The Collector

Blood on the Asphalt

*I-10 Near El Paso, Texas - October 2027*

The desert night swallowed everything but the rhythmic thump of Luz Martinez's tires over expansion joints. Her rig's dashboard clock read 3:17 AM when the CB radio suddenly screamed to life.

"—any eastbound haulers near mile marker 543? We got a... shit, is that—"

A wet crunch cut off the transmission. Static hissed like a dying breath.

Luz's grip tightened on the wheel. She'd driven these roads for twelve years, long enough to know when something wasn't right. The digital display on her GPS flickered, the map pixelating to show roads that shouldn't exist—twisting black veins connecting places that weren't on any map.

Then her headlights caught the figure.

Six and a half feet tall, standing motionless on the shoulder. Not hitchhiking. Not broken down. Just... waiting.

Something glinted in its hand.

Luz hit the brakes hard enough to send her cargo shifting. The Kenworth shuddered to a stop fifty yards past the figure. Through her side mirror, she watched it turn its head with mechanical slowness to track her.

The glint resolved into a vintage cassette recorder.

"Hell no," Luz muttered, reaching for her gearshift—

—when the recorder's PLAY button depressed itself with an audible click.

A woman's voice, frayed with static but clear as a gunshot in the silent cab:

"If you can hear this, you're already part of it."

Luz's blood turned to ice. That was her brother Mateo's girlfriend Rachel—missing since last summer.

The figure took one step toward the truck. Then another. Its shadow stretched too far in the moonlight, elongating until it touched her driver's side door.

The Passenger

The man who climbed into her cab smelled like a gas station spill—chemical and wrong. Up close, Luz could see the cracks in his facade:

Black sludge caked under his fingernails

A fresh scar circling his throat like a noose mark

Eyes that reflected light just a second too late

He placed the recorder carefully on the dash. "Play the rest, Luz."

She didn't ask how he knew her name. Didn't ask about the way his shadow kept moving even when he sat still. Just pressed PLAY.

Rachel's voice continued: "The roads are alive. Not just the bridges anymore. They're growing something new under the asphalt, and it needs—"

The tape warped violently. A man's voice—Jake's—but layered with something guttural and wet, interrupted: "—keeper of the new veins. We're almost ready."

Luz ejected the tape so hard the plastic cracked. "What the fuck is this?"

The stranger smiled. His teeth were too white. Too many. "Your brother Mateo sent me."

He reached into his jacket. Luz's hand flew to the tire iron under her seat—then froze when she saw the Polaroid.

A truck stop off I-20. The same one where Mateo had vanished three months ago after calling her about "black stuff coming out of the faucets." In the photo's background, barely visible in the shadows near the diesel pumps—

Something tall.

Something smiling.

The Collector's Truth

"They call me Cole," the man said, tracing the Polaroid's edge with a black-stained finger. "I find people touched by the Big Man. Document what's left."

He unzipped his backpack, revealing:

A sheriff's badge (Elias Holloway, Black Hollow PD)

A bloodstained podcast microphone (Rachel Mears, Dark Echoes)

A Navajo medicine pouch spilling blue cornmeal

Mateo's favorite Zippo lighter

Luz's breath hitched. "Where's my brother?"

Cole's pupils dilated unnaturally. "Under. But not gone." He tapped the recorder. "They're building something down there. A new kind of road."

Outside, the mile markers began to bleed dark tendrils across the asphalt.

The Choice

Luz stared at the growing stain spreading beneath her truck. The same black sludge had oozed from Mateo's shower drain before he disappeared.

Cole pressed a hand to the passenger window. His fingertips left greasy smears that squirmed like living things. "You've got three choices, Luz."

"One. Drive away. Forget this night. But it'll come for you eventually—through your radio, your GPS, the puddles after rain."

"Two. Take me to the next marked location." He placed a map on the dash—hand-drawn, with X's over seven western states. "Help me document before it's too late."

"Three." Cole's voice dropped to a whisper. "Ask to see what's really happening under the roads."

Luz's fingers found the Zippo in Cole's collection. Flipped it open.

The flame burned black.

In its unnatural light, she saw:

The highway stretching into a living throat

Cole's shadow peeling away to reveal rib-like girders beneath

Her own eyes beginning to reflect light a second too slow

The lighter snapped shut.

Luz shifted into gear. "Where first?"

Cole smiled as the truck accelerated. Behind them, the bleeding mile marker dissolved into the dark.

Somewhere beneath the tires, something laughing.