An Incident on Route 12 Read online

  AN INCIDENT ON ROUTE 12

  by

  JAMES H. SCHMITZ

  He was already a thief, prepared to steal again. He didn't know that he himself was only booty!

  Phil Garfield was thirty miles south of the little town of Redmon onRoute Twelve when he was startled by a series of sharp, clanking noises.They came from under the Packard's hood.

  The car immediately began to lose speed. Garfield jammed down theaccelerator, had a sense of sick helplessness at the complete lack ofresponse from the motor. The Packard rolled on, getting rid of itsmomentum, and came to a stop.

  Phil Garfield swore shakily. He checked his watch, switched off theheadlights and climbed out into the dark road. A delay of even half anhour here might be disastrous. It was past midnight, and he had anotherhundred and ten miles to cover to reach the small private airfield whereMadge waited for him and the thirty thousand dollars in the suitcase onthe Packard's front seat.

  If he didn't make it before daylight....

  He thought of the bank guard. The man had made a clumsy play at being ahero, and that had set off the fool woman who'd run screaming into theirline of fire. One dead. Perhaps two. Garfield hadn't stopped to look atan evening paper.

  But he knew they were hunting for him.

  He glanced up and down the road. No other headlights in sight at themoment, no light from a building showing on the forested hills. Hereached back into the car and brought out the suitcase, his gun, a bigflashlight and the box of shells which had been standing beside thesuitcase. He broke the box open, shoved a handful of shells and the .38into his coat pocket, then took suitcase and flashlight over to theshoulder of the road and set them down.

  There was no point in groping about under the Packard's hood. When itcame to mechanics, Phil Garfield was a moron and well aware of it. Thecar was useless to him now ... except as bait.

  But as bait it might be very useful.

  Should he leave it standing where it was? No, Garfield decided. Toanybody driving past it would merely suggest a necking party, or a drunksleeping off his load before continuing home. He might have to wait anhour or more before someone decided to stop. He didn't have the time. Hereached in through the window, hauled the top of the steering wheeltowards him and put his weight against the rear window frame.

  The Packard began to move slowly backwards at a slant across the road.In a minute or two he had it in position. Not blocking the roadentirely, which would arouse immediate suspicion, but angled across it,lights out, empty, both front doors open and inviting a passerby'sinvestigation.

  Garfield carried the suitcase and flashlight across the right-handshoulder of the road and moved up among the trees and undergrowth of theslope above the shoulder. Placing the suitcase between the bushes, hebrought out the .38, clicked the safety off and stood waiting.

  Some ten minutes later, a set of headlights appeared speeding up RouteTwelve from the direction of Redmon. Phil Garfield went down on one kneebefore he came within range of the lights. Now he was completelyconcealed by the vegetation.

  The car slowed as it approached, braking nearly to a stop sixty feetfrom the stalled Packard. There were several people inside it; Garfieldheard voices, then a woman's loud laugh. The driver tapped his horninquiringly twice, moved the car slowly forward. As the headlights wentpast him, Garfield got to his feet among the bushes, took a step downtowards the road, raising the gun.

  Then he caught the distant gleam of a second set of headlightsapproaching from Redmon. He swore under his breath and dropped back outof sight. The car below him reached the Packard, edged cautiously aroundit, rolled on with a sudden roar of acceleration.

  * * * * *

  The second car stopped when still a hundred yards away, the Packardcaught in the motionless glare of its lights. Garfield heard the steadypurring of a powerful motor.

  For almost a minute, nothing else happened. Then the car came glidingsmoothly on, stopped again no more than thirty feet to Garfield's left.He could see it now through the screening bushes--a big job, a long, lowfour-door sedan. The motor continued to purr. After a moment, a door onthe far side of the car opened and slammed shut.

  A man walked quickly out into the beam of the headlights and startedtowards the Packard.

  Phil Garfield rose from his crouching position, the .38 in his righthand, flashlight in his left. If the driver was alone, the thing was nowcinched! But if there was somebody else in the car, somebody capable offast, decisive action, a slip in the next ten seconds might cost him thesedan, and quite probably his freedom and life. Garfield lined up the.38's sights steadily on the center of the approaching man's head. Helet his breath out slowly as the fellow came level with him in the roadand squeezed off one shot.

  Instantly he went bounding down the slope to the road. The bullet hadflung the man sideways to the pavement. Garfield darted past him to theleft, crossed the beam of the headlights, and was in darkness again onthe far side of the road, snapping on his flashlight as he sprinted upto the car.

  The motor hummed quietly on. The flashlight showed the seats empty.Garfield dropped the light, jerked both doors open in turn, gun pointinginto the car's interior. Then he stood still for a moment, weak andalmost dizzy with relief.

  There was no one inside. The sedan was his.

  The man he had shot through the head lay face down on the road, his hatflung a dozen feet away from him. Route Twelve still stretched out indark silence to east and west. There should be time enough to clean upthe job before anyone else came along. Garfield brought the suitcasedown and put it on the front seat of the sedan, then started back to gethis victim off the road and out of sight. He scaled the man's hat intothe bushes, bent down, grasped the ankles and started to haul himtowards the left side of the road where the ground dropped off sharplybeyond the shoulder.

  The body made a high, squealing sound and began to writhe violently.

  * * * * *

  Shocked, Garfield dropped the legs and hurriedly took the gun from hispocket, moving back a step. The squealing noise rose in intensity as thewounded man quickly flopped over twice like a struggling fish, arms andlegs sawing about with startling energy. Garfield clicked off thesafety, pumped three shots into his victim's back.

  The grisly squeals ended abruptly. The body continued to jerk foranother second or two, then lay still.

  Garfield shoved the gun back into his pocket. The unexpectedinterruption had unnerved him; his hands shook as he reached down againfor the stranger's ankles. Then he jerked his hands back, andstraightened up, staring.

  From the side of the man's chest, a few inches below the right arm,something like a thick black stick, three feet long, protruded nowthrough the material of the coat.

  It shone, gleaming wetly, in the light from the car. Even in that firstuncomprehending instant, something in its appearance brought a surge ofsick disgust to Garfield's throat. Then the stick bent slowly halfwaydown its length, forming a sharp angle, and its tip opened into whatcould have been three blunt, black claws which scrabbled clumsilyagainst the pavement. Very faintly, the squealing began again, and thebody's back arched up as if another sticklike arm were pushingdesperately against the ground beneath it.

  Garfield acted in a blur of horror. He emptied the .38 into the thing athis feet almost without realizing he was doing it. Then, dropping thegun, he seized one of the ankles, ran backwards to the shoulder of theroad, dragging the body behind him.

  In the darkness at the edge of the shoulder, he let go of it, steppedaround to the other side and with two frantically savage kicks sent thebody plunging over the shoulder and down the steep slope beyond. Heheard it crash through the bushes for some seconds, then
stop. Heturned, and ran back to the sedan, scooping up his gun as he went past.He scrambled into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut behindhim.

  His hands shook violently on the steering wheel as he pressed down theaccelerator. The motor roared into life and the big car surged forward.He edged it past the Packard, cursing aloud in horrified shock, jammeddown the accelerator and went flashing up Route Twelve, darkness racingbeside and behind him.

  * * * * *

  _What had it been?_ Something that wore what seemed to be a man's bodylike a suit of clothes, moving the body as a man moves, driving a man'scar ... roach-armed, roach-legged itself!

  Garfield drew a long, shuddering breath. Then, as he slowed for a curve,there was a spark of reddish light in the rear-view mirror.

  He stared at the spark for an instant, braked the car to a stop, rolleddown the window and looked back.

  Far behind him along Route Twelve, a fire burned. Approximately at thepoint where the Packard had stalled out, where something had gonerolling off the road into the bushes....

  Something, Garfield added mentally, that found fiery automaticdestruction when death came to it, so that its secrets would remainunrevealed.

  But for him the fire meant the end of a nightmare. He rolled the windowup, took out a cigarette, lit it, and pressed the accelerator....

  In incredulous fright, he felt the nose of the car tilt upwards,headlights sweeping up from the road into the trees.

  Then the headlights winked out. Beyond the windshield, dark treebranches floated down towards him, the night sky beyond. He reachedfrantically for the door handle.

  A steel wrench clamped silently about each of his arms, drawing them inagainst his sides, immobilizing them there. Garfield gasped, looked upat the mirror and saw a pair of faintly gleaming red eyes watching himfrom the rear of the car. Two of the things ... the second one stoodbehind him out of sight, holding him. They'd been in what had seemed tobe the trunk compartment. And they had come out.

  The eyes in the mirror vanished. A moist, black roach-arm reached overthe back of the seat beside Garfield, picked up the cigarette he haddropped, extinguished it with rather horribly human motions, then tookup Garfield's gun and drew back out of sight.

  He expected a shot, but none came.

  One doesn't fire a bullet through the suit one intends to wear....

  It wasn't until that thought occurred to him that tough Phil Garfieldbegan to scream. He was still screaming minutes later when, beyond thewindshield, the spaceship floated into view among the stars.

  END

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from _Worlds of If_ January 1962. Extensiveresearch did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on thispublication was renewed.