He thought of his cell phone next, and grabbed at his jacket pocket. There it was. He withdrew it, flipped it open — and saw that it wasn’t receiving a signal. He moved it around, saw its glowing face flicker uncertainly. If he got out of the car, walked around, maybe he could find a signal—
And the thing outside screeched again.
Ben locked the doors.
What was it out there? Ben tried to picture it in his mind’s eyes, the flash he’d had of it in the roadway. It had been on two feet, walking upright. Oh Christ, it hadn’t been a man, had it? A hiker, maybe? No, it had been covered with what looked like black fur, and had been too tall. A bear? That must have been it. He tried to recall facts about the wildlife of the Pacific Northwest. They were only two hours outside of Seattle, were there really bears here?
Of course he’d heard the other stories, the ones about the things that were neither bear nor human—but those were ridiculous, fairy tales manufactured by crackpots and conmen. Ben’s world was a well-ordered one that didn’t allow for such absurdities. He was a critical thinker, a strategist. He had an MBA, for Christ’s sake. He believed only in what could be proven—
A shadow crossed through the headlights.
Ben craned his neck, trying to find a spot of uncracked glass to peer through, but he saw only steam and trees. He thought he heard a scrabbling off to his left, but it was dark there and he couldn’t make out anything. Whatever it was, it had come from where he’d hit it, maybe ten yards back, and had circled around towards the front of the car.
He needed a weapon.
There was nothing in the car he could use. In the truck was a solid, pigiron crowbar; outside were sturdy branches and rocks.
In here, though, was his only chance for shelter.
He tried the cell phone again—nothing—then turned to his wife.
“Angie…can you hear me? Angie!”
Still unconscious. He tried to feel for a pulse in her neck, but it was sticky with warm blood. He pulled his fingers away quickly, then dove under the shattered windshield for the glove compartment and the tissues Angie always kept there. He tore the pack open with trembling fingers and wiped the blood off. He saw he’d left a smear on the glove compartment, and he started to dab at it until he realized how ridiculous it was. His wife was bleeding to death (maybe already dead), and he was worried about staining the glove compartment. He turned to her and tried to clean her neck, but the blood was still issuing from some wound and the entire pack of tissue was sopping in seconds. Nevertheless, he kept the soggy bundle pressed to her neck tightly, not even sure if that’s where the wound was.
As he did, he tried to force his breathing (when did it become so rapid?) to slow, his mind to focus. He thought about where they were—on a little-used back road that wound through the Washington state rain forest to the little French restaurant where they’d dined. The one Angie had read a rave review of in a national food magazine, and had wanted to go to, even though it was a two-hour drive. The meal had been spectacular, although neither Ben nor Angie had been in much of a mood to appreciate it. They’d started fighting before they’d even been seated. Ben had brought up the idea of the sailing vacation again, the one that involved just the two of them renting a boat alone on the high seas for two weeks, and Angie had exploded. A vacation, she’d reasoned, was something you did to relax, not put yourself in life-or-death situations. Why couldn’t they just enjoy two weeks in a Caribbean beach retreat? Was he going through some mid-life crisis ten years too early, or did he just feel some inexplicable need to prove his masculinity?
The fight at the restaurant had escalated and ended badly. Ben thought Angie was too unwilling to take risks. Angie thought Ben had been playing too many power games lately, that he’d brought them home from the office after the last motivational retreat.
Now Angie might be dying, by the side of this roadway at least an hour from help, and it would be partly his fault. He felt her blood and knew he loved her and couldn’t imagine life without her and wished to hell he could tell her that right now.
He had to get her out of this. It had been several minutes now since he’d last heard anything outside. If he could just find a signal, or pick up a good solid club…maybe he’d get lucky (he thought he deserved to, god knows) and flag down a passing car. They couldn’t be the only traffic out here.
He unlocked his door, then opened it slightly and listened. Nothing. He opened it wider. It creaked and stopped, only a few inches ajar. The frame must have been bent out of shape and he’d have to work to get out, plus he was at a disadvantageous angle. It would make noise.
But he had to risk it.
He flashed on his grandfather, the family’s one authentic war hero, who’d earned two purple hearts in World War II; he’d been a big, blustering man who’d liked to recount his exploits on the islands of the Pacific, of charging into battle and eating lunch on the bodies of “dead Japs”. He knew his grandfather would have already had the door open and been out of the car; in his mind he saw his grandfather thumping his chest while his grandmother sat in a corner, smiling blankly and never saying a word. His grandfather had told Ben he’d never be a “real man” until he saw combat, and just before he’d died a few years ago he’d given Ben a copy of a book about “the greatest generation”, namely those like himself who’d fought in WW2. Ben had dutifully read the book, and had to admit he was envious: Up until now Ben’s life had been lived in classrooms and offices, without any chance at glory or raw experience. The closest he’d ever come to danger had been when his grandfather had taken him skiing at 14 and he’d broken a leg on his first quarter-mile run while the old man had laughed. Ben wanted to know what it was like to be really tested, not in a corporate boardroom, but a real life-or-death struggle. He’d desperately wanted to find that human, inner strength he thought he might possess, that sense of honor, of personal faith.
But this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. This was a situation where he had no control. No gun. No map. No general. All he had was something that he didn’t believe existed.
But he had to accept that it did exist. And his wife—
She was his honor here, now.
He took a deep breath and held it as he listened again, then dug in his feet against the car’s center divider and shoved. The door creaked loudly, but gave only another few inches. Trying not to grunt, he hefted again. There was a loud (too loud!) metallic snap, and the door sprang open.
He held it in place and strained to hear. Waiting. Every muscle tensed, frozen.
Nothing.
He clambered out of the car. It was difficult and he stumbled once, then caught his balance and looked around. He could see farther onto the roadway now, and his sight was no longer obscured by shattered glass.
In the red glow of the taillights he saw the black skid marks his expensive car had left on the pavement. He saw parts of the car—a tire, a mirror—scattered across the road, but there was nothing else.
He whipped open the phone and held it up. It flashed intermittently. He moved it around, but still no luck.
He bent to a crouch, and tried to creep up the slight incline to the road. Pebbles skidded out from under him, creating a tiny trickle of sound that was deafening to him. He stopped again, then cautiously stepped onto the road, looking in every direction. Nothing but asphalt and dark forest. It was overcast tonight, and he didn’t even have starlight to see by.
He tore his gaze away from the surroundings—and saw the signal lock in. He had it! His cautions were all forgotten as he punched in 911 and listened to the call going through, praying for a strong connection—
The 911 operator came onto the line. He choked getting the first word out, then the rest came too fast, a furious string of strangled whispers. He told them he’d had an accident, that his wife was badly hurt. He’d just started to describe their location—
—and something scrabbled in the woods near the car.
He whirled, forgetting the call. He
was only dimly aware of the operator urging him to respond. Another sound, closer to the car now.
Something was in the trees, and it was moving towards the car. Towards Angie.
Any help that was coming would be too late.
He slapped the phone closed and shoved it back in a pocket while looking around for something, anything, that could be wielded as a weapon. He saw the heavy branch that had smashed the windshield and had been torn from a tree, four feet of rough pine, now lying on the dirt shoulder. He ran to it and picked it up, wincing as the bark grated on the tender skin of his palms (“oh poor little hothouse flower!” he heard his grandfather snarl out), but its weight gave him a small measure of reassurance. He could defend with this. Or kill.
He walked closer to the line of evergreens, eyes wide to penetrate the dark curtain—
And the thing, whatever it was, shrieked, louder than before, in pain and fury. In challenge.
Ben suddenly felt very cold. He wondered if his antagonist (for such was how he thought of the thing, now) could smell his fear.
A tree three feet beyond the car’s passenger door—beyond Angie—shuddered.
Ben instinctively hefted the branch and stepped forward, adrenaline flooding him at the thought of it near his wife. He took one step, another, forward. Suddenly he was in front of her door, protecting, ready to swing—
—and he saw it.
Or at least part of it. Red eyes, a yard above his own. There was a smell, too, a rich, musky odor redolent of animal musk and Ben knew the scent of fear wasn’t his. And the eyes—whether from blood, the reflection of the car’s light, or their own internal fire he couldn’t tell. They were wide, moist. Looking at him.
Ben raised the branch and screamed, a primal sound ripped from somewhere deep within him. The thing in the woods blinked in fright and staggered back, then vanished. Ben kept screaming, screaming a war cry that finally left him hoarse and out of breath and exhausted.
And when he stopped he saw that it was gone.
He suddenly dropped to the ground, as if the line holding him in place had been cut. It was over. His enemy…the thing…had fled back into the forest, injured, to licks its wounds. Somehow he knew it wouldn’t come back.
He’d been tested, and had passed.
After a blank moment he used the branch to lever himself off the ground—his legs had suddenly gone weak—and staggered back to the car. He headed around to the driver’s side, dropped the branch and was lowering himself into the padded seat when he heard a moan.
From his wife.
“Angie!” He threw himself into the car and reached for her; her eyes were blinking, and she called his name.
“Ben…what…?”
“It’s okay, honey, don’t talk. They’re coming—help’s on the way—”
And then he was holding her and tears were streaming down his face, mixing with the cold sweat he’d worn moments ago, and he wanted to tell her, tell her what he’d done for her, and he started to…
…and stopped.
Because he’d heard his own words, and suddenly knew with horrifying clarity that no one would believe him. What he’d seen—what he’d fought—wasn’t human, or animal. It was something that shouldn’t exist, that both science and common sense said could not exist…but Ben knew now that it did. He might be the only one who had seen it, faced it, and lived. Even Angie hadn’t. When they would ask, he would tell them it had been a bear.
But he’d know, and he’d live the rest of his life with that knowing, that the world was not what he’d always believed—that there was no honor in combat and nightmares were real. Monsters lived, and they smelled like fear. He’d met the enemy, and the enemy wasn’t us. And if his grandfather had been here, the old man would have convinced himself of the lie, would have told himself that it had only been a bear, that he’d faced it down and won, thinking already of the valorous tales he’d tell while his grandmother had bled her life out in the car. He would never have fought the real battle, and suddenly Ben saw that the bravado and machismo was just self-deceit and stupidity, and he knew that he hated his grandfather, hated him as much as he loved his wife, and he knew at last that he was better than the old man, because what had happened tonight was something he would spend the rest of his life remembering and fearing and trying to understand.
By the time the ambulance and police car arrived fifteen minutes later, Ben was dazed and weak. An EMT told him he was in shock, but he knew the truth:
That here, tonight, by the side of this road in the woods near Seattle, he’d been tested at last, and could only hope that the best parts of himself had survived.
Bus People
by Simon Wood
“Shit! Why do we have to take the bus?” JB moaned.
“Because this is how we do it,” Tommy replied.
“But no one takes the fucking bus except losers, old people and whack jobs.”
“Yeah, and that’s the beauty of Casey’s plan. Who would think of a bus?”
Casey’s plan was ingenious. A drug dealer with Fagan’s sense of business management, he enlisted children to do his work. His plan used teens to carry cut cocaine for which they were paid two-fifty per pound. They would receive a call where the dope could be found, collect it and use the city’s transit system to make their connection with the pusher. After a call from a satisfied pusher, Casey paid the kid the other half.
Using minors worked well. They couldn’t be prosecuted as adults. And so what if he lost a kid to a boys’ ranch now and again? There were plenty to take his place. Even if the pushers were caught with the drugs, that was their problem. They had never met Casey, only his representatives. The money was never exchanged at the same time as the drugs. So, no money, no transaction, the best the cops could prosecute for was possession.
“Buses creep me out, man,” JB said.
“Well, give me the shit and you can piss off back to school. I’m more than happy to take your cut.”
“Fuck that, man.”
“Then shut up.”
“I’m cold.”
“So’s this conversation.”
The teenagers stood alone at the bus stop. They had their coats buttoned to the top and bounced on the spot to prevent the cold from invading their bones. JB especially hated the cold and withdrew his head, tortoise-like, into his bulky Raiders’ jacket.
Tommy had been part of this operation for nearly a year and this was his twentieth drop. He was fifteen and his brother was a pusher and user, more of the latter these days. His brother had been the one who had hooked him up with Casey. Casey liked to keep it in the family. It was easier to find people when they fucked up.
This was JB’s first run. His name was James Brown, but he hated any references to the R&B singer. Tommy knew JB from school but by name only. He was getting an extra hundred to show the kid the ropes.
“This is us,” Tommy said.
“What, the bus?”
“No, Einstein, the cops. Yes, the fucking bus.”
Jesus, rookies would be the death of him. JB was his eighth. He had known the kid less than an hour and he was already fed up with his whining. At least they would be separated for the journey.
“Remember, you get off at Broadway and wait by the dumpsters behind the Tower Theater,” Tommy explained.
“I remember,” JB sighed.
Tommy was going to chew the kid out but realized how much he sounded like his dad. He was getting old for his age. JB was only one grade below him. He would have to make sure he got out of this game before he became too old.
“And we don’t sit together.”
“I know,” JB huffed.
The bus stopped in front of them with an asthmatic wheeze. JB hopped aboard and dropped two quarters in the slot. JB found a seat while Tommy paid. Tommy went to take his transfer from the driver but she snatched it back.
She sniffed and scratched at her wire-wool hair. “Shouldn’t you kids be at school?”
“Shouldn’t
you have a proper job?” Tommy whipped the transfer out of her hand.
A piss-stinking wino behind the driver’s cab launched a burning stare at Tommy. He nursed a nasty looking homebrew in his grasp, cloaked by a paper bag. Tommy received similar glances from the other bus people.
Fuck ‘em! They couldn’t do anything to him. Towards the back of the bus, JB eyed him with a wry smile. He didn’t respond. He was on the clock and JB was on his own now. He slid onto a bench seat halfway down the bus, positioning himself by the window.
The bus closed its doors and pulled away. Tommy watched the neighborhood pass by.
“You’re a very rude young man. I hope you realize that.”
Tommy turned his attention to the old lady who had directed the accusation. “So?”
“That attitude won’t get you anywhere in life.”
Won’t it, Tommy thought. Hidden in the walls of his home were thousands of dollars earned from couriering. By the time he graduated from high school, he would have amassed a college fund. His attitude would get him a long way.
“Haven’t you got anything to say?” a hooknosed guy demanded.
Tommy shrugged.
Hooknose waved a disgusted hand.
Tommy surveyed his fellow passengers. JB had been right. Less than a quarter full, the bus carried losers and seniors to trivial destinations. The whack jobs had yet to make an appearance. But, as the bus slowed for the next stop, the lunatics were waiting to get on.
Tommy didn’t like taking the LB downtown and he wouldn’t be taking it now if he didn’t have to break in JB. The problem with the LB was they had to pick up the crazies from assisted living. Every day it took them to the adult education center. There was nothing wrong with them, he supposed, but the sight of them and their behavior made his scrotum pucker.
Aberrations Page 10
