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Hope	By : LadyNephero Category: +G through L > Invader Zim > AU/AR-Alternate Universe-Alternate Reality Views: 1600 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim, nor do I make any money from this work.

Chapter List
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  “You ready?”
                Dib pressed a finger to the edge of his glasses, feeling the tiny button there click into place. His vision shifted, the world going still for just half a moment before catching up again, the tiniest red dot in the corner of his vision letting him know that the tapes were rolling.
                “Ready. After you.” Nazca gave a stiff sort of smile, and strode down the corridor that led out into the terminal. There was a line of men in suits holding up signs with names, as well as pockets of families waiting to greet their loved ones. The sheriff stood just beyond the throng, his arms folded and his craggy face purple with stubble. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
                “Agents… Nazca and Mothman?” He asked, stumbling a bit over the codenames and looking irritated for it. He had to know who they were and who they worked for, and Dib could see disbelief already deeply set in his face. It was a normal enough reaction, but Dib was far more impressed by how well he suppressed it.
                “Hello, Sheriff Williams. Thank you for taking the time to meet us.” Nazca said, and immediately the older man’s face softened. Working her charm, Nazca applied a small smile and held out her hand, which the officer immediately took. “I understand that you have your hands full with… all of this. We’ll try to be out of your hair as soon as possible, and if there’s anything we can do to help…”
                “You can help by maybe giving us an explanation of what the hell we’re dealing with,” Williams replied, letting out a sigh and rubbing the back of his neck. He seemed to war with himself for a moment, before he jerked his head to the side. The two agents followed him out of the airport and to where a squad car waited.
                Dib took the back seat, his knees up in his chest at the tight fit. But Nazca would be able to hold conversation a lot better, leaving Dib with plenty of time to record and review the files. He flipped to the one dated for only a few days ago, and skimmed the initial report, just as Nazca was getting the same details from the sheriff.
                “This is the hottest one we’ve had. It took place in only a few hours. AAA got a call about a broken down minivan. Caller said she was Gail Watson. Husband and son were taking a look under the hood when she hung up. Tow truck came looking for them, didn’t see any car. It was only a hunch that made him look off the side of the road, the poor bastard.”
                “Wait, no car? How does an entire minivan just disappear?” Dib asked, his brows knitting tight.
                “Beats me, kid,” Williams replied, one hand leaving the steering wheel to rub at the back of his neck. “It’s only one road for miles. No exits, no dirt roads. Tow said the engine was shot, it shouldn’t have been able to move.”
                “That doesn’t even make sense.”
                “Yeah, well, that’s your specialty, ain’t it, kid?”
                Dib’s eyebrows rose up, and he was about to reply when he noticed Nazca had turned in her seat to look right at him. It was hard to tell, given the dark lenses of her sunglasses, but Dib knew. And his mouth was instantly zipped.
                “Okay, so we have a missing van, and three dead.”
                “Well…” Williams said, swallowing a bit. “We’re not sure.”
                “What?”
                “We’re not sure… how many are dead. It’s… it’s a mess. A whole big fuckin’ mess.”
                Nazca glanced back at him, and he could see her skin paling. He gave a reassuring sort of nod, and she turned her attention back to the road, which was suddenly lit up like so many red and blue Christmas trees. Exiting the car, Dib saw movement in the bushes, and was none too reassured to see some poor officer was currently dry heaving into the brittle twigs. The sheriff led them towards the ditch, cordoned off by so much yellow tape and more squad cars. He heard Nazca take a breath, and they both looked down off the side of the road.
                At first, Dib couldn’t tell what he was looking at. It looked like a ditch, covered in muddy water after a hard rain. But then the pieces began to click together, and the full horror his brain was attempting to hold at bay hit him like a semi. The mud wasn’t mud, it was too dark and too burgundy, and it was over leaves and twigs and branches and all the other miscellanea that one found off the side of an unkempt road. There was even a tiny Smirnoff bottle floating in the soup, the label almost illegible for all the gore that caked it. Nazca took a short breath, and immediately regretted it. Even from their vantage point, the smell was overwhelming.
                Suddenly, Dib knew why Williams looked like he hadn’t slept. Dib steeled his nerves—and his stomach, the last thing he wanted was to be branded useless and weak—and began a very careful trek down to the ditch. The steep incline made it slow going, but he held his balance and moved around the perimeter. It was the size of a small pond, leaking into the surrounding foliage like crimson swampwater. There was even what looked like pondscum—at least until Dib looked closer, and realized that was hair and skin and nothing so normal as pondscum. He carefully pulled in short breaths through his mouth, making sure his glasses caught every angle possible. He heard Nazca discussing something with the sheriff back on the road. He knew she was afraid of getting too close and passing out, but at least this way she kept the sheriff off of his back and let Dib get some work done.
                It was so much easier to look at when it was just pictures, he realized. He had thought the images would haunt him for years, but it was nothing compared to seeing it up close, smelling it and hearing the flies and bugs as they swarmed over a veritable feast of decay. A few insects swarmed up as his shoes disturbed them from their perch, and it took all of Dib’s willpower not to reel back and swat at them. Every few steps, he had to stop as his vision stilled, another picture logged away for later inspection. The sheriff was right; he couldn’t tell how many dead there were. There was a ton of blood, and so many pieces, but as for who was who…
                A father. A mother. A son. They might all be in here, merged into so much human soup, food for flies and maggots and whatever beast it was that did this.
                What could have done this? Suddenly, the entire reality of the situation took hold. This was only done in a few hours, between the phone call and when the tow driver arrived. And somewhere, in between tearing an entire family to pieces, the van was taken.
                It didn’t seem like the work of just some psycho in the woods. Already, his mind was reeling, going through suspect after suspect. Flat, grassy terrain, no major bodies of water nearby, some woodlands but nothing that one could hide in forever without someone finding you… it didn’t look like the kind of place that a spirit might frequent, no visible markers of some event long past. Slowly, he turned his eyes upwards, to the blinding sky and beyond it. Something twisted in his gut at the mere possibility, and he hastily sent up his hopes to whomever ran the fabric of the universe that it wasn’t what he was now thinking.
                He took another step; his boot snapped a twig. Almost immediately, there was a screech, and something big and black took off out of the foliage some distance away. Dib jumped, very nearly falling back into the ditch. The crow gave another shriek as it circled, high overhead and against the blinding sun. A few more birds joined it in their circling, before they swooped down and into the grass.
                That gave him pause. He tried to pinpoint where the scavenger had taken off from, and moved through the brambles. The voices of the police and Nazca got dimmer the further he walked, and he started to feel a little silly when he didn’t see anything to warrant the harsh twisting in his middle.
                That is, until he found what the crow had been eyeing. He turned to look back at the road, seeing Nazca staring at him, and gave a little jerk of his head. She immediately made her way down the side of the road, and began pushing through the high grass to get to him.
                “What is it?”
                “The husband, if I had to guess.” Dib stated, looking down near his feet. There lay the largest piece that remained of the victim, some thirty feet away from the rest of the site. He guessed it must have been part of the torso at some point, sizeable chunk of flesh that it was. Upon closer inspection, Dib saw a few broken vertebrae with strings of muscle still clinging in places.
                “Mary, Mother of God, are those?”
                “Claw marks.” Dib agreed, taking in a breath and immediately regretting the rancid air that filled his nose. “Three lines across… I think this is his back.”
                “There was no evidence of them heading this way… do you think scavengers dragged it out here after the fact?”
                “A piece this size? Something that big would leave a trail.”
                “Then… how…?”
                “Get back to the sheriff. Tell them to widen their search about ten yards and see if they find more pieces.” Dib raised his hand, touching at the frames of his sunglasses just as he focused on those deep purple lines in greyed flesh. The lenses flickered, the carcass frozen in time for just a moment, before his glasses resumed their normal vision.
                He could hear the sheriff cussing, and he turned just in time to see the man stifle a gag reflex. Williams rubbed at his mouth, before every line of him steeled and he looked down at the mess at Dib’s feet.
                “There wasn’t any blood this way. It was all back in the ditch,” he stated, slowly, and Dib recognized the sound of attempted sense. He let him murmur to himself for a few more moments, before he took a tentative breath.
                “I don’t… think that… the victim was bleeding at this point… sir.” Dib added as an afterthought, and he looked up to see Williams staring at him.
                “You saying they were… drained and… dragged out here?”
                “…No, I don’t think so. The bushes look untouched. Even if they were carried, it’d make some kind of trail, wouldn’t it? Footsteps? Something?”
                Williams was silent for a long moment, before he let out another harsh curse.
                “Sweet Jesus, they were fuckin’ thrown.”
                Dib didn’t say a word. His stomach twisted, and he couldn’t help but look skywards again, at the flicker of black wings against a white sun. In some part of his brain, he probably hoped that if he blinded himself with the sun, he might never see those hideous gashes. But then he blinked, and all he saw was three purple lines, straight across the inside of his eyelids.
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Hope