Free Apocalypse Island by Mark Edward Hall

just kids, sir. They didn’t know anything.”
    “You know they’ll talk, don’t you?”
    “Yes, sir, but I didn’t feel like I had the right to hold them.”
    “Get their names and addresses?”
    “Yes, sir. Right there on my notepad.”
    “Good work.”
    “It’s a woman, sir.”
    “I can see that.” Jennings thought the officer’s eyes looked haunted.
    “Someone carved a cross on her,” Myers said. “And she’s got tattoos.”
    “Yeah, I see that too,” Jennings replied. “You okay, Myers?”
    “Look at them,” Myers said. “They’re...filthy.”
    Jennings knew the officer was referring to the body art. Actually he was having trouble taking his own eyes off it. On the woman’s right front shoulder was a tattoo of a three-fanged skinless demon clinging to the back of a large, hair covered man. Or perhaps it was a monster. Jennings couldn’t really be sure. Some sort of snake continued down the arm to almost the wrist.
    A sort of Christ figure in white robes, his hands held out before him in entreaty, was tattooed on the corpse’s front thigh just below the hip bone. On her left hip was a tattoo of a man dressed as a nun who seemed to be playing with his own genitals. And there were more. Most were markings of an intensely blasphemous nature. If you happened to be religious, that is. Jennings sighed. The kids that did these sorts of things to themselves evidently weren’t. These days it was common to use blasphemous religious symbols as body art. They thought it was ‘radical’ or something. New meaning for an old word. What’ll they think when they’re seventy? 
    He stared down at the dead young woman and knew that the same person had killed both victims. It could not be coincidence. They’d both been stabbed to death. And on both bodies, the killer had left his mark, a crudely carved cross. Jennings was suddenly reminded of another murder from half a decade ago.
     

Chapter 19
     
     
     
    “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Myers said. He continued staring at the corpse, his eyes large and dulled by shock.
    “Dead people bother you, Myers?” The question came from the second plainclothesman, a man named Frank Cavanaugh. He was tall and lean with close-cropped salt and pepper hair, sunken, impassionate eyes and worry lines around his cruel mouth.
    “That does,” Myers said pointing at the corpse. “Those are Christian symbols.”
    “Yeah, so?”
    Myers stared at Cavanaugh and did not reply.
    “Myers is a Jew,” said one of the other officers.
    “You’re shitting me.” Cavanaugh said. He was looking at Myers like he was from another planet.
    “Does that make you think any less of me?” asked Myers.
    “No, Myers, I just didn’t know you were a Jew, that’s all, and I don’t think anything could make me think less of you.”
    “It never ceases to amaze me how insensitive you Christians are to other religions,” Myers said.
    “What, I’m supposed to be psychic?” Cavanaugh said.
    “And the shit you Christian assholes do in the name of your lord,” Myers added, his voice rising. “This is sick.”
    “You know something, Myers?” Cavanaugh said. “It wasn’t us Christian assholes that did this. It was some sick pervert.”
    Myers eyes looked haunted. “There’s something wrong here,” he said.
    “What do you mean by that?” Lieutenant Jennings asked, turning his full attention to the young officer.
    “I don’t know,” Myers replied. His haunted eyes were darting around, panic filled, his tongue licking nervously from his mouth. “I...can’t really explain it. It’s...I don’t know. It’s like there’s something...evil around her. Some sort of unfinished business or something.”
    “Unfinished business?” Cavanaugh said with a harsh laugh. “Christ. Now I’ve heard everything. She looks quite finished to me, Myers.”
    “No, you don’t understand. I saw something.”
    “What?”
    “I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”
    Jennings kept his