gravel skin of the lot, and it stopped inches from jackknifing in. The bastard.
The girl in the booth screamed. Both hands were clamped into her cheeks, dragging the flesh down,
turning it into a witch’s mask.
Glass broke. I turned my head and saw that the trucker had squeezed his glass hard enough to break it. I
don’t think he knew it yet. Milk and a few drops of blood fell on to the counter.
The black counterman was frozen by the radio, a dishcloth in hand, looking amazed. His teeth glittered.
For a moment there was no sound but the buzzing Westclox and the rumbling of the Reo’s engine as it
returned to its fellows. Then the girl began to cry and it was all right – or at least better.
My own car was around the side, also battered to junk. It was a 1971 Camaro and I had still been
paying on it, but I didn’t suppose that mattered now.
There was no one in the trucks.
The sun glittered and flashed on empty cabs. The wheels turned themselves. You couldn’t think about it
too much. You’d go insane if you thought about it too much. Like Snodgrass.
Two hours passed. The sun began to go down. Outside, the trucks patrolled in slow circles and figure
eights. Their parking lights and running lights had come on.
I walked the length of the counter twice to get the kinks out of my legs and then sat in a booth by the
long front window. It was a standard truck stop, close to the major throughway, a complete service
facility out back, gas and diesel fuel both. The truckers came here for coffee and pie.
‘Mister?’ The voice was hesitant.
I looked around. It was the two kids from the Fury. The boy looked about nineteen. He had long hair
and a beard that was just starting to take hold. His girl looked younger.
‘Yeah?’
‘What happened to you?’
I shrugged. ‘I was coming up the interstate to Pelson,’ I said. ‘A truck came up behind me – I could see it
in the mirror a long way off- really highballing. You could hear it a mile down the road. It whipped out
around a VW Beetle and just snapped it off the road with the whiplash of the trailer, the way you’d snap
a ball of paper off a table with your finger. I thought the truck would go, too. No driver could have held
it with the trailer whipping that way. But it didn’t go. The VW flopped over six or seven times and
exploded. And the truck got the next one coming up the same way. It was coming up on me and I took
the exit ramp in a hurry.’ I laughed but my heart wasn’t in it. ‘Right into a truck stop, of all places. From the frying pan into the fire.’
The girl swallowed. ‘We saw a Greyhound going north in the southbound lane. It was . . . ploughing . . .
through cars. It exploded and burned but before it did slaughter.’
A Greyhound bus. That was something new. And bad.
Outside, all the headlights suddenly popped on in unison, bathing the lot in an eerie, depthless glare.
Growling, they cruised back and forth. The headlights seemed to give them eyes, and in the growing
gloom, the dark trailer boxes looked like the hunched, squared-off shoulders of prehistoric giants.
The counterman said, ‘Is it safe to turn on the lights?’
‘Do it,’ I said, ‘and find out.’
He flipped the switches and a series of flyspecked globes overhead came on. At the same time a neon
sign out front stuttered into life: ‘Conant’s Truck Stop & Diner – Good Eats’. Nothing happened. The
trucks continued their patrol.
‘I can’t understand it,’ the trucker said. He had gotten down from his stool and was walking around, his
hand wrapped in a red engineer’s bandanna. ‘I ain’t had no problems with my rig. She’s a good old girl. I
pulled in here a little past one for a spaghetti dinner and this happens.’ He waved his arms and the
bandanna flapped. ‘My own rig’s out there right now, the one with the weak left tail-light. Been driving