Club Dead - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,46

was not only the weekend, but also only two weekends before Christmas. When the creaky contraption came back to the fifth floor, it was empty.

I dashed back to 504, knocked twice on the door, and dashed back to the elevator to hold the doors open. Preceded by the legs of the corpse, Alcide emerged from the apartment. He moved as quickly as a man can while he’s carrying a stiff body over his shoulder.

This was our most vulnerable moment. Alcide’s bundle looked like nothing on this earth but a corpse wrapped in a shower curtain. The plastic kept the smell down, but it was still noticeable in the small enclosure. We made it down one floor safely, then the next. At the third floor, our nerve ran out. We stopped the elevator, and to our great relief it opened onto an empty corridor. I darted out and over to the stair door, holding it open for Alcide. Then I scampered down the stairs ahead of him, and looked through the pane of glass in the door to the garage.

“Whoa,” I said, holding my hand up. A middle-aged woman and a teenage girl were unloading packages from the trunk of their Toyota, simultaneously having a vigorous disagreement. The girl had been invited to an all-night party. No, her mother said.

She had to go, all her friends would be there. No, her mother said.

But Mom, everyone else’s mom was letting them go. No, her mother said.

“Please don’t decide to take the stairs,” I whispered.

But the argument raged on as they got in the elevator. I clearly heard the girl break her train of complaint long enough to say, “Ew, something smells in here!” before the doors closed.

“What’s happening?” Alcide whispered.

“Nothing. Let’s see if that lasts a minute longer.”

It did, and I stepped out of the door and over to Alcide’s truck, darting glances from side to side to make sure I was really alone. We weren’t quite in sight of the security guard, who was in his little glass hut up the slope of the ramp.

I unlocked the back of Alcide’s pickup; fortunately, his pickup bed had a cover. With one more comprehensive look around the garage, I hurried back to the stair door and rapped on it. After a second, I pulled it open.

Alcide shot out and over to his truck faster than I would have believed he could move, burdened as he was. We pushed as hard as we could, and the body slowly retreated into the truck bed. With tremendous relief, we slammed the tailgate shut and locked it.

“Phase two complete,” Alcide said with an air that I would have called giddy if he hadn’t been such a big man.

Driving through the streets of a city with a body in your vehicle is a terrifying exercise in paranoia.

“Obey every single traffic rule,” I reminded Alcide, unhappy with how tense my voice sounded.

“Okay, okay,” he growled, his voice equally tense.

“Do you think those people in that Jimmy are looking at us?”

“No.”

It would obviously be a good thing for me to keep quiet, so I did. We got back on I-20, the same way we’d entered Jackson, and drove until there was no city, only farmland.

When we got to the Bolton exit, Alcide said, “This looks good.”

“Sure,” I said. I didn’t think I could stand driving around with the body any longer. The land between Jackson and Vicksburg is pretty low and flat, mostly open fields broken up by a few bayous, and this area was typical. We exited the interstate and headed north toward the woods. After a few miles Alcide took a right onto a road that had needed repaving for years. The trees grew up on either side of the much-patched strip of gray. The bleak winter sky didn’t stand a chance of giving much light with this kind of competition, and I shivered in the cab of the truck.

“Not too much longer,” Alcide said. I nodded jerkily.

A tiny thread of a road led off to the left, and I pointed. Alcide braked, and we examined the prospect. We gave each other a sharp nod of approval. Alcide backed in, which surprised me; but I decided that it was a good idea. The farther we went into the woods, the more I liked our choice of venue. The road had been graveled not too long ago, so we wouldn’t leave tire tracks, for one thing. And I thought the chances were good that this rudimentary road led to