A/N: This is a Casefic. And though Molly is not featured in this story, I'm keeping it in the same universe just to keep everything streamlined for now. You do not need to read either of my other stories to follow this one. There might be some minor references here and there, but nothing that is pertinent to the story.
All you need to know is that Molly is Emily's sister-in-law who use to work for the CIA. She's currently recovering at Ambassador Prentiss' home after a group of traumatic events. I'm only telling you this in case I decide to fork off into a future storyline I was thinking of. For now, I'm taking a break from actually writing Molly into the story itself though!
On to this story: I'm setting this in a fictional town in Iowa. So if there are an Iowans reading this, please know that I am quite aware that there is no such place in your state!
Anyway...I own nothing.
PLEASE REVIEW!
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"Ugh gross!" Cameron groaned, lifting his foot to shake it.
"What? You've never gotten a little mud on your boots?" Logan teased, mimicking a high-pitched whine.
Cam shot a glare at the taller boy. "Not on these I haven't." He snarled, grateful that it was dark enough to hide his pout as he looked back down. He wrinkled his nose when another breeze blew by. "God, it smells like ass up here."
"Mr. Garber has a few animal traps up the mountain. It's probably a deer carcass or something. Come on." Logan was already moving again.
They had been walking down the long winding driveway for nearly two hours. While riding their bikes home from football practice, the two high school sophomores caught a glimpse of a rusted Ford Pickup pulling onto the overgrown road that led up to Perrigrew Boulevard.
No one was allowed up there.
Even the Mayor steered clear of the deserted community.
"Dude, maybe we should just call the cops." Cameron groaned leaning forward as the climb became steeper. They had ditched their bikes about a mile back, given that they couldn't ride them all the way uphill.
"No, that's a waste of time!" Logan chuckled snatching a loose rock up from the ground and tossing it back at his friend. "Besides, we're almost there! I can see the gate!"
Ahead against the dark blue sky, the cast iron fence that surrounded the once thriving community of Buxton's wealthiest. In the late 1950's, when the coal mines finally collapsed, the mansions in the large circle emptied out one-by-one until there was no one left. The trolley that took people in and out of town sat abandoned on the wire halfway down the hill, it's green and gold paint had long since chipped and faded.
The mud beneath Cameron's feet had him stumbling again. He growled as he fell forward and caught himself with his hands. "Son of a bitch." He righted himself and rubbed his palms against his t-shirt. "The snow melted weeks ago! Why is it still wet?"
His question went unanswered. It had been rhetorical anyways, but Logan always had a smartass comment, so his silence was weird.
The grime was still caked between his fingers as he looked up at the gate. When they drew closer, Cam squinted up at the top of it. "What are those?"
Again, Logan didn't reply. His eyes widened and he backed up a few paces until his back slammed into his friend's front. He turned to the shorter teen and began to say something, but froze at the sight of Cam's shirt. "What the hell?" He shouted, shoving him away out of instinct and fear.
Still tired from their afternoon of practice followed by a steep climb, Cameron's legs flew out from under him and he landed flat on his rear, sliding back a few feet in the mud. "Oh, come on!" He grumbled. "My mom's going to kill me if I come home covered in this...this..."
He paused, lifting his hands up and staring at the new clay caked on his hands and arms. In the moonlight, he could see that what the dark revealed as light brown was actually closer to red when illuminated. In fact, it was red. It was really, really red.
"Oh man..." Cameron scrambled to his feet, not even noticing that Logan had taken off down the hill. He simply stared at his hands and clothes, trying to figure out what kind of mud he was standing in. In there parts, the only dirt that wasn't brown was on the baseball diamond behind the high school.
With another groan of disgust, he glared up at the fence of the neighborhood, intending to hurl a few insults its way-because he liked having something to blame. He stopped when the clouds overhead cleared away entirely.
And when it was light as it possibly could be, he let out s shriek and backed up until he collided with a large tree base. His eyes connected with those of the man forty feet above the ground with the sharp point of the speared railhead stuck up through his stomach and blood poured his body and trickled down the rusted iron until it found the cold ground.
Two feet away, on the next railhead, was another man. And two feet away from him was a woman. And then two more men, then...maybe a woman? The further they went, the less he could make out. But there were bodies on every single post that he could see. Some old and some new.
For some reason, blood was still pouring down from each of them. It formed a tiny waterfall down the hill they'd just climbed and soaked into the earth.
Cameron whimpered and looked down at his new shoes, covered in dirt and blood.
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Garcia made a point of keeping her back to the wall with the monitor on it as she pulled the photos up. Seeing them early that morning was enough for her. She didn't need to review them further.
"Buxton, Iowa." She bit her tongue to keep herself from greeting the agents as flamboyantly as she normally would. With a case like this, it was best to remain somber. "As of this morning, over ninety bodies were around an abandoned subdivision on the outskirts of town."
Reid leaned forward in his seat and flipped through the photographs in his paper file. "Men and women, all between the ages of sixteen and seventy-seven." He muttered. "Various races, religions, and socioeconomic backgrounds."
"And each method of killing and mutilation is the same." Derek added on. "No excessive violence on any specific group. It's precise and brutal every time."
"So there's no pattern and no underlying goal." Hotch surmised.
"This is a very small town." Emily said. "Less than five thousand. So these must not be locals, otherwise they would have noticed nearly a hundred of their own citizens missing."
"The local PD are doing their best to I.D. all of the bodies, but they're refusing to enter the gates of the division." Garcia let out a sigh and rubbed her forehead. She had been on the phone with Buxton's Police Chief for nearly an hour, insisting that he make sure that the entire perimeter of the neighborhood was swept for more victims. But the terrified man had refused.
JJ looked up from her tablet and tilted her head. "Why won't they go in?"
"Superstition I guess." Penelope shrugged. "And I can assure you, I tried my diddly-darndest to convince Chief Scaredy Pants to get his men inside, but it just ain't happenin'."
"Great, so if there are any more bodies they would have had a couple of more days to decompose." Morgan pointed out. "Making it that much harder to identify them when found."
"All the more reason to hurry. Garcia, we'll need you with us. With this many victims, it's best to have you nearby with tracking down their families and last known whereabouts." Hotch muttered, flipping his file closed and standing up. "Wheels up in twenty."