Chapter 7

"You want to work at the landfill with me?"

When Juan heard Roger's idea, he immediately nodded and replied: "No problem, I'll talk to the boss there—I just don't know if he still needs workers."

"Then it's settled—hurry up as soon as possible." Roger handed him the medicinal oil and watched as he applied it to Jose.

Although only two days of medication had passed, the pit bull's gait was already noticeably lighter and quicker than before.

This made Juan very happy; his face finally lost its grim, hardened expression and gained a few smiles.

That night, he gave Roger a definite answer.

The landfill was short-staffed temporarily, and the boss was willing to hire him—at $3 per hour.

This was half the market's average minimum wage, and even that might not be fully paid if the boss cheated—but Roger nodded without hesitation.

After all, earning money was secondary; completing the intelligence investigation was the main goal.

The next day, August 4th.

Roger and Juan arrived together at the worksite—a small, dilapidated family-run landfill.

Tons of garbage lay sprawled across the ground, emitting a pungent stench of rotting meat, sour spoilage, and chemical agents. The soil was everywhere sticky with black-brown leachate, and swarms of flies buzzed overhead, making one recoil in dread.

Roger stood before the pile of trash; even with his mask on, he felt his nasal passages were being subjected to wave after wave of kamikaze attacks, just like Pearl Harbor.

"Fuck, he's only paying $3 an hour for this place!? And he demands we work eight full hours and sort every single piece of trash?"

Thinking of the ugly face of the white bastard boss just now, he cursed under his breath, yanked his gloves tighter up his forearms, and extended his middle finger toward the gate, giving the boss's entire family a hearty salute.

Juan made no complaints, only silently approached the pile and began sorting.

Roger shrugged helplessly, thinking he'd better finish the intelligence investigation quickly, collect his pay, and leave—didn't want to stay here a second longer than necessary.

Yet when he finally squatted down to sort the trash, the sudden stench rising to his nostrils still made him gag.

Juan didn't mock him; instead, he silently handed over a piece of gum.

"Try this—it'll help a bit."

"Thanks."

Roger quickly shoved the gum into his mouth and pressed the mask tighter against his nose bridge.

The mint flavor of the gum soon dispersed most of the stench, but a faint residue of sewage lingered at his nostrils.

Yet for the sake of the intelligence, Roger could only endure in silence.

Fortunately, the human nose gradually grows accustomed to a constant odor over time, until it becomes normal.

So after two hours of work, the stench of the landfill was no longer a problem.

Instead, the real trouble was the mixture of different types of trash.

Especially when valuable electronic components were buried deep in the center of the pile—he had to first remove all the upper layers before he could pick them out.

After finally hauling and sorting through the first pile, Roger stood up, dared not rub his arms with his hands, and instead crossed his elbows to ease the fatigue.

Meanwhile, Juan had already finished the second pile.

"How long has it been?" Roger asked.

There was no clock in the landfill, and he didn't want to touch his phone with his stinking hands, so he couldn't check the time.

But Juan had a watch; he lifted his wrist to look, then answered: "Three hours and fifteen minutes have passed."

"Four more hours left—how much more trash do we have to move?"

Juan pointed behind him to the trash bins: "Next, we have to empty two new trash bins."

"Fuck." Roger stared at the massive green bins, twisted his mouth, and cursed under his breath.

Juan said: "You can rest for a bit—I'll go get some tools."

"Perfect." Roger was just looking for an excuse to investigate elsewhere.

Once Juan headed to the landfill's tool shed, Roger rushed over to other piles and listened intently.

"Metal scraping—that must mean the scrap metal pile. But what's 'beast whispering'? And breathing sounds? Could some stray dog be buried here? Or maybe a radio or something?"

After the first intelligence report, he already understood the Cthulhu Intelligence System's nature.

It loved to make small things sound incredibly eerie and terrifying.

If that logic held, perhaps the truth this time was simple.

But after searching for a while, Roger still heard no unusual sounds.

Not to mention metal scraping or beast whispering—he could only hear the rustling of rats scurrying through the trash.

Roger circled the entire landfill, unwilling to give up. When he returned, Juan was already prying open the trash bins with tools.

"Let me help you." He hurried forward—after all, this was a two-person job; he couldn't keep letting Juan accommodate him.

Together, they quickly emptied the newly delivered trash bins onto the ground.

Roger frowned at the filth and syringes on the ground, forcing himself to keep sorting despite the nausea in his stomach.

…

Time quickly reached 7:30 p. m. —only half an hour remained until their shift ended.

The sky had grown completely dark.

The landfill under the night sky had a completely different atmosphere from daytime.

To save money, the boss hadn't installed high-power lighting—only old-fashioned bulbs hung on walls and utility poles.

But these old bulbs, long neglected, flickered intermittently with yellowed tungsten filaments.

In this lighting, the leachate pooling on the ground was indistinguishable as black or red.

When it stained Roger's shoes, it seemed as if a metallic blood smell rushed toward him.

The shadows of the trash piles stretched long, completely obscuring the already dim corners. Rats gathered in swarms along the line between light and dark, their black eyes fixed on the two men, sending chills down their spines.

At some point, the familiar buzzing had vanished from his ears.

Roger only realized it now, belatedly.

The flies vanished.

Looking beside him again, though no wind had blown through, the crimson garbage bag on the ground rose and fell without warning.

And when Roger stared straight at it, the rising and falling stopped, as if whatever was hiding inside the bag was watching the man.

"Why hasn't Juan come back yet?"

Roger felt a thin layer of sweat break out on his back, with the illusion of feeling chilled.

Juan had just stepped away to pee; though he didn't know how long it had been, he figured it should have been about 5 minutes.

Roger looked around and found that among the piled mountains of garbage, only his own figure was present.

This scene looked exactly like something from a horror movie.

"In a place like this, it'd be completely normal for a few serial killers to crawl out!" Roger stood up from the ground, not daring to linger, planning to go find Juan.

But the next moment, he suddenly heard a sharp, scraping sound of metal.

"Who's there?"

Roger turned his head, stared at the garbage mountain behind him with a furrowed brow, gripping the crowbar tightly in his hand, ready to deliver an American-style golf swing to any uninvited guest at any moment and smash their head in.

But no one spoke, and there were no footsteps.

Only the red plastic bag rose and fell as if being trampled.

Roger swallowed a mouthful of saliva and walked toward the source of the sound in the flickering light, cocking his ear to listen.

Suddenly, a muffled, beast-like growl came from somewhere unknown.

The sound didn't resemble a human at all, yet one couldn't find any similar creature in memory; it was full of grief, fear, and hysteria.

Roger took a few steps back. Based on the principle that horror-movie side characters always die from curiosity, he planned to give up for now and come back to investigate tomorrow morning.

Only the piercing metal sound rang in his ears again.

This time it was very clear, like someone suddenly crushing a pull-tab can flat, which immediately let Roger pinpoint the location.

He stepped over stretches of garbage and finally fixed his gaze on a large block.

It was a massive-looking block of garbage, pieced together from various types of trash.

To make truck transport easier, much of the useful garbage is often packed and compressed into blocks by a garbage compactor.

Although this dump only used an old-fashioned, basic manual compactor, the pressure could still reach around 300 kilograms; this thing was so tightly sealed that even a mouse couldn't squeeze in, so Roger had never paid it any attention.

But he hadn't expected the sound to really be coming from here!

Having finally found the source, Roger carefully approached and used the crowbar in his hand to push at the garbage block.

Yet no sound came from inside; it seemed he had misheard the location.

Roger had no choice but to find a gap between two metal cans, squat down, and peer inside carefully.

The old-fashioned lightbulb overhead seemed to be anticipating his discovery too, briefly returning to normal without flickering out.

And when he borrowed the light to clearly see the situation inside the garbage block, he couldn't help but open his mouth, revealing an expression of disbelief, and instinctively said:

"Holy sh*t!"