Researchers, continued

Coffee!! Holy jumpin’…I almost forgot to grab my coffee. BRB.

Okay. Let’s just dive in, shall we?

***

"Let’s widen the search; look around the world for any deaths that might match, no matter how small the similarities." He logged onto his favourite search engine. "I’m going to try tracking down where they might have come from. There’s got to be a clue somewhere."

Eva nodded and typed in a new search. "What do you think they are, Liam?" she asked, as the response appeared on the monitor.

"I don’t know," he said. "Maybe someone was breeding something and came up with a new breed of predator. Maybe it’s a mutation from space, like in those old sci-fi movies. Maybe it’s aliens. I wish we could get our hands on one of them. We could learn a lot."

"They can’t be very big, whatever they are," Eva said. She skimmed the headlines on the first page of results and clicked on one of them. "Maybe they’re rats."

"Like in the books by James Herbert?" Liam looked over the monitor of his laptop at her. "I doubt it. I think if it were rats, the attacks would have started in a big city, not some remote island–and how did they get out there, and where did they go after? The fisherman who found the body didn’t say anything about either a swarm of rats or giant ravenous crabs or bear rabid chihuahuas. So they must have gotten off the island before he got there."

Eva went on to the last page of results, deciding to work backward from there. The first two pages were stories she had already read. "Then either they can fly, or they’re great swimmers. Either way, it creeps me out."

"Maybe they took the old man’s boat," said Liam. "They could have drifted to the mainland in a dory."

"I can live with that as long as they weren’t using the outboard motor or rowing themselves ashore. Hey! I think I found something. You should read this one." She clicked on the link and opened the story.

Liam put his laptop aside and went to lean over her shoulder. His eyes darted over the headline and date, noting the locale. "Indonesia? And a good eight months before our lighthouse guy. Shit." He read the article with a growing sense of looming disaster.

"It was right after the tsunami, as if people hadn’t been through enough already. You think it’s one of ours?" Eva asked.

"Says here they blamed rats and other scavengers for the mutilations, but I think you’re right. Shit. That’s ages ago." He went back to his laptop. "We better look harder," he said. "This could be escalating and we have no clue aobut anything. I don’t even know who to warn–and who would listen to me, anyway?"

***

It’s good to be back transcribing…and it’s only a short step to be writing the rough draft again. This is good to be doing. Thanks for reading.