Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
He stopped, got out, looked at the faces of the cleanup crew.
Each and every one of the team appeared exhausted—hardly a surprise, given the waves of horrific insanity that had hit their race over the past weeks, the outbreaks so random that there was no way to prepare for them. Ivan had kept an eye on the news the entire time he’d been on the course, ready to respond with an assist should it be required. But he’d been too far away from this one to help during the event itself.
It was the least he could do to assist with the cleanup.
Because the recovery part of this particular operation was long over. It had been forty-eight hours since the Psy in this settlement lost themselves to the urge to do murderous violence. Many affected by this insidious disease turned on themselves, but others threw their inexplicable rage outward.
Ivan found the woman in charge, volunteered his services. Perhaps the assistance offered by a random Mercant wouldn’t have been accepted at any other time, his family’s reputation for hoarding secrets and unearthing skeletons too strong. But this was no secret. This was just death, and he was a strong man with the capacity to help put bodies in bags and haul them to the morgue trucks.
That the cleanup was still in progress two days after the massacre was an unspoken indicator of resources stretched to the limit. He hadn’t realized it was this bad, or he’d have come much earlier. The entire settlement would’ve been a putrid pit had they not been in the heart of winter. A dusting of white covered the bodies around him, creating silent sculptures unchanged from the moment of death.
A small, furred body, glimpses of black and gold below the white.
Crouching down, he brushed away the snow with a gloved hand, his breath visible puffs in the air. It was extraordinary, how changelings could have such a different mass in their human form as opposed to their animal one. In human form, this small feline had likely been a full-grown adult.
“All ocelot bodies go in that truck,” the mortuary attendant told him, pointing to a truck parked away from the others. “Survivors want to deal with their own dead.”
Ivan nodded, unsurprised by the need of the pack to see to the respectful burial of their lost packmates. “Neighbors caught in the crossfire?”
“Yes, the ocelot pack’s main residential area butts up against this settlement.” The attendant indicated a line of trees on the other side of the wide parklike strip that held the vast majority of the bodies; it had functioned as this small township’s outdoor recreation area. Now it was their temporary grave.
As the attendant knelt down beside another ocelot body, Ivan picked this one up on his own. It was heavier than it looked—another thing that set changelings apart from ordinary animals. Their bodies weren’t built the same.
“No question that the infected Psy attacked their neighbors, and the cats tried to defend themselves,” the attendant added as he made a note on the datapad he was using to track the dead. “Significant number of ocelot casualties.”
“Why haven’t the survivors already retrieved the bodies?” Changelings took care of their own; he’d witnessed that multiple times with the bears in Moscow. No wounded or otherwise incapacitated bear was ever left on their own. The idea of a pack leaving its dead out in the open like this … no, it didn’t sit right.
“Majority of the pack is dead,” was the sobering response. “The others are injured. We offered an assist, but they’re adamant they’ll bury their dead without help.”
Ivan asked no more questions until after he’d put both dead ocelots in the truck with their brethren. Not all the changelings were in their animal form. A number were in human form—but had been identified as ocelot from identification found on their bodies, or from signs of a semi-shift: claws unsheathed, eyes frozen in their other form by death, patches of fur on their skin.
The latter he’d never even heard of, so he had to assume it to be an artefact of severe trauma, a malfunction in the changeling ability to shift. Those found in full human form with no visible sign of changeling status would be identified later, using whatever resources were available. If he had to guess—and with the bodies so well preserved—he’d say the pack would send a survivor to look through the dead.
Changelings didn’t like to share fingerprints or DNA data with the Psy.
That task done, he returned to the attendant who’d been assigned as his partner, and they continued on in their grim work. The other man was able to immediately identify the Psy casualties using a fingerprint or DNA database. Ivan’s family made it a point to keep their information off those databases, but most Psy took the tracking for granted. The same with many humans—not so much on the DNA, but with fingerprints.