Below by Laurel Hightower

Author:Laurel Hightower [Hightower, Laurel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
Publisher: Ghoulish Books
Published: 2022-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

People. The trailer of Mads’ truck was filled with people, but not living cargo, or at least not conscious. They were naked, lying horizontally in stacks, each separated from the others by at least a foot of air, backlit by that cold blue glow. They should have fallen to the roof of the trailer when it flipped, piled together in haphazard mounds of flesh, but they remained suspended by means Addy couldn’t see. What’s more, they were all facing up, hands neatly by their sides, bearing none of the signs of cargo that had suffered a crash and fall.

Not cargo—people.

“What kind of man transports people in the back of a truck?” Brian asked.

“Maybe they’re dead,” Addy suggested, squinting at the chest of the nearest woman, waiting for it to rise and fall. But the glow and the undulating mist made it impossible to tell.

“Is that supposed to make it better?” hissed Brian. “This was who you were planning to rebound with? He’s got a bunch of frozen bodies in here like an ice cream truck from hell—tell me one good reason for that.”

“Mass casualties?” Addy suggested.

“Right. This many people dead in the back of his truck and the guy stops for coffee and pie?”

“I’m not defending him,” Addy said, though that wasn’t true. Mads was dead, at least partially consumed by some cave-dwelling creep, but she didn’t want to believe her judgment was as bad as this. Her billowing breath preceding her, she took two sliding steps toward the woman to her right. The floor—wall—whatever she was walking on, it was slippery with frost, and she grabbed the woman’s arm without thinking.

Addy gasped and pulled her hand away, holding it against her chest like she could protect it from the feel of that flesh. Cold, supple, a little spongy. Not like she imagined a corpse would feel, but light-years away from a living, breathing person.

When the woman didn’t stir, Addy leaned closer to inspect her body, averting her eyes from the parts that shouldn’t be exposed. She disliked the vulnerability of the woman’s nudity, wanted to cover it for her, but she had nothing, her coat still soaking in the liquid bits of Mads. There were no wounds she could see, no signs of trauma or a fatal illness. The woman was young, maybe late twenties or early thirties, and the expression on her face was peaceful, eyes closed, brow clear, mouth turned up slightly at the edges. This close Addy could tell she wasn’t breathing, but she couldn’t make herself reach out to check for a pulse.

The undercurrent of unease rose closer to the surface, Addy’s ears ringing, her breathing shallow and fast. She looked down the long, endless rows of bodies contained in the trailer and tried to guess at a count. Five high at least, stack after stack receding into the darkness. Each one she approached was dead, unmoving, no breath escaping their lips. Many were like the first woman, peaceful, with no visible injuries, but then she noticed stitching along one man’s abdomen.

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