The Incredimammals

Chapter 4

The wonderful feeling of wearing normal clothes again instead of a hospital gown put a little extra hop in Judy's step as she and Nick made their way to the coroner's office. She couldn't help but notice how he was even more pensive than usual, and she had a pretty good idea why.

"Still no word on Finnick?" was her first stab at making conversation, but Nick only shook his head and kept walking. She knew he'd been texting and calling everyone he could think of all afternoon in a vain attempt to locate his friend.

Hoping to at least distract him, Judy asked, "How's your mom?"

"She's good. The house sold last week, and she's all packed and ready to move to the retirement community. Even more reason for me to get out of here as soon as possible."

"Any idea where you'll be staying? You know, the offer still stands-"

"Pfft. Carrots, there isn't even enough room for you in that tiny shoebox masquerading as an apartment. Besides, a friend mentioned letting me sublet his place while he's out of town, though I haven't seen it yet." Nick grinned. "And how are your parents and ten zillion other family members?"

Judy sighed. "Overprotective, as usual."

They arrived at their destination, a medium sized door with bold lettering that read, Dr. Roxy Debwah, Forensic Pawthologist.

They entered the office and Judy pulled out her pad and carrot pen. Dr. Debwah was a hyena, so Judy would take notes while Nick did most of the talking. Ever since Nick had become her partner at the ZPD, Judy and he had an unspoken understanding that he took the lead when interacting with predators, while she did the same with prey, and overall things seemed to go more smoothly that way.

Judy liked Roxy. She appreciated how thorough the hyena was, and since Roxy had met with them before, there were already two appropriately sized chairs set up next to a bigger chair that was obviously meant for larger mammals like Chief Bogo.

The doctor looked up from where she was sitting at her desk when they came in. "Good to see both of you again. I've made copies of my report so we can go over it. I thought Chief Bogo was coming too?"

Nick grabbed the report the hyena offered him and began shuffling through it. "He can't make it, so we'll fill him in later."

The hyena begin speaking as soon as everyone was seated. "If I didn't examine the victim myself, I'd think someone at the ZPD was playing a joke on me."

Nick looked up from the report he'd been leafing through. "What do you mean?"

"I've been performing autopsies for almost twenty years now, and I've never even heard of a case like this. I'll start with the less crazy parts and go from there." The hyena glanced at her copy of the report. "Victim is a saiga antelope. Identity unknown, exact age unknown. At first glance, he appears to be in his late 30's or early 40's, though I'll delve into that more in a moment. His pockets were empty, except for a single standard house key, a few coins, and a ticket to the museum. Toxicology shows nothing unusual in his bloodstream." She shook her head. "For some reason, he had cotton in his ears."

Nick nodded. "He must've known beforehand about the noise we heard."

Roxy continued speaking. "The clothes he was wearing, at least what's left of them, are unusual. They appear to be made of a fairly new fabric, but the pattern is, for lack of a better word, vintage, and they're well tailored, so it's safe to assume he's a mammal of some means."

After a quick nod from Nick she continued. "There's no central point of combustion. He had burns over his entire body, in a pattern I've never seen before. It's like all his cells simultaneously caught fire and he cooked from the inside out. If it wasn't for the sprinkler system at the museum, I'm pretty certain there wouldn't have been much left for me to perform an autopsy on. I'm still trying to figure out what to list as the cause of death, since spontaneous combustion sounds ridiculous."

"So there was no accelerant present?"

The hyena shook her head. "Nope." She flipped to the next page of the report. "The victim has extensive scarring all over his body, as well as evidence of multiple healed broken bones."

"Guess he was really accident prone?" Nick's comment made the other two mammals chuckle.

Roxy said, "Perhaps. Though there sure were are an awful lot of them, and they've all healed. Also, he has a gunshot wound."

"How recent?"

"The healed scar would indicate it happened more than a year ago, but the slug was never removed. Except that's not the weirdest part. I didn't recognize what kind of weapon it came from, so I checked with someone I know at a local university. It's from some kind of musket."

Judy stopped writing and said, "Sorry? Can you explain-"

The hyena interrupted her. "You know, from a muzzleloader. They went out of style a few hundred years ago." Judy processed Roxy's words for a moment before she went back to taking notes.

Nick quirked an eyebrow. "Maybe he was part of a really authentic reenactment club?"

Roxy laughed. "That's probably the least crazy explanation I can think of." She glanced down at the report and frowned. "Except this next part..." she trailed off and shook her head before clearing her throat and continuing. "At some point in the past, the victim suffered from a disease often derogatorily referred to as 'Goat Plague'. Properly known as ovine rinderpest, or PPR, it's caused by a morbillivirus in the family of paramyxoviruses, and is related to distemper.

"It has a high fatality rate among goats, sheep, and other members of the Bovidae family, including saiga antelopes. One of the symptoms are sores that create scarring similar to what I found in the victim's mouth. The thing is, PPR was eradicated over sixty years ago, and the last known case occurred well before that."

All three mammals awkwardly looked at each other for a few moments, with only the ticking of the clock filling the silence. Even Nick couldn't come up with something snarky to say, so the hyena continued. "His body has certainly taken a beating, but he survived long enough for all his wounds to heal. In fact, he would appear to have been in good health, especially for a mammal of his apparent age-"

Nick interrupted her. "I'm sorry, what do you mean by 'apparent age'?"

"From all of the evidence gathered so far, I can only conclude he's much older than he appears to be. It would take further tests to get a better estimate, but he's very likely hundreds of years old, even though logically that's impossible."

The three mammals stared at each other in uncomfortable silence for a moment, before the quiet was shattered by three tones from the hospital's PA system. A calm voice announced:

Security alert, southwest wing. Code Silver. Code Amber. Repeat. Code Silver. Code Amber. The hospital is on lockdown. All patients and visitors are asked to remain calm and shelter in place for their own safety. Repeat... Security alert, southwest wing...

The message repeated and a chill swept through Judy as she processed what the emergency codes meant. Code Silver was a hostage situation, and her stomach lurched when she remembered what Code Amber meant.

The realization hit Nick at the same time, and they simultaneously exclaimed, "The kits!" before they both sprinted out the door and down the hallway leading back to the ward.