They drove through the silent streets. Now that he knew what to look for he couldn’t miss the bodies strewn to everywhere. Some of them had been propped to different poses, leaning against the doorframe as if they were just waiting for somebody, sitting on the benches outside small stores, but most of them were just lying on the ground, like toys that had been abandoned after the child had gotten bored of playing with them. Some of the bodies were more evidently dead than others. The ones with skid marks on them, the ones with their heads blown off.
“I have a bad feeling about this…” Logan murmured when they parked in front of the police station. The girl let out a strangled giggle.
“You think so?”
“Yeah. Xavier should have contacted me already.”
“Maybe he’s just being careful? Doesn't want to hurt you anymore?” The girl asked. He dug up his cell phone from the glove compartment of the truck before stepping out.
“Oh…” The girl noted. He nodded. Then frowned.
“No reception. Fuck. For all I know the prof could have tried to call me. Come on. It’s creepy out here. Lets get inside.”
It wasn’t any less creepy on the inside. When they opened the front door of the police station they found yet another body. A small girl, couldn’t have been older than ten. She was lying on her side on the floor, her head bent to an angle that made Logan suspect that her neck was broken. There was a gash on the girl’s forehead, and the stairs stretching to the second floor behind her had blood on the steps. She had fallen, or somebody had pushed her down those stairs.
“Oh, my God…” His companion whispered, kneeling next to the corpse, her gloved hand smoothing off strands of hair that had escaped from the dead little girl’s braids on her forehead.
“I think God has very little to do with what has happened here,” he grunted, his eyes already scanning the darkened staircase. He could smell professor Xavier’s cologne.
“Come on, there’s nothing you can do for her. My boss is somewhere on the second floor,” he said, grasping the girl and pulling her up from her kneeling position. She was crying. He huffed and shrugged off his jacket he had put on earlier, and covered the little girl’s body with it before stepping over her on to the stairs.
The building was as silent as the whole town had been. Now that the sand in the air wasn’t distracting him he could smell bodies everywhere around him, thankfully hidden behind closed doors along the corridor of the second floor. Only signs of life came from behind a door at the end of the corridor. Xavier was in there, he could tell it from the faint feeling of warm glow that he had learned to connect to the telepath. He could smell and hear a wild animal as well, a coyote maybe. It was right behind the closed door. He could smell its anxiety. It was ready and coiled. Prepared to attack and tear to shreds anybody and anything that tried to go through that door.
“Xavier?” He raised his voice. No need to whisper.
“Logan? There’s a coyote in here. Be careful.”
“You know me, prof…”
“Yes. That’s why I’m worried. For some reason I have lost my powers. Lost them as soon as I entered in to this town. And I have a reason to suspect that same has happened to you. I’d advice you not to rely too much on your healing.”
“But my senses are still working?”
“Yes. That only proves something I have been suspecting for quite some time already. They’re not part of your mutation. I strongly advice you to take extreme caution when you come through that door. The animal guarding me is quite a vicious creature.”
“Okay. I hear you.”
He turned to look at the girl standing next to him.
“You heard what the boss said. Move away from me. That mutt will probably come straight at me. I’ll keep it occupied. You go and get Xavier out.”
“Okay…”
He pushed the door open. The coyote had been crouching on the floor on its haunches, teeth bared and tail whipping the floor. Now it sprung through the air, colliding against his chest and its teeth lodged deep in his left shoulder, grinding against the metal covering his bones. He grabbed a firm hold from around its throat.
“Run!” The girl had frozen momentarily, but now she bolted in to action, sprinting in to the room. He could hear Xavier telling her to search through the desk, keys to the cell should be somewhere in the drawers, then the growling and drooling beast took his whole attention.
His shoulder was on fire. The coyote was tearing in to muscle, growling and slobbering frustrated, shaking its head in an attempt to tear off a piece of him. He blinked off the tears from his eyes to clear his vision. His left hand was as good as useless, lolling limply when the beast tore in to him. He squeezed with his right hand instead. The coyote wasn’t even trying to escape though he had to be hurting it. He heard the satisfactory crunch when its airways gave up under his thumb. Then a snap when the neck broke.
“Logan? Are you alright?” He could hear Xavier asking. He struggled, pushing off the heavy carcass of the coyote and sat up clutching his shoulder.
“Almost… Shit… It nearly tore my fucking arm off…” He gasped, grimacing from the slippery feel of the gaping wound under his palm.
“I warned you. Are you able to carry me?” The professor asked. He focused his gaze past the tears that stung in his eyes. Professor Xavier was sitting in a cell. The hitchhiker was in there with him, holding his hand.
“I think so… Wait a moment…” He grunted, scrambling on his hands and knees and rising on his feet. He shook his head to clear off the haze of pain.
“I’m afraid we have to hurry. The person that brought me here… My telepathy isn’t working, but I can feel him somehow. And he’s coming back. Getting closer every passing minute,” Xavier said.
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