The Things We Bury - Part 1: In Anticipation of the End of the World [Completed]

Chapter 4: Me and My Bad Luck (Part 1 of 6)

There was nothing new about walking into a cell.  There was typically a smell.  Under the best of circumstances, there was a close odor of stale air, body odor, and an open toilet.  But in Maxwell Wiley's experience, things were often worse.  By the time he entered a cell, the prisoner had usually given up hope.  All kinds of bodily fluids saturated their clothes, the floor, and the mattress if there was one.  Too frequently, these dark, windowless rooms baked in the sun. The desert heat slow-cooked the contents to a rank, unbearable stench.  Then there were the cells where the prisoners had become ill.  The inhabitant suffered from dysentery that festered to the point of some sort of intestinal rot.  Feces would be stinking up the blistering hot cell for days, while the detainee sweated out a sewer of toxins.

But Maxwell had never encountered anything as awful as the odor that greeted them when the security portal opened.  He heard the stomach-turning wretch of R.J. gagging beside him and fought with every fiber of his being not to do the same.

It was a fetid, bestial aroma, like a hundred wet dogs had been held in there for a year – and died in captivity.  Overlaying that was the raw offense of the shit on the floor.  Just before dawn, the creature had relieved itself right under the central monitoring array.  The pile of black excrement stood like a monument – an ancient cairn representing corruption and hate for all that was good and decent.  If the room hadn't been airtight, there would have been a swarm of demonic flies buzzing around it.

Maxwell regretted not wearing the full containment suit.  He would have very much welcomed a tank of fresh oxygen.  The thin plastic face shields only made the air feel dense and every horrible smell slid around its sides and up through the open bottom.

R.J. produced a hacking cough, as though trying to expel poison from his lungs.  When he was done, he said, "Is there a way we can get this aired out?  There's no way we can put the girl in here tonight with it smelling like this."

"The vents can flush the room.  But it'll need to be cleaned first."

"I'll get some people on it.  We're going to want to collect some of the urine and the stool anyway."

Oh, Christ, he hadn't spotted the urine.  Maxwell took a hasty step backward.  He'd almost put his foot in the putrid, yellow-orange liquid.

"LARS also left some hair."  R.J. pointed to the broken wall array.  A tuft of fur was caught in the cracked remains of the Plexiglas dome.  He went over and examined it closer, being careful not to dislodge the strands from the jagged shards.  "Amazing."

"What?"

R.J. answered without looking towards Maxwell, clearly absorbed in his own thoughts.  "There's no blood.  You would think that with the momentum she had, the skin would have at least been grazed."

He reluctantly turned away.  "Once we retrieve the samples, I'll have them hose the place down and bleach it.  Can we get that fixed for tonight?"  R.J. pointed back to the broken sensors with his thumb.

Maxwell surveyed the smashed electronics.  Not a chance.    

"It's not like I can order a new one online.  It's going to take a while."  That stupid animal had to go straight for the most expensive thing in the room.  The budget spreadsheet played in his head.  One-point-two million dollars was the cost for one of the arrays.  They were produced at some military contractor's top-secret factory in Colorado.  Could they even get another one?  He'd have to talk to Grierson.

And the damn freak would probably try and smash it again as soon as it was installed.

"We'll need to have the dome reinforced too," he said.  "That will create additional delays."