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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jonrog1" data-source="post: 272980" data-attributes="member: 189"> CATTLE MUTILATORSPt. 4The Agents woke up early.  They decided talk to the man who’d called in the latest cattle mutilation.They called the rancher, Claremont, who gave them terse direction from the motel they were staying at.  Soon they were back out on the highway, lackluster brown dirt stretching flatly away to distant steppes all around them.  The Agents were a good half-hour out of the town before they realized they were on the same two-lane highway where they’d had the previous night’s encounter.  They spotted the flashing lights of the two cop cars from a mile away.  “Dodge them,” advised Stephen.  Denis was driving for this leg of the journey.“Can’t,” Denis answered. “The turn-off’s past them.”They stopped the van beside the two cop cars.  Both cruisers had seen better days, and both were local, from Fairview.  Just past them the still-smoking husks of the two devastated MiB cars smoldered, scattered all over the pavement and roadside as if they’d been crashing airplanes rather then cars.  The police were just two men – a fat-muscled older sheriff, and his deputy who looked no more then twenty years old.“Hold up there,” the Sheriff drawled.   He flashed a badge – “Sheriff Glick” – and rested his hand on his gun.  “This here’s an accident site.”The Agents unloaded from the van, casually circled the area like gawkers.  Andy quietly flipped his video camera to ON.  “Gosh, what happened here?” Johanna asked in her most disarming drawl.“Looks like some kids were drag-racing, and got blowed up.  Luckily everybody survived, but they ran off – no bodies.”  Sheriff Glick nodded sagely, then turned back to the wreck.  Ross looked at the others incredulously.  They’d hoped that they would escape scrutiny for the wrecks, but this level of idiocy had to have some ulterior motive.  “So.  Some kids in late-model sedans were drag-racing, and then they both exploded next to each other.  Along this empty stretch of road.” “Yep.”  Sheriff Glick turned back to them.  “And you are?”Ross and Andy spun out their cover story of the Hoffman Institute and its documentary on cattle mutilations.  Sheriff Gick merely stared and grunted at intervals.  At the same time, Denis and Stephen circled the crash site.  They’d both spotted something they wanted to get a closer look at.  Johanna attempted to distract the young Deputy with cleavage and small talk, as Stephen crouched to pick something up.  That’s when she received two surprises:First, her usually reliable cleavage and small talk had not distracted the Deputy.  He saw Stephen pocket what he’d found.  Second, the Deputy kept his mouth shut. “Deputy Tom Murphy, miss,” he smiled, passing her his card.  “If you need me for anything, care to … share some information … I’d appreciate a call.”“Why thank you, sir,” Johanna smiled, discretely pocketing the number.In a moment the Agents were back in the van and guided around the wreck.  Only once the cop cars were well behind them did they compare notes.  “The Deputy’s smarter than the Sheriff,” Johanna said.“As are mollusks.”  Andy rechecked their map for the Claremont Ranch turn-off. “What did you two find?”Denis held up a tattered scrap of papers.  “A burned passport.  The Men in Black carried ID. And here’s what’s weird –“ he tossed it on the seat.  The passport’s scorched cover was in Russian.Andy studied the picture. “Ilya Sergerov, hmmm, with the name and pic, maybe the Hoffman Institute can find out something about him.  What else?”  At that, Stephen handed him a long sliver of metal.  Ross interecepted it – he’d taken advanced firearms training at the Hoffman Institute. “This is a shell casing,” Ross said, squinting through it.“It’s huge,” Jo answered.“Yep.  Seventy millimeter, the kind you fire from a Vulcan Heavy Autocannon as you, say, devastate a Vietnamese village in order to save it.  Now, here’s what’s weird – our suited friends last night weren’t packing this sort of firepower, nor were we, which leaves –““The UFO,” Denis finished.  “But what sort of UFO is strapped out with Earth-manufactured heavy metal?”The Agents interrupted their discussion when they finally reached the gates of the Claremont Ranch.  Jack Claremont, lean and sunburnt, waved to them wordlessly, then hopped in his waiting pick-up truck and led them out into his open range.*************************************************“How often has this happened?”  Jo asked, clutching the handkerchief to her nose.  Andy and Ross busied themselves with the mikes and video cameras.  They’d rather do that than stand where Stephen and Denis were: hip-deep in mutilated cow.  Day-old-sitting-in-the-desert-sun mutilated cow.  The smell was vomitous at thirty feet out.  Everyone else was fighting to keep from losing their lunches.  Claremont just spit an extra two times a minute, that seemed to do the job for him.“Ayyup, thehd tahme this month.  Used to not happ’n so much, but lately – and as always, the lights in the sky come at the same time.”“As always?” Jo asked.Over by the cow, Denis happily passed Stephen a plastic container. “Quick, bag the cow anus.”  Stephen glared at him, but Denis just returned to his note-taking, humming cheerfully.“Way-ull, not as always.  Cattle mutilations been hapn’in to all us locals for the last three yeahs.   Ra-yah, so we chalked it up to cay-otes.   Then real bad for the last six months. Then, a month ago, the lights started showin’ up.  Sometimes alone, but mostly when the cattle wind up dead.”“Can we talk to the other ranchers?”  Jo glanced over at the cow, then quickly turned away when Denis held some brain matter up to the sun to take a closer look.  Claremont told them that most of the local ranchers would congregate in the local diner for lunch.  As quick as they could, they finished the interview, got in their van and drove from the charnel-house stench.  They expectantly looked to Denis, their expert in all things UFO.  “That,” he said authoritatively, “was no mutilated cow.  It was just mutilated.”  When the others stared blankly, he continued. “UFO mutilations follow a very distinct pattern.  That cow – if it’s like the others – didn’t have that pattern.  It was not clinically dispatched, it was killed, then the soft parts were eaten away by small carnivores.  But not the ones you’d think.”  He produced an evidence baggie.  Within it was a small tooth. “I recovered this from within the brain matter remaining in the skull.”“Doesn’t look like an animal,” Ross said.“It’s not.”  Denis held it up for all to see. “It’s got a silver filling.  This is a human tooth.”</blockquote>

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