Mystery Noir

Down Below Part 5

Even in the dark, the desert was full of light. From the sprawl of stars overhead, mainly, though everyone on our seven-person team had a headlamp on, a flashlight in their hands and another spare one close at hand clipped to their belt.

Unfortunately, the tracking dog that they did have, had been out all day and had reached its limits for searching. Though Matt did have his own dog, this one a large Irish wolfhound, that walked at his side. I watched the dog's attention, seeing it glaring off into the darkness of the desert far more than I wanted it to.

And the heavy weight of the handgun on my hip, complete with the magazines that were in my cargo pockets, was something I had not felt in a rather long time. I had shifted my long hunting knife to counterbalance the gun a little bit, but it didn't stop the memories of when I was with the FBI from rushing back every time my hand brushed against the cold, deadly metal.

It had been a rule of the group, you carry the gun you're used to, leaving me with a handgun and Penny with a hunting rifle she had slung over her shoulder.

I grinned at the girl, seeing her walking beside the other female on the team, the two of them talking low about random things. They were both younger than the rest of us, though they were both on high alert. Penny walked near silently and seemed to be able to see and hear things in the desert that the rest of us could not.

Walking easily near the back of the group, I let my eyes wander on the ground and stopped when I saw a round, black gelatinous ball clinging to the side of a rock. Black slime oozed down the rock from it, and when I bent down to inspect it, I could see that a couple smaller jelly balls seemed to be growing from the slime trail. The wind shifted, bringing me the scent of feces and decay from out beyond where the limits of my eyesight and the flashlight could see.

It was almost as if I could hear some sort of scratching, digging sound, and a weird clicking noise, though the sound of my heartbeat began to thunder in my ears.

"What is it, Doc?" Rick spoke up from where he stood behind me, causing me to jump.

I let out a breath, realizing I had been holding it, raising a hand to cover my light as I looked up to him. "You ever see this shit before?"

Rick looked down at the oozing slime ball and made a face, shaking his head slowly. "Fuck no. Look... Matt said you were into like... ghosts and shite..."

"Nah." I shook my head and turned back to the path, following after the rest of the team that was quickly leaving us behind in the darkness. Though I watched the ground still, noticing splotches of the black ooze, sometimes accompanied by the jelly balls that almost looked like mushrooms at times, trailing along our path.

Along the path that Bonnie Broadick had supposedly taken before going missing.

Now, I had never been formally trained in forensic blood spatter analysis, but I had been to enough crime scenes and learned enough to know that the splats of black were dripping from above. Sometimes they spread out, as if flung off, like whatever was dripping them was moving quickly, but always indicating that whatever had dropped the black ooze, had moved in the same direction as us.

As Bonnie.

I skidded to a stop as the black ooze moved off in another direction, leaving the path at a diagonal to where ours was taking us. I glanced at Rick, then turned and started in that direction, hearing him let out a whistle, presumably to the others. If it was meant for me, I didn't pay it any attention. The path here got a little rockier and the incline got sharper, but it wasn't anything that would prevent a determined person from pushing a stroller up.

I was thinking so hard about the possibilities of what this could mean that my brain did not process a change in the pattern right away. I had to stop so suddenly that Rick nearly bowled me over, though he merely gripped my shoulders to steady both of us.