Page 142 of The Bones in the Yard

Part of me took a perverse amount of pleasure from the fact that a bunch of rich people were boating and swimming in literal shit. And part of me thought that was fucking disgusting and should probably be illegal.

Even though we were outside, Ward pulled out and put on a mask, this one—maybe a bit inappropriately, even if it was rather apropos—with blue skulls on it. I kind of wished I had one on me, even though I can’t actually contract the virus again, unlike my still-human boss. But it meant that he wasn’t going to be breathing in poop, while I was.

With an audible sigh, Ward pulled on his grippy gloves and shoved himself off the edge of the pavement, propelling himself across the grass with his all-terrain wheels toward where a cluster of people were gathered, most of them in little CSI bunny-suits.

I walked beside his chair, hands shoved in my pockets as I breathed in and out through my mouth to avoid the stench while trying not to think about the scientific fact that smell was caused by microscopic airborne particulates.

“Anything exciting yet?” I asked Ward.

“Other than the toilet-stench?”

“Does that really qualify as exciting?” I wanted to know.

He snorted. “It qualifies assomething.”

“Yeah, fucking disgusting.”

That got me a laugh.

We’d gotten close enough that I recognized most of the people in the cluster—Dan was there, and Raj, Kurtz, Mays, and a handful of other CSIs I’d worked with back when I was the poor bastard who got these calls.

I took in a breath to call out, and the horrible oily smell-taste of death hit me in the back of the throat, making me choke.

“You okay?” Ward asked.

“Ugh,no.Whatever they’ve found, it’s… still fresh enough that you’re going to want to stay over here.”

I like my boss, he’s a great guy, and he’sterriblewith gross.

If the air quality was any indication, this was going to be really fucking gross.

“Oh,goodie,” Ward muttered, but he stopped himself, then put his hands in his lap. “I’ll just wait here, shall I?”

“You could see if the… source of the smell is around,” I suggested.

“I could,” he agreed. “And I could also accidentally start raising some victims of the slave trade, a couple Pamunkey, and several unfortunate kayakers.”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“The river is not a good place to just start summoning things when you don’t know who you’re looking for,” he replied, his tone a little clipped. I gathered there was a story or two behind that.

“Fair,” I conceded. “Let me just go see what you should be looking for, then, shall I?”

“Try not to piss off both the RPD and the FBI,” he replied, a slight turn around his eyes telling me that he was trying to lighten the mood by making a joke.

“I’ll do my best,” I told him, then kept going toward the source of the horrible smell.

All the humans had on masks, although I could tell from the pinched expressions and puffs of breath against the masks that the filtration definitely wasn’t blocking all of the stench. Even Raj and Kurtz had masks on, both of them black with tiny little grey FBI shields screen-printed on them.

I swallowed the bile that was trying to push at the back of my throat.

“Jesus, Hart,” Mays muttered, digging a white paper mask out of his kit and handing it to me with purple-gloved fingers. “Don’t breathe this shit in.”

I put it on quickly, slipping the elastic over my pointy ears. “Thanks. I was… not enjoying that.”

Raj looked behind me. “Why’s he over there?” he asked.

“He doesn’t do gooey,” I answered, looking down at the hole where Mays and Quincy were both crouched. Whatever had been in there was very dead andverygooey.

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