Break time, Tom thought. He leaned against the shovel and chugged more Spaten-nothing like a cold beer after hard work, whether you were mowing the lawn, laying shingles, or burying girls alive.

"She'd been in some of my cla.s.ses," Besser lamented.

"Too bad she didn't take," Tom said.

"We've got it all worked out now." Besser looked fearfully to the hooded sister. "No more mistakes."

A froth of foam and bubbles drooled from Penelope's mouth. What a grosser. The gelatinous loops of her arms and legs slopped uselessly, like tentacles on a speared octopus. Tom figured she was folded in half backward, her big wet b.r.e.a.s.t.s lolling at her armpits. At least she smelled like good barbecue.

The sister pointed to the hole.

"Bury her," Besser said.

Tom pushed her into the grave with his boot sole. She didn't fall in, she oozed in, like muck. Besser held up the lantern and groaned when he looked into the hole.

At last Penelope's words blubbered up. "Plub plub please don't bulup bulup bury me, Tom!"

"Don't let the minor fact that she's still alive dissuade your heart," Besser regretted to Tom. "It must be done."

"W where's where's my blay blay baby?"

Besser cleared his throat. "Regrettably, dear, your baby's dead. Don't blame yourself. You simply didn't take."

"I lyly rup want m m m my baby!"

Where was it? Tom looked around. Ah, there. The jellyish thing was crammed in the corner of the box. Tom picked it up by what he guessed were its feet and held it up to the lantern light. It hung limp as a rooster's wattle.

Penelope blubbered a high pitched shriek.

-Give me it! the sister ordered. She held out her white hands.

Besser recoiled. "Oh, for G.o.d's sake. Please."

Tom shrugged. He gave it to the woman in black. Grinning, she let its bloated head swing back and forth like depended pizza dough, throwing a pendulous shadow. Tom watched with little interest. It wasn't like it was a real baby, right? Not like the kind he'd been once, not like the kind mothers cuddled and loved. Not really anyway.

"Please," Besser objected, nausea in his face. "Please don't."

-Shut up! the sister said like an irked grade-school girl. Her bleating wet giggles palpitated up. She turned the dead baby thing in her white hands and squeezed its head till its eyes popped out.

Penelope was flopping madly in her hole, shrieking, trying to get out. Motherly love, Tom supposed. He was amazed at her sudden ability to move. For a moment he feared she might actually churn herself out of the grave.

Besser winced. "Just throw it in the hole. Please don't-"

Gnarled doglike teeth bared through the sister's grin. She bit into the top of the dead baby's head with a sound much like biting into a crisp apple. The sister sucked its brain till the boneless bag for a head collapsed. Then she giggled, munching. Someone should teach her some manners, Tom thought. Judith Martin would s.h.i.t railroad ties if she could see this.

Wet smacking sounds followed, and slurping. The sister chewed her meal heartily; a big lump slid down her throat when she swallowed.

Revolted, Besser dropped the lantern. He stumbled away rubber kneed, fell between some trees, and vomited in grand style. Now, this was not something you got to see every day, a three hundred pound college professor throwing up like a sludge pump in the middle of the woods. Watching a black cloaked woman eat a dead baby's brains wasn't something you got to see every day either. Even Tom had to raise a brow at these shenanigans. The sister's giggles splayed out into the grove, quite loudly. Tom still hadn't gotten used to that awful sound-that giggling. Who could giggle while eating a baby's brains? They were one wild crew, that was for sure. Yeah, real party animals.

She flung the head sucked baby into the hole. Splap. Penelope was still flopping in throes of absolute amorphous rage. Her high pitched blubbering shriek blurted out loud like a faulty train whistle.

-Bury her.

"Yes, ma'am," Tom said. The shovel bit into the ground. He tossed in the first load. Ba b.u.mp! Penelope squealed again. Tom dropped the second load into her opened mouth. That should quiet her down some, the little d.i.c.kens. She gagged and coughed up wet clumps of earth.

-This is so much fun, isn't it, Tom?

"Yes, ma'am, it sure is. I haven't had this much fun since the last Polanski Festival."

He buried Penelope without reservation. He whistled that great old Guess Who song "Share the Land" as his shovel gradually filled the hole. Burying girls alive wasn't exactly fun for the whole family, yet despite the grimness of the task, Tom supposed it was a fair trade.

s.h.i.t, he thought. For immortality, I'll dig graves from here to Seattle.

CHAPTER 16.

An alarm was blaring.

Lydia sat up naked in bed. She could still hear the alarm, but then she realized it was only the telephone. The clock read 5 A.M.

She snapped up the phone and yelled, "What!"

"You have a nice sleep?" a voice inquired.

This was outrageous; it was Chief White. "How come you're calling me at five in the morning?" she complained. "You gave me the day off, remember?"

"I need ya to do me somethin'. I'd have the night boys do it 'cept they been out all night flaggin' traffic. Some stoner done rolled fifteen thousand gallons of super unleaded all over the Route. My boys are plumb wore out and stinkin' fierce of gas."

"Okay, Chief. What do you want me to do?"

"Go out to agro. Them state guys are finally packing it up. Some geek named Latin is runnin' the show. They'll be trucking out by nine."

Trucking out? "Chief, what-"

"They got a prelim for us. Go pick it up."

"All right," Lydia groaned.

"Good girl. Report to me when you're done. Now, this Latin guy's got a bug up his b.u.m the size of my Buick. Be nice to him or else he won't tell you squat. Nose around, try and see what they've been up to. Use your" -White gave a typical hick laugh- "your feminine powers of persuasion."

Lydia rang off, sputtering. White didn't want to go himself because he figured Lydia's t.i.ts and a.s.s would prompt a more cooperative response. She suited up quickly, enjoying the early morning silence. Dawn had not yet broken when she pulled into the agriculture/agronomy site. State cadets were loading signs into a van. "Quarantine Area, Do Not Enter," they read. Three semi rigs were parked in a row behind the stables. A state sergeant directed her to a wheeled trailer. Gas powered generators pumped racket into the air, like jackhammers. But the electricity had been fixed. Why would they need generators?

A work booted nerd in khakis met her at the trailer door. He looked bony, had short hair and a long neck. "My name is Dr. Hatton," he said. Hatton, Latin. This must be the guy with the bug up his b.u.m the size of White's Buick. His voice was uncharacteristically dark. "I'm senior field officer for the state department of agriculture. You may have seen my picture in the Enquirer last year. I delivered twin Berkshire hogs joined at the head."

Lydia told him regrettably that she'd missed that issue.

He handed her a single piece of paper. "This the prelim?" she asked.

"There is no preliminary report. This is a state quarantine release form. It authorizes that your agro site can now be safely reoccupied."

"Then what happened to the agro animals?"

"We're not prepared to release any conclusions as of yet."

"In other words," Lydia observed, "you have no intention of cooperating with the local authorities."

"I am the only authority here," Dr. Hatton said.

White's got this guy pegged pretty good. "Okay," Lydia agreed, "but do you think you could take that Buick out of your a.s.s long enough to give me something to tell my boss?"

"It's none of your boss's business... Buick?"

This might be fun. "You know what I think, Dr. Hatton? I think you're not giving me answers because you don't have any. You guys don't know what you're doing out here. You're a bunch of p.u.s.s.ies."

Hatton was getting p.i.s.sed. "p.u.s.s.ies?" he challenged.

"That's right. Lightweights. You've been sitting out here for two days, blowing tax dollars and doing nothing."

Hatton glowered.

"Did you at least autopsy some of the animals?"

His tension strained further. He was getting closer to the line she wanted him on. "Of course," he said. "Dozens. There was an inconsistency in some aspects of the structural pathology."

"Great answer, Doc. Show me."

Hatton smiled. "You don't have the stomach for it."

Lydia laughed in his face. At D.C. she'd broken into hardhouses full of weeks old corpses of junkies. She'd hauled up maggot swollen floaters. She'd cut down drug stoolies who'd been hung upside down and gutted like deer. "I've seen things that would make your worst nightmare look like Ronald McDonaldland. You talk big, Hatton, but if you had any real guts, you'd show me what you've got in those rigs."

Now Dr. Hatton's true self was beginning to glimmer through. "It would be a pleasure," he said.

He took her out to the closest semi rig. This would be his morgue on wheels; that's what the generators were for, to run the coolers while the trucks were parked. Inside, buzzing tubes lit a tiny office. There was a water cooler, a coffeepot, and a little fridge for snacks. Cozy, she thought. A metal door stood opposite.

"So we're all p.u.s.s.ies, is that it?" He pulled on a yellow raincoat and hood, then a plastic face shield. He looked ridiculous in it. "Well, I'll show you what this p.u.s.s.y has been doing for the last two days." He heaved open the metal door and led her in.

Inside was very cold. High coolers gusted chill and noise through metal grilles. In back, pairs of animals lay strapped to steel shelving, probably a dozen pairs. Each had been split like a cleaned fish; body cavities were stuffed with bagged organs, and an eye had been removed from each beast, to check ocular pota.s.sium levels, she a.s.sumed. This great bulk of bagged meat whelmed her.

Dr. Hatton stood by a metal table. On the table lay a dead horse. "You wanted to see? Well, take a look at this."

He tossed her a small plastic pouch which contained several ounces of some red marbled gray mush. A tag on the bottom gave an index number, time and date of dissection, and Hatton's initials. The next line read: Palomino, white, 2 yrs. approx., testes.

"They're b.a.l.l.s!" Hatton yelled at her. "Horse b.a.l.l.s!"

Confusion screwed up Lydia's face. "It's just mush," she said.

"They're b.a.l.l.s!" Hatton reiterated. "You know, nuts, p.e.c.k.e.r jewels, doodads! Those are from the first horse I autopsied yesterday! It's the same for every male animal on the site!"

Lydia had no idea what he meant. Hatton patted the horse on the table. "I was saving this baby to open for the people back at AHL, but what the h.e.l.l! Who the f.u.c.k are you to come here and question my competence!"

"Doctor, I wasn't-"

"Shut up!" Hatton barked. Then he laughed. "It's show time!"

Lydia gasped. Hatton raised a sixteen inch Homelite chain saw. It started up on the first try. Hatton flipped down his visor and went to work. He delved the blade up into the animal's top hind leg, through the joint. The sound was atrocious, a searing, hitching scream. Lydia almost couldn't watch.

"This is what I've been doing the last two days, b.i.t.c.h!"

He's crazy, she thought. He's fried.

Hatton continued to saw. Clumped blood and shreds of muscle spat out of the meaty groove; his face-shield and coat were flecked with it. Then the horse's leg flipped over on the floor. Hatton turned off the saw, then went right to work with a big autopsy scalpel, cutting a deep gash into the animal's rear belly. He was a maniac. He grinned like a madman through the flecked visor.

"Lo!" he shouted. From the gash, bare handed, he yanked out a flap of yellowed tissue. "A little of the old mesovarium! See?" He threw it on the floor and ripped out more. "A little peritoneal tissue, a little stroma!" Flap, flap! It all went onto the floor. "Ho! A kidney! My mistake!" Flump!

What he withdrew next looked like a large strip of steak with a lump on the end. He slapped it down on the table. "See that?"

Lydia nodded rather morosely.

"It's the infundibulum, ampula, left side. See that lump?"

"Uh, yeah."

"That's the ovary. Next to the brain, it's the most complex organ in the body, and, like the male testes, it's the hardest. Harder than the heart, the kidneys, etcetera. It's dense, heavily celled, firm. Understand?"

"I think so."

Hatton punctured the ovary's germinus with the scalpel. Globs of reddish gray mush oozed from the puncture. "See, see?" he said. "It's almost liquefied, just like the testes on the other horse. But they're not supposed to be like this. They should still be firm."

"They're decomposed," Lydia ventured.

"No, no, no!" Hatton snapped. "There wasn't time. The things hadn't been dead twelve hours before we got them cooled down; they were still in rigor. These organs could not possibly decompose to this consistency in twelve hours under any condition."

"Maybe it's a disease, cancer or something."

"Cancer! In every single animal, at the same time? That's not how it works." He washed his hands at a metal sink then shook them dry against the wall, disgusted. "I'm supposed to be the expert here. s.h.i.t. My people are going to want an explanation and I can't give them one. I don't know anything more than I did the minute we pulled in."

Now Lydia understood why he'd been stonewalling. He was a preposterous sight, a grown man sitting dejected in a gore-splattered raincoat, hood, and face-shield. "How can you determine that the agro site is safe to reoccupy if you don't know what killed the animals?"

"State protocol," he said, shrugging. "We simply followed the standard legal procedures. The bloodwork all came back negative, which satisfied the state quarantine criteria. We screened for everything and found nothing; I had lab couriers coming in and out of here day and night. We exhausted every standard detection test. There were no mold toxins in the feed, no poisons, no bacteria, and there was nothing wrong with the water. We even ran tests on the gra.s.s, the soil, the water table. Nothing."

"So what about this?" She pointed to the punctured ovary.