Speaker 1: An Incident on Route twelve by James H. Schmitz. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Read for LibriVox by Dale Growthman. He
was already a thief, prepared to steal again. He didn't
know that he himself was only booty. An incident on
Route twelve by James H. Schmitz. Phil Garfield was thirty
miles south of the little town of Redmond on Route
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 on
the accelerator, had a sense of sick helplessness at the
complete lack of response from the motor. The packard rolled
onetting rid of its momentum, and came to a stop.
Phil Garfield swore shakily. He checked his watch, switching off
the headlights, and climbed out onto the dark road. A
delay of even half an hour here might be disastrous.
It was past midnight, and he had another one hundred
and ten miles to cover to reach the small private
airfield where Madge waited for him and the thirty thousand
dollars in the suitcase on the 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 a hero, and that had set off the fool
woman who'd run screaming into their line of fire. One dead,
perhaps two. Garfield hadn't stopped to look at the evening paper,
but he knew they were hunting him. He glanced up
and down the road, no other headlights in sight at
the moment, no light from a building showing on the
forest hills. He reached back into the car and brought
out the suitcase, his gun, a big flashlight, and the
box of shells which had been standing beside the suitcase.
He broke the box open, shoved a handful of shells
and the thirty eight into his coat pocket, then took
suitcase and flashlight over to the shoulder of the road
and set them down. There was no point in groping
about under the Packard's hood. When it came to mechanics.
Phil Garfield was a moron and well aware of it.
The car 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 to
anyone driving past it would merely suggest a necking party
or a drunk sleeping off his load before continuing home.
He might have to wait an hour or more before
someone decided to stop. He didn't have the time. He
reached in through the window, hauled the top of the
steering wheel towards 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 road entirely,
which would have aroused immediate suspicion, but angled across it,
lights out, empty, both front doors open, and inviting a passer.
By his investigation. Garfield carried the suit case and the
flashlight across the right hand shoulder of the road and
moved up among the trees and undergrowth of the slope
above the shoulder, placing the suit case between the bushes.
He brought out the thirty eight, clicked the safety off,
and stood waiting. Some ten minutes later, a set of
headlights appeared, speeding up Route twelve from the direction of Redmond.
Phil Garfield went down on one knee before he came
within range of the lights. Now he was completely concealed
by the vegetation. The car slowed as it approached, breaking
nearly to a stop sixty feet from the stalled packard.
There were several people inside. Garfield heard voices, then a
woman's loud laugh. The driver tapped his horn inquiringly twice,
moved the car slowly forward as the headlights went past him.
Garfield got to his feet among the bushes, took a
step down toward the road, raising the gun. Then he
caught the distant gleam of a second set of headlights
approaching from Redmond. He swore under his breath and dropped
back out of sight. The car below him reached the packard,
edged cautiously around it, rolled on with a sudden roar
of acceleration. The second car stopped when it was still
a hundred yards away, the packard caught in the motionless
glare of its lights. Garfield heard a steady purr of
the powerful engine. For almost a minute, nothing else happened.
Then the car came gliding smoothly on stopped again, no
more than thirty feet to Garfield's left. He could see
it now through the screening brush, a big job, a long,
low four door sedan. The motor continued to purr. After
a moment, a door on the far side of the
car opened and slammed shut. A man walked quickly out
into the beam of the head lights and started toward
the packard. Phil Garfield rose from his scrouching position, the
thirty eight in his right hand, flashlight in his left.
If the driver was alone, the thing was now cinched.
But if there was somebody else in the car, somebody
capable of fast decisive action, a slip in the next
ten seconds might cost him the sedan and quite probably
his freedom and life. Garfield lined up the thirty eight
sights steadily on the center of the approaching man's head.
He let his breath out slowly as the fellow came
level with him in the road, and squeezed off one shot.
Instantly he went bounding down the slope to the road.
The bullet had flung the man sideways to the pavement.
Garfield darted past him to the left, crossing the beam
of the headlights and was in darkness again on the
far side of the road, snapping on his flashlight as
he split it up to the car. The motor hummed
quietly on the flashlight showed the seats empty. Garfield dropped
the light, jerked both doors open in turn, gun pointed
into the car's interior. Then he stood still for a moment, weak,
almost 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 hat flung
a dozen feet away from him. Route twelve still stretched
out in the dark silence to east and west. There
should be enough time to clean up the job before
anyone else came along. Garfield brought the suitcase down and
put it on the front seat of the sedan, then
started back to get his victim off the road and
out of sight. He scaled the man's hat into the bushes,
bent down, grasped the ankles, and started to haul him
towards the left side of the road, where the ground
dropped off sharply beyond the shoulder. He made a high
squealing sound and began to Writhe violently shocked. Garfield dropped
the legs and hurriedly took the gun from his pocket,
moving back a step. The squealing noise rose in intensity
as the wounded man quickly flopped over twice, like a
struggling fish, arms and legs sawing about with startling energy.
Garfield clicked off the safety pumped three shots into his
victim's back. The grizzly squeals ended abruptly. The body continued
to jerk for another second or two, then lay still.
Garfield shoved the gun back into his pocket. The unexpected
interruption had unnerved him. His hands shook as he reached
down again for the stranger's angles. Then he jerked his
hands back and straightened up. Startled. 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
now through the material of the coat. It shone gleaming
wetly in the light from the car. Even in that
first uncomprehending instant, something in its appearance brought a surge
of sick disgust to Garfield's throat. Then the stick bent
slowly halfway down its length, forming a sharp angle, and
its tip opened into what could have been three blunt
black claws, which scrambled clumsily against the pavement. Very faintly.
The squealing began again, and the body's back arched up,
as if another stick like arm were pushing desperately against
the ground beneath it. Garfield acted in a blur of horror.
He emptied the thirty eight into the thing at his feet,
almost without realizing he doing it. Then dropping the gun,
he seized one of the ankles, ran backwards to the
shoulder of the road, dragging the body behind him in
the darkness. At the edge of the shoulder, he let
go of it, stepping around to the other side, and
with two frantically savage kicks, sent the body plunging over
the shoulder and down the steep slope beyond. He heard
it crash through the bushes for some seconds, then stop.
He turned 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 behind him. His
hand shook violently on the steering wheel as he pressed
down on the accelerator. The motor roared into life, and
the big car surged forward. He edged it past the
packard cursing aloud in horrified shock, jammed down the accelerator
and went flashing up Root twelve, Darkness racing beside him
and behind him. What had it been? Something that wore
what seemed to be a man's body like a suit
of clothes, moving the body as a man moves, driving
a man's car, roach armed, roach legs itself. Garfield drew
a long, shuddering breath. Then, as he slowed for a curve,
there was a spark of ruddish light in the rear
view mirror. He stared at the spark for an instant
brake the car to a stop, rolled down the window,
and looked back far behind him. Along Route twelve, a
fire burned approximately at the point where the packard had
stalled out, where something had gone rolling off the road
into the bushes, something Garfield added mentally, that found fiery
automatic destruction when death came to it, so that its
secrets would remain unrevealed. But for him, the fire meant
the end of a nightmare. He rolled the window up,
took out a cigarette, lit it, and pressed the accelerator
in incredulous fright. He felt the nose of the car
tilt upward. Headlights sweeping up from the road into the trees.
Then the headlights winked out beyond the windscreen. Dark tree
branches floated down towards him, the night sky beyond. He
reached frantically for the door handle. A steel wrench clamped
silently about each of his arms, drawing them in against
his sides, immobilizing them there. Garfield gasped, looked up at
the mirror and saw a pair of faintly gleaming red
eyes watching him from the rear of the car. Two
of the things, the second one stood behind him, out
of sight, holding him. They'd been in what had seemed
to be the trunk compartment, and they had come out.
The eyes in the mirror vanished. A moist black roach
arm reached over the back of the seat beside Garfield,
picked up the cigarette he had dropped, extinguished it with
rather horrible human motions, then took up Garfield's gun and
drew back out of sight. He expected a shot, but
none came. One doesn't fire a bullet through a suit
one intends to wear. It wasn't until that thought occurred
to him that tough Phil Garfield began to scream. He
was still screaming. Minutes later, when beyond the windshield, the
spaceship floated into view among the stars. The end of
an incident on Route twelve by James H. Schmitz