The Thing in B-3: A Tale of the Supernatural

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No other student at Crownover University had a part-time job quite like Bill Latham’s. He worked at the city morgue five evenings a week, Monday through Friday.

His duties in this place of the dead were light — except for those occasions when he manned an ambulance on emergency call.

Early in the evening of October fifth (the date would stamp itself in his memory) Bill was threading the ambulance through the city streets with the cool of a NASCAR point leader.

The attitude of his rangy six-foot body settled in the driver’s seat suggested total concentration, but not strain. He was grateful that the rush-hour congestion was over.

The lights of street, buildings, and cars flicked past like winking fireflies. The moan of the siren added a painful quality to the crisp autumn darkness. It was a sound Bill could have done without.

The instrument panel cast a dim glow. Bill’s husky face — cleft chin, rugged cheekbones, high forehead — right now reflected none of its usual quiet good humor. Under even brows, his brown eyes glittered with alertness as he picked and judged details of the street rushing at the windshield. The dawdling gray sedan straddling a white line... the pedestrian stepping from a traffic island as if hypnotized by the spinning red light of the ambulance... the pickup truck nosing into the intersection... and that silly driver in the red sports car who had U-turned a block back to chase the ambulance.

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