Bunker Road

The incident started with some sort of deal gone wrong, a pistol still warm from the bullet that had ricocheted through its chambers, and what I presumed was a dead body. I didn’t know the guy. He was lying face-up with a bloody hole in his chest when I arrived at Marco’s place. It’s weird how details blend together in a situation like that. All I can really remember is that the dude was short, and dressed like some hipster college kid. I kept telling myself it had to be a college kid, because I didn’t want to contemplate the reality of being called in at three AM on a Wednesday night to bury some poor chump that wasn’t even old enough to buy cigarettes.

A quick glance around told me a lot of what I needed to know. Marco was pale, and shaky, and clearly had not been the dude to pull the trigger. His house was a hotbed of shady business because it was a run-down ranch in the middle of nowhere and he was an easily bullied dumbass. He’d inherited the farm from his grandmother, and being a college dropout with a sudden claim to a sprawling stretch of land lent itself to setting up a drug den. He wasn’t really what you’d call a hard-boiled criminal. Hell, he’d never even done jail time. So it wasn’t long before he’d gotten in way over his head. Gotten involved with people like me and Jonah, who was of course, standing in the corner. Looking on with that same blank expression he always had.

Even if the gun was lying next to the body, I knew Jonah must have fired it. Hell, I knew Jonah had killed someone the second I woke up to him calling and asking me to bring my car and a very specific list of supplies. Pretty much anything awful that happened within a few highway exits of our little town led back to Jonah. He was the festering black hole that all the other scumbags crowded around. I’d gotten tangled up with him back in high school. It started as relatively innocent partying. I ended up getting dragged into coke deals, carjacking, full-on breaking into houses to steal shit and well… let’s just say it wasn’t the first time I’d helped him hide a body.

Jonah always called me to clean up his messes. Because he had enough dirt on me and I had enough dirt on him that it was mutually assured destruction. We had a vested interest in making sure neither of us ever got caught, because we knew we’d flip on each other in a heartbeat.

I didn’t ask what had happened or why the kid got shot. Maybe that was stupid. But the less I knew, the less culpable I felt. I got the tarps and oxygen-based detergent (bleach doesn’t actually get rid of blood for good) out of my car and got to work. Nobody said a goddamned word as I poured lye flakes over the corpse and Jonah helped me roll it up in plastic. The corpse was still warm. That’s all I could keep thinking. Even through layers of dingy blue tarp, the body was still fucking warm. I didn’t want to work out the math in my head, as it certainly seemed to point to this thing being premeditated. It takes well over an hour to drive from my trailer out to Marco’s house. It took me another twenty minutes to get everything together before leaving. Could the body still be blood-warm after almost two hours? Or did Jonah call me and then kill this poor bastard right before I arrived? Was there even a deal going down? Or did Jonah bring this kid out into the sticks just to murder him?

We stayed silent as we scrubbed the floor, and cleaned the murder weapon to be deposited in a different location than the corpse. Marco just stood there, still shaken as all fuck. He kept looking at the corpse rolled up in the tarp, then back at us, then back at the corpse. It felt like he was waiting for something, but it just wasn’t coming. Bastard even parted his cracked, chapped-lips a few times like he wanted to say something. But then he always seemed to chicken out.

Once we’d scrubbed the evidence to the best of our ability, Jonah reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. I only got the briefest glance at it. But it looked like a considerable sum. All twenties. Jonah tucked the wad of money into Marco’s limp hand. It took a moment for Marco to even register what had happened.

“I don’t—I didn’t—”

“Just take it.” Jonah smiled, cocking his head just slightly to the left in that way he did when he was contemplating making a bad situation worse. “It’s all over and done with.”

He didn’t leave room for Marco to dig himself into deeper shit. Instead he stooped down and grabbed the corpse’s feet, nodding to indicate I should take the shoulders. We lifted the body together. The phrase ‘dead weight’ ain’t an idiom for nothing. Even though the kid was short and thin, he was fucking heavy. It wasn’t a long walk out of Marco’s living room to my car. We had to stop to open the door anyway and we took a short break.

By the time we got the body in the trunk, I was sweating. Jonah slid into the passenger’s seat and lit up a cigarette like he wasn’t particularly bothered by the whole ordeal. Just a regular weeknight. All in a day’s work.

There was nothing to do but start the engine and head off into the night. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel, as we trundled along 5 miles below the speed limit. My head filled with visions of some cop pulling us over just for kicks and finding a lot more than he bargained for.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Jonah asked so casual, like he was asking to change the radio station.

“What the fuck kind of question is that, dude? You can’t say that shit when there’s a goddamned corpse in my trunk.”

“I dunno. Kinda seems like the perfect time to ask it from where I’m sitting.”

“Fuck you, man. You’re a fucking psychopath.”

“I didn’t kill that kid, you know.”

“Yeah, sure. Marco did it.”

“Nah. It was some satanists.”

“What satanists? What are you talking about?”

Jonah just shrugged, flicking his cigarette butt out the window. “Reggie’s into that shit. He told me they do weird stuff up in the woods sometimes. Said I could come watch whatever blood orgy thing they were doing tonight. Didn’t really think to question his motives. Long story short, that thing in the trunk followed me back to Marco’s. So yeah, I shot it. But it was already dead.”

I pulled the car over onto the side of the road to avoid swerving. It was a full moon that night. We were sitting there on an open stretch of prairie near the foothills and the woods. I was sitting there alone with a dead body and a man that had clearly gone off the rails in a permanent way.

“Are you on something?” I tried to keep my voice level. “Lab chemicals? PCP? Some shit I’ve never heard of?”

“You don’t believe me,” Jonah smiled. “That’s OK. I probably wouldn’t believe you either. Don’t worry about it. Just keep driving.”

“Where? Where are we going?”

“I dunno. I was thinking the fields out by Bunker Road? We gotta find somewhere the ground is soft enough to dig real deep.”

“Who is that kid? Are there gonna be people looking for him?”

“I dunno. I hope not. I’m not sure if satanic death cults do their homework before they go abducting people.”

“God fucking damn it, dude.”

I started the car again, because I didn’t know what else to do. Because it ultimately didn’t matter what sort of bullshit Jonah was trying to feed me. I couldn’t bail on him with a body in my car. The only way out was through.

In the silence, I had a lot of time to contemplate my life and the choices that lead me to such an abysmal existence. The panic sat high in my throat, clenching at my chest, threatening to overwhelm me. I focused on breathing. Four counts in, four counts out, like the high school social worker taught me to do if I got too mad or it felt like the walls were closing in on me. I felt like that a lot back in those days.

My mind kept circling the drain, the thing I didn’t want to contemplate. The last dead body I’d come in contact with. Marina’s tinged blue skin on the ratty green rug, belt still wrapped loosely around her arm. Overdose isn’t pretty. It’s a lot of vomit and shit and thrashing as your body tries to fight for survival against your own idiot choices.

I found her too late to do anything about it. I buried her with the engagement ring still on her finger because the sentiment felt more important than the thousands of dollars I’d spent on it.

The turn for Bunker Road was hard to miss. It was the only turn possible for at least a few miles. I took it, and we trundled into the woods. I could still feel my heart beating in my tongue. Making it heavy. I could taste the metallic anxiety. Jonah lit another cigarette and I took him up on the silent offer when he held it out to me. Nothing on the radio. Just the rumble of the engine and the oppressive silent darkness of the forest at night. Trees dampen sound. Seem to absorb light. Once we passed onto Bunker Road, the only source of illumination were the dim bulbs of my headlights.

“Stop. Right up here.” Jonah indicated a spot on the side of the road where the dirt was flat enough to park. I pulled in and killed the engine.

Then it was time to go about our grim work.

We took the shovels out of the back seat and traipsed off the beaten path. Jonah found a little trench with soft, damp soil. We started digging.

Most people probably haven’t tried to dig a hole big enough to fit a grown person before. It ain’t easy work. Especially if you’re having to hack through roots and excavate rocks as you go. Jonah said deep and he meant it. We huffed, and puffed, blisters forming on our palms and sweat trickling down our faces despite the cool air of late September. We dug for hours. Even with the two of us, we weren’t finished until the first rays of sunlight were threatening to creep over the horizon.

Getting the body down to its final resting place was a fucking struggle. Both of us were already worn out from the digging. My arms felt like cooked pasta. I was barely able to keep a grip on the shoulders and had to just let the weight sag-suspended by my bones and my fingers more than my biceps. Jonah seemed to be in a similar state of exhaustion. Halfway down the hill, the corpse’s ass started dragging on the ground and neither of us did anything to remedy the situation. I was so tired it took me a few minutes to realize what the fuck was happening.

The body was still warm.

Still warm so many hours later. Rigor mortis should have long since set in. The body shouldn’t have been capable of sagging. It should have been stiff as a board instead of slumped in an awkward ark between me and Jonah’s grips.

I yelped and dropped the thing when I felt it twitch. An unmistakable shake of the shoulders. If it as trying to squirm free, it fucking succeeded.

“What the hell!” I wanted to scream but I knew we didn’t want to draw any attention to the little horrorshow currently unfolded. So the words mostly came out in a strangled whisper.

Jonah looked at me. Then down at the body. The body moved again. Thrashing, now. Kicking its legs in Jonah’s grasp.

He reacted so quickly, I didn’t have time to process it. Jonah dropped the body’s legs and shoved it downhill with the heel of his foot. The tarp restricted its occupant’s movements, preventing it from reaching out to grab any hold to stop the descent. Watching how fast the body rolled, part of me couldn’t help thinking about how carrying it had been a waste of time. The body hit the edge of the hole within seconds and plunged downwards with a sickening thud.

There was an awful gurgling noise. Like someone trying to speak through fluid filled lungs. Jonah didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at me. He just walked down to the edge of the hole, and started shoveling dirt back in.

I stood there for a while. Wondering if I’d finally lost it. Or if maybe I was dreaming. Jonah had the good sense not to rush me as I tried to reckon with the impossibility of my situation.

The gurgling sounds became increasingly muffled. The fact was, I saw that body with big old hole punched into it. Not the sort of wound anyone could survive. After hours without medical care, the possibility of continued existence had to be zero.

So I walked down to the hole and started shoveling. That’s why Jonah called me and not someone else, after all. He could always count on me to do the easy thing. Not the right thing, or the wrong thing, just the thing that would cause me the least amount of personal hardship.

It was well into morning by the time we sprinkled pine needles and forest detritus over the fresh dirt. There was no sound anymore. No sign of what we’d done beyond our filthy, wrecked hands.

We walked back to my car. Scrubbed at our fingers with those little packaged wipes they hand out at barbecue restaurants. When we were relatively presentable, I got in the driver’s seat, and took us to the diner out by the highway. The sort of place nobody would look twice at a couple of rough kids with messy clothes.

I got myself a full breakfast. Ham off the bone. Potatoes. Pancakes. Jonah got black coffee and a slice of apple pie.

“What are you gonna do about Reggie?” I asked after the dishes were clear, and the exhaustion loomed over us.

“Nothing needs doing.”

I nodded. There’d probably be a lot of reports about missing people over the following days. Or maybe not even reports. People would just be gone. Nothing too out of the ordinary. Drug addicts and ruffians vanish all the time. Nobody cares.

Jonah and I parted ways at the diner. He called someone else to pick him up. Probably off to do enough cocaine to wipe the night’s events from his mind entirely. I went home to my whiskey bottle and my bed. Dreading what nightmares I might have.

I still have to drive up Bunker Road every now and then. Even though it’s been years, I stop every once in a while, on that flat patch of ground. I get out of my car and look down the hill. I’m never sure exactly what I’m expecting to see. Maybe it’s some primordial fear that someday I’ll go there, and see a big empty hole. Like whatever we put in the ground finally managed to claw its way back out.

Tell you one thing, though. That patch of dirt hasn’t grown a single plant since we turned it up. Sometimes, I think the trees and shrubs around it are receding. Recoiling. Like maybe even plants can get scared if what you plant in the soil beside them is evil enough.