Tales From the Midnight Shift Vol. 1 Read online

  The teenaged dick from the Ford pickup to Elliot’s left was flirting with the teenaged daughter of the driver of the SUV directly in front of Elliot. Papa was keeping a disapproving eye on the whole affair. To his right was an elderly woman who seemed made up entirely of wrinkles, chewing on beef jerky while leaning against the door of her gas-guzzling boat of a Chevrolet. Behind Elliot was a minivan filled with screaming children and a frazzled woman who looked like she might be contemplating suicide as an escape from the hell that raged inside her van.

  A light breeze sprang up, cooling the sweat on Elliot’s forehead, and he closed his eyes and smiled. There were lots of grumblings around him, people ready to get on their way to wherever they were going, but Elliot found that in an odd way he was enjoying himself. Sure beat the hell out of going to work. Where were you all day, Elliot? Why, I was attending a block party out on the interstate.

  Where else?

  TWO HOURS LATER…

  People were starting to get hostile. The whole situation was wearing on people’s nerves, and there was bound to be some spillover. Small disagreements sprouted, blossoming into full-fledged arguments. Somewhere several cars ahead there was a fistfight. Some helpful truckers broke it up before anyone got hurt.

  Elliot cranked his car for a moment, plugged his phone back into the lighter, and tried again to make a call. Still no signal. He’d heard several people complain of the same problem.

  A man who looked to be in his mid-thirties, dressed in a suit and silk tie, knocked on Elliot’s window. “Hey, some of us are gonna go get something to eat? You want anything?”

  “Something to eat?” Elliot said. “From where?”

  “Well, there were a couple of fast-food places off the exit about two miles back. A few of us are gonna hike back that way and get some grub.”

  “What if traffic starts back up while you’re gone?” Elliot asked, not really believing it would. It had been so long, the very idea of traffic starting back up just seemed unthinkable. Had there ever been a time when these cars moved?

  “My wife is staying with the car,” Silk Tie said, pointing toward a very pregnant woman standing by a white Subaru. “If traffic starts up again, she’ll just pull the car over on the shoulder and wait ‘til I get back. Same with the other fellas going with me.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Elliot said, fishing a five out of his wallet and handing it to Silk Tie. “I’ll take a cheeseburger and any kind of soda. I appreciate it.”

  “Not a problem,” Silk Tie said, then he and three others headed off down the interstate, weaving through the cars like survivors of some cataclysmic holocaust.

  FIVE HOURS LATER…

  Silk Tie and his three buddies never came back. Silk Tie’s pregnant wife couldn’t seem to stop crying, interspersed from time to time with some hysterical screaming just for the sake of variety. People were scared; there was a lot of praying, more fights, and more than a little fucking. The driver of the SUV had been one of the three to go for food with Silk Tie, and his daughter’s method of grieving her father’s disappearance was to climb into the back of the SUV with the teenaged dick for about twenty minutes.

  Elliot had discovered a half-empty bag of M&Ms under the front seat of his car, buried treasure. He huddled in the backseat and ate them slowly, savoring each one, trying to be as discreet as possible. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to share, it was just that he wasn’t going to share.

  Through the windshield, Elliot saw SUV’s daughter and the teenaged dick emerge from the SUV, tears on her face and a grin on his. He swaggered back to his truck, leaving her alone.

  THE NEXT DAY…

  Elliot sat on the pavement, in the meager shade thrown by the teenaged dick’s pickup, gnawing on a piece of beef jerky that Ms. Wrinkles had been kind enough to share with him. It was a lot like trying to eat shit-flavored leather, but it was better than nothing. Elliot had finished off the M&Ms last night.

  Nearby a group of people were having a theological discussion of sorts. A fat woman in a floral dress was saying she believed there had indeed been a horrible accident on the interstate. Her theory was that they had all been killed in the accident and were now in some kind of purgatory. Elliot almost chimed in that he didn’t believe in hell, or heaven for that matter, but then thought better of it. Tensions were high, if he were to espouse the wrong opinion, these people were liable to attack and tear him to pieces. He’d read Lord of the Flies. Well, he’d seen the movie.

  ONE HOUR LATER…

  Dullard and Bimbo were discussing the latest Keanu Reeves film as if it had the power to change lives and enrich the world.

  Maybe there was a hell, after all.

  SEVEN HOURS LATER…

  Elliot noticed that he kept seeing Minivan Mom, but he no longer saw any of her children. And he didn’t hear them in the van. The fat lady in the floral dress asked about them, but Minivan Mom just smiled strangely and said, “They’re sleeping.”

  THE NEXT DAY…

  Silk Tie’s wife went into labor early in the morning. People started spreading the word up and down the line, trying to find a doctor. It reminded Elliot of that children’s game where everyone sits in a row, and the first person whispers something to the next person, that person whispers it to the next, that one to the next, until you get to the last person in the row, the fun of the game being how different the end statement is from what the first person originally whispered.

  Is there a doctor in the house?

  Is there a doorway for the house?

  Where’s the doorway for the mouse?

  Is he a boring mouse?

  He’s a bore and a louse.

  We’re never getting out.

  TWO HOURS LATER…

  No doctor was found, but two nurses got the message and came to lend their services. Silk Tie’s wife screamed loud enough to wake the dead, but not loud enough to summon back those in search of cheeseburgers. It was her first child, and the nurses informed her that her labor could take hours.

  A burly trucker organized a scouting party. They decided to head out on foot south down the interstate, to try to find the beginning of the traffic jam and see what was causing it. The plan was to walk for two hours, and if they hadn’t found the cause by then, they would turn and head back. The idea that they still believed something tangible and logical was causing the traffic jam struck Elliot as funny. He did not volunteer for the party.

  SIX HOURS LATER…

  The scouting party did not return. No one really expected them to.

  THE NEXT DAY…

  It was a day of death and violence.

  Silk Tie’s wife gave birth, the child stillborn. She began to hemorrhage, and the nurses were unable to stop the bleeding. She and her infant were buried together in the median.

  The fat woman in the floral dress went to check on Minivan Mom and discovered what everyone already suspected. She had slit all their little throats with a pair of scissors. Minivan Mom would just smile and say, “Shhh, they’re sleeping.”

  SUV’s daughter, who had been ignored by the teenaged dick since their tryst in her vanished Papa’s vehicle, took a switchblade she found in the back of the SUV and removed the offending part of him. He was now just the teenaged.

  8:10…?

  Elliot began to wonder if perhaps they were all stuck in a single moment in time. Maybe it was still 8:10, and he could still make it to the 9:00 department meeting if he could just somehow get himself unstuck.

  Elliot recognized this as an insane notion, but this was an insane situation. Two wrongs may not make a right, but can two insanes make a sane?

  SOMETIME LATER…

  The batteries in Elliot’s Tetris game had died. His car would no longer crank, so he couldn’t even plug up his phone and play the games on it. He had borrowed a book from Ms. Wrinkles, but it was a romance novel with a plot as predictable as life never is.

  Elliot was bored. It was time to go, time to get unstuck.

  Goin
g back didn’t help, going forward didn’t help. What about off to the side? A lovely green field ran along the side of the highway to the left. What if he just walked straight across it? Would he eventually run into civilization? Would he find people again, life, the world? Or would he end up with Silk Tie and the scouting party, in whatever dark place they had found along the interstate?

  Fuck it, he’d have to risk it. He’d run out of things to do here. Besides, people had dug up Silk Tie’s wife and child and were roasting them, along with Minivan Mom’s brood, for dinner. Elliot had a feeling they might taste worse than the beef jerky.

  He walked over to the shoulder of the highway and hesitated just on the edge of the pavement. He wasn’t going to tell anyone what he was doing, wasn’t going to invite anyone to join him. If this plan failed, he would doom no one but himself.

  And if it succeeded, he’d send help.

  Or maybe he’d just get a cheeseburger.

  ACTS 19:19 PARTY

  “Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together,

  and burned them before all men…”

  “You’re going to a book burning?”

  Jacob winced at the term. “It’s not a book burning. I told you, it’s an Acts 19:19 party.”

  Tracy cocked an eyebrow and pursed her lips, what Jacob had come to think of as her I-know-bullshit-when-I-smell-it expression. “A party, huh? And what exactly will you all be doing at this party? Chips and dip? Pin the Tail on the Donkey?”

  Jacob sighed, feeling suddenly weary. He and Tracy had been friends for eight years, but ever since Jacob had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior, things had been strained between them. He had seen the Light, and Tracy still had scales on her eyes. It wasn’t easy being a Christian in tenth grade.

  “We’re gathering together in the field behind the Church to sing hymns, share fellowship, and…”

  “And burn some books. If you’re going to do it, at least have the balls to say it.”

  “It’s not like you’re making it sound. The Bible instructs us to purge from our lives those things that are unholy and wicked.”

  Tracy leaned back in her chair, pushing her lunch tray aside, as if this conversation had robbed her of her appetite. “And just what are some of these ‘wicked’ books that you guys will be purging?”

  “Well,” Jacob said, “a lot of copies of The Da Vinci Code, some Stephen King, John Saul, Richard Laymon—”

  “Jacob, you used to love Laymon’s novels.”

  “That was before I was saved.”

  “Before you were brainwashed is more like it,” Tracy said, looking at Jacob as if he were a stranger and not her best friend since second grade.

  “I’m trying to lead a pure and righteous life. You just don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t. You used to have a mind of your own; now you let those stuffed-shirts down at that Church do all your thinking for you.”

  Jacob grunted in frustration, then said a silent prayer for patience. He wanted to get through to Tracy, help lead her out of the wilderness and back onto the path of salvation, but she was a stubborn one. “Tracy, if you’d just come with me to one of the services, you’d see what we’re all about.”

  “No thanks,” Tracy said with a snort. “I don’t hang with book burners.”

  “I keep telling you—”

  “I know, I know. It’s a party. Seems to me like you’re trying awfully hard to make it sound less Nazi than it really is. What’s that quote from Heinrich Heine? ‘Whenever books are burned, men also in the end are burned.’ Well, I don’t want to be around when you guys light the match.”

  With that, Tracy grabbed her backpack and stormed out of the cafeteria, leaving Jacob alone at the table. He felt like crying but held it back. Although he’d never exactly been Mr. Popular at school, since joining the Church he’d lost the few friends he did have. Everyone but Tracy. And now it looked like even she was deserting him. He thought he could feel judging eyes weighing on the back of his head, and the discordant music of mean-spirited laughter filled his ears.

  But no matter. He had God, and what better friend could a person have? Tracy might not understand, but he knew that it was right to rid himself of those nasty books he used to devour like candy. And like candy rots the teeth, those books had been rotting his soul.

  But tonight, at the Acts 19:19 party, he would free himself of them.

  * * *

  In the center of the field behind the Church, a circular indenture had been dug out in the ground and filled with sticks and twigs. A match was lit, and a bonfire blazed into the night, crackling like something alive, something hungry for the pages that would soon be fed to it. The wind was blowing the smoke to the south, so everyone congregated on the north side of the bonfire. As people arrived, they piled their books atop an old wooden picnic table.

  Jacob showed up with an armful of Richard Laymon paperbacks. He was ashamed to admit how much he’d once enjoyed these books. When he thought of the violence, the sex, the depravity that was housed between their covers, it sickened him. The novels were a bitter reminder of just how deeply he’d been sunk in sin. He would be happy to watch them burn, searing away that old godless life, paving the way for a closer relationship with the Almighty.

  The spring night was warm to begin with, but the heat from the fire made it stifling. Jacob felt sweat trickling down the sides of his face, and he stepped back away from the fire, looking around at everyone who had gathered for the Acts 19:19 party. There were about a dozen people, all of them adults except for Jacob. No one else from the Church’s youth group, but Jacob had long suspected most of them attended services just because their parents insisted and not out of any genuine desire to be there. Sometimes when sitting in Sunday school, Jacob felt he was the only one in attendance with a sincere heart.

  “Can I have everyone’s attention?” Pastor Monroe said, stepping up onto one of the picnic table’s benches. Gradually everyone quieted and turned toward Monroe. “I just want to say how gratifying it is to see so many of you here for our little party. I see Brother Carter has brought along his guitar, so I’m sure they’ll be some singing before the night is through. Sister Opal has made a batch of her famous oatmeal raisin cookies to keep our tummies full. And the fire behind me will help us unburden ourselves of all the immoral literature that once shackled us to this world, acting as a barrier between us and our Lord.”

  There were a smattering of “Amens” and even some applause. Jacob smiled up at Monroe. Back lit by the fire, the flickering light dancing across his face, he looked like some Old Testament prophet, delivering the Word to the masses. Monroe, with his steadfast conviction and unwavering devotion to God, was a role model for Jacob, someone to be emulated and admired. Jacob could only hope to one day achieve even a fraction of the Pastor’s piety.

  “I’m particularly happy to see young Jacob in attendance,” Monroe said, and all eyes turned to look at the teenager. Jacob blushed, uncomfortable at being singled out this way. “Too many of today’s young people are slaves to their passions, prisoners of the flesh. Everywhere they turn, society is telling them it’s okay to be sinful, it’s right to be decadent, it’s cool to be hedonistic. Too many parents ignore the admonition ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ coddling their children and allowing them to do whatever they want. There are no limits for the young anymore, no boundaries, no rule that cannot be broken. That is why it warms my heart to see a young man who has dedicated himself to doing the will of God, who has given his life over to Christ. Welcome, young Jacob. You are a shining example of what all young people should strive to be.”

  Jacob’s blush deepened, but he found he was a little less uncomfortable with the scrutiny of the congregation. Instead, he felt proud that Monroe recognized his striving for purity, but he reminded himself that pride in excess was also a sin.

  Monroe stepped down from the bench and walked over to Jacob, clamping a firm hand on the teenager’s sh
oulder. “Jacob, why don’t you do the honors of getting us started?”

  “Me?”

  “Sure. Grab a book and toss it in.”

  With the unselfconscious grin of a baby that doesn’t yet know of life’s pain, Jacob approached the picnic table, the books scattered across its surface, just waiting to become fuel for the fire. Which one to start with? He spotted a Clive Barker hardcover sitting opened at the end of the table. Barker not only wrote some truly twisted tales, but he was also a homosexual. Jacob thought this would be a great book to start the party. He reached out, but a sudden gust of wind snapped the book closed right on the backs of Jacob’s knuckles.

  “Ow!” Jacob yelled, snatching his hand back. “That hurt!”

  “You okay?” Monroe asked.

  “Yeah, just caught be my surprise, I guess.”

  Monroe took Jacob’s hand and frowned down at it. “Hmm, left quite a welt, and I’d almost swear those look like teeth marks.”

  “That’s silly,” Jacob said, but there was a nervous edge to his laughter. He reached back for the book and it jumped off the table. Jacob knew that was impossible, that the book must have been sitting too close to the edge and simply slipped off, but it had looked like the book actually hopped onto the ground.

  “I’ve got it, Jacob.”

  Monroe leaned down to retrieve the Barker novel. He held it out to Jacob, but before the teenager could take the book, Monroe suddenly jerked it back and slapped himself in the side of the face with it. Some of the people nearby snickered, perhaps thinking the Pastor was playing some kind of joke, but then he did it again, harder this time. The book smashed into his nose and blood gushed out, running down his chin and dribbling onto his shirt. The laughter died instantly.