Breakout

Detective Speurder didn’t want to be going to the pound.  Yeah, he had always seen it and promised Millie he would take her to see the “wittle doggos” at least a hundred times, but he never meant it.  But now here he was, on a Saturday night, his one day off, walking into the pound for some mysterious call his boss wouldn’t outright explain.

No one was at the front desk, which he found odd, but he rang their little bell anyways.  Ten minutes went by, and still, no one showed up.  He rang the bell again.  After no one came to help him, he decided to help himself and go into the back, where they kept all the dogs.

The first thing he noticed when he opened the door was the smell. Don’t pounds have to follow some sort of health code?  It smelled of wet dog, piss, and something far fouler, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

As Speurder took a step into the hallway, he felt a crunch under his feet.  Fearing the worst, he made himself look down, but it was simply dog food.  It formed a thin layer over the floor, spilling from a nearby bag that was looked like it was bitten into by a dog.

And that ‘s when he noticed the noise…or rather, the lack thereof.

The hallway stretched for 20 meters or so, with cages lining the entire length, but every single one was empty.  Stains showed where dogs had left their marks, with more than one looking like dried blood.  Beside each cage was a temporary plaque that described the dog that once inhabited it.  Among them, there was Max, a seven-year-old golden retriever who was blind in one eye and Bo Peep who was an eleven-month-old dachshund with only three legs…that died two months ago?  Why would they keep her plague up if she had passed on?

That’s when Detective Speurder noticed the scratches on the floor leading to one particular cage that belonged to…Storhund?  This cage was clearly the reason he was here, given the gaping hole in the fence and the large scratches both inside and out.  He concluded the hound must have broken out, but how?  All of the fences were very thick, even for humans.  So how did this dog manage to bust one nearly in half?

Speurder looked inside the cage and saw the same as every other cell: the piss stains, matted down hair, and a dried blood.  What really caught his eye was the giant bite taken out of the bowl.  This dog was definitely not all bark.  Looking outside of the cell, he noticed a lone leather shoe, tipped on its side.  It was black and seemed to be the type worn by those who wanted to seem more professional than they actually were.  Next to the shoe, he spotted what looked like an empty syringe.

That’s when it hit him.  This wasn’t a pound.  It was an illegal research facility masquerading as a pound.  Somewhere here they developed chemical substances to test on these dogs.  Most seemed to be fatal, but one…one seemed to have been successful.  As successful as you can call a hyperaggressive abnormally strong dog that can break through steel like bamboo.  The “researcher” that was monitoring this Storhund must have gotten in his way and been dragged off, his shoe getting left behind as he frantically kicked either the dog or to gain purchase.

This was turning out to be a rather interesting Saturday night after all.