"The Autopsy" Trivia Quiz

Answer: A mine

A mine tunnel operates in the evening and a group of its workers finish their duties before descending deeper into the shaft. As they head into the elevator and make their way down, one of their colleagues, Joe, leaps on top and descends with them, toting a large rock under his arm. As they come to a stop he fidgets with his find and tosses the rock behind him, running down the tunnel, before it illuminates and explodes. The result is a devastating cave-in.

In the days to follow, Dr. Carl Winters arrives in town at the behest of the sheriff. They make small talk as they sit and sip coffee (and whiskey) in Sheriff Craven's office, but the reason for Winters' arrival is clear; there are nine dead men (and one miraculous survivor) and autopsies must be performed.

Answer: Its blood

Dr. Winters explains the actual concern with the mining accident-- Fordham Mutual doesn't want to pay a penny to the families of the deceased, and Winters is convinced that a second autopsy is being requested to ensure that the men weren't necessarily killed in their line of work, but by the singular lunatic responsible for the cave-in. It's not necessarily conscionable. Unfortunately, it seems there's evidence that the cave-in was caused by an explosion, so there's work to be done. Craven believes, however, that this is one of those unsolvable ones.

Two months ago, Craven explains, a man went missing-- a mill worker vanished without a trace. The next week, the lady at the laundromat disappeared as well. Six people in just over a month. They called in the dogs and sent out search parties, but nearly none of the people were found. They did find one body, wrapped in a tarp and rope and hanging in a tree, its edges butchered clean. There wasn't a single drop of blood in or on the body; it was as pale as a piece of fish meat. He had his men tie it back up and place it back in the tree. Someone would surely be back for it.

Answer: A radio

Placing the body back where he and his search party left it, Craven asked two local hunters to stake out the woods from a nearby ridge, intending to catch whoever left it when they returned to collect their victim. His deputies handed over some radios and jackets and left them to take positions for the evening while he had the film of the crime scene developed. They returned in five hours to check in on the men, and that's when things got weirder. Arriving back in the woods, there was no sign of the hunters; all that was left was the radios, dropped on the ground and left behind. Whatever took them took the body as well.

When the forensics report came back, it was determined that the body in the tree belonged to a local miller who frequented a bar called Trucker's Tavern. That's where Craven went next.

Answer: Meteor shower

At Trucker's a man recognized his coworker, Eddie Sykes, who'd been missing for some time. The man believed to be Sykes claimed otherwise, however, insisting that he was actually someone else-- a man by the name of Joe Allen. As they talked, the unknown man started to speak low, suggesting that they leave the bar; he could tell him everything somewhere quieter. Almost as though hypnotized, the colleague followed as he was instructed, got into the vehicle, and was never seen alive again.

Reviewing the case files and crime scene photos, Craven tells Dr. Winters that Sykes, a tenement worker, went missing nine months ago after telling a buddy that he'd planned to go hiking in the woods at night, eager to see a meteor shower. He never came back to work. Instead, he showed back up in Bailey under the name Joe Allen. Craven arrived at his place to find the man's apartment vacant and unkempt. Amongst his belongings was an awful orb, smelly and covered in hairs; the landlady claimed he brought it in from the woods. It was making everyone uneasy.

Craven loaded the orb into his cruiser and headed off to the Braddock Forks Mine in time for shift change. It was there, after they arrived, that the police found Joe Allen, but only he broke into the vehicle, took the orb, and rushed into the mines with it. The cave-in occurred shortly thereafter. What Craven can't understand is how Allen knew the orb was in his car.

Answer: True

Craven drives Dr. Winters to the temporary morgue and on the way Winters breaks the news-- he has stomach cancer; six months to live. He's made as much peace as he can, given the circumstances.

The town doesn't have a formal morgue, so when they arrive at the facility, Craven explains they brought a generator and some work lights up from the mines and tried to keep the space cool. It's enough to work for the time-being; he has the space he needs, even if he lacks some critical items like a working phone.

When they head back to the bodies, Craven warns that his men were unable to make much headway on preparing the bodies. One of them they didn't even touch, feeling uneasy about it. Winters sends him away for the night to get some much deserved rest and prepares for his evening, plugging in his tape recorder and commencing his preliminary findings.

Answer: Run

As Dr. Winters goes through the contents of the case file he determines that he will start his examination with Hudson Miller, who was found between the two groups found in the mines. If anyone contains fragments of the bomb, it will likely be him. It comes as no surprise to Winters that the man died of asphyxiation, likely due to the cave-in resulting from the bomb explosion.

Winters performs the incisions and tears the body apart, concluding with the obvious cause of death of asphyxiation preceded by blunt force trauma. It's open and shut, which makes this particular corpse a non-starter for investigative purposes. He sews the body back up and moves to returns it to the other room when he feels the uncanny sensation of his hairs standing on end. Something in his mind tells him to run.

Answer: Their hearts

Instead of leaving, Winters collects the next body, Walter Lou Jackson, from the adjacent room. Starting the preliminary report he cites that this is the body that was unearthed next to Joe Allen. It gets him thinking that perhaps the orb wasn't destroyed in a botched escape attempt, but perhaps it was always intended to be destructive. In the other room, something breathes with great difficulty from its metal slab.

Walter Lou Jackson's body proves to be at least a bit more interesting because after the corpse is washed, there's a small, deep wound in the bottom of his sternum that curves from the diaphragm and into the heart. When Winters opens him up, it appears that the lungs and heart are small and abnormally pale, drained almost completely of their blood. He sews this body up as well and places it back into the other room.

He pulls Matthew Brady out next, repeating the process to find another unique sternum wound. There's no blood in him either. Jackson, Brady, and Allen were all in the same grouping. As he discovers this, the generator fails and restarts itself. He wonders...maybe the blood is in Allen's stomach.

Answer: A spaceship

Preparing to take the next body, Winters hears movement in the refrigeration room and heads in to investigate. What he finds, to his great dismay, is Joe Allen rising from his gurney, sliding to the floor, and crawling across the room. Though Winters slowly retreats, he can only watch as the corpse lurches towards him, grabbing a scalpel and using it to open his passages to speak.

Though whatever moves before Winters bears the likeness of a man named Joe Allen, the creature claims that it is nothing more than a traveller from a place beyond Earth. It hungers but it seeks escape. While death would have been said escape, it was more imperative that it destroy the ship, the orb, first; his kind must not be understood.

Winters knows that there is little escape. He grabs a knife and intends to fight back, insisting that his body shall be a coffin and he will bury the visitor within it. That's when the creature emerges.

Answer: Excision

Winters awakens on the autopsy slab nearly unable to move. Tied to the table, he watches as the visitor removes his clothing and lays down next to him. The intent, according to the visitor, is to transfer him into Winters' body-- Winters, after all, is privy to fresh meals on the regular as new corpses are delivered to him directly-- but to do that the proper incisions must be made so as to not arouse suspicion. Normally he would travel into a host via the alimentary canal. As he has grown, unfortunately, they will instead need to make some incisions.

With good understanding of the human body, the visitor claims that he can remove himself and transfer over to Winters but it will be a delicate procedure. Winters laughs at the idea-- the alien seems to be jealous that it doesn't bear the senses found in man, and it makes the visitor nothing more than a parasite. It's nothing more than cancer with a mouth.

The visitor insists that humanity is more than livestock to him and his kind. He can create unique neural pathways to keep their minds alive. Eddie Sykes, he claims, is still present inside his body, mute and powerless, even as the body is disemboweled and the relocation process is prepared.

Winters tells him he's forgotten one thing, however; his arrogance has made him stupid. The visitor doesn't care either way-- once he's inside Winters, all of their thoughts will be shared.

Answer: The tape recording

The visitor's true form is removed from Sykes' body and placed onto Winters' as an incision is made in the coroner. Winters realizes that, without senses, the alien is incapable of hearing or seeing until it takes control of his body, and with that he collects a scalpel and attempts to destroy it. He's unable to reach, tied to the table, but he quickly realizes the solution is not to kill the being, but put a stop to it.

With the scalpel, Winters slices into his own neck and then proceeds to plunge the instrument into his ears, deafening himself. After slitting his throat, he drives the scalpel into his own eyes and lets the visitor proceed.

Winters' dying plan succeeds, unfortunately for the visitor. As they communicate over his eighth cranial nerve, Winters reveals that he's vandalized the parasite's new home. Though the visitor hopes to wait for Craven to return by morning, Winters reveals that the recent leaks to the plumbing will cause him to bleed out, deaf and blind, by the time that occurs. And worse still, the one thing that the visitor forgot was that the tape was running while he performed the autopsy on Sykes' body. Soon, others will know the truth.

Craven arrives to find Winters' body damaged and dead on the floor. The only message left, printed on the coroner's corpse in bloody fingerprints, is the words 'PLAY TAPE, BURN BODY'. The recorder spins on the table nearby.