The Last Christmas On Earth

"It's been ten minutes since I sent you the radio signal, where the hell are you? As soon as they will finish praying I will have them all on and I can guarantee you they are really ugly and bad!"

"Quiet Indy, all this sand caused me a problem with the carburetor, but I solved it. You'll see me coming sooner than you think," a distorted voice answered.

"I really hope you're telling the truth ..."

When their prayers were over, the marauders carefully rolled their carpets and began to descend unhurriedly from the dunes, "the prey" was alone and unarmed and with no way out, so there was no reason to pick up the pace. But after a few moments, a deafening noise made them turn in unison as in choreography. Right after they all were with their faces sunk in the hot sand and with their hands covering their heads, in order to protect it. The Dune Buggy, suddenly sprung up behind them, climbed skidding to the top of the dune and from there jumped like from a trampoline, flew over them a few inches above their backs and fell a few meters ahead, skipping a couple of times and risking to overturn, but the pilot regained control and accelerated. The marauders stood up and began to descend the dune in leaps, spitting and crying out like crazy, they wanted to run but could not, because their legs were sunk in the sand almost to their knees.

"It's unbelievable, you really did it! Harrison Ford would die of envy," the Dune Buggy driver commented, stopping in front of Bryan.

"It's not the time for congrats, in case you haven't notice yet those guys you almost ran over, they just braced their Kalashnikovs," he said nervously.

"Then it's better to load up and leave quickly," said the pilot, jumping down from the vehicle to help him lift the trunk. The bullets began to whistle a few meters from them. At first, the raiders simply wanted to force them to stop, because according to their code of honor when you kill a man you have to be close enough to look him in the eye. The two hoisted the trunk and began to secure it to the roll bar with a rope. The marauders had realized that they would never reach them in time and began to shoot them closer and more intensely, aiming at the tires of the vehicle. Bryan and the pilot jumped aboard, finished fixing the trunk and were ready to flee.

"Please, Sahib, don't leave me in their hands ... I have four wives and seven children, what will happen to them?" Abdul pleaded, kneeling. A real hail of bullets whistled a few centimeters far from them, one of which hit the oil lamp in the tent and fire broke out everywhere. A great black smoke momentarily hid the fugitives from the sight of the marauders, who for the anger began to shoot blindly as they quickly and dangerously got closer and closer. Bryan glanced at the pilot.

"It is your choice, but it is still a guide and could be useful to us" proposed him.

"The scimitar and the mobile phone leave them here though," Bryan pointed out, nodding to him to jump aboard.

At that moment there was a metallic bump and one of the diving tanks exploded in a thunderous roar. The shockwave caused the Dune Buggy to leap up in the air.

"Come on, jump on!" Ordered the pilot to Abdul, but now he was lying on the ground with his eyes fixed on the sky and he was gasping.

"They hit him! Come on, we can't do anything for him anymore," Bryan shouted at the pilot, patting him on his shoulder.

Following the procedure Dr. Parker had recommended to her by phone, Helen carefully washed her finger with a block of antibacterial soap and placed it in front of the fan to dry it, avoiding painful rubbing. After some hesitation, she finally found the courage to spray the disinfectant on the sore and immediately swore repeatedly hopping on her toes because the burning was tremendous; she waited a few moments and brushed the last two phalanges with an herbal calendula ointment from the refreshing effect, which gave her immediate relief. Stevenson entered as she applied the plaster to fix the linen bandage with which she had wrapped it. "Still struggling with that finger?" He asked her, almost thoughtfully.

"That's right."

"How are you?"

"Not very well, apparently," she replied, grinding her teeth due to an unexpected and painful stab like a knife one, forcing herself up, she told herself that maybe it hurt so much because the miraculous ointment had already begun to take effect. "But didn't you say you'd come tomorrow?" She asked the Coroner, thinking back to their last conversation.

"It's true, but I annoyed so much those who work to the analysis lab that they gave me the report earlier than expected. They owed me a favor, so I sat down there last night and they worked until late night because they knew they had no alternative, if they wanted me to get off my feet," he explained, throwing the report on the table. Helen looked hopefully at it, but Stevenson shook his head.

"... nothing?" Asked Helen. "Nothing of nothing of a damned thing," Stevenson confirmed, then sat down in a disheveled pose and folded his hands on his stomach.

"So to date, we are unable to establish the causes of their deaths?"

"Absolutely not!"

"And what will I tell their relatives when they'll come here?"

"I don't know, if I were in your place I'd burn the car with the corpses in it and come up with a different version of the story to feed the journalists."

"You're kidding, aren't you?"

"Such a case can only lead to trouble," he insisted disenchanted.

"I don't understand how you can be so cynical," Helen murmured.

"Believe it or not I'm saying it for your own good. Those are gone now and at this point how it happened doesn't matter. What really matters is that fighting windmills often end up getting us in trouble up to our necks. Knowing the cause of death would not help you bring them back to life, nor to find any responsible ... listen to me, try to get rid of this case as soon as possible, in one way or another. There are too many off-key notes in this story."

Helen looked thoughtful and began to fiddle with the paperweight because in her heart she knew that Stevenson had said something true: that story couldn't have lead to other than trouble.

"Don't you read the report?" He urged, interrupting her thoughts.

"And what for? There will certainly be written" negative ... negative ... negative ... "Helen replied, and he nodded. "At this point, I don't even understand why you are here, a phone call would have been enough."

"I want to see your mummies."

"For what purpose?"

"Simple professional curiosity, something like this has never happened to me in so many years. I also brought the camera and the equipment necessary to take new samples," Stevenson explained, rekindling a faint hope in her. "New samples? Then you have some ideas!" She exclaimed confidently.

"No idea, but if what you told me is true, maybe some scholars of different alternative disciplines could help us out. Those not approved, so to speak. Maybe we could even make some sensational discovery ... are we going?" He proposed without putting the usual bit of sarcasm in his voice.

"If it pleases you ..." she replied, shrugging.

It was a long time since Luke Mc January's met the man who had hired him. He had never phoned him and as far as he knew he could even have died due to some typical old age ailment, like a heart attack or pneumonia. But for all that time someone had worked hard to ensure that his Visa wouldn't be blocked and this comforted him. Luke turned on the direction indicator to enter a gas station and the attendant took his eyes off the book to look him annoyed, for the last half hour it was the fourth time he began to read the third last page of the novel and it was the fourth time someone interrupted him ... and three times out of four they had only asked for information. He thought angrily that even on that day he would not be able to finish reading his book, so he closed it and threw it on the table with a blatant gesture, then took a sip of lemonade and walked with a listless step towards the car.

"Fill it up, please," Luke said, handing him the key of his Dodge Nitro's tank, then got out to stretch his legs a little.

"Fine," replied the attendant, opening the flap of the tank in a brisk manner.

"Is there a restroom I may use?" Luke asked him. The other pointed to a door next to the entrance to the store with a nod of his head and watched him walk away as he pumped diesel into the car. Tall and thin, dressed in a pair of tight black leather trousers and a raincoat also in very fine black leather, Luke reminded the attendant of the protagonist of the novel he was vainly trying to finish reading. But the fact that man went around dressed like that, made him think that maybe he was a little tossed in the head. "This is the classic type that will never wear gym clothes," he said to himself. When Luke returned to the car the attendant was cleaning his windshield, a supply of a hundred dollars could always soften him up a bit.

"You've traveled a lot, huh?"

"What made you understand that ?"

"You've made a beautiful massacre of gnats."

"Indeed."

"Are you here for the Lobster's Festival?"

"Lobster's Festival?" Luke said curiously.

"Yes, it is an event that takes place every year at the marina and on the main streets of Rockland, it's a gigantic festival of the lobster. It doesn't have anything exceptional, but if you aren't busy yet I suggest you not to miss it, at least it is very original."

"It smells good, it seems more a summer festival ..." Luke considered.

"In fact, the event usually takes place in the first days of August, but this year the Hurricane Sandra has put the sticks in the wheel to the organizers and so the festival will begin in a few days."

"Actually, I'm traveling for pleasure, so if you tell me it's really worth it, I might even decide to stay until then. After all, this place seems quiet and welcoming to me," Mc January explained to him, handing him a one-hundred-dollar bill, then he sat down in the driver's seat.

"I wouldn't call it very quiet lately," replied the attendant looking out the window to hand the rest over.

"... What do you mean?"

"Just in the last two days so many things have happened ..." he said, cursing himself immediately afterward. That sentence could have opened another conversation and he had no desire to chat, he just wanted to sit back and finish reading those last three damn pages. "Anyway, if you decide to stay, you'll see it for yourself, I don't want to ruin it," he said shortly. He had been sufficiently polite, had enough conversation and now was anxious to send him away to return to his book.

He turned to go and lower the windshield wipers so that he could leave, but for a long moment, he stared bewildered at the picture of the woman hanging from the lowered sun visor. Luke noticed it and hastened to pull it up, then the two peered at each other for an infinite moment.

It was the typical dead moment when one would like to ask a question, but at the same time he fears a question from the other, so neither of them makes the first move to not open things up.

"Can you recommend a good Motel?" Luke asked to break the awkward silence.

"Go ahead for five or six miles and you'll see the Spring sign. It's clean and well equipped, the food is good and its prices are honest."

"Well, thanks for everything. See you soon," Luke greeted him, shifting the gear. The attendant answered with an awkward hand gesture.

"... I know that I am a pain in the ass, a cynic and that I have a bad temper and I recognize that if you have organized all this to make me a joke I probably deserved it" the Coroner mumbled, "but I guarantee you that it is not funny at all. To get the reports and come here as soon as possible I had to raise hell, I antagonized the staff of the whole laboratory of analysis," he added, while Helen stared in shock at the empty beds she had taken from the cold room.

On the metal floors, there were only a few hairs and a few shreds of skin left, and she wasn't even sure that they had belonged to the bodies of those two or even to those who had occupied those beds before them.

"Come on, where did you hide the bodies?" Stevenson asked, pulling out all the compartments from the cold room one after the other, but he found them all empty. "Have you already sent them to their relatives?" He went on, rummaging through the desk drawers, looking for documents attesting to the transfer. Helen gave him an expressionless look, then put her hands to her face, bowing her head and then Stevenson calmed down.

"Do you realize that two bodies have disappeared here?" He asked good-naturedly. "What are you going to do?" He insisted after a few moments, but Helen remained barricaded behind a wall of silence. Then the Coroner sat down at his desk and pulled his packaged sandwich out of his leather briefcase, always keeping one of it for every eventuality because he became even more ravenous when he was nervous. He began to unwrap it and the noise of the tin foil attracted the attention of Helen, who finally uncovered her eyes and surprised him with his hands fixed on the sandwich and his open mouth ready to bite it. He froze.

"I ... I ... oh, dam nit!" he exclaimed. He threw the sandwich angrily into the garbage can, picked up his belongings and walked down the corridor to leave. At the front door, he met James, who was returning from his visit to Bob.

"Hey Stevie, where are you going so fast?" he greeted him.

"Go to hell!" Replied the Coroner pulling straight on his way.

It took Luke Mc January less than a minute to realize that the chirping lady who ran the Spring, a beautiful woman in her fifties named Sally, was the gas station attendant's wife. He booked the room until the end of the Lobster's Festival and exchanged a few chats with the lady, studied the map of the area hanging in the small hall to put the focal points well in his mind and finally went inside of the room. He found it small but welcoming, the door was half armored and the windows had double glazing; furthermore, he was satisfied that the furniture included the two things he needed the most, a desk and a bar fridge. He opened it to check the contents and found that in the freezer compartment there were even ready-made ice cubes, then he took from the travel bag his inseparable shaker and the ingredients necessary to prepare his habitual drink, the devastating and horrible mixture he had named "L.M.J.". Between a sip and the other, he unpacked the few bags he had with him and arranged them with meticulous care in the wardrobe and in the chest of drawers. Once the unpacking operations were completed, he put his precious briefcase under the bed and sat at the desk to update his logbook. When he finished he closed the notebook and looked at the phone, because like every time he arrived in a new place he was tempted to make a few calls, but like every time he told himself too much time had passed since he showed up, and give up the idea. He lay down on the bed to finish his L.M.J. and thought back pleased about the reaction the gas attendant had when he saw the photograph hanging from the sun visor: that was the umpteenth confirmation to his theory that the old trick of arousing curiosity in the interlocutor always works and that, moreover, it is much healthier than going around asking direct questions. He had learned it at his own experience that time when, by asking too much, he had hit someone's susceptibility and received very annoying answers. Instead, he had just thrown his bait and now he knew that sooner or later some fish would take it, it was just a matter of time. Luke then judged the fact that the attendant had sent him to his wife's Motel had been another stroke of luck, because if you know how to take them the right way, women can be very talkative. He told himself that he had to walk on eggshells because he had been already disappointed several times, but the attendant gave him the impression he knew the person depicted in the picture very well. It could also be only a resemblance, but contrary to his initial expectations there were instead good chances this time he had definitely hit the mark. Or at least that he went very close. He smiled and narrowed his eyes to rest a little; later he would have gone for a pizza and a beer in the village pub, because often in those places it is enough to know how to listen to rumor to be able to capture important information.

For the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon, Helen and James had fruitlessly stuck looking for an idea, a logical thread, a clue.

"Just yesterday, Stevenson had told me jokingly, but it seems to me to be right in the middle of an episode of X Files ..." Helen murmured suddenly demoralized.

"The only thing I'm sure of is that fortunately, you weren't here last night, everything else counts very little for me..." James answered seriously, and she nodded gravely. He sensed how deeply she was suffering and felt the impulse to embrace her, but after the incident of the night before he was not sure she wanted that too. And then, shortly afterward all the agents would have returned, if someone had caught them in an equivocal attitude they would have added complications to the problems.

"What can we do?" Helen asked in a faint voice.

"I swear I wish I knew," he replied, disheartened.

"Perhaps it would really be appropriate to call the Bureau, what do you think?" She then proposed judging that they had already run out of gas. James looked out the window and found himself frustrated.

If they haven't had all those problems it would have been a wonderful sunny day, one of those that at the end of the shift you take your family and load them in the car driving straight to the sea to take a nice bath, so much for December. And then to eat a sumptuous pizza. He snorted indecisively.

"I believe it would not be good. Obviously, something happened beyond our understanding, there are very powerful forces at play that we do not know and that act in the shadows. Stevenson is probably right, maybe the best thing would be to simply pretend that nothing ever happened ..." he suggested.

"You know it's not possible. Surely sooner or later this story will come up and then someone will come and ask us to give an explanation of what happened," Helen objected.

"On the contrary, it seems to me that whoever is behind all this is working to eliminate all evidence of what happened. Indeed, if we were to tell this story, that someone would do anything to make us ridicule or, worse, to put us in silence. Except for this mysterious box, which until proven otherwise could only be an empty box, we have nothing in hand. And, furthermore, by making this story known, we would be investigated for letting us swindle all the evidence in such a manner," James explained.

"And Harry? What if he saw something? If he speaks he could at least help us to clarify some things, after all on his bike and on the fishing rod there was the same dust."

James thought about his son's strange behavior and frowned.

"In this story, he must not get involved, whatever happened to him I want you to forget as soon as possible," he said.

"But there must be a connection! And then, honestly, I can't understand how he could not have suffered the deadly effects of contact with that stuff."

"Listen," he countered, changing his expression, "if there was a connection I don't know and I don't want to know.

I'm glad that despite behaving a little strangely, Harry is fine, and I just want him to quickly forget that experience. And then, even if we involve him and someone decides to set up an inquiry, the sheriff's son with Down syndrome would certainly not be a reliable witness. I repeat, I think the best thing is to pretend that nothing has ever happened."

"And what do we do with the people of the country?"

"Apparently no one saw or heard anything, so nobody knows exactly what happened. Soon the Festival will begin and everyone will think only and only about that, they are all waiting for the hordes of tourists that will arrive to make up for the economic damages produced by the hurricane Sandra. We will all forget this much sooner than you think."

"Yes, but there are always a few meddlings around."

"We will release a version, it will be enough to say that the case was not ours and that we passed it to another jurisdiction along with all the evidence."

"And old Bob?"

"Proud as he is, he will certainly not go around telling what happened to him, he doesn't want to look like a fool."

"What about the guys?"

"If they don't want to lose their jobs, they'll do better to don't say a word, if feds get here, the whole county police force would be wiped out and replaced within five minutes."

Helen wondered for a long time, tormenting the finger that in the meantime had removed the bandage, to make the skin breathe a little and allow the blood to circulate better. She gave a little more scratching and a small piece of the last fingertip, now completely lifeless, broke away and fell to the ground without causing her any pain. James heard the faint noise produced by the little piece that touched the floor and looked at her with his eyes wide open, on the other hand, she spoke again as if she was completely indifferent to that fact as if losing pieces was the most normal thing in the world.

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