He had laughed when she screamed: a horrible, high-pitched laugh that sounded like the squeal of a guinea pig. Now he was doing something to the corpse of Tad. She kept her head turned, eyes closed. She could hear the sound of rending cloth, then a horrible wet tearing sound. She scrunched her eyes tight shut and tried to mentally block out the sound.He was only a few feet from her, humming and talking nonsensically to himself in a singsong while he worked. Every time he moved, a terrible reek washed toward her: sweat, mold, rot, other things even worse.The horror, the sheer unreality, was so intense that she found herself shutting down.Corrie, just hold on.But she couldn’t hold on. Not anymore. The instinct for self-preservation that had prompted her to free her hands had faded with the reappearance of thatthing, lugging the dead Tad Franklin.Her mind began to wander, curiously numb. Fragmented memories drifted across her consciousness: playing catch as a young child with her father; her mother, wearing curlers and laughing into the telephone; a fat kid who was nice to her once in third grade.She was going to die and her life seemed so empty, a wasteland stretching back as far as she could remember.Her hands were untied, but what did it matter now?
