Somewhere in Michigan State
She waited in her small car alongside of the secondary road when her two-way radio beeped. A lone truck was coming. She turned her emergency lights on, and she went to stand almost in the middle of the road. It didn't take long before she saw the beams of the eighteen-wheeler.
With a flare in her hand, she frantically waved for assistance.
The truck driver slowed down. The girl didn't look more than nineteen or twenty. He would have been surprised to learn she was a decade older. Her small car was halfway in the ditch. She probably took the curve too fast, he guessed. With the recent attacks, the driver knew it wasn't safe to stop but she looked harmless enough and he couldn't in good conscience leave her alone on a deserted road in the middle of the night.
He stepped out of his truck to render assistance. He never knew what hit him from behind.
***
The room was dark, and the house was silent, everyone having gone to bed a long time ago.
Fifteen-year-old Dylan Thomas stared at what he knew was his ceiling. For the second night in a row, sleep eluded him. He should be elated. Was there something seriously wrong with him?
His dad seemed to think so. When Dylan tried to have a conversation with him about his dilemma, his dad brushed his concerns away. There was only one possible choice, how could Dylan even doubt it?
Dylan could feel his eyes stinging, not that he would cry. He was way too old to cry. He would never give anyone that satisfaction. He sighed for what seemed the millionth time. His mind went back to May.
As far back as he could remember, Dylan always played little league baseball. His dad loved baseball and he made sure his son had all the chances to improve. Every year, Dylan made the city team. And every year, their city team got creamed at Regionals. They had some very talented players, but never twelve of them. Dylan had debated in May if he should play over that summer.
Over the years he'd also developed another interest, one that occupied his entire winter and part of his summer. Hockey.
The first time he stepped on the ice, it became his passion, a passion his dad didn't share but nevertheless he indulged his son. And when Dylan asked to go to that Elite Hockey School in Toronto at the beginning of August, offering to pay half the registration fees, his parents gave him the other half for Christmas and registered him eight months ahead of time.
It was a very popular school and only twenty kids were chosen on the elite level every summer. And Dylan was lucky enough to be one of them, the only Non-Canadian kids this time around.
Back in May, the incessant nagging of his friends convinced Dylan to reluctantly play baseball one last summer. With him, they had twelve players, and they automatically became the city team. They practiced regularly and it kept Dylan busy. At the end of June, they went to a one-week tournament where they played most of the teams they would face at Regionals. Strangely, for twelve misfits, they had a terrific team and they easily beat every single opponent. Suddenly their team became the favourite for Regionals and their coach's dream of representing Michigan State at Nationals wasn't as far fetch as anyone believed.
But Dylan had a problem. If they won Regionals at the end of the month, Nationals was a week later the same week than his hockey school in Toronto.
He sighed again in the dark. That hockey school would give him an edge for hockey tryouts at the end of August, and he needed to make the Midget AAA team if he eventually wanted to play junior hockey. Without that school, he wouldn't stand out, and his chances would be minimal at best.
If talking to his dad proved useless, opening up to his coach ended up being even worse. Coach sent Dylan on a very long guilty trip and the fact that Dylan was co-captain didn't help. Dylan wasn't a star player, but he was a very valuable player, and on a personal level, Dylan was a very good example to follow. Coach never sat him on the bench. No matter where Coach positioned him, infield or out, he could always rely on Dylan for not making any error and playing the game correctly. Dylan had a sense for baseball and very good reflexes. And offensively, though he wasn't a powerful hitter, he was a consistent one and a fast runner, making it to first base most of the time and stealing his way around the diamond.
Coach needed him. Two other players had already approached him, unsure they could make it to Nationals if they won. Coach couldn't lose Dylan. The team counted on him. It was his responsibility to make sure the team didn't fall.
Dylan talked privately to his mom. She listened and argued that he couldn't be held exclusively responsible if three players decided not to go. That was when he told her he regretted ever playing baseball this year, that his heart belonged on the ice. She told him the decision should be his, and his alone, and that she would support it, reminding him all along that even though they were the favourite, they were not winners yet. Dylan knew that, but he still needed to make a decision before Regionals. It wouldn't be fair to let Coach know only a few days before Nationals if he had no intention of going.
Dylan sighed again, sleep no closer than last night, and his mind no closer to a decision. To go to Nationals in baseball or to go to an Elite Hockey School? When did choices become that heartbreaking?
***
A couple stopped alongside the road. Their dog had been whining for the last ten minutes and they didn't think the poor puppy could hold it much longer.
The dog leaped out of the car and ran to the closest tree. Except once he was done, he didn't come back. Instead, he went further into the woods and began barking. Annoyed, the male owner went to fetch him. He grabbed his collar but not before noticing the corpse lying in the low bushes. He took his cell out and called 9-1-1 hoping to get a signal.
The police arrived twenty minutes later, and after taking the man's deposition, they let him go. They searched the body, a white male in his early fifties who died of a blow to the back of the head.
"Call the FBI in Detroit," said the officer to his assistant. "We have another dead trucker. Same M.O., but that one is fresh and hasn't been reported missing yet."
State wide, there had been eleven truckers reported missing in the last seven weeks, and so far five had been found murdered, six were unaccounted for, and none of the eleven trucks had been located yet. The police had turned the case to the FBI after the fourth incident and was more than happy to let the Feds deal with it.
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Choices & Hasty Decisions (Sue Thomas FBEye)
FanfictionHeartbreaking choices led many people to take hasty decisions.