And what? Bring her back to life?
Who am I kidding? he thought. That’s Stephen King stuff. Carrie’s gone...forever.
Without warning, he broke into deep, wracking sobs. He hadn’t even felt them coming. Suddenly they were there, convulsing his chest as they ripped free.
A hand touched his shoulder. He fought for control and looked up. The man called Kesev had returned.
“Come, Father Fitzpatrick. I’ll take you home. There are things we must discuss.”
Dan nodded absently. Home...where was that? The rectory? That wasn’t home. Where was home now that Carrie was dead? He didn’t care where he went now, he just knew he didn’t want to stay in this hospital.
He bunched up the neck of the plastic bag and followed Kesev toward the exit.
‡
Manhattan
Dr. Darryl Chin, Second Assistant Medical Examiner for New York City yawned as he pulled on a pair of examination gloves. This is what you get, he supposed, when you’re downline in the pecking order and you live in the East Village: They need somebody quick, they call you.
“Could be a lot worse,” he muttered.
He looked down at the naked female cadaver supine before him on the stainless steel autopsy table, dead-pale skin, breasts caked with blood, dark hair tangled in disarray, jaw slack, dull blue eyes staring lifelessly at the overhead fluorescents. The murdered nun he’d heard about on the news tonight. Young, pretty, and fresh. The fresh part was important. Only a few hours cold. He might get some useful information out of her. Better than some stinking, macerated, crab-nibbled corpse they’d dragged out of the Hudson. And this was a neat chest wound, not some messy gut shot. He’d be through with this one in no time.
If he ever got started.
Where the hell was Lou Ann? She was supposed to assist him tonight. She lived in Queens and had a longer ride, but she should have been here by now. Probably had to put on her face before she came in. Darryl had never seen her without two tons of eye liner and mascara.
Vanity, woman be thy name.
No use in wasting time. He could get started without her. Open and drain the thorax at least. These chest wounds always left the cavity filled with blood.
He probed the entry wound with his little finger. Looked like the work of a 9mm slug. Good shot. Right into the heart. Poor girl probably never knew what hit her.
He reached up and adjusted the voice-activated mike that hung over the table. He gave the date and read off the name of the subject and presumed cause of death from the ID card, then reached for his scalpel.
Time to open her up. Get the major incisions out of the way, drain and measure the volume of blood in the thoracic cavity, and by then Lou Ann would be here and they could start in on the individual organs.
He poked his index finger into the suprasternal notch atop the breast bone, laid the point of the blade against the skin just below the notch, and leaned over the table to make the first long incision down the center of the sternum.
“Please don’t do that.”
A woman’s voice. He looked around. Who—?
Then he looked down. The cadaver’s blue eyes were no longer dull and unfocused. They were bright and moving, looking at him. They blinked.
The scalpel clattered on the metal table as he jumped back.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Please don’t take His name in vain,” the nun said, staring at him as she levered up to a sitting position on the table.
Darryl felt his heart hammering in his chest, heard a roaring in his ears as he backed away.
She’s dead! She’s dead but she’s talking, moving!
She swung her legs over the side of the table and slipped to the floor. Still backing away, Darryl dumbly watched her naked form cross the room like a sleepwalker and pull a white lab coat from a hook on the wall.
Darryl’s heel caught against something on the floor and he fell backward, his arms pinwheeling for balance. He grabbed the edge of a table but his fingers slipped off the shiny surface and he landed on his buttocks. His head snapped back and struck the painted concrete block of the wall.
Darryl tried to call out but found he had no voice. He tried to hold onto consciousness but found it a losing battle.
The last thing he saw before darkness closed in was the dead woman slipping into the lab coat and walking out the door, leaving it open behind her.
‡
Mecca, Saudi Arabia
The sun rises over the Arabian sea and strikes the minarets and domes of Masjid al Haram. The mosque and every open spot around it as well as its central courtyard, home to the Kaaba, are packed with the faithful who have rushed here from all directions. More are on the way, careening from all over the world to protect the holiest place in all of Islam. They have brought their prayer rugs and are on their knees, their foreheads pressed to the ground as they face the Kaaba and pray to Allah to save the Masjid al Haram.
But the minarets and domes and walls dissolve, and the Kaaba too fades away, leaving only the participants in the last Hadj.
IN THE PACIFIC
24o N, 120o W
Reconnaissance flight 705 out of San Diego is buffeted by tornadic winds and blinding torrents as it fights its way toward the center of the huge, mysterious Pacific storm that shows up on satellite photos but not radar. An unclassifiable, logic-defying storm with the combined properties of an Atlantic hurricane, a Pacific typhoon, and a Midwestern supercell. All that can be said of it from orbit photos and fly-by observation is that a towering colossus of violent weather topping out at fifty-thousand feet is crossing the Pacific in the general direction of northern Mexico.
Reconnaissance 705’s mission is to classify it, but right now, hemmed in by roiling clouds and radar that shows clear, calm, open sea ahead of them, they are truly flying blind. The pilot, Captain Harry Densmore, has never experienced anything like this. The barometric readings are in the mid-twenties as he approaches what should be the center of the storm. He wants to turn back but needs to know what’s at the heart of this monstrosity. There’s no eye visible from orbit, but all indications point to an organized center. One look, one reading, and he’ll turn tail and run. This monster hasn’t killed anybody yet but he’s afraid he and his crew might change all that. He’ll count himself lucky if he sees San Diego again.
Just a little farther...
Suddenly the plane is buffeted by a gust that knocks it 45 degrees off line. Metal shrieks in Densmore’s ears and he’s sure she’s going to come apart when suddenly they’re in still air.
“It’s got an eye!” he shouts. “We’re through the eye wall!”
But an eye should be clear. And in an eye this size, blue sky should be visible above. Not here. It’s dark in this eye. Very dark. And raining.
Maybe it’ll clear up ahead.
The copilot calls out the barometric reading: Twenty-three.
“Twenty-
three
? Check that again. That’s got to be wrong!”
Then lightning flashes and Densmore sees something through the rain ahead. Something huge. Something dark. The far side of the eye wall? Maybe this eye isn’t as big as he thought. Maybe—
“Oh, Christ!”
He turns the wheel and kicks the rudder hard, all but standing the plane on its wing-tip as he banks sharply to the left. The shouts of alarm and surprise from his copilot and navigator choke off as they see it too.