Page 7

M ost people don’t realise how hard it is to close a dead person’s eyelids. It’s not like in films. They often spring back open.

Closing the eyelids of an Infected is even more disconcerting.

hadn’t squirmed away from a corpse since she was a child—she knew the spirit was gone and the body was just the coat left behind—but there was always something mystifying about the Infected. Almost like there was something other left behind. Something alive, but inhuman. She knew in her heart of hearts it had to be related to the flora.

After finishing bagging and tagging for the day, all she had to do was document the necessary details for the Identified—both naturally occurring deaths and the Infected—and then double-check the list of TBBs . It was a shorter list of bodies to be burned than usual, which was a good thing in the grand scheme of things, but it meant there were only a couple of Unidentified Infected and really needed one to take to Achilles House after last night’s debacle.

It was possible she could take the one she had down in the basement, but it had been out of the chill room for hours already. It wouldn’t be a viable option. In fact, she needed to hurry with her duties because the corpse could very well turn by the time Siobhan and Seamus left for the night.

As quickly as she could accurately manage, finished her duties. At the last second, she decided to document both Unidentified Infected. It was too risky to take one of only two.

Peeking out into the corridor, she heard Seamus’s bone saw in the autopsy room down the way and Siobhan’s voice echoing from the front as she spoke with someone. A widower perhaps, or a lawyer. She couldn’t quite tell.

Cautiously, tiptoed toward the back and took the steps down to the cellar in twos, nearly tripping and breaking her neck.

“Hello, you,” she murmured to the cadaver awaiting her in the supply closet-turned-laboratory.

She’d chosen this one for herself because of his eyes. The veins in them had gone grey, and it intrigued her. It was something she hadn’t noticed in another Infected before.

flicked on her overhead light, the hum of the fluorescent bulb filling the small space, then slipped on her head light. It was an ugly thing, but how else was she to see in such a dank space?

The body, prostrate before her, looked innocuous upon first inspection with its chalky pallor and vacant eyes. But she knew underneath the flesh, there would be more signs of decay from the Plague. She lifted her scalpel and set it just below the clavicle, slicing to the man’s sternum, a thin incision immediately tracing her movement. paused, leaning in closer. . .

There was something on his neck.

“My god,” she breathed.

His veins had gone black, just a little, spidering out near his jugular, like fungal mycelium. It made sense that the veins would appear black considering the blood darkened, but she’d never seen it visible through the skin before. In fact, the skin was almost translucent in some areas.

Her heart pounded with the idea that she was on the cusp of a major discovery. She moved the scalpel to the other shoulder, slicing toward the first incision, then sliced with careful precision, dragging the blade down toward the pelvis.

“!” Siobhan’s voice echoed down to the cellar and ’s scalpel slipped. “Are you down there, hun?”

“Yep!” skittered out of her hideout like a frightened arachnid. “I’m here!”

“Phone for you! I think it’s that twat you live with.”

coughed a laugh. Perhaps she’d been a bit too open with her employers. She wiped the black blood off her hands as best she could, but it was caked under her nails. Not wearing gloves was foolish, but there hadn’t been any cases of transference from an Infected corpse to a live host a couple of days after death, so she wasn’t worried about that. However, she should probably be more concerned with the cleanliness aspect or—possibly—the illegal dealings she was hiding under her employers’ morgue.

Sometimes the lines of laws and normality needed to be smudged a little—with black blood, evidently.

“Hello?” she breathed into the telephone when she made it upstairs. “Imogen?”

“Colin.”

tucked her lips between her teeth. So Colin was the twat. “Hey.”

“You got a call from your advisor. She said it was important.”

“Yeah, thanks, Colin. What’s the number?”

“You got paper? I don’t have all day.”

“You’re a real ray of sunshine, you know that?”

“Fuck off.”

“Wait. Yes, I have paper.” She did not.

Colin rattled off the number one time, and the phone clicked. Thank goodness had a decent memory. She glanced at the clock. 4:55. The offices would close any minute.

dialled the number quickly and set to picking the dried blood from under her fingernails.

“Trinity Student Offices,” a chipper voice came over the line.

“Yes, this is Morrow for Mrs O’Sullivan.”

“Hold please.”

tapped her foot against the linoleum and twirled the curly phone cord with her finger. Siobhan came up behind her, speaking loudly at first, then lowering her voice when she saw the phone sandwiched between ’s shoulder and ear. “We’re headed out, hun. Lock up after the TBB van?”

nodded and wished her employers a good evening.

“!” Mrs O’Sullivan’s voice came over the phone cheerfully and stood up straight. “Have I got good news for you.”

The advisor rushed through the name of a professor, a classroom, a building, and a time, and instructed to come by her office again in a couple of days to get the keys to her new place.

“TAs all cohabitate in their respective college’s House, near the professor’s office. It helps with late-night grading and things of the sort.”

A vague map of campus etched itself in ’s mind and she tried in vain to calculate how having all of her classes in the Botany building was going to work with living and working around the Medical College’s buildings. Maybe she was mistaken about the location.

“Professor Murdoch doesn’t often stay on campus late, so you won’t likely need to be close by, but the lodging included with the position is only in the TA Houses. Yours is called Briseis House.” She rattled off another building and location and looked around frantically for a pen and paper, momentarily distracted by the interesting name of her new student accommodations.

It was what she got for being an arse and lying to Colin about having a pen handy.

“Thank you, Mrs O’Sullivan. I don’t know how to repay you.”

“Just keep your grades up and don’t let Murdoch scare you off.”

Scare her off? A horn blared out the back door and jumped. “Yes, of course, Mrs O’Sullivan.” She looked over her shoulder at the door. “I have to be going now.”

“See you, dear.”

hung up the receiver just as a meaty fist banged on the back door, rattling it on its hinges. “Bring out ya’ dead! Bring out ya’ dead!” The voice outside was muffled, but he used the same crass joke every night and every night it made laugh. Monty Python had been a favourite film of hers growing up.

“You’d think that would get old,” she said to Carl by way of greeting and the big oaf grinned.

“Nah.” He lumbered in past her, looking at the body count list she handed him. “Whatcha got for me? Only two TBB s tonight?”

nodded, already wheeling one toward him.

“Think the Plague is lettin’ up then?”

“I don’t think so, Carl.” She said the words gently. Carl had lost his sister to the Plague a couple of years prior, and it was why he began working for the service that incinerates the bodies in the first place. He’d told his life’s story her first shift at Gallaghers’ before term began. He was a sweet guy and she didn’t want to upset him, but saw no point in lying to him, either. Lies were a rare currency meant for the Garda and politicians and pricks like Colin to keep them out of your business—but you had to know how to wield them. That’s what her gran taught her, anyway.

“Well, fuck me into next week.” Good ol’ Carl. He wheeled the first body out to his transport van while wheeled the second out behind him.

As soon as Carl’s taillights faded into the fog around the dark street corner, locked up Gallaghers’ tight like a fort and crept back downstairs to her John Doe.

Scalpel in hand, she completed her incision from earlier, but as she reached for her rib cutter, she realised two discomfiting things. She didn’t have a body for Achilles. And she needed to return the very cutter in her hands.

It was likely she wouldn’t receive much payment for the cadaver as it was since she’d sliced the man open and he was rather ripe already.

At least she had a gurney available this time.

Sadder than was warranted or sane, checked the perimeter of the morgue and wheeled the body and her medical bag of precious tools out to the boot of her car.