Weekly Drabble #362: Expeditious (Patreon)

This week's chosen prompts are "unbroken bones" from AS900 and "smaller than I remember" from EBB.

Enjoy!

~

Expeditious:

Johnathan knelt by the pile of bones, shining his light over them. “Smaller than I thought,” he mused.

Behind him, Perkins was covering his mouth and nose with the collar of his jacket. The mound was a few inches high. Everything was broken and chewed, but something within caught his eye. John put on a pair of latex gloves and reached into the pile. He pulled out a stainless steel pin, holding it up to the light to check the serial number, though he already knew they’d be a match. “Well,” he said to the group, showing it to them. “We found out what happened to Joey Cusack.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Marie muttered, turning away.

“Don’t vomit on Joey’s account,” John told her. “He was a real piece of shit. Contributing to the ecosystem is probably the one good thing a mafia goon like him ever did.”

“That was still a person,” Perkins retorted. “Nobody deserves that.”

“Oh, I can think of a few people who do,” John challenged. “But regardless, this is good news.”

Andy shone his light towards the kneeling man, then to the pile of bone fragments. “‘Good’ news? How?”

“We’ve only got a little one. Probably a child. Adolescents and young adults wouldn’t need to break the bones this much, and once they hit adulthood, their stomach acid is strong enough to dissolve bones. That’s why we get this little vomit-pile. Greedy thing ate too fast, got stuffed and then upchucked once all the meat melted off.” He stood, putting the surgical pin and some of the bone fragments into an evidence bag. “Plus, a little one is easier to handle.”

“You’re talking like this is a lot more than theory,” Andrew pointed out.

John didn’t respond. He swept his light around the underground chamber. There were no other bone piles here or signs of habitation. No, it’s not all theory. Their quarry – originally just a suspicion, but now a certainty – hadn’t been living here. They probably just retreated to the abandoned subway platform to sleep off Joey, barfed what was left of him up and scampered off. Probably not too far from where they were nesting. “It’s probably an orphan,” he guessed. “If there were parents around, they wouldn’t let us get this close, and they wouldn’t leave evidence out in the open.” They were quite a ways off the main lines. No one came down here without a damn good reason, but active parents would still have made sure there was no evidence of their offspring.

“Or they’re letting us get closer so they can cripple us and use us as a hunting lesson,” Perkins replied.

John shook his head. “They might do that with one or two intruders. We’ve got four people. Say what you like, but they’re good parents. They wouldn’t risk exposing themselves to this many people, let alone endanger a child. No, we’ve got someone on their own. They’re young, alone, frightened and hungry. That dipshit Joey probably got lost running from the police and ran into them. Marie, mark our location. We’ll head deeper in. Eyes up, get the gear ready. If we run into our little friend, we’ll only get one chance to capture them. I don’t want us to miss.”

He stared into the darkness of a long-forgotten train line. The shadows closing in around the bright intrusion their flashlights stabbed out. The lightlessness stretched farther than the light, well beyond what any of them could see. Somewhere in all those shadowed and abandoned tunnels and caverns was their target.

Somewhere out there was the fame and proof he knew existed, and he was going to find it.