Chapter 2 #2
What the ever-loving fuck am I doing? How could this possibly have happened?
Fuck, I need to focus. I smack myself across the face, desperate to wake up from this horrible dream.
Wake up, wake up, wake up. Except I’m still here, driving away from a crime scene with a body next to me, so for good measure, I smack myself again.
Harder this time, but the reality hasn’t changed. This is happening.
Okay, deep breaths. Get it together, Zane! In and out. Hide the body first and freak out later. You can’t get caught. Your entire life is over if you do.
My hands are shaking on the steering wheel.
I would not claim to be calm in any way, but my mind is beginning to clear beyond the initial panic now that I’m not out in public.
I feel like I could run a marathon with the adrenaline coursing through me, but I’m trapped in this car until I come up with an actual plan.
I can’t call anyone. Maybe a year or two ago, when Grant was just my best friend, I could have trusted him with this, but he’s my business partner now, and we’re only a few weeks from the brewery finally opening. He’s been working so hard toward that dream. I shouldn’t risk involving him in this.
Everyone else that I know in this city is either a future coworker at the brewery, or a current coworker at the waiting gig I took to cover my expenses in the meantime. Not exactly hide-a-body-with-me material.
I want to call my mom, but I can’t bear the thought of hearing the disappointment in her voice. Or adding this insane stress to her life. She was finally proud of me for moving here and having a plan for my life. Plus, what the fuck could she realistically do from Arizona? Nothing.
So I’m on my own. Which is fine. Better, really.
Easier to not have any witnesses or accomplices.
No one to know what I’ve done or to testify against me if this goes south.
No one for me to drag into this fucking mess.
I just need to figure out a place where I can hide the body where no one will ever find it.
I continue driving, but I don’t have a destination in mind.
Where the fuck can I ditch this guy? Grant and Eric have been raving about Kansas City for the last year, trying to convince me to move here; they must have told me about something useful.
I know they talked about hiking, but I think they meant at a state park, so that’s probably not a good option if other people go there.
Grant definitely mentioned somewhere with caves, so that might be better…
but how do I get a body into a cave? And how would I hide it if I did? Probably not a great option either.
Fuck. Okay, focus. Popular touristy places are not the way to go.
Maybe I should head north and ditch him in one of the industrial parks… but those might have cameras. I could dump him in the Missouri River… but what if someone saw me, or what if he washed up somewhere… Do people float when they’re decomposing?
This is way too hard.
Why aren’t there easier places to hide a dead body?
God, I wish I were closer to the desert.
If I were back in Arizona, I could just drive for a couple of hours until there was no one around in the desert, bury the body, and no one would ever know.
Even if digging out there is extremely difficult, it’d still probably be less stressful than figuring out where to bury a body in a place I’m not familiar with.
Maybe driving for hours is still the way to go, though. The drive to Missouri through Kansas was boring as fuck, full of abandoned farms and fields that would probably be effective as far as random dump sites go.
I nod my head decisively. I’ll drive into Kansas, follow a few dirt roads until I find somewhere that looks forgotten, and bury him there.
Which means I need a shovel. Holy fuck, I’m doing this. I ignore the way my hands are still shaking as I quickly search for the nearest Home Depot and heave a sigh of relief when I confirm they’re still open and I’m close by.
A few minutes later, I park in the middle of the lot, away from the overhead streetlights, only sparing a quick glance to confirm the body still appears to be in what could pass as a sleeping position if anyone walks past the car.
His face is nearly invisible in the shadows of this dark parking spot I intentionally picked, so I doubt anyone would even look that closely.
I wipe my face of any stray tears or sweat and hope I seem somewhat normal as I walk into the store.
Once inside, I don’t trust my voice with how tight my throat is, so I politely shake my head to deny needing any help from the employee and use the aisle descriptions on the ceiling to identify where the shovels are.
I feel like I have a giant sign on my back labeling me as a murderer, and every noise has me flinching with how high my anxiety is. I have no idea what might be useful, so I just grab the shovel and impulsively buy a flashlight at the register, using my cash from today’s tips to purchase it.
I’m back in my car in less than five minutes, and the body obviously hasn’t moved.
I don’t want my phone to have any evidence of my location, so I put it in airplane mode, then turn it off completely before heading west.
This is a great plan. It will totally work.
It has to work because there’s literally no other option. My entire life is on the line.
It doesn’t take all that long for the city to become suburbs, then farmland.
I keep driving though, not wanting to choose somewhere too close.
After about forty-five minutes of me questioning every single life choice I’ve ever made and imagining how horrible life in prison would be, I decide enough’s enough.
I turn down a random dirt road, and then another, and another.
The farms are spread out, and at least two of the last three I passed had no signs of anyone living there.
I think this is as good a place as any. I pull over next to a cluster of trees, hoping they’ll provide the privacy I need and guarantee his body won’t be dug up with the next planting season or whatever the fuck farmers do.
After turning off the car and headlights, I grab my new shovel from the back.
Shit, I’m so on edge, I don’t know how much longer my adrenaline will last. I hope digging his grave doesn’t take me hours.
I have no idea how big to make the hole, so I open the passenger door, intending to use the shovel to compare to his height as a sort of measuring guide, and I swear to God I nearly jump out of my skin when I lock eyes with the dead body.
Because they’re open.