The First

Chapter 27

Warning! This chapter is not for the feeble of heart or mind.

Proceed at your own risk.

Ross gasped and turned his head, willing himself not to puke again. "You got this, Ross. Keep it steady." After several deep breaths, he surveyed the room.

He'd seen movies, horrific ones. Hostel came to mind. Maybe Saw? His daughters loved horror and dragged him to every new scary movie. The two monsters also made him watch old horror movies on Friday nights. Creature Feature Fridays, they called it. But Ross had never witnessed a more horrific scene; in life or movie.

Blood coated the floor like a newly stained deck. Rivers of the thick, red, fluid flowed down the walls. When his eyes rowed upriver he saw the bodies again. Six or seven is what he counted. Most of them had limbs torn off. Entrails dangled from the dead. They had been tacked up with various office items; morbid reverse marionettes amongst the kiosks. Each person had met a horrific end. Several had their hearts ripped out. A male officer's head rested at the center of his spine. His eyes wide open, staring at Ross as if to say 'why weren't you here to save me.'

Ross didn't see Sheriff Lawson amongst the dead. One of the bodies he found wore civilian clothes. He figured the man might be the little girl's father. The one he came to question, but he didn't see a child. A cringe shot through him as he imagined what might have happened.

One of the officers had a chain thick with keys hanging from his belt. Ross climbed onto a slick desk, reached up, and unlatched them. When he hopped off, he slid for a couple of feet, leaving snake trails in the blood. After he secured the keys inside his front pocket, he packed the pocket with tissues from a clean desk, an effective silencing tool.

"Agent Harris?"

Ross grabbed the radio and clicked the receiver off. If the Trill didn't already know about him, it did now. He wiped his sweat-laden palms on his pants and tightened his grip on the shotgun. Then he waited for what seemed like an eternity. His ears tuned into every sound in the station: the click of the wall clock every second, a hum from one of the lights above him, and something else...the patter of feet down the hall.

From the outside, the building had looked small. He didn't think there could be much more to it. Maybe a small courtroom, an interrogation room, lunch room, and holding cells.

If I were being chased by an indestructible creature, where would I go?

The jail cells.

He backed out of the room into the hallway.

Still empty.

The lunchroom door wobbled on one hinge, blocking entrance into the small room. Through a crack in the door, Ross noticed another pool of blood in the center of the room. Poor bastards. Several bodies would have to be drained to make a pool that big. He backed away and continued down the hall. Past the empty interrogation room on his right stood a large metal door with a small slit in the center.

Locked. He tugged the handle again to make sure. Lighthanded, he extracted the keys from his front pocket. They jingled and he stopped them, making sure he hadn't alerted anyone to his presence.

He tried each key in succession. The third one spun and the lock mechanism released. The door creaked as it swung open. Jail cells with wrought iron bars lined the long concrete hallway. They faced a wall with a single red fire alarm in the center.