A Dark Horizon (PB2): Chapter Five- Grisly Discovery
Jackie climbed the small hill, propelling herself upwards with her hands and
feet. "Do not go too far," she heard Imam warn in the distance,
"we do not know what dangers lurk beyond the settlement."
She heard him but payed no attention. She dug her fingernails into the
red clay of the surface and clawed her way to the top. "Wow," she
muttered to herself as she stood at the peak and looked out over the land,
"wicked." She could she for miles, past the settlement, all the way to
the planet's dark horizon.
"Hey, Riddick," she called, "you gotta see this!
It's..." Suddenly the clay beneath her feet gave way and she lost her
footing. She cried out as she tumbled down the opposite side of the hill, red
powder filling her eyes and mouth. She landed with a painful thud and coughed
violently as the loose clay shifted and settled. She heard Imam call her name
desperately and replied, rubbing the dust from her eyes, "I'm fine, I'm
okay. I just fell." Riddick was at her side in no time, checking her limbs
for any fractures or breaks. "I'm fine," she insisted again, trying to
stand, but her shirt snagged on something. She gave it a hard tug and shrieked
as a decayed skeletal arm appeared grasping her sleeve. She staggered backwards,
crushing a fragile skull beneath her boot. She screamed again as she became
aware of at least two dozen bodies scattered across the ground all around them,
half buried, rotting slowly in the cool climate.
"Allah!" Imam whispered, stunned. His dark features were hard,
disgusted, frightened. "It is a graveyard." He fell to his kness
instantly and began to pray. "No, not a graveyard," Riddick said
deeply, kneeling to examine one of the stinking bodies, "a dumping ground.
Whoever put these people her didn't even bother to bury them, they just left
them out her to rot." Jackie suggested that perhaps these were the plague
victems but Riddick quickly dismissed the idea, saying that the people of the
settlement would have wanted to bury the victems deep in fear of airborne
contamination. No, these were something else. He ran his hand along the
disgusting, blackened flesh and bone of one of the bodies. The rotted skin was
slimy under his touch and peeled away easily so he could better study the bone
underneath. He could feel long thin fractures in the bone. Cut marks. He
remembered Cassandra's wounds and shuddered. But these marks were deep, precise.
"They left them out here after they killed them."
"Dr. Redding, she said that things became chaotic before the
citizens exodus," Imam, who was now back on his feet and glancing over
Riddick's shoulder, said. "Perhaps these people were the unfortunate
ones."
"Perhaps," Riddick said under his breath, not daring to
tell the others what he really thought. "When did she say everyone left? A
month ago? Some of these people have been dead a lot longer than a month. Some
of them look like they've been here for years, others just weeks."
"Well, what does this mean?" Jackie shrugged. Riddick was
silent. It meant Cassandra had lied, but why? To what end? Who was she
protecting, and what dark secret were they hiding? What had happened on this
planet to kill off all these people? And could he find out before it did the
same to them? He heard a noise in the canyon behind them, a small, quiet sort of
sound like a footstep crunching in the hard clay that made the hairs on the back
of his neck rise. It was time to get back to the settlement, he decided glancing
around cautiously.