Full Service

by Bruce Arthurs

About the Author: Bruce Arthurs has been writing occasional stories since 1975, with scattered publications in scattered venues over the years. In the 1990s he also edited two anthologies and wrote an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation ("Clues", 4th Season, 1991). After a long hiatus he began writing fiction again in late 2012 while recovering from a badly broken arm. Five new stories have been published since then, with several others accepted. One of those new stories, "Beks and the Second Note" (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, December 2016), was a Best Short Story finalist for the 2017 Derringer Short Mystery Fiction awards.

Excerpt

The Highway Patrol car raised a trail of dust from the worn asphalt road. No siren, no lights; no reason for them with no other vehicles visible. The Plymouth black-&-white sped on towards what had once been a town.

This road gets worse every time I come out here, Decker thought. He could feel each bump and crack the patrol vehicle drove over. He considered asking Anderson to slow the ’69 Fury’s speed, but this trip out to Hank’s place was personal and needed doing as quickly as possible. Decker and the rookie needed to get back and rejoin the search for Brill.

The dead town was as brown as the surrounding desert. The barren mountains to the southeast made a darker backdrop to the remains. The town had never been large, a few hundred residents at its peak, kept alive by the stream of traffic that had once passed along the highway. Bare concrete slabs showed where many of the buildings and homes had once stood. Except for one, the few buildings left standing barely merited the name. They were tinder-dry, bleached beige and gray by years of sun, spikes of bright sunlight showing through gaps in shrunken and twisted boards, only a few panes of glass still unbroken. The dust thrown up by the patrol car as it followed the neglected road towards the town added one more layer to the patina of years.

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