John Barnes - Directive 51

Traffic roared by at the speed limit. Trooper Davis appreciated the peaceful order of it all. He waited in a median pullout, not eagerly, for the first aggressive speeder to zip by. His days usually contained many moments worse than this.

He was thinking about the coffee in his thermos when the minivan in the southbound left lane had a messy blowout—the tire totally grenaded, dropping the minivan onto the rim at that corner, and he held his breath while the driver fought it across the right lane; luckily the red Camaro in the right lane behind it was alert and the pavement was dry, so the minivan made it over onto the shoulder—

Shit. Looks like the Camaro blew a tire, too, in the hard braking. The guy behind him, less alert, missed the Camaro by a hair, and only by swinging into the left lane. That sudden change triggered a wave of brake lights. Davis flipped on his bubble and siren and turned up onto the left shoulder to go sort all this out. At least his lights would make people slow down and wake up.

Passing the now-forming traffic jam, he saw half a dozen more blowouts. Crap. That Daybreak stuff they were warning us about at the shift briefing.

Closer to the front of the jam, he found a couple of fender benders. Davis called it in; didn’t look like anyone was hurt, and no air bags had fired, spacing had been good, speeds not excessive, and pavement dry. Nonetheless, this was going to be a major mess. Just behind the original blowout situation, three collided cars in a rough Z stretched most of the way across both lanes; everything in front of them had either made it to a shoulder or was finding a way through and rolling on.

Davis decided that would do for a starting point. He braked, left the flashing lights on to tell drivers behind him that there was an officer on the scene, and walked up to the Z-form collision.

The drivers were two lady office workers in sensible little hybrids, and a sad, frustrated-looking sales type in a cheap washable suit and an obvious by-the-weeker used Kia. Their paperwork was all in order, even the sales-guy’s insurance; the bar code on his license authorized a breathalyzer, but Davis didn’t see any reason to do that. They all had grenaded, torn-off flats; Sales Loser’s tire had blown after his car had stopped.

They agreed to move their cars over to the left, so Davis pulled the patrol car across the lane to block traffic for them, and set up a choke point to keep things slow as he worked out the jam.

He grabbed his electronic pad and headed up the snarl of traffic on foot, talking to dispatch on handset as he went.

At least a third of the cars in the jam had flat tires. An odd stench, not like cow or pig or chicken, but definitely like some kind of manure, hung in the air. Yeah, this has to be that Daybreak thing. From a low rise he saw that he already had a two-mile jam, at least, on his hands, and called in to the dispatcher, asking for another couple of cars “and a Daybreak specialist if there is such a thing.”

With a sigh, he got back to work, moving everyone with a burst tire to one shoulder or the other, clearing a lane for the trapped but functional cars. He flagged down a couple frantic idiots who were trying to zigzag between shoulder and lane to get past, and gave them their well-earned tickets. He noted a plate number on one asshole who shot him the finger and zipped on by, calling it in for an intercept up the road.

The farther along he went, the more tires were blown, at least twenty so far in this quarter mile of stopped cars. He sent up a prayer of thanks; if this had been an icy morning, he’d be looking at real wrecks, deployed air bags, injuries, maybe even some deaths and fires, instead of merely the worst fall day he’d ever had.

He saw the shreds of tire on the front driver side of the next car and leaned over the window. “When this guy right in front of you pulls forward, you can pull forward into the space he’s in, and then left, over there, onto the shoulder. It’s that Daybreak thing from the news last night. The best thing for everyone to do is sit tight, off the road, till we get whatever it is cleaned off.”

“Sure thing, Officer.” The fiftyish woman wore a plain cloth coat and slacks; she looked like an office worker, probably taking the two grandkids in the back to day care. While her daughter works a shift at 7-Eleven or McDonald’s, bet you anything, and not a man in sight anywhere around the place. Oh, well, not my business.

The car ahead pulled forward. Nice Office Lady turned to go left onto the shoulder. With a sound like somebody’d fired a 9mm inside a trash can, something stung his lower leg. He looked down to see the remains of the other passenger-side tire from her sedan, smeared across the pavement and wrapped partly around his leg.

“Oh, no,” she said quietly. “I only have one spare.”

Davis flexed his ankle; it had stung but apparently done no other harm. “Yeah. I don’t know how soon they’ll be able to get help out here and it might just be to evacuate; I’d pack anything you don’t want to leave in your car, if you can.”

“My god,” she said, “What’s that awful smell?”

He bent to shine his flashlight at the damp mess of her tire. It looked wet or greasy, as if it had been splashed with black oil or partly melted. The reek of raw shit nearly knocked him out. “The Daybreak bug,” he told her. “Be real careful pulling over.”

Her other rear tire blew as she parked it; they exchanged helpless shrugs.

As Davis walked on up the line the thuds and bangs sounded like a distant war starting; with a loud report, one tire just behind him flung goopcovered shards across his calves, and he jumped. I wonder if it’s getting worse because it’s warming up. The stench of rotting tires was like putting your head up a sick goat’s ass.

The smell grew stronger, the bangs and thuds more frequent, and some of the drivers were angrier with him, and some more resigned. When the sun came up at eight, and the temperature started to rise rapidly, the remaining tires started to blow in great volleys, and the reek became strong enough so that many of the stranded motorists were throwing up on the roadside.

He had a moment of hope when the dispatcher called to tell him a Daybreak specialist was coming out, but then the rest of the explanation came: “He’s a microbiologist from Wright State. He’s walking out to you—it’s about six miles—and he’ll be taking samples of the rotting tires.”

“Is there anything he can do?”

“As far as we know, he’ll just take samples and start walking back. Might be a day or more before he even gets to his lab, and the power just went off up there, so he might not even be able to study the Daybreak bugs when he gets them there.”

“Great. Well, there aren’t too many cars that can move anymore, so I guess it doesn’t matter if you get me traffic-control backups, or not.”

“They’re all stranded with flat tires. Right now we’re trying to find some way of evacuating, but tell anyone who can walk home they should start, and not waste daylight. Nobody’s going to come into the city today from the north—all those routes are under quarantine. The microbiologist will look for you by your car, so be there in an hour or so.”

It was in perfect keeping with Trooper Davis’s day that when he returned to his cruiser, it rested on four soggy, stinking piles of black goo. Can’t cry in front of the civilians, he reminded himself, and leaned against the cruiser, drinking the coffee from his thermos while it was still hot. All he had left, emotionally, was a small shrug, and an unvoiced Well, shit .

Feeling better for the coffee, and unable to remain passive for long, he started his long walk up the highway, looking for anyone in trouble he might be able to help. He found plenty of people in trouble.