Alien Roadkill-Dealbreaker Read online

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter One - A Long Look Back

  Chapter Two - Obsession

  Chapter Three - No Rest for the Wicked

  Chapter Four - The Man with the Plan

  Chapter Five - Out of the Frying Pan

  Chapter Six - Into the Fire

  Chapter Seven - Douglass

  Chapter Eight - War on the Road

  Chapter Nine - The Payoff

  Chapter Ten - Intersection

  Chapter Eleven - The Deal

  Author's Note

  A Preview of "Home Coming" Alien Roadkill Vol. 2

  About the Author

  Dedication

  For Michelle, my children and all aliens everywhere.

  Special thanks to Eric, John and Caryn for your unwavering help and support.

  Copyright 2017. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright owner. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are entirely products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Descriptions of towns, buildings, places and things may or may not be accurate.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Long Look Back

  AS HIS TRUCK turned off the interstate, Jim Bob Tucker, or JB, as he liked to be called, wondered for the hundredth time about how all of this was going to end. He had been on the run so long that he had almost forgotten what it was like not to be a hunted man. He was living a nightmare, one equally as surreal as the unlikely sequence of events that had sealed his fate. Not surprisingly, if someone else had told him the same story, he would have dismissed it as pure, unadulterated bullshit.

  His pursuers were never far behind him, regardless of his best attempts to cover his tracks. How they managed to do remained a mystery; one he had yet to solve. He had a few theories, but they were pure guesswork on his part. The only fact he knew for certain was that they weren’t going to stop until he was dead. From his point of view, his situation was somewhere between impossible and hopeless. Since it had been almost a week since his last, narrow brush with death, he was certain another attempt was close at hand. He had only survived this far because of luck… And because of what he had become.

  While the last few turbulent months had passed quickly, JB could remember every day, and every deadly encounter without any real effort. That was ironic, because before the incredible series of events that changed him, all he had was a wash of hazy memories. The one exception being the night that changed him forever. On that night, when he had intentionally run down the thing in the swamp, he had unwittingly set into motion an unimaginable chain of events.

  The memory of what happened that night was still painful to him because it served as a sharp reminder of who he used to be. Even looking back with a measure of understanding, there was never any rationalization he could think of that could quell his uneasy conscience. Not his horrendous childhood, nor his twenty-two years of constant drug and alcohol abuse, or even his brain injury, inflicted by way of his father’s Louisville Slugger.

  While much of what had shaped his early years had been beyond his control, there was no justification that he could offer himself. Without any doubt, his life had been one disaster after another. Up until the night that changed everything, he grown up to become his father's son in every way imaginable. Like his father, Willie-Dean Tucker, JB lived his life in a stupor, assuaging his anger with drugs and alcohol, blunting his need to unravel emotions he couldn’t or wouldn’t bring himself to confront.

  Ironically, these frustrations had manifested themselves in JB’s main recreational activity. It was brutal ritual, inspired by his father’s favorite drunken pastime. And so it was, that JB, once he had become suitably inebriated, drove around in his dilapidated pickup searching for small animals to run down on the road. His only passion had been to inflict pain and death on whatever was unlucky enough to wander out in front of his truck. As despicable as it was, it was one of the few emotions he had ever been capable of experiencing. His obsession with his truck, “Ol’ Blue” was another. The name wasn't his doing. It had been painted in script on the back window by its previous owner, and JB had been more than happy to let it be.

  He had spent every dime that he could earn or steal to buy that truck, and it became the material extension of his depravity. But his craven predilections had demanded even more, so he modified the front bumper to insure his kills were as spectacular as they were effective. He outfitted Ol' Blue with a large metal push plate, thick enough to house the three-inch, sharp steel spikes that extended and retracted with the push or pull of a lever in the cab.

  On the night of the incident that changed him forever, JB was traveling a remote and isolated road that led deep into the Great Dismal Swamp. It was one of the many logging roads that were built over the decades, criss-crossing the wetlands. Most of these little more than oversized dirt pathways that were abandoned after having outlived their usefulness. Even though the roads were rough, JB's oversized tires and raised suspension allowed him to go far faster than he could otherwise. However, on that particular night, like many others, he was too drunk to be concerned about anything other than the hunt.

  The moonless night was pitch black, except for the occasional winking glows from the fireflies and lightning bugs. Ol' Blue's mis-aligned headlights only lit up the road for a short distance ahead, but that made little difference to JB since he was far too stoned to see clearly anyway. In fact, considering the amounts of meth, heroin and vodka in his system, it was a miracle he could drive at all.

  Despite the darkness, he caught a glimmer of a shadowy figure up ahead on the road and his pickled brain lit up with pleasure and anticipation. He roared something unintelligible in delight, and gunned the engine. At the same time, he reached under the dash and yanked the lever that extended the spikes through the push plate on the front of his truck. As he accelerated, he aimed his pickup at what he assumed was a really big possum. Immediately before the impact, JB wasn't sure that it was a possum at all, or any other animal that he recognized. However, that thought was quickly supplanted by the satisfying crunch as Ol’ Blue racked up another kill.

  The heavy pickup quivered just slightly from the collision, rewarding JB with a gout of purple gore that splattered onto the front windshield. He switched on his wipers, but they only spread the goo into a much larger smear. Cursing, he pulled the truck over to the side of the road. He staggered out of the truck, and stumbled over to the spiked push plate. Intending to crouch down for a closer look, he fell to his knees instead, trying to blink back his double vision and focus his eyes.

  The spikes had badly damaged the animal. It was mangled and torn apart in several places, but even in his present state, JB could tell that it clearly wasn’t a possum. Possums didn’t have bunches of tentacles like those that limply sprouted from the bulbous, ovoid torso. The small triangular head, if that's what it was, had no recognizable features. It was attached directly to the thing’s torso and there was nothing he saw that even remotely resembled a mouth, ears, nose or eyes. Instead, sprouting from the top of it were a number of slender stalks, each crowned with a small fleshy sphere. The creature’s skin was hairless and shiny, like a frog’s, and mottled with patches of bilious green and yellow.

  Naturally, JB thought he was hallucinating, especially when he saw movement coming from the wounds on the creature’s body. He wasn't sure if he was imagining the wispy
tendrils of what appeared to be smoke as they seeped out of the gory remains impaled on the spikes.

  While he watched, the smoke-like tendrils merged into rivulets of glittering vapor, swiftly coalescing into a single cloud of shimmering iridescence. The glittering cloud then began to float in his direction, picking up speed as it did so. It came straight at him, faster and faster, like a swarm of insects drawn by food or light. Instinctively, he stood up and took a step backwards in retreat, but he was so inebriated that he tripped over his own feet and tumbled onto the ground.

  He looked up and saw, or thought he saw, the strange remains on the bumper dissolve away, leaving only a dull purple stain. It was then that the strange cloud engulfed JB where he lay, too stunned to move. He screamed loudly in a sheer drunken panic, convinced he was going to die, but seconds later it was all over. The cloud and the possum, or whatever it was, were both gone as if they were never there.

  Relieved to be alive, JB managed to limp back to the truck. He wasn't sure any of it had been real, but the experience had drained him and he wasn’t feeling very well. If nothing else, he was an experienced stoner, and even on the verge of passing out, he still managed to navigate himself back home to his trailer… If only barely. The entire way he struggled to stay awake, fighting an uncontrollable urge to sleep. Even so, it was a major effort for him to mount the short, wooden steps up to the front door of his squalid trailer. He shoved the unlocked door open, remaining conscious only long enough to make sure he passed out on his couch. He fell asleep almost instantly, lying among scores of cigarette butts and empty candy wrappers.

  When JB awoke the following morning, he instantly knew that something was very different. After a long moment he realized that, for the first time in his adult life, he was sober and perfectly clearheaded. The unfamiliar sensation was unsettling enough, but after he reflexively ran his hands over his head, he quickly forgot about it. His anxiety was growing exponentially as he gradually became aware of several things, all of them quite impossible.

  First, the scar from the baseball bat that had crushed his skull was gone, along with the dent that it had left there. Now, in place of the scarred and damaged flesh, hair grew there for the first time he could remember. His eyebrow, lip and nose piercings were all gone, as were the large gauges in his ears. Looking down at the couch he saw small puddles of metal dotting the worn vinyl as though all of his metal piercings had simply melted off him while he slept.

  Overcome with shock at this discovery, he sprung off the couch and became suddenly aware that he had taken several steps without limping or pain. Yet another bitter souvenir from his harrowing childhood, the break in his right leg had never been set properly. However, now it was perfect… Completely straight, and the same length as his left. For the first time, he was able to stand erect at his full six foot-six inch height.

  It was too much for him to process, and he found himself in a complete state of confusion and disbelief. When he glanced down at his arms, his unease increased even more. He rushed to the mirror to confirm what he already knew. All of his tattoos had completely disappeared, including the ones on his arms that had camouflaged his cutting scars. Nevertheless, the biggest shock of all came when he realized that he didn’t recognize the face staring back at him in the cracked glass. The reflection he saw in the mirror was more than just pleasant… It was actually handsome. His square, symmetrical features were framed by a full, thick head of brown hair. The numerous acne scars; the rough, red craters that had covered his face for as long as he could remember were gone, and his unblemished skin glowed with health. For once, his dark green eyes were clear and bright, lacking their usual yellow tinge that had been a result of his overworked liver.

  Stunned and disoriented, he sat back down on the couch and discovered a rusty razor blade in the cushions. He held it up and saw that the edge of the blade still glistened from whatever drug it cut last. He got another surprise when he found that he had a complete lack of desire to lick the blade clean, something he had done often in the past. As he handled the blade, pondering his reaction to it, he accidentally sliced himself. It wasn’t a deep cut; it should have bled, but strangely enough, it didn’t. Even stranger, he had no sensation of pain. Several seconds later, he couldn’t even find it again.

  The old JB would not have had the inclination, nor the mental capacity to reach any conclusion about what had happened to him, but the man JB had become overnight had no doubts whatsoever. There could only be one explanation. He had been infected with something. Something that had originated from the "possum" he had ran over the night before.

  Whatever it was, it had passed from the creature on to him. But it hadn’t made him sick… On the contrary, he felt better than he could ever remember. Although the events of the previous night were as hazy as a dream, there was no way he could dismiss the evidence of his own eyes. Regardless, he soon realized that it was no dream. It was only a matter of time before he discovered that it harked the beginning of a seemingly endless ordeal which could only have one outcome. His complete and utter demise.

  The rush of the air from the big semi passing him in the opposite direction jostled JB's thoughts back to his current state of affairs. He had been driving this stretch of two-lane highway for the last hundred miles and suddenly felt the need to take a break. Even if it was for only a few hours it wouldn’t be without risk. He had managed to survive this long by constantly staying on the move. That strategy seemed effective, but it was exhausting. Regardless, he harbored no illusions. The long range odds weren’t in his favor; eventually, the off-world bastards were going to catch up with him anyways. But at this moment, the idea of sleeping in a bed, if just for a single night, was too powerful for him to ignore.

  A sign designated the next exit up ahead as the business district and on impulse he decided to take it. After navigating the short length of road into town, he decided that the sign was a gross exaggeration. The Gas n’ Shop, where he stopped to piss and fill Ol' Blue's twin fuel tanks, seemed to be all the business there was. It was a typical Southern town; fried food and gasoline, he thought as he headed down the road towards another sign that had caught his eye. He saw the blinking vacancy sign in the office window of the Suitewater Motel and made another snap decision. Putting Ol’ Blue into a wide u-turn, he backtracked and pulled into the lot.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Obsession

  ON THE MORNING before JB pulled off the highway, Joey Rodriguez, the grounds keeper at the Oakwell Industrial Park, rushed into Harvey Matthews’ office in a panic. Breathlessly, he told Harvey that he had just accidentally run over a strange animal with his tractor and was unsure about what to do next. Joey, clearly disturbed by what had happened, begged Harvey to accompany him back to the accident scene.

  Harvey Matthews was the head of research and operations at CronLab’s satellite Oakwell office, and was always the first one in the building at that early hour of the morning. He was perturbed by the interruption, and upset at having to abandon his second cup of coffee. His first thought was that the luckless animal was probably somebody’s pet.

  Inevitably, there would be blame and it eventually could even become corporate's problem. They couldn’t fire him of course; the double edged sword of his iron-clad contract insured his high paying job was safe for the remainder of its term. But, he thought bitterly, it was also why he had to rot in this backwater shit-hole, stuck in a dead-end job, and now chasing after the gardener.

  Cronlab's Oakwell Research facility was located in a rugged and remote part of Virginia, in the heart of farm country. Having a large physical presence there was one of the deals corporate management made in return for a big state tax break. As it turned out, despite the name on the security fence that surrounded the enormous single story building, no research had ever been done there. Instead, the facility served to warehouse the fertilizers, insecticides and other agrochemicals that were in wide use throughout the county.

  Once a rising star in the chemical
research division, Harvey still wore a white lab coat to work, mostly for spite. Now, the only chemistry he performed was mixing bourbon into his morning coffee. He knew that his banishment to Oakwell resulted from upper management's rancor over a product safety issue. They couldn’t fire him, thanks to his iron-clad contract, so they turned him into a paper pusher and assigned him to a place as far away from corporate headquarters as possible. He frequently fantasized about different ways to exact his revenge, though he never had the nerve to do anything about it.

  Now, as Harvey followed the frantic grounds keeper through the thick row of trees that circled the parking area, his thoughts had moved on to the fortified coffee on his desk that was growing colder with every passing minute. Anxious to return to his office, he broke through the line of oak trees and joined Joey on the grassy clearing where the tractor was parked.

  Joey, a pudgy Hispanic man in his sixties pointed meekly at the thing crumpled in front of the tractor as Harvey walked up. “Meester Harvey, look!”

  “Jesus! What the hell is that?” Harvey sputtered in surprise, stepping back in disbelief when he saw it.

  Clearly dead, the thing was sandwiched between the front wheel of the tractor and the tree behind it. It was hairless, about four feet in height and was definitely not anyone’s pet. Nor, for that matter, was it any animal that either man had ever seen. Its large, oval shaped body sprouted groups of smooth tentacles that were now lying limply on the ground in all directions. It had no neck and if anything, the triangular head appeared to be a part of its bulbous torso. There were six stalks on top of the head, each ending in a semitransparent orb; like a gelatinous knob on the tip of a translucent walking stick. The portions of its skin that were visible, and not hidden by the thin, metallic mesh that covered most of the body, were bluish and shiny, like a frog’s.