The Hidden Toxin ✔(#6 in the Our Side of The Dice Series)

Chapter 25: Emergency Excursion

Omsk, Russia

"What are we going to do?" Ebun asked, wearied as she sank low onto the grassy field, curving her arm to shield her nostrils from further inhaling the poisonous fumes from the burning fire.

It was half-past five in the evening. The sunset flaunted itself across the sky in unique disarray of fiery red colors.

The color was an omen— a bad one. The tainted outlook of the sky was like a foreshadowing of more bloodshed and danger that was to come in the future.

Red. Red as doom.

Earlier in the day, Ebun had spilled the blood of Mr. Kojo, the janitor, with her pocket knife and had fired multiple bullets into his torso region. Unfortunately, Ebun and Sean had heard the door squeak behind them. Someone had witnessed what they had done but was quick to pass by before Ebun and Sean could figure out who it was.

Immediately afterward, Ebun and Sean drove past several streets in Moscow with the trunk of Mr. Kojo's body resting at the boot of the car as they searched for the most suitable place to get rid of the pervert's corpse.

Eventually, they arrived at a completely different city in Russia — Omsk. Omsk had a different time zone from Moscow. Hence while it was still half-past two in Moscow, it was already dusk in Omsk.

With dots of blood spatter stains all over Ebun's cheeks and palms and Sean's clothes smudged with coal, the two had spent hours improvising items from the woods to set up a small crematorium in which Mr. Kojo's body would be burned to ashes.

Sean, whose back was now turned to Ebun as he was busy adjusting a log of wood from beneath the kiln, seemed to be lost deep in his thoughts, rendering Ebun's question a rhetoric one.

"Sean!" Ebun yelled from behind Sean.

"What?!" Sean snapped back, responding to Ebun this time.

"I asked you what we are going to do!"

"What else do you think we are going to do?" Sean turned to face Ebun with a frosty look on his face that made Ebun's palm moist. "Can't you think for yourself?"

"You can't possibly be suggesting that I go for the excursion the school is planning," Ebun's eyes shone in disbelief as she managed to protect her nostrils from the thick smoke. "What if I get caught by the person who saw us at Mrs. Yekaterina's office? What if the person recognizes me?"

"It's not a suggestion, Ebun. You must go for the excursion to protect yourself," Sean replied in a calm, unmoved tone.

"You seem to have forgotten so quickly that I recently lied to my hostel mistress, Mrs. Mariyah, that I was going for a school excursion so that I could prepare myself for the murder of Mr. Kojo. There's no way she will believe me if I tell her about this excursion even though it's real this time around."

"You were preparing yourself for the murder of Mr. Kojo but still failed to do a proper job. The least you can do is convince your hostel mistress to spend some more days away from home. Use the real excursion to clean up the mess you created during the fake excursion unless you want to go back to Moscow and get caught. I had to come to this rural city just to get rid of this corpse — despite the power I have. How much more you?"

Ebun dug her hands into her kinky hair and tugged hard at it, bending her head in frustration. A tear slipped down her eyes, mixing with the spatter stains of blood that tainted her cheeks.

Frankly, convincing Mrs. Mariyah wasn't going to be difficult. After all, she'd managed not to be seen by her for some days now. She'd been climbing the ladder through the backyard into her room every night and had been waking up before everyone else in Hostel Pavlov to leave in the earliest hours of dawn. Mrs. Mariyah still believed that she was on the dinosaur excursion she'd lied about.