The wipers beat steadily against the drizzle as Elijah's G-Wagon rolled back onto the dark stretch of county asphalt. The rain had softened into mist, and the sky above Crestwood's northern rim was pale with a bruised shade of gray.
He drove without aim for several minutes, the road signs blurring past. The weight of what lay in the back pressed into his mind heavier than gravity itself. Dalton Wielder's lifeless form, wrapped in the tarp he'd found in the trunk, shifted slightly with each bump in the road.
Elijah's jaw tightened. Every few seconds, his eyes flicked toward the rear-view mirror, half-expecting the body to sit up.
No cameras. No trace. No witnesses.
He repeated the words like a prayer, though the anxiety in his veins told him prayers weren't enough. The highways connecting North and South Crestwood were lined with automated checkpoints—government surveillance cameras every few miles, tracking number plates and heat signatures. It was impossible to drive between towns without being logged.
He couldn't afford that. Not tonight.
Elijah's fingers tightened around the steering wheel as a plan formed. It wasn't elegant, but it would have to do. He reached for the passenger seat, dragging over a battered laptop that hummed to life the moment he flipped it open. The glow of the screen cast thin blue lines across his face, reflecting off the rain-specked glass.
A boot sequence flashed. Then a black command console opened—lines of code crawling like fireflies across the display.
Elijah wasn't new to this. Before the nightmares, before the Warden, he had written software for Crestwood's traffic management department. He'd built parts of the very surveillance grid that watched over the roads now.
He remembered the backdoors he'd left—the ones no one else knew about.
His fingers began to move faster, tapping commands that tunneled deep into the county's closed network. The laptop whirred, showing flickers of multiple camera feeds across the highway. Each window showed timestamped footage of rain-soaked asphalt, cars passing, blurred lights reflected off puddles.
Elijah's voice came out in a murmur.
"Alright… north junction, camera zero-seven, overwrite feed."
He typed in the access key—an old one that should've expired years ago. The cursor blinked, paused, then green text appeared:
ACCESS GRANTED
"Still works," Elijah whispered, a faint, humorless grin on his lips.
He connected the feed to a storage folder and dragged in a looped recording—footage from last Thursday, 11:23 p.m., of the same stretch of highway when nothing unusual had occurred.
The script compiled automatically, embedding the static timestamp. In seconds, the system began playing that old video back into the live network.
To anyone monitoring the cameras, Elijah's G-Wagon would never appear. The screens would show only the ghost of an empty road, replayed again and again.
He leaned back for a second, exhaling. The tension didn't leave him, but it loosened enough for him to notice his shaking hands.
---
Surveillance Command Center – Crestwood County HQ
The camera feeds played quietly across a grid of twelve monitors. The control room was dim, lit mostly by the glow of screens and the faint hum of a vending machine near the door.
Two men occupied the night shift.
The first, Henry, was round in the middle and perpetually glued to a mug of cappuccino that smelled more like melted sugar than coffee. The second, Milo, was shorter, wiry, and sporting a patchy beard that looked like it had lost an argument with his razor.
Henry took another loud sip, his eyes barely on the monitors. "Man, you see the circus downtown today? Whole department's a damn joke now."
Milo chuckled, spinning his chair slightly. "Oh, you mean that VTube clip? The one with the new detective guy?"
He pulled out his phone, thumb swiping over the screen. "Here, check this out again."
On the display, a live stream played in vertical format—a scene in front of Crestwood's station. A young lieutenant detective stood stiff in his uniform: navy trench coat with silver-lined lapels, badge crooked, and the cap sitting slightly askew. He looked every bit the rookie trying too hard to look important.
A granny in the crowd raised her purse and whacked him across the shoulder while shouting something about "fake arrests." The crowd had recorded it. The internet had done the rest.
Milo was grinning. "Wait—this is the best part. Look what someone edited in."
The video looped again, except this time, the detective's face had been altered with clown paint. Each hit from the granny's purse came with a squeaky honk sound effect.
#ClownCop #NewLieutenantFails trended across the bottom in bright yellow text.
Henry nearly choked on his drink. "Oh, hell no—someone added the broom version!"
The clip changed again—the granny now wielding a broomstick twice her height, animated with cartoon fire trailing behind it. The broom came down with a comically loud "BONK!" while confetti exploded across the screen.
The chat feed scrolled nonstop.
> User_56: "Seriously… where's this town heading?"
User_Rita: "Tell me about it 😭😭"
Milo was wheezing now, tears in his eyes. "They even added circus music, bro! Look at his face!"
Henry slapped his knee. "What a clown show!"
Milo, barely able to breathe from laughter, echoed, "Tell me about it!"
Their laughter echoed through the room, drowning the quiet hum of the equipment.
That was when the monitor feed in front of them flickered.
For a second, the footage of Highway North-7 glitched—static lacing across the image. The timestamp skipped backward by three seconds. Then again. And again.
To any trained observer, it was obvious—a looping feed replacing a live one. But Henry and Milo were too busy wiping tears from their eyes.
The glitch settled, the road now showing a harmless sedan passing by, identical to what had played moments ago. The system stabilized.
Henry took another sip. "Man, I love this job. Easy pay, free internet, and memes."
Milo grinned. "As long as no psychos come driving through, right?"
Neither noticed that the ghost feed was now running seamlessly, hiding the one vehicle that mattered most.
---
Back on the Road
Elijah closed the laptop lid gently, his reflection fading from the screen. Outside, the rain had stopped altogether. The only sound was the low hum of the engine and the occasional crackle of gravel under his tires.
"Nowhere's safe," he murmured. "Except where no one looks."
He drove past the last visible junction before the forest edge. Beyond this point, the surveillance grid thinned—no cameras, no checkpoints, just the old backroads leading into the timber reserve that bordered the county's edge.
Moonlight spilled faintly between the trees, painting the path silver.
After several minutes of careful driving, he reached a small clearing beside a stream, overgrown with grass and half-collapsed wooden fencing. It was a forgotten stretch of Crestwood's maintenance land—one that hadn't seen a county inspector in years.
Elijah stopped the car. The headlights cut through the mist, landing on the gnarled trunks ahead.
He stepped out, feeling the cold air slap his face. The metallic scent of the rain mixed with something heavier—earth, rot, and guilt.
When he opened the back of the G-Wagon, the tarp shifted.
Dalton Wielder's pale face peeked from beneath the folds, the eyes mercifully closed but still somehow aware. Elijah hesitated only a second before he forced himself to drag the body out. It landed with a dull thump against the wet ground.
The shovel was in the trunk too, rusted at the edges but sturdy enough. He gripped it tight, thrusting it into the soil.
Each scoop came with a grunt. The wet dirt clung to his boots, the sound muffled by the steady chirp of night insects. His breath steamed in the cold.
It took longer than he wanted. When the hole was deep enough, he stared at it for a moment, chest rising and falling rapidly.
"I didn't kill you," he muttered under his breath, though even he didn't sound convinced. "You were just… there."
He lowered the body in, the tarp rustling softly. A strange calm overtook him as he began to shovel the dirt back over. The rain had softened the ground, making it easy to cover the evidence—easy enough for it to look as though the earth had never been disturbed.
When it was done, Elijah stood there for a long time, staring at the mound. His expression was unreadable.
The trees swayed. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted.
He pressed his hand briefly against the wet soil, as though trying to confirm this was real—that Wielder truly lay beneath it. Then he turned back to his vehicle, sliding into the driver's seat with a slow exhale.
The engine roared to life, headlights flicking back on. As he drove away, the forest swallowed the small clearing behind him, leaving only the faint tracks of his tires in the mud.
For a moment, the world seemed normal again.
But the reflection in his rear-view mirror showed something strange—a faint shimmer, static reddish hue in his left eye
, running briefly over his own face. It was gone as soon as it appeared.
Elijah didn't notice.
He simply kept driving, deeper into the night.