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

“Good. Open her up,” the security guard said.

John felt his host’s effort and the wheezing as he heaved the weight of his body up, step by step. Heavily panting, the host joined the guard on the deck. John waited for the driver to open the rear cargo doors and for the guard to walk inside before he left the trucker’s body. His former host faltered and collapsed, causing the guard to turn around just as John possessed him. The guard’s entire body tensed for a moment.

“Shit!” he exclaimed, surprised by both the strange feeling that had come over him, and by the scene in front of him.

“Larry, you fat ass. Get up. I can’t have this bullshit today.”

The guard leaned over the truck driver, slapping him on the cheeks. When that didn’t work, he looked toward the dispatcher’s desk and saw a bottle of water. He went to fetch it, un-did the cap and threw the water over the trucker’s face. The driver spurted out a complaint as he came to.

“Thank God you’re OK! I would need to dig a big hole for your corpse!” the guard snickered.

John’s new host pulled the trucker to his feet and called through his short-wave radio for help with the unloading as the trucker stumbled over to sit in the chair at the dispatcher’s desk. The cracked leatherette cushion hissed air with the sudden load.

After a few minutes, the elevator doors opened and four men in black jeans and t-shirts with the DNA logo printed on them, and a variety of part-shaved, part-quiff hairstyles, tattoos, and piercings pushed out pallet trucks. One by one, pallets stacked with beer barrels went into the goods lift and disappeared. After the second row of barrels had been taken, John’s host used a UV lamp to scan the top of each barrel. A spider-shaped logo, like the one he had seen on the pills, fluoresced on some of the containers, and these were immediately directed to be stacked, to wait, on separate pallets.

As the last batch of ‘regular’ kegs left in the elevator, John’s host was left with two guys, both Hispanic, grim-faced and solidly built.

“OK, you know the drill, get on with it!” John’s host ordered.

The two men made four trips in the elevator, taking two pallets at a time with eighteen of the secret, logo-bearing kegs on each pallet. That gave a total of 144 kegs out of 270 that were most likely filled with pills, by John’s rapid calculations. His host got into the elevator with the last load. The journey took them up again to the 40th floor––the location of the VIP club, the kitchen that served it, and the restaurant area he had seen during his last, brief visit. The beer was moved along the service corridor until they stopped by a metal door. A code was punched into a keypad, and they entered a storage room with plain concrete walls that were scuffed in horizontal bands by the protruding ribs of more steel kegs stacked against them.

The floor was dominated by a large drainage area covered by a heavy-duty metal grille. Men were opening barrels over it and there was a smell of stale beer. The contents hissed and foamed as the keg spears were pulled out and each man ran a finger alongside the inside of the opening to catch and pull out what looked like the end of a fishing line. As they pulled, bag after bag of the pills emerged. They were rinsed, dried, and piled into large, clear-plastic containers on wheels.

John could feel the guard’s anxiety over signing off on the exact number of pills that had been delivered as the filled containers were wheeled into another room.

Finished with white walls and a floor, the second room looked pristine by comparison. It contained a few white tables and a silver-colored machine about the size of a copy shop Xerox with a slowly turning spool at one end, feeding plastic film into it. A guard dressed in black stood sentinel in the corner with what John assumed was a small automatic weapon with a noise suppressor. The guard’s eyes were normal, unpossessed, but as his index finger rested on the trigger, they surveyed the activity in the room with the merciless, intense stare of a bird of prey. Two middle-aged Hispanic women, dressed like lab assistants, quickly attended to the incoming containers. The bags were opened and the pills poured into a funnel onto the top of the silver machine which, not unlike a photocopier, made relentless and rhythmic clanking sounds as it packed the pills into individual wrappers. The wrapped pills were then packed by hand into small boxes.

John’s attention was diverted by his host receiving an incoming call on his phone. He looked at the screen. The caller ID showed simply ‘The Accountant.’ The conversation was brief.

“Cargo arrived?” the voice on the line asked.

“Yes.”

“All as ordered?”

“Yes.”

“Bring the delivery roster to my office when unloading is complete.”

“Will do.”

The line went dead. John noted that his host was keeping two records. One for the delivery of real beer, and one for the kegs containing pills. John watched in disbelief as barrel after barrel was emptied, and countless trolleys of pills were packed. The process took about forty minutes, during which time his host made calls and paced up and down the room, then sent a text to The Accountant:

All done. On my way.

It looked as though John was now going to meet The Accountant.

On the fortieth floor, John’s host passed the doors to the kitchen that were connected to the VIP lounge. Next along was a pair of sleek wooden doors. One had a sign that read ‘Restricted Access - Management Only’ and another had a keypad beside it. The guard keyed in a code, there was a click, and he pushed open the door. It had noticeable heft. Probably a