Story code: ST-000138
Part 4: The Price of Order
Dale stared down at his own hand. His knuckles were bone-white, clamped around Toby’s blue uniform sleeve like a vice. The junior inspector was barely breathing, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and dawning comprehension. The red laser of Toby’s scanner painted a bright, damning line across Dale’s chest, a silent alarm demanding a choice.
“You’re harboring,” Toby whispered again, the accusation slicing clearly through the heavy, dusty air of the facility. “Dale, that’s a federal charge. That’s twenty years.”
Twenty years. The phrase hit Dale like a physical blow, breaking the feverish spell that had taken hold of his mind. He looked down at the cardboard box, at Arthur Vance’s name printed in the smeared black transit grease. He thought of the chemo pills sitting innocently in their silver foil blisters. To save Arthur Vance, Dale would have to completely destroy his own life. He would lose his twenty-year federal pension, his unblemished law enforcement record, his home, and his standing on the school board. He would be stripped of the very authority that defined his entire existence. He would go to a federal penitentiary.
Dale’s chest heaved. The righteous fire that had fueled him at the civic center podium just twenty-four hours ago abruptly extinguished, leaving behind a cold, pathetic cowardice. He was not a martyr. He was just a bureaucrat who loved his safety and his pension far more than he valued a stranger’s life.
Slowly, his trembling fingers uncurled. He released Toby’s wrist, his arm dropping limply to his side in total surrender to the rules.
Toby stumbled back a half-step, rubbing his arm, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He looked at Dale, waiting for an explanation, for an excuse, for anything that made sense of the older agent’s momentary madness.
“Bag it,” Dale said. His voice was a hollow, defeated rasp, entirely devoid of its usual commanding resonance.
“Dale…”
“I said bag it, Toby,” Dale repeated, staring blankly at the brushed steel table. “It’s unapproved contraband. Follow the bio-hazard protocol.”
Toby didn’t argue. He moved with jerky, nervous efficiency, grabbing the heavy yellow plastic bag. Dale stood completely frozen, forcing himself to watch as Toby scooped up the silver blister packs. The opaque, life-sustaining capsules slid into the yellow hazard bag with a terrible, dry rattling sound. Toby grabbed the half-taped cardboard box bearing Vance’s desperate final hope, shoving it in alongside the pills. He pulled the thick plastic zip-tie, pulling it taut until the tamper-proof chemical lock engaged with a loud, irreversible snap.
Toby tossed the heavy yellow bag into the red destruction bin, slamming the lid shut and engaging the heavy steel padlock.
“I’ll… I’ll take this to the incinerator loading dock,” Toby muttered, refusing to meet Dale’s eyes. He pushed the squeaking cart away, leaving Dale standing alone in the deafening roar of the sorting facility, watching the last of Arthur Vance’s time on earth roll away into the flames.
Three days later, the afternoon sun glared off the windshield of Dale’s SUV as he idled at a stop sign on the edge of the newly drawn school district boundary. Dale’s fingers tapped a nervous, erratic rhythm against the leather steering wheel. He had driven out of his way to pass Arthur Vance’s street, driven by a morbid, sickening compulsion he couldn’t entirely articulate.
He turned the corner, his tires crunching over fallen autumn leaves. Two houses down, just past the municipal sign that marked the official end of the exclusive district, sat Vance’s small, single-story home.
A battered green sedan was parked in the driveway, its trunk wide open. Dale took his foot off the accelerator, letting his SUV coast to a crawl.
Arthur Vance emerged from the front door. He looked significantly worse than he had at the school board meeting. His skin possessed a waxy, translucent pallor, and his clothes hung off his gaunt frame like rags on a scarecrow. He was moving with agonizing slowness, his breathing visibly labored as he carried a single, taped cardboard moving box down the concrete steps. Without the district insurance exception, and with his black-market medication destroyed in a federal fire, Vance had no options left. He was packing up what little time he had remaining.
“Hey! Dale!”
Dale flinched, slamming his foot on the brake. Across the street from Vance’s house, a man was mowing his lawn. It was Greg, one of the loudest supporters of Dale’s faction at the civic center. Greg killed the mower’s engine and jogged over to the curb, a wide, triumphant grin plastered across his sweaty face.
“Great to see you, man!” Greg shouted, leaning cheerfully toward Dale’s open window. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder toward Vance’s driveway. “Looks like our little zoning victory worked, huh? The freeloaders are already packing it up. You really saved the district’s budget, Dale. We owe you a beer.”
Greg offered a celebratory thumbs-up, his eyes bright with ignorant, tribal satisfaction.
Dale looked past Greg’s cheering face, his gaze locking onto Vance. The frail teacher paused by the open trunk, leaning heavily against the bumper as a severe coughing fit racked his fragile body. He looked entirely broken.
“Yeah,” Dale whispered, his throat constricting so tightly he could barely force the single word out. “We won.”
He rolled the window up, cutting off Greg’s cheerful chatter, and pressed the accelerator. As the SUV pulled away, Dale stared straight ahead at the empty road, a cold, sickening stone of guilt settling permanently in his chest.