The Loneliest Highway

This story is featured in the non-profit Den of Thieves Anthology published by WolfSinger Publications, and will be featured in an upcoming collection of my short stories.

The theme of the anthology is thievery. When I wrote this story, I wanted to do something akin to a classic Twilight Zone twist. I hope I pulled it off. Sound off below if I managed it.

The Loneliest Highway

Anthony D Farr

Neil inhaled the arid blast rushing through the passenger window. He gazed out at the vivid blue stretching out in every direction before meeting the bright desert sand at the horizon. Only the black asphalt broke the monotony of sky and grit, as their van sped down the highway. Closing his eyes, he stuck his hand out of the window, letting the dry wind flow around his palm.

            "Can you believe it?" Alan yelled from the back, breaking Neil out of his reverie. "Look at all of this. Just look at it," Alan continued. Neil spun in his seat to see Alan laying on the floor of the van, buried in money.

            "Have you counted it?" Phil asked from the driver's seat, his southern accent clashing with his surfer tan and highlights.

            "Count it? How am I supposed to count this?" Alan leaned between the two front seats and fanned out hundred dollar bills in each hand.

            "Come on, man," Phil said as he pushed Alan back into the rear of the van, "don't be pulling stuff like that right now. What if we get pulled over? Huh? How would that go over with a cop?"

            "Really," Neil said as he chuckled, "I don't think that'll be an issue for a while. That last sign we passed said 'No service for 88 miles.' I think we're safe."

            "Well, I don't want to take any chances. Alan, clean it up and start counting the bags. I want to know if it's all there." Phil set his jaw and looked at the road ahead without another word.

            Alan gathered the money together and sort it back into its black duffle bag. For the next half hour, the rush of the wind drowned out Alan's grumbling as he counted the individual bags of money. Neil could hear Alan murmuring to himself, much like he did in freshman year of college when something troubled him. Neil looked back to check on Alan, and saw him holding a small, black, rectangular device in his lap.

            "What's that, bud?"

            "What's what?" Phil craned his neck around.

            "You," Neil pushed Phil's head straight again, "watch the road. I've got this." He turned his attention back to Alan and asked, "What've you got there, Alan?"

            "Dunno, man." Alan turned it over in his hands and continued, "I think it's a tablet or something. It's a little thicker than a normal tablet device, but look, here is a USB input. I don't see any on switch or anything, but if I got it open, I'm sure I could get it working. Here check it out." Neil took it from Alan's outstretched hand. As Neil took it, his arm dropped slightly at the heft of the object. He peered at the side that appeared to be a screen, but the black opaque surface revealed nothing.

            "Toss it," Phil said, glancing over at Neil, "I say we toss it. It's gotta be some sort of tracker. Get rid of it."

            "Alan, if it's a tracker, can you do something with it? Can you make them think we are somewhere else, if someone is tracking us?"

            "Well," Alan responded, "I'll need a way to turn it on, but yeah, I think my laptop could handle it." His eyes lit up as he took the tablet back from Neil and pulled his laptop out from his case.

            "We've lost him now," Neil said as Alan started on the tablet. Neil glanced back to watch Alan connecting his various toys to the device. He chuckled to himself as he turned his attention back to the road. "Mind if I turn on the radio?" he asked with his hand outstretched to the knob.

            "Naw," Phil responded with a nod, "go ahead, I need some tunes, and I don't think your buddy is even on this reality currently, so he don't care." Neil turned the knob and static poured from the speakers echoing in the open body of the van. All three cringed and covered their ears until Neil turned the radio off again.

            "Yeah, sorry about that fellas. Guess no music for us now. Not out here." Neil looked around again at the emptiness speeding by outside the window. Turning back to Phil, he said, "Need me to drive a bit? I don't mind. You've been at the wheel since we grabbed the cash."

            "Thanks. Maybe in a bit, but I'm fine now." He reached down beside the seat, grabbed an energy drink, and said, "As long as we've got this, I'm good to go." He returned his attention back to the asphalt. Phil looked out over the road to the horizon and squinted against the shimmering waves in the distance.

            Highway 51, the Loneliest Highway, offered their escape route. Nothing and no one stood in the way of their freedom. Phil pondered their luck in finding this score. The odds always surprised him. Luck never favored them this much. Neil looked back at Alan to check on his progress and laughed.

            "Dude, what are you doing? Sleeping on the money?" Alan sat up and leaned between the two seats.

            "What?" Phil said turning his head back. "Aren't you doing your hacking thing? Is it done?"

            "Really?" Alan responded with a half-smile, "You watch too much television. You probably think I should be hitting my keyboard loud and fast. The faster I type the better I hack, is that right?" He smacked Phil on the back of the head and continued, "No, man, I've got a program I compiled that is testing out vulnerabilities in the security of the tablet. It is very similar to some stuff I worked with when I worked in the intelligence field."

            "Just what does that mean? Were you James Bond before you turned to a life of crime?"

            "No," Neil said, "he's the Q to my Bond."

            "You wish," Alan went back to his laptop, "I worked in private IT security for a bit when I left college. After a while, I got bored and wanted something new. That's when this came up."

            "Buddy," Neil said as he tapped Alan on the side of the face, "you got the golden ticket when you found out about this score. Can you believe how easy it was?"

            "I know. It was basically just sitting there, asking to be taken."

            "Hey, what's wrong with your nose?" Phil asked looking into the mirror at Alan. Neil turned his head back and saw blood running from Alan's nose. "Don't get any of that on the money," Phil said pointing a finger at the rearview.

            "You okay, man?" Neil asked.

            "Oh, yeah. Peachy. Happens all the time when I have headaches." Alan waved his right hand at Neil as he scrounged around for a cloth in his bag.

            "You have a headache?"

            "No, but it's just a nosebleed. I'm fine. Don't worry."

            Neil let him be and looked back at the road. The van slowed and eased onto the shoulder. Neil cocked his head and inquired to Phil why they were stopping. Phil's only response was to grab his crotch as the van stopped. He hopped out and walked around to the passenger side and walked to the nearest bush. Neil decided he might as well too, and looked back at Alan, but decided against breaking him away from his laptop. As he exited the van, his eyes adjusted to the increased light, and he put his hand over his forehead. Mountains now spotted the horizon, but they still had many miles to go on Highway 51. Neil started away from the van, but he paused as he heard Alan scrambling in the rear. The door slid open and Alan jumped out. His eyes wide and sweat staining his shirt he turned to Neil and grasped him on the shoulders.

            "We are dead," he said and turned back to the open door.

            "What do you mean," Neil took a step closer but Alan stepped back with the tablet in hand.

            "You were right, in a way," he called to Phil. "It is a tracker, which I've disabled. But, oh man, there's more."

            "What's he rambling about?" Phil asked, walking up and zipping his pants. Neil just lifted his hands in response and looked back to Alan.

            "Look at this. Just look what I found on here." Alan turned the tablet toward them. The screen, now illuminated, showed a shield icon emblazoned with a blue letter "A." Alan tapped on the icon and the screen shifted to another screen.

            With black letters on a white background, the shield in the upper right hand corner, displayed the following:

Congratulations on the successful deployment of the package.
Project Aegis thanks you for your service.

Please follow the prompts on the following screens to determine patient zero and take samples.

            "What does this mean?" Phil snatched the tablet away from Alan. "What did you do?" He asked as he tossed it to the side and grabbed Alan by his shirt. Pinning him against the side of the van Phil yelled, "Tell me what you did before I tear you up…" He raised his fist but Neil tackled him and wrestled him down to the ground. After taking a blow to the side of his head, Neil stood and backed away from Phil. The side of his face grew hot and tight where the blow landed and he pressed his hand against his cheek.

            "Back off, Phil," Neil raised a hand at Phil, who sat up in the dirt but remained on the ground. "We don't know what's going on yet. Alan, can you elaborate?" Alan shuffled to the tablet and picked it up. He held it out with a trembling hand. Neil noticed that his nose bled again.

            "It's bad, man," Alan said as Neil took the tablet. "It's really bad. There are projections in there in the hundreds of thousands, and that is just at the low end." Alan coughed and blood sprayed over his hand as he tried to cover his mouth. Neil reached a hand out for him, but Alan waved him off. "Read that data. Go ahead. We weren't supposed to be able to access that tablet. That was for whoever found us. We were set up."

            "What do you mean?" Neil's stomach lurched and his mouth went dry.

            "Yeah," Phil stood and walked to Neil's side, "how were we set up on this? This was your gig."

            "Well," Alan said through another coughing fit, "I'm not sure, but it looks like according to that thing, this money was meant to be stolen and distributed by this Project Aegis."

            "What's Project Aegis?" Neil asked.

            "Who cares? What is going on why did you say we are dead?"

            "Because we are," Alan said, "or at least, we will be. That money was tainted with a viral agent. It looks to be an engineered flu. They named it the Red Baron because of the profuse bleeding that it causes. Some of these projection charts show a death toll at least in the hundreds of thousands in the US, possibly up to a million."

            "But why? What do they have to gain?" Neil dropped to his knees in the dirt and tried to ignore the tickle in the back of his nose.

            "Aegis is something I heard about on the deeper sections of the web," Alan said as he picked up the tablet again and began to swipe the screen again. "According to this, they have an antidote. This is about them testing this agent. It is like when the government used to use the population to test radiation poisoning and viruses on the population. They want to know how effective their product is."

            "No way. No way someone could do something like this." Phil shook his head and rubbed his temples with his right hand. "No way…" His voice trailed off into silence.

            "You think they wouldn't try something like this?" Alan shouted. "What about Tuskegee? What about Dr. Rhoads? Project Paperclip?" Alan spat a bloody wad into the dirt and continued, "They don't care about us. It's all a chess game. We are being sacrificed so that their plan for the greater good can grow."

            "Oh God," Neil said burying his head into his hands, choking back the bile rising in his throat. "What do we do?" He asked. Then he lifted his eyes to Alan and stood with an arm outstretched to his friend, "Oh no. What's happening to you? Is this it?"

            "Yep," Alan said through a weak smile, "I get the honor of being patient zero." He laughed once before continuing, "Phil, you told me not to go all 'McDuck' on the money. My bad." He moved away from Neil, outside of his reach and said, "No, you guys might still be safe. We don't know if it is airborne."

            "Neil, let's leave him here," Phil said as he grabbed Neil's arm. "Just start walking and let him die."

            "I can't," Neil said, swallowing hard against the nausea rising in his stomach. "Alan, I can't leave you." Alan laughed, which turned into another coughing fit as flecks of blood sprayed around his hand.

            "Too late," he whispered, "Too late for you two as well. Your noses are bleeding. Too late." Alan dropped to the ground clutching his stomach and groaning. Neil rushed to his side and put an arm around him. He heard Phil moving behind them, but did not turn away from his friend.

            "Alan, buddy," he said, ignoring the wet sensation crawling down his upper lip, "you're smart. What can we do? How do we stop this?"

            "I don't know, man. I just don't know," Alan groaned. "This can't be happening. It can't be happening."

            "Alan," Neil pulled his friend upright and stopped short at the sight of blood collecting in Alan's eyelids. With a deep breath he continued, "Alan, this is happening. I need you to think. How do we stop this? How do we get the antidote?"

            "No chance on the antidote. We are dead men. No chance," Alan pushed Neil away and leaned on the van as he stood. "We've got to burn it all. Everything. Use the spare gas in the back of the van. Burn the money. Burn the van. Kill the virus."

            "Everything? Alan, we're infected," Neil said as he stood facing Alan.

            "We've got to, man," Alan said as he wept. "We've got to burn too. We can't let this get out. It's too much."

            "Come on. Let's think this through, there's got to be another way."

            "I'll tell you what we are going to do," Phil came back from around the back of the van with a pistol pointed at Alan. "We are going to finish this road trip." Pointing the gun at Neil he continued, "If your friend is right, we are dead. Nothing's going to help us. We might as well finish the fight."

            "What are you saying, Phil," Neil asked.

            "I'm saying that we are dead anyways. We can die here in the middle of nowhere or we can do what this Aegis group wanted of us. I say we die with purpose. Take out as many as we can." He wiped the blood off his upper lip with his free hand and waved toward the van. "Go on, boys," he said, "let's saddle up and finish the race."

            Alan pushed away from the van and took a moment to gather his feet. Phil backed away and waved again at the van. Neil stepped closer to Alan and reached out to help steady him. Before he could offer support, Alan lunged at Phil and tackled him to the ground. As they rolled, Neil ran over to them and tried to separate the two men. The gun flew from Phil's grasp and Neil broke free to leap for it, but as he lunged, Phil moved with a liquid speed and pinned Alan to the ground with a knee, grabbed Neil by the back of the shirt, and threw Neil back against the van. Neil's vision, rimmed with black, blurred as his head struck the bumper. His legs refused to stand and his arms felt as though weights held pulled on them. As his vision cleared, he could see Phil retrieve the gun and stand over Alan. Neil pushed himself forward and began to crawl towards Phil, his fingers gliding through the hot sand. He tried to call out, to plead for Phil to stop, but he only choked and spat blood onto the grit below. He paused as his hand brushed up against a rock, and he entwined his fingers around the warm smooth stone. Neil pushed himself up, slowly stood upright, and approached Phil.

            The report from the gun felt like a shockwave and Neil stumbled back a step. As Phil turned, Neil's senses sharpened and focused. He swung the stone and caught Phil on the side of the head. The larger man crumpled like a doll and Neil pounced upon him. Neil flailed his fist upon the larger man, as his scream resounded across the open sand. He finally rolled off Phil and collapsed on his back between the bodies. Placing his hands over his swollen face, he screamed again and felt the tears stinging his cuts as they spilled down his face. Neil rolled onto his side and pulled himself over to Alan.

            "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he whispered, his face close to Alan's, willing to feel his friend's breath against his face. "What do I do now?" He pushed himself up and winced at the pain shooting through his head. As he stood, a loud wet cough doubled him over. When he pulled his arm away, his elbow showed splatters of blood. "Too late, buddy," he said to Alan's corpse, "Too late for me too. I think you might be right. Only one thing left to do."

            Neil alternated between dragging the bodies toward the van and succumbing to coughing fits until finally, he had both corpses piled upon the money in the back of the van. He walked to the rear and opened up the double doors. They had two ten gallon plastic spares for trip. Neil poured one full canister over the bodies and money and the remaining canister he poured over himself and the front seat. As the fumes filled the van in the baking heat, he felt himself growing lightheaded.

            "Not much longer guys," he said as opened the driver's window a crack, "Not much longer at all…" His voice trailed off and his head drooped as his consciousness slipped from him. A coughing fit brought him back to cognizance. Neil coughed one last time into his hand and it came away covered in blood. Neil looked back at the bodies, gritted his teeth at the pain in his side, and let his gaze linger on Alan. His hand stretched out to Alan, he whispered one final goodbye to his friend. The smell of gasoline stung his nostrils and he closed his eyes against the fumes filling the enclosed space of the van. Neil wiped the tears from his eyes, and grabbed the lighter from his pocket. He fumbled with the lighter for a moment, praying the heat would destroy the virus. His finger pressed into the striker and watched his finger go white with the pressure. Neil watched, as if removed from his body, as his finger slid down the lighter and a small insignificant spark leapt and ignited the fumes. The blue wave spread out and Neil closed his eyes at the expanding heat.

            "Oh, God," he prayed, beyond the pain and anguish, "Oh, God, let it work." Outside the van, between screams, his voice rose above the sounds of the flames, echoing across the sands. Finally, he stopped, and the sound of the flames spoke in quiet contrast as they burned the inside of the van and three occupants.



As always, let me know what you thought of this one, either in the comments below or on whatever social media you found this on. 

Thanks so much for reading.

-Anthony

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