EIGHT LETTERS || Liam Dunbar [2]

THIRTY NINE

That night, just as they agreed, they set the plan into action.

But Katherine hadn't realized just how much she hated the beginning of the plan until it was actually put into action. The back of the police cruiser smelled absolutely horrible, due to the decomp from the several occupied body bags piled around her, and she wasn't even someone with a supernatural sense of smell.

The plan to smuggle her, Stiles, Scott and Liam into Eichen was to put them in body bags with the rest of the bodies in the back of the standard issue police SUV, and so far it worked. But clearly, they hadn't taken the smell into consideration.

"I hate this, whole entire scenario" Katherine muttered, squeaking as Parrish took a turn and her bag slid into one of the ones containing an actual dead body. "I want to watch Tinker Bell right now...I'm going to have nightmares for weeks...literal weeks oh my god."

"Shut up," Stiles hissed from somewhere in the general space behind her head. "This was your idea, this is on you."

She scoffed. "I never said it was a good idea," she whisper yelled back, scrambling to lay flat as the car rolled to a stop. "You never listen to me, why did you decide to start now? Now shut up, we're dead, remember?"

"Shush."

"Delivery to the morgue," she heard Parrish say, and automatically started taking much shallower breaths to better pretend she wasn't one of the living.

There was a pause. "I don't see you on the list."

"You heard about the animal attacks, right?" Parrish tried again. "The hospital ran out of refrigerated drawers and Eichen's got the only other up-to-code morgue in the county."

He's using my excuse, I'm proud...I feel like a proud momma...a proud momma bird...Jesus Christ Katherine focus.

"Let's have a look," the security guard decided.

She heard Parrish grimace, and she felt herself doing the same thing. She wouldn't want anyone to smell what was in the back with her. Then she remembered she was also there, where she wasn't supposed to be, and her heart started to race while she tried to hide the bulk of her wrist from being visible.

Even though Melissa had confirmed that her wrist was healed enough for her to leave the bandage off, she didn't want to test that theory out with their current plan in mind. "I don't think you want to do that. The stench back there almost made me pass out while driving."

"Open the back of the van, please," the security guard repeated with a scoff.

Katherine closed her eyes and all but held her breath when the back doors clicked open. She didn't like being in the dark, but was very thankful for the barrier the body bag provided. She just wished they were better ventilated so she could breathe properly, but knew that the issue hadn't really ever been a...well...an issue.

"I'll need to log the names off the toe tags."

"There's significant decomp," Parrish warned him. "They were found in the county tunnels way past rigor."

"Open them up, please."

She heard the sound of a zipper being pulled, and the scent of decomposition was overpowering almost immediately. The security guard was gagging and stumbling back, from what she could picture, as Parrish waited for him to say something. "Go, just go," he managed to choke out finally."

Then, as quickly as he was physically able to, Parrish got the SUV going again and was driving them to the back door where a team of orderlies would take them inside to the morgue. Katherine exhaled her breath of relief and tried to get enough air in to send the spots in her vision away before she had to hold it again.