“A noise.”
“Brilliant. That’s what I thought it was too.”
They both laughed. Then there was another sound, a staccato growl that ended on a murmuring high note. The two men looked at one another. “That sounds like my brother singing in the shower,” DiFalco said.
From ahead of them came further sounds—rustlings and more of the unusual growls. DiFalco and Houlihan stopped. They weren’t joking anymore, but they also weren’t afraid, only curious. The wet, ruined cars just didn’t seem to hold any danger on this dripping autumn afternoon. But there was something out there.
They were now in the center of a circle of half-heard rustling movement. As both men realized that something had surrounded them, they had their first twinge of concern. They now had less than one minute of life remaining. Both of them lived with the central truth of police work—it could happen anytime. But what the hell was happening now?
Then something stepped gingerly from between two derelicts and stood facing the victims.
The men were not frightened, but they sensed danger. As it had before in moments of peril, Hugo DiFalco’s mind turned to a brief thought of his wife, of how she liked to say “We’re an us.” Dennis Houlihan felt a shiver of prickles come over him as if the hair all over his body was standing up.
“Don’t move, man,” DiFalco said.
It snarled at the voice. “There’s more of ’em behind us, buddy.” Their voices were low and controlled, the tone of professionals in trouble. They moved closer together; their shoulders touched. Both men knew that one of them had to turn around, the other keep facing this way. But they didn’t need to talk about it; they had worked together too long to have to plan their moves.
DiFalco started to make the turn and draw his pistol. That was the mistake.
Ten seconds later their throats were being torn out. Twenty seconds later the last life was pulsing out of their bodies. Thirty seconds later they were being systematically consumed.
Neither man had made a sound. Houlihan had seen the one in front of them twitch its eyes, but before he could follow the movement there was a searing pain in his throat and he was suddenly, desperately struggling for air through the bubbling torrent of his own blood.
DiFalco’s hand had just gripped the familiar checkered wooden butt of his service revolver when it was yanked violently aside. The impression of impossibly fast-moving shapes entered his astonished mind, then something slammed into his chest and he too was bleeding, in his imagination protecting his throat as in reality his body slumped to the ground and his mind sank into darkness.
The attackers moved almost too quickly, their speed born of nervousness at the youth of their victims. The shirts were torn open, the white chests exposed, the entrails tugged out and taken away, the precious organs swallowed. The rest was left behind.
In less than five more minutes it was over. The hollow, ravaged corpses lay there in the mud, two ended lives now food for the wild scavengers of the area.
For a long time nothing more moved at the Fountain Avenue Automobile Pound. The cries of gulls echoed among the rustling hulks of the cars. Around the corpses the blood coagulated and blackened. As the afternoon drew on, the autumn mist became rain, covering the dead policemen with droplets of water end making the blood run again.
Night fell.
Rats worried the corpses until dawn.
The two men had been listed AWOL for fourteen hours. Most unusual for these guys. They were both family types, steady and reliable. AWOL wasn’t their style. But still, what could happen to two experienced policemen on marking duty at the auto pound? That was a question nobody would even try to answer until a search was made for the men.
Police work might be dangerous, but nobody seriously believed that DiFalco and Houlihan were in any real trouble. Maybe there had been a family emergency and the two had failed to check in. Maybe a lot of things. And maybe there
“They better not be sleeping in some damn car.” Secretly all four men hoped that the two AWOL officers were off on a bender or something. You’d rather see that than the other possibility.
A cop screamed. The sound stunned the other three to silence because it was one they rarely heard.
“Over here,” the rookie called in a choking voice.
“Hold on, man.” The other three converged on the spot as the rookie’s cries sounded again and again. When the older men got there he slumped against a car.
The three older cops cursed.
“Call the hell in. Get Homicide out here. Seal the area. Jesus Christ!”
They covered the remains with their rainslickers. They put their hats where the faces had been.
The police communications network responded fast; fellow officers were dead, nobody wasted time. Ten minutes after the initial alarms, had gone out the phone was ringing in the half-empty ready-room of the Brooklyn Homicide Division. Detective Becky Neff picked it up. “Neff,” the gruff voice of the Inspector said, “you and Wilson’re assigned to a case in the Seventy-fifth Precinct.”
“The what?”
“It’s the Fountain Avenue Dump. Got a double cop killing, mutilation, probable sex assault, cannibalism. Get the hell out there fast.” The line clicked.
“Wake up, George, we’ve got a case,” Neff growled. “We’ve got a bad one.” She had hardly absorbed what the
