Burn Scars, Eddie Generous [read full novel txt] 📗

in the trailer with a huge stainless steel fridge on a dolly. The man flew when he had a mind to. In reality, if it weren’t for the awkward sizes and shapes, Cary could’ve been the whole damned delivery crew by himself. “Set that in front of the bay door, but not in the way,” he said.

Rusty did.

“Unpack it.”

Rusty got busy, still shaky and slow, but as the blood worked through his veins, oxygen awakened sleeping muscles and nerves. It hurt, but that was okay, because the pain sent information to the last of his unwilling cells.

Within minutes, Cary was drenched with sweat and Rusty had the cardboard and polystyrene set aside. He put the packet with the freezer’s keys in his pocket. Without a word, he got to grabbing the stuff he could carry and stacked the boxes on top of the big pieces Cary slammed home in the trailer, doing his best not to slow Cary at all.

By a quarter after nine, the trailer was closed tight and Cary broke for the man door. The rig rumbled to life and began rolling. Rusty watched it and thought of the time he’d wasted, Mrs. Betts’ bullshit, and the damned wasps that nailed him—all for nothing. The time and stress, the whole show seemed doomed from the start and, now, here it was feeling doomed in the middle, which was a much worse place to be.

But with Cary, maybe, just maybe…

The truck’s rumble ceased ten feet from where it had been, and within seconds, Cary’s truck backed up to the bay door. The bed was a whole lot lower than the trailer had been. Cary killed the engine and climbed over the rail, into the bed, and up into the warehouse. He was wide-eyed. His thin hair was in a wild stringy wave. His expression seemed almost happy. He pulled off his glasses and wiped away sweat condensation.

“You got your other glove?”

Rusty turned and scanned the suddenly sparsely filled warehouse. The other glove was over by the microwaves, the cheap ones left behind and not worth loading. He jogged over. He was not quite good as new, but he’d do in a pinch. As he grabbed the glove, Cary took the mover’s carpet from the wall—a three-foot canvas square with four long, looped straps jutting from corners.

“Okay, like moving a prize hog when the skidder can’t get to it,” Cary said as he set the pad next to Dwayne’s corpse. “Ready?”

“No.”

“Too bad.”

Dwayne lay face down, despite lacking most of his face. Rusty grabbed his right foot and Cary got a grip under his right shoulder.

“One. Two. Roll.”

Rusty did as told, grunting at the weight. The body was reluctant, but went over, freeing a deluge of blood that widened the original puddle by several inches. Dwayne’s corpse kept on rolling until it was onto the pad where Cary stilled the motion. Both Rusty and Cary stood straight, grimacing.

“Silent but deadly. Filet-O-Fish,” Cary said, making that face.

“He farted before, too. Big one, maybe he shit.”

Cary snickered. Everything easy-peasy. “Okay, one go, into the freezer.”

“Yep.” Rusty had two of the straps over his wrists while Cary had the other two.

“One. Two. Lift.”

The body oozed and trailed blood. Both men grunted to lift all three hundred-forty pounds up over the lip of the freezer. The design of the mover’s carpet was such to spread the weight and make the impossible possible. The man dropped wetly, wedging near the top at first, but then slid to the bottom, slowly, his body conforming to the plastic contours within the 10.2 cubic feet of Woods brand molded plastic. His head turned and a piece of eye that hung by a tendril seemed to look at them.

“Spooky,” Cary said and then, “Lock it up and we’ll use the castors.”

Rusty ripped open the plastic sack he’d pulled from his pocket and locked the freezer, and again pocketed the keys and their wrapper. Cary grabbed a dolly and Rusty hurried to the wall, pulling the foot-squared, wooden pads with single castors from their hooks. He slipped one beneath the end Cary lifted, then repeated at the other end once Cary repositioned.

“Think I really gotta plow it in there, because there’ll be no second shot, not without bringing in a backhoe,” Cary said, pushing the freezer away from the doorway.

There was no space for both of them to push, not and get maximum leverage. Cary circled the freezer, getting a good look at the sum of Dwayne Siegenthaler’s casket, and then wiggled his eyebrows at Rusty. Mimicking a bobsled rider, he did three practice pushes, reeling it back each time, before starting off running. The freezer flew from the bay door and thumped into the bed of the truck, but went too far, shattering the rear window.

“Sonofagun!” Cary began cackling and grabbed a set of walkie-talkies he’d pulled from a box labelled Stocking Stuffers. He tore the pack and handed over one of the devices and the wrapped Radio Shack brand batteries—before Logic was Logic, it had been a Radio Shack. “You follow in my truck. Don’t get pulled over, cops won’t appreciate you transporting a dead body.” Cary seemed to be having a good old time. “I know some decent bridges where we can pitch the fat bastard.”

“All right.”

“Leave a note with the pass code for your lady friend.” Cary began fastening the freezer down with ratchet straps that never left the truck bed.

Rusty wrote a quick note on the back of a packing slip, leaving his key to the door as well. Maybe, just maybe, not everything was lost.

 20

Wind whipped around the truck’s cab through the broken window, agitating bags and arrant papers into a fury of action. Rusty tried to catch and stuff the moving items while he followed the red running lights of the truck