It was mutually obvious that we had no idea what we were doing. The only logical thing to do was start gingerly pulling wires. We started with victim number six, pulling out one at a time. Every time a wire came free, the victim’s body twitched in this ghastly and almost unearthly manner.
Just as we finished disconnecting victim number six, the police ambulance arrived ready to take the two survivors away. Dr. William Marshall, one of the top neurosurgeons at Eastgrove was already standing by to do what he could. We moved on to victim number seven, a young woman, probably no more than twenty-five years of age, her eyes blankly staring out into nothing. When our eyes did meet, it was like she was looking right through me, as perhaps I was nothing more than a pane of glass. As Dr. Whitaker was disconnecting the last of the wires from her right parietal, I noticed that her lips were beginning to move. Instinctively, I thought perhaps she was trying to say something. I put my ear close to her mouth just as she ever so quietly uttered the words “I can see forever.” I said absolutely nothing to doctor Whitaker about this. Within seconds of the last lead being disconnected, the glow of the voltaic pile slowly faded to nothing.
As expected, none of Moresby’s victims were ever identified. The first five were given unceremonious burials in the potter’s field out on Pell’s island. Victim number six lived for another three weeks before succumbing to a massive brain infection. Only victim number seven survived any great length of time. After having been committed to Ward 6 at Eastgrove Hospital, she lived another seven months in a state of total catatonia.
Moresby, after readily identifying himself to the police upon their arrival, was eventually charged with a litany of crimes. The most serious of which was the murder of those who did not survive his experiments. The District Attorney had no trouble arguing that because of Moresby’s medical knowledge, that the deaths were premeditated, thus constituting a capital crime. Moresby decided to defend himself. In a series of bizarre, ranting speeches he was the prosecution’s best witness, admitting to everything and showing not a single hint of remorse. The jury took less than an hour before deciding on his guilt. Ironically, Moresby was sentenced to the electric chair.
It was a sentence that was never carried out. Soon after his transfer to death row at Walterville Penitentiary, he was found dead in his cell one morning. I’m grateful that I was not involved in the investigation of his bizarre death. But I was unfortunate enough to have read the postmortem. It seems as though there was very little left of Michael Moresby, not much more than his prison clothes and an unidentifiable jellylike substance that engulfed a slowly disintegrating skeleton. A molar with a very distinct gold filling confirmed that the remains had definitely belonged to Moresby. Written on his cell wall in blood were the words “I told you they were coming. But you chose not to listen.”
THE SHIPMENT
KEVIN BANNIGAN JR.
2:19 A.M.
A Motel in Kansas
ROY BARGER COULD HARDLY believe his luck. His feelings had altered considerably from twenty minutes earlier, when he woke up after only three hours of rocky sleep with his lungs screaming for nicotine. Roy left his motel room—scarcely more luxurious than a cardboard box—pissed off at the world. He climbed into the cab of his truck and fired up a cancer stick. He let Muff, his cat, out of her plastic cage. Roy never understood Muff’s problems with hotel rooms (maybe he did after this particular dump), but the cat much preferred the familiar darkness of the truck.
Figuring he had nothing to lose (he’d done enough of that lately) Roy powered up his laptop and logged onto Ship Central, hoping for something, anything, that would get him out of Kansas with any kind of a profit. What he found was surprising, in more ways than one.
Professional driver needed for sensitive shipment. The transporter must pick up a package containing highly sensitive objects within. The box must be kept under extremely cautious care until it arrives at the destination. Per the customer’s request, under no circumstances may the box be opened, due to the risk of the contents within no longer being serviceable.
Normally a shipment like this—and especially one at 2:19 in the morning—was clearly one to steer away from. No one, let alone a professional, liked to drive several hundred miles with one eye on the road and one on the rear view. The suspicion surrounding it was almost always more trouble than it was worth—almost.
Payment for this load will be 5000 dollars.
“Five freakin’ grand! We might survive this rough patch yet Muff.” His co-pilot acknowledged her name by raising her furry head before laying it back down on the passenger seat. “I see you’re overwhelmed at the news.” Normally Roy couldn’t be bothered to waste good energy with excitement, but a load like this was almost too good to be true. The pickup location was only one hundred and six miles away, still in the state of Kansas, and the drop off only four hundred and ten more, somewhere in the middle of Iowa.
Ten bucks a freakin’ mile! Roy thought. Most transporters were thrilled to make three dollars per mile. The new truck—he chose a Chevy because apparently driving more than a hundred thousand miles in two and a half years was too much of a task for Ford—he’d had to buy last week had put a hurting on his wallet. To make matters worse, the first load he’d booked in his new truck had arrived five hours late, thanks to a deep pothole that the state of Nebraska was apparently too poor to replace. With a one-hundred-dollar fee per hour late, and the entire load paying just twelve hundred before expenses, you need not be a mathematician to calculate his frustration. Five grand for a day’s work would erase a good chunk of that debt. This job was a no-brainer.
A few clicks later and the job was secured. As he closed the lid of his laptop his cell phone began to buzz. “Now who the hell’s that Muff?” The caller ID read unavailable. He answered.
“Hello Mr. Barger,” a deep, slow-speaking voice said. As if receiving a phone call at two-thirty in the morning wasn’t unsettling enough, the voice on the other line sounded … hypnotic. But Roy was never one to be put off. To many people he was a first-rate asshole, but nevertheless, Roy was rather proud of his steely nerves and the ice-cold blood that coursed through his veins.
“Who’s this?” he asked. In true Roy Barger style, he made no attempt to mask his annoyance.
“It’s your customer, Mr. Barger.”
“How did you get my number?”
There was silence on the other end of the line, until finally the voice said, “Why, Mr. Barger, it’s listed on the Ship Central website.”
So it was. Roy said, “You know, most of my customers only call when they really need to ask me something.”
“I see, Mr. Barger. Well, Mr. Barger I would like to know how long it will take you to pick up the box.”
“You mean now?”
“Yes, Mr. Barger.”
“And why would I come pick up the box now, at two-thirty in the morning?”
There was a moment of silence before the voice spoke. “We’ll make it six grand if you can be here by four-thirty, Mr. Barger.”
What the hell was so special about this box? Roy wondered. Well, whatever it might be, these people were willing to pay good money for it. “Yeah?”
“Do we have a deal then Mr. Barger?”
“Give me two hours. I’ll be there.”
“Excellent, Mr. Barger.”
Roy hung up. “Ready to take a ride Muff?” Roy asked his cat. Muff couldn’t be bothered to lift her head this time. Roy scratched the cat’s head. “Well, I see who’s taking the first shift.”
4:27 A.M.
Pickup Location
For as long as Roy could remember, he’d kept a traditional sleeping schedule; bed at eleven and up at seven. Not since his twenties had he wheeled through the graveyard shift. He’d forgotten how liberating the open road in the middle of the night felt. Hell, he’d forgotten how liberating an open road felt regardless of the time. And what did a loss of sleep matter compared to a six-thousand dollar payday?
Muff had eve
ntually made her way to his lap, where she’d wasted no time curling up and dozing off. Though Roy felt disdain toward his fellow humans—especially customers, who often made the job unnecessarily difficult, with their bad measurements and unending barrage of stupid questions—he’d always founds cats to be wondrous creatures, and Muff was the best one he’d ever known. For seven years now the cat had been a stellar travel buddy.
By the time Roy’s GPS instructed him to make a left turn in five hundred feet it had been twenty minutes without seeing another vehicle. The sun was still hiding behind the moon, and the road that Roy had been traveling for thirty-nine miles had become steadily darker. The wide open area had also become foggy; the convenience of sight, at least, was one of the advantages of daytime driving.
The street Roy was supposed to turn on didn’t become visible until the hood of his truck was nearly past it. He managed to make a sharp left turn without veering onto the dirt too far. It was an odd location for a pickup—seemingly in the middle of nowhere but actually near the border of Kansas—but Roy had expected nothing less. A half-mile down the one-lane road brought him into a small parking lot. A small metal building that he hadn’t been able to see from the highway stood directly in front of him.
Roy parked the truck, oblivious to the lack of fog that had swarmed his truck for the last twenty minutes. His mind was busy focusing on his stomach, and trying to thwart the feeling of unease from the pit of it. The nerves of steel that were his trademark might soon become aluminum if he didn’t get a grip. Roy was reaching into his pack of cigarettes when a voice came from his left. To his credit Roy didn’t flinch.
“Hello Mr. Barger. You made wonderful time.”
“Where’s my shipment?”
“Right inside the building, Mr. Barger.”
When they’d spoken on the phone, Roy couldn’t have fathomed what the face that belonged to that hypnotic voice would look like. Even granted a thousand guesses would he have come close. The entire body, from the hairless head to the skinny circular legs was a shiny, silver metal. No legs, the entire lower half of the body was a large smooth circle, as if the robot had decided to wear an oil drum for pants.
“Who’s your owner?” Roy asked. He could care less actually, but a television showed he’d watched in his motel room one night explained that a robot must always answer this question.
“The one you’ll be meeting when you reach your destination, Mr. Barger.”
The robot’s answer planted many seeds of confusion, but every minute he sat here talking to a voice coming from inside a machine was probably equal to five minutes that he’d be stuck in traffic on the interstate.
“So let’s get this special box loaded up and I’ll be on my way.”
“I can’t not allow anyone inside the building Mr Barger.”
“Why not?”
“I can not, Mr. Barger,” the robot reiterated. “No one is allowed inside our buildings. I shall retrieve the box and bring it out promptly, Mr. Barger.” The robot zoomed away and disappeared into the building.
“I’m telling you Muff, it just ain’t American. Before we know it a damn machine will take my seat and job, free of charge! They don’t even have a pair of freakin’ legs!” Muff meowed her agreement. She’d been roused from sleep by the voice of her owner, but now she curled back up on the passenger seat to resume her slumber. “You work too hard, puss.”
The robot returned with the box in its silver hands. Usually a seller provided a picture of the item in the listing, as well as the product’s dimension. But Roy had already made peace with the fact that this whole run would be beyond the norm.
“That’s it?” Roy asked.
“Indeed, Mr. Barger.” In the robot’s hands was a wooden box not much larger than the one his last pair of boots had come in. There were two metal latches near the front corners, both with locks securing them shut.
Roy snubbed out his cigarette and opened his door. “Anywhere in the trailer’s good with me.”
“Oh no, Mr. Barger, the box must ride in the cab with you.”
Roy, not exactly the jokey type, almost laughed. He had an empty thirty-foot enclosed trailer that could have held a hundred of these things, and the box needed to be inside with him. “The listing never said anything about that.”
The voice from inside the robot insisted once again that the box could not travel anywhere but inside the cab. And then it apologized to Mr. Barger.
Roy sighed. “Fine, but it’s going on the floor in the backseat.”
“Splendid, Mr. Barger.”
As Roy got back into the truck the robot stunned him by sticking out its silver hand. “Safe travels, Mr. Barger.”
“I don’t shake hands unless they’re made of flesh.” Saying no more Roy rolled his window up and put the truck in reverse.
5:14 a.m.
A gas station near Missouri’s north border
In his twenty-four year shipping career, Roy had run out of gas while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic only once. He was twenty-three, nearly starving, desperate for the four-hundred-dollar payment he’d been promised at the end of the run. The experience had been horrid enough that he’d never risk it again. One time he chose to overdraft his account by a hundred dollars rather than relive that experience. He later paid a twenty dollar fee but made it to his drop off with an eighth of a tank to spare.
Roy passed a sign that welcomed him to Missouri and another small blue sign that informed him fuel could be found in three miles.
“Well Muff, we ain’t in Kansas anymore.” Roy hated that movie.
He pulled into the Denado’s and parked next to the last pump. The gas station was so still and silent that for all Roy knew the apocalypse had happened while he’d been sleeping. The lights were so bright here that Roy thought about putting his sunglasses on; it was quite the contrast between the pitch-black night a hundred feet away.
He didn’t move to get out just yet. This was his first time at a gas station without an attendant’s booth. The pumps had a slot where either money or plastic could be used to pay. He’d seen the news story of when the first of these no-maintenance gas stations had been opened. He thought of his Uncle Jimmy, who’d owned his own station. Uncle Jimmy had never let a car leave his station with a dirty windshield. Back in those days a man could pull into a gas station, hand someone their money and have a five-minute conversation (not that Roy missed that) while the tank quenched its thirst. So un-American, Roy thought.
“You’re turn to fill ‘er up, Muff?” The cat didn’t move. “Guess not.”
“Hello Mr. Barger,” the pump said when Roy inserted his debit card.
Yeah, not happening, Roy thought. The day he spoke to a gas pump was the day he’d welcome being institutionalized with open arms. He placed the nozzle in his tank and waited.
Inside the truck his cell phone rang. Roy grabbed his phone and saw that the number was from unavailable. “Yeah?”
“Is there a problem Mr. Barger?” asked the hypnotic voice.
“No?”
“I see that the package has stopped its progress Mr. Barger.”
Roy felt his anger coming. “You’re tracking me?”
“We are tracking the box, Mr. Barger.”
“I don’t need constant supervision to do my job.”
“I understand, Mr. Barger. It’s just that the package is extremely important to us.”
“Yeah, I got that part.”
“Will you be on your way soon Mr. Barger?”
“You do know that my truck needs gasoline in order to run?”
“Yes, Mr. Barger, we are aware.”
“I’ll be there as soon as it’s humanly possible.” Roy felt much better after throwing that in.
“Thank you Mr. Barger.”
Roy hung up. “Jesus Christ, Muff, what the hell did we get into?” The feline kept its uninterested attitude. Roy pet the top of its head. “That’s why I love you, Muff, no one interrupts your lounging.”
&nbs
p; Roy left the Denado’s at twenty after five ready for the next three hundred miles—he expected at least one more phone call—but wanting more than anything to collect his money and never deal with anything too small for his trailer again. It was almost funny, here he was with an empty thirty-foot trailer that cost fifteen thousand dollars, and yet he was being paid more for a box than he’d been for loads that required the entire trailer to ship.
In another twenty miles the sun had just began to show its face. Only two other cars had passed by Roy in the last fifteen minutes. There was no fog left—there hadn’t been for the last hundred miles—and the coast was clear as far as Roy could see, until five miles later.
Something was in the road about a mile ahead. Even squinting Roy couldn’t quite make out the figure standing just beyond the reach of his headlights. This is all I need, Roy thought. The run had been going too well, strange occurrences aside. Roy would have passed by the figure without a second’s thought except that there wasn’t one of them but two. Each figure was standing in the middle of a lane, leaving Roy no room to pass. As the truck’s lights revealed slightly more it appeared the two figures were kids. They were short, their clothes baggy, and their baseball-capped heads were bent down slightly. Roy had no choice but to let off the gas, though he laid on the horn good and hard before he reached the two figures.
He rolled his window down, tossed the cigarette he’d just finished out, and stuck his head out. “Fuck outta the road!” Roy yelled as he laid on the horn again. The figure on the left lifted its head and froze Roy in his seat. The figures eyes shone in the headlights like bicycle reflectors. The skin illuminated and seemingly glowed in the dim pink light of dawn. Roy immediately thought of two letters—E.T.
Dark Horizons Page 25
