Trampling On the Blood of My Enemies

PART 1-Will

The room was filled with dead bodies—severed limbs, severed heads, and the distributed contents of what had once been held in people's chests and stomachs and bowels.

It had been a wedding reception, but then something big and fast and powerful had moved through the space, literally ripping everyone apart.

"Same as the last place," Will muttered into the microphone. He was glad the air he was breathing came from a reservoir in his suit, and not from the room.

"Full auto," he added, moving his own fire selection switch to the automatic position. Anyone capable of doing this much damage would definitely be hard to stop—if they were still here.

The building's emergency lighting had kicked in when the main power failed and directional spotlights dotted around the walls, near the ceiling, illuminated the garish carnage at a glancing angle, so that even the shadows looked like something from Dante's Inferno. They spread across the wet floor and up onto the blood-spattered walls. But nothing here was moving.

A shattered door at the opposite end of the room was hanging by a single hinge. Will didn't hear sounds of movement, or anything else. He increased the directional audio sensor gain until he could hear the wind blowing from outside through the building, and even the breathing of the team, still in the entrance hallway behind him. No footsteps. No crashing sounds from deeper within the building. It was possible that whoever, or whatever, did this was still hiding inside—he or she or . . . it—possible, but unlikely. The killer was gone. Just like at the previous crime scene.

He moved sideways, and away from the entrance, to make way his across the room, stepping along the perimeter near the wall. He signaled for his team to do the same thing, pointing left and right. That would have them avoid the main area of the slippery mess on the floor, minimizing the damage to forensic evidence. Despite this risk to the evidence, it was important that he made sure the building was safe before allowing the others inside. Sifting through the crime scene would be a matter for the police and forensic scientists, not his tactical team.

At the other side of the main room, he paused to take a quick glance through the doorway, retracting his head quickly in case the killer was still lying in wait beyond the opening. A subtle movement of his jaw changed the way everything looked on the heads-up display, as he switched from the visible spectrum camera to a mid-infrared sensor. Now warm things appeared bright and cold objects dark. He looked through the doorway again and saw what looked like oversized human-like footprints—still warm from places where blood had clung to the bottom of the killer's feet. The tracks led away from where he was, disappearing down a hallway on the other side of this second room.

Will raised a fist, signaling for his team to hold while he moved diagonally through the doorway, so someone could cover him. He moved his jaw again and the room turned a bright green, as the visible camera with an image intensifier kicked in. There was nothing to see.

At the end of the next short hallway was another opening. Its door, too, had been ripped from the hinges. Beyond that doorway, was the parking lot.

"Anything out back?" he said into the microphone. Part of his team had circled around the outside of the building and the three members should be able to see the whole parking area.

"Nothing. There are some odd footprints leading onto the grass on the other side of the cars. They seem to disappear into the river. And then there's a big field of tall grass on the other side of the water."

"Shit! Get in the chopper and see if you can find anything moving from up in the air. We'll cross the channel here and look for signs of the killer on the opposite bank."