Dirty jobs. [Derek!]

[Rhi-Rhi]

"Stupid mutt." Cyrus nudged the wolf's hairless corpse with his boot, quickly at first to check that it was dead. It was huge with jaws large enough to snap off someone's hand, and it wasn't breathing, thank goodness; his aim had been true, a shot right through its head, but you could never be too sure with these things. This one wasn't even twitching anymore, tongue lolling out of its mouth with saliva pooling onto the dirt. Dead as a doornail. Cyrus planted his foot on it and gave it a good kick, rolling it over onto its side, then waited again just in case. No movement. Great.

He pulled some gloves out from his backpack and tugged them on, then drew his combat knife from his belt and bent down. Working fast as he could, he slit open the creature's belly, steaming guts spilling out, and held his breath. The smell was ghastly and it was an effort not to gag, but with some digging around he found the thing's stomach and opened that, too.

What he found made him wince and draw in a sharp breath.

A human hand. It looked like a woman's.

Well...at least they'd found their culprit. So this had been the one that had been picking off people lately. Or one of them, at least.

Trying to keep his stomach down, Cyrus extracted the hand and dropped it into a plastic bag, sealing it, then peeled off his gloves and stuck them in another one. He put both away in his backpack--he was professional like that--and scraped his knife off on the ground before sheathing it. Well, that was that. He figured it might be the one; it had been skulking above the city for weeks now but had always managed to evade capture. Its hide was scarred with old and fresh bullet wounds and grazes, showing that it had been a fugitive for some time now.

Finally.

Ugh. What a way to end a patrol. Goddamn he needed a smoke now. If he wasn't so sure taking off his mask and smoking outside in the toxic air wouldn't kill him right here and now, well, fuck, he'd add a little more poison to his lungs.

Hefting his backpack, he turned and started back for one of the city's many hidden entrances, ever alert for anything else that might have been attracted by the gunshots and the new blood smell in the air.

[Anonymous]

He could smell the blood.

The coppery scent floated across the wasteland, invading Bone's senses like an army holding siege over a castle. By the slighty acrid, more pungent scent of the blood, Bone knew it was one of the hairless-wasteland-wolf-beasts. Lifting his muzzle, the beast quickly shoved his carving knife into it's sheath at his hip, stashed the bones he was carving into his den-that-was-home, and grabbed the long, double-bladed-star-metal-axe that served as his weapon.

Letting loose a savage, blood curdling howl, Bone began to lope across the wastelands, his foot-paws kicking up dust-that-was-barren along the way.

The blood was close, within one hundred feet of his den-that-was-home. The smell was tainted with the sweaty, flesh-smell of two-leg-round-ear-humans. Sliding to a stop a mere twenty-five feet away from the sight of the kill, Bone growled. A single two-leg-round-ear-human stood kicking a hairless-wasteland-wolf-beast, no doubt to check that it was long-gone-dead-kill.

Bone snarled. The round-ear-human was a Teinar-ground-human. Caution warned him not to move forward, but the scent of the blood draining onto the ground was too great. The gristly smell enticed him, seducing him to move within twenty, fifteen, ten feet of the human.

No doubt the Teinar-ground-human had seen him by now. Bone parted his jaws, his vocal muscles straining to form two-leg-round-ear words that had been long forgotten.

"Not harm."

Bone's voice was deep, like the crash of  thunder or the roar of ocean waves. Hoarse and gravelly, it was clear that the words were unfamiliar to Bone, but his meaning was clear enough.

"Bone not harm. Not harm Bone."