An Incident on Route 12

Phil Garfield is thirty miles from nowhere with a broken-down Packard, thirty thousand dollars in stolen cash, and a body count behind him. The cops are closing in. He needs a mark, fast. So he stages his car as bait, waiting for some unsuspecting driver to stop. When headlights finally appear in his rearview mirror, Garfield feels luck finally turn his way. He couldn't be more wrong. James H. Schmitz builds this short, brutal tale with the precision of a trap. Garfield is no victim. He's a armed, desperate man who's already killed tonight. But what pulls alongside him in the dark isn't a marksman or a cop or even a Good Samaritan. It's something that doesn't think in human terms at all. Something that's been tracking him for miles. The twist lands like a hammer: Garfield was never the hunter here. He was always the prey. Schmitz turns the predator-prey dynamic inside out with nasty, efficient prose, and the horror isn't the alien itself. It's the moment Garfield understands he's been the booty all along.