The Fish Have Human Eyes

My name is Dutch. I haul freight for a living.

But you wont see my rig parked at a Walmart loading dock, and I dont move consumer goods. I specialize in the kind of shadow contracts that most drivers wouldnt touch with a ten-foot pole.

Word around the depots is that Im hard to killthat I was born under a dark star and have enough grit to stare down whatever crawls out of the roadside ditches.

But this last job? The cargo was a truckload of live fish, and it damn near buried me.

These werent your average catch. They were massive, housed in custom-built black timber crates that looked more like caskets than shipping containers.

The creepiest part was the sealing protocol. Each lid had to be hammered shut with seven iron spikes, black as sin and thick as a finger.

Curiosity is a dangerous thing on the road, but it got the better of me. I pried a corner open for a peek.

Just one look. Thats all it took to make sure that for the rest of my life, the mere sight of open water makes my hands shake.

Because what was swimming in that box wasnt a fish. It was...

It was an open secret in the underground logistics circuit that the heir to the Vanderwalt fortune had a taste for fish.

Rumor had it the young patriarch consumed a dozen massive sturgeons every monthcreatures bigger than a grown man.

Hauling for the Vanderwalts used to be the golden tickethigh pay, premium routes. But in the last three months alone, seven veteran drivers had vanished or washed out.

When Russo, the owner of the logistics company, cornered me, he looked like hed been drinking swamp water. His face was a sickly shade of green.

"Dutch, Im telling you, this is wrong. Its unnatural," Russo hissed, wiping sweat from his forehead. "We watched them load the crates. They looked like fish. They moved like fish."

"The Vanderwalts have money to burn," I said, scrolling through the video file Russo had sent to my phone. "Why are they importing monster river monsters when they could be eating lobster on a yacht?"

On the screen, a driver I vaguely recognized was curled up on the asphalt, sobbing. His skin was pale as chalk. "Its not a fish!" he screamed at the person recording. "Its people! I saw legs!"

The camera panned to the overturned cargo. Sliding out of the splintered wood was a massive, glistening creature. It had scales, fins, and a tail.

"That thing has to be five feet long," I muttered, zooming in. "Growth hormones? Genetic splicing?"

"Rich people and their sick hobbies, who knows?" Russo looked miserable. "Supposedly its some rare import. Young Mr. Vanderwalt craves the... freshness."

I lit a cigarette and watched the driver on the screen breakdown, swearing hed never touch a steering wheel again. I knew then why Russo was begging me.

"Dutch, I need you to bail me out. Just two more runs. If you don't take this, the breach of contract fees will leave me without a pot to piss in."

Russo looked like he was about to get on his knees. The Vanderwalts weren't just rich; they were powerful in ways that made the local police look the other way. I didn't want their karma rubbing off on me.

"You've been pulling too many cursed tickets lately, Russo," I said, exhaling smoke. "I drive for a paycheck, not a death wish. The Vanderwalt water is too deep. People drown in it."

Russo sighed, the lines on his face deepening. "Its the holidays, Dutch. The boys need the bonus. I warned them about the risks, but the Vanderwalt money... it made them blind. We would have folded three months ago without it."

Russo and I went way back. When I was at rock bottom, he was the one who fronted me the cash for repairs.

"Look," Russo pressed, seeing me hesitate. "Miller just got diagnosed with kidney failure. Lewis's wife is expecting their second kid. Theyre desperate."

He leaned in, voice dropping. "Im all in on this. You do this run, I dont take a cut. Every cent goes to you. If something happens... thats on me. I wont hold you to it."

He had me cornered. I couldn't walk away when he put it like that.

"Fine," I crushed the cigarette under my boot. "Tell them I'm coming. But don't start loading until I get there."

The pickup point was a secluded hatchery deep in the marshlands, a private facility leased entirely by the Vanderwalts.

It was a twenty-hour haul.

When I rolled into the yard the next day, the massive crates were already staged. Because it was a "short" run relative to cross-country, the creatures were packed in thick, transparent industrial bags pumped full of oxygen before being crated.

The size of them was unsettling. It took three burly dockworkers heaving in unison just to lift one bag into a box.

And the boxes... why black timber? Why not fiberglass tanks or insulated coolers?

lined up on the gravel, the vertical crates looked exactly like rows of coffins waiting for a mass burial.

"Dutch."

Russo had saddled me with a rookie named Mikey. The kid looked like hed been drafted for war.

"Dutch, stay back," Mikey whispered, scrunching his nose. "The smell... it burns your eyes even through the plastic."

He wasn't wrong. As I got closer, a stench hit mepungent, metallic, and rotting.

Live fish smell like algae and river mud. They don't smell like a week-old corpse.

My gut tightened, but I walked up to the line. Before the workers could nail the lid shut, I leaned in.

The creature inside hovered in the water, suspended. Its mouth gaped open and shut rhythmically. Its belly was a sickly, translucent white, contrasting with scales that shimmered a bruised grey-blue. The meat beneath looked dense.

I checked the manifest. They were alive.

Then the hammering started.

The workers weren't just sealing the crates; they were driving those seven black spikes in with a violence that made the wood groan.

Clang. Clang.

At the sound, the fish in the bags went berserk, thrashing against the plastic.

Thats when I saw it. A detail that sent a cold spike of adrenaline down my spine.

The fish were blinking.

Fish don't have eyelids. They live in the water; they don't need to moisten their eyes.

But I saw it clear as day. A thin, membranous layer of skin slid down over those milky, bulbous eyes and then retracted.

Blink. Blink.

"Well, look at that. Russo actually found someone stupid enough to drive the hearse. I heard the last guy pissed his pants for three days straight."

The voice was oily and mocking.

"Shut your mouth!" Mikey snapped. He was young and full of nervous energy. "We handle our business. Worry about your own."

"Easy there, pup. The grown-ups are talking."

"Slick," I acknowledged without turning around.

"Ah, Dutch. I should have known." The bald man grinned, his scalp gleaming in the harsh sunlight. "I figured Russo brought in a heavy hitter."

I ignored him and looked past his shoulder.

Standing behind Slick was his brothera man known in the circuit as Twitch.

Slick and Twitch were the bottom feeders of our industry. If I was the guy you called for a tough job, they were the guys you called to bury the evidence.

We have a term in the trade: "Pathfinding."

When a new route opens up, or an abandoned logging road needs to be run again, you send a veteran driver to test the waters. We call it "clearing the mines."

If the pathfinder makes it through without vanishing or crashing, the fleet follows.

It pays double, sometimes triple. But you're basically being paid to see if the road ghosts are hungry.

Slick and Twitch made their living doing this. But they were dirty. Theyd run you off the road to beat you to a contract. Theyd sabotage your rig at a rest stop.

Id had run-ins with them before. My mentor used to tell me, "Don't wrestle with pigs; you both get dirty, and the pig likes it."

Twitch, the younger brother, was the one who really turned my stomach.

He didn't talk much. He was short but had disturbingly long arms that hung past his knees, giving him the silhouette of a gibbon.

People said I looked scaryIm six-four, built like a linebacker, with a face that stops bar fights before they start.

But if I looked like a bouncer, Twitch looked like a demon that had clawed its way out of a basement.

It wasn't just his looks. Twitch had a history. Hed done time for stalking and assault. He liked to hurt women.

"What are you doing here?" I lit a cigarette, stepping between them and Mikey. "Russo has the contract. You trying to poach?"

Slick flashed a grin full of yellow teeth. "Relax, Dutch. We aren't poaching. We're the overflow. The client said the volume was too high for one truck. We're splitting the load. Everybody eats."

I glanced back at the loading dock. There were at least thirty of those coffin-crates. Too many for my flatbed.

"Fine," I said. "Stay out of my lane, I'll stay out of yours."

Honestly, I was relieved. If they wanted to share the curse of the Vanderwalt job, they were welcome to it.

We loaded up and rolled out first.

Mikey was fuming. Slick had spat on the ground near his boots before we left.

"Garbage humans," Mikey muttered, gripping the dash.

"Slick and Twitch have been rotting in this business for twenty years," I said calmly. "They're dangerous. Keep your distance. Don't engage."

Mikey grumbled but quieted down.

I wasn't just lecturing him. There was a darkness around those brothers that went beyond just being jerks.

Over a decade ago, back when I was still riding shotgun with my mentor, there was an old-timer who took on a young apprentice.

The kid was barely seventeen, pretty in a way that made you look twice. Soft features, bright eyes. We called him Jamie.

We were all stuck at a rest stop during a blizzard. Jamie had the bad luck of running into the brothers in the bathroom.

We heard the shouting through the walls. Jamie was crying, screaming that Twitch had cornered him in a stall.

My mentor and the old-timer kicked the door in. Twitch was on the kid.

It turned into a brawl. I was the only one big enough to pin Twitch down. I held his face against the dirty tile floor, and when I looked into his eyes, I didn't see fear.

I saw red, frantic arousal. It wasn't human.

The cops were called, but without physical evidence, nothing stuck.

But the bad luck started immediately for the old-timer. Tires blowing out on straight roads. Engines catching fire.

Jamie blamed himself. He went to confront the brothers alone.

No one knows exactly what happened. We just know that Jamie jumped off a bridge the next night. When they fished him out, he was bloated beyond recognition.

The old-timer quit the life, heartbroken. He told my mentor one thing before he vanished: "You can dodge a bullet, but you can't dodge a curse. Those two aren't men; they're devils."

I shook the memory off. We were on the access road now, heading for the highway.

It was desolate country. The dirt road was riddled with potholes.

The truck bounced violently. Maybe it was the suspension, or maybe it was the load, but I kept hearing sloshing sounds from the back.

Mikey was curled up in the passenger seat, looking pale.

"Take a nap," I said. "We'll switch in a few hours."

"I'm not tired," Mikey said quickly. Too quickly. He looked like a cornered animal. "I slept great last night."

I wanted to ask what he'd seen on the manifest, but I didn't want to spook him further.

Suddenly, a rhythmic thumping started from the cargo hold.

Thump... Thump...

It was heavy. Deliberate.

Mikeys face went grey. He stared at his knees, twisting his hands together until his knuckles turned white.

"Just the water displacement," I lied. "Road's rough."

Mikey didn't answer. The noise got louder. Faster.

It didn't sound like fish tails slapping water.

It sounded like wet, heavy palms slamming against the wood.

I pressed down on the accelerator. "We'll be on the interstate soon. It'll smooth out."

Once we hit the pavement, the thumping stopped.

"See?" I told Mikey. "Physics."

He nodded, but the color didn't come back to his cheeks.

Around noon, we pulled over at a gravel lot where a guy was selling hot meals out of a converted trailer.

"Get out, get some air," I ordered. The cab smelled like a fish market that had lost power three days ago.

Mikey stumbled out, breathing in the cold air. He ordered the braised pork over rice and a chicken leg.

I chatted with the food vendor while I ate. He mentioned traffic was thin; drivers were avoiding this route.

Behind me, Mikey let out a strangled scream and hurled his lunch container across the lot.

"What is that?! What the hell is that?!"

He fell to his knees, clawing at his mouth, trying to dig the food out of his throat.

The vendor looked terrified. "Hey! That meat is fresh! Bought it this morning!"

"No! No!" Mikey was gagging, tears streaming down his face.

I grabbed a water bottle from the truck and flushed his mouth out. He retched violently, vomiting a pile of half-chewed pork onto the gravel.

And there, glistening in the mess, were several scales.

They were the size of thumbnails. Grey-blue.

10

The vendor poked at the mess with a stick. "I didn't cook any fish today. Where did those come from?"

He tried to refund us, but I waved him off. It wasn't his fault.

Just then, the screech of air brakes announced the arrival of the brothers.

Slick hopped out of their rig. "Look at that. Kid's got a weak stomach. Typical."

Twitch stood by the fender. His face was flushed a deep, unnatural red, like hed downed a bottle of vodka. He was vibrating with energy.

I recognized that look. It was the look he got when things were about to go wrong. He was hunting.

Mikey was still dry heaving. I hauled him back into the cab.

As I pulled away, I checked the mirror. Twitch was staring at our truck, a twisted, predatory smile stretching his face.

11

I drove the afternoon shift. Mikey was a wreck, shaking too hard to hold a cigarette.

I kept the windows down, letting the freezing wind blast through the cab to scrub out the smell.

We stopped for the night at a motel in a small, forgotten town at the base of the mountains. The next leg was a treacherous climb, icy and narrow. I wasn't risking it in the dark.

The motel was a divepeeling paint, neon sign buzzingbut it had a big lot for rigs.

The lobby doubled as a diner. Mikey picked at two hard-boiled eggs and nursed a beer, trying to drown the memory of lunch.

The bell above the door chimed.

Ding, ding...

It was a sharp, piercing sound. Mikey didn't even flinch, seemingly deaf to it.

I looked up.

A girl walked in. She couldn't have been more than twenty. She wore a faded white down coat and tapped the floor with a white cane.

12

What was a blind girl doing alone in a place like this?

The diner was full of truckersrough men, smoke, grease.

The owner, a portly woman, hurried over. "Honey, are you lost?"

The girl turned her head slightly, guided by the sound. "I need a room. A single." Her voice was soft but clear.

"We... we aren't really set up for... look, there's a chain hotel two streets over. Much safer," the owner stammered. She didn't want the liability.

"I want to stay here," the girl insisted. "It's what I can afford."

Before the owner could argue, the door opened again. A gust of snow blew in.

Slick and Twitch.

Twitch looked even worse than before. His eyes were bloodshot, bulging.

As soon as he saw the girl, he froze. His gaze crawled over her, disgusting and palpable.

The girl sensed the new presence. She shrank back, fumbling to hand her ID and cash to the owner.

The owner, sensing the tension, quickly ushered the girl toward the stairs. Twitch watched them go, his Adam's apple bobbing.

13

"Mikey."

I shoved five hundred bucks into the kid's hand.

"Go to the owner. Tell her to move that girl to the hotel down the street. I'm paying."

Mikey blinked, confused, but saw the look on my face and scrambled off.

Twitch whipped his head around, staring at me with those dead, frantic eyes.

I slammed my hand on the table. "What are you looking at? Sit down. We're drinking."

Slick glanced between me and his brother. He knew I wouldn't let them leave that room until the girl was gone.

Mikey came back, nodding to indicate the girl was safe.

I kept the brothers at the table until midnight. Slick talked shop, trying to fish for details about the payout. Twitch just drank. He poured cheap whiskey down his throat until the veins in his neck looked like they were going to burst.

Finally, Slick dragged his brother to their room next door.

I helped Mikey upstairs. The kid passed out the second he hit the mattress.

14

That night, the nightmare found me.

I wasn't in the motel. I was back in the truck, parked in pitch blackness.

A figure, dripping wet, approached the window. The voice sounded like sandpaper on bone. "Driver... when do we leave?"

I tried to open my eyes, but they were glued shut.

"Driver... it's so stuffy in the bag. I can't breathe."

Panic set in. I could smell the cargo. The brine. The rot.

Then, something cold and slimy wrapped around my throat. Wet hair. But it wasn't just hairit was matted with scales and chunks of raw meat.

It tightened.

Ding, ding...

The bell.

Was the girl back?

My heart hammered against my ribs. She shouldn't be here. Twitch was a powder keg.

I thrashed in the dream, finally tearing the wet hair from my neck.

I woke up gasping.

15

The room was silent. Gray morning light filtered through the dirty curtains.

No bell. Just a nightmare.

Mikey was curled in a fetal ball, shivering. I shook him awake.

"Wash up. We move in ten."

We walked out into the hallway just as Slick opened his door.

"Morning, Dutch."

I grunted, intending to walk past. But my eyes caught the inside of their room.

Two beds. One was a mess of tangled sheets.

The other was pristine. Unslept in.

Where was Twitch?

Slick saw me looking. He smirked, a lewd, knowing expression. "He found his own way back. Guess the little lady has a thing for bad boys. Don't be a prude, Dutch."

16

"What did you say?"

I grabbed Slick by the collar and slammed him against the wall.

"Hey! Easy! Theyre consenting adults!" Slick yelped.

"I swear to god..."

Mikey grabbed my arm, holding me back. The commotion brought the motel owner running up the stairs.

"What is going on?!"

I spun on her. "The blind girl. Did she come back? Which room?"

She looked terrified. "The... the utility room at the end of the hall. She said she forgot something..."

I threw Slick aside and sprinted down the hallway.

I knew what Twitch was capable of. I knew about Jamie.

Slick chased after me. "He hasn't had a woman in years! Don't ruin this for him"

Before he could finish, a scream tore through the building.