“Yes,” Mildred said, stepping forward with a frown. “Let’s do that.”
No MATTER HOW MUCH death she had been forced to witness in the dark future world she’d been awakened from cryo sleep to find herself thrust into, Dr. Mildred Wyeth had never been able to numb herself to the heartbreaking sight of a dead child.
She found the chosen site where the little girl had been placed in repose to be one of infinite sadness, since in life, in another time, this very same sanctuary would have been a place of learning and security for a child. Now, alone as only the dead can be, the girl rested under a threadbare sheet on a long wooden table, inert and eternally still. The upcoming funeral and burial services were planned for the next day.
Unlike many children, Mildred had never feared or dreaded going to school. The locker-lined hallways of academia served as order against the chaos of her life, and gave off light against the darkness of ignorance and fear. Born too late to experience the insult of segregation, she’d always thought of school as her second home, and after her father’s brutal murder by Klansmen-an act in itself an aberrant throwback of a hate crime that she’d never been able to fully erase from her mind-Mildred had come to rely on the educational system more and more as her primary residence as she grew older.
“That Mildred…always got her nose in a book,” one of her two aunts was always saying, even after she’d graduated from high school and entered into college, finding a new home and leaving behind the old shell. What would those very same two aunts now have to say regarding her current life-style?
Mildred sighed. These days, she was getting entirely too much in the way of exercise, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat and read a good novel from cover to cover.
Besides, there were no more schools, except for the few private affairs such as the Brody School where Ryan had sent Dean. Mildred turned away from the dead girl and walked over to the boarded-up windows along the side of the classroom. She peered out across the overgrown schoolyard at the remains of the playground. She imagined the skeletal jungle gym out back hadn’t been touched by innocent hands in many years.
Reaching down, she took the hand of the dead girl and was stunned to discover it was still flexible. Rigor mortis hadn’t begun to set in, even though the flesh was cold.
“How long did you say she has been dead?” she asked Soto.
The short Puerto Rican managed to twist his face into an even more morose expression. “Since three nights ago.”
Mildred frowned as she flexed the fingers of the child’s hand with ease. “The body…there’s no stiffness.”
“I know. That is how we can always tell a true victim of the chupacabras. You might wait a handful of days, and still little Rosa would not stiffen, her body still limp even in death.”
Mildred frowned. “The blood,” she said softly.
“Que?”
“The absence of rigor mortis must be related to the blood loss. Some sort of secretion given off by the chupacabras during its…feeding.” Mildred suddenly felt completely helpless. “I could try and do an analysis, but without the proper instruments and laboratory equipment, my hands are tied. Dammit.”
“Now do you believe?”
“Let’s just say I’m leaning closer to your side.”
“I’ll accept that as a yes.”
“Why here? Why a school as a storage spot for a corpse?”
“This is a safe place. Many live here.”
“No, what I meant was why keep her body in a school and not in a church?” the woman demanded. She was by no means an expert, but she’d always understood most Puerto Ricans to be both deeply religious and firmly Catholic. She knew many of the social customs and mores had disappeared after the arrival of skydark, but from what she’d observed of this community, the men and women still held the concept of God close to their bosoms.
Soto took off his battered straw hat and sheepishly ran his fingers through his lank black hair. “The child…she is unholy,” he said in a halting voice.