Shunt

Officer Turner received a strange package. What was inside?

The sun woke her up. It was just coming up on the horizon now, shining straight into her eyes. She sighed and slowly pushed the covers aside. "I should get curtains soon" she thought "or I'm gonna go f*****g blind." She looked over and as expected, her husband had already left, leaving a slight pit in the bed. She wished he was here long enough for her to wake up to him, sleeping soundly, his bushy red beard being stroked by her, smiling about something only he knew. It made her day brighter. She sighed again. His job as a trucker just took so much time away from family, he could be gone for days on end.

She got up out of bed in her pajamas and slowly shuffled her way towards the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and some toast. She bumped into her son along the way. "Hey Mom!" he exclaimed. "Good morning, John." she replied tiredly. "Where are you going? School doesn't start for another two hours." "It's my first day volunteering at the hospital. I told you, don't you remember?" "That's great honey! And yes, I do remember. Have a good day!" She smiled and watched as he closed the door behind him.

She felt completely drained after forcing her enthusiasm out. She wanted that coffee now more than ever. Just the almondy scent of it was enough to lift her spirits and after taking a big swig of the liquid and chomping down her toast as well as some fruit, she felt a tad happier about the day ahead. She whistled as she took a hot shower, put on her civilian clothes, and locked the house behind her.

It was a cloudy day with rays of sunshine poking through as she drove toward the police station. "Another day at the office" she thought. "Wonder if something, ANYTHING, is going to happen today?" There hasn't been a lot of activity happening lately and in 20 years of being a police officer, this is the least amount of crime she has ever seen.

Into the station she went and she heard her friend ,and station receptionist, Jeanette say to her cheerfully "Good morning! How are you doing today, Lisa?" 

"Pretty good, I guess." 

"Something the matter?" 

"No, just a little tired this morning thats all." 

"Should take a break soon then. Personally, I'd take a day off right now." 

"Nah" she smiled faintly "Not today, maybe soon though." 

"Oh! I almost forgot, there was a package mailed to your office earlier this morning. It's in on your desk, just so you know." 

"Thanks for telling me." 

"Your welcome!"

She passed the reception desk and walked down a rather narrow hall to the elevator. She managed to slip in as the elevator doors were closing. Pressing the button for the third floor, she waited silently as she felt the familiar motion of going up. Eventually, the doors opened back up into a short hall which in itself opened up into a large room.

Walking into the room, someone had sneaked up behind her and covered her mouth and eyes. She felt the person's hot breath in her ear as he whispered "Hey baby, I'm gonna take you somewhere special." She instantly recognized the voice and elbowing him in the chest, she turned around to glare at her "captor".

"GERRY?!! WHAT THE HELL?!" 

"Hahahahahaha! What?" 

"DON'T. DO THAT!" 

"Hahahahaha! Scared ya didn't I?" 

"God, your such a child!" 

"Nah, really?" 

"Sometimes I can't believe that someone like you still works here." 

"Geez, lighten up would ya? Not all of us have to be all serious and moody ya know. There needs to be humor in the world. "sigh" I remember you actually used to like that." 

"Well, I guess i don't like your kind of humor anymore. Maybe I'm just getting old." 

"Maybe. Oh would you look at the time, I've gotta go to a meeting soon. I'll see ya at lunch, maybe there I can make you laugh." 

"Bye."

She sullenly opened a white door on her right which led directly into her office. Upon walking in she noticed the aforementioned package on her desk. It was smaller than she thought, in fact it was actually one of those cardboard envelopes so it had to be pretty small. She tore open one end and dumped out the contents. Just one CD in a case labeled "THEY'RE HERE." Intrigued, she popped open the case and carefully slid the disk into her laptop to her immediate right. A video came up on the screen and she pressed play.

"10-15 that over." a voice says accompanied by static. 

"Perp's in custody?" a man questions, presumably off camera. 

"Uh, yeah." the woman replies on the 2-way radio. 

"K, just wanted to make sure." 

"Where are you?" 

"North side, it sounded like you had it under control anyway." 

"heavy sigh" you need an attitude change. Keep this up and you won't make it a year."

Several minutes passed with the young man mumbling to himself about how he's not getting paid enough, the unfair treatment and the other usual problems. This is further followed by approximately 10 minutes of silence. Along the way, he transitioned from a residential street onto the highway. He spotted a vehicle racing up an entryway onto the highway becoming ever faster. He put on the siren and got it to pull over. He stepped out of the cruiser noticing that there was no license plate, and walked causally over to the other vehicle. He's certainly a young man; black haired, blue-eyed, well-muscled, and of course in the dark blue uniform the cops here wear.

He was only a few feet from the driver's window when it suddenly took off. "F**k" he yelled as he ran back towards his own vehicle. Within moments, the chase was on.

"I have a suspect on Route I9." he said through the radio as he weaved in and out of traffic trying to keep up with the vehicle ahead. "BOLO for a green 2008 Honda Civic without a back license plate." 

"How fast?" 

"about 155 km/hr." 

"Okay, identity of susp?" 

"Unknown. He's doing a 305 and possibly a 510 at this moment. 10-63." 

"10-4."

The car ahead suddenly took a sharp left turn nearly turning it over as it bounced across the median and started racing back the other way forcing the police officer to do the same thing.

"We are now going southbound on highway I9." 

"Copy that." 

"Could I have some assistance catching this guy?" 

"We're all busy at the moment unfortunately so... it looks like you'll have to do this yourself."

 

"What could possibly keep you so busy as to disregard your own?"

 

"What do you think?" the man on the other line said snarkily.

The vehicle sped down the ramp bouncing from one side of the road to the other. It then drifted around the corner onto a busy street and headed towards town. It drove on the wrong side of the street, headed into oncoming traffic as it ran a red light. It managed to avoid numerous near hits before drifting across someone's front yard onto a residential street. It sped down the straddling the yellow line forcing other vehicles off producing chaos in it's wake which made it difficult to keep up with. It then turned another corner nearly crashing into a ditch on the opposite side of the street before recovering.

It ran red light after red light before eventually finding it's way back to the highway again, going in the wrong direction. This time though it seemed to be actively steering into oncoming traffic thereby intentionally endangering other people's lives. This sounded like it pissed him off.

Again and again, he tried to PIT it when there was no traffic around but to no avail, it kept managing to avoid him. Finally, it just pulled over onto the side of the road; the right side of the road. Still alone, he angrily got out of his cruiser and approached the car with his gun drawn. "Get out of the car. Get out of the f*****g car and put your hands be-" When he got to the driver's window his whole body just loosened. The pistol fell out of his hands and he just stood there staring with mouth agape, eyes bugging out, and an odd shaking from his limbs.

Suddenly he began gagging managing to get out an "Oh my god." before he regurgitated. Lisa just barely heard it, but she could hear faint cries for help coming from somewhere. The police officer managed to stand up again before taking another glimpse of what was inside only to double up in pain and regurgitate once more. Suddenly, he just keeled over and a strange growth appeared out of the backseat window.

It appeared to be growing at an incredibly rapid pace. Not only that, it looked like it was heading towards the fallen officer. Through only a window of a few minutes, it had grown from just a mold like film on the back window to a 10 foot long tube that had nearly reached the body. It widened as it came ever so closer and in a shot of terrifying speed, it went down and it looked like it had swallowed him. Though his head and legs were still visible, he was being moved through the tube through what it seemed like a series of muscle-like contractions almost like an esophagus.

Somehow, it turned him over and put him through the window or what had looked like a window at first but it seemed to pop as he went through. As soon as the "vehicle" started moving forward the "projection" broke off. Within minutes the "projection" had disintegrated into nothing and the "vehicle" was long gone by the time the other cops had arrived after being told that an empty cruiser was found alongside the road.

She put it on fast forward until it stopped. Nothing else of significance had happened. Lisa had quickly showed it to her coworkers after watching it for herself and wanted to get their opinions on it.

"That had to be CGI or something" Gerry said. "I mean that can't be real, just look at it." 

"Then how do you explain the cop's reaction?" a female officer inquired. 

"He could've smelled something terrible when he got close and it dropped him." 

"It could be an alien of some sort or some kind of side-product of something gone wrong." someone on the right side of the room said.

"Really? That just sounds stupid." someone else replied.

"Who sent this to you?" someone asked Lisa.

"I don't know, it could've been anyone though it definitely came from here." 

"Should this be released at all or should we give it to the government or something?" the same person asked.

"I don't think this should be released. We don't want the public freaking out unnecessarily." 

"But they should be allowed to know about these things!" 

"Yeah, WHY?!" another man asked sarcastically.

The room full of people gradually got noisier and noisier as the many questions and arguments rapidly devolved into nothing more than insults and a noise competition. From the front of the room Lisa shouts "Shut the hell up!" and surprisingly everyone listens. "I say this tape will be released and I'll leave it up to the people to decide." 

"Are you nuts?" a man in the back yelled. "This "thing" would cause widespread panic!" 

"I don't think so. I think the people will be afraid but that most of them will continue to act in a fairly reasonable manner. Of course, that's just what I think. What they think may be completely different. She grinned, "Let's give it a try shall we?"