The Soul Collectors

76

'Bravo One,' Knowles said, 'what's your status?'

Darby sat up. 'Command, I'm holding a set of hands that have been severed at the forearms. Someone just stuck them in the dirt.'

'What about the body, any sign of it?'

'Stand by.'

She got on her knees, moved to the spot where she had pulled the hands and dug through the earth.

'Command, I'm not seeing a body, just several bones.'

'And these other hands? Any survivors?'

'Unknown. Farrell and I will split up, check each one and see who's alive. There're at least a dozen or more here.'

'Bravo Two, assist Bravo One and search for survivors.'

Farrell moved to her left. Darby walked to the next pair of hands, grabbed the wrists and this time pulled up a body. Down on her knees, she stripped off her gloves and then brushed away the dirt from the neck and checked for a pulse on the cold skin.

Standing, she turned on her tactical light and saw a shaved, scarred head. The emaciated body was covered with fresh and old scars, fresh and healing wounds — and there were no eyes, the sockets scorched and blackened as if they had been burned away. Like Charlie Rizzo, like Darren Waters, this victim had been castrated.

She swiped her forearm across her forehead. 'Command, this is Bravo One. I have one male vic, deceased.'

Clark had pulled up a body and was checking for a pulse. His partner, Reggie, was kneeling on the ground, digging.

She moved on to the next set of hands when Clark said, 'I have a young female vic, deceased, with blonde hair.'

Darby felt as though her stomach had been rolled across shards of glass. Please don't let it be -

'It's not Sarah Casey,' Clark said. 'Vic appears — '

Screaming cut through the air and she whipped her head around, bringing up her weapon. In the beam of her tactical light she saw Reggie writhing on the ground, his gloved hands working furiously at something wrapped around his knee — the clawed metal jaw of what she was sure was a bear trap. It had clamped around his left thigh and shin, trapping his leg at a 90-degree angle. His knee had been spared. He must have knelt on the ground and triggered the trap's spring with his knee.

Clark had bolted over to help his partner. Darby ran too, Reggie's screaming and painful blubbering as loud as gunshot reports against her ears. The hands sticking out of the ground were bound by rope at the wrists. She dropped to her knees and helped Clark prise away the trap, her bare fingers slipping across the rusty metal jaws slick with blood.

Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw the bound hands move. Darby turned to them and saw moving fingers.

Reggie slid his shredded mess of a leg out of the trap. Darby got to her feet, wrapped her hands around the wrists and pulled.