Four men stood under the harsh illumination of a halogen light as they contemplated the ice cream card. There were three blank spaces remaining. “I wonder if they have jimmies,” said one. “They’re called sprinkles in New Mexico,” responded the other absently as he threw the empty wallet on a nearby table, thumbing through the IDs of PFC Paul Clark. “I could go for some vanilla right about now,” said the third, his back to a clear jar colored cherry red with the biological stains of parts of Paul Clark and Paul Clark himself (mostly at least) silently staring up on a slab with a Y-shaped incision on his chest. “We are missing something important,” remarked the fourth, holding up the card, “Who gets the free ice cream here?”
Silent cogitation and the shuffling of wingtips greeted this comment.
--recollections of Jim Coake
I am playing Jim Coake, an FBI Agent involved in investigating Middle Eastern artifact smuggling around Iraq, in TopHat’s Delta Green campaign. The campaign will be focused on the published Delta Green scenario Iconoclasts, with additions of other adventures as TopHat sees fit. For example, our first adventure was titled Enemy of the Tribes, a shotgun scenario written by David Tormsen, found here.
We did not know the title of the adventure going into it.
Along with myself, there are three other players with the following characters:
FBI Agent Gabriel Almeida, a hulking man who is very physically capable and a keen investigator.
Doc Taylor is the gung-ho enlisted Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman. He has interfaced with SEAL teams before, but has had bad experiences.
William ‘Big Bill’ Chester, a paramilitary operations officer with a specialization on electronics, and the most senior Delta Green agent in the group.
The four of us reported to Albuquerque, New Mexico where our case officer, Army Colonel Gwin, met us in a nondescript hotel conference room. The name of the game was an unnatural murder and we had to cover it up and solve it. Manilla folders were opened, papers were rifled through, and open laptops were swiveled. The victim was one Private First Class Paul Clark, recently returned from overseas where he had served multiple tours in Iraq. He was dead, and not in the nice way. Evidently PFC Clark had been torn to shreds in his Albuquerque home, 30 minutes after he had placed a 911 call rambling about “insurgents” and “exfiltration” before a single gunshot punctuated the call and the phone hit the ground.
Big Bill and Doc Taylor listened to the 911 call carefully. It was unusual, at least in more than one way. PFC Clark seemed lucid and adhering strictly to military doctrine when he made the call and was barking orders at the 911 operator. Whatever stress he had been put under; Clark was operating tactically as an experienced Army veteran. Before he died, at least.
Gwin provided our cover. We were a military police investigative body experienced in counter-terrorism and on the case for a “revenge killing”. At that time, we had no idea how accurate that was.
In the nondescript black van that was to be our second home during the investigation, we reviewed documents and threw theories back and forth as we drove to the morgue to talk to the medical examiner. We learned that PFC Clark lived alone and had divorced his wife rather shortly after returning stateside. Not all together uncommon, but a detail niggled at our brains. What if he knew what was coming for him?
With that detail in our minds, we pushed open the double doors of the cold and sterile morgue with the ME in tow. It was bad. Even Big Bill had to take a seat at the sight of Clark in different locations and containers. Bill had seen plenty of shit in Iraq. A body shouldn’t look like that unless an IED got it, and that wasn’t supposed to happen in America (failed San Check). It wasn’t an IED that caused this though…maybe some sort of animal?
We started correlating our contents. Clark was in two major pieces: upper and bottom half. Most of the wounds were prior to Clark’s death, some were postmortem. The actual cause of death was shock and blood loss. The upper body told us an interesting story. There were defensive wounds that look like he fended off edged and blunt weapons. The bottom half…well it was a mess. The right leg looked of all things like it had been gnawed. The left leg and meat had been removed with a cleaver. The remainder of the left leg, it was sort of not there. It had been pulverized into a human stain; it was collected in a glass jar, crimson and cherry red.
We got to work. Agents Coake and Almeida dove right into DNA collection and forensics examination. The right leg had teeth marks on it all right. Weird ones though, like the teeth of some primate. The top of the body was definitely assaulted with knives but the strange thing was there was sand in the wounds. Like if PFC Clark had been stabbed then rolled around in sand. Someone suggested a sandblaster was used, but that was a head scratcher too. We knew whatever this was appeared to use tools, but a sandblaster? The teeth marks suggested to everyone cannibalism or at least consumption of the body. Parts of Clark were missing after all.
Further investigation indicated Clark had been intentionally stripped by bladed implements before being whatevered to death. This suggested multiple murderers but how many? And were they more animals or humans? It just didn’t make sense. At least we found out Clark had a beer in him before his demise. Couldn’t imagine going out like that sober.
Then it hit us. There was, well a scent for lack of a better word. Maybe funk. Yeah, that works. The corpse didn’t smell of decay, it smelled of urine and less savory things. It was pervasive, annoying and we could smell it through our masks.
Done with the funk, we gathered around Big Bill who had wisely chosen a spot far away from the body. He was examining Clark’s wallet and his phone. We found three contacts in Clark’s phone: a Kirkman, Lacroix and Jackson. Kirkman had been called a few days ago for five minutes. Big Bill found it pinged to Germany though the area code was local to New Mexico. The other two numbers, Lacroix and Jackson had not been called. They were just programmed in. Then out came the ice cream card from the wallet like a rabbit out of a hat. We stared at it for a while, the humanity of what happened brought into focus for a moment.
The four of us collapsed into the black van. Windows rolled down; cigarettes were shared with impunity. Except for Big Bill. He said smoking was a nasty habit and grabbed some dip. We were on to the crime scene.
Clark had a house on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Well, that was too nice. It was in the sticks. We identified it by the windows being smashed in and the good old yellow do-not-cross tape, cordoning it off late at night, flapping forlornly in the breeze. As we approached, all four of us looked to each other and nodded. We could smell it. It was worse inside. A musky piss scent, same as what we encountered on the body in the morgue but fouler. We put on our masks and went to work.
PFC Clark didn’t go down without a fight. We knew there was an M-16, bagged from evidence, and it appeared that Clark shot out his backyard glass door, aiming at something. There were footprints or bootprints, lots of them, inside where the body had been found. Blood was everywhere. Fortunately, it was dried at this point. It was clear there was a violent struggle with multiple attackers. Maybe five to ten guys? Sand was also present in the scene, which was weird. But it wasn’t the strangest thing.
There were bones strewn about in a circle where the corpse had been found. A bit of forensic know-how revealed they were a mix of canine and human. They looked for all the world to have been scrimshawed with petroglyphs that made Jim think of the indigenous peoples of the American South West. At least that sort of made sense, given New Mexico.
We collected DNA evidence from the shattered glass and from shattered dishes in the kitchen. Someone had slammed someone else’s head into the dishes. A cleaver was found thrown under the refrigerator. This was clearly the or one of the murder weapons used to cut up Clarke’s leg. That indicated tool use. What type of weird creature had primate-like teeth, attacked to eat you and carried a cleaver? What exactly were we into?
Jim also found the source of the stench. There was oily residue all over the kitchen walls. It was tagged and bagged and sent to our Delta Green supervisors.
Doc Taylor and Big Bill explored the rest of the house while Gabriel and Jim fussed about the kitchen and circle of bones. PFC Clark was evidently aware of his condition. Doc Taylor opened the bathroom and was assaulted with a near opposite scent from the nasty funk in the kitchen. Bottles, potions, lotions and soaps were stacked in the bathroom. Big Bill found some paperwork. PFC Clark had been honorably discharged for “undisclosed medical considerations”. “He smelled like ass,” Bill translated dryly. Medical notes indicated Clark had been suffering from this funk since he served overseas. He had been treated for skin lesions and some sort of “bromhidrosis”. Poor guy couldn’t catch a break. Divorce papers with one Karen Clark were arranged neatly on the coffee table. No reason was cited, but we knew why.
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| Credit: magnificentophat |
Photographs were taken of the bones from every angle. No stone unturned you know. On a closer look one of the pictographs didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit with the Southwest angle. No, it looked like a carving straight out of the Middle East, Jim said. One that was associated with…pre-Islamic mythology. Specifical ghuls.
Bandying about ideas about extreme body odor and things that go bump in the night, the group followed the mess of sandy footprints outside. Then things got serious. There was evidence of a dog. Nice things you know? Dog house, dog bowl with water, squeaky toys. But no big Newfoundland like was written up in the police report.
Suspicious, we walked the perimeter. We found the remains of a short fight. God, thankfully it was short. The attackers had killed and eaten the dog, likely before Clark was murdered. It was bizarre though. What kind of attackers lick up the blood? Or was it sucked up like a vampire?
Chupacabra, Gabriel said. No one argued.
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