Empire's End

Seventeen / Autopsy

“It shouldn’t have happened,” Killian said, pale-faced, as she stood with the others in a hospital corridor.

A door marked MORGUE opened, and Casey stuck his head out. “Voorhees?”

“Why me?” Voorhees asked as he followed Casey through the door.

“Because you saw her better than anybody else.” Except Blake went unsaid.

Manning’s headless body was strapped to a table in a brightly-lit room. A thin man with a crooked smile stood over her, pulling on latex gloves. “I’m Doctor Zane,” the man said. “Please direct any questions you may have to me, and I’ll ask the deceased.”

Voorhees let that one go without comment and stood silent while the doctor cut away the twitching subject’s garments. Laying them open, Zane began prodding Manning’s flesh with his fingertips, looking for the bite.

“Can you tell us how long she’d been infected?” Casey asked. Zane shook his head. “Infection period always varies. Still don’t know why. You know what they say, though, about spiritual constitution. ‘The flesh is willing if the spirit is weak.’”

“Do you really believe that?” Voorhees asked.

“It’d make perfect sense,” Zane replied, “if I believed in the spirit to begin with. But since I don’t, no. That’s a load of crap.”

One at a time, he loosened the restraints of Manning’s limbs and lifted them for examination. “The real question is, if she’d been infected for long, why hadn’t she told anyone?”

“Simple. She didn’t want to be sealed away in quarantine to die.”

“Dead is dead,” Zane muttered. “I don’t understand people.”

“She wanted to settle her affairs,” Casey suggested. “Or maybe she was just hoping she wouldn’t turn. The infected aren’t known for their rationality.”

“Well I’ll be.” Zane lifted Manning’s hips slightly and called the P.Os over to his side of the table.

“Fresh puncture to the left lower back,” he M.E. said. “And look at this…”

He produced a pair of tweezers and carefully removed something from the small wound. “Looks like a bone fragment.”

“There were bone fragments all over the place out there,” Casey said.

“But that wound was small, and covered,” said Voorhees. “How did bone get in there?”

“It was lodged in the meat,” Zane said. “My guess is, it’s part of whatever made that wound.”

The room started to spin. Voorhees slammed his hands down on the autopsy table. “Wait.”

He stepped back, taking in the sight of Manning’s nude, twitching body. Then he said, “This was a murder.”

Casey gaped at him. “How?”

Voorhees pointed to the tweezers in Zane’s grip. “That bone is infected. It’s from a rotter.”

“She was stabbed with infected bone?” Casey cried.

“Not bad,” Zane whistled.

“You can’t be serious,” protested Casey. “How would the killer have known that Manning would turn on stage?”

“Maybe that wasn’t the plan,” said Voorhees, “or at least it wasn’t necessary that she turn right there at the amphitheater. She could have turned anytime… at a Senate meeting, for example.”

“Manning was assassinated,” Casey breathed.

“And we were forced to destroy her,” Voorhees said grimly.

“Hey, don’t do that to yourself.” Zane patted Manning’s clutching hand. “Remember — they’re not us. Homo inferis, gentlemen. No longer human.”

He dropped the bone fragment into a bottle. “I’ll test this for infection to confirm your theory. Good luck finding the sicko who did this.”

Voorhees already had a suspect. But he knew that neither Casey nor the Senators would like it.

Maybe this would be their wake-up call. Maybe this would be the end for Meyer.