Trail of Terror: On the Appalachian Trail by John West

Author:John West [West, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 47

RACHEL CAREFULLY STRODE SEVERAL hundred feet into the nearby woods, casting her headlamp around to make sure no animals or other hikers were in the vicinity. Satisfied she was in a concealed area, she unbuckled, squatted down and did her business.

As she stood up, the wind abruptly shifted direction and she immediately smelled a foul odor. She recognized immediately the odor of death. The cadaverine and putrescine smell of rotting flesh, mixed with the skatole odor of feces and the hydrogen sulfide smell of rotten eggs and cabbage. She’d been in many morgues and dissected human remains during her medical training. She knew what death smelled like. No mistaking it.

Probably just a dead animal she surmised.

She glanced in the direction of the blowing breeze, her head lamp light shining brightly. She swiveled her head slowly to illuminate the area where the stench was coming from.

That’s when she saw a pile of branches, leaves and debris covering what appeared to be part of a sleeping bag. Curious, she slowly and cautiously walked forward, one step at a time.

It is said seeing and smelling a dead body is difficult if you’ve never been around one before. Most people compare the putrid stench of a decomposing body to the smell of rotting fruit.

The closer she approached the debris, the more her mind started to click, she recognized the familiar smell. In addition to various gases, a dead human body released around 30 different chemical compounds. The gases and compounds produced in a decomposing body emitted distinct odors.

She began to recognize them all now.

That’s what death smelled like.

She grabbed a small tree branch from the ground and gently brushed some leaves away and saw a body. She involuntarily jumped back, trying not to gag, fighting revulsion, the horrible smell.

Her stomach started to rebel. She started to panic. She pinched her nose to avoid the terrible odor. Her eyes even began to water due to the stench.

Rachel shivered, her eyes darting over a headless corpse lying on its’ back, on a blood-soaked sleeping bag.

Her adrenaline started coursing so fast through her veins, she could hardly think. Her thoughts raced in ten different directions at once. Then her medical mind focused and the sense of panic dissolved. She stood silently several feet away and did a quick visual inspection of the scene, being very careful not to move or touch anything.

Not only had it been decapitated, its hands had been removed.

She could clearly tell it was a human body by the exposed vertebrae and arms. She determined it was female because of the breasts, size of the torso and limbs.

As a trained physician, she automatically began to perform a quick clinical analysis in her mind. When someone died, the body immediately began the decomposition process and the smell of death began. This body had already begun to smell due to various gases created by microorganisms during the early stages of decomposition. Body decomposition fluids had already permeated the sleeping bag.

She guessed death had occurred probably within the last 48-to-72 hours.

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