Several corpses remained at the scene, some still propped up inside their smoking vehicles, others lying twisted on the hot asphalt. Worse still were the body parts, unmistakable hands and occasional organs and the like. Those were the things Donna didn’t like. As the pair neared the epicenter of the explosion, Donna stared down at something she guessed to be the remains of someone’s knee.

The burned out remains of the riot bus stood still and silent before them as various officers taped off sections of the road to keep out spectators.

“Give me a whole body any day,” she said quietly to Kelly. “I don’t mind a body full of bulletholes or beaten to death, but I don’t like this anatomy-class thing.”

Roy Kelly nodded. To him it wasn’t such a big deal. What mattered to him was catching whoever did it so that they could prevent it happening again. From the news of two other blasts across the city already that morning, he had few illusions about stopping the bombings anytime soon.

“Hmm,” was all the reply he gave.

They stared at the bus. Most of its center was gone or at best hanging by thin twisted metal shreds in unrecognizable, singed masses. No visible bodies remained in the bus, or even body parts for that matter, most having been blasted out in the initial explosion. Long, gnarled metal fingers seemed to reach outward from within the bus where the blast had extruded them in its outward haste. No windows remained, and what little there was to mark the shape as that of a bus was charred black from the resulting fire. Steam rose and hissed in a few places where remnants of heat still occupied the burned-out frame, the fire brigade having moved on to cope with other crises along the block.

“Big blast,” Roy finally noted, stating the obvious. “We need to get a team in here now, and make sure those fire fighters don’t come back and hose away any more evidence.”

He paused, noticing a small chunk of human intestine hanging from a sharp hook of metal not far from where he was standing. “Whoever did this, they’re serious,” he said. “I think we can expect some sort of message or demand real soon.”

“Twenty cops,” Donna noted, casting her eyes about. “I’ll pull out all the stops. There’s gonna be hell to pay for this.” Her partner shook his head in disbelief at the horror.