18 Wheels of Horror

by Eric Miller

  I set the brake and ran to the back of the trailer, throwing the doors open. I had no idea how to get her to the water as the blast of refrigerated air hit my face.

  Mama saw the ocean; her sides clacked excitedly and she edged forward, anxious. Son of a bitch. On her underside, four human legs had appeared. Charley and Tiffany, no doubt.

  Mama lumbered forward, unsure.

  I hit the switch and lowered the gate to the sand. Mama stumbled onto the ground.

  Big water.

  Super cool, baby.

  The day had blossomed bright and sunny with a trace of high clouds framing the horizon. On the beach, a couple of twenty-something girls were setting up a net for a volleyball match. A family cruised by on the bike path, pink streamers from their toddler’s bike sparkling in the sunlight. A group of middle-aged men jogged by, breathing hard, but the words stock market and good investment floated on the sea breeze.

  Mama ambled toward the surf on those four human legs. She twisted to look at me with her indigo eye.

  Join?

  Join?

  I thought it over.

  No thanks, I responded.

  Mama turned to face the ocean.

  “What the hell is that?” somebody yelled from down the beach. I heard screaming from the bike path. People running.

  A large wave washed around Mama and she screeched “Big water, big water, big water, big water, big water.”

  Of course, only I could hear her.

  Mama hurried to the waves. Hurried might be an exaggeration. She moved as fast as she could on her new legs. A moment later she disappeared leaving only an odd track of footprints in the wet sand.

  Then I heard a police siren. No doubt some soccer mom had dialed 911.

  In my heart, I knew this might be the end of the world. Maybe I should have stopped Mama in Barstow. I don’t know if I could have. But it didn’t matter.

  Things that are alive deserve to live.

  But now I needed to save Janet 784.

  Behind the tractor, I hurriedly uncoupled the air lines and yanked the pigtail. Then I pulled the 5th wheel jaws open and ran for the cab, where I jammed the truck into gear. The trailer slammed down onto its jacks as Janet 784 and I struggled free. Without looking back, I headed for the interstate. A minute later, two Highway Patrol cars shot by apparently heading to the ruckus at the beach.

  Merging with freeway traffic on the 405, Janet 784 and I set course for Baja Mexico. I punched on the cruise control.

  ***

  A few months ago, I found myself in a bar in San Felipe. It’s a nice town where people don’t ask too many questions. Even though a year has passed, I figure it still isn’t safe to show my face north of the border.

  On a flickering television above the rows of multicolored liquor behind the bar, the local news team reported more surfers missing off Inspiration Point near Santa Barbara. Biologists and surfer dudes alike attributed the attacks to a Great White Shark.

  But you and I, my friend, we know better. So what do you say, the moon is out and the grunion are running. Shall we go to beach and take a look? Have another shot of tequila. Too drunk? Come on. I’ve heard the grunion have sprouted legs. It’s worth a look.

  And if you’re lucky, I’ll introduce you to Mama’s children.

  At the age of eight Daniel P. Coughlin was sent to a psychiatrist by his loving parents because of the dark content of his stories. Since then, he barely graduated from high school, served as a machine gunner in the last of the Marine Corps Amphibious Raider Units, graduated (with good grades this time) from California State University Long Beach with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Film/Screenwriting where he interned for Wes Craven as a script analyst, authored five published novels (Ted’s Score, The Last Customer, Craven’s Red, The Heartland and Sunny California), has had four original screenplays produced into feature films (Lake Dead, Farmhouse, Ditch Day Massacre and Diary of a Psychopath), got married to the love of his life Kelli-Rae, with whom he is expecting their first baby boy, has become an active member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Horror Writers Association where he met and befriended some of the greatest people on earth (and in hell), and resides in beautiful Southern California.

  DOWNSHIFT

  Daniel P. Coughlin

  THIS PART OF THE DESERT WHISTLES at night and it’s warm. One of those nights when the moon is set high and full and yellow and that luminescent energy cascades your being and captivates your thoughts and the feeling you get is almost like a drug. Well, I don’t notice any of that as I speed past her. She’s walking, drifting really, along the highway and I know it’s her. My wife. Mrs. Ron Burkard. The wife that was taken from me. Her life cut short and placed deeply into an infinite sleep. And now I miss her. Enough so that I see her sometimes while I’m hauling cargo in the middle of the night. She’s usually dressed in that simple white nightgown, the one I’d bought her at Walmart in Kentucky, but the way she wore that knee length slip you’d think I’d bought it at some fancy store in Times Square, New York City. The kind of store where you’re served champagne while shopping. God, she’s beautiful, flawed, everything. I’d always savored each of her flaws and hoped one day we’d have a child that would possess her traits. But that would never happen because of the vile man. And tonight I’ve seen my love more than fits comfortable. It’s bad enough, the dagger of despair still sticking outwardly from my chest like a coat hook for death’s jacket.

  Downshift.

  The next time I see her that gorgeous nightgown is crimson and slick in the moonlight, each pore of its purity wet and shiny. I don’t often see her like this, mostly on the nights when I haven’t slept in two or three days. The bird dog squelches, but I know there are no bears around this part of the desert looking for speeders and drunks to arrest. And I swear there’s a woman’s voice drowning in the static, a sad radio squelch begging for a strong hand to lift her outward and return her to the land of the living. These sounds and sights are simply sleep deprivation tugging at my senses and sanity. It plays tricks on you, sleep deprivation. There’s a coop up ahead, but I know I won’t be able to call it a night.

  Downshift.

  There are two rigs lined up just inside the closed chicken coop even though it’s all locked up. Everything is set. The boys have come through. I shake my head, look out the window. Can I do this? Hell yes I can. The bird dog and CB start squawking again. This time it’s high pitched. Not the usual static. This is the sound a computer would make if it were human, being murdered and dying. Then the distinct sound of my girl screaming explodes from the speakers. In the throes of death while that vile fuck does her in with garden sheers. She’ll never rest. I don’t care about myself. I’ll dance haunted until the end of my days and then burn in hell for eternity if it means she’ll finally rest.

  Downshift.

  She’s full on screaming. I turn to the passenger seat and see her. Her presence has never been so near. The swollen, ripped edges of her flesh where her wounds pulsate blood onto her nightgown makes my stomach sick. The endurance of her pain drives me into madness. I smile and tell my woman, “You’ll sleep the sleep of a queen before sun up. He’ll never steal another restless night.”

  And then time stands still. The air becomes stale and even the scent of night and undertones of fast food and air freshener cease. My rig halts but not abruptly, bluntly, or jarringly. It seems the Earth has hit the brakes. The fresh blood lathering my beautiful bride evaporates and retracts inside of her wounds, the wounds that now mend themselves. This black magic will work. I can feel it. Sense it. The unseen plane of existence living beneath simple thought and sight is bleeding into our worldly plane of existence. And that’s why breathing no longer matters. And when the gore completely evaporates from my love I think for a moment that my heart will stop. She’s so beautiful. Effortless. Stunning. I don’t want to leave this moment. I’ve not known a moment like this since before he’d taken her from me. This beautiful woman sitting beside me has captivated me
to the point that time has stopped.

  And her smile allows me the confidence to shake the jitters dancing, kicking, and marching through my veins like fire ants. I can move forward with this plan. The sign reading SCALES CLOSED only means that I won’t be bothered while I do to this man what he’s done to my bride.

  Downshift.

  Billy the “Big Rigger” appears from behind a gaggle of poplar trees and directs me into the back lot where the bears like to park and keep the peace. But not on this night. The guys from base camp made sure of that. No officers will cross this route until sunup. Good old Teddy Buckskin served in the Marines with the Highway Patrol big wig in charge of this stretch of highway. For the night, this stretch of highway is law free. And it’ll remain safe. Nobody will miss a piece of shit like… I can’t even say his name, not to this day. But the maniac that took my beloved. Can’t say her name either. It’s like a mental block. Every time I try and push the sweet sound of her name or the bitter scratch of his out of my mouth, my throat kind of heats up and cinches off. Anyway, that old piece of shit has been cargo inside of a refrigerator in Billy’s rig for the last seven hours. It’s only my good luck he hasn’t passed in transit. No way in hell I’m not gonna take care of this vile man by myself. My doubts are many, but I’d do anything for my love and if ending this shitbag in a vile manner will allow my love to rest then that’s what his demise will entail.

  She whispers, “I want to sleep in your arms for eternity.” I park my rig, jump down from the cab, and wander over to my fellow rig nuts gathered near the forest edge. I smell cigarette smoke. Smoking lamp is on and a couple of cherries glow bright red in the distance. I could use a smoke about now, but I’ll not have one. Maybe when I’m finished. Definitely when I’m finished. I’ve never killed. Sure, a few doe and a couple bucks when I was a boy, but never the most dangerous, if you know what I mean.

  My nerves run rampant when I hear the sound of the vile man huffing and puffing in the very near distance. My head starts to spin and my stomach clenches up. Hustling to the nearest tree I dry heave into the cool grass. Feel better. Shaking, I raise my hand and suddenly I can feel her hand wrap around mine and I know it’s her. I mean I know it’s her because her slender fingers intertwine with mine and then she’s squeezing tight and I’m squeezing tight and then I feel and smell the distinct humidity of her breath when she whispers, “I no longer wish to be tired.” And I understand her request clearly.

  By the time I reach him he’s figured out who I am and he’s smiling, welcoming death.

  “I’ll only do worse to her on the other side,” he says, smiling. It’s not the comedic, senseless babble of a maniac, but the cool sadism of the devil and I realize that without a doubt this demonic fuck is serious and the thought of my wife, tortured, restless on the other side causes me to hesitate, which is something I cannot afford right now. The guys look to me with detached humiliation. They know the silliness with which I debate and they don’t approve. These men have sacrificed a great deal in order for me to put my love to rest.

  “Is he handcuffed?” I ask Billy.

  “Cop cuffs. This dipshit ain’t getting’ loose.” Billy responds.

  I thank the fellas for their part in my plan and then excuse them. They argue and debate for a while. Jethro and Ken even beat the maniac into unconsciousness and knock out a few of his teeth before I’m able to convince them that I can manage from this point. What finally gets them to back off is when I explain that I want to take him to the place where he took my dearest and slayed our future in the dark. They understand and now I’m back on the road headed into the most desolate part of the desert. There are areas of this country where very few men have gone. Rare Native American tribes are the only lifeforms out here and the pure spirituality of what is about to take place keeps them at bay.

  Downshift.

  He’s still antagonizing me. Spouting off horrid words of what he’s done to my love. And the only time silence steals his vile tongue is when my love appears in the desert. Far at first but gliding toward us. I’m captivated by her beauty and he’s mortified. Knowing that something more than his demise is at hand. Death he could deal with, but not the confrontation of his undead victim. This affects him deeply. Grabbing at his chest I watch as he sucks at the night hoping to expand the lungs suffocating beneath his rib cage. Then the most beautiful form is standing amongst us in her white nightgown. She smiles at me and a warmth finds my chin when she touches me there, leans in, and kisses my lips. The sheer ecstasy of this touch and kiss sends me into a lucid state. Many, many years ago drugs had taken hold of my life, but nothing I’d ever ingested could touch the high sensation of this kiss from my deceased lover. I’m sent into a comatose state and I’m barely able to witness my love when she leans in close to the vile man that took her life so many years ago and begins to scream. Her scream is soft at first, a normal scream, but then it grows as does the vile man’s terror and by the time the volume of her agony is at full capacity his ears are bleeding and then he’s sobbing tears of crimson blood and that’s before his skin begins to rip and he’s now just a screaming skull with raw, taut cheek muscles and chattering gums. When my love finishes releasing the anger and rage that she’s harbored for so long she turns to me and smiles. Joy has found my love and to express this she laughs while embracing me and I’m uncertain, but the sputtering engine of my rig kicks into gear and somehow my love has shifted and it’s not downshifting now but the wheels spin and what looks like pink sugar spits up into the early morning light of this beautiful desert. When I’m done loving my wife, which is true heaven on earth, I see that the vile man has been sprayed into a mist and frosts the delicate desert sand, except for a torso and chattering skull, but my love and I wish to turn away and now I know that I never have to worry because my love and I speed down the empty highway experiencing the wonders and beauties of the open road and we are together and this is my heaven. We’ll never be apart. We are together for eternity. And death is perfect.

  Upshift.

  Sometimes the road least taken is the road best followed. Regardless, no road is best taken alone.

  Eric Miller (who prefers C.W. McCall’s Wolf Creek Pass to Convoy) has worked in Movie and TV Transportation for over 20 years, using his CDL on films such as The Joyriders with “Rubber Duck” Kris Kristofferson, The Last Producer, which was directed by and starred “The Bandit” himself, Burt Reynolds, and the Taken series with Liam Neeson. When not working as a Teamster, Miller is a screenwriter with credits including Mask Maker, Swamp Shark, and Ice Spiders. He also edited this book. The idea for this story came to him one night while driving a truck through the seemingly endless highways of west Texas, where something was singing to him from the darkness. It was the tires, of course. Yeah, right…

  SIREN

  Eric Miller

  “I DON’T KNOW HOW you can listen to that crazy stuff every night,” Gary said, looking across the cab at his middle-aged co-driver Phil, who was behind the wheel. Phil had just turned the truck’s radio to the AM dial, like he did every night at this time to catch his favorite radio show, Coast to Coast AM.

  “Coast to Coast is not crazy,” Phil replied. “If you’d take off your headphones every once in a while and actually listen, you’d find out some pretty interesting stuff. “

  “Like where the aliens really landed in New Mexico? I mean, who the hell would fly all the way across the galaxy just to visit Roswell? You’ve been there, right?”

  “Sure. It’s not that bad. But they crashed, that’s why they wound up there instead of Vegas or something. The real story is how they secretly took over the White House in ’52 and tried to start a war with Russia, which was really being run by a renegade gang of telepathic Yeti from Siberia.”

  “What are you—” Gary looked over and saw his partner grinning wide.

  “Gotcha.”

  Gary shook his head and smiled. “Never knew you had a sense of humor, Phil.”

  “Lots of things
you don’t know about me, kid. Lots of things.”

  “I’m sure there is,” Gary nodded. Phil was obviously fishing, trying to get Gary to ask about his life. But Gary shied away from most small talk. The company had put him with a never-ending stream of co-drivers since he signed on with them three years ago, most of them good guys and good drivers, but a few were obnoxious enough that he quickly lost his desire to learn more about the next person. Sometimes he regretted that; Phil was obviously a nice guy with a very fatherly personality, but the last thing Gary needed was a new friend. He had lost enough of them in his three deployments overseas, and wasn’t really ready to make more. And besides, the company would shuffle him off to a new rig and partner in a few months anyway, and he might never see Phil again. So he did what he always did; he retreated into his own world, putting in his earbuds and cranking up the music that for a little while every day took him away from the world.

  “Suit yourself. You can listen to your rock and roll all you want. I’ll let Mr. Noory and a few special guests get me through the night.”

  “It’s Waylon tonight.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Waylon Jennings. And a little of his kid Shooter mixed in for fun. I’m not really a rock and roll guy.”

  “Lots I don’t know about you, too I guess.”

  Gary smiled. Phil really was a likeable guy. “Maybe tomorrow we can talk about when you got kidnapped by those Russian Yetis.”

  Phil smiled back and turned up the radio as the ads finished and the bumper music to Coast to Coast came out of the speakers. “You got it.”

  Gary nestled back in the passenger seat and turned his music player up. The earbuds cut out a lot of the sounds from the rig’s cab, and the music covered up the rest. Even though he was off shift and could be in the sleeper, Gary always felt more comfortable up front in the seat, where he could see the road through the big windshield. He slept more soundly knowing he was close to the outside, to escape, rather than being closed up in the sleeper. He never told the VA shrinks about that, and why should he? They’d just tell him what he already knew; he was afraid of being caught inside another vehicle, like the troop carrier he’d been riding in on the road to Kandahar when the roadside bomb exploded. For a second, the screams of his squad-mates echoed in his head, and he could see the fire and blood and smoke all over again as he tried to free himself from the twisted wreckage and help them, but then he turned up the music and it all faded away. There was nothing there but the dark, lonely West Texas highway unrolling through the windshield outside. He was alive, and that was all that mattered for tonight.