The Book of Fate

77

Edmund had been dead for nearly twelve hours. During hour one, as Nico strapped him into the passenger seat of the truck, thick frothy blood bubbles multiplied at the wound in Edmund’s neck. Nico barely noticed, too excited about telling his friend about Thomas Jefferson and the original Three.

By hour four, Edmund’s body had stiffened. His arms stopped flopping. His head, bent awkwardly back and to the right, no longer bobbed with each bump. Instead of a rag doll, Edmund was a frozen mannequin. Rigor mortis had settled in. Nico still didn’t notice.

By hour ten, the cab of the truck began to take its own beating. On the seats… the floor mat… across the vinyl interior of the passenger-side door, the blood began to decompose, turning each stain a darker, richer red, tiny speckles of liquid rubies.

But even when they left all that behind — when they abandoned the truck and used Edmund’s wool blanket to switch to the clean maroon Pontiac — there was no escaping the smell. And it wasn’t from the body. That would take days to decompose, even in the Florida heat. The true foul horror came from what was inside, as Edmund’s lack of muscle control caused everything from feces to flatulence to leak out, soaking his clothes, his pants, all the way through to the once-parchment-colored cloth seat and the dusty blanket that covered Edmund from the neck down.

In the driver’s seat next to him, Nico couldn’t have been happier. Up ahead, despite rush hour, traffic looked clear. On his right, out west, the sun was a perfect orange circle as it began its slow bow from the sky. And most important, as they blew past another green highway sign, they were even closer than Nico expected.

Less than an hour and we’re there.

Barely able to contain himself, Nico smiled and took a deep breath of the car’s outhouse reek.

He didn’t smell a thing. He couldn’t. Not when life was this sweet.

Quickly picking up speed, Nico reached for the wipers as a late-day sun-shower sent a few speckles against the Pontiac’s front windshield. But before he could flick the wipers on, he thought twice and left them off. The rain was light. Just a drizzle. Enough to cleanse.

Maybe you should—

“Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing,” Nico said, nodding to himself. With the push of a button on the dash, he opened the sunroof of the car, held his stolen Orioles baseball cap, and tilted his head back to stare up at the gray sky.

“Hold the wheel,” he told Edmund as he clamped his eyes shut.

At eighty miles an hour, Nico let go of the steering wheel. The Pontiac veered slightly to the right, cutting off a woman in a silver Honda.

Saying a prayer to himself, Nico kept his head back. The wind from outside lashed against the brim, blowing his baseball cap from his head. Needles of rain tap-danced against his forehead and face. The baptism had begun. Wes’s home address was clutched in his hand. Salvation — for Nico and his mom — was less than an hour away.