Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

Johanson clipped his radio to his belt. He walked slowly to the car, to the couple who stood there.

The turn signal flashed at him like a bad facial tic.

Blink. Blink.

A strobe of bright glowing yellow.

“You still there?” Shatterbaugh’s words were like the distant barking of a dog. “You listen to a fucking word I said?”

“Excuse me,” Johanson said to the couple. “You have to go now.” The light from the turn signal engulfed him. He closed his eyes against the blinding flash. “He’s not here.” He felt for the car’s exterior, found the hood. “You have to go. Please. You have to leave him alone.” His hand traveled over the car’s body up to the driver’s side. He found the signal lever. It broke off in his hand.

The signal continued to flash.

He let his eyes adjust. The couple was no longer there. He looked inside the car. Looked at the empty child’s safety seat pocked with his bullets. Looked at the front seats, the dash only inches from them, dark stains covering them like a second skin.

The kid survived. He survived . Where was he?

The left turn signal…

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Small explosions in his eyes. Funny how the crash hadn’t destroyed it. Funny how things can be touched. Untouched. No rhyme or reason. Just random spatterings of dumb luck.

The kid survived.

Blink blink blink…

The couple was there again, pale against the on/off glare of the signal. The looks in their eyes — longing, pleading.

“I can’t help you,” Johanson said. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

The woman bent down, stuck her head into the car. She crawled inside. Crawled over the bent, twisted seats to the back. Hovered over the child’s seat. The man followed her.

“He’s not there,” Johanson said. What if the couple did find their child? What then?

“Please,” Johanson said. “Please.”

The couple hovered over the safety seat.

Johanson saw images as the turn signal flashed, each flash bringing a new one. A flash of the couple as teenagers when they first bought the car. A flash of them making love in the backseat. A flash of them driving, the turn signal flashing on them like passing road lights on an interstate. A flash of them giving birth — here — in this very car. Flashes of them with a child, their son, singing, playing, as they drove from destination to destination. Then flashes of the wreck, of the looks on their faces as they saw the truck coming, each flash like a single frame advance on a DVD player. He watched them die in slow motion, watched their bodies crushed by the force of impact, impossibly squeezed until blood was forced out of them in great splashes. Yet the child in back remained unharmed.

And he watched as the couple lay dead and disfigured stuck in the front seats as emergency workers hurried to pull the child from the wreck.

Each flash. A new scene.

Each flash an unwanted revelation.

And now the couple wanted to find their son. Why? Into what realm did they wish to take him?

Johanson found his voice. “Leave him alone.”

And they were in the back once again, eyes pleading and desperate. “We have to find him. We have to see him, touch him,” the woman said.

“Please, leave him in peace.”

Their eyes registered no understanding. Instead, they kept turning to the safety seat, looking at it longingly.

No. Johanson couldn’t accept this.

He turned away, his mind made up. He felt the flashing light hot on his back, saw it illuminate the mud at his feet. He ran toward the shack. Pressed the button that opened the gate. Ran out to one of the tow trucks that sat outside. Jumped in, turned the engine over and stepped on the gas.

He drove through the gate and headed toward the percussive flash of the turn signal. Between flashes he could see the couple in the car, impossibly contorted, looking frantically for their child, now clawing through the seats, clawing through the back of the child’s safety seat.

Johanson maneuvered the tow truck until its back faced the rear of the Sunbird. As he hopped from the truck and hooked the tow chain to the car’s bumper, he couldn’t help but look as the couple pressed their pale, bloodied faces against the rear spider-webbed glass, their eyes searching, pleading. Johanson hurried back into the truck’s cab, and with a jerk, pulled forward. There were snapping sounds, cracking, squeals of chrome and metal. He pressed the gas and the tow truck moved forward.

And somewhere in the distance, there was Shatterbaugh yelling through the static of his radio. “What the fuck are you doing?”

He headed toward the railroad tracks. Once the Sunbird was situated across them, he unhooked it, trying not to look at the couple inside, trying not to listen as they insistently asked “Where’s our child? Where’s our son?”

And all the while…

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Until it was joined by more lights. The lights of an oncoming train. The lights of the patrol car Shatterbaugh had called in.

He heard their screams. Or was it the screech of the train’s brakes? Or the shouts of the cops surrounding the tow truck, their guns drawn?

The turn signal blinked on and off, on and off. The train whistle was a hollow cry in the night, it’s echoes like bony fingers clenching his heart.

The cops jumped on Johanson, tackled him to the ground. One of them tried to re-hook the Sunbird to the tow truck, but the train was too close. The officer jumped.

The train couldn’t stop in time.

It smashed into the Sunbird. The train’s engine and the first ten cars behind it, jumped from the tracks and plowed their way toward the impound lot, while the rear fifteen cars tumbled the opposite way into the Mississippi river.

Johanson felt his arms twisted painfully behind him as his fellow officers cuffed him. But it didn’t matter. A smile pierced his lips, pierced the blood and sweat that dripped down his face. Pierced it like the bright yellow glow of the turn signal.

“He’s safe now,” he said to the officer who restrained him, praying his own words were true. “He’s safe.”

I appreciate you having us write this paper, Mr. Anderson. It’s much better than some of the other assignments you’ve given us. Especially the one on that old, dead English author. That one really sucked. Don’t get me wrong. You’re still my favorite teacher. You seem to understand us for the most part. And to have us write a paper on Bobby Truant and the effect his death had on us — I think that’s really important to almost everyone here. You’re the coolest. Marsha Blick thinks I have a big crush on you. Isn’t that hilarious?

Of course the death of Bobby was crazy, but why is it so hard to believe like the newspapers make it out to be? I mean, he was kind of a weirdo. No disrespect for the dead and all, but he did have a few screws loose.

I think it’s ridiculous that Marsha told everybody that I had been dating him before he died. That’s crazy! I was not dating him, Mr. Anderson. I hope you believe me. He was just a friend. Maybe not even a friend. Just someone to pass the time with when I was bored. I mean, when the majority of my friends are in dance line practice, what can I do? They don’t even let me in the gym to watch anymore. Just because they caught me with one cigarette. One lousy cigarette! Can you believe it? By the way, I noticed you smoke, Mr. Anderson. I can tell by the way you smell when you walk into the room. I really like that smell. That cigarette smell and the cologne you wear. What kind is it? Is it Polo? It is, isn’t it?

But so Bobby and I were just friends. I’d go over to his house — his parents were always working late — and we’d sit around and watch TV. We wouldn’t talk a whole lot — he wasn’t much of a talker. But I’d tease him sometimes. Flirt with him. It was fun to get him to blush. Sometimes he’d turn so red, I swear, Mr. Anderson, I thought he was going to explode.