THE CRAWLING CARRION OF COUNTY ROAD Q

Lee: Late in the evening of April 29th, 1996, Anna Kimball, 26, was returning home from a weekend in Memphis, Tennessee. She had attended the 40th Anniversary Celebration in honor of Jerry Lee Lewis' career in the music industry, but the star-studded rock and roll revelry did little to prepare her for the terrified rhythm her heart would soon be pounding out.

     It was windy and raining as she paid the 25 cent toll to cross the Des Moines River at St. Fancisville, Missouri. The tollbooth attendant, Mr. Homer Grundy, remembers her as "...pretty, intelligent looking, but no librarian, either, if you take my meaning. She showed me some kind of a plate with somebody famous on it, I don't remember who." Kimball crossed the river into Iowa at 9:40 PM, and continued north toward Highway 218 at Donnellson. Somewhere between 10:00 and 10:35 she left the main road to refuel at Admah's Get n' Gone in the town of Benbow. Lyle and Tim Pennyroyal, fraternal twins who own and operate the rural business, serviced her vehicle and gave the young woman instructions on how to get back to the highway, but watched in dismay as her taillights disappeared in the opposite direction.

     "She must have been tired, or confused, because she turned left instead of right and headed down Old County Road Q. Nobody goes down there anymore." Lyle Pennyroyal said in an interview, "The whole road is condemned, but the damn kids keep taking the signs."

     State and county authorities are still trying to piece together the events that happened after Anna Kimball left the Get n' Gone . No official statement has been released to the press, but our own investigation has revealed some details disturbing in the extreme.

     Early indications now point to Massaraty Asylum, a private and secluded annex of the State Mental Health Facility at Mt. Pleasant. In this remote hospital, Anna Kimball is possibly being held against her will by those same authorities claiming to be searching for her. She is allegedly under armed guard and constant observation, but reportedly safe and in reasonably good health. Monitoring her condition and questioning her are the County Sheriff, an unnamed high ranking representative of the Governor's Office, and the County Medical Examiner. It is unclear why the coroner is in attendance, rather than a physician, but speculation at this juncture would be irresponsible.

     Sources within the secret sanitarium have disclosed that Anna Kimball claims to have been attacked by unnatural "creatures of the night." We are currently in possession of an audio tape containing a partial statement given by Miss Kimball. The following is a verbatim, unedited transcript.

     "....I must have...I don't know...misunderstood them. I'm not good with directions....It was stupid...so stupid...Please, can I have a drink of water? Hello? Are you there? I just want a glass of water....OK...forget the water. Forget my fucking leg! Forget I might have rabies or something! I want a doctor! I should be in a fucking hospital, not locked in here talking to my reflection in a mirror!.......I know....keep talking....but, I've told you the same story a hundred times already, it's not going to change what happened.....OK...I turned up the wrong road. I was driving in the rain and the tape player was going, loud, and I started to notice that on this road there were some parked cars....every once in a while, cars would be parked along the road. I thought it must be people who pulled over to sleep, or who didn't want to drive in the rain....Some of them were older models. Like from the fifties.....I started to notice that most of them, almost all of them, were damaged.....cracked windshields, crumpled fenders, dents in the hoods and doors....flat tires....and then I realized that nobody had been inside them....any of them....it frightened me....I started driving faster. I realized that I was lost, but was too afraid to go back the way I'd come.....please, my leg really hurts. My foot is going numb.....can I have a glass of water? Are you still there? Is anybody listening to me?......OK, I was afraid, and I thought I started seeing things...seeing shapes moving along the sides of the road....I must have panicked....I saw a car overturned in a ravine and I'm sure I saw something big climb out of it, sort of jump down. I started driving much faster, maybe 65 or 70 down this little country road....There were no lights, it was raining, and I was scared.....Then something very large jumped out of the trees in front of my car and we collided before I could get a good look at what it was. There was this sickening thud, and it tumbled over the top of my car, and I lost control of the vehicle....At the time I didn't even know what I'd hit, I thought it might even have been a person, maybe the one who was climbing out of the car in the ravine...but I wasn't thinking about any of that, I was just trying to keep my car from slamming into a tree....I finally came to a stop, off the road, and I may have blacked out for a moment...I don't think so....I wasn't too badly hurt....just had the wind knocked out of me....I got out and looked around on the road with my flashlight, and I saw a deer lying in the mud....Thank God, I thought, at least it wasn't a person.....I moved closer to the animal, I knew there was nothing I could do, but I had to find out if it was dead, if I'd killed something because I'd been afraid....I felt so stupid that my emotions had overcome my reason.....Do I have to keep going over this?....I shined my light on the carcass, and it was dead....but not just dead...very dead....I mean, it had been dead for a long, long time....oh, God, like it had been dead a month....I looked around to see if there might be another one, but that was the only thing in the road, and if it had already been there, I would have run over it, not hit it head on.....you could see bones sticking out of its sides, it had no lower jaw....and there was no blood....I moved closer, and saw that it was just teeming with maggots. Horrid little white worms crawling in and out of its body cavities....I screamed and the thing moved, like the scream had startled it awake....the thing was moving, now, struggling horribly to its feet, and dripping those maggots from its disfigured maw like saliva, splashing into the mud on the road. It had a nauseating stench, and I began to choke, it was very hard to breathe. I could see, as it turned its head toward me, that the animal's one remaining eye was clouded white and hanging from its socket, lolling against the side of its head....It had to be blind, and yet I could sense that it knew exactly where I was, and that it was looking at me with malice and hatred no human heart could feel....I knew that it would kill me, so I turned to run....but there on the road, clawing its way toward me with two good paws was the front half of a rabbit, dragging its partially crushed hindquarters behind it over the gravel....It looked straight through me and reared back its head, letting out a scream like a baby caught in a burning house......I lost all sense and ran into the woods, away from the road.....I could hear them all around me now....and when lightning flashed across the sky, I saw more and more mutilated animals taking up my pursuit.....Road kills, I suppose, animals caught between life and death, kept in this world by a murderous desire for revenge....there were dogs, cats...even a horse, frogs...all in various stages of decay and rot.....from behind a log a three legged fox darted out and caught my leg in its mouth biting me, hard....I fell and it just kept gnawing at my shin....look, I think it's probably infected! I need a doctor.....all right, I picked up a rock and I hit it, over and over, I smashed its skull and beat its damn brains out, and than I ran some more....I don't know what happened then....I woke up here. Who are you people? What were those things out there? Why won't you let me have a drink of water??? Why won't you let me have a drink of water?"

     As of last week, any attempt to access County Road Q was blocked by armed members of the Iowa National Guard, who have set up a razor wire perimeter along the 12 mile stretch of gravel and tar. When questioned, a member of the unit stated: "That information is on a need to know basis only. You do not need to know." Farmers in the area report sporadic bursts of automatic weapons fire within the area, locally known as "The Q." Yesterday it was confirmed that a steady column of sulphery black smoke has been rising over the fields near the center of the area. A consumer advocacy environmental group based in Iowa City has called for an immediate toxicology report, but spokespeople at the State Capitol and the Iowa Department of Transportation flatly deny that County Road Q exists or is the site of anything unusual.

     The truth may never be known. Anna's father, Ralph Kimball, has filed a civil suit against Lee County, demanding the release of his daughter. But in an interview, Lee County Sheriff Art Delmay responded to the suit, saying, "The Sheriff's Department exists to protect the people of the county it serves...I was elected to do that and I will do whatever that entails. I am not the ringleader of a band of kidnappers who delights in torturing young women. Anyone who says so is guilty of slander. And THAT is a very serious crime. You people better have some proof before you start making crazy allegations. Now, I sympathize with the Kimballs, having a daughter disappear is a terrible thing, but we don't even know she disappeared in Lee County. Let's not point fingers until all the facts are in."

     Meanwhile, the "facts" seem to be denied and concealed as quickly as they are uncovered. Sulpherous smoke continues to rise above machine gun fire while the roar of helicopters cuts through the sky over a road the Iowa Department of Transportation insists does not exist.