Sacrifice by Wrath James White Page B

and teachers. All their stories were the same.
    “How much do you want to bet that when we find Marsha Wells it will be somewhere in the proximity of one of these weird-ass murders?”
    “What are you thinking, Mo?”
    “I don’t know. But I think we need to talk to Mary Nielson’s parents today.”
    “Why? Do you think she might head back home?”
    “No. I’m pretty sure she’ll turn up in a coma somewhere just like the rest of them. I just want to see if her parents left her pictures on the walls.”
    The detectives ended their evening at the coroner’s office staring at the body of the young teacher with questions flying through their heads. The ME was on the other side of the room working on another body, that of a teenage prostitute with bruises and track marks in equal number on her arms and legs. A cynical part of Malloy wondered why he was even bothering. The streets had killed her, pure and simple, and chances are no one would ever claim the body, just as no one had come to rescue her in life.
    “Hi, John, Mohammed. I hope you two aren’t expecting this autopsy to happen tonight? I’ve got nearly a dozen others before you.”
    “What? Homicides?”
    “I won’t know that ‘til I autopsy them.”
    “Okay, smartass. Well, can you tell us anything on the teacher?”
    “Not much. I only looked at him briefly when he first came in. You said kids did that to him? What was it some kind of gang?” the doctor asked.
    “His students. Seven and eight-year-old children. Have you ever heard of anything like that?”
    Dr. Medoff’s eyebrows knitted together in concentration, Malloy could see the doctor probing his memory for some frame of reference, for one situation even remotely similar to the tragedy that lay torn apart on his examining table. He told them he’d never seen anything like this. At least not done by children. Attack dogs, even a circus lion once, but never children; never like this.
    Malloy was still haunted by the image of those children ripping into their screaming teacher as if they were in some type of feeding frenzy. He shook his head to try and clear the vision from his mind, only succeeding in giving himself a headache. He grabbed Dr. Medoff, squeezing the man’s slender bicep hard enough to leave a bruise as he tried to fight off the wave of revulsion that suddenly came crashing through him. Seeing the man wince, he slackened his grip and took a deep breath to calm himself.
    “Doc, you have to have some theory about all this. I mean something had to have made those kids go nuts like that. They looked like they were possessed!”
    “There’ve been many cases of mass hysteria, mob mentality, riots, in which relatively normal people suddenly turn into looters and murderers. There’ve even been gang-rape cases where large groups of people have gotten swept up in the moment and committed what to them would ordinarily have been an unthinkable act. It’s some bizarre type of peer-pressure dynamic that seems to override the normal restraints we place on ourselves.”
    “But children?”
    “Maybe it had something to do with the bees.”
    “What?” Detective Rafik asked incredulously.
    The doctor walked over to the table where the two detectives stood looking down at the body. He removed the sheet, revealing the tortured remains of David Orluske, the young teacher who’d been beaten to death by his students just hours ago. There were bee stings and insect bites all over him along with a profusion of other bruises, lacerations, and avulsions. The corpse still teemed with maggots, slugs, and earthworms. It was literally vibrating with activity.
    “Maybe when the bees attacked the kids panicked, and in some type of mass hysteria mistook David Orluske for their attacker. I mean, there had to have been thousands of bees. The pain and confusion, coupled with a child’s imagination and limited understanding of the world could have made the children believe that they were literally fighting