AFTER THE CALL, Nora prepared hot tea and dumped in extra Cremora and sugar.
“More ibuprofen,” said Corrie.
“I already gave you—”
“Just hand it over.”
Nora fished one more tablet out of the bottle. Corrie swallowed it with a gulp of tea. The storm shook the tent, the rain sweeping across in gusts.
Fugit groaned. She seemed to be regaining consciousness. Nora checked her bandages and saw that blood was soaking through. Rather than remove them, she added another layer and applied pressure.
After a long silence, Corrie spoke again. “Why would Parkin’s skull be more valuable than a boatload of gold?”
“We can worry about that later.”
Corrie winced. “I want to worry about it now.”
“Why?”
“It matters to me. I feel like…” Corrie hesitated. “Like I’ve got all the information I need and should be able to put it together. I don’t want to face Morwood and have to tell him, Sorry, five people are dead and I don’t have a clue why.”
Nora didn’t respond at first. The whole business was stranger than she’d ever imagined. A skull, apparently worth millions—how could that possibly be? “Maybe there’s some crazy collector out there, willing to pay a fortune for a historic skull. Look what some people pay for a baseball card.”
Corrie shook her head. “This skull isn’t old enough to be rare. We’re not talking about Taung-1 or Cheddar Man.”
“True,” Nora said. “Then perhaps someone wants the skull for DNA identification to prove a family inheritance.”
Corrie again shook her head. “I’m guessing this is about more than money.”
That seemed true enough, Nora thought.
“It seems somebody, or some organization, has been scouring the world for Parkin family remains, digging up graves, and even kidnapping, perhaps murdering, a living Parkin. Clive killed two people for that skull. Fugit killed one and was ready to kill again.” Corrie closed her eyes, then after a moment opened them again. “After crossing everything else off the list, all I can think of is that it’s some sort of genetic thing Parkin and his descendants have. Something desirable.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But if you forget any truly freaky theories, like a nut with a penchant for Parkin skulls, what else is left?”
“Nothing,” Nora admitted. “But with genetics, you’re casting a net that’s almost ridiculously broad. A genetic mutation that could, theoretically, confer a resistance to cancer? Or promote longer life? I mean, of course, something like that would be worth millions—even billions.” She looked at the blue plastic box, sitting to one side, that contained the skull. “Did you see a connection such as those among the Parkin descendants you investigated? Remarkable intellect, long life, resistance to disease?”
“No. But I never got that specific.” Corrie looked up at Nora. “What about Albert Parkin himself? Anything odd about his life?”
“We don’t know much. He abandoned his wife and kids in Missouri to go to California. As you know, he was struck by an arrow in an Indian attack in Utah, which cracked his collarbone and helped us identify him. He died of starvation in late February of 1847, and he was the first person cannibalized. Except, of course, for Samantha Carville, whose leg was partially eaten.”
Corrie winced. “So that’s all we know about Parkin?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And he was cannibalized how, exactly?”
“His skull was roasted upside down in the fire and the cooked brains scooped out, the rest of him presumably chopped up, butchered, and cooked.”
The wind buffeted the tent.
“And the rest in the Lost Camp? What happened to them?”
“They continued to starve, went mad, died, and were eaten. Like Parkin—he just happened to be first. Except for two people: one made his way to the Donner’s camp on Alder Creek, and another was found by a rescuer, but died later raving mad.”
“They all went crazy?”
“It’s not unusual: extreme starvation usually triggers a mental breakdown before the end.”
“In what ways did they go nuts?”
“The man who escaped the Lost Camp, Boardman, said his wife had tried to kill and eat him. He said they were fighting with each other, hallucinating, that sort of thing.”
“What happened to Boardman?” Corrie asked.
“He died of starvation in the Donner camp.”
“Did Boardman eat Parkin?”
Nora thought. “He claimed to Tamzene Donner that he didn’t ‘indulge’ in cannibalism. He was a preacher and said it was a mortal sin. Or so she said in her diary.”
“So we have essentially a secondhand account of what Boardman told Tamzene, who then wrote it down.”
“Right. Although Mrs. Horne’s journal mentioned Boardman’s surprise arrival in camp, we know the specifics—secondhand—only from Tamzene.” Then Nora hesitated. “Except…”
Quickly, she dug into her rain gear and pulled out the sheet of paper that had dropped from the journal she’d found in Clive’s hotel room. She unfolded it and looked over the old, uneven handwriting, the quotes from the Bible, the strange drawings here and there among the words. It seemed to be primarily a list of names and dates, with additional information mostly in Latin:
MORS COMMENTARIUS
In this dismal place where, after the blizzard of 23rd Oct. 1846, abandoned by man & forgotten by God:
Widow Morehouse agt 50 years; died of Cupid’s disease 20th Dec. 46.
Sam. Carvil agt 6 years; died 25th Dec 46. “Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God.”
Spitzer et Reinhartt non potuerunt incipere
Aug. Spitzer, died 21 Jan 47 unrepentant; Joseph Reinhartt agt 35 confess’t his sin of murder before expiring 28 Jan 47. Both taken by starvation. “At the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of a man.”
‡ Nobis maledictum: ‡
Albert Parkin, agt 38 years; died 20 Feb 47.
Coeperunt malis festum
“And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images,
and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul
shall abhor you.”
† Jul. Carvil †, anthropgs., agt 27 years; died 23 Feb ex insania
† Leander Widnall †, anthropgs., agt 17 years; died 24 Feb ex insania
† Mrs. Jul. Carvil † anthropgs., agt 30 years; died 24 Feb ex insania
“Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore.”
25 Feb 1847
As witnessed by Asher Boardman
husband of † Edith Boardman †
Lamented and lamentable
Et anthropgs.
“Is that the document you picked up in Clive’s room?” Corrie asked.
“Yes. The one that slipped out of Tamzene’s journal.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a list of names, sort of a death almanac of the Lost Camp. Given all the biblical quotations and Latin, it might have been compiled by Boardman himself.”
“You know Latin?”
“If you’d taken as many grad-level zoological courses as I did, you’d know it, too.” She read the document over and over. It was like a puzzle written in shorthand.
“Keep going,” Corrie said.
“It says that the widow Morehouse was the first to die, of ‘Cupid’s Disease’—a euphemism for venereal illness—followed shortly by Samantha Carville. Then it mentions the two killers, Spitzer and Reinhardt. There’s an aside about them: non potuerunt incipere. That translates roughly to ‘could only begin.’” She put down the note. “Could only begin what?”
“Eating Samantha Carville,” Corrie said. “Remember where you found the missing leg bone?”
“My God, you’re right.” Nora began examining the document again. “Then, in January of 1847, the killers died. Boardman writes that Spitzer was unrepentant to the last, but Reinhardt confessed to murder. That must mean Wolfinger.”
“Go on,” Corrie said.
But Nora paused a moment. “After that, the tone of the document seems to change. Boardman prefaces the rest with nobis maledictum, ‘our curse.’ He makes a big deal about Parkin’s death in late February, following it with a dire biblical quotation and something in Latin like, ‘the beginning of the terrible feast.’”
“So the cannibalism started in earnest once Parkin died.”
“And the deaths also started mounting more quickly,” Nora said. “Julius Carville. Leander Widnall. Carville’s wife, Julius Carville, and Widnall are all described as dying insane. There are little daggers surrounding the names of all three, also, and some Latin abbreviation—anthropgs. I’ve no clue what it means.” She looked up. “The last date recorded is February 25. Boardman concludes with the mention of his wife. She has daggers around her name, too, and that same strange abbreviation—anthropgs.”
“Didn’t you say Boardman ran away from the camp because his wife had gone nuts? She was trying to kill and eat him?”
“That’s what Tamzene recounted in her diary.”
There was a pause, during which the only sound was the shrieking of the wind and the pelting of the rain against the tent.
“So Boardman wrote up this death almanac after he reached the other camp,” Corrie said.
“It’s the only possibility.” Nora’s eye fell to the brief, cryptic notes Clive had made in the document’s margin. One said daggers! with a circle around it.
“Odd,” she murmured.
“What?”
“The names notated with little daggers—Clive seems to have thought them important.”
Corrie stirred in her sleeping bag. “Why?”
“All three—Carville and his wife, Widnall—bear the notation ‘anthropgs.’ And Boardman also labeled them as ex insania—insane. His wife’s name is just surrounded by those daggers.”
“Well, unlike the others, he didn’t actually see her die. He was too busy running away from her at the time. It’s a safe bet his wife also went crazy. I think that’s what those daggers by the names stand for—the people he knew went insane.” Corrie sat up, winced, then lay back.
“He was a carrier,” she murmured. “A Typhoid Mary. Maybe that’s what this unknown group digging up all the Parkin bodies was after. It wasn’t something nature had gifted Parkin with. They wanted his skull to get the microbes from a disease.”
Nora shook her head. “Microbes don’t get inherited down the generations. You don’t pass along an infectious disease—not genetically. And genetic diseases aren’t infectious: you can’t get them from eating someone.”
Corrie closed her eyes. “Damn, I hope they bring some morphine.”
Nora checked her watch. “Any minute now.”
Corrie remained a long time with her eyes closed. “Boardman didn’t go mad. Samantha Carville didn’t go mad. The two killers who started in on her leg didn’t go mad. Parkin didn’t go mad—just the people who ate his body. If it wasn’t a disease, what else could it have been?”
It was a drowsy question, more rhetorical than anything else. But it rang a bell in the back of Nora’s mind. Going mad from eating flesh. She’d studied a case like that in college, a famous case.
The story of the Fore tribe in New Guinea.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
Corrie opened her eyes at this sudden change of tone. “What?”
“There’s a case every student of anthropology learns about. There was this tribe in New Guinea, the Fore. Around a hundred years ago, many of them started going mad and dying. It wasn’t until the 1960s that doctors figured out what was causing the epidemic—ritual cannibalism. When a person died, they were eaten by the family as an expression of love. Doctors discovered the deadly agent wasn’t any ordinary disease. It was a prion disease.”
“Prion?”
“Like mad cow, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Prions are not a microbe, like a virus or parasite. They’re not even alive; they’re a protein particle with a very strange property. When you eat them, the prions spread through your body, and when they come in contact with other proteins, those proteins are changed—into something deadly. Prions especially attack the proteins of the brain…and drive people mad.”
“But how did something like this start in the first place?”
“Around the year 1900, a single Fore individual suffered a random mutation and his body began to produce prions. He became the first carrier. When he died and was eaten, the disease started spreading. And spreading.”
Corrie groaned. “So you think Albert Parkin was like that tribesman? A mutant carrier?”
“Maybe. CJD is a horrible disease—there’s no vaccine, no cure, and the protein particles can’t be killed by sterilization or disinfectant. It’s inevitably fatal.” Nora frowned. “But prion disease takes up to fifty years to kill—and the people in the Lost Camp died within a week of eating Parkin.”
“So Parkin carried an incredibly fast-acting form of the disease.”
“It’s possible,” said Nora.
Corrie sat up again, ignoring the pain. “Nora, think about it. Here’s a disease that kills in days, has no vaccine and no cure, and is a hundred percent fatal. Sterilization can’t kill it. What does that describe to you?”
“Something terrible. Demonic.”
“More than that. It describes the ultimate weapon.”
“Holy shit.”
“Holy shit is right. A biological weapon that makes anthrax, Ebola, or smallpox look like a head cold. No wonder it’s worth more than gold, worth killing for—worth any effort. Think about what would happen if you weaponized that prion protein and dispersed it over a city with a crop duster. Or put it in a bomb. Or dumped it in a water supply—”
Suddenly Nora heard a grotesque sound, a gurgling hiccup from Fugit, lying prone across the tent from them. The sound resolved itself into low, ugly laughter. Fugit’s eyes were open and she was staring at Corrie, a trickle of blood dribbling from her mouth.
“So,” Corrie said to her. “You’ve been listening.”
Fugit stared back at them.
“Are we right?”
Fugit’s bloody mouth opened again. But whether she planned to explain or just emit another gibber of laughter, Nora never found out, because the howl of the storm—quite suddenly—was drowned out by the beating of an approaching helicopter.