Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
I turned. “Listen, Emily, I didn’t create this situation, okay—”
“What’s that smell?” Her face was wrinkled up, and she was sniffing at the air.
I paused. I smelled it too. Death. I turned toward the odor, noticing the remnants of a crash on the road a ways ahead. A tire rim. Some shattered glass. I pointed. “There it is. The pileup Neil mentioned.” Shit. It was true. There were dead bodies in at least one of those cars. And they were decaying.
“What’s going on?” Charlie asked before tossing back a handful of the cereal as he trailed behind us.
“Car crash,” Emily said from behind me. “Someone obviously died. Tuck! Come on, let’s go back.”
But I needed to see. I needed to understand what we were dealing with. Because if the authorities had made the call to leave a slew of abandoned vehicles on the highway for now, because there were more pressing issues in a major blackout, that was one thing. But if there were literal dead bodies rotting in the road for three days, then that was something different entirely.
I began walking and heard Tuck and Emily follow. The crash involved five vehicles in a pileup that occurred when the truck at the front came to a halt, likely after slamming its brakes—though I was no insurance adjuster. The dead woman was in the fifth car, her bloated body slumped over the dashboard, the driver’s side door having been torn from the car. Her airbag had clearly not deployed.
I put my forearm over my nose and turned back to Emily and Charlie, who were lingering behind. “Go on back,” I said. There was no reason they needed to see this. I paused as my gaze landed on one of the woman’s sneakers that had come off during the wreck and was sitting on the floor of the car. I hesitated only briefly before holding my breath, reaching in and grabbing the one shoe and then pulling the other one off the dead woman’s foot. “Thanks,” I mumbled, feeling foolish for talking to a dead person, but also a little guilty for taking her shoes.
The fact was, however, she didn’t need them and Emily did.
Emily and Charlie were standing stoically next to an empty SUV when I approached, holding out the shoes to Emily. “Put these on.”
She gave them a look of horror and stepped back. I felt a raindrop hit my cheek, and then another. “I’m not wearing shoes that you took off a corpse,” she said, disgust in her tone. “I’m not wearing corpse shoes,” she asserted more loudly.
I grit my teeth as several raindrops hit my head and began sliding down my cheeks. I felt irrationally rejected, which was stupid on several levels, but what did she think? That I’d wanted to pull shoes off a dead woman’s body for her? “Stop being a baby, Emily.” I nodded down to her grimy slippers. “Those things are about to fall off.”
“I don’t care,” she ground out, and now the rain really started coming down, drumming on the roofs of the cars all around us. “That’s disgusting and—”
“God, you really have zero survival skills, you know that? I’m surprised you didn’t complain there was no milk for your cereal on that truck.”
“Who the hell do you think you are anyway?”
I stepped forward. “The guy who got you out of a field in the middle of nowhere to—”
“A deserted fucking highway with a bunch of dead people!” She practically screamed, her voice rising over the pounding rain. She stepped forward too. Her cheeks were flushed, eyelashes glittering with raindrops, shoulders jutted back, and fuck if she wasn’t beautiful, and fuck if it didn’t piss me the hell off. “And now we have to walk again!”
“Yes,” I snarled. “We do. So put. The. Fucking. Shoes. On.” I held them between us and pushed them against her chest.
We stood toe to toe, staring angrily, both breathing heavily as rain streamed down our skin. Her hands came up and she took the shoes, her eyes narrowed, as she pressed her lips into a thin line and hissed, “I’ll never forgive you.”
“Likewise,” I hissed back.
I felt Charlie’s hand on my chest as he pushed us apart. I stepped back and so did Emily, and then I grabbed Charlie’s hand and threw it off me.
When the hell had it started raining like this? It was already cold, and now it was freezing, and we were soaking wet. I moved quickly to a nearby black Sedan and was elated to find it unlocked. I slid into the front seat, while behind me, Emily and Charlie were clamoring in the back. Both our doors shut with twin thwacks.
I took off my coat and used the inside lining to dry my hair and my pants as best as I could, and I heard them doing the same thing. From behind me, Emily’s quiet sobs took up again, mixing with the steady drumbeat of rain and making me feel trapped. It was either get out of the car and get soaked again or sit in here and listen to her crying. When the rain let up, I’d try to find another open car in the immediate vicinity, so I at least had my own space. But for now, I knew it was important to get dry. I was already chilled from removing my jacket and sitting in soggy jeans. “My God. I’m really trapped in a car with these two,” I murmured, mostly under my breath.