Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

When the game finally ended (double over-time) he remembered the couple. Wondered what the hell they’d been doing for the last thirty-five minutes.

He got up and pressed his face against the window. A thin fog covered the lot. The light from the main office was dimmed by the haze. And he noticed another light. He swallowed.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Glow. Darkness. Glow. Darkness.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

He found it almost impossible to move from the window. He felt like he would melt right through it and float out into the misty darkness. His face felt numb. Finally he turned away. He looked at the glow of the television, the tinny audio coming out of the speakers, buzzing like a mosquito in his ear. He looked back at the lot.

Blink blink blink, the glow fuzzy as the fog and darkness devoured it.

He felt vulnerable standing in the window. He stepped to the side. Checked his sidearm. Pulled it out and made sure it was loaded. One more turn to the window, one more look outside.

Okay, just a short in the wiring. That’s all it is. Something got fucked up in the accident.

He talked into his radio. “Shatterbaugh, you there?”

Again, there was no answer.

Someone was in the car this time. A couple of teenagers humping away like mad in the back. The guy who was on top wore a letter jacket with a big ‘A’ on the back.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing in there?”

They ignored him and kept at it.

“Get the hell out of there.”

The boy paused. He turned his head. His face was white and streaked with blood. “Fuck off,” he said. “You’ll get your turn.”

Johanson saw the girl. She was dead. One arm was missing, her skull was smashed and pieces of brain spread like jelly over the back seat. Johanson jumped back and pulled out his sidearm. He aimed at the boy.

“Get out now!”

“Fuck off,” the boy said. He looked familiar, and the girl, through all the mess, looked familiar, too.

Johanson’s mind reeled. That couldn’t be. These two were younger. Dressed differently.

He fired. The boy didn’t flinch. Johanson fired again, the bullet crashing into the boy’s skull.

“Leave us alone,” the boy grunted as he continued to screw the corpse beneath him. “Wait your turn.”

Johanson fired again and again, flinching each time until his bullets ran out. His hands shook. He gasped. He realized the car was empty. He stared at the bullet riddled child’s car seat. It took an effort to get his gun back in its holster.

His radio squawked.

“What the hell’s going on down there? You okay?” Shatterbaugh.

Johanson turned in a quick circle. Lifted the radio to his face. “Where’ve you been? I tried calling you twice already.”

“Taking a shit. What’s going on down there? Sounded like the OK Corral.”

The turn signal was still on, reflecting the grinning grills of the surrounding vehicles. “Nothing,” Johanson said. He stared at the blinking light. “Target practice.”

“Knock that shit off.”

“Yeah,” Johanson said. He reached in, his hand shaking, and turned the signal off. “Yeah.”

He walked the perimeter of the lot looking for the couple. They couldn’t have let themselves out. Certainly couldn’t have climbed the fence. And that hallucination…

Don’t let it get to you, Johanson thought. Anyone would be creeped out by a place like this. How could you not be? The darkness was heavy. Palpable. Even with the lights surrounding the lot, it seemed to weigh on the cars, squatting on them like some fat, intangible bully.

Suck it up, he told himself. Suck it up.

Inside the shack, he reloaded his sidearm. He started to wonder if the couple he’d let in was another hallucination. Maybe he dozed off during the ball game and dreamed the whole thing. Wouldn’t be the first time he fell asleep while on duty.

Johanson dropped his gun at the sound of knocking below. He forced himself to relax before picking up the gun and slowly taking the steps down to the door.

The couple’s silhouettes were backlit against the door’s glass window. Backlit by the on-again, off-again blink of the yellow light in the distance. The turn signal he’d turned off not long before.

For a moment he didn’t think he could twist the door knob. He stared at his hand as it sat there like a flesh paperweight. Another knock made it twitch.

C’mon. Don’t be silly. Open the damned door.

He opened it.

The couple looked frantic. The woman grabbed Johanson by the sleeve.

“We can’t find him,” she said.

Johanson pulled away. “Who?”

“Please help us. We can’t find him.”

He took a step back, thought about shutting the door on them.

The man said, “Our son. We can’t find him.”

“You didn’t come in here with anybody else,” Johanson said. “There’s no one else in here.”

The woman’s voice rose. “Please!”

“What have you been doing here for so long, anyway? You’ve been here for over an hour.” He grabbed his radio. “Shatterbaugh? You there?”

Of course not. Worthless fuck.

“Help us find our son,” the man said.

“Settle down. Both of you. What makes you think he’s here?”

“It was the accident,” the man said. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes. “We lost him.”

The turn signal in the distance. Blinking.

On/off.

On/off.

Okay, a couple of nut jobs. Kid died in an accident and they’ve lost their grip on reality. Made sense.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Once more with the radio. “Shatterbaugh?”

Nothing.

“Please,” the woman said, tears in her eyes as well.

Johanson looked from one to the other. Okay. They want to look for their dead son? Nothing wrong with that. Why the hell not?

“Let’s take a walk around the lot,” he said. “Will that be enough for you?”

The woman nodded desperately. “Thank you.”

When they headed toward the blue Pontiac Sunbird, it’s turn signal calling to them like a beacon, he was not surprised. He wondered why he hadn’t shot the light out earlier while shooting up the rest of the car.

“We’ve looked everywhere,” the woman said. “At the crash site. At home.”

Why were they doing this to themselves?

“We just want to see him again,” she said.

“Tell him we love him,” the man said. “Tell him it’s okay. It’s okay to be with us.”

Johanson followed them to the Sunbird. He reached in and turned off the signal one more time.

The couple stood and stared at the wreck.

“Maybe I should leave you alone,” Johanson said.

They didn’t answer, their eyes moist and shiny, trained on the child seat in the back of the car.

Johanson said softly, “He’s not here. Come on folks. I’m sorry. But he’s not here.”

His radio squawked, making him jump. He quickly backed away from the couple.

“Johanson, you there?” It was Shatterbaugh.

“Yes. What?”

“You tried calling me a bit ago?”

“Yeah, where were you?”

“Taking a shit. What’s it to you?”

“Again?”

“Did you want something or not?”

He almost told him no, forget it, but then he turned away from the couple and said quietly into the radio, “Tell me about this blue Sunbird that’s our here.” He gave him the license plate number.

Shatterbaugh sighed audibly before clicking off. A moment later he was back.

“Ninety-three blue Pontiac Sunbird? Hit by a semi two days ago. Family of three. The mother and father killed instantly. Smashed like water balloons. I talked to the tow truck operator when he brought it in. But the kid was all right.”

“What?”

“I said the kid was all right. Can you believe that?”