Chapter 2
The Walk-through
Mosquito-like whirls twisted the air and bent the grass beneath, revealing the dark, rust-colored rivers between each blade.
“Dammit. Too close,” Carrion said in a low tone. His fingers twitched on the black throttle and rudder control rods on the H-shaped transmitter in his hands. On the monitor, above the black boots he had kicked up on the shelf that he had installed on the side of the van, the image zoomed out as the drone he controlled elevated higher in the sky. Slowly it panned from left to right, quad engines buzzing, the images pausing on the numerous black-clad bodies strewn on the lawn.
“Messy,” he whispered, but even then, in a deep tone. Then he said louder. “Bodies in the lawn. At least twelve. Torn and eviscerated. Deep hemoglobin saturation in the top soil.”
Thumbs moved again, and the camera panned to the east. “Estimated twelve square feet of area coverage.”
Next to the monitor, a red line on a small gray box wavered from each word. The wave cascaded higher, mirroring Carrion's elevated tone, until it flattened into a thin line.
“Numerous bodies. Twelve.” it repeated back, in a halting voice, rounding up to the nearest number. “Disemboweled. Cleanse radius twelve square feet.”
“Continuing,” Carrion said.
“Standing by,” the box replied. The drone buzzed towards the entrance of the safe house Carrion had been pulled out of a somber dream to cleanse.
Just twelve hours prior, comfortable in bed beneath cool sheets with a thousand-level thread count, the receiver he kept jabbed in his ear for emergency jobs softly vibrated the ear drum within. Tapping his ear, he listened to a recording which repeated a address thrice before going dead. Carrion sighed, rubbing sleep from his eyes while memorizing the address by repeating the words. A soft snore made him look to his right at the woman sleeping next to him, her dark strands of hair covering part of his face.
It took care to remove the skinny arm that stood contrast to his pale skin and was draped over his chest, pinching the forearm with two fingers and gently moving it to the side. A few puffs blew her dark hair from over his mouth. Slow squirming extracted his muscled arm from beneath her lithe neck. A moan made him freeze, halfway off the bed with one hand on the ground, until he saw her clutch the sheet and covers to replace the warmth he left behind. Freedom was close.
Yet, sliding down over the edge of the bed, he cursed when his weight caused a bump against the floor. Instantly she sprang up, leaning on her taunt arms, red eyes staring daggers through his soul. Sitting alone in his van at the work site, he could still hear her yelling obscenities, sitting naked and hands gyrating, over his abrupt and sudden exit.
He shook the image from his mind. Back to work.
Noticing that the entrance was open wide on the domicile, Carrion stood up straight in his green canvas chair. Shirtless and devoid of hair, the skin on his chest gleamed a porcelain white from the sunshine that bled through the windshield.
“They took down the door,” hairless eyebrows wrinkled. It had taken time to arrive at that precise point in the woods, going on thirteen hours since that call. Too much time for things to go wrong. He turned to the box. “Medi, the door is open. Exposed to the elements. Be aware of wildlife attracted to the rotting flesh.”
“Door ajar. Possible wildlife incursion.” Medi repeated.
“And order a SCT-4 reinforced door, with the enhanced pivot latches.” The Medi repeated the order.
The drone continued, its rotor blades chasing away a black mass of flies that had attacked the neck and face of a slain guard lying over a steel door, in a pool of drying blood.
The drone panned the room.
“Three in the living room. Two with their jugulars slashed. One, perforated and eviscerated,” Carrion said. Medi dutifully repeated the scene.
A song played in his ear, a tune he had assigned to Vicki, the woman he had left in a rush of gathering clothes, screams, curses and a tossed bedroom item that shattered against a door he barely closed in time.
A tap in his ear made the song stop playing.
“Why are you calling me?” He said to the air. “No, no, I told you when I left I was working. Don't start up with me Vick, you know I can't turn down a job.”
The darkened alcove that led up to the second floor called to the drone. A flick of a red switch on the transmitter turned on the light attached like a bar beneath the frame. Slowly it illuminated room by room. He took count of the blood saturation that affected the carpet, covers, sheets, and left streaks along the walls. Even the ceiling. Some cleaners forget to look up. Red leaked down from the tile, dried like thin tears. Pillows swelled like used tampons soaking up the blood.
“ Yes, I know what today is,” he continued, talking to his earpiece while concentrating on the screen. “But you like that fancy car, right? The house and those slippery sheets? What do you want me to do? Look, I have to go.” A double-tap of his ear brought silence, and Carrion blew out while shaking his head.
“That woman is going to be the death of me,” he whispered, then looked back at the screen. “Now let's see how you all died.”
The bodies inside each room were much the same as downstairs, heads askew from deep throat cuts, while others were stabbed a nearly impossible number of times from head to toe, their faces almost frozen from the shock and pain. Carrion counted five in total.
“This is not so bad upstairs,” he said in a low tone as the drone went back downstairs and floated toward the dining room he had seen before. “Bodies in one piece. Very professional.”
Hovering just beyond the dining area, the camera on the front end zoomed out to take in the scene. Three of the corpses were clean, hunched over, curled up, intact, as if they had died suddenly from some internal organ failure. There were no signs of the cause of death, which was a indication of who had taken their lives.
“Nunn’s work,” Carrion mumbled.
On the floor he found the fourth body, a bloated neck with white thrashed skin, and a pink jagged bone in the center.
“Where is the head?” he questioned, slowly moving his thumbs to pan the drone to the left, searching for the lost appendage. It wasn't until he saw the horror on the wall that his grip tightened on the transmitter.
“That asshole,” Carrion growled. The drone moved forward. The mess Bloody had left into the wall appeared like a horrific mosaic, blood running down like dried red rain streaking on a windshield. What remained of the body was pulverized into the wall, hanging like the children's doll of a psychopath.
Carrion's teeth ground in his skull. “Medi,” Carrion spat. The box came to life in a series of beeps from his voice command. “Mutilated corpse. Bone fragments, brain, teeth, flesh in the wall. One fourth double-wall drywall needs to be replaced.”
His thumbs moved again until he paused and said, “and we are missing a head.”
The rest of the domicile was relatively clean. The drone made it through the kitchen and into the back room without finding any more bodies. The buzzing of the quad-engines echoed through a long hallway. Light from the flashlight swept over droplets of red raindrops seen in intervals, patterns left by someone running at a brisk pace. That had to be dealt with.
Then the drone reached the end of the hallway.
Cloudy white eyes squinted. “Medi, I need hinges. Four by four, with an approximately five-eights radius. Stainless, reinforced, with solid steel security tab. And with an arch hole pattern.”
“Confirmed,” Medi replied.
“And double security doors. It looks like TDA-A, number thirty one.” He glanced again. “Make that thirty two.”
As the Medi marked his instructions, beeping to update his instructions, Carrion moved the drone forward. Any hope of a quick clean was dashed by the massacre in the final room. He counted two corpses, mutilated but relatively intact. One with his face crushed and the other perforated through the sternum with what looked like a bazooka round. Body parts were tossed about, leaving a shredded torso that was mired in coagulated ichor. The same gore left lakes staining the floor red. Someone was having fun.
Then the drone panned to what was left of some Mega or Mal by the look of his costume, pulled halfway through a wall, rigor mortis freezing the terror on his face and making his free arm clutch the air.
A warm breath seeped from Carrion's mouth. The job just doubled in effort.
“Medi, we're going to need a lot of RCC lined plastic. A full bolt. Paint supplies. And that drywall order?” he said. “Double it.”
