Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense by Fynn Perry (popular romance novels TXT) 📗

So now, all John had to do was get into the back of that truck bound for Montreal.

“How long before I can get going?”

“An hour to unload and an hour to load, as usual. Are you new or what?” came the reply from the dispatcher as he walked off.

John’s host took another proud look at his rig. It was a Kenwood flat-nose tractor, which meant that the cab was over the engine, unlike the long noses where the engines are mounted in front of the cab. He thought that the flat noses looked meaner, like bulldogs with the shiny chrome exhaust stacks sticking out behind his cab, like ears. At night, bright LEDs running down the cab and sleeper panels lit it up like a float at Mardi Gras. He was pretty sure that no other rig looked as good, but as always, he had to check out the competition.

The trucks he walked past gave no cause for jealousy but the truck going to Montreal was a different story, and it stopped him in his tracks as he was flooded with envy. The tractor had custom blue paintwork with an intricate design and chromed parts throughout, including four—not the usual two—chrome exhaust stacks and a chrome fuel tank. He had to admit that it looked even better than his rig. John’s host had to take a closer look around the back of the cab to check out the exhaust manufacturer’s nameplate. He could see that there was a badge on the manifold linking the four pipes. It was just too small to read from where he was standing. He leaned over the wheels to get a better look. It was the last thing he saw before passing out.

John left his host lying over the deck plate where he could be mistaken for someone doing some work on the vehicle. He walked to the side of the trailer, pulled himself through the curtains and onto the floor, immediately taking cover within a cargo of packed and stacked washing machines. Passing through the boxes, he was able to see, by the light of his own glow, that the pills were tucked away in the most central part of the cargo, as Lazlo suspected they would be. They were taped to the outside of each washing machine’s drum, to the water pump and to the inside of the casing. Ten bags in total in each machine, and there were about a hundred machines carrying drugs, he estimated.

It was a six-hour run to Montreal, and John reasoned that after two hours the truck would be out of New Jersey and well into New York State. That would give him about a one-hour window to do what he needed to do. He had to crash the truck in such a way that the cargo would spill out over the road, break open the packaging around the appliances, and release the bags of pills. That meant a collision with an immovable object at high speed. The truck would stop, but the contents would keep going, through inertia, at quite some speed. Practical physics. The contents would all get bunched up and by dint of sheer mass and weight would force their way out of the truck, travel through the air and hit the ground at various distances, dependent on a complex cocktail of forces and factors in play.

There were two things in John’s favor: firstly, every washing machine is built with a lump of concrete weighing around sixty pounds suspended below the drum to keep it stable during the spin-dry cycle. Secondly, their thin metal casings are left open on the underside. Both these factors tended to result in them falling apart when they were dropped.

Thirty more minutes of loading took place before the metal doors creaked shut and the remaining curtains were unhitched and strapped down. There was a commotion outside—angry shouting. John guessed that the truck owner had returned to find John’s previous host sprawled over the back of his rig. Cautiously, he stuck his head out. The abandoned host had now gone, and John glimpsed a man dressed in a fashionable tan leather jacket, dark jeans, and expensive-looking shoes get into the cab––not the usual sort of clothes that a truck driver would wear.

The trailer shook as the twelve-liter engine roared into life and the truck jolted into motion.

An hour of the journey passed and John still hadn’t figured out how he could cause an accident to happen without getting anyone killed. He stuck his head out of the trailer, like a dog with its head out of a car window. A sign flashed past stating he was on the I-84, and another stating Albany was eighty miles ahead. He was already passing through New York State. Time to do something. He decided to go to the sleeper part of the cab, located behind the driver and passenger seats, where he could check out his options.

Using the middle exhaust stacks to help him scale the back of the cab, he pushed his head through the rear wall. The sleeping compartment had the curtains drawn from the rest of the cab. As he pulled himself into the chamber, filling it with a dull orange glow, he pulled the curtains back a touch, just enough to peer through into the driver’s cab.

The driver was alone. John instinctively looked in the mirror to see the eyes of the man driving. The eyes would show his frame of mind, giving John an idea of the type of guy he had to work with. He wasn’t for a moment expecting to see an orange fire in those eyes. But he was wrong. The driver was possessed.

The driver carried on looking straight ahead but a disembodied voice screamed, “Who the fuck are you!” Seconds later, a glowing orange head appeared out of the driver’s head and turned to look straight at John. The features were Hispanic and the stare was vile and brutish. The