Hopper puffed his pipe to life and nodded at Warren Grimes. “Suppose you begin, Warren. And give us a report of your examination of the only decent body we found.”

Grimes took a clipboard from one of his assistants and studied it for a moment under the glare of a Coleman lantern. “In all my years of experience, I’ve never seen so many complications in one human. Reddish discoloration of the eyes, both the iris and the whites. Skin tissue an extreme flushed, bronze color. Greatly enlarged spleen. Blood clots in the vessels of the heart, the brain, and extremities. Kidneys damaged. Heavy scarring in the liver and pancreas. Very high hemoglobin. Degeneration of fatty tissue. No wonder these people ran amok and ate each other. Put all the disorders together and you could easily produce uncontrolled psychosis.”

“Uncontrolled?” asked Eva.

“The victim slowly went mad as the conditions increased, especially damage to the brain, and he eventually went berserk, as evidenced by the signs of cannibalism. In my humble estimation it’s a miracle he lived as long as he did.”

“Your diagnostic conclusion?” Hopper probed.

“Death by massive polycythemia vera, a disease of unknown cause whose symptoms are increased numbers of red blood cells and hemoglobin in the circulation. In this case a massive infusion of red blood cells that produced irreparable damage to the victim’s internal systems. And because blood-clotting factors were not created in enough amounts for heart stoppage and stroke, hemorrhages occurred throughout the body, becoming especially visible in the skin and eyes. It is as though he was injected with massive doses of vitamin B-12, which as you all know is essential in the development of red blood cells.”

Hopper turned to Eva. “You did the blood testing. What about the cells themselves? Did they maintain their normal flat, round shapes with depressed centers?”

Eva shook her head. “No, they were formed like none I’ve ever seen before. Almost triangular with spore-like projections. As Dr. Hopper stated, their number was incredibly high. There are roughly 5.2 million red cells per cubic millimeter of blood in the average adult human. Our victim’s blood carried three times that number.”

Grimes said, “I might add that I also discovered evidence of arsenic poisoning, which would have also killed him sooner or later.”

Eva nodded. “I confirmed Warren’s diagnosis. Above normal concentrations of arsenic were found in the blood samples. Also, the cobalt level went off scale.”

“Cobalt?” Hopper straightened in his camp chair.

“Not surprising,” said Grimes. “Vitamin B-12 contains almost 4.5 percent cobalt.”

“Both of your findings pretty well back the results of my analysis of the community wells,” said Hopper. “There was enough arsenic and cobalt in a common cup of water to choke a camel.”

“The underground water table,” said Eva, staring into the glow from the heater. “The flow must have slowly worked itself through a geologic deposit of cobalt and arsenic.”

“If I recall my university geology class,” Hopper said, thinking back, “a common arsenide is niccolite, a mineral often associated with cobalt.”