zoo to the reptile house. I watched the bushes the whole way, searching for a sign that the cockatrice had been transported back to its original stomping grounds.
I didn’t see anything.
Inside the reptile house, the nocturnal animals were wide awake, slithering and skittering around their enclosures . . . and then there was Crunchy, who hung as still and patient as a stone in his tank, waiting to be rewarded for his persistence. I pulled out the stepladder and positioned it in front of the glass, climbing up to the top step. Once I was stable, I unlocked the panel that kept foolish kids from going for a swim, pushing it off to the side. Then I held out my hand.
“Give me a leg,” I said.
If Crunchy was surprised by this sudden manna from heaven, he didn’t show it. His neck lashed out as the leg drifted by, and with dismaying speed, what had been a piece of a human body was nothing but a thin red cloud in the water. In a few seconds, even that was gone. I held out my hand again. Grandpa passed me the next piece of Mr. O’Malley. Bit by bit, we fed the old man into the tank, until there was nothing left but a bloody plastic bag, which my grandfather solemnly folded and tucked into his coat.
“Let’s go home,” said my grandmother, sounding subdued.
“Alex—” began Shelby.
“Tomorrow, all right?” I locked the panel over Crunchy’s tank before climbing down from the stepstool and turning to look at her. She was beautiful in the reddish light of the heat lamps on the reptile enclosures. She was dangerous.
I needed to get her the hell away from my family.
“Promise?” she asked.
“I promise,” I said wearily. “Now come on. We’ll drive you back to your car.”