“What would you like me to do?” I asked Larke.
“Earl has the morgue under control. Go work recovery. But once transport starts I'll need you here.”
Back at the site, I went directly to a decontamination trailer and donned mask, gloves, and jumpsuit. Looking more like a spaceman than an anthropologist, I nodded to the guard, circled the barricade, and crossed to the temporary morgue for an update.
The exact location of every flagged item was being entered into a CAD-type program using technology called Total Station. The position of airplane parts, personal effects, and human remains would later be plotted onto virtual grids and printed out as hard copy. Since the technique was far quicker and less labor-intensive than the traditional system of mapping with strings and grids, the removal of remains had already begun. I headed out across the debris field.
The sun was arcing toward the tree line, and delicate shadows spiderwebbed the carnage. Klieg lights had been set up, and the smell of putrefaction had strengthened. Otherwise, little had changed in the time I'd been gone.
For the next three hours I assisted my colleagues in tagging, photographing, and packaging what was left of the passengers of Air TransSouth 228. Complete corpses, limbs, and torsos went into large body bags, fragments into small ones. The bags were then hauled uphill and placed on racks in refrigerated trailers.
The temperature was warm, and I perspired inside my suit and gloves. Flies swarmed, attracted by the rotting flesh. Several times I had to fight nausea as I scraped up entrails or brain tissue. Eventually, my nose and mind numbed. I didn't notice when the sky went red and the lights clicked on.
Then I came to the girl. She lay face up, legs bent backward in the middle of her shins. Her features had been gnawed, and the exposed bone glowed crimson in the sunset.
I straightened, wrapped my arms around my middle, and drew several steadying breaths. In, out. In, out.
Dear God. Wasn't a thirty-thousand-foot plunge enough? Must creatures degrade what remained?
These children had danced, played tennis, ridden the roller coaster, checked their e-mail. They represented the dreams of their parents. But no longer. Now they would be framed photos resting on closed caskets.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Time for a break, Tempe.”
Earl Bliss's eyes peered at me from the slit between his mask and cap.
“I'm fine.”
“Take a break. That's an order.”
“O.K.”
“At least an hour.” Halfway to the NTSB command center I stopped, dreading the chaos I knew I'd find. I needed serenity. Life. Birds singing, squirrels chasing, and air that was free of the smell of death. I reversed direction and walked toward the woods.
Skirting the edge of the debris field, I spotted a break in the trees and remembered that Larke and the lieutenant governor had appeared at that point, coming from their helicopter. Up close, I could see the route they had probably taken. Perhaps a trail or streambed at one time, it was now a meandering, treeless passage littered with rocks and bordered by scrub. Stripping off mask and gloves, I headed into the forest.
As I moved deeper into the trees the organized hubbub around the wreckage receded, and forest sounds took over. Thirty yards in, I climbed onto a fallen sourwood, drew my feet to my bum, and gazed up at the sky. Yellow and rose now streaked the red as nightfall crawled toward the horizon. It would soon be dark. I couldn't stay long.
I let my brain cells pick their topic.
The girl with the ravaged face.
No. New category.
The cells chose living people.
Katy. My daughter was over twenty now, moving off on a life of her own. It was what I wanted, of course, but the severing of ties was hard. The child Katy had passed through my life and disappeared. I was now meeting the young woman Katy, and liking her very much.
But where is she? the cells asked.
Next.
Pete. We were better friends separated than we'd ever been married. On occasion, he actually talked to me and listened to me. Should I ask for a divorce and move on, or roll with the status quo?
The cells had no answer.
Andrew Ryan. I'd been thinking of him a lot lately. Ryan was a homicide detective with the provincial police in Montreal. Though we'd known each other for nearly a decade, it was only last year that I'd agreed to date him.
Date. I had my usual cringe reaction. There had to be a better term for singles over forty.
The cells had no suggestion.
Nomenclature aside, Ryan and I had never pulled it off. Before our first official social outing, he had gone undercover, and I hadn't seen him in months. At times like this, I missed him intensely.
I heard rustling in the underbrush and held my breath to listen. The woods were quiet. Seconds later I heard it again, this time on my other side. The movement sounded too large for a rabbit or squirrel.
The brain cells sounded a low-level alarm.
Thinking perhaps Earl had followed me, I stood up and looked around. I was alone.
For a full minute nothing moved, then the rhododendron to my right jiggled, and I heard a low growl. I whirled but saw only leaves and bushes. Eyes probing into the shrubbery, I slipped off the log and planted my feet.
Moments later there was another growl, followed by a highpitched keening.
The cells called in the limbic guys, and adrenaline shot to every part of my body.
Slowly, I squatted and reached for a rock. Hearing movement behind me, I pivoted in that direction.
My eyes met other eyes, black and gleaming. Lips curled back over teeth pale and slick in the deepening twilight. Between the teeth, something horrifyingly familiar.
A foot.
The cells struggled for meaning.
The teeth were embedded in a human foot.
The cells linked to recently stored memories. A mangled face. A deputy's comment.
Oh, God! A wolf? I was unarmed. What to do? Threaten?
The animal stared at me, its body feral and emaciated.
Run?
No. I had to get the foot. It belonged to a person. A person with family and friends. I wouldn't abandon it to scavengers.
Then a second wolf emerged and positioned itself behind the first, teeth bared, saliva darkening the fur around its mouth. It snarled and the lips quivered. Slowly, I stood and raised the rock.
“Back!”
Both animals halted, and the first wolf dropped the foot. Sniffing the air, the ground, the air again, it lowered its head, raised its tail, took a step in my direction, then sidled away a few feet and stopped, motionless and watching. The other wolf followed. Were they uncertain or did they have a plan? I started to retreat, heard a snap, and turned to see three more animals at my back. They appeared to be slowly circling.
“Stop!”
I screamed and threw the rock, catching the closest animal near its eye. He yelped and twisted, scampering backward. The others froze for a moment, then resumed circling.
Placing my back to the fallen tree, I twisted a branch from side to side, trying to detach it.
The circle was getting smaller. I could hear their panting, smell their bodies. One of the group took a step inside the circle, then another, flicking its tail up, down. It stood staring, soundless.
The branch broke, and at the sound the wolf jumped back, then stood again and stared.
Grasping my branch like a baseball bat, I screamed, “Beat it, you scavengers. Get out of here,” and lunged at the lead wolf, swinging my club.
The wolf easily jumped out of the way, retreated a few feet, then resumed circling and snarling. As I was readying my lungs for the loudest yell that had ever escaped them, someone beat me to it.
“Scram, you goddamn fur balls. Yo! Haul ass!”