Depths: Southern Watch #2

by Crane, Robert J.

  * * *

  Jerry Bryan was on his way home from work. He was just doing his shift down at the distribution center a few miles down the highway, passing through, one exit to go, and counting the miles till home. The rain was an absolute hell today, the blacktop on the interstate slicker than shit. Jerry knew a little about this stuff, and he would have sworn the oil and sediment that made it all so dangerous was supposed to wash off in the first half hour or so of a good rain,

  But they were on day two, and it was still slick as hell.

  Jerry had been on a couple long shifts the last few days. Lots of heavy lifting. Lots of carrying. Lots of packages going out the door. He had only had the job a month, the warehouse opening a boon to Calhoun County. Jobs were getting rarer out there, especially ones that paid eleven bucks an hour in this area.

  The rain was just slamming down, running across the windshield like someone had poured a bucket over the glass. The wipers were at max but barely keeping up, giving him a clear view for a second before they got overwhelmed again.

  He was trying to keep his eyes on the road, but his head was drifting to think about the baseball game he’d stayed up to watch last night. The Braves had taken the Phillies in the ninth, and there was—

  Jerry saw a shadow overhead and then something hit the windshield. It shattered, spraying him with glass before whatever it was dropped in and bounced off the steering wheel to hit him in the face.

  It was like he got smashed in the teeth and nose by a concrete block. The pain was immediate, and Jerry slammed his foot onto the brakes on instinct. His head was spinning and he could feel cold rain mix with warm blood on his face. The car jerked and locked into a spin.

  Jerry felt the world shift around him as the Buick’s back end swept around. The rain kept coming and he saw a faint shadow ahead of him through the blood that was dripping into his eyes.

  * * *

  Gideon listened as the tire fell. The sound of it hitting the Buick’s windshield was like a gunshot. Like he was back Chicago again.

  Gideon had already reached down and grabbed the jack. It was heavy, the steel edges biting into his eager hands. He was already shaking from the thrill of it. Now it wasn’t just anticipation, it was the beginning of the stirrings. He could feel Jerry Bryan suffering down there, and he saw the semi truck emerge from the rain below and knew that the driver wouldn’t have enough time to stop, even if he tried.

  Still, he flung the jack anyway and waited with shaking hands and his breath held to see what happened.

  * * *

  Jerry ran a hand over his face to clear the blood, and that turned out to be a real mistake. He saw the black shape emerge from the haze of the downpour. It was just out his window, at a perfect forty-five degree angle to his left. He heard the brakes squeal and the engine make a noise like it was downshifting, but that stopped a moment later when something hit the truck’s windshield.

  He saw the spiderweb cracks like it was happening in slow motion, then the whole thing caved in like someone had chucked a brick through it. The next thing Jerry saw was the windshield of the truck disappearing as the front grill of it became his whole world, and he barely felt the impact when it slammed into his Buick.

  * * *

  Gideon could hear the collision, the semi eating the Buick with Jerry Bryan in it. He’d felt the trucker actually die from the jack hitting him, the steel edge catching him in the temple and breaking his skull open. It didn’t happen immediately; these things never did, but he was rendered insensate and unable to stop the truck. Gideon knew that even if a paramedic had been on scene with a doctor, the trucker—named Jack Benitez, lately out of Miami, Florida—would still be dead in minutes.

  It was locked in, now. Nothing to do but wait and savor that one. Those were the best, in Gideon’s opinion.

  Of course, the one that Jerry Bryan had experienced, the mostly sudden type, those were good, too. Jerry Bryan was just barely dead now, splattered on the road underneath Benitez’s semi. Parts of his brain were still working, even though they were spread out over several lanes of traffic. Bryan wasn’t anywhere near conscious now, though, so most of the satisfaction was gone.

  Gideon had the tire iron in his hand and heaved it over at a delivery van detouring below to avoid the accident. The left-hand lane was still mostly clear. Mostly. Gideon’s throw ended that, though, as the delivery driver caught it right in the chest. Gideon had the demon strength, fortunately, though he rarely had cause to use it.

  He chucked the last piece, the brace that kept the tire mounted in the trunk, and aimed it a little farther out.

  * * *

  Sarah Glass was in a hurry. She was supposed to start babysitting fifteen minutes ago, but her mom had been late in getting home from a shopping trip to Knoxville. They shared the car on days when Sarah had to work, like today. It was a tough gig, and Sarah knew she was in the shit as she drove along way faster than she should with the rain coming down like it was. Her fingers danced over the keys of her iPhone, tapping out a text message, a hurried apology to her boss, Anna, who was actually a very lovely lady to work for. Anna had given Sarah a fucking amazing bonus last Christmas, which she’d used to get her first tattoo, a little flower on her ankle.

  Sarah was texting one handed, one eye on the road and one on the screen of the phone. The car was warm, the heater working overtime to banish the chill the rains had brought it. This shitty weather was going to totally fuck with her plans, because the kids she watched would be confined indoors tonight. On nice nights, she could take them out to the park near their house. On a night like this, it’d be episode after episode of Bubble Guppies.

  Anna wouldn’t get home until after midnight, because she was on a permanent hybrid shift at her job. That was the name of the game. Sarah would put the kids to bed at eight-thirty, work on homework until eleven and fall asleep on the couch or watch TV until her boss came home, and then she’d drive home to sleep a little longer. Anna had long offered for her to stay, but it was fifty-fifty whether Sarah would even get to sleep in the house. It was hard to sleep anywhere but her own bed, the smells of Anna’s home just not-quite-familiar as her own. The couch was kinda shitty, too. It had a spring that always poked her in the back.

  She sent the text and tossed her iPhone into the cup holder. Shit shit shit. Anna would be late to work, that was the bottom line. Fuck. She felt bad, but she didn’t have her own car, and her goddamned mom just had to make a shopping trip to the mall in Knoxville today. Why? No reason, really. It’s not like she didn’t already have plenty of clothes. It’s not like she didn’t know the weather was going to be shitty. It wasn’t like she didn’t have plenty of warning that traffic was going to suck on the way back—

  Her furious irritation with her mother was interrupted by something smashing into her windshield. It broke the glass and hit her in the arm, stunning her. The words, did that just fucking happen? ran through her head. She tried not to swear around the kids, but fuck, sometimes that was hard.

  She was still processing what the fuck was happening when she realized that there was something ahead. It took her a second to realize that both lanes were totally blocked under the overpass at the Midian exit. A semi-trailer looked like it had smashed a car on one side, and a blue van with something written on the side had neatly smashed into the bridge support between the opposing lanes of traffic on the left. The van was wedged sideways and no more than three feet of space remained between it and the accident in the right lane.

  Sarah hit the brakes but knew she was far, far too late. She slammed into the van with her mother’s Subaru. There was no windshield to shatter now. As the hood of the car crumpled before her she barely felt the impact of her face against the side of the van, smashing her skull into oblivion.

  * * *

  Gideon staggered back toward the rental now. He checked to make sure no one was coming over the bridge before breaking into a run toward the driver’s side door. He reached it and threw it open, yanki
ng his pants down around his ankles the moment he was in. He could feel them, so close—Jerry Bryan, Jack Benitez, Sarah Glass. The delivery driver was still alive, barely, but there were other cars piling up now. The ones who were too dumb to slow down, driving seventy even with the visibility as low as it was, like they were fucking invincible. They caused the mess to grow by leaps and bounds.

  Gideon’s hand was on his cock and rubbing now, the desire and heat rushing through him. He’d been hard since Jerry Bryan had died first. Now it was just a ongoing rush of arousal, his ejaculations coming one after another with an intensity from the closeness of the deaths. He felt another car slam into the pileup and a family of three died nearly instantly. He exploded and felt the hot ejaculate splatter his legs and drip onto the floor mat. He could hear the hiss, the smoky smell of the plastic and carpet filling the car.

  Another semi slid in below, a long-haul driver named Sam Worthen dying as his sternum cracked on the steering wheel. He hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt. Worthen writhed in his cab in immeasurable pain. Gideon felt himself come again, his fingers sticky with the burning ejaculate, stinging his flesh as he continued to stroke himself to the feeling of the man thrashing around in the semi below.

  Gideon was on fire now, his hand moving up and down his shaft in a symphony of pain and pleasure. There were voices crying out below him, souls leaving their bodies while screaming in agony and terror, and he was drinking it all in. The thrill was almost more than he could manage, and just when he’d catch his breath in his throat, another car would slam into the pile-up, another life would flee its earthly shackles, and he’d explode in an orgasmic burst that would send another ejaculation spitting from his tip.

  He could smell the cloth seat burning, but his eyes were closed tight as Gideon savored the sensations around him. He was feeling those souls come through him. Their cries were like the sounds of his lover, their moans of pain as near to his lover’s orgasm as he’d ever experience. They filled him up, these twenty dead and counting, and it was more powerful than anything he’d ever felt before.

  The feeling started to taper off, this most intense of pleasures, this hottest fire of arousal he’d ever felt. His hand was covered over with his own expulsion, and the car stunk of sulfur and smoke. It was thick in the back of his throat. He could barely move his hand over his cock, it was so sticky and taxed. His wrist shook with the strain of what he’d been doing, and looked down at the clock.

  Five fifty-four.

  He felt a surge of panic and hurried to wipe his hand on the passenger seat. It burned and sizzled as he did so, and then he fumbled for his keys. He looked down and his seat was burned through, a clear swath of nearly two inches seared right through the cloth, then yellow insulation burnt black in the hole. He could see a little had even burned through the floorboard of the car, though the hole was small enough that it didn’t concern him. It was maybe as wide as his pinky. Little spots of black on the steering wheel marked the places where particularly violent ejaculations had melted the pleather.

  Gideon fumbled for his keys and felt the metal bend under his touch from the remnants of his ejaculate still on his fingers. He turned the key in the ignition hurriedly then removed his hand to see his fingerprints melted into the plastic head of the key. Fuck fuck fuck.

  He looked back and could see some minor traffic on the bridge. There were lights flashing below, police and paramedics and firemen on the scene that he hadn’t even noticed in his orgasmic engrossment. He hurriedly put the car into gear, feeling the metal of the gearshift melt beneath his touch. He looked down quickly and noted his pants and underwear were mostly intact; the instrument panel had a few spots where the plastic displays had melted because of his emissions coming to rest on them.

  He put foot to pedal slowly, not wanting to arouse any suspicion. He was just a lookiloo, he told himself. Just someone watching the chaos. Or at least that’s what they’d think at first. He’d need to be gone by the time that they realized otherwise.

  Gideon steered the car over the bridge and crossed into the left turn lane. He got onto the freeway, heading south toward Chattanooga. He’d ditch the car somewhere down there, switch to a different rental company and get another one before returning to Midian.

  Why come back? he asked himself. He’d done something new here, experienced his most intense session yet, better even than that one a year ago. But if he tried to replicate it again, it probably wouldn’t go so well.

  But the excitement! The raw excitement of moving from letting things happen naturally, lying back passively and expecting death to come to you, around you, from watching at a distance to being up close, right there, and even MAKING IT HAPPEN—

  No, that was a rush he couldn’t forget. It was a new high of arousal for him. He felt his hand shake as he guided the rental down the on-ramp to the interstate below. There was no traffic, none at all.

  Gideon smiled wider as he cranked the car up to seventy. The rain hammered the windshield, but he didn’t care. He had to come back. He was going to re-experience this moment in his motel room later tonight, over and over.

  And then, after he was good and worn out, he was going to take some time to build his excitement again—and figure out a way to do it even bigger and better next time.

  Chapter 8

  This was a sick fucking day, Erin reflected as she stood in the rain, looking at the mangled pile of cars under the interstate bridge. She was still wearing her rain gear because the shit soup was still pouring down. She was the only one of the sheriff’s department presently on scene, but there were a few Tennessee state troopers there and more on the way. She’d seen the latest one pull up a few minutes ago, siren blaring over the downpour and blue lights flashing, throwing up gravel while churning up the shoulder.

  Erin was basically watching at this point, left to supervise the more prosaic of two evils that had happened in Midian today. It was a bitch of a coincidence that the largest multi-vehicular accident in Tennessee history should happen on the same damned day as the discovery of a mass murder, but she had only the barest of suspicions about that. It was something that was nagging at her as she stood there in the rain, waiting for the tow trucks to clear things out enough that they could divert traffic up onto the off-ramp temporarily. They’d closed the interstate an exit back and everything was flowing through Midian proper now. That’d make the downtown shop owners real happy and piss off the homeowners.

  She felt a cold that went way beyond the chill the rain had brought as she stood there on the shoulder, the gravel crunching beneath her shoes as she shifted from left to right foot and back again. She studied the remains of the accident and tried to figure out how it had happened. It was enough of a jigsaw puzzle she honestly wondered if she’d ever be able to figure it out before conceding that no, she probably wouldn’t. Maybe the brains at the Tennessee Highway Patrol or even the National Transportation Safety Board would figure it out.

  But for now, she just stood there, watching them try and manage the scene. And it was a hell of a scene to manage.

  Colonel Donald Ferris of the Tennessee Highway Patrol worked his way over to her as he had every few minutes in a more or less standard orbit. His wide-brimmed hat was state trooper standard, and he’d come from district headquarters to oversee the shit fall out from this wreck. He was an older man, grey shot through his hair, he carried a few extra pounds and seemed to be of the same stripe as Sheriff Reeve. He walked plenty upright and was doing his damnedest to be courteous, Erin could tell that much.

  Whether that was because he was just wired that way or he was treating her different because she was a young woman, Erin didn’t know. Didn’t care, either, so long as he didn’t cross any lines.

  “Ma’am,” Ferris said, doffing his hat slightly and getting himself wet in the process. Erin found a little amusement in that. Very little, but on a day like today she’d take it.

  “Colonel,” she said with a nod. She didn’t bother to doff her hat. Not that
it would matter at this point; her hair was soaked anyway.

  “We found some … unusual things here,” Ferris said without much preamble.

  “How unusual?” Erin tried to keep her cool, but inwardly she could hear her heart thumping louder than the raindrops on her head.

  Ferris gave a kind of shrug. “We found some things in places they shouldn’t be. A spare car tire that we can’t match to any of the vehicles in the collision. It’s pretty mangled since we pulled it from under the semi at the head of the crash, though. A car’s jack in the cab of one of the big semi trucks; kind of out of place there. A bent-up tire iron that looks like it might match the jack.” Ferris’s hat was sluicing water off as he talked to her, and she could tell he was raising his voice to be heard over the rain.

  “So what do you think?” Erin asked, pretty sure she knew what he was going to say. It seemed obvious enough to her.

  “I hate to jump to conclusions, but it looks like this might have been intentional,” Ferris said, looking no more bothered by the news than if he’d just told her he had to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home. He pointed up to the highway bridge above them. “Someone may have thrown some things down to try and trigger an accident.”

  Erin wanted to be sickened by the thought of that, but she’d already seen much worse just today. “What do we do next?”

  Ferris shook his head. His khaki shirt and green pants lost some of their luster under the clear plastic rain gear. He was one cool customer, Erin thought. “Nothing you have to worry about,” Ferris said. “I’ve got my forensics people bagging evidence, and we’ll get ’em back to our impound for investigation.” He scratched his cheek with long fingernails yellowed by tobacco. “Department of Transportation and NTSB might get involved with something of this scale.”