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by Joseph R. Armstead
Horror, 59 pages.
Originally Published in MeatGrinder Press #1, 2006
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Good Christ, but they had made a mess of things. It was a disaster. It was awful.
It was typical.
The air was ripe with the rich musk from sweat-dappled bodies made feverish from disease, pain, and physical exhaustion. There were dark wet patches on the ground that discolored the straw-like growth of weeds that covered the grainy, loose soil in irregular patches and old snack food wrappers, bent soft drink cans, shards of amber-colored glass from broken beer bottles, and discarded cigarette butts littered the acre-wide clearing that sat at the edge of a clump of old maple trees. Flies and gnats flit through the humid air in messy phalanxes. The rising moon cast weird shadows on the clearing past the intertwined branches of the trees that edged the rhomboid shaped field.
Nine bodies, all dead, were clumped around an eleven foot-tall metal tower that looked like a piece of metal sculpture. It was a multi-tiered column made from razor-wire, rebar rods, corroded copper pipes, shiny chrome shapes cut into geometric patterns, and snaking loops of black co-axial cable. Here and there, fist-sized pieces of torn flesh hung from off it. The flesh was still dripping blood.
Scientific Security Criminal Anomalies Agent Patrick Madigan could smell the putrid reek of fecal matter riding the sluggish twilight breezes.
A male forensic technician in a blue nylon tunic came up to Madigan shaking his head, a gauze safety mask covering his nose and mouth.
“No footprints anywhere near the collection of bodies or leading to and from the ironwork tower. No torn clothing scattered anywhere. Four men, I estimate their ages to range from about eighteen to thirty-five, and five women, mid-twenties to early-forties, various nationalities. No bullet wounds that I can find. Their bodies were all shaved of hair pre-massacre,” the man said, “And it doesn’t look as if they’ve been out here more than maybe three hours, probably less.”
A thickly-built short woman, also a forensic tech, walked over to Madigan. She wore glasses that barely sat on her pert pug-nose and she was carrying a digital camera.
“Got some tire tracks off towards the trees, so it looks like they may have come out from the forest. There’s blood on the ground but not enough for the number of people here or enough to account for all the wounds they’ve suffered. All the blood pooling looks to be post-mortem. These people were killed elsewhere,” she said.
Yes, indeed, it was a proper mess. He couldn’t believe the arrogance and lack of regard these bastards showed with their bloody-handed actions. It’s not like they were afraid of getting caught, it wasn’t even as if they were at all concerned with getting caught. They weren’t thinking about the consequences at all.
They were having too much fun.
Madigan felt a shadow start to loom over his left shoulder. Someone had walked up behind him.
“So whaddaya think, here, Pat? FBI Agent Bob Lamburton, the man he’d ridden with to the slaughter site, asked him. “Is it a Kaggermann Alert we’re lookin’ at? Did someone activate that damn artifact again?”
“Preliminary examination of the scene seems to support that”, Madigan answered.
“So what’s this, the third one of these slaughter mounds we’ve found in about five months? Yeah, the third. This one has the largest body count, though. All totaled, I figure maybe twenty-two homicides between all the sites. That’s way too ugly to hide. We’re gonna catch hell on this from the media if they ever get whiff of it,” Lamburton commented.
“They won’t. SSCA, Homeland Security, the FBI and the DOJ have it all tied up. Anyone leaks word of this to any news media or to any unauthorized agency will be in a world of hurt,” Madigan stated. “Talking about a Kaggermann Alert to anyone outside the investigative field team is damn near a treasonable offense. There won’t EVER be a repeat of the Facility A-11/Outwater Glen debacle. Remember XPETE, the External Projects Technical Engineering unit run and funded by the National Security Agency and the Office of Scientific Management? It was back in the mid-1970s. The XPETE project was destroyed by press leaks. When Congress caught whiff of what had happened when the XPETE team had activated the artifact without telling anyone they crucified anyone and everyone who had anything to do with the project, you know that. No one is going to let that happen again.”
“Oh yeah? Then how do you explain this?” Lamburton challenged.
“I don’t,” Madigan hissed tensely, “I just hunt down the bastards responsible for doing it.”
The lead Medical Examiner, a tall taciturn man named Worcyznski, limped over to meet the two government agents, leaning heavily on his cane as he walked.
“These people were tortured before they died. I’ve got easily identifiable multiple ligature marks around wrists and ankles and even around some of their throats. More, from -- [End of Preview.]