Chapter 143

We were in front of a corpse, half-buried at the foot of a tree.

The corpse of a person.

The cold got under my skin like never before. I feared I would never be able to shake it from my body again; more than cold, it was the claustrophobic feeling of being surrounded and having no choice but to continue moving through the maze.

Straight into the darkness ahead.

“It’s Johnny Rice, the local delivery man,” Kaylee said, with severe serenity. The corpse did not have its face unearthed, but there was no need. “I’m going to have to report this, Nikolai. He has been missing for five days, there are people looking for him.”

I immediately crouched down and dug deeper into the snow and wet dirt until my frozen fingers brushed against something hard, revealing the shiny edges of a wristwatch. It was a crude, superficial grave. The stench of decomposition and suppuration from open wounds turned my stomach like never before. The cold weather was not helping to prese