Dragonet

Chapter Four

“That’s five bodies, if their bodies” Detective Arnold Whitman told the man standing near him. Andrew Williams, another Detective, grunted. Williams was Homicide, Whitman narcotics. Often their departments overlapped, like today. Now their partners were downstairs comparing notes. Whitman’s normally gruff ‘seen it all’ voice was edged with an unnatural sharpness. His companion, fresh from outside where he’d emptied his own stomach twice now only nodded in agreement. Five people, all young adults, at least from the id’s they’d uncovered. What they had found had been something out of a cheap science fiction movie. Bodies sprouting odd limbs, long dried internal organs now horribly outside, as if it were natural. At first they’d thought it was a movie set, until the smell hit them.

Down in the basement it’d been worse as little airflow had kept the smell inside. It’d been four days since these people had died and In that four days mother nature had been busy. Very busy. Neither man could look long at any body, not without running upstairs and outside. “So where’s the other one” Detective Thomas Barlow, Whitman’s partner asked. Flipping open his notebook he read a name. “Blanca Martinez, age twenty four.” He indicated a point near the last body. “Had to have been there from the mess so where is she?”

“Donno” Jacob Thomas admitted, “Maybe she melted?” He was William’s partner and well known to be subject to making poor jokes. “Think about it though, wake up, see this” He waved towards a mass of rotting flesh & bones that looked more like some seven eyed alien bear than a human, “What would you do?”

“Run. Run as fast and as far away as I could” his companion admitted. “APB on her family, friends, workplace. If we can find her we can figure out what happened here.”

“Maybe” Thomas agreed, walking over to what had been a large glassware assembly. “Maybe she just went mad or maybe she did it and ran. Wish I knew what this had been, looks like a mad mans chemistry set. Like the set of some old Hammer film. Maybe the lab boys can figure it out.”