Chapter 6: The Collectors

Jack's first sensation was the taste of copper in his mouth—blood from where he'd bitten his tongue when he fell. The second was the rhythmic flash of red and blue lights painting the inside of his eyelids. Emergency vehicles. Help had arrived.

He tried to sit up and immediately regretted it as pain lanced through his skull. A gentle hand pressed him back down onto what felt like a stretcher.

"Easy there, sir. You've got a nasty bump on your head." The voice belonged to a young EMT with kind eyes and steady hands. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Jack Riley." The words came out as a croak. "The accident—are they—?"

"We're taking care of everything. Just focus on staying still for me."

But Jack couldn't stay still. Memory was returning in fragments—the collision, the fire, the impossible figures emerging from the darkness. He struggled against the restraints holding him to the stretcher, panic overriding the EMT's calming voice.

"The tall ones," Jack said, grabbing the medic's arm with desperate strength. "Did you see the tall ones?"

The EMT's expression shifted to professional concern. "Sir, you've suffered a head injury. It's normal to be confused—"

"They were pulling bodies from the cars. Six of them, maybe more. Where did they go?"

"Mr. Riley, you're the only person we found at the scene. County sheriff's deputy spotted your truck on the shoulder about an hour ago and found you unconscious beside the wreckage."

An hour. Jack tried to process this. An hour was more than enough time for whatever he'd witnessed to conclude its business and disappear back into the woods. But the EMT's words suggested something worse—that there had been no survivors to pull from the wreckage in the first place.

"The kid in the sedan," Jack pressed. "College boy, early twenties. And the truck driver—"

"Sir, I need you to calm down. The paramedics at the scene can fill you in on the details, but right now my job is to get you to the hospital and make sure you don't have a concussion."

The ambulance ride passed in a blur of questions Jack couldn't answer and memories that made less sense the more he examined them. The collision had been real—he could smell the lingering odor of gasoline and burned rubber on his clothes. But the figures he remembered, the coordinated way they'd moved toward the wreckage...

Head injuries played tricks on perception. Trauma could create false memories, insert impossible elements into otherwise ordinary events. By the time they reached the county hospital, Jack had almost convinced himself that shock and adrenaline had transformed good Samaritans into monsters, rescue workers into something sinister.

Almost.

The emergency room was a sterile maze of bright lights and antiseptic smells. Jack submitted to X-rays and neurological tests, answered questions about his name and the date and what he remembered about the accident. The doctor—a tired-looking woman in her forties—seemed satisfied that his injuries were minor.

"Mild concussion, some bruising. You're lucky," she said, shining a penlight into his eyes. "Another few inches and that blow could have fractured your skull."

"Blow?"

"You've got a contusion on the back of your head consistent with blunt force trauma. Probably a piece of debris from the collision. Flying metal, broken glass—accident scenes are chaotic."

Debris. Not the deliberate strike he remembered, but random chance in a world of twisted steel and scattered wreckage. Another rational explanation for something that had felt intentional and malicious.

The doctor discharged him with instructions to rest and return if he experienced any worsening symptoms. A sheriff's deputy was waiting in the hallway—a young man with a serious expression and a notebook full of questions.

"Mr. Riley? I'm Deputy Morrison. I need to ask you a few questions about what you witnessed tonight."

They found a quiet corner of the waiting room, surrounded by vending machines and outdated magazines. Morrison opened his notebook and clicked his pen with the methodical precision of someone who'd done this many times before.

"Start from the beginning. What brought you to the scene?"

Jack had rehearsed this during the ambulance ride, crafting a version of events that stuck close to the truth while avoiding the impossible elements. "I was driving home from the Crossroads Tavern. Saw the collision happen about a quarter mile ahead—drunk driver crossed the centerline, hit a logging truck head-on."

Morrison made notes. "You witnessed the actual collision?"

"Yes. Both vehicles caught fire. I ran to help."

"And then?"

This was the crucial moment, the place where Jack's story would either hold together or fall apart. He took a breath and committed to the lie that would define the rest of his life.

"I must have been hit by debris when I got close to the wreckage. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the ambulance."

"You don't remember anything between the collision and losing consciousness?"

Jack shook his head, wincing as the movement aggravated his headache. "Just running toward the cars, trying to help. Everything after that is blank."

Morrison closed his notebook. "Trauma can affect memory. Sometimes it comes back, sometimes it doesn't." He paused, studying Jack with the careful attention of someone trained to detect deception. "The thing is, Mr. Riley, we didn't find any survivors at the scene. Both victims were deceased before emergency services arrived."

The words hit Jack like another blow to the head. "Both? But the kid was alive when I—" He caught himself, remembering his story. "I mean, when I first saw the cars, it looked like there might be survivors."

"Driver of the sedan died on impact—crushed skull, internal injuries. Truck driver had a heart attack, probably brought on by the collision. Coroner estimates both deaths occurred within minutes of the accident."

Jack stared at his hands, trying to reconcile the deputy's words with his memory of the young man trapped in the overturned sedan, conscious and breathing despite his injuries. Had shock distorted his perception that badly? Made him see life where there was only death?

"Is there anything else you can remember? Any detail, no matter how small?"

"No," Jack said, and the lie felt like swallowing broken glass. "Nothing else."

Morrison handed him a business card. "If your memory clears up, give me a call. Sometimes witnesses remember more after the initial shock wears off."

Jack pocketed the card and watched the deputy walk away, knowing he would never make that call. Some memories were too dangerous to share, too impossible to explain. Even if he could convince Morrison that he'd seen tall figures moving through the darkness, what good would it do? The victims were already dead. The scene was already processed. Adding supernatural elements to an official report would only raise questions about his mental state and his fitness for county employment.

A taxi took him back to his truck, still parked on the shoulder of Route 340 where he'd left it hours earlier. The accident scene had been cleared, the wreckage towed away, the highway reopened to traffic. Only the gouges in the asphalt and the broken glass in the ditch remained as evidence of the night's violence.

Jack sat in his truck for a long time, staring at the spot where two lives had ended and something impossible had begun. The rational part of his mind provided a comforting narrative: he'd witnessed a tragic accident, tried to help, been injured by flying debris, and suffered temporary memory loss as a result. The figures he remembered were hallucinations, products of trauma and head injury.

But deep in his chest, in the place where instinct lived, Jack knew he was lying to himself. The creatures he'd seen moving through the darkness had been real. Their coordinated movements, their predatory patience, their casual efficiency in dealing with human remains—all of it pointed to something organized and intelligent.

Something that had been using his highway as a hunting ground for months.

The mountain lion he'd convinced himself explained everything now seemed like wishful thinking, a desperate attempt to impose normalcy on a situation that defied explanation. What he'd seen tonight wasn't natural predation or scavenging behavior. It was something else entirely.

Something that collected the dead with the same methodical precision he brought to clearing roadside debris.

Jack started his truck and drove home through the pre-dawn darkness, past mile markers he'd once known as well as his own name. But the familiar landscape felt alien now, full of shadows that might conceal watchers and sounds that could mean anything.

At his house, he locked every door and window, checked them twice, then sat in his kitchen with a cup of coffee and tried to plan his next move. Going to the authorities was out of the question—his story would be dismissed as the ravings of a head injury victim. Continuing his job meant driving past the scene every day, pretending normalcy while knowing that something monstrous lurked in the woods.

But there was a third option, one that grew more appealing as the sun rose over Virginia's rolling hills. He could request a transfer. Get moved to a different route, a different county, a different life where tall figures didn't emerge from darkness to claim the dead.

He could run.

The thought brought relief so intense it made him dizzy. Thirty years of service had earned him the right to a transfer, especially if he cited medical concerns related to his head injury. Tracy would understand. The county would accommodate. By next month, Route 340 could be someone else's problem.

Jack finished his coffee and went to bed, pulling the covers over his head like a child hiding from monsters. But even in sleep, he couldn't escape the memory of wet voices speaking with authority, of figures moving through darkness with terrible purpose.

Of his own helplessness when confronted with something beyond his understanding or control.

When he woke that afternoon, his first act was to call Tracy and request a meeting. His second was to start planning his escape from the twelve miles of highway that had stolen his peace and shown him truths too large for one man to carry.

The Collectors—for that's how he'd started thinking of them—would have to find their prey without his unwilling assistance. Someone else would have to clean up the messes they left behind.

Jack Riley was done being a witness to the impossible.

At least, that's what he told himself as he filled out transfer paperwork and tried not to think about the other drivers who would travel Route 340 in his absence, unaware of what waited for them in the darkness between the trees.