Haaawww! The seagulls screamed, causing Phillip to jump out of his hypnotic state as he stared into the fog covered ocean while standing on the beach.  The early morning air was crisp.  The aroma of salt water and seaweed filled his nostrils as he took a deep breath. Ordinarily this would be the perfect setting for a morning run.  A time to reflect on his next steps in life.  This morning was different.  He had a mission.  He continued to stare out into the fog intensely.  His palms were sweaty as he continued to make fists as if he were grabbing at invisible stress balls.  Once the birds cleared, he focused past the slight breeze whistling past his face.  Past the waves crashing on the narrow strip of sand in which he stood while in his sneakers.  The minutes seemed to be hours as he continually checked his watch in between long glances into the mist.

          His ears perked.  In the distance he could faintly hear the buzz of electric propellers.  The sound became more intense as he attempted to look into the distance.  Finally, he saw them.  Six large drones carrying aluminum boxes appeared out of the fog.  He quickly waved his hands in the air and pointed in the direction of his Car, hoping the camera’s mounted on the front of the drones could see him.  He continued to wave and point as he frantically climbed the small rock wall and up to the dirt road where his 2010 beaten up Corolla was parked. 

          The six drones followed him up to his car.  The propellers powered down as they landed in a small dirt opening next to him.  Small clicks sounded as they released the grip on the metal boxes.  The propellers powered back up and lifted into the air.  Instead of the drones leaving immediately to go back from where they came, they circled Phillip with the front mounted cameras all facing him.  An icy chill went up his spine.  He knew what it meant.  He knew that a lot was riding on him.  Failing to do his part was not an option and this jester of the drones was a reminder of that.  The drones tilted back in the direction of the ocean, almost clipping him in the head as they left and disappeared back into the fog.

          Phillip clenched his jaw and fists as he forced himself back into focus.  Turning toward his car, he opened the back doors and trunk.  He quickly ran over to the aluminum boxes.  They were perfectly square and about a foot in length.  He grabbed one and quickly threw it in the trunk.  They weighed about twenty to thirty pounds, each one slightly different in weight.  He continued to run back and forth, loading up his car with three in the trunk and three in the back seat.  It was at least twenty miles away from anyone else, yet he felt as if he was being watched.  After loading up his car, he threw blankets over the boxes and closed the trunk and back doors.  Jumping in, he turned the ignition on and took off.  As he drove off, he took a deep breath to calm himself.  It was a twelve hour drive across Mexico to the Rio Grande at the U.S. border and he didn’t want to be on edge the whole drive.

          Turning off of the dirt road and onto the main road, the adrenaline coursing through his body decreased.  He pushed the button on his radio to help the cause.  No sound.  He pushed it again.  Nothing.  He slammed his palm on the controls in frustration.  Taking a deep breath, he dove into deep thought.  After countless runs transporting various cargo, this was his last trip.  This was his big pay day.  But at what cost?  How many hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions of lives will pay the price.  His foot unconsciously started to lift off the gas as he dove into that thought.  Looking out the window he noticed that he was slowing down.

          “No!” he shouted out loud as he sped up again.  Shaking his head, he pushed the consequences of his trip out of his mind.  It’s his turn.  The world owes him.  All his life he struggled, living in poverty.  His mother sacrificed everything for him, and where did that leave her?  Sick in bed while the world could care less about her.  Why should he care about anyone else.  This time tomorrow they will be far from any conflict.  Money will no longer be an issue.  He can do anything he wants.  Visions of self-fulfilling desires filled his mind while pushing out any empathy for the victims of the cargo he was carrying.  After a few hours of daydreaming, he forced the thought of his cargo out of his mind.

          After a long journey, he finally arrived at his destination.  He pulled onto a dirt road and made his way to the meet point where boats were waiting for him.  The sun was setting and the light was fading fast.  Through the window he could see two men with rifles flung over their shoulders jumping off of one of two small boats into the ankle high water.  The fronts of the boats were resting on the muddy banks of the river, keeping them from floating away.  One of the boats was already full of drugs bundled and wrapped in green cubes.  The sight of the cargo was too familiar from his previous jobs.  He reached into the glove box of the car, pulled out an envelope full of cash, and got out.  By the time he stepped out, the two men were already at his car, knocking on the trunk for Phillip to open it.  He got out and opened the trunk and back doors.

          The two men quickly went to work unloading his car of the boxes and placing them in the second boat.  The stench of river water as well as cigarettes engulfed them.  Phillip could tell that they haven’t showered in days.  In the past they at least controlled their odor from the search dogs, but now a days, they didn’t even care.  One of the men tossed the last box onto the boat and it landed with a loud thud.

          “Careful with that!  Do you want to kill us all!”  Phillip yelled.  The man turned to Phillip and raised his rifle to him.  He looked at Phillip with his soulless eyes.  It was almost as if he were dead inside.  The man walked up to him, almost touching the barrel of the rifle to his chest, keeping his dead stare into his eyes.  Phillip had to hold his breath as the stench of the man invaded his nostrils.  The man grabbed the envelope from Phillip, looked inside, then gave a deathly smile, showing his yellow chunky teeth as he turned and walked back to the boat.

          Shaking his head in disgust, Phillip reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone as he walked closer to the boat.  As he took a picture of the six boxes successfully loaded in the boat, he noticed that a woman and a little girl were hunched down next to a pile of drugs in the rear of the boat.  They were dressed in rags and were both heavily bruised.  The woman looked up at Phillip, clenching the little girl in her arms.  A little bit of humanity crept back into him as they looked at each other.  His face cringed.  He felt bad for them, yet he knew that there was nothing he could do to help them.

          A glimmer of hope entered his thoughts.  Perhaps the border patrol would catch them.  That glimmer was quickly extinguished with the realization that it would never happen.  All of this was timed and coordinated.  Right now, thousands of migrants were flooding the border.  All available agents were there.  He also knew that there were probably a dozen other boats at different locations.  As for the agents, there was no way they would have received reinforcements.  Nobody wanted to join the border patrol, especially after the Americans accused them of misconduct for just doing their job.  It was a perfect setup for jobs like this.  Hope of their rescue was nonexistent.

          Phillip looked down to the floor, defeated.  His whole life was like that.  Why try.  He forced the little bit of humanity out and turned away from them, pretending that they didn’t exist.  Walking back to his car he tapped at his phone and sent the picture that he took with the text, “It is done.”  As he reached for the handle of his car door, he could make out a faint reflection of himself in the window visible from the almost extinguished sunlight.  To him he looked just like the man that had a barrel to his chest.  Soulless.  As he got in and sat back in his seat, he received a text back.  It said, “Funds transferred.  Disappear.  We better not hear about you again.”

          As he turned the car on, he felt disgusted.  For a brief moment, the reality of what he did hit him.  Gripping the steering wheel as tight as he could, he squeezed his eyes shut as he attempted to purge his mind of the thought.  After banging his fist on the dash, he looked over at his phone.  Opening a banking app, he checked his account.  Once he saw the amount now in it, the thought that he wished to escape left him.  A large grin filled his face and a sense of hope of the future for the first time in his life engulfed him.  He put the car in drive and got back on the main road.

          A few miles down the road his phone buzzed.  He received another text from an unknown number.  With one hand, he glanced at the message which said, “Might as well have taken payment in silver pieces.”  His car swerved on the now dark, empty road as he read the text.  His heart skipped a beat as he tried to figure out what number it was.  He typed, “Who is this?”  The car accelerated as his mind went through the possibilities of who it could be.  Was his contact messing with him?  Was it law enforcement?  Did they know what he did?  Were they tracking him?

          His phone buzzed again.  As he read the text, his eyes widened in horror.  It said, “…and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak.”  Someone knew.  They were tracking him.  He quickly shut down his phone as he sped even faster down the road.  Paranoia struck him as he glanced at the lifeless, dark, and seemingly void desert around him.  Were those lights behind him?  No, just his imagination.  He needed to disappear.  Did they know about his bank account?  Did they know about his safe house?  Were they waiting for him?

          As thousands of thoughts raced through his mind, his phone turned back on by itself.  The glow of the screen caught his eye as he swerved in and out of his lane.  He picked up the phone and briefly examined it.  Was it malfunctioning?  Just then dozens of pictures of bomb victims both dead and alive flashed quickly on the screen.  Without thinking, he quickly rolled down the window of his car and threw his phone outside.  He immediately regretted it.  All of his contacts were on that phone.  If the authorities found it, his contacts would kill him.  As he slammed on the brakes, his car came to a halt.  Closing his eyes, he took deep breaths as beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.  He had to focus.  One step at a time.  Slowly turning the car around, he turned on his high beams and made his way back to where he threw his phone out the window.

          He squinted his eyes as he drove slowly back, trying to find any sign of his phone.  As he drove his car started to struggle.  Normally he would be pulling just above one thousand rpms.  His engine was up to three thousand.  It was almost as if he was dragging something heavy.  As he traveled, the rpms crept up to four thousand, then five thousand.  Something was wrong, but he had to keep going.  He had to find that phone.

          “Pop!”  His front tire blew.  His eyebrows lifted as he struggled to get control and pulled off to the side of the road.  He looked outside of the windows of his car frantically to see if someone was there.  All he could see was desert and darkness.  He opened his front door and stumbled as he got out, falling on the edge of the asphalt.  Dusting himself off, he looked at his car.  Not only was the front tire flat, but the springs of his suspension was pressed all the way down, as if a giant weight was pushing down on top of the car.  “Pop! Pop! Pop!”  The other three tires blew.

          Phillip stumbled back and fell on his rear in the middle of the road.  His heart was racing.  What was causing this?  He could hear the metal of his car creek as if it were slowly getting pushed further down.  “Crash!”  The car suddenly was flattened as if an invisible giant stepped on it.  He screamed as a chill went up and down his spine.  Adrenaline in his body kicked in as he quickly got up and started running across the road, away from his now flattened car.  He ran as fast as he could to the other side of the road, then kept going into the dark, cold desert.  As he glanced behind him to see if anyone was following, he saw a Yucca tree get smashed into splinters by the invisible force.  His eyes widened and lost his balance, causing him to stumble and fall onto the dirt floor.

          Frantically he quickly got up and started running again.  The moment he looked forward, he stopped dead in his tracks.  Twenty feet ahead of him he saw a figure of a woman walking toward him.  He backed up as she approached.  She had long dark hair and was wearing a black jump suit with a belt around her waist.  Where did she come from?  Phillip turned around to run the other way but then froze.  Another figure approach him from the other side.  It was a man with a cowboy hat.  As the man got closer, Phillip noticed that the cowboy hat he was wearing was a police officer’s hat.  Despite his recent activities, he was relieved to see him.

          Phillip raised his hands in the air waving at the man in the hat as he walked towards him.  As he got closer to the man, Phillip noticed that the man had a gun in his hand.  He lifted it, pointing the barrel of the gun at Phillip.  As he noticed with darting eyes, Phillip gasped and stumbled backwards.  Before he fell on the ground again, the man shot him.  Phillip felt a surge of electricity flow through his body before he blacked out.

          Screams echoed in the background as Phillip struggled to open his eyes.  When he attempted to rub his eyes, he realized that both his hands were bound.  As he gained visibility, he realized his situation.  Lying on a hard metal table, his feet, hands, and forehead were strapped down.  Above him was a bright light shining directly on his face.  A strange aroma of burnt enamel, that which one would smell at a dentist office, filled the air.  The mostly empty room he was in was square and about thirty feet across.  Next to him was a small table filled with tools that he’d never seen before.  His breaths became shallow and fast as his heartbeat sped up.  That amplified when two figures appeared from behind him wearing white lab coats.  It was the man and the woman that he saw in the desert, but they were wearing surgical caps.  Both had a blank expression on their face as they stood in front of him, staring down at him.

          A mist filled the air, temporarily blurring his vision.  When it cleared, Phillips eyes widened in horror.  The man and the woman’s appearance changed.  They were now both pale, hairless, figures with no mouth, nose, eyebrows, or ears.  Just wide black eyes stared into his.  Phillip screamed.  One of the figures grabbed his throat with one hand, then shoved a tennis ball sized metal sphere in his mouth with the other hand.  A horrible metallic taste filled his mouth.  The other figure placed two small paddles against his arms, delivering immense pain throughout his body.  The figure did it over and over again.  Tears dripped down his cheeks.  They didn’t stop.  Finally, after what seemed to be hours to him, the first figure shoved rods up Phillips nose, causing his head to hurt beyond any migraine that he had ever felt until he blacked out from the pain.

          Phillip screamed as he woke up on the dirt floor.  The sun was beating down on his face.  He was lying on his stomach covered in dust.  As he sat up, he noticed that all of his muscles were sore.  He looked over his body for any cuts or marks.  Nothing was there that wasn’t there before.  His throat was dry.  He needed water.  He looked around to find that about one hundred yards away was a parking lot of a small diner.  Slowly, he picked himself up and dusted himself off.  As he approached he noticed that there was a police car in the parking lot.  A few spaces over were a small pickup truck with a tarp covering the bed.  Stumbling in the diner, he went over to the counter where there was a waitress with her back to him.  Sitting down on a stool he rose his hand and asked for a glass of water.  He placed his forehead on the bar as he tried to reflect what happened to him.  As he picked his head up to rub is eyes, a glass of water appeared in front of him.  He quickly grabbed it and pored it down his throat.  While he was drinking, he looked up to see a dark-haired waitress staring at him with an extremely puzzled look on her face.  He choked on his water and dropped the glass on the floor when he saw her face.  It was the woman from the desert.

          Phillip got up off his seat and stumbled backwards.  The waitress didn’t know what was wrong with him.  “Are you ok?  What’s wrong with you?”

          Phillip backed up until he was against the wall.  Fear engulfed him.  He looked around to search for something to protect him.  As he was looking, a police officer that was sitting at a nearby table approached him to see what was wrong.  Phillip jumped away from the police officer when he noticed that it was the same man that was in the desert as well.

           “What are you on young man!” the police officer shouted as he tried to calm Phillip down.

          As the officer attempted to calm him down, Phillip noticed the police officers’ gun and reached for it.  The officer noticed his attempt and quickly grappled Phillip and slammed him against the wall.  After restraining Phillip with handcuffs, the officer searched Phillip.  In one pocket he found a car key fab.  In the other pocket was a sheet of paper that appeared to have numbers on it.  Phillip was puzzled as to how those items got in his pocket.  As he glanced at the paper, he immediately recognized what those numbers were.  It was his bank account that had the recently transferred money in it.

          The police officer took Phillip outside and walked him to the back of the police car.  As they were walking, the officer pushed the fab to see which car it belonged to.  The truck with the tarp in the back beeped.  After securing Phillip in the back of the police car, the officer walked over to the truck.  He lifted the tarp and shook his head at what he saw.  Phillip’s jaw dropped when he saw the officer pull out a green bundle packed with drugs.  It was the same bundle that he saw in the boat last night.  Just like that, Phillip knew that the future that he tried to secure at the expense of others was destroyed.