The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  I got my first signal around 10 o’clock, near a side road leading to a little town called Penfield, so I followed my nose down the off-ramp, and within three miles I came to it—a crazy, telescoped VW van, crushed against a cruelly jagged rock-fact. There was a wrecker there, and two state police cars, and a sheriff’s deputy, so I pulled off and showed the sergeant my credentials. He was properly impressed and treated me like I wish people had when I was in the Army.

  “Another one of these goddam one-car deals,” he commented, “and not even on the freeway. Lucky it’s just a lousy hippie down the drain—probably higher than a kite on something. He’s on his way to Penfield in the meat-wagon.”

  I spent 15 minutes with him, and though he kept repeating we wouldn’t find a thing, he did help me search the area; and he was right, of course. There wasn’t anything.

  “I wish to God we could’ve found it,” he said. “Just once, to take the curse off this crazy business. If you’re working on it, I sure wish you luck. Believe me, it’s getting to us all!”

  That was the first of five that night. The second was just about a duplicate, right off an interchange on 25, only the car looked like it’d been brand new and probably a Cadillac. The third was a huge diesel truck lying on its crushed cab at the foot of a steep embankment; I got there almost right away, even before the ambulance, and it was a messy deal—messy enough to shake me and the two policemen. The next was standard—a concrete overpass, ripped chunks of what had been a passionate Porche, a young man’s body underneath a blanket. The fifth was something else again—a flaming, smoking heap of unidentifiable wreckage half a straight mile down the mountain side, with the cops and me and the trucker who’d reported it staring helplessly and talking about getting a crew down there come morning.

  There were no clues at any of them.

  I’d called Marina before midnight from a coffee stop, to tell her where I was and that I loved her; and by 3 a.m., more than a hundred miles from home, I holed up in a flea-bag motel, ate a sandwich, drank half a pint of bourbon, and hit the sack.

  I slept till noon—after all, my working hours were going to be from dark to dawn—then made my calls to Chief Sam and Tod Welles, and learned that there was nothing new except a scare story in a national tabloid, which wasn’t making anybody happy. I spent the afternoon talking the situation over with state and local police, doing none of us much good, and had dinner with a superannuated sheriff who’d actually forbidden his wife and kids to use the highways after dark.

  That night was like the first, only there were seven of them instead of five; it had rained and snowed a little, and we had bad slick spots here and there. I drove where instinct told me, and again learned nothing.

  For the next three days, the pattern scarcely varied. I followed 25 clear up into Wyoming and back down again. I followed I-70 for almost 300 miles west of Denver, coping with more bad weather, bedding down at night with my bit of bourbon to dream about Marina—with a nightmare or two about fatal crashes to keep me on my toes. I had nothing to report except somebody’s testimony at third hand from the state police, who’d had it from a sheriff’s deputy, who had it from a shepherd type driving an old pickup: he’d been following one of them maybe a quarter-mile away, and he thought maybe he’d seen some sort of shadow moving right in front of her before she hit.

  Then, late on the fourth night, after 2 a.m., I pulled into a truck stop to get myself together. I’d just come from the nastiest wreck of all—a truck and trailer filled with something flammable. It had gone off at a sharp curve, hit some trees and flamed instantly. I was there long before the police arrived—in time to hear the driver screaming—and there was absolutely nothing I could do but watch the flames. When it was over, I went into the truck-stop restaurant, ordered a T-bone and coffee to drink while it was cooking, drank half the coffee, filled the cup up again from a pint I kept against emergencies, and found myself listening to four truckers in the booth behind me. They were fresh off the road, and they knew the man whom I’d heard die.

  They made the usual profane comments about the one-car crack-ups, only they said one-rig instead, and they indulged in the same foolish and futile attempts to explain them, or explain them away. Then, “Goddamit, okay!” growled one of them. “That was a hell of a way to go, but—ah crap, man! If it had to happen could you have picked any guy you’d rather have it happen to?”

  “Don’t talk like that, Slavich,” barked another. “Grayber was a bastard, sure he was, but Jesus!—he was human, wasn’t he?”

  “Human? Like sour owl shit he was human! Remember how that poor damn girl of his always looked like she’d been beat up on? Well, she had. And talk to anybody who’s rode with him, or right behind him even. Twice I seen him try to nudge cars off the road when he figured nobody was looking. And he’d run over every critter crossed the road ahead of him—dog, cat, ’possum, you name it. The sonnabitch’d speed up to catch ’em. He’d swerve to cut ’em down. Hell, for my money he had it coming!”

  They kept on arguing about the dead Grayber for a bit, with nobody getting really mad about it, and then the talk changed to women, and I quit listening. I ate my steak—a good one—but somehow it didn’t really grab me. I kept remembering that driver in Ohio who’d screamed about hitting a coyote, and the nurse in Canada who’d died mumbling “squirrel… squirrel… squirrel…” My mind just wouldn’t chase the thought away. When I drove off, I told myself to stop imagining a connection. Sure, there’d been people who’d killed themselves trying to keep from running down a dog, but chances were most had been inexperienced drivers.

  There was only one more that night; and next day, when I phoned in, Chief Sam told me to come on back for Thanksgiving. Marina and I could have the night together, and then next day, unless we had a date, would we have dinner with his family?

  I told him we were free as air, we’d love to; and then he told me that he and Tod Welles had been taking Emmie Bostwick to every crash site they could think of. She was part of The Team, a black girl from around Baton Rouge, with a genius for sensing felonious little plans being hatched or carried out anywhere near her—even a day or two afterwards.

  She had a courier’s job, a good cover for sudden travelling, and the Chief used her when terrorists or blackmailers were making threats. She was pretty close to being infallible; and she’d detected nothing, absolutely nothing. Chief Sam felt that if there was dirty work afoot it was a long-range deal, and it might even help for me to take a two-day break.

  So I called Marina and gave her the good news, and in her voice I could read not only pleasure but relief. “Oh, I’m glad, lover! At least I’ll have you off those freeways for awhile. Last night I had an awful dream—I guess it wasn’t really awful, but in the dream it was. It scared me, and I’ve been worried for you ever since. Garry, don’t laugh—I dreamed you ran over a poor raccoon.”

  I didn’t laugh, partly because once I had; and, coming home, I drove more carefully than I usually do.

  Thanksgiving Day, I took time out in the afternoon to get together with Tod Welles and his R.C.M.P. friend and compare notes. We told each other what we could, and ended up just where we’d started, on line one. Then, at around 4:30, Marina and I drove out to the Warhorses’. Chief Sam has about 20 acres a dozen miles out of Cinnabar, near a weird little place called Dudgeon, where there’s nothing but a service station, a general store, a bar, a hashhouse, and a combination city hall and volunteer fire department—but only half a mile off the good main road, where you can snake around the mountains without losing too much speed and with about half of it freeway so nobody can really hold you up. It didn’t take us long to get there; there wasn’t even a whisper of bad weather.

  We were greeted by Chief Sam, his wife Connie, three kids, a pretty Warhorse cousin from some university out West, two big brown Labs, a Siamese, and a striped tabby cat. The Warhorses told us it
was heap good for stupid palefaces to come in out of the cold and drink firewater with the friendly natives; and we all sat there before the huge fireplace, surrounded by dogs and cats and kids, talking, laughing, and forgetting that along the miles of road that hold our world together people were suddenly smashing to their deaths.

  Our conversation flowed from one culture into another; tales were told born in traditions continents apart. Nobody spoiled things by trying to hog the floor; when disagreements showed themselves they became friendly fencing matches instead of duels. Then we went in to dinner, and let the turkey dictate to us.

  We left just after midnight, still glowing, and at the door we were kissed goodnight; and when I shook Chief Sam’s hand I knew that he, even as I myself, at once regretted that tomorrow it would be back to work—and looked forward to it.

  The night was frosty; the air was crystal clear; never had there been so many stars across the sky. Quickly, we left Dudgeon sound asleep behind us, and in moments we were at the freeway entrance. I turned into it. I speeded up. And, as I did so, I felt again, suddenly, that something was all set to happen—and the feeling, as it always is, was laced with fear.

  “Damn!” I said, only half aloud. “Not tonight!”

  Marina heard me. “Garry,” she whispered, “are you sure?”

  The feeling, oddly, was a little different. I couldn’t tell exactly how, but that didn’t change it. “Yes, I’m sure,” I told her. “I wish to God I wasn’t, but I am.”

  “Can’t you—can’t we ignore it?”

  I shook my head. In the rearview mirror I could see the single light of a motorcycle coming, coming fast.

  That’s him! I thought, as he swept by, doing 80 or 85—and yet, somehow, I wasn’t sure it was him. Still, whatever it might be, I knew that he was part of it.

  “This one may be special,” I told her, stepping on the gas. “There’s something strange about it. We’ll have to see.”

  She didn’t say a word. Her hand moved over and rested lightly on my knee.

  For three miles we followed him, taking the mad curves, never letting him get more than half a mile away. Then we came to a long, straight, downhill stretch. We passed a sign saying JEFFERS PASS, TURNOFF 2 MI. There ahead of us was the interchange, a concrete bastion pierced by two sally-ports. Our motorcyclist was heading straight toward it. I could feel apprehension building in me. I could feel the tightening of Marina’s hand against my thigh.

  The concrete rushed toward the motorcyclist. It rushed at us. It seemed to grow. There was the second sign. There, very suddenly, was the turnoff.

  And, so abruptly that for an instant I thought he’d lose control, the motorcyclist hit his brakes and, tires shrieking, swerved sharply to the right, taking the turnoff, barely making it. I forced my eyes back to the road in front of me. I heard Marina scream—

  In my headlights, right in the middle of my lane, less than a hundred feet ahead of me, there was a wildcat, white fangs bared, ears back, eyes burning bright—

  And he was 25 feet high.

  How many impressions can you crowd into a quarter-second? How many decisions can you make in half that time? I recall Marina screaming; my hands doing their damndest to twist the wheel; my brain, in shock, still forcing them to freeze, forcing my foot to floor the throttle instead of trying for the brake. I remember my mind telling me that cats are not as hard as concrete. I don’t recall whether or not I closed my eyes. We hit. There was no impact, none. There was a timeless instant in which I felt surrounded by flesh and fur, by the idea of fur and flesh, by an animal odor, musky and far away. Then we were through, and through beneath the overpass, and nothing lay ahead of us but open road. I looked up in the mirror, and there was nothing there.

  Then the reaction hit me. Fearing that in a moment I would be trembling uncontrollably, I let my foot leave the throttle. I let compression slow us down. Finally I pulled off onto the shoulder, stopped the car with a jerk.

  Beside me, Marina’s scream had dropped to a small, wailing moan, ululating hysterically. I switched the engine off. Trying to control my almost spastic hands and arms, I reached for her.

  “Darling, darling!” I cried out, shaking her by the shoulders. “It’s all right! We’re safe! Everything’s all right!”

  She stared at me out of enormous eyes. Her moaning stopped. “Let me go!” she cried out, pulling violently away. Then she covered up her face and wept, her head thrown back, her whole body shaken with her weeping.

  “Sweetheart! Marina! It’s all right!” I kept repeating foolishly. “It was a hologram—some kind of a projection. That’s all it was. I tell you, we’re safe. There’s no need to be afraid!”

  She dropped her hands. Still weeping, she threw herself at me. “Afraid? Afraid? Of course I’m not afraid! What was there there for me to be afraid of?” Her small fists hammered at my shoulder, at my chest. “My G-G-God, are you a log? A stone? C-can’t you feel anything at all?”

  I simply stared at her, helpless before her terrifying intensity.

  “My God, my G-G-God!” she sobbed, covering her face again. “Those animals! Those poor, poor animals! Oh, God, when I think of the c-callousness, the utter emptiness, the—the abandonment, the uselessness! Oh, damn you, damn you! You’ll never understand!”

  Once more, her weeping shook her; and I, shaken by her words, made no attempt to touch her. An endless minute passed, lacerated by her sobbing, a minute and another and a third—then suddenly it was over. She dropped her hands again; she sighed, a sound so sad and so forlorn that any hurt I might have felt was swept away. Gently, she reached out to me.

  “I never should have said that,” she whispered. “Garry, not to you. I’m sorry. It’s just—just that you’re a Westerner. In Asia, we see things differently. Besides, though you can see perils in the future, I—I share agonies right now. Have you ever thought what we’ve been doing to the animals? On every highway, Garry? We run them down, but it’s not death that counts—” Her hands clutched at mine. “We all die, men and beasts. In the wilds, an animal will die, and it’ll be eaten, by other beasts, and birds of prey, and scavenging insects. At least its substance goes to sustain more life.”

  “How about men killed in war?” I said. “By earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes?”

  “We’re on a different level. Most of us. Animals have to feel their deaths aren’t purposeless.” Her voice rose. “Garry, did you know that sometimes one caribou will actually allow a pack of wolves to eat it? That antelopes in Africa have done the same for hunting lions? They know. They know it in the group-souls they share, life after life, until they individualize as men. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s what Buddhists teach—”

  She stroked my face; she let me hold her close. “What have we done to them, for years and years, as our highway speeds went up and our concern went down? Have you ever seen a dead animal even thrown off a freeway, Garry—except deer, because they’re big enough to cause accidents? No, no! We leave them there, to be crushed, flattened thin, rubbed into the fabric of our concrete—even their hair, their hides—until they vanish. No other animals can get to them to profit by their deaths, not even buzzards—no, not even ants! And that is what they do not understand, their useless dying, the contemptuous coldness of our disregard; and in their chilly emptiness they hate us for it. More and more and more of them. They—they’ve reached critical mass. It was no hologram that tried to kill us! They’re striking back!”

  I thought about Jung’s theory of group-souls. I remembered the stories of Lord Buddha, feeding his own body to hungry tigers.

  “Garry, you’ve seen Kuniyoshi’s prints of monster cats! You’ve heard the legends, from every continent, of monster dogs and jaguars and wolves! They aren’t just legends. They’re real—but never, never, never on this scale. Lover, you must believe me. You must, you must! I felt it a
ll when—when we went through that beast.”

  I did remember the legends I had read. Even the one about the monstrous cat that’s said to haunt the lower corridors of the Capitol in Washington—still terrifying patrolling guards at night. I remembered, and in spite of logic, in spite of my own training—and also just because I knew my girl so well—I did believe.

  “Marina,” I said then, “what can we do?”

  “In Japan,” she told me, “the people who grow cultured pearls have segaki services performed for the spirits of all those oysters who die in making them. Samisen makers have them said for the dogs and cats whose skins are stretched over their instruments. It is an explanation, an apology. That is all they ask.”

  “Who could we get to do it here? Christianity tells us animals have no souls. You know, ‘the beasts that perish.’”

  Not all Christians believe that,” she answered, “nor all ministers, and there are many others who would help.”

  “And how are we supposed to sell Chief Sam on the idea?”

  She kissed me, there next to the haunted highway. “We’ll have no trouble there,” she declared. “His people never did deny that animals have souls.”

  It took Chief Sam a little while to get things organized, especially without stirring up a mess of controversy. But he managed it, and we were surprised at how many people from how many different faiths came to our assistance. (The media hardly touched it, and when they did they treated it as nut stuff, as a joke.) Within ten days, the one-car fatal accident rate had plummeted; in three weeks it had returned to normal. In a month, almost everyone had forgotten it completely, and I was trying to.