18 Wheels of Horror

by Eric Miller

  Babbling incoherently as he tried to get out of the trailer, but he slipped and fell in all that blood and hit his elbow on the corner of the counter, his head on the floor, tripping on a limp, staring girl of about eight and—

  Running through the night, crying, laughing, shouting at himself, looking for the truck, where was the goddamned—

  Making that engine wake up with a rumble that chewed over his sobbing and whimpering, fastening his seatbelt and feeling the stickiness of the drying blood on his hands—

  Watching those blurred yellow missiles being fired silently at him, so blurred they almost looked like a single line as he cut through the night fast.

  Something, a small animal of some kind, dashed into the road and died under his tires.

  The chatter on the CB was nothing but babble through the screams inside his head. Unfamiliar screams from strangers pleading for their lives. At the Copa. Copacabana.

  “Breaker twenny, breaker two-zero, lookin’ for the Sidewinder, come back.”

  Rage moved through Spence’s body like an electrical current and he gripped the wheel so hard that he was sure it would come off the steering column in his fists. But he did not respond. He could not remember turning the radio on when he’d gotten in the truck. But he didn’t remember turning it off when he’d gotten out earlier, either. He loosened his right hand from the wheel and reached over to turn off the CB, but—

  “Come on, Sidewinder, I know you’re out there. Did you have a good time with the DiLucas? They’re vacationing from Seattle.”

  A miserable sound filled the truck, a shrill whimpering. When Spence realized it was coming from him, he stopped and grabbed the microphone.

  “What the fuck did you do, you prick? You sick, sadistic prick!”

  “What did I do?”

  “You set me up!”

  “Oh, Sidey, Sidey. Winder, old buddy, you really shouldn’t drive while you’re sleepin’.”

  “Stop it! I’m not your fucking buddy!” His saliva spattered on the microphone. “You set me up, you killed that family and you fucking set me up!”

  He waited. The yellow missiles came. The road continued to unroll ahead of him.

  No response from Sam Shepherd.

  “Talk to me, you fucker!”

  He did not talk. Others did, but they were nothing more than babble to Spence.

  “…to me like somebody’s had too much meth, if you wanna know the…”

  Watching the road while his concentration was focused on hearing Sam Shepherd’s voice, Spence seemed to exist in a narrow tunnel.

  “…and get off the damned radio, you drunken…”

  But that voice didn’t come.

  “…the hell is wrong with that guy, who the hell’s he talking to, anyway, ‘cause I don’t hear…”

  The steady thrum of the road beneath the wheels calmed him and he took comfort in the sound of the smooth-running engine.

  “…talking to himself, the nutjob!”

  Spence did not hear the voices or the laughter. He turned off the CB and decided to listen to some music.

  And the missiles kept coming.

  Brad C. Hodson is the son of a trucker who grew up on Smokey and the Bandit and reruns of BJ and the Bear. He’s also a screenwriter and novelist in Los Angeles and his first novel, Darling, is currently being adapted into a movie. For information on him or where to find more of his short fiction, please check out www.brad-hodson.com.

  RISING FAWN

  Brad C. Hodson

  HE HAD BEEN AWAKE for thirty-six hours when he came down the hill outside of Chattanooga and first had the thought that he needed to see Lucille. He’d been going non-stop since leaving Baltimore, downing Yellow Jackets with sugar-free Red Bull every few hours just to keep his hands on the wheel. Trying to fight it anymore was useless. He could only give in and find Lucille.

  It had been a rough six months. Sleep eluded him even when home between runs. He found himself more often than not in front of the television at three in the morning, eyes tired, ass numb, switching channels so rapidly that the random voices and sound effects and bits of music created an odd rhythm. It was like a tribal chant issued from his idiot box. It would lull him to sleep for an hour or two but then he would see her face and bolt awake to an infomercial for weight loss aids or fabric cleaner. Those ads pretended to be talk show segments so well that it often took him several minutes to realize what he was watching.

  The Peterbilt eased off of the hill and passed the small lake he had always thought of as the edge of civilization. It wasn’t so bad these days. When he had first started driving, there was only one exit with a small gas station for the next two hundred fifty miles. Well, one exit worth a damn. There were several others, of course, each charting its own path into those ancient hills that ran from Tennessee through Georgia and into Alabama, but they were dark and lonely things that someone driving a truck this size had no reason to head down. For him there had only been the interstate to keep him company in those days before cell phones and satellite radio. In the last ten years more and more restaurants and gas stations had appeared along this stretch. Each came suddenly with no visible construction as though they had grown in the fertile soil, their seeds carried by thunderstorm winds rolling down through the Cumberland Gap or up from the Gulf Coast.

  This time of night, the lake was little more than a dark hole, a pitch black abyss that beckoned him to turn his wheel hard to the right, crash through the guard rail, and tumble down into angry oblivion. It would be so easy, he knew.

  He kept driving.

  Even with the sporadic developments appearing down this stretch of interstate, he still had a long patch of nothing ahead of him. The rumble of his engine and the sound of his windshield wipers worked at him. He wanted sleep so bad that he thought if he pulled over onto the side of the road right now he might actually be able to get it. But he had to be in Birmingham in four hours to drop off a load of printer ink. He’d have time for a long nap while they emptied his trailer and reloaded it with plumbing fixtures and then he would be on the road again, this time to…

  He couldn’t remember.

  He took a deep breath and scratched his scalp and said the names of a few cities aloud, places like Tampa and Austin and Kansas City, but none of them sounded right. Damn, was he tired.

  Rolling the window down to let the cold November wind pelt his face, he woke a little. Wherever he headed next didn’t matter. He’d examine the manifest when the plumbing supplies were loaded and then he would be fine. All he needed to know was what direction he was going. One destination at a time, his father always said.

  Had the old man said that? It sounded right, but Randy couldn’t be certain.

  The Yellow Jackets were gone and the Red Bull had been reduced to a few empty cans knocking against one another on the passenger side floorboard. What he needed was to see Lucille.

  Grabbing the CB handset, he squawked a quick greeting and asked if anyone had seen her.

  His radio crackled. “Flying Dutchman, this is Tricky Dick. You’re breaking up. Come back.”

  Tricky Dick was receiving poorly and wanted him to repeat the message. He held the button down and spoke a little louder. “Tricky Dick, this is Flying Dutchman. I’m calling out to see if anyone knows where I can find Lucille.”

  “10-4. I know a Truck Stop Tommy or two might know where she is. What’s your 20?”

  “I’m on I-24 West heading to the I-59 split down to Birmingham.”

  “Rising Fawn.”

  “Come back?”

  “The Rising Fawn exit. There’s a big ass truck stop there, rain lockers, Subway sandwiches, the whole shebang.”

  “You seen Lucille there?”

  “Saw her there earlier tonight, as a matter of fact. Her pearly white smile is the only thing keeping me going right now.”

  “10-4, Tricky Dick.”

  “And Flying Dutchman? You back off the hammer coming down south from that exit. Sometimes there�
��s a picture taker inviting folks to feed the bear a little further down the road. Don’t wanna end up with a driving award around these parts, I guarantee you that.”

  “Much obliged.” Randy wasn’t much of a speed demon as it was, but he appreciated Tricky Dick’s warning. He did not want to get a ticket, especially right after seeing Lucille. That could be ten to twenty these days.

  The last time he had seen Lucille had been that night. He had gone cold turkey after that and was surprised that he had made it this long. Yet every run he went on over the past six months, he had almost gotten on the horn and asked about her. He wasn’t disappointed so much that he was giving in tonight as he was relieved. He’d known the day would come, after all. How could he have not? The constant fight had been exhausting.

  Just because he knew where she was didn’t mean he had to act on it, he reminded himself. He could keep driving through the cold rain and push toward month seven.

  His headlights illuminated a sign ahead. “Rising Fawn,” it said.

  He flipped on his blinker.

  Turning off the interstate, he rose up the hill to a small road. To the east was darkness, a cold black that devoured the pavement. To the west was a near deserted BP, a minivan at one of the pumps and an ancient El Camino parked by the doors. He took a small road that led past the BP and further up the hill.

  The truck stop was massive. Tricky Dick hadn’t been lying about that. A dozen cars occupied the civilian pumps, their drivers shivering as they refilled their tanks in clouds of their own icy breath. A line of semis filled up on the commercial side. Other rigs were parked in a lot that wound around back of the building. He parked the truck and went inside.

  He was surprised at how many people milled around through the snack food and audiobook aisles. He double checked his watch to be sure, but it was indeed almost two AM. This was the only decent exit for quite a while, he reminded himself. Still, it wasn’t a holiday weekend and the amount of bodies wandering around half-dead was odd to say the least.

  The coffee station was busy, most of its eight machines in use, and that was less of a surprise. Pouring himself a small cup, he fished in his pocket for a crumpled bill and stood in line at the register. A teenage girl worked the machine, blonde hair pulled into a ponytail, pasty skin and a hanging chin already marking her as one of the Night People. When you were on the road as much as Randy, you became intimately familiar with the Night People. Graveyard shift workers mostly, though there were a few insomniacs peppered into the mix who congregated at those select places open in the dead of night. The Night People were far from the picture of health. Even the most robust of them, the ones who ate well and exercised regularly, bore the marks of abusing the body’s natural cycles.

  When it was his turn in line, he tossed the bill onto the counter and asked about Lucille.

  The girl blinked. “Lucille?”

  “Yeah,” he said, all grins. “Have you seen her?”

  She blinked again.

  “I heard she was here.”

  The girl scanned the room and tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear. She turned back and looked him up and down.

  “There’s a Ms. Pac-Man game in the little arcade back over there by the showers. Some folks like to pull a chair up to that all backwards like and sit in it while they play.”

  He nodded, grabbed his coffee, and headed into the arcade. It wasn’t a large room. The walls were dark colored and the lights dim and, even with no door on the room and the lights in the white hallway outside of it so bright, it only added to the almost instant sense of claustrophobia. Electronic chimes and beeps sounded from several poker machines along with the occasional plinky string of music. Aside from him, the place was empty.

  There were two video games that were not gambling related: one a “Walking Dead” shooter with a plastic shotgun attached and the other a thirty-year-old Ms. Pac-Man with the decals peeling from the side. He pulled what looked like a wrought iron dining room chair over to it, spun it around backwards, and straddled the seat. Plopping a quarter into the slot, he pressed the “Single Player” button and waited for the game to start.

  It had been fifteen years since he had played a video game. Not since Debbie left in the middle of the night with the kids, leaving nothing but a note. They had taken their Nintendo with them and he never played a video game again, not even those cheap ones that you could get on your cell phone.

  He wondered how his two boys were doing. Sam would be…twenty-one now? Was that right?

  That would make Bobby twenty-four. Jesus.

  Their absence hit him hard and sudden and he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the stress or the lack of sleep, he didn’t know. Whatever it was, he wished desperately that he knew where they were right now.

  Debbie had not left a forwarding address, but it wouldn’t have been impossible to find her even in those days before Google and Facebook. Why he hadn’t even tried was also something he didn’t entirely know. He suspected, sure. Suspected that she had been right and that the drugs and the drink had gotten to be too much, suspected that she had been right to never forgive him for losing control and popping Bobby across the mouth hard enough to bust the boy’s lip. The question for him had never been “Why did she leave?” but was instead “Why did it take her so long?”

  He missed her some nights, too, if he were being honest.

  Quitting was something he should have done right when they left, but hadn’t. He had lost whatever fire he had somewhere along the way. Even before Debbie and the kids left. Whatever spark had been inside of him that made him buck trends, that made him carve his way, that made him give the finger to the arrogant sons-of-bitches that he worked with as he walked out the door to find a better job, whatever spark had fueled those parts of him had been snuffed out. The drink and the drugs made him feel like he had that spark again, but it had just been a pale imitation. Smoke without a fire. It took years and years to realize that he was burning himself to death from the inside out. And even then, that realization didn’t fully hit him until the girl.

  That poor girl.

  “Heard you’re looking for Lucille.”

  He turned from the game that he had only half been paying attention to. A tall, thin man stood in the doorway, the light from the hall making him little more than a skeletal silhouette.

  “Yeah,” Randy said and stood. “Heard she might be here.”

  They stood and stared at one another in silence for a long and uncomfortable moment.

  “Alright,” the man finally said. “Follow me out back.”

  The light in the hallway allowed Randy a better look at the man. He was thin but wiry, dry knots of muscle running down the length of his forearms. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans and Randy wondered how he could stand the cold without a jacket or sweater. They passed through a back door and across the parking lot, the freezing rain pelting them both. The man paid the rain no mind. Shoving his hands in his own jacket pockets, Randy thought the man should have at least had the decency to shiver a little.

  They weaved through a few trucks until they were at the very back of the parking lot. Massive rigs on either side of them blocked out most of the light and the man was once again little more than shadow.

  “Here’s good,” he said.

  Before Randy could reply, footsteps sounded behind him. He spun in time to see a board swing toward his face, the movement cutting a woosh sound into the winter air.

  There were stars and pain and blood. The concrete beneath him was rough and damp and smelled of motor oil. Had he fallen? He must have. His head rocked, his thoughts sloshing around and refusing to steady.

  Hands dug through his pockets. Two voices went back and forth in rapid-fire gibberish, nothing either said making sense to Randy.

  Footsteps pounded away from him. All he was left with was the sound of the wind and rain and the distant rumbling of an engine.

  Pressing himself to his feet, he almost vomited. The world pitched hard one way
and then the other. He steadied himself with one weak hand on the wet metal of a trailer. His other hand wiped the blood from his face. Gingerly, he felt around for the wound. The gash itself was small, but there was no way to tell what it had done to his skull. He was standing, that much was good, but his head felt like it had been sawed open and packed with broken glass.

  He fought his way across the parking lot and back into the truck stop. In the bathroom, he washed his hair and face with cold water, the blood streaking across the porcelain as it spiraled away. Checking his pants, he was relieved to find they had only taken his wallet and not his keys. He kept spare cash and a credit card in a safe in his truck in case of emergencies.

  The cards in his wallet would need to be cancelled. He slid his phone from its holster to find the screen shattered. From the fall, he assumed.

  Stumbling out into the station proper, he headed toward the counter, prepared to tell the Night Person working what had happened and to use her phone.

  There was no one there.

  He looked around the station. The entire place was empty.

  That couldn’t be right. He shook his head but doing so hurt and made him queasy. He walked over into the deserted Subway and sat, waiting for the pain and nausea to subside.

  The station was quiet aside from the hum of refrigerators and a percolating pot of coffee.

  Tricky Dick…

  He should have known from the bastard’s handle. He’d heard stories his entire career of dirty sons-of-bitches luring truckers in for a Lot Lizard or what have you and then jumping them, but in all his time on the road it had never happened to him. He had been careless. He should have never followed the guy into such an isolated place.

  And for what? The chance to get high?

  Lucille had always been his weakness. A little coke, a little speed, a little meth… Every time he’d seen Lucille, the concoction had been different but never any less satisfying. Most truckers didn’t take anything harder than 5 Hour Energy and a Starbucks double espresso, but for the ones that did, Lucille kept them going long and hard. She’d kept him going for days on end in the past.