Wastelands ~ The Game's afoot

Post Reply New Topic

"The look on your face was completely worth it Colonel. Thought you were supposed to be the most observant guy here anyway." Virgil pulled out two plastic chairs and sat them a good distance from the corpse. "This is gonna be good."

Saldana grinned smugly, and looked at at the carcass again. "Just a little humour, something we don't get alot of nowadays, and that made me laugh for the first time in a long while." He smirked at Virgil, and sat on one of the chairs. "Alan didn't want to come?"

"Let him play with his computers if he likes, I told him about Lassie eariler over the com so I guess he isn't coming." As Virgil's smoke came to it's end he flicked it in the trash and savored it's last aroma's. "Been too long since I lit up."

After putting on the hazard suit and going into the room, Sydney looked at the thing. Horrid looking. He got the dissection kit out and placed it on the nearby tool table. He then activated the voice recorder and the suit's external speakers.

"This is blah-blah time on the blah of the blah, blahdy-blah-blah. I have been presented with the corpse of one oversized caninid, possibly a labrador, though-" (he looked at the two smug looking sods behind the glass) "-I doubt it will win any breeding awards. In fact, here's an interesting fact. It does have in fact, a pedigree. Literally."

He held up a very bizarre-looking paw.

"Pedigree is French. Derived from 'pied de grue', or the foot of a crane. Looks kinda bird-like, doesn't it?"

He held the misshapen paw up, and then returned to the external evaluation.

"Until I cut this thing up, I won't know for certain what killed it. However, the rather strange angle of its head, coupled by its looseness, suggest that something broke its neck." He looked at the two out there. "How did you grab it around the throat and twist? Without it biting you?" ((The Colonel's kicks broke the neck, but Sydney doesn't know that.))

"Colonel kicked the dog in face, probably what did it in. Should also be nine bullets in it."

"It limped after I shot it, but still kept on coming." The colonel looked at the three-eyed canine freak, glad that he was just observing.

"Aye, don't wanna think how hard it would be to bring down a bear thats been exposed to whatever mutated the dog. Luckily we don't many bears here, same with cougars." Virgil held his nose but still stared enraptured at the corpse. "At this rate the housepets will be enough to rip us to shreds though."

Sydney completed the external examination. It was large in size, had those weird external muscles at points and the three eyes, but it was what was inside that he wanted to to check. He rotated the slab (it was effectively on wheels) so that the belly faced the observation window, then carefully, but in full view of Virgil and the Colonel, slit the 'dog' open.

"Jeez, even I can smell it inside my suit!" yelped Sydney as he rolled the dog onto its back and pulled the torso open. He then frowned as he looked at the mess of the small and large intestines.

"THAT is not meant to be there. Gentlemen, this dog has a caecum. In our bodies, it is what is called an appendix. A dog would also have a small appendix, but this one is large. And that is only meant to happen in those animals with a largely herbivorous diet. However--" (with a grunt, he violated normal autopsy procedure and cut open a lumpy part of the small intestine, unleashing a further stench) "--all meat. I dunno what animal this meat is from, but there is virtually no vegetable matter here. This caecum somehow came back into existence as a result of the mutations."

He then washed his bloody gloves and took out an aerosol spray and sprayed it liberally around the room.

"Air freshener."

"It's like something out of a horror film," Saldana paused, "in fact, this could well be real life epic horror." he stared through the window.
"Yuck, that's most definitely not just cancerous growth," he exclaimed, "what about its body fluids?"

"What else could lead to the need for such a large Caecum? I know in us the appendix handles poisons and such, perhaps it deals with radiation somehow?"

((Good point, Flagg, I didn't think of that.))

"Actually, Virgil, the vermiform appendix is a mass of lymphoid tissue. There is still debate as to whether it is of any use, but it may help the immune system."

Sydney started poking through the organs again.

"If you don't mind, I want to look over this myself for a while. Can you go, please?"

((Gotta go. Autopsies take a long time IRL...))

"Sure, when I get back I expect to know what caused it to turn into such a monster and if we are vunerable to this thing." Virgil slowly got up from his chair and put it back againist the wall "Colonel, let's let him have his fun with his new toy."

"Yeah, we had better leave you to examine it thoroughly. In the meantime, I should catch some sleep. No point in doing much else until the autopsy is finished. See you in about... six hours". Saldana yawned, and walked out of the room, down one flight of stairs to sublevel 4, where most of the living quarters were situated, plus the library, lounge, mess hall, kitchen, and reserve beds, just in case there were more survivors. Saldana had a small room, with a double bed, bookcase, drawers, and wardrobe.

((I'm going to bed as well, in real life. I won't be back for about 8 hours.))

"See ya, Colonel. I'll be on the surface working on the vehicles. Once I am sure they all run I'll start doing some upgrading on them to make them better suited to winter warfare in this rough environment." Picking his tools up from the workshop he suited up again and picked up a Remington 870 Shotgun just in case there were more Lassies to shot at, taking a box of extra shells (Slug rounds). Hurrying back up to the surface he looked like a crazed Hunter S. Thompson of the Apocalypse in radiation suit with the shotgun slung over his back and the toolbox in his other hand.

Ater he was throughly sure that his boards over the hole in the wall would hole Virgil set to playing with the Motorhome. Besides the gas going bad it had completely survived, after refueling it Virgil mounted extra armor over the tirewells and made sure the one bullet proof glass was properly in. Moving on to the dune buggy he found one of the shocks wasnt too great off but he quickly replaced it and moved on to the various other vehicles, none needing no more the basic repairs and refueling. When he was done he cleaned up his tools and went back into the bunker - making sure to throughly decon himself and lit himself a smoke. Swearing a little under his breath he decided to drop by and see how Syndey was doing on the dog autospy.

Sydney was just stripping off his hazard suit (which he was under a bleach shower and bathed under a UV Lamp to kill off anything for a little while) as Virgil came in.

"It's not good, Virgil." said Sydney, indicating the various jars and tubes he put on a trolley that had just undergone the same decontamination process. He even used his decontamination spray, even though that was designed mostly for radioactive contamination (though it had enough in it to act as a antiseptic and antiviral, though not as effective as good old bleach).

"I've deliberately put the organs and tissue samples into those jars because some organs began to putrify upon being exposed to light. Particularly muscles and blood-rich organs like the spleen. Talking of which, that was one of the few organs I found that was actually normal, structurally speaking."

DUN DUN DUN DUN! DUN DUN DUN DUN!

He heard the drums again, and put a hand to his head. He waved away Virgil.

"I'm fine, just a headache, probably from collapsing onto the floor. Here's the weird thing. Some organs were merged. The pancreas and the gall bladder were almost completely merged. And then there are multiple organs. A small, underdeveloped second heart. An extension to the left lung. There seems to be three kidneys, possibly to excrete more waste than usual. Obviously the third eye. And the brain was structured differently, more cerebellum, less cerebrum. It doesn't have much personality or conscious memory, but it can learn procedure more than your average mutt. The optic radiation, the part of the brain that interprets sight, is expanded, obviously. Smell is a little diminished, but not by much. I won't know much about its blood chemistry until I get it to my equipment, but it seems somewhat leukaemic. Paler blood than usual. Lots of neoplasic growths around the dog's body. I mean cancers, but here's the thing: I won't know until I get them under a slide, but there is no pathology around those cancers, they aren't actually causing any harm to the mutt itself."