“Two things, genius,” Cade sneered. “First, how the hell would we get anything to start on fire tonight? All the wood is wet. Second, what if someone sees the smoke? It wouldn’t be completely weird for someone to call in a brushfire. Do you really want the cops on the site of a fire that turns out to be a burning body? What happens then? ‘Oh, sorry, officer, I accidentally set my dead professor on fire’?”
The group was quiet then. Cade felt a hot orb of rage rising in his chest, bubbling dangerously near the surface. It was the rage that ran in his family. That made his father so scary. He needed to do something before he blew up.
“The river,” Kinley spoke, still sitting on the lopsided bale.
“What?” Tyler asked. Cade turned toward her, flexing his hands into fists.
“Let’s throw him in the river. I think burning is frankly the best idea, but let’s get rid of the body in the water. We’ll throw some driftwood on him, and chances are he’ll get stuck in it downriver. He’ll get so bloated with water by the time anyone finds him that they won’t be able to determine the cause of death.” She bobbed her head. “In theory.”
Cade glanced at the corpse and imagined it, fat and blue-purple with water, the skin loose and translucent. He let his breath out. The idea almost calmed him down, strangely.
He unballed his fists and scratched his head. It was throbbing, his pulse pounding in his ears. “Yeah, but how far is that? Are we going to have to throw him off the bridge downtown?”
“No.” Kinley pointed to the east. “The river runs through the town. And then it runs through the farm. No one will ever need to know where, exactly, he was thrown in.”
“But he’ll be found,” Cade said.
“Yeah. But he won’t be found with us. It’ll take him far away. Maybe so far that they won’t track him back for a while. Maybe . . . maybe they’ll think he drowned. Or something.” Kinley rubbed her arms. “Any better ideas?”
The barn was quiet. The wind swept around the corners and made high, keening noises that sounded like crying ghosts.
Cade turned it over in his head. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to be rid of the thing in the corner.
“Let’s do it,” he said. “Let’s throw him in the river. Can we get him back in the trunk?” Cade led the way to the corner. And when he turned Dr. Stratford over, a fat black beetle crawled out of the corpse’s mouth.
Cade’s stomach lurched. He turned away and vomited, very quietly, in the corner next to his dead professor.
“What?” asked Tyler. “What happened, dude?”
Cade cleared his burning throat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nothing. Just . . . grab on to him. Let’s get him out to the car.”
They were better at it, this time. The corpse-carrying. It was something, unfortunately, that got easier with practice. They got Dr. Stratford back into the car in record time, and Kinley drove them to the river.
“He stinks,” Ivy whimpered. “God, he already stinks.”
“No.” But Cade wasn’t sure she was wrong. He felt like the corpse was invading his nostrils. The feel of Stratford’s waxen skin against his hand was infiltrating every pore. It was like Stratford was already haunting him, and he had been dead only a few hours.
He remembered the last corpse he’d seen. Somehow, he assured himself, it had been worse than this.
He would get through this.
He would.
He’d done harder things. Maybe.
Kinley pulled up to the riverbank and pressed the button to pop the trunk. It was raining harder now. Good, Cade thought. It would wash away any tracks they left.
The five gathered at the trunk and lifted their professor out, his legs catching on the lip. One of his shoes slipped half off.
“Put it back on!” shouted Kinley. The river was moving quickly, and it roared in their ears.
Ivy stepped away, her hands in the air. “No!” she yelled. “I can’t!” Rain streamed over her face.
“Holy shit, Ivy. I will, okay? Sue me if I don’t want a dead man’s shoe in my car.” Kinley leaned one of Stratford’s shoulders against the back of the car and pushed past everyone like they weren’t even there. And she grabbed Statford’s leg and shoved his shoe back onto his foot.
“Let’s go.” She grabbed on to a calf. “Come on!”
Together, they heaved the body down toward the edge of the riverbank, slipping and sliding in the mud. Tyler went down once, and popped up, half covered in the thick river sludge.
“Are you okay?” Mattie asked.
“It’s fine, dude. Let’s just do this.”
Tyler grunted under the weight of the body. Cade’s back strained. But together, they moved Dr. Stratford toward the river.
They paused at the very edge. The river had risen to the top of its banks, and it was rushing by with an intensity that Cade had never seen.