We walked over to the side door where I’d come in that afternoon and stood there for a second,
watching the shadows wax and wane as the trucks went back and forth.
‘Now?’ the kid said. His arm brushed mine and the muscles were jumping and humming like wires. If
anyone bumped him he’d go straight up to heaven.
‘Relax,’ I said.
He smiled a little. It was a sick smile, but better than none.
‘Okay.’
We slipped out.
The night air had cooled. Crickets chirred in the grass, and frogs thumped and croaked in the drainage
ditch. Out here the rumble of the trucks was louder, more menacing, the sound of beasts. From inside it
was a movie. Out here it was real, you could get killed.
We slid along the tiled outer wall. A slight overhang gave us some shadow. My Camaro was huddled
against the cyclone fence across from us, and faint light from the roadside sign glinted on broken metal
and puddles of gas and oil.
‘You take the lady’s,’ I whispered. ‘Fill your bucket from the toilet tank and wait.’
Steady diesel rumblings. It was tricky; you thought they were coming, but it was only echoes bouncing
off the building’s odd corners. It was only twenty feet, but it seemed much further.
He opened the lady’s-room door and went in. I went past and then I was inside the gent’s. I could feel
my muscles loosen and a breath whistled out of me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, strained
white face with dark eyes.
I got the porcelain tank cover off and dunked the bucket full. I poured a little back to keep from
sloshing and went to the door. ‘Hey?’
‘Yeah,’ he breathed.
‘You ready?’
‘Yeah.’
We went out again. We got maybe six steps before lights blared in our faces. It had crept up, big
wheels barely turning on the gravel. It had been lying in wait and now it leaped at us, electric
headlamps glowing in savage circles, the huge chrome grill seeming to snarl.
The kid froze, his face stamped with horror, his eyes blank, the pupils dilated down to pinpricks. I gave
him a hard shove, spilling half his water.
‘Go!’
The thunder of that diesel engine rose to a shriek. I reached over the kid’s shoulder to yank the door
open, but before I could it was shoved from inside. The kid lunged in and I dodged after him. I looked
back to see the truck – a big cab-over Peterbilt – kiss off the tiled outside wall, peeling away jagged
hunks of tile. There was an ear-grinding squealing noise, like gigantic fingers scraping a blackboard.
Then the right mudguard and the corners of the grill smashed into the still-open door, sending glass in a crystal spray and snapping the door’s steel-gauge hinges like tissue paper. The door flew into the night
like something out of a Dali painting and the truck accelerated towards the front parking lot, its exhaust
racketing like machine-gun fire. It had a disappointed, angry sound.
The kid put his bucket down and collapsed into the girl’s arms, shuddering.
My heart was thudding heavily in my chest and my calves felt like water. And speaking of water, we
had brought back about a bucket and a quarter between us. It hardly seemed worth it.
‘I want to block up that doorway,’ I said to the counterman. ‘What will do the trick?’
‘Well -‘
The trucker broke in: ‘Why? One of those big trucks couldn’t get a wheel in through there.’
‘It’s not the big trucks I’m worried about.’
The trucker began hunting for a smoke.
‘We got some sheet sidin’ out in the supply room,’ the counterman said. ‘Boss was gonna put up a shed
to store butane gas.’
‘We’ll put them across and prop them with a couple of booths.’
‘It’ll help,’ the trucker said.
It took about an hour and by the end we’d all got into the act, even the girl. It was fairly solid. Of course, fairly solid wasn’t going to be good enough, not if something hit it at full speed. I think they all knew
that.