by Devin James Leonard
It was after midnight and had been storming since the start of Buckley and Teale’s three-hundred-mile drive across New York State. Two hours into their journey, just outside the Winona State Forest, the snow blanketed the road, causing the wheels to lose traction and slide unpredictably. This was dangerous weather for a box truck, a narrow contraption that was taller than it was lengthy, and prone to tipping over in high winds or when making sharp turns. Driving an unstable vehicle in such hazardous conditions, they got off the highway as soon as they could, finding refuge at a 24-hour diner and fueling station. The men parked at the gas pump, topped off the tank, and went inside the empty diner and ordered coffees.
From the booth where he sat, Buckley gazed out the window, watching the wind blow the snow sideways. “We’re not gonna make it,” he said.
Positioned across from him, Teale clasped his hands around his mug, warming them, and said, “Make what? The trip?”
“Alive. We’re not gonna make it alive. The outfit paired us together and we’re gonna be the victims of the biggest damn cliché that ever was in the movies.”
“What cliché?”
“You and I are the most overused tropes in situations like this,” Buckley said. “One of us has an eight-month pregnant wife at home, and the other’s got less than two weeks until retirement. We’re carrying what I presume to be life-threatening cargo three-hundred-some miles across the state, through lake effect country, where the roads are only gonna get worse from here on out. You think we’re destined to see this through? Cause I don’t.”
“This is my last mission,” Teale said. “We better make it.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. I’ve seen it a thousand times. In the movies, which character dies? The one with the baby on the way, or the one who’s got one last job to do before he’s done?”
“Don’t tell me it’s me.”
“It’s both, usually.”
Buckley, the one whose wife was expecting, was twenty-six years old, with a smooth, youthful face, except for the single wrinkle across his forehead from too much frowning and an endless amount of worrying. He wore a puffy jacket with a fur-lined hood and a knit hat that concealed most of his long, blonde hair. Teale, the elderly one, was pushing seventy. His face was aged with deep-set creases and a scruffy white beard, the top of his bald head covered and warmed by a beanie. Between the two of them, they each carried 9mm Glocks under their coats. Inside the cab of the truck were a pair M27 Infantry Automatic Rifles with thirty-round magazines, barrel suppressors, and night vision scopes, and between the seats, spare ammunition in a steel box.
While blowing on his coffee and peering out the window, the old man, Teale, said, “Must be almost a foot on the roads now.”
“Makes us destined not to make it,” Buckley said, dumping a heap of sugar into his mug.
“Suppose you want to stop at the first outpost along the way?” Teale said. “Wait for the storm to pass?”
Buckley shook his head. “And leave the cargo unattended so we can come out the next morning and see it’s gone? Broke out?”
“You watch too many movies.”
“We’re heading through the Great Lakes region. My kid’ll be born and going to college by the time the roads clear out there.”
“You got any solutions to these problems you keep bitching about?” Teale said. “If not, we stay on track and get the job done, whether that’s riding through the storm or waiting it out.”
“Doesn’t matter how we go about it,” Buckley said. “We’ll be falling into a trope either way.”
“Play it out for me,” Teale said with a smirk. “We’re the cliches—supposedly you know the formula—tell me what’s gonna happen.” He raised his mug, considered Buckley, and waited for his answer.
“The storm the way it is?” Buckley said. “We keep driving, we could slip on a patch of ice and go sliding right off the road—”
“Where the truck flips over—”
“—smack dab sideways into a tree. Back doors fly open—”
“—because the padlock miraculously breaks off first,” Teale said, smiling, getting a kick out of this.
Nodding, serious, Buckley said, “The package launches out into the woods.”
“Except in this case, the package escapes.”
“Runs away.”
“Because it’s not an object.”
“But a living, breathing thing.”
“Then what happens?” Teale asked.
Buckley scrunched his eyebrows. “You don’t know what happens next?”
“No. Tell me.”
“I’ll tell you what happens next.”
“Go on. Tell it.”
“The old man on his last mission and the rookie with the pregnant wife search for the runaway cargo. For some idiotic reason they separate—it’s the middle of the night—dark out—can’t see nothing—and they get picked off, one by one, by the very thing they’re tracking.”
Teale set his coffee down, pushed it away, and leaned back. “Then we avoid that trope by stopping at the first outpost. Wait out the storm.”
Buckley glanced out the window. With the snowfall a whiteout, he had to damn near squint to make out the box truck parked at the pump. “Okay. Maybe we ought to do that.”
“Hold on,” Teale said. “Time out.”
“What?”
“You say we’re a couple of clichés—what makes you think our shipment has to be one,
too?”
“How do you mean?”
“Some mysterious creature shackled in the truck? Why’s it always gotta be a monster they’re carrying that escapes and wreaks havoc? Why can’t it be just, like, I don’t know, some furniture?”
“You’re the one that’s been working for the outfit for forty-some years, you ought to know,” Buckley said. “We’re government agents that specialize in the occupying and transporting of monsters—has it ever not been a monster you transported?”
“Yes,” Teale said, firmly.
“Really?”
“Of course. Sometimes it’s just equipment, other times weapons. Lots of times it’s normal, everyday people.”
“But never furniture.”
“No, never furniture.”
“Then why say furniture?”
“I’m just saying,” Teale said, “it’s not always monsters in the truck.”
“But is it usually?” Buckley said.
“Occasionally.”
“Occasionally is another word for usually.”
“It’s not always monsters,” Teale argued. “And most times, they don’t clue us in on what the cargo is anyhow. How many trips have you been on, Buckley, where they tell you what you’re transporting?”
Buckley looked down, thinking about it. “Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head.
“What?”
“Another cliché.”
“What is?”
“Me,” Buckley said. “This is my first transport job. That all but guarantees I’m not long for this world. It also means I’m gonna be the first to go. The new guy always dies first.”
“Thought we already established you were the new guy.”
“Yeah, but I’m new-new. It’s even worse.”
“Have I told you,” Teale said, “you watch too many movies?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Too many war movies, from the sounds of it. And we ain’t in a war.”
“Happens in horror movies, too,” Buckley said. “Creature features.”
Teale scoffed. “Key word being movies, there, Buck.”
Buckley sighed and stirred his coffee.
Teale sipped from his mug, letting the silence sit for a moment, then said, “Tell me something about yourself.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know… to take your mind off the job for a second. Your baby—you got a name picked out yet?”
Buckley shook his head. “Don’t.”
“That’s not a name,” Teale said.
“No—don’t ask me personal questions.”
“Why not?”
“That’s the start of it,” Buckley said. He mumbled under his breath. “Start humanizing me. Making me more relatable—”
“What are you on about now?”
“—get you to care for me before I get my ass killed—”
“Buckley.”
Buckley’s voice rose with worry. “What do you want me to do next? Show you a picture of my old lady waiting for me back home?”
“Now that is definitely from war movies,” Teale said.
“Don’t ask me anything, because I ain’t telling.”
“You finish your coffee?”
“I hardly started it.”
“Take it to go. If I’m gonna die tonight, I’d just as soon get it the hell over with.”
Teale paid the check and when they got up to leave, the waitress told them to be safe out there. Buckley, halfway out the door, spun back around, threw his hands up, and said, “Now, why’d you have to go and say some shit like that?”
On the walk outside, they clutched their hoods over their heads as the harsh, brutal snow thrashed their faces. When they reached the truck, Teale trundled toward the driver-side door while Buckley, on his way to the other side, halted at the back of the cargo area. He called Teale over, and when Teale came back, Buckley pointed at the bottom of the metal bar, the latching mechanism of the closed doors.
“The lock,” Buckley howled over the wind. He wiggled the padlock that was slipped around the latch that held the two doors together. “It’s not locked.”
“What do you mean it’s not locked?”
Buckley removed the padlock and waved it at him. “It’s not locked, see? How’d that happen?”
Teale took it in his gloved hand and inspected it. He pressed the hooked shackle into the hole of the locking bar, where it at once popped back out. He pushed it in again, pulled it, and once again, it popped out. “Must be frozen,” he said. “Too cold for the lock to catch. Happens sometimes.”
Buckley’s eyes widened with disbelief. “Happens sometimes!”
“The hell you want me to say?” Teale said.
“I don’t know, man. I got a bad—”
“Don’t say it.”
“Well, I do.”
Teale plopped the padlock into Buckley’s hand. “Just get in the truck.”
“And do what with this?” Buckley said.
“Don’t worry about it. Look. The latch is still holding the doors in place. They can’t open.”
“But—”
“The doors,” Teale said, “are not going to open. The padlock’s to keep people from breaking in, not keeping the doors from opening. Everything is fine.”
“Everything is fine,” Buckley muttered, and released a sigh louder than the wind. He shoved the faulty padlock into his jacket pocket, the idea being he’d bring it into the warmth of the cab, set it on the heater vent, and when it thawed, he’d tell the old man to pull over so he could put it on the doors.
Before turning off, he wiggled the latching bar, ensuring it would remain in place, and then he lifted his hood and removed his hat to press his ear to the door. He leaned in close, listening. The weather was loud and raucous, and if there was anything inside the cargo bay, something alive, it was impossible to hear any stirring—
Bang!
Buckley jerked his head away and yelped from the smacking sound. Teale stood at the back with his face poking out from the side, laughing. He clapped his hand against the truck again—Bang!—and chuckled as he returned to the cab and got in behind the wheel.
While Teale started the engine, Buckley hopped in, cranked the heat, and set the padlock on top of the dash where the heater vents blew warm air against the windshield. Teale glared at him, a look that told Buckley his worrying was getting on the old man’s nerves.
The truck rolled forward, the overhanging lights of the gas station behind them now, as they drove out onto the snow-covered asphalt and the late-night whiteout.
There were no other cars on the road.
Even though the speed limit on the interstate was sixty-five, Teale held the gauge at a steady thirty, his hands gripping the wheel at ten and two. The snow battered against the windshield like a spaceship going into warp speed, giving him a headache and making him dizzy.
Forty-five minutes in, Buckley quit his worrying and fell asleep with his face against the cold window.
The highway thickened with increasing snow the farther they traveled. Teale knew of an outpost close to Lake Neatahwanta, near the city of Fulton in Oswego County—the outfit had secretive rest areas and safe houses, aka outposts, all over the state—but that would bring them closer to Lake Ontario, the bad weather, so he remained on his route.
Two hours later, Teale slowed to twenty-five-miles-per-hour. He still hadn’t seen another traveling car or even a plow truck, this side of the highway or the other.
Ten minutes later, on a straightaway, Teale hit a slippery spot, pumped the brakes and shook the wheel, and lost control. Buckley, sound asleep, swayed with the momentum of the truck, falling to the left and thrusting back to the right. His face smacked the window hard enough to wake him, and he popped up gasping, his eyes wide and terrified as he looked out the windshield and saw the world spinning. Teale jerked the steering wheel, smashed his foot down on the brake, and the box truck’s backside spun out and skidded sideways. Snow crunched beneath them. The vehicle spiraled like a windmill. “No, no, no, no!” Buckley screamed, as if he’d expected this to happen but still couldn’t believe it was coming true. The truck soared off the road, careened backward down an angled slope, and abruptly came to a jolting stop halfway down a ditch with a sound akin to lightning crashing.
The only thing moving now were the wipers, the headlights shining skyward. Both men stared straight, stiff and panting.
Teale said, “Before you say anything—don’t.”
“I won’t say anything,” Buckley said, rubbing his cheek. “Not a single word.”
A long, drawn-out creak echoed behind them, like the sound of a rusty hinge squeaking.
Something pounded against the truck—Bang!—and the cab shook, reminding Buckley of Teale’s prank at the gas pump. He snapped his face in Teale’s direction, and the old man said, “That wasn’t me this time.”
Buckley rolled down his snow-stippled window and peered into the side mirror. It was the cargo door. It had swung open and was now lurching back the other way.
Buckley faced Teale and mumbled, “Door’s open.”
Teale killed the engine, ripped open the glove compartment, retrieved two LED flashlights, and handed one to Buckley. In a hurry, they both twisted around to reach for the rifles propped behind their seats. Both doors opened, and they jumped out. Teale landed in a mound of snow up to his knees, and Buckley slipped down the slant of the ditch, his rifle flying out of his grasp as he plunged head-first to the ground. He pulled himself up, his face a mask of white powder, the cold stinging his eyes and impairing his vision, and he continued to fumble.
He lost his footing, tripped, fell, stood up, fell again. Only when he staggered his way to the forest and pressed his back against a tree did he regain his stability.
Ten yards off and to the left from where he’d exited the truck, it took him a solid panicky minute to find his rifle submerged in the powder at the base of the slope. He fished it out and ran to the rear of the box truck, meeting Teale at the open doors. It was not until he noticed Teale shining his flashlight in the cargo bay that he realized he’d lost his own light when he’d fallen.
The cargo bay was empty.
Buckley’s voice sank to the depths of his stomach. “Oh, goodness, no.”
“Shut up,” Teale said.
“I told you! Didn’t I tell you?”
Teale spun around, his light shining on the snow. “Look for footprints, tracks—”
“I told you this would happen,” Buckley said.
“Shut up and search for tracks before the snow covers the trail.”
“What trail?”
Teale jumped into gear, examining the ground amidst the falling snow. Buckley stood still, watching, until Teale swung his light on him.
“Where’s your flashlight?”
“I dropped it,” Buckley said.
“Did you fall?”
“No.”
“You fell.”
“Okay, I fell.”
“Use your rifle.”
“For what?”
“The scope, idiot. It’s got night vision. Hurry,” Teale said, and ran off toward the woods.
Buckley raised his rifle and peered into the scope, the forest, snow, ground, and sky all a blend of greens, whites, and blacks. Despite being able to see again, he couldn’t focus. His arms were already shaking from the cold, but now, with the added weight of the rifle, the darkness, the escaped cargo, he trembled with absolute dread.
It was all coming true. The tired old tropes.
He was going to die.
“Come look at this,” Teale called out from the tree line.
Buckley made his way through the deep powder to Teale, who was looking down at what appeared to be fresh tracks in the snow.
“Footprints,” Teale said.
“But what kind?”
“What do you mean?”
“Human or”—Buckley gulped—“not human.”
“Hard to tell,” Teale said. “But it’s the only spot around us besides our own tracks that impacted the recent snow.” He aimed his light into the forest. “Looks like it goes this way. Trail’s cold in there. It’s all sticks and limbs. Not enough snow to tamp a trail. Bet that’s where it—”
“It?”
“—or he—or she—went.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Buckley said.
“And leave the cargo?” Teale shook his head. “We’re not getting the truck out of that ditch, but the least we can do is get our transport secured.”
Buckley huffed. “Goddamnit, the next thing you’re gonna say is you think we should—”
“We should split up.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“I’ll head straight in from here,” Teale said. “You go that way at an angle. Like a V. Move in about a hundred yards and stop. Sweep my direction with your scope. Anything that’s moving out here, you should be able to see it.”
Teale rushed into the woods, his flashlight leading the way but showing him nothing but brush and leaves and a light dusting of snow, not enough powder to leave a footprint. By the time he went twenty strides into the forest, a thought dawned on him, but he was already too far away to shout. He should have told Buckley that, under no circumstances, was he to shoot the cargo—whatever it may be.
Buckley trampled through the brush where Teale had instructed, the wind howling like a gargantuan monster lurking behind him and whistling in his ears. With the rifle extended and his eye in the scope, his arms stiffened and strained in no time, forcing him to lower the gun and give his limbs a break. Now marching without sight, he bumped into trees and tripped over fallen branches. Breathless, his nose hairs frozen into tiny icicles, he halted and took a knee, contemplating the distance he’d covered in the pitch-black darkness. Had he trekked a hundred yards? Maybe. Might have only gone fifteen. Hard to say. None of his senses were working. He hollered out to Teale, but only heard the wind and the creaking of the surrounding trees. At least he hoped it was the trees making all those creepy noises.
Buckley forced himself to heft the rifle up and peered into the scope, aiming it in Teale’s direction—what he thought was Teale’s direction. That was another sense that had gone haywire. He swung to the left, looking further into the woods. The trees made it look like everything was moving. It’d be much easier to find what they were looking for if Buckley knew just what the hell it was they were looking for.
Then he saw something in his scope, plain as day. Yes, there it was, an upright figure, walking on two legs, stamping the ground as it marched through the woods. It was a person, and that was a relief. At least it wasn’t a creature, one of the many varieties he’d heard about from the veterans. Many tales circulated within the secret organization he was a part of, some too horrifying to believe, but most were probably true. Monsters existed, Buckley knew, and the outfit dealt with them.
But this was just a person he was looking at, and that gave him relief. Before he’d joined the organization, Buckley had killed plenty of people, never missed his target, never felt remorse. Killing people was easy, and now that he knew there was nothing to fear out here, he could get his breathing under control and his heart rate lowered. That’s how you take your best shot—the slower your heart beats, the steadier your aim.
Buckley aimed at the target’s head, took a breath, and fired when exhaling. The report of the rifle cracked in his ears, the suppressor minimizing the sound of the discharge but not completely extinguishing it. Still, the wind was louder. A hundred yards out, the target had dropped. That’s why the outfit had taken Buckley under their employ; he was a tremendous shot.
“How’s this for a cliché?” Buckley said to himself as he headed toward his downed target. He wasn’t worried about stumbling upon Teale and having Teale accidentally shoot him. No, Teale would know it was him. He’d see his—
“Light,” Buckley said. He forgot he’d dropped his flashlight. He shouted, “I’m coming your way, Teale, don’t shoot me.” But Buckley wasn’t concerned. Teale wasn’t even in sight now. He would have seen his light.
He hustled toward his kill until he needed to stop and breathe. Walked some more and stopped again. Looked through his night scope and saw the figure laid out. Estimated it was thirty yards away and started running. When he reached it, his eyes came upon the cast of light first, the flashlight still held in the person’s grip, shining on the ground. Teale lay face down, a puddle of blood gathering around his head and melting the surrounding dusting of snow.
“Oh,” Buckley said. “No.”
Something snarled behind him. Buckley snapped about face and raised his rifle. He saw nothing through the scope, but he could have sworn there was something just beyond his shoulder. Another groan, again behind him, and again he spun. Nothing over here, just the trees swaying in the wind, branches rustling. Everything around him moved, making it impossible to locate whatever was growling at him. Whatever was stalking him.
Farther away now, he heard a huff, the sound like a bull exhaling through its nose. In the opposite direction, a snarl, a guttural howl, that of a defensive, hostile animal.
With his eye peering through his scope, Buckley swung the rifle round and round, but couldn’t find it. He could blame it on the trees and shrubbery moving in the wind and obstructing his vision, but mostly it was because his heart was pounding in his chest and his arms were shaking with terror.
And he was cold. At this very moment, he realized just how freezing the temperature was. The outfit hadn’t equipped them with gear to be out in the elements. On this mission, they were drivers, not hunters. His boots were tactical, but not warm nor waterproof. His feet were numb, fingers too.
The thing in the woods groaned, closer now. So close, it almost sounded as though it was above him.
Just as close, a branch snapped, loud. Not from the wind, either. No, this snap came from something stepping on it.
He needed to get to the truck. It wouldn’t make it out of the ditch, but at least he’d find warmth inside and he could call for help.
Buckley ran. Ran as fast as he could. With the forest enclosing him from every direction, he was uncertain if he was running out of the woods or farther in. He would not dare stop and use his night scope to find out, not with that thing out there. The cold pricked his eyes, drawing tears. His face was so numb, his nose felt like it was going to fall off. Every breath he took stung his nostrils and filled his chest with the blistering air.
He kept running.
Running for what seemed like an eternity.
And getting nowhere.
He was lost.
He was cold.
When he could no longer feel the rifle in his frozen hands, he dropped it.
And when he could no longer feel his feet, and each breath he took eviscerated his throat, he fell to the ground.
Buckley sat against a tree, closed in by the suffocating pitch black. All around him, darkness. And though he couldn’t see, he could hear movement every which way, the forest shaking, rattling. Even the tree against his back moved as if it were breathing.
And the growling, the snarling. It was everywhere.
It was coming for him.
The monster.
Sparing himself from the agony of being torn to shreds by the claws of some mysterious creature the outfit had entrusted him to transport three hundred miles in a snowstorm, Buckley pulled out his sidearm, placed the cold muzzle to his temple, and bid farewell to his unborn child.
#
When the storm passed and the sun rose, a traveling plowman found the box truck and promptly reported it. By 11 A.M. the roads were cleared, and a team of four state troopers searched the nearby woods, and within five minutes, they discovered the first body leaning against a tree with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The young man sat just ten yards away from the clearing, a stone’s throw from the road. It took another twenty minutes to find the second body, this one an old man.
A tow company arrived to pull the truck back onto the road, the coroner was called, and by 12:30 P.M. the staties dragged the bodies out, as well as a flashlight, two pistols, and two automatic rifles. The coroner had yet to show up when a shiny black SUV stopped at the scene. Two men in pristine suits and long black coats got out. They wore sunglasses, leather gloves, and 9mm pistols on shoulder holsters, and when approaching the troopers, they flashed no smiles, only government badges that resembled an agency likened to the FBI or CIA.
The troopers, as per instruction, called off the coroner, had the tow truck driver drop the truck on the road, and immediately vacated. The suited men tended to the bodies, hefting the corpses into the box truck. Then one suit got in the cab and drove it away while the other returned to the SUV and followed.
On the road, the suited man in the SUV dialed a number on his cell and spoke into it.
“Buckley and Teale. Dead, sir. Uh-huh. Went off the road and crashed the truck. No, sir, they died after. Both shot. No, sir, I have no idea why they would have gone out in the woods, but it looks like Buckley shot Teale, then shot himself.” He paused, and said, “Well, sir, you know how Teale was due to retire and Buckley was a newbie? This was supposed to be a trial run, sir, a simple task for the new kid to get the hang of things with no threat of loss on our end. Simple task for the old guy on one last mission. That’s right, sir.”
The man listened for a moment, then said, “The cargo? What cargo? This was a trial run, sir. The truck was empty.”
About the Author
Devin James Leonard’s job as a night watchman comprises sitting at a desk monitoring a county building, which allows him eight mostly uninterrupted hours of reading and writing (best job ever). A native of upstate New York, he prefers the countryside over cities, and dogs and cats over humans. His interests include throwing paint at canvases, walking through the woods, and exercising. His favorite word is urchin, though he’s never used it in a sentence. Devin has written six novels and is currently working on many short stories.